#2
Russia's Komi governor, his entourage arrest sends Thou Shalt Not Steal warning to elites
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. The arrest of the Komi Republic's governor, Vyacheslav Gaizer, and more than a dozen other senior local officials on charges of fraud and organized crime sounds an explicit message to the elites: the federal authorities are determined to crack down on corruption in defiance of ranks and posts, polled experts told TASS.

The criminal proceedings against Vyacheslav Gaizer and his entourage were launched on September 18. Of the 19 persons on the list fifteen, including Gaizer himself, were remanded in custody following a court ruling. The investigators say the accused alienated government stakes in profitable businesses and transferred the money to offshore zones as dividends. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin has said the size of the damage caused in this way is yet to be established, but at this point one can say with certainty that billions of roubles are involved.

The director of the Institute of Political Studies, Sergey Markov, believes that the arrest of a governor and his team in a major Russian region is a sure sign the country's top leadership is determined to push ahead with the crusade against corruption.

"I strongly disagree with those experts who suspect that the arrest of Gaizer and his team is nothing but a high-profile PR campaign. On the one hand, it surely demonstrates the determination to take a hard line against the embezzlement of budget funds. The authorities even dared bear certain reputation losses. There have been no attempts to play down the affair. On the contrary, for the first time in Russia's recent history a governor was accused of running a crime ring," said Markov, a member of the Civic Chamber.

"And still, the high-profile detention and arrest on the basis of a court verdict of the Komi Republic's senior officials have drawn a mixed response from the public. People are wondering: 'How come the governor of the Sakhalin Region, Aleksandr Khoroshavin, was arrested last March and charged with taking huge bribe? Now Gaizer and his team are in custody. What had the superior authorities been doing all the time then?' Let me say it once again, it was not at all easy for the country's leadership to take this public step indicating that the war on corruption will proceed unabated."

The director of the Globalization Problems Institute, Mikhail Delyagin, believes that the arrest of the governor-led crime ring in Komi will have a positive effect on the public opinion, because the people will see for themselves the authorities are prepared to fight against corruption at the highest level. "But skeptics are speculating the Oboronservis affair may have a rerun. The main culprit, Yevgenia Vasilieva, who caused grave damage to the state budget, was released from jail virtually in no time with a dozen TV camera crews around filming the procedure. It is to be hoped the authorities will take the negative effect into account and bring the affair of Gaizer and his associates to the logical outcome," Delyagin said.

The ongoing budget crisis has forced the country's leadership to take the hardest line possible against corrupt officials.

"Whereas two or three years ago most corrupt civil servants got away with theft at the regional level, now it has gone intolerable. The costs are too high. They are estimated at millions," Delyagin said. "The arrest of senior officials in Komi sounds a warning to the regional elites they should toe the line amid the financial and economic crisis," Delyagin said.

And the general director of the Centre for Political Technologies, Igor Bunin, has recalled that the Komi Republic had invariably remained in the top five Russian regions.

"That so many heads have rolled is a reminder to all governors they should behave themselves at a time when the country has found itself in an adverse environment. This is precisely what President Vladimir Putin told the new governors elected on September 13," Bunin told TASS.

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 #3
Russia Beyond the Headlines
wwww.rbth.ru
September 22, 2015
Russia's opposition denies waning influence as protests shrink
In the wake of the low turnout to a Sept. 20 protest in Moscow, sources polled by RBTH say that the protest did not appear convincing and conclude that for the time being the opposition does not have very bright prospects.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH
 
Despite claims by leading liberal figures that Russia's opposition remains a force to be reckoned with, observers say that the increasingly low turnouts at organized protests are a sign that the movement is slipping into irrelevancy.

The opposition's latest rally, staged in a suburb of Moscow on the evening of Sept. 20 under the slogan "For the possibility to replace those in power!," gathered from 4,000 (according to the Interior Ministry) to 7,000 participants (according to the organizers, whereas their original application was for 40,000 people), making it the second-biggest opposition protest this year.

The protest, which had been sanctioned by the city authorities, was timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the controversial 2011 "swap" in which then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that he would be seeking a third presidential term, while then-President Dmitry Medvedev said he would not be running in the election. The exchange of power sparked large protests in Moscow and other Russian cities

The first one was a march of mourning for opposition leader and former First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, assassinated in February 2015, which gathered some 16,600 people, according to official figures alone.

Yet opposition leaders themselves appear to be satisfied by the turnout at the Sunday rally, with deputy chairman of PARNAS (People's Freedom Party) Ilya Yashin telling RBTH that the attendance proved that his party was a force.

"Despite the fact that we had been squeezed out to a suburb of Moscow, many people came," he said, adding that "there is in effect no other political opposition force capable of galvanizing, despite constant pressure and propaganda attacks, such a number of its supporters."
 
Agenda misses the mark

The opposition agreed to the venue in the residential suburb of Maryino after their application for a venue in the center of Moscow was rejected. If previously the organizers refused to accept a suburban alternative and just canceled their plans for a rally, this time round they decided not to defend their "right to central Moscow" with a boycott.

"If we do indeed have political and economic demands to the powers that be, we can declare them in Maryino too," Alexei Navalny, the liberal opposition leader behind the rally, wrote in his blog.

Yet the rally did not voice any topical economic demands to the authorities, only political ones: to give up censorship (which ironically officially does not exist in Russia as it is supposedly banned by the constitution), to free political prisoners, to end the war in southeast Ukraine, to combat corruption and to ensure "unconditional access to elections for the opposition."

It is worth pointing out that the protest was held just a week after the regional and local elections, in which PARNAS got under 2 percent of the vote and did not make it to the Kostroma Region parliament.

After such a "defeat", Navalny simply could not afford "to sit it out somewhere in the shadow", said the head of the independent Political Expert Group, Konstantin Kalachev.

However, with their main slogan - "for the possibility to replace those in power" - the organizers have misfired, he said: "To have the possibility to replace those in power is a good thing, and it is available at the regional level, take Irkutsk for example. Whereas people in the regions are far more concerned by the social agenda."

According to Kalachev, the opposition's prospects are even more pessimistic if they decide to use the same slogan in the upcoming federal elections.

"To fight the State Duma election under this slogan when there are 14 parties that have the right to run in elections without the need to collect signatures [a demand often used to create obstacles to parties registering for elections - RBTH] is somewhat strange. The majority of the population will not respond to it," he said.
 
Less numerous but still alive

At the same time, it would be wrong to describe both opposition projects - the regional elections and the rally - as a complete failure, says managing director of the independent Center of Political Information Alexei Mukhin, since opposition figures are again a focus of attention.

"Unfortunately, they are a focus of attention mainly for foreign observers. This is slightly alarming, as it puts the opposition into the marginal zone of the notorious fifth column," he said. Any hint that an organization receives funding from abroad is often used by the government to claim that they are "fifth columnists" operating on a shady agenda.

Furthermore, Mukhin claims, the authorities are "quite effectively" stealing the opposition agenda, with recent anti-corruption moves by the government such as the dismissal of the governors of Sakhalin and the Komi Republic. Opposition leaders should broaden the range of theses they address to the public since the emphasis only on negative things and on protest for the sake of protest no longer works, said Mukhin, "as demonstrated by the gathering in Maryino."

For their part, opposition leaders do not agree that protest sentiment is waning, although they admit that the number of people who are ready to take to the streets has indeed dropped over the past several years.

"After those rallies people were put in prison, prosecuted, questioned, their homes were searched. An opposition leader was assassinated. Against this backdrop, protesters have become less numerous but the number of discontented people is rising," said Yashin.

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 #4
Politkom.ru
September 15, 2015
Russian commentary blames opposition party's campaign for failure at elections
Aleksey Roshchin, expert at the Centre for Political Technologies: On the Failure of Parnas

Even if you only want to spend the night with a girl, promise her a star from the sky or, at worst, indicate that you are willing to marry her. Then you will have a chance of a good night (and maybe you will not have to marry her anyway). It is an ineffective and fundamentally flawed strategy to tell the girl that you just want to sleep with her, reinforcing this with an argument along the lines of "well, what does it cost you? It is not difficult." In this case your chances of even the most basic sex will certainly be close to zero.

An understanding of this kind of revelations from the "pick-up guru" was clearly lacking in the Parnas party [People's Freedom Party] in Kostromskaya Oblast [Kostroma Region] (one could put it even more broadly - in the entire "democratic clique" in the 2015 campaign). The reason for the patent failure of the Democratic Coalition is precisely this: They essentially offered the Russian province a relationship in the spirit of "let me sleep with you just once - and then I run for it." Naturally the locals considered such approaches to be frivolous, to say the least, and generally offensive. All this was clear from the outset, but our opposition, despite the warnings of well-wishers (like me) that "this is not how it is done in the provinces, they like to be courted," yet again preferred to follow its mournful path through old mistakes to the very end.

Electorate Is a Word of the Feminine Gender [the Russian word "elektorat" is in fact of masculine gender]

Let us express the same idea even more briefly and clearly: Elections are a power struggle; an "opposition" that approaches the voter with the words "in principle we want power, but not here, not with you, and not now" is doomed to a lack of understanding at best and, at worst, rotten eggs.

You could spend a long time scrutinizing Parnas with a magnifying glass in terms of the details of actual campaigning work, and here, indeed, there is plenty to scrutinize (such as one campaign newspaper in the colour of pale green sickness). We will do this later, but for the time being let us single out the main point: The Parnas' campaign was doomed by its very nature (and it would have remained so even if, by some miracle, the party had succeeded in scraping together the "longed-for" 5 per cent of votes). The point is that you cannot run for election in a region without displaying the readiness - even theoretically - immediately to take power in that region and without having any kind of plan, even purely theoretical, for reforms in that specific region.

This is the same thing as "I am willing to sleep with you but not to marry you." You should not think that all the above argument is some kind of abstraction; in actual fact the ordinary voter, even if unable to formulate it coherently, can detect this attitude literally in his skin. And to be frank, it sickens him.

The problem is not even that Parnas openly, without making a secret of it, intended "only" to penetrate the Kostromskaya Oblast Duma by introducing one or at most two members of the party - and in the style of: Goodbye, "I do not know you, you do not know me." The problem is that the visitors from Moscow apparently sincerely considered this kind of approach to be tempting for the residents of the province. "We will put Yashin into your duma - of course he will not be able to influence anything there, but that does not matter, ha ha, after all, we simply need to secure our position for the future State Duma elections, it is nothing personal, do not consider it any trouble."

If you look at it dispassionately, these were the Democratic Coalition's tactics everywhere. Not in a single region did they set the goal of - no, not "taking power," but even showing the voter what exactly, step by step, the party would do IF [throughout the report capitalization as published] it won the election and took power. In every case the talk was only of "overcoming the 5 per cent barrier" as if that was some kind of "ultimate dream." Should one be surprised that in every region the vast majority of the residents proved indifferent to the party and its misfortunes over, for instance, trying to secure registration "by signatures"? That reaction is perfectly natural: These guys turn up, they want to secure some kind of little deals of their own - what does this have to do with the ordinary person?

It all began with the failure of the primaries

The squeamishness or maybe arrogance of the Parnas party functionaries was manifested very graphically at the stage of preparations for the so-called "primaries." It is well known that the Democratic Coalition's political council initially approached the idea of "primaries" in May of this year, just over three months before the elections, with great scepticism, and for a long time refused to conduct primaries at all, asserting that "this is all meaningless" and "the elections to the Opposition Coordination Council convinced us that these votes lead to no end of trouble." Rumour has it that M.B. Khodorkovskiy insisted on the "primaries" from his distant foreign parts, threatening that if they abandoned them he simply would not give them any money.

So Parnas agreed to it, albeit with enormous reluctance. However, in the end they did it their own way anyhow - and the failure of the Democratic Coalition primaries was the natural precondition for the subsequent failure in the actual elections.

So, purely logically, what were they resisting? Khodorkovskiy's demand, to an outsider, appeared perfectly natural: If you have an absolutely "unpublicized" party, essentially new-born (on the federal scale), and unknown to anyone in the regions - how can you avoid conducting measures to "publicize" the party and its future "personalities" in the pre-pre-election period? You would think it would be the other way around - you should seize the opportunity with both hands!

There was also another reason for the "primaries": In fact you did not need to be a genius to foresee probable "difficulties" in obtaining registration for the elections in the chosen regions "by signatures" (particularly considering that under current legislation the party has no other way of registering candidates). That being so, it was obviously necessary to have a "big stick" in reserve in the shape of possible popular pressure on the electoral commissions (and the courts) in the Federation components: rallies, pickets, civil disobedience campaigns by party supporters, and so forth. However, in order to assemble rallies of supporters, at the very least you have to have supporters.

So the need to fight your way through the "signatures" barrier in itself justified those who supported full-scale "primaries" involving the broadest possible population strata in the regions. But no Navalnyy and Volkov (as well as Maksim Kats) preferred to make the far-fetched assumption that they would "collect the most perfect signatures in the world" (a verbatim quotation from Navalnyy's blog) and then they "simply will not be able not to register us." Uh-huh times three, as the saying goes. Life convincingly and quite harshly showed the Democratic Coalition (and Maksim Kats) what these castles in the air built on sand are worth. Although you might have thought that the "people's tribunes" would not need to chew over axiomatic truths such as that the only real strength of opposition forces is mass popular support, and certainly not legal chicanery or good handwriting skills.

How precisely did the Parnas leadership wreck the "primaries" (thereby depriving themselves of resources of any kind in defending the "signatures" to the electoral commissions)? It is very simple: In all the regions they made their "primaries" as private as possible, practically a secret procedure "strictly for our own people." Subsequently at a discussion of the disastrous results of the "primaries" (in Kostromskaya Oblast, for instance, about 300 people took part) Leonid Volkov, without batting an eyelid, tried to justify himself by saying that Parnas actually wanted to conduct these "primary elections" exclusively "among our dedicated supporters." The question of where a totally unknown party is going to find supporters in the regions was tactfully bypassed in silence.

What was the underlying reason for this contempt for the "primaries" - such powerful contempt that, because of it, the party leadership was not afraid even to come into conflict with its chief sponsor? I think the reason was what we have been talking about from the beginning: Parnas had nothing to say. It is not ready - even in its thoughts - to take power!

Hence this persistent desire to talk to "supporters." In sectarian organizations of this kind, the word "supporters" is interpreted in a rather original way: They are people who do not ask "unnecessary" and inconvenient questions.

Perplexity of a political technologist

On reading the blogs of prominent oppositionists during this campaign - Volkov, Kats, and others - I constantly found myself perplexed: Why so many technical details, described with such gusto (campaigners, [poster] cubes, samples of campaign material), and at the same time practically zero information about the substantive content of the campaign? Here, for example, is a typical quotation from Volkov:

"Last Thursday we acquired a large pamphlet in A3 format, and today a full-scale election newspaper came off the printing press; we have disseminated 230,000 copies of various campaign products in total, and there are now a further 220,000 on the shelves and in production. There are about 120 campaigners working at the campaign staff (we began the campaign with 50 campaigners), Yashin and Andreychenko will hold a further 40 meetings in the courtyards of Kostroma, and there will be about 100 more campaign cubes in the streets of the oblast's cities (up to 15 a day in Kostroma and 10 a day in the oblast)."

And so on, in the same spirit. But where is the explanation - "why?" Why should the voter vote specifically for this party? At the end of the campaign in Kostromskaya Oblast, according to Parnas' own figures, their recognition level in the region was 47 per cent across the oblast. That is to say, practically every second voter in the oblast knew something about the party - had seen its spokespeople, had read or looked at its campaign materials. And of those 47 per cent, in the end only 2 per cent (fine, it may be 4 per cent "in actual fact") actually gave the party their votes! This means precisely that the failure was in the campaign's CONTENT. Yashin and Andreychenko were saying the wrong things at the meetings, the wrong things were written in the pamphlets and the newspaper. They did not convince people!

They failed specifically in terms of content. Blatherers. The simplest example that springs to mind: In Kostromskaya Oblast there are two major timber processing enterprises - a plywood combine in Manturovo, and Fanplit in Kostroma itself; they both form part of the Sveza group, which in turn belongs to Severstal, which has its head office in Moscow. Accordingly the plywood manufacturers (who send a lot of their products for export) also pay their taxes in Moscow, and Kostromskaya Oblast is left with only crumbs. A typical story. Did Parnas say a single word about this in the campaign? No. That was a mistake: The residents of Kostroma may have thought that this situation actually suits the Parnas people, as Muscovites, perfectly well.

Or if we dig more deeply: The plywood plants have long been located in the Kostroma region because the entire oblast is densely covered in forest; however, nowadays the timber for processing at these combines is brought mainly from other oblasts and some deliveries even come from Siberia. Why? They say that the timber in the oblast itself is "not the right kind." There is the ecological issue, there is jobs, there is the subject of the development of the oblast's resource base in the long term... Did Parnas have anything to say about this? Nothing except generalities on the theme of "let us develop local self-government." Yes, let's - only we already have a master of generalities in United Russia.

But never mind the plywood combines Parnas failed in Kostromskaya Oblast even in what you would think is its "very own" field - the war on corruption. We never heard a single exposure of even the most worthless Kostroma official along the lines of "Sobyanin's daughters' luxury apartments." And in this respect the Parnas campaign in Kostroma was surprisingly peaceful and vegetarian, "in favour of everything good and against everything bad." One can only speculate about the reason for this strange peaceability.

Reliance on imported volunteers

Because of the total failure, it makes sense to call into question even an apparently "undoubted advantage" of the Democratic Coalition in its work in Kostromskaya Oblast, namely the reliance on "democratic activists from Moscow." True, throughout the campaign Volkov never stopped bragging in his blog about how many people from Moscow he had enlisted "for the cubes" and sent out "here and there." But is it such a good thing, from the viewpoint of the results, to rely on outsiders?

It seems that this idea is also fundamentally incorrect. It is desirable to conduct a campaign in a region by using the efforts first and foremost of inhabitants of that same region. Well-fed, self-satisfied hipsters in their own cars "campaigning" for Soviet power on wrecked roads in the impoverished expanses of the province - this is probably too striking and painful a contrast for unprepared people from Shar'ya, Manturovo, and other godforsaken places. There is too great a temptation for them to think: "You will just hand out your pamphlets and then go speeding back to Moscow, BUT WE HAVE TO LIVE HERE!"

To Sum Up

So, to put it briefly: The failure of the Democratic Coalition was unfortunately only natural. The 2015 campaign demonstrated convincingly that our opposition:

A) does not have sufficient cadre or intellectual resources to put forward ideas that are comprehensible and attractive to the ordinary voter outside the Third Ring [outer Moscow] (with the exception of the "war on corruption" which people are sick and tired of and on which, in any case, there are no new ideas either)

B) is not even capable of recognizing its own shortage of these intellectual and cadre resources.

Alas, without an understanding of point B it is useless even to dream of overcoming point A.

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 #5
Wall Street Journal
September 23, 2015
Russians Feel Pain as Sinking Ruble Pushes Up Medical Costs
Vladimir Putin's efforts to promote domestic industry in wake of Western sanctions drives prices up
By OLGA RAZUMOVSKAYA

MOSCOW- Nina Semyonova is in trouble. She is at risk for stroke, but says she can no longer afford to take the prophylactics prescribed for her condition, as a weakening ruble and double-digit inflation drive up prices.

The cost of a course of Caviton and Phezam, both imported, has gone up by two thirds to 500 rubles ($7.60), the 50-year-old English teacher says. That is a lot of money where she lives in Nizhny Novgorod, where educators earn less than $300 a month on average.

Cheaper, Russian-made alternatives "aren't of good quality, and somehow don't work," she says. "I basically haven't taken these drugs since last year. Now I am just waiting for my symptoms to start, like dizziness."

Imports across the board have become more expensive in Russia as Western sanctions and falling oil prices take a toll on the national currency. Over the past year, the ruble has weakened by about 45% against the dollar, and the economy remains mired in recession.

Drug prices in particular have become such a cause for concern that President Vladimir Putin addressed the issue during his annual phone-in with Russians in mid-April. "Part of those medicines, even though they are produced in our country, contain imported substances. Obviously, because of the exchange rate fluctuations, their prices have gone up," he said.

In response, the Russian government has embarked on a campaign to bolster domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers. In addition to a pledge to support local producers, the country recently adopted a set of new regulations that would raise the prices of domestically produced "essential medicines"-widely prescribed drugs used to treat relatively common conditions.

According to Russia's Federal Statistics Service, medication prices in Russia rose 22.2% in August compared with the same period of last year, due in part to the new regulations. Over the first eight months of the year, the increase was 16.6%.

As a result of the new regulations, prices for nearly all domestically produced essential medicines will have gone up 16% on average since July 1, according to Yelena Balashova of Russia's Higher School of Economics.

Russian authorities "have decided that the consumer must support the domestic producer," she said in her research in June.

For Elena Pakhomova, a freelance English teacher, that means canceling more classes-and losing income-when she gets an occasional sore throat.

Until recently she used Hungarian-made Bioparox containing fusafungine, an antibacterial spray that rid her of her symptoms within two days. After the price more than doubled, she switched to homemade gargles and Inhalyptum, a cheaper Russian spray. Getting back to work now takes five days, she said.

The push for imports substitution-a trendy shorthand for Russia's effort to offset the impact of sanctions and falling oil prices-has also hit the medical equipment industry.

The Trade Ministry recently proposed a rule that would restrict foreign suppliers from submitting bids to sell medical equipment to state agencies unless at least two companies from Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan or Belarus are taking part in the tender.

That decree is under review until Oct. 1, but many Russians are already worried about the potential impact.

Six-year-old Alina Germanenko, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, is able to live at home because she has a portable ventilator there that helps her breathe. The rare genetic disorder affects the control of muscle movement.

Alina's pulmonologist, Vasily Shchtabnitsky, said there were no Russian-made equivalents to the home models. "It is unlikely that one will appear in the coming years," he added.

That means other patients may not be able to get one if the new decree passes, meaning they would have to live in an intensive care unit at a hospital.

"Having her in the ICU permanently would be like visiting an orphan," said her mother, Olga Germanenko, who heads the Russian Association for Families with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. "No one would take care of her the way we would here at home."

 #6
New York Times
September 23, 2015
Putin Opens Moscow's Most Elaborate Mosque
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

MOSCOW - The most elaborate mosque ever built in Moscow, a city that is home to one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in Europe, was opened on Wednesday by President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Putin, in brief remarks, called the new, modern mosque the biggest in Europe and said that it was a worthy addition to a capital and a country built on the idea of uniting different nationalities and faiths. The mosque is a central part of Russia's efforts to develop its own system of Muslim religious education and training to counteract extremists seeking recruits, the president said.

"Terrorists from the so-called Islamic State actually cast a shadow on the great global religion of Islam," he said. "Their ideology is built on hate."

The opening is a singular event for Moscow, where a wave of bombing attacks by Muslim extremists that started around 2000 generated a wave of animosity toward the faith that has never entirely ebbed.

"Finally, Moscow, which lays claim to the title of the biggest Muslim city in Europe, has a big mosque," said Aleksei Malashenko, an expert on Islam at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "It shows that the center of Islamic life in the Russian Federation is in Moscow."

Mosque construction has long been fraught here - this project took a decade to come to fruition. The biggest chunk of the construction costs, about $170 million, came from a wealthy Russian oil tycoon, mosque officials said, but foreign governments also donated. They included Turkey, Kazakhstan and even the Palestinian Authority, whose president, Mahmoud Abbas, gave $25,000. He spoke at the inauguration, as did President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey; both criticized recent Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshipers.

Known as the Moscow Cathedral Mosque, the grand structure holds 10,000 people on three stories and replaced a much smaller one built in 1904. The previous two-story building - with a squat dome and two stunted minarets - could hold only 1,000 people.

There are just three other official mosques in a city whose Muslim population is estimated to be as high as two million. No exact public numbers exist.

That would mean Muslims make up about 16 percent of the population in this city of 12.5 million, and that puts the capital in contention for the title of most Muslims in Europe, not counting Turkey. Estimates about the number of Muslims in the greater Paris area, often described as having the largest concentration in the European Union, range from 1.2 million to 1.7 million. (Russian census numbers have long been considered a bit dubious, and about 10 years ago, the government stopped counting according to ethnicity, which was broadly used to estimate religious affiliation.)

Given the tens of thousands of Muslims who pray on city streets during major holidays, Moscow appears grievously short on mosques. All four could accommodate just 10,000 worshipers. The new mosque virtually doubles the space available.

Often, 60,000 or more show up at this mosque on major holidays, like Eid al-Adha, which is celebrated on Thursday in Russia and will be used as the occasion to inaugurate the mosque. The building is tucked into a corner near one of Moscow's stadiums left over from the 1980 Olympics, and an adjacent parking lot now has the capacity for an overflow crowd of at least 20,000.

"It is strange that in such a big city like Moscow there are only four mosques, and even this one does not solve the problems in terms of space," said Maksim Shevchenko, a member of the Kremlin's human rights council who concentrates on religious issues.

Ravil Gainutdin, the chairman of the council of muftis in Russia, has suggested that every Moscow neighborhood should have one mosque - meaning about 20 to 30 new ones. With at least 40 underground mosques estimated to be working in apartments, the Muslim hierarchy argues that more official mosques would help curb recruiters for the Islamic State or other extremist groups.

About 2,400 Russians are fighting for the Islamic State, Sergei Smirnov, the deputy director of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the main security organization, said last week, with at least an additional 3,000 having joined from Central Asia.

Russia has built up of its own military forces in Syria in what Mr. Putin has described as part of an effort to create an international military coalition to fight the Islamic State. Others, however, see it as an attempt to reassert the military power lost in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In Moscow, plans to construct just a couple more mosques in recent years met such vehement public protests that they were canceled. The fact that sophisticated criminal gangs have a hand in many Moscow real estate deals does not help either, Mr. Shevchenko said, as they tend to favor shopping malls or office buildings that generate revenue.

Ildar Hazrat Alyautdinov, the senior imam at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque and the mufti of Moscow, said, "One reason why mosques don't get built is public opinion, unfortunately."

"When we studied the situation, we found that those who initiated such a mood were from the Russian Orthodox Church," he added. "Their activists would rile people up - going door to door telling people that the mosque should not be built. Maybe it is not their official position but the work of activists."

The mayor or Moscow, Sergei S. Sobyanin, has gone on the record opposing new mosques. Spot checks of worshipers' identity cards indicated that many of them were not legal Moscow residents, he said in a 2012 interview. "So it is not a fact that the construction of mosques is needed, namely in Moscow," the mayor said.

On Tuesday night, the state-run television channel Rossiya 24 broadcast a 30-minute preview of the mosque opening. In it, Mr. Gainutdin, the Russian Muslim leader, went out of his way to present the building as an organic element of Moscow's religious architecture.

The dome - of the onion family if not exactly an onion, and encircled with an inscription from the Quran - was designed and clad in gold in order to fit in with the many gilded church domes in Moscow, he said. The mosque is a bit of an architectural mishmash, built from grayish green stone, with one of its two minarets meant to resemble a famous Kremlin tower. Design elements were drawn from Turkish mosques and various indigenous Russian traditions, Mr. Gainutdin said, but the overall effect was unique.

"It is something special to Moscow, a Russian-Muslim style," he said.

Recently, most attention on Islam in Russia has focused on Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the contentious leader of Chechnya, the southern republic where Russia fought two wars against Islamic extremists in the 1990s. He has tried to cast himself as the leader of all Russian Muslims and encouraged traditional practices like polygamy in his republic, even though it is banned in the Russian Federation.

Senior Muslim officials and other analysts noted that hostility toward Muslims had diminished somewhat in the past 18 months given the war in Ukraine and the official vilification of the United States.

"Now that we hate Ukrainians and people from the United States, we have suspended our fears concerning Muslims," Natalya V. Zubarevich, a demographics expert at Moscow State University, said with some irony. "They will come back at some future time. The authorities found another enemy, something fresh."

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#7
Deutsche Welle
September 22, 2015
Islam in Russia: Caught between acceptance and rejection

Russia's largest mosque is opening its doors in Moscow. New Muslim houses of worship, however, are very controversial in Russia. More than anything, many Russians fear more immigrants.

After ten years of construction, Moscow's main mosque will finally open its doors to the faithful this Wednesday. It is big enough to hold up to 10,000 worshippers, and according to the chair of the Russian Council of Muftis, Ravil Gaynutdin, that makes it the largest Muslim house of worship in the whole of Europe. The mosque that originally occupied the site was built in 1904, but it was torn down in May 2005 to make way for the new building.

That means that now there are six mosques in the Russian capital. It is estimated that some two million Muslims live in Moscow. In all, nearly 20 million Muslims reside in the Russian Federation.

Islam considered an ideology

Russians tend to clearly differentiate between Islam as a religion and Muslims as individuals, says Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center, a Moscow-based NGO. He adds that 40 percent of Russians say they have a negative opinion of Islam, yet only 12 percent claim that they have a negative opinion of individual Muslims. Verkhovsky told DW that many Russians perceive Islam as "a kind of ideology, as something dangerous that is connected to terrorism."

He explains that Russians are generally not very tolerant of certain ethnic groups - above all those hailing from the Caucasus - but that religion has little to do with that fact. "People are against the construction of new mosques because they fear that new immigrants will move into their neighborhoods. They are less scared about the buildings than about the influx of foreigners." This often leads to naked aggression. Russia has a history of ethnically motivated attacks, though very few are motivated by religion.
Russland Neue Zentralmoschee in Moskau auf Prospekt Mira

Nonetheless, he says the Russian government is looking at Islamic religious communities through the prism of the war on terror: "From the authorities' point of view, informal Islamic groups are a risk. Peaceful people may be associated with such groups, but also extremists with ties to armed underground organizations." Verkhovsky is critical of the fact that peaceful groups have been prohibited in Russia alongside groups that actually have extremist structures.

Immigration stokes suspicion

Islamophobia definitely exists in Russia, says renowned orientalist Alexey Malashenko of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "It is fueled by conflicts in the Caucasus, but also by internal and external immigration, as well as extremism." In his opinion, the only tolerance that really exists is that regarding religious attire: "Nobody cares whether or not someone wears a headscarf."

People view the question of the building of mosques in Russian cities in very different ways. "A few years ago, a new mosque was built near my house, I never heard anything about conflict there," says Malashenko. He adds that the chairman of the Council of Muftis is of the opinion that there should be a mosque in every neighborhood in Moscow. "And he's right, because Moscow is the largest Muslim city in Europe," he says.

"But as soon as it was determined that the number of mosques in the city should in fact be increased, people started speaking out against the plan, because they were scared of immigration," according to the orientalist. "But immigrants are just people, they have to pray somewhere too! Otherwise they will be forced to go to more dubious houses of worship, and those are often hotbeds of extremism."

The complexity of daily life

The chairman of the Society for Central Asian Political Immigrants, Bakhrom Khamraev, is convinced that the Russian government is waging a real war against Islam - primarily against independent Islamic organizations and associations. "The situation is extremely difficult. There are repressions and trumped-up criminal proceedings, even against Tatars and Bashkirs," says Khamraev.

"It is very difficult to be a Muslim in Russia today. There have been many cases of authorities attempting to prohibit the wearing of the hijab or the possession of religious literature on grounds of extremism," complains the activist. People often have no idea that the literature they have in their house may be considered extreme. Yet, even Khamraev says: "In daily life, Muslims are generally well treated."
 

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 #8
Kremlin.ru
September 23, 2015
Moscow's Cathedral Mosque has reopened after reconstruction

Vladimir Putin, President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the opening of Moscow's Cathedral Mosque following reconstruction.

The mosque has reopened after extensive reconstruction designed to increase its capacity substantially. The new building can hold up to 10,000 worshippers at a time.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Erdogan, Mr Abbas, members of the clergy, foreign guests, friends,

Let me congratulate you from all my heart on the opening of Moscow's rebuilt Cathedral Mosque. This is a big event for all Muslims in Russia.

One of Moscow's oldest mosques stood on this historical site and has undergone reconstruction that now makes it the biggest in Europe. It was given a magnificent modern new look worthy of the capital of our united, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country. This new mosque is worthy of Russia, in which, I want to stress, Islam, under our country's law, is one of Russia's traditional religions, with millions of our citizens counting themselves among its followers.

I want to thank everyone who took part in the work on this magnificent building and all of the Muslims in Russia and abroad who donated to this effort. We are grateful to the governments of Turkey and Kazakhstan for their contributions to the mosque's reconstruction.

I am sure that the mosque will become a major spiritual centre for Muslims in Moscow and throughout Russia, providing education and spreading humanistic ideas and the true and authentic values of Islam. It will spread knowledge and spirituality and will help to unite the efforts of Muslims and people of other faiths too in common worthy causes. The Koran tells us to try to outdo each other in doing good.

Right from its creation, Russia has always been a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country. This mutual enrichment of different cultures, traditions and religions has always been our country's distinguishing feature and strength.

Moscow's Muslim community, for example, emerged back in mediaeval times, and this is reflected in the Tatar roots of many of the capital's street names.

The traditions of enlightened Islam developed over many centuries in Russia. The fact that different peoples and religions live peacefully together in Russia is in large part thanks to the Muslim community, which has made a worthy contribution to preserving harmony in our society and has always strived to build relations within and between religions based on tolerance for each other's faiths.

Today, traditional Islam is an integral part of Russia's spiritual life. Islam's humanist values, like the values of our other traditional religions, teach people compassion, justice and care for our loved ones. We place great value on these things.

The number of mosques and Islamic cultural centres has increased greatly in Russia over the last 20 years. Amazingly beautiful mosques have been built in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya and other Russian regions. In 2003, our country became a permanent observer in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Thousands of pilgrims from Russia make the hajj, and the number of madrasas and schools attached to mosques has also increased greatly.

It is important to educate Muslim youth in traditional Islamic values and prevent attempts to impose on us world outlooks that are alien to us and have nothing to do with genuine Islam. Let me say that the authorities will continue to assist in reviving Russia's system of Islamic theological schools and religious education.

As you know, I supported the Tatarstan authorities and the principal Muslim spiritual bodies on the issue of establishing the Bulgar Islamic Academy, thus reviving this ancient Russian Muslim centre of religion and learning.

Of course, we must continue expanding the network of Muslim cultural and educational centres. Their aim is to bring Muslims together, impart to them the spiritual, cultural and moral code inherent to traditional Islam in Russia, help to resolve common problems, and take part in youth education.

I note the big role that Muslims and above all their spiritual leaders play in strengthening interethnic and interfaith harmony. Their rejection and condemnation of all forms of fundamentalism and radicalism have made a major contribution to the fight against nationalism and religious extremism.

Work in this area is all the more important today, when we see attempts to cynically exploit religious feelings for political aims.

We see what is happening in the Middle East (this has been mentioned here today too), where terrorists from the so-called Islamic State are compromising a great world religion, compromising Islam, sowing hatred, killing people, including clergy, and barbarically destroying monuments of world culture. Their ideology is built on lies and blatant distortions of Islam.

They are trying to recruit followers here in Russia too. Russia's Muslim leaders are bravely and fearlessly using their own influence to resist this extremist propaganda. I want to express my tremendous respect for these people who carry out their work heroically and have suffered losses. I have no doubt that they will continue to educate the faithful in the spirit of humanism, compassion and justice.

Friends, this new mosque is opening as the Muslim community is about to celebrate the big holiday of Eid al-Adha. Let me congratulate all of Russia's Muslims on this joyful holiday and wish you all goodness, happiness and prosperity.

I congratulate you on the mosque's opening.

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 #9
Inflation in Russia to stand at 6-7% in 2016 - finance minister

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. Russia's Finance Ministry projects inflation at 6-7% in 2016, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Wednesday.

"Inflation has been obviously going down in recent quarters. Q2 and Q3 have been witnessing a sharp decline in consumer prices growth rate. We expect inflation to reach 6-7% next year," the Minister said.

Earlier on Wednesday Siluanov said inflation is projected at 1.8% for Q3 in Russia despite substantial devaluation of the ruble in August. "We managed to curb inflation as it dropped from 7.3% in Q1 to 1.1% in Q2 and [is projected at] 1.8% in Q3 despite substantial devaluation of the ruble in August," he said. This year "has seen an extremely high risk of inflationary spiral," the Minister added.

The Finance Ministry projects inflation at 12.2% in 2015, the Central Bank - at 12-13%.

Russia to face high inflation "for some time"

High inflation negatively impacts Russia's lending sector, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on Wednesday.

"Banking capital is currently almost inaccessible for entrepreneurs, especially for small business. It's obvious that we'll be facing high inflation for some time. Until we get inflation under control within 4-5% banking credit will still be rather expensive for small business," Shuvalov said.

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 #10
Bloomberg
September 22, 2015
Russian Options Narrow as Putin Looks to Exporters' Windfall
By Olga Tanas and Andrey Biryukov

Russian President Vladimir Putin's promises made as recently as last year may be the latest casualty of the collapse in oil prices.

Putin instructed the government on Tuesday to study the possibility of steering into the budget some of the gains by exporters from ruble devaluation, without losing the focus on meeting all social obligations. One proposal has been to raise taxes on crude producers, the nation's main source of revenue, a move that would break the president's pledge to refrain from higher levies.

"It's necessary to ensure that state finances are balanced and steady," Putin said at the meeting with top officials near Moscow. "The situation in the economy isn't simple, but it's not critical. We have to make calibrated, correct decisions aimed at strengthening the country's economic potential."

The budget debate is putting the spotlight on an economy cratered by a selloff in oil, which has paralyzed investment and plunged millions into poverty amid the biggest collapse in living standards during Putin's 15 years in power. With Russia at threat of the longest recession in two decades, the government is struggling to find the right policy mix after responding this year with budget cutbacks and a stimulus program for banks and industry.

Foreign Revenue

After appealing to exporters to sell foreign currency at the height of last year's currency crisis, the government is zeroing in again on companies that have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the ruble's tumble of more than 50 percent since the start of 2014, the steepest decline since the 1998 economic crisis.

Under discussion is a proposal to raise levies on the oil industry, which may generate an additional 605 billion rubles ($9.1 billion) for next year's budget, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Tuesday. Other options for stabilizing government finances include spending cuts and changes in the pace of increases for state-regulated tariffs.

Elections Loom

As economic pressures build, Russia is also bracing for early parliamentary elections next year and the presidential vote in 2018. While Putin is still riding a wave of patriotic support linked to the standoff in Ukraine, with approval ratings hovering above 80 percent, gauges of social sentiment are declining. Optimism regarding Russia's prospects has plunged near a level last seen in 2009, according to a survey published Monday by the state-run All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion.

"It's very important now to adapt the budget to the new reality, with the lower oil price and lower oil and gas revenues in the mid-term," said Oleg Kouzmin, a former central bank adviser who's now an economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. "The sooner they will start to do that, the more opportunities there will be to implement the necessary steps smoothly, with fewer costs for the economy and risks for the budget system."

Brent crude, used to price Russia's main export blend Urals, decreased as much 2.25 percent to $47.82 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The ruble traded 0.8 percent weaker at 66.49 versus the dollar as of 5:53 p.m. in Moscow.

Fiscal Adjustments

The government, which relies on oil and gas for almost half of its revenue, is drafting next year's budget based on an average price of Urals at $50 a barrel. It's already revamped its approach by shortening its fiscal-planning horizon to one year, from three, for 2016 and suspending a rule that capped public spending based on average long-term oil prices.

The Finance Ministry has also suggested further decreases to spending, including a reduction in pension adjustments to 4 percent. Next year's fiscal gap must not exceed 3 percent of gross domestic product, Putin said at the meeting. While telling the government to consider using some of the revenue reaped by exporters as a result of the ruble devaluation, the president warned against undermining the companies and their investment capabilities.

"It's necessary to act extremely carefully," he said.

There's still no final decision on tapping into exporters' revenue because of concern by the Energy Ministry about the damage such a move may inflict on corporate investment programs, Siluanov told reporters after the meeting.

By targeting the oil industry, the Finance Ministry may end up making cuts in expenditure more palatable, according to Alexey Pogorelov, an economist at Credit Suisse Group AG. The new deadline for submitting the budget to lawmakers is Oct. 25.

"The option with the extraction tax was presented on purpose," he said. "This initiative would not be supported by the oil and gas lobby and the government may back alternative proposals of the Finance Ministry to cut spending."

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#11
Kremlin.ru
September 22, 2015
Meeting on budget planning for 2016

Vladimir Putin held a meeting on budget planning for 2016. The meeting participants discussed key issues of forming the federal budget and extra-budgetary funds for the upcoming period.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko, State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Ivanov, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, deputy prime ministers Olga Golodets, Arkady Dvorkovich and Dmitry Rogozin, First Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Alexander Zhukov, Presidential Aide Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev, Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Accounts Chamber Chairperson Tatyana Golikova, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes Andrei Makarov, and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,

Today, we will talk about issues that concern representatives from all the agencies present here: the Federal Assembly, the supervisory agencies, the Central Bank, the Government Cabinet and our leading businesses, including from the key industry, the oil sector.

Let's talk about how work is progressing on the draft federal budget and extra-budgetary funds for 2016. This work is about to enter its final stage. In October, the completed draft law should be submitted to the State Duma.

Today, I propose that we focus on the fiscal policy for next year, discuss key outcomes and, of course, reach concrete decisions on the federal budget's main parameters.

The planned budget deficit for next year should not exceed 3% of GDP. This is one of the most important benchmarks for the Cabinet during the budget process.

Before we begin our work, I would like to identify several priorities.

First, it is imperative to ensure the balance and stability of public finance, and to considerably decrease the federal budget's dependence on oil prices and benchmarks.

The planned budget deficit for next year should not exceed 3% of GDP. This is one of the most important benchmarks for the Cabinet during the budget process.

In order to reach that level, I ask you to look very carefully at the revenue side of the budget, improving administration and increasing tax collections. At the same time, please remember that we made a decision not to increase the tax burden on businesses.

In the present environment, it is particularly important to provide a set of measures to overcome the economic recession and maintain the role of the federal budget as one of the leading development tools.

Meanwhile, I am asking the Cabinet to look into bringing additional revenues into the budget received by our exporters as a result of the ruble's devaluation. Naturally, we need to tread very carefully, in order not to weaken the economy of export companies, maintaining their investment opportunities.

Second, the Government's fulfilment of social obligations to the public should be at the centre of our attention. The federal budget should finance the most important objectives in healthcare, education and science. Government expenditures for these goals should fully meet the needs and demands of society.

Of course, it is also imperative to continue working on improving efficiency in budgetary spending in the social sector. In this respect, I am asking you to accelerate the transition to targeted social support for the most vulnerable categories of our citizens. We have been talking about this for many years. First and foremost, we need to support those who truly need this kind of help.

The federal budget should finance the most important objectives in healthcare, education and science. Government expenditures for these goals should fully meet the needs and demands of society.

Third, in the present environment, it is particularly important to provide a set of measures to overcome the economic recession and maintain the role of the federal budget as one of the leading development tools.

Projects financed through the budget should stimulate economic growth and private investments. I am referring primarily to import substitution programmes in manufacturing and agriculture. I ask the Government to provide regular financing in these areas and particularly monitor the efficacy of these expenditures.

In addition, we must give attention to strengthening the nation's economic potential, which should include examining the option of recapitalisation for institutions supporting exports.

Fourth, the federal budget should include spending on infrastructure development. We must remove any bottlenecks in problem areas in transportation and the energy sector, eliminating limitations that hinder business activity; in particular, I am referring first and foremost to Russia's regions. I am talking primarily about implementing plans to develop roads, the railway network, airports and seaports.

Projects financed through the budget should stimulate economic growth and private investments. I ask to provide import substitution programmes in manufacturing and agriculture.

Finally, an important issue I would like to point out is increasing the human and technological potential of Russia's economy. It is imperative to create new scientific capacity and professional competence, implementing modern systems for professional standards and increasing the quality of labour resources, first and foremost in engineering, which we have also discussed a great deal lately.

These approaches are reflected in the National Technology Initiative, which the Government is working on. Sufficient funding should also be provided for this in the federal budget.

I ask the Government to work through all of the suggestions presented during today's discussion and to report on when the draft federal budget will be ready for submission to the State Duma.

We know that the economic situation is complicated, but it is not critical. We must make the right, calibrated decisions with the goal of strengthening our nation's economic potential, and we have everything we need to do this. Our decisions will affect our continued work in the most important sector, whose success we are working towards: the social sector. We must strengthen the economy and use that development to resolve social issues.

Let's get to work.

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 #12
Moscow Times
September 23, 2015
Russian Imports Plunge 39 Percent as Recession Takes Hold
By Peter Hobson

The value of goods imported by Russia from outside the former Soviet Union tumbled 39 percent in the first eight months of this year compared to the same period in 2014, as a deep recession cut into the country's buying power.

According to preliminary data from the Federal Customs Service released this week, Russia imported goods worth $103.9 billion over the period, down from $170.3 billion in January-August last year.

The decline comes as the low price of oil, Russia's key export, shrinks the country's income and worsens an economic slowdown. Russia's ruble has weakened by around 45 percent against the dollar during the last year, making imports more expensive for companies and consumers.

A breakdown of the figures for August shows that the value of machinery and equipment imports dropped 36.7 percent compared to the same month in 2014. Imports of chemicals plunged by 29.4 percent, and of textiles and shoes by 35.9 percent, the data showed.

Food imports, whose value fell by 29.1 percent, were also constricted by embargoes imposed by the Kremlin in August 2014 on meat, fish, dairy, fruit and vegetables from the U.S. and European Union and some other allied countries - a retaliation to sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine. The government in August doubled down on these measures by burning contraband food and crushing it with tractors at the border.

Vegetable oil, tobacco and cotton saw their import value grow slightly, along with pork - the latter likely due to smaller import volumes last year when sanitary controls blocked imports from a number of countries.

Overall in August, Russia imported goods from beyond the former U.S.S.R. worth $13.5 billion, 1.7 percent less than in July.

Not all countries suffered equal losses in sales to Russia. Customs data from January-July showed that the European Union - Russia's biggest trading partner - saw the largest drop-off in exports to Russia, with the value of its deliveries falling 45 percent compared to the same period a year before.

The Netherlands, Britain and France - in the top five European exporters to Russia - saw sales to the country cut in half. Germany and Italy saw exports fall around 40 percent, while former Soviet republics Estonia and Lithuania suffered falls of 57.1 percent and 55.5 percent, respectively.

Russian imports from the U.S. and Japan fell by just over 40 percent, while those from China - with which Russia is trying to boost trade - declined by 34.1 percent.

Russian exports have fallen at a slightly slower pace than imports. No data for August has been published, but in January-July, total exports - including to former Soviet republics - fell 30.6 percent to $210.5 billion, leaving a trade surplus of more than $100 billion.

During that period the volume of oil and gas exports to countries outside the former Soviet Union actually rose 6.1 percent, but due to the lower oil price the value of those deliveries plunged by 36.6 percent compared to the same period in 2014, when oil cost more than $100 per barrel.

The Russian government has during the past year accelerated programs to replace imports with locally produced goods, but the plans have been hampered by high interest rates and a shortage of capital to invest in new facilities.

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 #13
Food security in focus of Russia's expert community
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. Russian analysts are divided over whether 100-percent independence from food export is a reasonable benchmark. Stepping up food production inside the country is an important task, no denying that, but it is utterly unnecessary to seek complete self-sufficiency in this or that foodstuff, experts say about the draft amendments to Russia's food security doctrine the Ministry of Agriculture has just proposed for public scrutiny.

The Agriculture Ministry suggests gauging food security as the ratio of domestic production to domestic consumption. The proposed amendments mention specific amounts of certain products Russia should be producing on its own by 2020. The minimum levels of self-sufficiency in certain foods are to go up in contrast to the current ones: for sugar and sunflower oil, from 80% to 90%, and for fish, from 80% to 85%. The minimum levels for vegetables and gourds are to be set at 90%, and for vegetables and fruit, at 70%.

President Vladimir Putin issued instructions to speed up progress towards achieving food security in August 2014, shortly after the introduction of the embargo on the import of some foods from the European Union and the United States.

"Far from everybody understands food security as food independence," the chief research fellow at the Agri-Industrial Policies Center of the presidential academy RANEPA, Vasily Uzun, has told TASS. "International organizations define it as the availability of foods to each individual. If customers can afford to buy food, then there is food security, if not, there is none."

The main idea of proposed amendments is Russia should be able to meet all of its needs. "We have conducted some research to find out that from the standpoint of food independence Russia is high on the world list. It makes no sense for raising the degree of independence still further. We should take a look at what products should be produced inside the country, and what items should be grown in still greater amounts and exported to other countries. The items that are too costly to produce inside the country should be purchased on the world market. This is more reasonable in terms of food security understood as availability, because this is what people really care about. For producers it is far more important to restrict import so that they can enjoy a greater share of the market. Not because they grow produce at lower costs, but because the government protects them."

Uzun pointed to the certain political role of food trade. "Those countries which trade in food, export a lot and import much enjoy loyal treatment. Everybody is reluctant to lose the provider and the buyer. The United States exports $100 billion worth of food, but it imports about the same amount. That gives the country a firmer foothold in the world. We should be moving along the same lines."

Protecting the domestic market to a degree where there should be only domestically grown foods on sale will make no sense, Uzun said.

"Technologically bananas can be grown in Russia. But what for? They will be too costly," he said.

"A level of 80% is a very good one, so raising it further to 90% only to say that there will be food security only after that is very wrong," a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Elmira Krylatykh, told TASS. "It is not percentage parameters that really matter. We have problems with milk, which can be resolved no earlier than in seven to eight years' time. There are problems with beef. Vegetables and fruit are no problem. Building up vegetable production will be easy. It is incorrect to say that it will be a great achievement."

There cannot be the necessary degree of stable food security in the context of a low level of independence, but food security is not confined to the share of domestically grown products in the overall domestic consumption, Krylatykh said. It is a far more complex notion.

"Besides, even if domestic production goes up to 90%, it does not mean yet that independence has been achieved. We are far more dependent not on the import of foods, but on the import of means of production and even genetic material."

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 #14
Russia's green NGO declared 'foreign agent' returns grant back to DiCaprio foundation

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. An environmental protection organization in Russia's Far East, included in the NGO register of "foreign agents" last week, has announced a decision to reject financing from abroad, including a donation from the Leonardo DiCaprio foundation.

"At the general meeting, the majority voted in favor of a decision to send back all the foreign funds that the organization has and to refuse to accept them in the future," the Sakhalin Environment Watch said in a statement.

In particular, this concerns the donation worth $159,000 that the Sakhalin Environment Watch received from the foundation of Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio this July for the project to protect the Vostochny nature reserve and the nearby wild salmon rivers.

The Leonardo DiCaprio foundation supports projects on preserving and protecting the last remaining wildlife areas around the world and the Sakhalin Environment Watch received its support for the first time in Russia, the organization says.

"Today's morning these funds worth $159,000 were already sent back to the foundation and the organization has already sent the respective documents to the bank for returning the funds," it says.

Russia's Justice Ministry included the Sakhalin Environment Watch to the NGO register of "foreign agents" on September 18.

Under the law passed in Russia in July 2012, non-profit organizations which engage in "political activity" and receive funding from abroad are required to register as "foreign agents."

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 #15
The Ecologist
www.theecologist.org
September 22, 2015
Russia - has the world's biggest country turned against the environment?
By Lucy E J Woods
Lucy E J Woods is a freelance journalist recently returned from Russia, who specialises in domestic and foreign environmental and energy reporting. She is currently reporting from South East Asia.

While other countries apply themselves to environmental challenges from climate change to nature protection, Russia - with its massive wealth of nature and natural resources - is stubbornly refusing to take part, writes Lucy E J Woods. And as the economy declines, the pressure is on: to ignore environmental regulations, and clamp down on environmental defenders.

Russia is the globe's biggest single nation. It spans nine time zones, borders Europe, China, North Korea and the Arctic; has the world's eighth largest economy, 140 million residents, and unmatchable potential in leading the globe towards ecological peace.

Yet Russia trundles sluggishly behind the rest of the world in international environmental policy.

It wasn't always like this. Soviet Russia was pro-renewables. The first wind turbine was up and running in the 1940s, and solar panels were developed as part of the Soviet Union's space programme. Huge hydropower dams were built electrifying the country, making Russia a global powerhouse.

However, Russia then "discovered this huge amount of oil in the 60s" and forgot all about renewables, says WWF Russia's extractive industries environmental policy officer, Alexey Knizhnikov.

Knizhnikov explains this through a thick Russian accent, very patiently repeating phrases and spelling out words across a huge round oak table in the WWF Moscow office. He is passionate when the "flagship" conservation of Russia's remaining walruses and bears are mentioned, and refreshingly open minded when it comes to the tough job of negotiating with Russia's oligarchic fossil fuel companies.

And yes, Russia is big in oil and gas - but also in water, nature, beauty

Russia alone is home to the globe's second largest quantities of coal and natural gas with significant oil reserves, accounting for half of Russia's sovereign wealth.

With all that fossil fuel Russia's carbon emissions (when measured as per real GDP), are 60% higher than the average of most other developed countries - its extraction is so prolific that its pipelines alone could loop the planet six times over.

But not just a land of fossil fuels, Russia has unimaginable wealth in the natural landscapes its NGOs are attempting to save; Russia is home to the globe's largest forest areas and a staggering 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water resides in just one of its lakes: the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Lake Baikal.

The Lake is so clear it's rumored you can drink straight from it. Tasting some (admittedly filtered!) Baikal water, after taking a long journey from mainland Siberia to pitch a tent on the idyllic shores of it's largest island, Orkon, the lake water is refreshingly icy to drink.

Orkhon Island only gained electricity access ten years ago and still has little in the way of tarmac roads, sewage and running water. Lavish ten bedroom holiday cabins are scattered amongst dilapidated slum-shacks. Battered Ladas and Soviet-built Moskvich vehicles zoom between the handful of towns, while Volkswagon vans kick up dust storms along the bumpy dirt roads that lead to the island's singular ferry.

Across the Lake somber shadows of the adjacent snow covered mountaintops dance on the surface of the deep, clear waters. Strips of brightly coloured fabric tied to Buddhist monuments flutter in the breeze, paying respects to the spirits of tall pine forests and rolling sand dunes.

The monuments hint at Orkon's once solely Buryat (a Mongolian ethnic group) population. There are still Mongolian ger tents pitched around the island, selling souvenirs.

Orkhon Island is just one example of a newly booming eco tourism spot. There are 26 similar UNESCO world heritage sites, 40 national parks and 100 wildlife reserves. With runaway climate change threatening them all, Russia cannot afford to keep ignoring its contribution and responsibilities to the global environment.

Protecting Russia - how Russians are trying to save the environment

Trying to protect this awe-inspiring environment, as an NGO, however, is "dangerous", reveals Knizhnikov, "A lot of our colleagues are in prison now."

Activist numbers are suffering as a result of this government pressure. Exacerbating the situation further is an informal order to mark environmental NGOs with the status of 'foreign agent', or paid spies, says Vladimir Tchouprov, the vivacious head of energy at Greenpeace Russia and devoted activist.

"This is political, this is the attempt of the government to move public opinion from the real problem", says Tchouprov.

With NGOs doggedly fighting spy accusation propaganda - as Sakhalin Watch and 90 other environmental groups are now doing - Russia's world-renowned scientists are left with only their research when asking for policy to mirror science.

"It is very political", says Alexey Mikheev, scientific secretary and doctor of engineering at the Russian Academy of Sciences' (RAS)'s Melentiev Energy Systems Institute, located in the desolate, cold, former political exile favourite: Irkutsk, Siberia. An economics expert at the same institute, Maysyuk Elevo says many scientists oppose Russia's energy and environment policies.

More than 2,500 miles away, in a suave Moscow restaurant a maverick government official from Russia's energy sector tells me over lunch that the lack of private investment in science is what stifles scientists' voices from policy decisions. "They can't influence officials or government, or business or ministers", he says. "Russian science is wholly dependent on the state."

Tchouprov recounts one attempt to finance science projects privately, called 'Dynasty Foundation'. Set up as a charity to finance scientific research, it was proclaimed a foreign agent and forced to cease operations. "Even such a small foundation has been stopped."

Private money is readily available for London real estate, yachts, and luxury ski zones in the Caucus, "but not in science", laments Tchouprov. Would-be renewable energy investors fear "the absence of stability, no rules, and state monopoly" in Russian environment and energy policy.

However, NGOs and scientists are not the only ones facing new challenges...

Russia's fossil fuel woes

Big Oil is moving east as export markets rapidly decline. Russia's largest export market, Europe, is preparing to phase out fossil fuels, says Tchouprov. EU economic sanctions restrict Russian fossil fuel corporations' investment loans to a 90-day maximum.

In response, gas giant Gazprom is already building domestic liquefied natural gas plants. There is one plant in the far eastern Sakhalin Oblast, and a second is underway in the northwest Siberian province of Yamal. Both are built to avoid the EU, opting instead to sell gas in domestic regions without technology restrictions or sanctions, says Tchouprov.

Sanctions caused the ruble to crash, along with any investments in updating Russia's outdated energy sector. Domestic and foreign investment in Russia is predicted by the World Bank to either stagnant or decrease, with negative economic growth projected for 2015-16.

These economic pressures are causing desperate fossil fuel companies to consider the unthinkable: complete disregard for all international environmental regulations. The latest Gazprom development is to build new infrastructure located in Kavkaz, the Kerch Strait, Western Caucus, between Ukraine, Georgia and Russia: in the mountainous national parks and nature reserves protected by UNESCO.

"It is a completely corrupt project. It is laundry of money to build luxury apartments for rich people. It is not investment, it's just stealing money. It is not for people or business - it is just business as usual in Russia", states Tchouprov.

Russian pipelines are also moving east to export to China. With pipelines marked out to cover the Golden Mountains of Altai - another UNESCO world heritage site.

Knizhnikov explains WWF have been fighting the Altai pipeline development for years but "all this shift from Europe [markets] to China, now it is much more political."

Permafrost and immigration

On top of all these challenges, 65% of Russia is covered in melting permafrost, and mass climate migration from Central Asia is predicted.

The permafrost territory accounts for more than half of oil and gas mines, thousands of miles of pipe infrastructure, four nuclear reactors and a few million people, all at risk from the cracking permafrost, says Tchouprov.

Ironically, colossal investments from fossil fuel companies are being thrown at keeping oil and gas infrastructures safe from the melting permafrost they helped aggravate, reveals Knizhnikov.

When it comes to policies planning for climate migration from central Asia, the Russian government is utterly unprepared. One environmental minister, when reminded at a conference by Greenpeace that mass climate migration is coming, responded with: "Oh shit!"

This reluctance to adapt is imbedded in the introverted and conservative Russian culture, says Tchouprov. "We think we know better and we are different. This is wrong. We are different, but not enough to escape this mega change in energy."

However the government official hopes this will change with tangible, sizable and generating renewable energy plants in Russia. "The Russian mentality needs to see realized projects, they will only buy it when they see it", he says.

Renewables and environmental regulations in Russia

The Kremlin "don't understand that renewables can now be a priority, they still think renewables is some kind of luxury toy for rich people, is extremely expensive, needing a lot of back up and a lot of technical improvements, and is useless rather than common, this is the myth" perpetuated by state propaganda, reveals Tchouprov.

Renewable energy development in Russia is heavily restricted by state imposed capacity and local content restrictions, zero private investment and a grid built for Soviet times.

However the state does provide support for all renewables, in all regions - just limited to plants 25MW and under.

The official national renewable energy target is 5GW by 2020, around 4.5% of Russia's total energy mix. For comparison, solar energy alone reached 5GW installed capacity in the UK, over a year ago.

There are, still, several successful renewable energy plants - albeit tiny, off grid and in the farthest corners of the country, used mostly by reindeer farmers in snow-covered oblasts.

Russia also has ecological zones, monitored by drones with strict fines, as well as government aid and monitoring for conservation. Tatiana Tuguzova, a warm and friendly senior researcher also from the Melentiev Energy Systems Institute in Irkutsk, explains that there are even some areas where "only clean energy is allowed" - but again, only in very remote areas where it is too difficult or expensive to connect to the existing central grid.

WWF has had some success in gaining government action too, by presenting strong scientific arguments. WWF reversed state decisions for coalmines and pipelines in forests. "Our government listened", Knizhnikov says triumphantly.

However, such thorough presentations require what NGOs are most scarce on. sighs Knizhinkov: "time."

Next on Russia's environmental policy horizon

Despite solar lights and bikes in urban centers, flooding and forest fires increasing public awareness, Russia is far behind on the international stage when it comes to climate change action.

For the upcoming United Nations climate change talks in Paris this November, Russia's targets "are not very ambitious", says Tchouprov. Predictions are for a meager minus 30% emissions target by 2030, "keeping Russia dependent on oil and gas exports."

Knizhnikov says WWF is working on gaining science-led agreements and supporting anti coal movements in the build up to November. But for the rapid change deemed necessary by the international scientific community, Tchouprov is stern in stating that Russia "needs bankruptcy."

"When the elite have plenty of money ... then forget any change." Any money that's around, says Tchouprov, "goes immediately to the next corruption scheme. This is the reality. Russia needs crisis. No crisis, no change."

Until then, Tchouprov is certain that when it comes to assertive action on climate change, one of the most powerful countries in the world will remain "somewhere on the side of the road where mega trends are passing the state, disappearing on the horizon."

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 #16
Moscow Times
September 23, 2015
Pope Francis Says Russia Is Needed to Solve World Problems

Pope Francis has said Russia plays a crucial role in solving the world's problems, a TASS news agency report said.

"Without Russia, not one of today's most pressing global problems can be solved," the pontiff was cited Tuesday as telling a TASS reporter aboard a flight to Cuba.

The pontiff continued his journey on Tuesday to the United States, where he is set to address the UN General Assembly on Friday, the report said.

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 #17
Moscow Times
September 23, 2015
Will Putin Pull Off His Syria Gambit?
By Richard Galustian and Theodore Karasik
Richard Galustian is a Middle East security expert based in Libya. Theodore Karasik is a senior adviser at Gulf State Analytics.

During a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) meeting in Dushanbe on Sept. 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced his concerns about Syria.

"The state of affairs there is very serious. The Islamic State controls significant stretches of territory in Iraq and Syria. Terrorists are already publicly stating that they have targets set on Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Their plans include expanding activities to Europe, Russia, Central and Southeast Asia."

Putin couldn't be more correct. The Islamic State threatens Russia and Central Asia specifically. Even though the Kremlin sees the rise of the Islamic State as the product of destructive American foreign policy and military operations that leave ungovernable holes later filled in by terrorists and transnational criminal groups, the Kremlin is intent on being a part of the solution to these problems.

Putin also blames American foreign policy for the migrant crisis currently engulfing Europe and has called for an international coalition against terrorism and extremism. The president stated that "This is a crisis which was absolutely expected. We in Russia said several years ago that there would be massive problems if our Western partners conduct what I have always called the 'wrong' foreign policy, especially in regions of the Muslim world, the Middle East and North Africa, which they continue practically to this day."

Russia is making its move in Syria, with the deployment of a forward operating base for fighter jets and drones, in support of the Syrian military. More importantly, it is possible that the Russian presence in Latakia will halt Turkish and Israeli air flights over Syria. In other words, a no-fly zone imposed by the Kremlin could emerge. Moscow has already started a humanitarian aid lift and network in the country.

Iran is part of Moscow's plans in Syria. Tehran's own military presence in Syria is working in coordination with Russia to protect the Syrian government, especially the security of Alawites in Latakia. Tehran seems to be wavering on Assad's immediate future, which fits perfectly with the Kremlin's plan. Iran may be persuaded to back Russia's plan to accommodate the Americans somewhat by helping plan an exit strategy for the Assad family.

Outlining his ideas on a potential diplomatic solution, Putin suggested that it be carried out in parallel with the fight against extremists and that Assad should play a role in the political process. Putin said that "The Syrian president, as a matter of fact, agrees with that, including holding early elections, parliamentary elections, and establishing contact with the so-called 'healthy' opposition, bringing them into governing." That argument is gaining traction in Europe and with some Arab governments.

Putin's upcoming speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Syria and the Islamic State is going to be an important marker for the Kremlin. The Kremlin wants to stabilize the Syrian government through elections endorsed by a bulk of the Syrian opposition and form a new coalition of key regional states to attack and destroy the Islamic State.

Yet, all is not rosy. The perilous state of Russia's finances will play a major role in Russia's foreign policy ambitions. With the collapse of oil prices, coupled with economic sanctions, Russia's economy will continue to be in recession.

There have also been reports that some Russian servicemen are refusing to go to Syria.

These facts do not necessarily mean that Putin's gambit with the Americans will not pay off in the future thanks to ongoing communication between U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Nevertheless, the Kremlin sees a real need for Russia to continue its involvement in Syria, on its own terms.

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 #18
Consortiumnews.com
September 22, 2015
Will US Grasp Putin's Syria Lifeline?
By Robert Parry
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

Exclusive: The neocons' obsession with "regime change" in Syria is driving another one of Official Washington's "group thinks" toward rejecting Russia's offer to help stabilize the war-torn country and stem the destabilizing flood of refugees into Europe, writes Robert Parry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown U.S. policymakers what amounts to a lifeline to pull them out of the quicksand that is the Syrian war, but Official Washington's neocons and the mainstream U.S. news media are growling about Putin's audacity and challenging his motives.

For instance, The New York Times' lead editorial on Monday accused Putin of "dangerously building up Russia's military presence" in Syria, even though Putin's stated goal is to help crush the Sunni jihadists in the Islamic State and other extremist movements.

Instead, the Times harrumphs about Putin using his upcoming 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."

The Times then reprises the bizarre neocon argument that the best way to solve the threat from the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other jihadist forces is to eliminate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his military who have been the principal obstacles to an outright victory by the Sunni terrorist groups.

The dreamy Times/neocon prescription continues to be that "regime change" in Damascus would finally lead to the emergence of the mythical "moderate" rebels who would somehow prevail over the far more numerous and far better armed extremists. This perspective ignores the fact that after a $500 million training project for these "moderates," the U.S. military says four or five fighters are now on the battlefield inside Syria. In other words, the members of this U.S.-trained brigade can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

But rather than rethink Official Washington's goofy "group think" on Syria - or provide readers a fuller history of the Syrian conflict - the Times moves on to blame Putin for the mess.

"No one should be fooled about Russia's culpability in Syria's agony," the Times writes. "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. ... Mr. Assad would probably be gone without the weapons aid and other assistance from Russia and Iran."

This "group think" ignores the early role of Sunni extremists in killing police and soldiers and thus provoking the harsh retaliation that followed. But the Syrian narrative, according to The New York Times, is that the "white-hat" protesters were simply set upon by the "black-hat" government.

The Times' simplistic storyline fits neatly with what the influential neoconservatives want the West to believe, since the neocons have had Syria on their "regime change" list, alongside Iraq and Iran, since the list was compiled as part of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996 political campaign. The Times' narrative also leaves out the crucial role of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other U.S. "allies" in supporting Al Qaeda and its Islamic State spinoff.

Bush's Unaccounted-for Cash

Further complicating Official Washington's let's-blame-Putin Syrian narrative is the unintended role of President George W. Bush and the U.S. military in laying the groundwork for these brutal Sunni extremist movements through the invasion of Iraq last decade. After all, it was only in reaction to the U.S. military presence that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" took root in Iraqi and then Syrian territory.

Not only did the ouster and execution of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein alienate the region's Sunnis, but Bush's desperation to avert an outright military defeat in Iraq during his second term led him to authorize the payment of billions of dollars to Sunni fighters to get them to stop shooting at American soldiers and to give Bush time to negotiate a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Beginning in 2006, those U.S. payments to Sunni fighters to get them to suspend their resistance were central to what was then called the "Sunni Awakening." Though the program preceded Bush's "surge" of troops in 2007, the bought-and-paid-for truce became central to what Official Washington then hailed as the "successful surge" or "victory at last."

Besides the billions of dollars paid out in pallets of U.S. cash to Sunni insurgents, Bush's "surge" cost the lives of another 1,000 U.S. soldiers and killed a countless number of Iraqis, many just going about their daily lives until they were blown apart by powerful American munitions. [See, for example, the "Collateral Murder" video leaked by Pvt. Bradley/Chelsea Manning]

But what the U.S. intelligence community is only now assessing is the collateral damage caused by the bribes that the Bush administration paid to Sunni insurgents. Some of the cash appears to have become seed money for the transformation of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" into the Islamic State as Sunnis, who continued to be disenfranchised by Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, expanded their sectarian war into Syria.

Besides the Iraqi Sunnis, Syria's secular government, with Assad and other key leaders from the Alawite branch of Shiite Islam, also was set upon by home-grown Sunni extremists and foreign jihadists, some of whom joined the Islamic State but mostly coalesced around Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and other radical forces. Though the Islamic State had originated as "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (or AQI), it evolved into an even more bloodthirsty force and, in Syria, split off from Al Qaeda central.

Intelligence Reporting

U.S. intelligence followed many of these developments in real time. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from August 2012, "AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. ... AQI declared its opposition of Assad's government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis."

In other words, Assad's early complaint about "terrorists" having infiltrated the opposition had a basis in fact. Early in the disorders in 2011, there were cases of armed elements killing police and soldiers. Later, there were terrorist bombings targeting senior Syrian government officials, including a July 18, 2012 explosion - deemed a suicide bombing by government officials - that killed Syrian Defense Minister General Dawoud Rajiha and Assef Shawkat, the deputy defense minister and Assad's brother-in-law.

By then, it had become clear that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni-ruled countries were funneling money and other help to jihadist rebels seeking to oust Assad's regime, which was considered a protector of Christians, Shiites, Alawites and other minorities fearing persecution if Sunni extremists prevailed.

As the 2012 DIA report noted about Syria, "internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction. ... The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. ... The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime."

The DIA analysts already understood the risks that AQI represented both to Syria and Iraq. The report included a stark warning about the expansion of AQI, which was changing into the Islamic State or what the DIA referred to as ISI. The brutal armed movement was seeing its ranks swelled by the arrival of global jihadists rallying to the black banner of Sunni militancy, intolerant of both Westerners and "heretics" from Shiite and other non-Sunni branches of Islam.

As this movement strengthened it risked spilling back into Iraq. The DIA wrote: "This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi [in Iraq], and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters [apparently a reference to Shiite and other non-Sunni forms of Islam]. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory."

Facing this growing Sunni terrorist threat - which indeed did spill back into Iraq - the idea that the CIA or the U.S. military could effectively arm and train a "moderate" rebel force to somehow compete with the Islamists was already delusional, yet that was the "group think" among the Important People of Official Washington, simply organize a "moderate" army to oust Assad and everything would turn out just great.

On Oct. 2, 2014, Vice President Joe Biden let more of the cat out of the bag when he told an audience at Harvard's Kennedy School: "our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria ... the Saudis, the emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world." [Quote at 53:20 of clip.]

In other words, much of the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition actually has been involved in financing and arming many of the same jihadists that the coalition is now supposedly fighting. If you take into account the lost billions of dollars that the Bush administration dumped on Sunni fighters starting in 2006, you could argue that the U.S.-led coalition bears primary responsibility for creating the problem that it is now confronting.

Biden made a similar point at least in reference to the Persian Gulf states: "Now all of a sudden, I don't want to be too facetious, but they have seen the lord. ...  Saudi Arabia has stopped funding. Saudi Arabia is allowing training [of anti-Islamic State fighters] on its soil ... the Qataris have cut off their support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations, and the Turks ... [are] trying to seal their border."

But there remain many doubts about the commitment of these Sunni governments to the cause of fighting the Islamic State and even more doubts about whether that commitment extends to Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and other jihadist forces. Some neocons have even advocated backing Al Qaeda as the lesser evil both vis a vis the Islamic State and the Assad regime.

Blaming Putin

Yet, the Times editorial on Monday blamed Putin for a big chunk of the Syrian mess because Russia has dared support the internationally recognized Syrian government in the face of vicious foreign-supported terrorism. The Times casts no blame on the United States or its allies for the Syrian horror.

The Times also hurled personal insults at Putin as part of its equally one-sided narrative of the Ukraine crisis, which the editorial writers have summarized as simply a case of "Russian aggression" or a "Russian invasion" - ignoring the behind-the-scenes role of neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in orchestrating the violent overthrow of Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

In Monday's editorial, the Times reported that President Barack Obama "considers Mr. Putin a thug," though it was President Obama who boasted just last month, "I've ordered military action in seven countries," another inconvenient fact that the Times discreetly leaves out. In other words, who's the "thug"?

Yet, despite all its huffing and puffing and calling Putin names, the Times ultimately concludes that Obama should test out the lifeline that Putin has tossed to Obama's Syrian policy which - with all its thrashing and arm waving - is rapidly disappearing into the quicksand. The editorial concluded:

"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."

Kerry's apparent willingness to work with the Russians - a position that I'm told Obama shares - is at least a sign that some sanity exists inside the State Department, which initially mounted an absurd and futile attempt to organize an aerial blockade to prevent Russia from flying in any assistance to Syria.

If successful, that scheme, emanating from Nuland's European division, could have collapsed the Syrian regime and opened the gates of Damascus to the Islamic State and/or Al Qaeda. So obsessed are the neocons to achieve their long-held goal of "regime change" in Syria that they would run the risk of turning Syria over to the Islamic State head-choppers and Al Qaeda's terrorism plotters.

However, after the requisite snorting and pawing of hooves, it appears that the cooler heads in the Obama administration may have finally asserted themselves - and perhaps at The New York Times as well.

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 #19
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
September 21, 2015
Russia deploys Ukraine-based militants to Syria - Tymchuk

Only the Donbas battalion's snipers will reportedly stay in Donbas

Military analyst and MP Dmytro Tymchuk says Russia's 'Don' battalion, currently stationed in Ukraine's war-torn Donbas region, has been ordered to dispatch 190 of it's militant footsoldiers to Syria.

According to Tymchuk, nearly 200 Russian mercenaries, who were fighting alongside with militants in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, will be sent back to Russia, from where they will be deployed to Syria.

Read also Will West sacrifice policy of isolation of Russia over Ukraine in order to fight ISIS in Syria?

As well as several thousand mercaneries fighting in Ukraine, Russia is believed to be keeping 7,000 regular army troops camped in east Ukraine.

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 #20
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
September 8, 2015
Russian paper interviews pro-government fighter back from Syria
Artur Avakov interview with Mishel Mizakh, a citizen of Russia and Syria who had just returned from fighting in Damascus: To save Bashar al-Asad: Revelations of a volunteer about war in Syria - 'We defended our building and during this time the Islamists were digging an underground passage right under our noses'

Stories often appear in the media about people going for various reasons to fight in the ranks of ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant]. At the same time, Russians know almost nothing about who is fighting the plague of the 21st century in their own house. We talked to Mishel Mizakh, a 25-year-old citizen of Russia and Syria, who returned a few days ago from Damascus where he was fighting in the ranks of the Shabiha pro-governmental armed formation. He spoke about what Syrians think of this war, their president Bashar al-Asad, Islamic State, and the future.

[Interviewer Artur Avakov] Why did you decide to go to Syria?

[Mizakh] My father is from Syria and many of my relatives with whom we speak every day have stayed there, you may consider that we live between the two countries. We are Christians. My second cousin is fighting in the ranks of the Syrian army, my uncle and aunt died as civilians in the Kalamoon area in 2012.

So when I watch the news my conscience troubles me... I have wanted to go there for three years now but something has always prevented me - my wife, then my job. Only now were the stars aligned and an opening appeared for me.

[Avakov] And when the "Arab Spring" started, what was your family's attitude towards it?

[Mizakh] At first my family were sympathetic towards the protesters but then it turned out that the uncompromising section of the secular opposition were defending the interests of Turkey and the Arab monarchies. Plus the prospects for the Islamization of the protest were obvious to many people and they feared them.

Probably like all normal people my family, and all my friends and acquaintances in Syria, have an extremely negative attitude towards the Wahhabis and towards any religious extremism in general.

The war that is under way in Syria is not against al-Asad but against civilization itself. ISIL takes people into slavery, crucifies them on crosses, introduces medieval taxes for Christians, and Shi'is and Alawites are killed on the spot...

Would you want to live under Shari'ah, where you can be killed for a cigarette or alcohol, and beaten with sticks on the town square for wearing tight jeans? No-one wants this!

And we know that this is what it will be like if Damascus falls. It is already like it in al-Raqqah, the local residents themselves are saying so. Buses still run between us so we know very well about the alternative to al-Asad.

I got to know a girl in Damascus, she was just 20, she had spent the past three months in slavery to members of ISIL. One of the commanders bought her and made her his concubine, and when he snuffed it she was "inherited" by his successor... By a miracle her relatives were able to buy her back.

[Avakov] Did you actually know where you were going, was someone expecting you there?

[Mizakh] Of course, about two months before my departure I found, via acquaintances of my relatives, my future commander of a detachment in the militia connected to the army.

This is the same Shabiha that the UN accused of crimes against humanity in 2012. In total I spent two months telling him about myself: who I was, what I was able to do, why I wanted to come, and so on... And he explained in response what he expected of me, what I would do, and so on.

I would also have joined the army but my turn for mobilization is last since I am the only breadwinner in my family, well and you cannot go there for a week. My brother has already been there for three years and he cannot even see his family, as there is no respite at all at the front.

[Avakov] Are there only Syrians in the militia or is it an international brigade?

[Mizakh] People are coming from Lebanon and Iran because they understand that if Syria falls they will be next. They supply us with both military advisers and weapons... The entire "Shi'i axis of evil" is supporting us!

I have not seen any fighters from the rest of the world... It seemed to me that the Syrian embassy in Russia did not approve of such topics. It is possible that this is linked to the rumours circulating around the so-called "Russian legion", which was hired by a Petersburg private security company several years ago to fight for al-Asad. But when they arrived in Damascus, Russia was outraged, the "legionnaires" were brought home and a couple of criminal cases for mercenary operations were instigated.

Generally speaking, it is only possible to fight legally for Syria if you have Syrian citizenship or there is an inter-governmental agreement. However, the Islamists are really international - they throng to us from absolutely everywhere.

[Avakov] How did you find Damascus?

[Mizakh] I flew into Damascus international airport and the first thing that I saw was a large number of soldiers and militias. But civilian life is continuing, in the centre of the city people walk in the streets without fearing anything despite periodic mortar fire.

In the Christian districts the situation is slightly more difficult, but even there the shops are operating. My detachment was actually based near them in the north-eastern outskirts of Damascus, opposite an opposition district where the Duma is entirely occupied by Islamists. It has always been populated by religious radicals, so no-one was surprised when it proved to be a hotbed of militants.

Admittedly, by the time I arrived the district had already long been under siege and the enemy had no chance of escaping, so it was relatively easy for me there by comparison with what is occurring in the north of Syria...

[Avakov] When people say "militia" you immediately imagine a motley crowd, dressed and armed in a slipshod manner, is Shabiha like that?

[Mizakh] No, of course not. On the first day I was issued with standard army ammunition, a briefing was conducted, and I was sent into position. They also feed plenty, if of course you are able to eat because when you are nervous you cannot...

The menu included the entire national cuisine, dishes made of meat, beans, all sorts of sweet things. A pack of cigarettes is issued for two days, but they are so strong that this is quite sufficient. Plus local products are brought every day, we and the army are like the last hope for them.

It is possible that in certain areas where local residents have gathered all the uniforms and weapons available to them, have contacted the army and said that their subdivisions made up of so many men are now part of the militia, there are some interruptions to supply, but in Damascus it is like a holiday camp in this respect. But the militias are not paid anything, instead of this al-Asad gives their families all sorts of benefits.

[Avakov] What is the relationship between the army and the militia like in general?

[Mizakh] One of subordinates. The opposition likes to portray Shabiha as barbarians who the government has taken under its wing, and they are using this and just stealing and raping... This bears no resemblance to the truth.

Of course civilians can be killed by the government troops, but unfortunately that is a feature of fighting in a city. Sometimes you cannot avoid such casualties especially since the Islamists hide behind civilians. If we really did massacre all those who support our enemy then the Duma would have been destroyed a long time ago.

It would have been flattened in a day by tanks, especially since some hotheads have been calling for this for a long time.

But al-Asad does not want this, on the contrary, he even continues to pay salaries to officials who now work for the Islamic State. Our task is not to organize genocide but to un! ite the country. So we were told ahead of each attack on the building that we must not in any event shoot at civilians. If one of them dies, checks are carried out on each incident, if necessary up to and including a tribunal.

[Avakov] Let us be more specific, how is the relationship between Shabiha and the army constructed?

[Mizakh] The army sets the task, and provides all the necessary information, support, and so on. It supplies us with instructors.

With al-Asad's permission, Hezbollah trains militias in areas the army cannot get to. It is possible that in remote areas the militias may only enter into communication occasionally, but if this does not occur at all their detachment will not be considered part of the militia.

In other words, the militia is a natural continuation of the army. Communication takes place via the commanders of the detachments. All matters are approved in the army and in the civilian administrations, if this is necessary. Nothing is done at their own risk.

If the militia decides that a building needs to be demolished for the defence, permission first needs to be obtained from the city authorities. Of course, there are occasions when you do not manage to notify them but then you must report this all post factum.

As for rotation, my commander fought in the army as a sergeant for four years, he was wounded, and left for the militia. In general, the militia recruits volunteers who can be transferred to the army as a result of distinction in battle.

[Avakov] And how many people altogether were there in the detachment?

[Mizakh] Altogether there were 21 of us. Despite the fact that a detachment should be formed on a territorial basis, we had three Christians from Aleppo, two Druze who had fled to Damascus from ISIL and joined the militia, and one Lebanese volunteer.

The atmosphere of military brotherhood is very strong there so we did not have any religious differences, bullying, or anything like that. Everyone understands who our enemy is, all anger is directed towards them. At the same time there were a couple of people among us who at the start of the "Arab Spring" took part in the anti-government demonstrations, but al-Asad is now a kind of icon for them. And it is like this everywhere.

When I went to Syria I considered Soviet slogans like "For the Motherland, for Stalin!" to be a farce but in Damascus I myself witnessed how people going on the attack shouted "God! Syria! Bashar!", "Our blood and soul for you, Bashar!" and so on.

[Avakov] What was the militia's main task?

[Mizakh] The militia did not arise out of great love, but because of the need to somehow fill the gap when, during the first years of the war, the army was somewhat "reduced".

It can now manoeuvre and we hold the positions taken. For example, for an entire week we sat in a building that drove a kind of wedge into the positions of the militants.

I do not know what organizations they were in, perhaps ISIL, or perhaps some other. And this is not important either since they constantly migrate from one organization to another.

[Avakov] So you found yourself on the frontline the first day? Did the commander test your abilities at all?

[Mizakh] Yes, a funny episode resulted... In the past I had undergone reserve training in Syria where I became a sniper. But while we were walking to our positions it became clear that I did not shoot much -I was unable to hit a tin on a barrel a hundred metres from me.

As a result I was made an ordinary rifleman, well and an enlisted rifleman since there are no ranks in the detachment and you are either the commander or an enlisted serviceman.

And so, yes, I was in action from the first day, well or from the first night since it is above 40 degrees there during the day and it is hard to do anything.

Until it was dark our main task was not to let the enemy sleep so that he was not too frisky during the night.

The main fighting begins at around 6-7 at night when the heat starts to abate. Although our commander told me that even the heaviest fighting at our position was nothing in comparison with what was occurring in the north of Syria where the Islamists have heavy artillery, tanks, and trucks with suicide bombers.

While six of our people died in a week - and that was as a result of their own mistakes - around 300 people could die there a night.

[Avakov] And how did these six people die?

[Mizakh] During the second day of my stay they went to the aid of a neighbouring unit, which had seized a building containing Islamists. They entered the building, which the militants had already fled.

According to all the instructions, the sappers should have entered first because the Islamists always mine buildings before leaving them... They forgot, they made a mistake, and were blown up.

[Avakov] Did you know where your enemies were from?

[Mizakh] During the night of the second-third day, we took a militant prisoner, he turned out to be a Syrian from Aleppo, who admitted that he was a member of ISIL. In the neighbouring district he had killed an Armenian family - a woman and her four-year-old daughter, he had cut their heads off. He had got into their apartment when trying to evade pursuit by the militias.

Then he apparently tried to flee for the Duma but since he is not local he simply got lost and came our way. If anyone is worried about his fate, they should not be. He is alive, we handed him over to the military police.

[Avakov] How did you know that he was from Aleppo?

[Mizakh] By his accent. Arabic is like the Latin of the Middle East. Everyone understands it but speaks their own local dialects.

And when someone speaks pure Arabic he is either very educated, or speaks a small-town dialect, or they are not Syrian or Arab at all but know the language from the Koran. That is how I identified natives of the CIS and the North Ossetia among the militants... There are quite a lot of them there and they are the most thuggish.

[Avakov] They go all-out on the attack?

[Mizakh] Exactly... The next night after the prisoner had been taken the Islamists tried to seize our building. And then these natives of the CIS, yelling "Allahu Akbar" and something about the prowess of Islamic warriors, went all out advancing into our bursts of automatic gunfire.

Perhaps they were on drugs or drunk but in general neither one nor the other is welcomed in the Caliphate, being punishable even by the death penalty. In total 30-40 people attacked us that day, of whom we killed about ten.

[Avakov] Was it frightening?

[Mizakh] I was most frightened when I flew in or rather, you do not even feel fear but a kind of desolate excitement. All feelings are blocked and you sit as if prostrated. But when they start to shoot there is no time to be afraid.

Admittedly people periodically appear who only realize when they are in position that they cannot fight at all. They enter into a complete stupor during the fighting, they cannot do anything, they cannot hear anyone... They are immediately sent to the rear so that they can help at the hospital, for example. This is not such a terrible thing, the most important thing is to have the fortitude to come at all.

[Avakov] And what did you do to keep your composure?

[Mizakh] I tried to comment on my actions to myself or aloud, quietly, this helped me to concentrate. For example I said to myself: "The enemy is running at me. I need to check my safety catch, take aim, and fire. That is it, the fighting has ended, I need to report."

This helped a lot and after the fighting the come-down started: I smoked a lot, my hands shook.

And the very first night when I had just arrived I started to panic completely because militants were shelling our building with rocket propelled grenades, and a piece of the wall hit my shoulder. I started shouting that they had wounded me, I roused the entire detachment... And then I learnt the Arab version of the Russian saying "lies like Trotskiy". But I still have the bruise.

[Avakov] Were there any moments at all when it was not just you who was on tenterhooks?

[Mizakh] There were one-and-a-half such days. On the fifth day I learnt what tunnel warfare is. It turns out that while we were defending our building the Islamists were at the same time digging an underground passage, right under our noses.

I do not know how long it continued, perhaps a month or more, but the fact is that one "fine" day we discovered that the Islamists had climbed out behind us and seized a four-floor building, the highest in the area, since all the rest had two or three floors.

Of course, they put snipers and machine-gunners in there and we found ourselves in a small trap. If you had wanted to it was possible to run 200 m. under a hail of bullets in order to escape, but no-one wanted to.

Instead of this we contacted army headquarters and they said there that they would resolve the issue. They spent a day-and-a-half trying to resolve it then they drove an infantry fighting vehicle, an assault force, and two militia detachments up to the seized building.

First the building was hit by heavy machinegun fire for two hours, then we went on the attack on all sides.

As a result, our commander had a finger shot off and we killed eight Islamists. There were actually more of them in the building but they were a bit cleverer and managed to get back into the tunnel. In fact, my military exploits ended here since it was time to go home...

[Avakov] You were pulled out in time. And did you manage to talk to local residents about what they thought of the war?

[Mizakh] They were all very tired of it but they support al-Asad because they understand that if the Islamists win they will have a hard time.

ISIL does not take prisoners and if they have surrounded you do not think about how to surrender but how to take as many militants as possible to the other life with you.

Even the secular opposition has started to use amnesties to escape the Islamists. Only the poorest strata of the population are on the side of the Islamists.

At the same time, the majority of the refugees, despite the recent news, are staying in Syria. The government is trying not to create camps but to house them in administrative buildings.

The richest are leaving for Iran and Lebanon to continue their businesses there and those who are a bit poorer are trying to get into the European Union.

Despite the huge debts and the collapse of the economy, Syria is allocating a lot of money to the social sector. Children's centres are being built, schools, hospitals, and so on. Salaries are being paid even to officials who have stayed to work in ISIL.

The Wahhabis are building their own state but because of a shortage of their own personnel they have been forced to rely on Syrian officials in the occupied cities. Some officials have set themselves up so well that they are getting money both from Damascus and al-Raqqah. Generally speaking al-Asad is doing all he can to prove that Syria, unlike the terrorists, looks after its citizens.

[Avakov] You talk about ISIL but surely there are many different groups there, is there no difference for the locals?

[Mizakh] And what difference can there be over who will cut your head off?

Only the military distinguish between them because it is important for them to know with whom they are concluding tactical truces, and academics because research is being conducted by all kinds of...

Well, there is the Free Syrian Army, but a maximum of 10 per cent of all the rebel forces belong to it. The local residents do not want to talk to them about anything either. All their demands are being met gradually in any case.

In order to oppose the Islamists, al-Asad must establish a dialogue with the people. They are demanding al-Asad's resignation but why if everyone knows that he will now win any fair election?

[Avakov] For the locals is there a difference whether it is an Islamist from elsewhere or not?

[Mizakh] Well there is. The guests could not care less about local customs. It has even gone as far as the Bedouin tribes near al-Raqqah, who at first invited ISIL in, now running to al-Asad because they cannot live under the new order.

But an actual wave of refugees starts when the Islamists advance on the new settlements. The militias I spoke to think that they live with the mission of cleansing the world of the big pile of shit that went there. They only regret that it came to us and not to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or America, which fund them.

[Avakov] What in general is the attitude towards the Saudis?

[Mizakh] Even before the war none of the Gulf countries liked them because of their obscurantism... In Latakia, for instance, there is one cafe where it is written on the door: "Saudis and dogs are not served".

People do not like Saudi Arabia because of its savagery, backwardness, and barbarism, and also because of its uneducated pride caused by the presence of vast oil reserves. The Syrians, in turn, consider themselves to be the heirs of ancient civilizations.

[Avakov] And what do they think about Russia?

[Mizakh] Supporters of al-Asad have had a very favourable attitude towards Russia since the era of the USSR and now even more so. But if ISIL members discover that you are a Slav or that your wife is a Slav then they will definitely kill you because since the Chechen war Russia is considered one of the Islamists' chief enemies.

[Avakov] I see... Was it hard to say goodbye to your detachment?

[Mizakh] It was embarrassing. I have somewhere to go - they haven't. I had already made friends with them all. I want to go again next year. When I went there I thought that the enemy would be like the Immortal Horde. It turned out that the abilities of the Islamists are exaggerated. They die like everyone else.

[Avakov] Do you think that the war will not have ended by that time?

[Mizakh] No, of course not. For this to happen, the state needs to take the Turkish border under control, more or less in the maritime district and the Jordanian border in the Golan Heights district... Then the influx of Islamists will be halted and we will rapidly deal with the remaining militants.

All Syrians know that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and America are helping the Islamists with weapons and money, and they are buying oil from them.

They are supposedly only helping the secular opposition but everyone understands very well that they are effectively selling weapons to the common fund at a knock-down price. Weapons from the Free Army are distributed between everyone.

However, Syria can only lose if a no-flight zone is established, Turkey openly supports the militants, and the anti-ISIL coalition openly opposes Syria.

[Avakov] Did you sense any changes when you returned to Russia?

[Mizakh] I really do not understand how you live so calmly here. I have dreams about when I was there and you can only sleep when absolutely done in. I have grown to hate those who love fireworks. And, well, I look at my feet all the time so as not to run into a mine.

But anyway I had to make just a small contribution in the fight against ISIL. My brother says that in the north it is as if they are filming "Saving Private Ryan" every day. The losses are huge on both sides, no-one feels any pity for one another, they do not always take prisoners, they even cut one another's ears off as souvenirs...

[Avakov] Would you like to pass any message on to your fellow servicemen and the militants?

[Mizakh] For the militia and soldiers: all reasonable, normal people are with you, guys. And for the militants... probably things will turn out bad if the interview ends with the words "you will all be killed", won't they? You need to be total idiot to go to war for the Caliphate...

It would be better to tell a joke. Soldiers caught an Islamist. He asks to be shot at 13.00. They ask him why at that precise time? He answers that he will then be on time for dinner with the prophet Mohammed and the shakhid. They report this to the officer.

The officer says: shoot him at 14.15. They ask: why? And he answers that then he will in fact be in time to wash the dishes for everyone.

P.S. Mishel refused to be photographed - he said so that ISIL members could not identify him.

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 #21
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
September 22, 2015
EU-Russia food fight masks business as usual
Liam Halligan in London

For several days in late July and early August, thousands of farmers across North East France used tractors to obstruct roads from Germany. The aim was to prevent trucks carrying agricultural goods from crossing the Rhine. In South West France, too, more Gallic protesters, similarly mounted on tractors, blocked farm produce coming from Spain.

In Russia, meanwhile, customs authorities invited TV cameras to film the destruction of 20 tons of French and Spanish cheese using a bulldozer, while crushing a range of other foods -  including bacon, tomatoes and nectarines.

These two bizarre events - French tractors stopping food imports from within the EU, and televised "fromagicide" - are not unrelated. Both stem from Moscow's decision a year ago to ban farm produce from America, Canada, Norway, Australia and, most significantly, members of the EU.

In March 2014, the US and EU imposed travel bans and asset freezes on various Russian lawmakers and other prominent individuals - the most wide-ranging commercial restrictions since the Soviet era. Four months later, as tensions over Ukraine mounted, further limits were imposed on Russian state-owned banks' access to international capital markets.

Last August, Moscow hit back, banning a range of EU agricultural exports. With Russian inflation already high and a food import embargo likely to stoke prices further, this seemed like a strange move. Russia's counter-sanctions, though, have been extremely effective, causing a serious food glut in Western Europe and sparking sharp wholesale price falls for fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products. EU farmers have become properly angry, as the Kremlin hoped they would. For there are few interest groups that European politicians fear more than the dreaded farm lobby, not least in its Gallic form.

In early September, hundreds of tractor-mounted French farmers, protesting low wholesale prices, brought the centre of Paris to a standstill. President Francois Hollande capitulated within a few hours, announcing a package of "support measures" including €500mn in direct financial support for farmers and another €100mn in deferred or cancelled taxes. A week later, encouraged by their French brethren, thousands of farmers from across the EU used extreme traffic-blocking measures in downtown Brussels, including burning hay bales. It wasn't long before EU agriculture ministers unveiled a $557mn package of farm-supporting "special measures".

Salad days

The potency of Russia's food import ban has taken many Western commentators by surprise. That's because the extent to which EU now trades with its vast eastern neighbour is often underplayed. During the ten years to 2013, EU-Russia trade surged from €90bn to €325bn, a 360% rise. Sanctions, and the related economic slowdown in both Russia and Western Europe, saw that figure drop in 2014 to €285bn.

Given the extent of trade restrictions, though, and the ferocity of the sanctions-related rhetoric, this 12% fall was actually rather small. And while EU-Russia trade was down last year compared with 2013, it was still 15% higher than in 2011, showing a strong upward trajectory. Totaling three-fifths of the trade between the EU and US, and two-thirds of EU-China flows, trade between the EU and Russia is by no means a marginal activity.

The scale of such EU-Russia trade, and the ongoing shift away from the traditional energy-for-machine-tools swap, is shown by the extent to which EU farm produce was heading for Russia prior to the Kremlin's ban. In 2013, the last full year before sanctions, no less than a third of EU fresh fruit and vegetable exports were sold in Russia and a quarter of exported EU beef. Some 75% of EU cabbage exports went to Russia in 2013, together with 63% of tomatoes, 57% of pears, 54% of peaches and 52% of all EU apples sold abroad.

That's why Moscow's ban on a range of imported food has hit European agriculture hard. In 2014, the value of EU farm products sold in Russia fell 24%, from €11.8bn to €9.1bn. The latest figures show an even steeper 43% drop during the first eight months of 2015. EU farmers have been affected by both lower export volumes and lower prices at home, given the food glut that Moscow's counter-sanctions have caused.

While impacting today's bottom line, this ban has also incentivized Russia's domestic food producers and rival foreign exporters too. Russia's fast-growing food market has long been extremely attractive to EU farmers. Since mid-2014, though, Brazil has become one of Russia's major suppliers of agricultural and food products, with over 60% of Brazil's meat exports now sold in Russia. That's a direct result of the ban on imported EU and American meat.

Keen to maintain pressure on Western Europe, Moscow has taken high-profile measures to make sure its counter-sanctions, to some degree, stick. Tons of EU-derived cheese smuggled in and given counterfeit labels has been ostentatiously destroyed, as have countless truckloads of soft fruit from Poland and Greece. Amid fierce criticism from domestic anti-poverty campaigners, in a country where fears about food security run deep, the Kremlin has presented such destruction as a health issue, claiming food supplied in contravention of sanctions is of dubious quality. There is, meanwhile, little chance of Moscow relenting on its food import ban until it sees reciprocal easing of Western sanctions.

Under the sauce

Measures to restrict trade with Russia, widely supported in America, have clearly provoked a more nuanced reaction across the EU. Europe, after all, has a lot more to lose. While trade between the US and Russia was €21bn in 2013, EU-Russia commerce was over 15-times bigger. Within that, EU farm exports are obviously highly sensitive, given that a protesting agricultural sector causes political havoc in France. Many German engineering firms, large and small, are also fiercely protective of their lucrative trade links to Russia - and have complained loudly to Chancellor Angela Merkel since sanctions began.

Yet the main reason Western European and American attitudes to Russia differ is, of course, hydrocarbons. Russia remains the world's biggest energy exporter, selling over 600mn tonnes of oil equivalent in 2014, split between crude, coal and natural gas. Oil-focused Saudi Arabia, in second place, exported less than two-thirds of that last year.

The EU's reliance on Russian energy is highly significant and rising. Russia supplied 30% of the oil used in Western Europe in 2014, 34% of the gas and 32% of the coal - plus a fifth of the enriched uranium. The EU's oil and gas production has fallen by a third over the last five years, with coal production now 15% lower. As such, Western Europe's energy import dependence is spiraling, with 75% of the EU's gas needs now coming from imports, up from 57% in 2005.

For decades, even during Soviet times, Russia has been a reliable energy supplier to Western Europe. That won't change, despite sanctions. With its vast energy sector still accounting for three-quarters of exports, and two-fifths of budget revenues, Russia's commitment to fueling the EU, through thick and thin, is rooted in self-interest. But it works both ways, which is why, however bad the diplomatic squabbles, there is absolutely no question, nor will there ever be, of the EU imposing sanctions on Russia that go any further than the minimum level they can get away in the eyes of the US.

As summer turns to autumn, there are now signs of parts of the EU pushing back, taking steps to repair strained commercial relations with Russia whatever Washington may think. In September, a welter of European energy firms, including Germany's E.ON and Anglo-Dutch giant Shell, signed a landmark agreement with Gazprom to build Nord Stream 2 - an expansion to the existing gas pipeline that, since 2011, has run under the Baltic Sea from Russia directly to Germany. Nord Stream's capacity is now set to double, to over 30% of total EU gas demand.

While UK and US press coverage of Nord Stream 2 has been limited, leading German papers have hailed "Gazprom's new European strategy" as a "major coup" for Berlin. Having supported the EU's now abandoned Nabucco pipeline project, which would have brought Caspian gas to Western Europe, while avoiding Russia, America has opposed Nord Stream from the outset.

In 2011, two-thirds of EU-bound gas from Russia crossed Ukraine. That share has now fallen to a third and Nord Stream 2 will lower it further. The US has expressed concern that Ukraine and other Central and Eastern European countries such Poland now stand to lose considerable pipeline fees given increased flows through Nord Stream, the world's longest undersea gas pipe.

Germany, though, is determined to press ahead with Nord Stream 2, as are France and Austria, seeing as both countries also rely heavily on Russian gas and have large energy companies involved in the deal. This ongoing East-West sanctions stand-off has provoked some high-profile outcomes this summer, including rioting EU farmers and the crushing of tons of smelly cheese. Yet, despite the political sabre rattling, the business of business goes on, not least the deepening of energy links between some of the EU's largest economies and the hydrocarbon giant to their East.

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 #22
www.rt.com
September 23, 2015
Kremlin promises 'counter-steps' in reply to US deploying nuclear weapons to Germany

The planned deployment of the latest US nuclear bombs at the Buchel Air Base in Germany would disrupt the strategic balance of forces in Europe and could force a reaction from Russia, President Vladimir Putin's press secretary has stated.

"It may lead to the destruction of the strategic balance in Europe. Therefore it would definitely cause Russia to take corresponding counter-steps and counter-measures in order to restore the strategic balance and parity," Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.

"This is another step and unfortunately it is a very serious step towards increase of tensions on the European continent. Such actions cannot be described as a step towards stronger trust and greater stability," the Russian official added.

The statement was prompted by news this week circulated by the German television channel ZDF, which found out from US budget documents about the US Air Force's plans to bring new B61 nuclear bombs to the Luftwaffe's Buchel Air Base. It currently hosts Tornado multipurpose aircraft that are capable of carrying atomic weapons. Twenty older bombs are stored at the base under a nuclear sharing deal, while it is the only facility in Germany, which has kept nuclear weapons since 2007.

The newer B61 Mod 12 bombs are more accurate and have smaller yields than modifications 3 and 4, which are currently deployed in Europe.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova earlier told ZDF that Russia was deeply concern about America's plans to bring new nuclear weapons to Germany. She noted that Russia has reduced the number of tactical nukes it keeps by four times since the 1990s, while Moscow has also called for an international treaty, which would allow nuclear powers to only keep atomic weapons on their own territory.

"The comprehensive analysis of the situation points to the threat posed by the increasing military capability of NATO and its endowment with global functions, which it performs in violation of the international law, as well as the encroachment of the military infrastructure of NATO members on the borders of the Russian Federation," Zakharova told German reporters.

The head of the State Duma Committee for Defense, MP Vladimir Komoyedov (Communist Party) told TASS that Russia could deploy more weapons to its western exclaves - the Kaliningrad Region and the Crimean Republic - in order to retain a strategic balance of forces in Europe. However, the lawmaker noted that Russia had enough weapons, even on its mainland, to effectively ensure the security of the country.

The Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source, "from military-diplomatic circles," who said the Russian authorities were studying the details of the US plans to deploy new nuclear bombs to Germany and may decide to bring its newest Iskander-M tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad if the threat is judged as being a valid one.

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 #23
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova's interview with the German ZDF TV Company regarding the modernisation of US nuclear weapons in Europe, Moscow, September 22, 2015

Question: What does the Russian government think about the scheduled modernisation of US nuclear weapons in Germany?

Maria Zakharova: Such plans on the part of the United States raise concern for us. As you may be aware, in the 1990s, Russia reduced its non-strategic nuclear weapons arsenal by 75 per cent, moved them into the category of non-deployed weapons, and warehoused them in central storage facilities within its national territory.

Meanwhile, Europe - not just Germany, but Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey as well - still have deployed US tactical nuclear weapons on their respective territories. The Americans are modernising their nuclear bombs, and European NATO members are modernising aircraft carriers for such weapons. This policy was confirmed at the NATO summits held in Chicago (2012) and Wales (2014).

We are likewise concerned by the so-called practice of "joint use of nuclear weapons" within NATO. Exercises involving the preparation and use of nuclear weapons by the armed forces of states that do not possess such weapons are a direct violation of NPT articles 1 and 2. This abnormal situation has been in place for more than 40 years now, but that does not make it any more acceptable.

In the interest of security and stability in Europe, we believe it is necessary to return non-strategic nuclear weapons to countries' respective national territories and to impose a ban on deploying them outside national territories, to eliminate the corresponding infrastructures outside national territories enabling rapid deployment of these weapons and to reject the holding of exercises involving the preparation and use of nuclear weapons of the armed forces of states that do not possess such weapons.

Question: Do you consider US nuclear weapons a threat to Russia?

Maria Zakharova: The presence of US NSNW (non-strategic nuclear weapons) in Europe is taken into account in our military planning. A comprehensive analysis of the situation reveals that building up NATO military capabilities and imparting to it global functions that are exercised in violation of international law, as well as advancing NATO military infrastructure to Russia's borders, present a risk. We are concerned by the creation and the deployment of strategic missile defence systems which violate the balance of nuclear-missile forces and thus undermine global stability. We are also concerned by the implementation of the concept of a global strike and plans to put weapons in space, as well as the deployment of strategic nonnuclear precision weapon systems. All of that is outlined in the revised Russian military doctrine of December 2014

Question: Does Russia plan talks with the United States on reducing tactical nuclear weapons?

Maria Zakharova: Russia is open to discussing any issues related to strengthening international security, but we do not consider the NSNW a priority. We believe that when it comes to arms control, we should focus primarily on missile defence, the US reluctance to support the idea of giving up the deployment of weapons in outer space and the imbalance in conventional weapons, to name a few.

Compliance with the Russian-American START Treaty is a priority in the sphere of reducing and limiting nuclear arms.

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 #24
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
September 23, 2015
Key takeaways from 25 years of independence for South Ossetia
25 years after the recognition of the independence of South Ossetia, it is vitally important to determine what policy Russia should adhere to in this region to minimize tensions.
By Sergey Markedonov
Sergey Markedonov is an Associate Professor at Russian State University for the Humanities based in Moscow (Russia). From May 2010 to October 2013, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC, USA). In April-May 2015 he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Russia and Central Asia Studies, Institute of International Studies (IIS), Fudan University (Shanghai, China).

With South Ossetia having celebrated the 25th anniversary of its independence last Sunday, opinions on the matter are divided. Optimists cheer Russia's newfound assertiveness and unbreakable friendships in the region, while pessimists point out the huge financial and political costs that Moscow's geostrategic successes in the Caucasus have incurred.

Regardless of Russia's attitude towards this "strange state" on its southern borders, South Ossetia is of interest as a political phenomenon of post-Soviet history. South Ossetia has been paid far less attention to than Abkhazia. In fact, these two phenomena are usually separated by nothing more than a comma. But the differences between Abkhazia and South Ossetia are no fewer than the similarities.

First, South Ossetia, unlike Abkhazia, was compelled to become a separatist territory. In contrast to the intellectual and social movement in the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, there was no widespread discontent inside South Ossetia about being part of Georgia.

Even in Joseph Stalin's time, Abkhazians protested against being considered a part of the Georgian SSR (for instance, the public gathering in Duripsh in 1931), not to mention the protests that occurred during the relatively liberal years (compared to the Great Terror) from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Approximately every ten years in the Soviet period (1967, 1977-1978, 1989), Abkhazia saw the rise of protest movements and petition campaigns.

South Ossetia, meanwhile, was much better integrated into Georgia, and Ossetians themselves likewise into Georgian society. The popular memory of the tragic events of June-July 1920 (when pro-Bolshevik Ossetians were brutally suppressed by Georgia's Menshevik government) was mobilized only in the late 1980s.

Prior to that, the tragedy was written and spoken about primarily as a crime by the country's Menshevik government, and was not attached to the Georgian nation as a whole.

The majority of Ossetians in the Georgian SSR lived outside of South Ossetia. The autonomous region itself was home to about 63,200 people, while around 100,000 Ossetians lived abroad.

They were the fifth largest ethnic community in the country (after Georgians, Armenians, Russians and Azerbaijanis), and exceeded the number of Abkhazians squeezed into the Abkhaz ASSR. Before the outbreak of hostilities in the 1990s, Ossetians lived mainly in Tbilisi (33,318), Gori (8,222) and Rustavi (5,613).

Hence, Tbilisi was far more likely to avoid the excesses that Abkhazia was prone to. But Georgia's leaders, the self-proclaimed creators of the Georgian national project, did everything they could to ensure that these excesses arose. Moreover, issues of "ethnic safety", blurring at times with "ethnic purity," became the dominant theme in speeches delivered by the future founding fathers of independent Georgia.

All this was happening against the backdrop of the "toponymic war" (it was proposed that South Ossetia be renamed Samochablo, after the historical Georgian region that once existed inside Shida Kartli).

An information campaign was accompanied by the effective expulsion of Ossetians from places they densely populated, namely Gori, Pankisi, Borjomi, Bakuriani and Rustavi. It was then that South Ossetia became an outpost not only for local Ossetians, but also for all Ossetians in Georgia.

Second, after the 1990-1992 conflict, relations between South Ossetia and Georgia were not completely frozen (unlike between Abkhazia and Georgia). As correctly noted by Carnegie Endowment expert Thomas de Waal, before 2004 "South Ossetia was part of Georgia's economic space, and Ossetians and Georgians lived and traded freely with each other."

The famous Ergneti market was not the only joint venture. It is possible to remember traveling from Vladikavkaz to Tskhinvali by taxi (including through Georgian villages) for 600 rubles. Hence, unlike Abkhazia, Tbilisi after the military conflict had every chance of resolving the conflict and keeping hold of South Ossetia.

That fact may have inadvertently played a cruel trick on Tbilisi, creating the illusion that the South Ossetian question was simply a matter of "pacifying the Adjarian lion" Aslan Abashidze [a political figure and leader of the Adjara Autonomous Republic in western Georgia - Editor's note] .

However, the desire of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's team to "unfreeze" the conflict in 2004 and cause more bloodshed impeded not just the peace process (incidentally, it would not be amiss today to remember the peacemaking dividend that allowed residents of South Ossetia to travel to Tbilisi by car and Georgians to trade at markets in South Ossetia).

It also pushed South Ossetia away from Georgia with renewed vigor. What happened in August 2008 was the logical continuation of the policy begun by Saakashvili in May 2004.

Third, South Ossetia today differs significantly from Abkhazia in terms of its future prospects. Whereas the Abkhazian elite, which views Russia as a partner and the guarantor of its independence, appeals to the nation-state project, South Ossetia's leaders would prefer to merge with Russia's North Ossetia into a single constituent entity of Russia.

The specifics outlined above have prompted many Western experts (including the renowned Caucasus experts Charles King and Svante Cornell) to declare that South Ossetia, unlike Abkhazia, is not viable as a state. However, this skeptical approach (which isn't entirely unjustifiable) overlooks an important nuance.

South Ossetia's near total dependence on Russia does not alter the fact that the Georgian government has lost the struggle for the region and its people. And this loss occurred much earlier than August 2008: the Russo-Georgian conflict.

It was brought about by the Georgian politicians Zviad Gamsakhurdia and the aforementioned Saakashvili, as well as their inner circle of intellectuals who championed the notion of Georgia's "ancestral" Samachablo, referring to the results of a census taken in 1897 (when Ossetians in Tskhinvali were not the largest ethnic group).

This was all done in lieu of searching for mechanisms to harmonize the ethnic situation in South Ossetia. It is in this context that the "unwilling separatists" (many of whom were genuinely fond of Georgia) made their choice in favor of Russia with all its flaws.

What else could they do if the president of the country to which they were "assigned" stated publicly that, "In Georgia there are Ossetians, but no Ossetia"? The miserable prospects for South Ossetia's "statehood" in no way mitigate Georgia's responsibility for what happened. Tbilisi did everything possible to achieve such an outcome.

To lack viability as a state and to return to Georgia's fold are not the same thing. Post-2008, Georgia's place was taken by Russia, a much larger and stronger country. Can it provide a more attractive alternative? Will it make mistakes, believing that South Ossetians have made their choice forever?

The next quarter-century should be long enough to find answers to these questions. But there is a simple rule that needs to be understood today: ethno-political processes have no eternal friends and no eternal reference points, while their attractiveness to partners needs to be proved on a daily basis.

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New York Times
September 23, 2015
Documenting Ukraine with a Different Visual Approach
By James Estrin
[Photos here http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/documenting-ukraine-with-a-different-visual-approach/]

Most photojournalists covering the pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine work in the Donetsk area, where a small industry of fixers and drivers has developed. Images of the same people in similar scenes are frequently the result.

The Belgian photographer Thomas de Wouters took a less-traveled route last April, traveling through multiple checkpoints on damaged roads to Luhansk - a forlorn city that now bears scars of the continuing war.

Many of its buildings were destroyed, and the streets often empty of residents. Every day, Mr. de Wouters, 45, heard bombs exploding near the villages north of the city, but none of its inhabitants seemed to notice.

"There were mainly women, children and the old and infirm just doing their best to eat every day," he said. "The men were either fighting Ukraine or working in Russia to support their families."

Subject matter sets Mr. de Wouters's images apart, as does his visual approach. His strange, square, black-and white images look as if they were made by a 1960s-era New York street photographer set loose on the modern-day front between Russia and Ukraine.

The photographs from Luhansk and nearby towns are unlike any other reportage of the separatist areas of Ukraine. This distinction may be in part because of Mr. de Wouters's background. He has been shooting seriously for only two years, having previously worked as an engineer and a financial counselor.

Although Mr. de Wouters had photographed sporadically throughout his life, the Maidan revolution was the turning point for his beginning to take pictures seriously. He followed the unfolding events on his car radio, mesmerized by what he perceived as a historic moment happening close to where he lived.

In February 2014, he decided to see, and photograph, the events in Kiev. For five days, he lived in a tent in Maidan Square with protesters and sold a few photos to a Belgian newspaper, La Libre Belgique.

Last winter, Mr. de Wouters decided to photograph the humanitarian situation in Luhansk, but his trip had to be delayed because of brain cancer surgery. He made the decision to pursue photography full time after the operation, and the trip to Luhansk became a way of proving to himself that he could beat the disease.

He worked with a Nikon camera, modified by masking the film plane and view finder to make square images. His choice of working in analog photography was not for technical or aesthetic reasons, but simply because it slowed him down.

"If I have a roll of 36 pictures, I know I cannot shoot and shoot and shoot," he said. "I will take more time and think. I will sit for half an hour talking with the people before taking the first picture because I am not in a hurry. It's purposeful because I know it's three rolls of film a day or less."

He said he approached the work in Luhansk neutrally, without taking sides, but he was not working in a typical journalistic manner.

Instead, he expressed in photographs what he saw and experienced from a personal point of view. It was not an objective approach, but a subjective one - though it could be argued to be still truthful and honest.

In Luhansk, Mr. de Wouters encountered a city that had lost much of its vitality.

Although residents were opposed to the government in Kiev, many had tired of the continual fighting, he said. Electricity and heat were rare. Shops were mostly empty of food and goods, and few residents held jobs. The workers at soup kitchens and old age homes had not been paid in months, yet continued doing their jobs, he added.

After three weeks, Mr. de Wouters returned to Belgium, emotionally exhausted and weary.

"Luhansk is less than 3,000 kilometers from where I live, yet those people are living like we did 70 years ago, after World War II, when displaced people were moving from one country to another," he said. "You feel a bit powerless. What can we do except make some images?"

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 #26
www.paxforpeace.nl
September 21, 2015
The human cost of explosive violence in Ukraine

Today PAX presents the photo report Collateral: the human costs of explosive violence in Ukraine. The report contains a collection of moving stories and pictures of citizens that were affected by the use of explosive weapons in Ukraine, through the lens of independent photographer Dirk-Jan Visser.

Every day, in a range of different contexts around the world, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas causes immense harm to civilians. Their use in towns and cities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, amongst others, has resulted in countless civilian casualties, widespread displacement and the destruction of vital infrastructure upon which civilians depend. Too often, civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian homes and livelihoods are generally accepted as 'collateral damage' - a sad but inevitable side effect of war. The joined OCHA and PAX publication 'Collateral; the human cost of explosive violence in Ukraine' shows the individual stories of people that were affected by explosive weapons in Ukraine on both sides of the frontline through the lens of independent photographer Dirk-Jan Visser.

Download the report Collateral - The human cost of explosive violence in Ukraine (pdf, 6mb):
Report here http://www.paxforpeace.nl/stay-informed/news/the-human-cost-of-explosive-violence-in-ukraine

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 #27
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
September 23, 2015
Elections in Donbass: What they mean for the Ukrainian conflict
The decision by the Donetsk and Lugansk "people's republics" in eastern Ukraine to hold local elections on dates that contravene the Minsk peace agreements is placing the whole future of the region in doubt, with experts saying that holding elections in the southeast could lead to a freezing of the conflict and the extension of sanctions against Russia.
Alexey Timofeychev, RBTH

Negotiations on the resolution of the 18-month-old conflict between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, currently at a dead end, are to face their stiffest test yet in October - a test that threatens the very survival of the agreements signed in Minsk in February on a political settlement of the conflict.

The heads of the self-proclaimed republics in the south-east of Ukraine have issued decrees to hold local elections in territories under their control, regardless of the vote in the rest of Ukraine.

The problem is that the leaders of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk "people's republics" (DNR and LNR) in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine have signed decrees to hold local elections on Nov. 1 and Oct. 18, respectively, while the rest of the country goes to the polls on Oct. 25.

The organization of elections in the rebel-held region is a key element of the Minsk agreements, which stipulate that elections in the Donbass must be held on the same day as those in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine.

However, while the elections must be held in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, the Minsk agreements also call for them to be held under the provisions of a special law on special status for the Donbass as part of the federalization of Ukraine. They also call for dialogue between Kiev and the breakaway regions, which so far has not happened.

Yet Kiev has proclaimed that the law on special status, which has already been approved by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, will not come into force before the elections, as the Minsk agreements outline, but only after they are held. This categorically does not suit representatives of the DNR and LNR, which effectively have no place in Kiev's scenario.

The DNR and LNR, meanwhile, are claiming that the organization of the elections does not violate the Minsk ceasefire agreements.

According to Russian news daily RBK, they insist on the sequence of political steps reflected in the Minsk agreements - the authorization and adoption of a new electoral law by Kiev, the entry into force of the law on the special status of the Donbass, constitutional reform and amnesty.

This is the platform on which they are willing to discuss the possibility of a compromise - the holding of elections in such a way as to also meet the position of Kiev.
 
'The foundation of the state'

Commenting on the decision of the heads of the self-proclaimed republics, Poroshenko called for strengthening sanctions against Russia, which officially denies providing the two republics with military support despite mounting evidence.

Poroshenko compared the upcoming vote to the elections of the heads of the republics on Nov. 2 last year, which he sees as the reason for last year's escalation of the fighting and the failure of the first Minsk agreements of September 2014.

Speaking about the importance of the elections, Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the DNR, said that "they are important for the state in general."

"...With these elections, we conclude the construction phase of the state itself. This is the stone that we laid in the foundation, and now we will build the walls and roof. After holding the elections, we will show that we are an accomplished, self-sufficient state," said Zakharchenko, stressing that the elections will be fair and democratic, with the invitation of observers.
 
Extending sanctions

Despite the announcement of the election dates, experts believe that a compromise between the Donbass and Kiev on the issue is still possible. In their view, much depends on the upcoming meeting in Paris between the leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine, to be held on Oct. 2.

However, failure to make headway on the issue in recent negotiations does not bode well, and Russia could find itself facing further sanctions unless it can convince the leadership of the DNR and LNR to back down and follow the election procedure set out in the Minsk agreements.

According to Ukrainian political analyst Vadim Karasyov, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Global Strategies, a "hypothetical possibility to ensure that these elections are held under Ukrainian legislation" still remains. He also ties this to the meeting of Oct. 2.

Otherwise, he predicts a repeat of the "Transnistrian scenario" - a reference to the breakaway sliver of Moldova where, in the absence of a political solution between ethnic Russians and the authorities in the Moldovan capital Chisinau, an unrecognized state entity has existed de facto for more than 20 years.

"If the elections are held on their own, the Minsk agreements will be torn down, and the conflict will be frozen," said Karasyov.

"What does the failure of the Minsk agreements mean? It means the extension of economic sanctions [of the Western countries against Russia] in late January, Ukraine will not get back control of the border, while a notional border will be drawn along the line of contact. In general, everything will be modeled after Transnistria," he said.
 
Subject of bargaining

According to Andrei Suzdaltsev, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs of the Higher School of Economics, the elections are the "subject of bargaining" given the importance of this issue for Kiev as well as claims that the vote could lead to new sanctions against Russia.

If agreement is not reached on the election, it could lead to a long-term freezing of the conflict as in Transnistria and, he claims, a withdrawal of troops.

However, even if this does not happen, a resumption of hostilities is unlikely, he said, as an "escalation of the conflict will cause great harm to both Ukraine and Russia."

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 #28
Reuters
September 22, 2015
Ukraine Rebels Say Local Elections Still Set for Oct, Nov

KIEV - Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine said on Tuesday they were going ahead with local elections in October and November in defiance of Kiev, and only hours after they appeared to say they were prepared to postpone the vote to avoid "stalemate" in peace efforts.

Under terms of a peace agreement signed in Minsk in February, local elections were meant to be held in the separatist regions along with the rest of the former Soviet republic this autumn. But Kiev has since said they cannot take place in the east because of continued security problems there.

The separatists, in response, scheduled their own ballot for October and November, angering Kiev which said it would not recognise the results.

Separatist envoys to the Minsk peace process Vladislav Deinego and Denis Pushilin were quoted as saying their ballot would go ahead, despite comments earlier on Tuesday which suggested the votes could be pushed back to Feb. 21.

"That was in reference to the next round of elections ... The dates of the first round of elections for the heads of cities and regions remains unchanged: Oct. 18 in the Donetsk People's Republic and Nov. 1 in the Luhansk People's Republic," separatist website DAN quoted Pushilin as saying.

It was not clear how or why the confusion in the message came about.

The comments come as the two rebel envoys meet representatives of Ukraine and Russia, under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, for further talks on the implementation of the peace process.

On Monday, President Petro Poroshenko criticised separatist plans for independent local balloting in October and November. "These aren't elections, they're not free, they will not meet the standards of the OSCE. This directly and severely contradicts the Minsk agreements," he said.

In the past, Ukrainian and rebel forces have blamed each other for repeated ceasefire breaches but both sides are now broadly respecting a truce that took effect on Sept. 1, according to OSCE monitors.

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 #29
Donbas chooses February 21 as election day in line with Ukraine's law - LPR

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR respectively) have chosen February 21 as the date for holding local elections in line with Ukraine's legislation, LPR leader Igor Plotnitsky said on Wednesday.

"The date for holding elections has been determined by the Minsk-2 deal," Plotnitsky said. "If Ukraine stops sabotage and imitation and immediately goes ahead with the Minsk-2 implementation, it will approximately be this date. The package of measures should be implemented step by step: a special status, amnesty, and a reform of the Constitution and a law on elections negotiated by the sides."

"We have considered all the procedural timeframes required by Ukraine's laws - the procedure of amendments in the constitution, Rada's regulations and timeframes for announcing and then preparing elections. So the date fell on February 21," he said.

Plotnitsky said Donbas "treated laws and regulations of Ukraine with respect."

"However, they [Ukraine's government] have taken it in as an ultimatum," LPR leader went on to say. "But our proposals contain just requirements written in the Minsk-2 agreements. Ukraine sealed the deal. So does [President Petro] Poroshenko happen to believe the Minsk deal is an ultimatum which he himself signed?"

"The logic is quite contorted," he said. "I feel that Petro Alekseyevich [Poroshenko's patronymic] should stop worrying, calm down and carefully consider our proposals."

"Ukraine has declared an ultimatum to itself," Plotnitsky said. "We don't understand why Ukraine's officials have perceived our proposal to hold elections on February 21 as an ultimatum. On the contrary, we are showing a path to a compromise."

On Tuesday, the LPR envoy at the Minsk talks of the Contact Group resolving the conflict in Donbas, Vyacheslav Deinego, said that on that day the self-proclaimed republics had submitted to the Contact Group an adequate timeframe for implementation of political provisions of the Minsk deal, which would help secure the settlement of political issues in Donbas.

"We have prepared a schedule with an adequate timeframe for implementing each political point of the package of measures to break the impasse. It was drafted based on the current legislation of Ukraine and the regulation of the Verkhovna Rada and also the norms of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)," Deinego said noting that the DPR and LPR had suggested to Kiev that local elections should be held on a new date, February 21.

Talks of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) leaders on the Ukrainian issue along with regular talks of the Contact Group on resolving the Ukraine conflict took place in the Belarusian capital Minsk on February 12.

The talks ended by adoption of a 13-point package of measures, which contained in particular a ceasefire starting from February 15, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line disengaging the Kiev troops and militias of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as measures on long-term political settlement in Donbass, including enforcement of a special self-rule status for certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

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 #30
Interfax-Ukraine
September 23, 2015
Kyiv critical of DPR, LPR proposal to hold elections on Feb 21
 
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Ambassador at Large Dmytro Kuleba has called cynical the proposal of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics to hold local elections on the territories under their control on February 21.

"This proposal is an absolutely cynical act of trolling," Kuleba said in a program aired by Ukraine's Channel 5 on Tuesday evening. The Crimean accession to Russia and the tragic events on Kyiv's Maidan began on February 20-21, 2014, he said. "Of all the days in the calendar they could choose from they chose exactly that one," the Ukrainian diplomat said.

In fact, what is now happening is "the cross-messages sent to one another," Kuleba said. "The Russians were perfectly aware of why NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg planned to visit us and what documents were planned to be signed. By today's visit of the NATO secretary general the West sent an explicit message not only to us but also to Russia - Ukraine is a part of the West, we [the West] are set to integrate, and everything will now depend on the Ukrainian wish. And the Russians are raising their bets and bargaining a delay in the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements and a postponement of the elections," he said.

This exchange of messages will reach its climax at the 'Normandy Four' summit in Paris on October 2 where the parties will not just send messages but will also make decisions, he said.

"The UN General Assembly session is another way of warming up before the 'Normandy format' meeting. What we are seeing and hearing now is, as the army will put it, artillery preparation for a grand diplomatic operation," he said.

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 #31
Newsweek.com
September 23, 2015
Why Ukraine Needs to Give Power to Its Regions
By Petro Poroshenko
Petro Poroshenko is the president of Ukraine.    

Ukraine's parliamentary vote on August 31 in favor of the law on amendments to the constitution on decentralization of powers showed the world that our country has many responsible politicians with a strategic and democratic vision.

However, the events outside Parliament that followed the vote were supremely painful - three servicemen fell victims to a failed attempt to destabilize the state. I feel truly disgusted that someone could use the deepest sorrows of my fellow citizens to their political advantage. And I will personally make sure that anyone involved directly in the events near the Ukrainian parliament as well as those who orchestrated their actions will be brought to justice.

For more than 20 years decentralization has been discussed in Ukraine, although no government before dared to take real action on this topic. Decentralization of powers in Ukraine is crucial for building a European state, full stop. I said it in my inauguration speech, I say it now.

The existing model of governance is excessively centralized, and has nothing to do with democracy. It is a Soviet atavism that has largely contributed to endemic corruption and widespread economic and political mismanagement in Ukraine. We are now doing what should have been done a long time ago.

Let me be clear that the reforms to the constitution which we are proposing will allow us to grant more power to all our regions and, therefore, to all law-abiding Ukrainian citizens. Decentralization will strengthen, not weaken Ukraine.

Regardless of the issue's sensitivity in Ukrainian society, I have consciously assumed this responsibility because it is the right thing to do for the prosperity of my country.

The main idea behind the amendments is delegation of some central powers, as well as financial resources, to the level of local government where they can be used with maximum efficiency.

The first part-budget decentralization-was initiated in the beginning of 2015. Thus far it has shown very promising results-the average relative increase of local budgets' revenues amounted to 36.8%. Decentralization of state powers suggests that local communities will be able to decide how to spend the received funds themselves. And, as is also highly important, local government will be accountable not to the center, but directly to their voters.

What is more, the Venice Commission, which provides independent advice for the Council of Europe on all matters of constitutional reform, praised our draft law on amendments to the constitution and stated that it was highly compatible with the European Charter of Local Self-government.

Since many misinterpret the essence of decentralization in Ukraine, let me explain some potentially confusing points.

Firstly, defense, national security, rule of law, and compliance with civil freedoms will remain in the jurisdiction of the central authorities.

Secondly, the current constitution has an article that implies a possibility for special regional status. The draft law I have submitted to Parliament on amendments to the Ukrainian constitution, on the contrary, eliminates this item to prevent the emergence of numerous fiefdoms. Instead, there will be forms of local self-governance in certain districts-in Donetsk and Luhansk regions-only when three conditions are met: Russia has withdrawn its troops and weapons from Ukrainian territory; control over the Ukraine-Russia border is entirely restored; and lastly, elections on those territories are held according to Ukrainian law and standards set by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Thirdly, decentralization initially was in my peace plan because I believed that was the right path for my country and my people. The item was included in February's Minsk ceasefire agreements, despite all of President Putin's attempts to substitute it with "federalization" or "autonomy". What is more, constitutional reform on decentralization demonstrates that the responsibilities Ukraine commits to are upheld, and we keep our promises even when the road gets rocky. We demand the same in return.

Few nations can truly relate to what Ukrainians are going through right now. Eastern Ukraine right now is our open wound, and anything associated with it is a very sensitive topic. Decentralization of powers is indeed a hard choice, but it is the only right choice. Now, despite all the challenges, we are approaching the moment of truth, and we just need to take a couple more courageous and responsible steps.

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 #32
Sputnik
September 19, 2015
Did Yatsenyuk Just Say That Western Ukraine Should Be Given Back to Poland?

Polish media are abuzz with excitement over a statement by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The official ostensibly declared that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which effectively created contemporary Ukraine's western borders, was an act against the interests of both Poland and Ukraine.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact signed between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War, resulted in the return of Polish-controlled territories in western Belarus and Ukraine lost during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 to the Soviet Union, effectively forming the western borders of the two future countries following the USSR's collapse.

Speaking alongside Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, who had arrived in the Ukrainian village of Bykivnia on Thursday to participate in a commemoration to the Polish officers killed by Soviet security forces during the war, Yatsenyuk declared that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was directed not only against Poland, but against Ukraine as well, Polish newspaper Kresy reported.

"Having concluded this pact, the Bolsheviks-Communists and the Nazis acted against Poland and Ukraine, dividing our countries and humiliating our people," Yatsenyuk said, adding that the pact was responsible for unleashing the Second World War.

Commenting on the absurdity of Yatsenyuk's statement, which seemed to open the door for Polish revanchism in western Ukraine, social media users noted that if authorities in Kiev consider the pact to be a criminal act, perhaps they should contemplate returning western Ukraine to Poland, in the interests of 'righting' this historical wrong.

Following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, from which post-independence Ukraine eventually emerged, received the regions of Volyn, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Rivne, as well as the region of Lviv and its capital of the same name. Lviv, which had never been part of the Russian Empire, had previously been one of the wealthiest cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and served as the jewel in the crown of interwar Poland's eastern holdings. Following the Polish-Soviet War, Lviv served as Poland's third most populous city, and was widely considered to be the second most important cultural and academic center in the country after Warsaw.

Social media users who didn't launch an outright attack on the prime minister seemed dumbfounded by his comment, with a user on news and analysis site PolitNavigator.net asking "Let me get this right: western Ukraine uniting with the rest of Ukraine was directed against Ukraine's interest? Did Yatsenyuk even understand what he just said?"

Following the collapse of communism, a segment of Polish society began to openly declare that they saw the Kresy, or 'Eastern Borderlands' in western Ukraine, western Belarus and southeastern Lithuania as rightfully Polish territories, with numerous organizations with state support creating memorial projects and assisting Poles who continue to live in the region, even if outright revanchism remains politically taboo. With over 800,000 people resettling west to the territories of contemporary Poland following the war, an estimated 15 percent of Poland's population is believed to have originated in the Kresy.

Last year, following Ukraine's signing of the EU's Association Agreement, several Polish civil organizations declared that they would file lawsuits to make a case for the restitution of property in western Ukraine which was seized from Poles following the region's transfer to Soviet Ukraine.

Moreover, recent polling by the Warsaw Institute of Public Affairs, in cooperation with their counterparts in Kiev, found that nearly half of Poles continue to view Ukraine and Ukrainians negatively, with 38 percent indifferent, and only 23 percent saying that they were willing to fully recognize the legitimacy of the contemporary Polish-Ukrainian border.

Standard Fare

Despite ordinary Poles' apparent antipathy to Ukraine, exacerbated by post-Maidan Kiev's glorification of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, responsible for the massacre of up to 120,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during the Second World War, Yatsenyuk said that the Warsaw-Kiev partnership was the key to an "axis of the common European future of our nations." The prime minister added that "under conditions of Russian aggression, we must pledge that we will continue to fight for our independence and freedom -for a free world and the values of a free world."

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#33
www.rt.com
September 23, 2015
Around 200 masked men storm Kharkov city hall in Eastern Ukraine (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
[Photos and video here http://www.rt.com/news/316266-masked-men-storm-kharkov/]

At least 200 people wearing camouflage and masks stormed the local administration building in the city of Kharkov, eastern Ukraine, local media said. The perpetrators are alleged to be members of the radical Azov battalion.

The masked men reportedly clashed with police and security forces at the city's administration building. Those who have entered the building have also reportedly used tear gas, the Ukrainian 112 channel is saying.

The masked activists were seen holding flags with the insignia of the radical Azov Battalion, which is accused of committing numerous human rights violations in Eastern Ukraine, according to international watchdogs.

"There have been several small clashes between police and people in balaclavas. A few minutes ago somebody let off tear gas. The entrance to the city council is surrounded by a tight police cordon," a journalist at the scene, from the 112 channel reported.

Earlier, at least 50 people wearing camouflage and balaclavas had taken part in a protest in front of the residence of the local politician, Mikhail Dobkin, who represents the 'Opposition Bloc' political party, which wants to find a peaceful solution to the current crisis in Ukraine. The masked men had not set out any demands. However, they were reported to have stated their aim was to "to throw Dobkin out of the city and not to let Kernes become Kharkov's mayor," according to the 112 channel.

Gennady Kernes has been the mayor of Kharkov since March 2010. Before the coup in Ukraine, he had been a strong supporter of President Viktor Yanokovich. However, he subsequently switched sides and has backed the new Ukrainian government in order to keep his position.

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 #34
Russian Orthodox Church condemns participation by Ukrainian police in conflicts between religious organizations

MOSCOW. Sept 23 (Interfax) - Vladimir Legoida, head of the synodal information department, has condemned the takeover by schismatics in Ukraine of the Church of St. George and called on the administration of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to investigate police involvement in violence against believers.

On September 21, the Day of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, representatives of the Kyiv patriarchate, who were supported by young men in camouflaged uniform bearing labels of the organization Right Sector, which is banned in Russia, took over the Church of St. George in the village of Katerinovka.

According to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, members of the Interior Ministry battalion Ternopol-2 took the side of the people who took over the church, battering the congregation and preventing them from coming inside the church.

A representative of the Russian Orthodox Church recalled that the Church of St. George in Katerynivka has been attacked by radical nationalist forces and schismatic groups before.

"In the summer, supporters of the so-called Kyiv patriarchate made two attempts to take over the Church of St. George, but the community of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church then, fortunately, managed to defend it. However, the schismatics made a new attempt to take over the church on the Day of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, which is a holy day to all Orthodox Christians," Legoida said.

"It is regrettable that the Ukrainian police took part in the violence along with representatives of radical militarized groups and the non-canonical 'Kyiv patriarchate'," he said.

Legoida believes that the use of violence against the congregation and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the nationalists and schismatics "unfortunately, became almost commonplace in the past 1.5 years, but police involvement in such openly illegal actions is very bad news."

Legoida said he is hoping that the administration of the Ukrainian police will take "urgent measures against those officials who are involved in arbitrariness that destroyed civil accord."

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 #35
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
September 22, 2015
Speaking Truth to Power: Ukrainian Human Rights Activist at Warsaw OSCE Meeting [+Video, english]
[http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/09/speaking-truth-to-power-ukrainian-human.html]

Warsaw: September 21st,  a meeting of the OSCE was held in which the Ukrainian crisis was discussed - in particular, the tragedy of the situation with freedom of speech, the threat of independent journalists.

Ukraine today is one of the most troubled European countries in matters of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Speaking on September 21st in Warsaw at the OSCE meeting, to review the implementation of commitments, from the perspective of human rights, the Ukrainian human rights activist and Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Commission on Human Rights, Alexei Tarasov, made the following educational, revealing, and sobering statements:

"Dear colleagues,

Please allow me to welcome this meeting.

Probably everyone knows that today's Ukraine is the most problematic European country in terms of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Especially where it concerns the tragic situation with the freedom of speech and freedom of expression, the situation of access to information, limitation of journalists' activity and the mass media in general.

According to information by the Institute of Mass Media, since the beginning of 2015 in Ukraine, there has been recorded 224 violations of the rights of journalists. According to the Institute's reports, almost every day journalists in Ukraine are beaten or intimidated.

The worst thing is the continuation of journalists' murders. For example, last year the talented journalist Oles' Buzina was killed right near the entrance of his house. He was a consistent supporter of the Ukraine's unity, at the same time fundamentally opposing to the war in the Donbass, which contradicted the official doctrine. The suspects of the murder of Buzina were arrested. They are under investigation. Human rights defenders are very concerned with the political pressure on the investigation and law enforcement agencies. They are afraid that the real killers will escape  punishment.

In Kiev this year, journalists Sergei Sukhobok and Margarita Valenko, were killed in Cherkassy region - Vasily Sergienko.

In Ukraine there is political pressure on opposition media, harassment, illegal criminal searches and arrests of journalists became a reality. There are varied forms of violence against  dissent in the Ukrainian media.

State officials are trying to illegally shut the license of the popular opposition 112 TV channel and of the metropolitan newspaper "Vesti". There were a great number of provocations, criminal searches, etc. Ukrainian authorities are forcibly trying to substitute owners of the mass media. Employees of the Odessa opposition website "Timer" for "prevention" were summoned for questioning at the office of the Ukrainian security service (SBU). There were some searches in journalists' houses.

Ukrainian authorities always have standard charges on "separatism" with following arrests for those media professionals who are disagree with the state policy. The Chief Editor of the Internet newspaper "Vzapravdu" Artem Buzila, for the last five months has been imprisoned in Odessa on such fabricated accusations.

The Editor of the newspaper "Rabochiy class", Alexander Bondarchuk has been illegally jailed for the last six months in the Kiev prison. And I can continue this list. There are dozens of journalists who are jailed or are in the wanted list of the SBU for their opposition publications.

Also, I want to draw your attention to the problem with the freedom of expression and regulation of the rights of conscientious objectors (COs) in Ukraine. They are individuals who have claimed their right to refuse to take military service, who have special ideological and moral convictions. This is a normal practice for the European countries to protect rights of conscientious objectors, but not for the Ukraine. Nowadays the position of Ukrainian COs, who are not members of any religious organization, violates the law of the country. Authorities criminally prosecute even those journalists who are COs.

A striking confirmation of this problem is the prosecution of journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who is CO. For his public conscientious objection, Ruslan Kotsaba has been jailed and his case has been considered for several months by the Ivano-Frankivsk City Court. The authorities consider the open position of the honest journalist as "obstruction of the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations during the special period." Such behavior of the authorities is difficult to imagine in a normal democratic society. Now, according to the information of Ukrainian prosecutors thousands of COs have been prosecuted, and hundreds of them have been jailed. Therefore, in our country there is a total process of transformation of ideological Ukrainian COs into real prisoners of conscience.

In addition, there is another issue. Between Ukraine and the European Union the Association Agreement was signed, which was simultaneously ratified in September 16, 2014 by the European Parliament and the Parliament of Ukraine. According to the Agreement, particular attention is paid to the observation of human rights. Article II (two) states: "Respect for democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms, as defined in particular in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975) and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990) ...".

This Agreement has not yet entered into force, and the Parliament of Ukraine on May 21, 2015 has adopted a resolution "On the withdrawal from certain obligations, certain International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms." This resolution also violates Helsinki Final Act obligations. Ukrainian Deputies motivated their decision to adopt the resolution by the tragic events in Donbass.

By the way, our Ukrainian Human Rights Commission issued a report "Undeclared war at the center of Europe". It concerns the observance of human rights during the so called «anti-terrorist operation» in Donbass by Ukraine's state officials. You can see and have it near the conference hall.

So, the Ukrainian state instead of focusing on the implementation of international humanitarian law and the protection of civilians during the armed conflict in Donbass, has substituted these concepts and instead withdrew itself from the obligations of the state to respect international human rights, to protect them, and the exercising of  rights of millions of inhabitants of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

By the adoption of such a decision, the Ukrainian state has applied to a part of its citizens discriminatory measures based on their residence, and has restricted their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including their right to liberty and security, freedom of residence and movement, the right to fair trial and effective means of legal protection, social protection etc.

There is a question to the EU countries, who ratified the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, the main elements of which are based on international and European standards of human rights without any exceptions:

Will these countries suspend the entry into force of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU before the termination of the violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of millions of citizens in Ukraine? Or will they want to support Ukraine's position of double standards, and not to extend the requirements of this Agreement to particular regions of Donetsk and Lugansk?

We hope that the international community will stop the ignorance of massive and systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Ukraine, first of all, in matters of freedom of speech and the rights of journalists, and will put pressure on the Ukrainian authorities in order to force them into complying with their international obligations in the field of human rights."

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 #36
The Independent (UK)
September 23, 2015
Ukraine crisis: Crimean Tatars' border blockade of their 'occupied' peninsula could strangle the economy and invite forceful response from Russia
By Oliver Carroll

"You've got to make up your mind", Mustafa Dzhemilev said. "You're either at war, or you're trading with the enemy." The leader of the Crimean Tatars, 71, was dwarfed by the lorries lined up behind him at the Chaplynka border crossing.

But his diminutive figure belied a steely determination, forged by a life of activism against Russian adversaries. The newly launched campaign to block an important trade lifeline between Ukraine and "occupied" Crimea might be his most important yet.

The Crimean Tatars are a close-knit, minority population (12 per cent) inside the majority-Russian (58 per cent) Crimea. They were part of a significant minority that did not welcome Moscow's annexation last year and they retain a strong historical grievance with Russia because their entire population was deported to Central Asia on the orders of Stalin in 1944. Mr Dzhemilev was just six months old at the time.

In exile, he became a famous dissenting voice. In 1975 he went on a hunger strike, campaigning for his people's return to their homeland - he was persuaded to end it after 303 days by another famous dissident, Andrei Sakharov.

Mr Dzhemilev was only able to move back to Crimea in 1989 as the Soviet Union began to crumble. Shortly after his return he was elected as head of the Tatar consultative parliament, the Mejlis, and in 1998 he entered the Ukrainian national parliament as an MP.

When Russia prepared to annex Crimea in March last year, it was only natural that President Putin and his allies should turn to Mr Dzhemilev in their attempts to ensure a smooth passage for their military strategy. He was flown in to Moscow: whisked from the plane in a limousine to a special conference room with a direct line to the President. They spoke for 40 minutes but Mr Dzhemilev did not budge. "He told me that our future would be better in Russia, that all the problems that had amassed over 20 years of Ukrainian rule would be resolved in months," recalled Mr Dzhemilev. "I told him our population would not welcome Russian occupation, since the last time it happened half our people perished." The Crimean Tatars did not believe a Russian presence would serve them well, he told Mr Putin. What was needed were negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, and full a withdrawal of Russian "little green men" from Crimea.

Mr Dzhemilev admits he anticipated an angry response from Mr Putin but instead was told that his words "showed he was a man who loves his homeland". Mr Dzhemilev was told to come to Moscow and use the same presidential hotline if ever he changed his mind. The two men had agreed to disagree.

Three days later pro-Russian Crimeans voted, in a much-disputed ballot, for annexation. Just weeks after his conversation with Mr Putin, Mr Dzhemilev was stopped from entering Crimea from mainland Ukraine and told he would not be allowed back in until 2019. "I told them that they were very optimistic if they thought they could hang on to Crimea till then," recalled Mr Dzhemilev.

To some extent the Crimean Tatars' worst fears have been realised, with a worrying pattern of extrajudicial arrests, violence, disappearances and murder emerging from the peninsula. Last week, a report from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said there were "numerous credible, consistent and compelling accounts of human-rights violations and legal irregularities" in the new Crimea.

Crimean Tatar authorities claim the de facto, Russian-installed authorities have been responsible for some 22 murders and disappearances of Tatars since Crimea was annexed. The authorities deny this. The alleged killings began with Reshat Akhmetov, who was bundled into a car after demonstrating with a Ukrainian flag in central Simferopol. He was found dead a few days later with stab wounds across his body and eyes.

The disappearances continue. A few weeks ago, three members of the Crimean Tatar community were reported missing; two have already been found dead. "The authorities say they've found the killer but can't say who he is, other than that he is Ukrainian, how he killed two big men or how he managed to bury them," said Mr Dzhemilev. "It's the stuff of fairy-tales." He said the murders were the direct work of the de facto authorities, designed to further frighten the Crimean Tatar population.

Among the 200 or so demonstrators present on the Crimean border when The Independent visited was Larisa Shaimardanova, the mother of Timur Shaimardanov, an activist who disappeared in Simferopol on 26 May last year. Breaking down in tears, she said she had been ignored by both Russian and Ukrainian authorities since his disappearance. She has since moved to greater safety on the Ukrainian side of the border.

Since coming into force at noon on Sunday, the blockade here has been largely effective - much to the chagrin of lorry drivers who had been waiting days for customs clearance. At one point, there were more than 200 lorries being held at the three border crossings in Chongar, Chaplynka and Kalanchak but by Tuesday evening several dozen had decided to turn around.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who initially adopted a position of studied neutrality, has since offered some support for the "civilian" protest. The state would ensure the security of those protesting at the border, he said. But questions emerged about co-operation between state border guards, the exiled Crimean Tatar authorities and the nationalist far-right paramilitaries who have also arrived on the scene after declaring support for the blockade last week.

Mr Dzhemilev insisted that the paramilitary groups were present without the Tatars' invitation and that there had been no talks or agreement with them prior to the action. "We took steps to warn them that we didn't want any violence or political agitation," he said. But he added that he welcomed "anyone who peacefully supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine".

Artem Skoropadsky, a spokesman for Right Sector - by far the most visible of the paramilitary forces present - said his leadership had met Crimean Tatar representatives and were now co-ordinating their activities. He confirmed that the group had a total of 150 men across the checkpoints.

Crimean Tatar representatives said the blockade was in place indefinitely, but others doubt their ability to continue to block a lucrative trade route. There is also the prospect of a Russian reaction. Crimea's ports are largely cut off from international shipping because of the Western-led economic boycott so the removal of cheap Ukrainian produce would lead to rapid inflation on the peninsula. It would only be a matter of time before the Russian side put pressure on Ukraine to end the blockade.

Meanwhile, Europe's diplomatic outlook is one which now privately accepts that Crimea is unlikely to be returned to Ukraine soon. But Mr Dzhemilev has harsh words for such positions, likening the view to the "short-sighted politics" of 1938. "Chamberlain said he brought peace and he brought the Second World War," he said. "If they forget about Crimea, they might as well forget about Western Europe."

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 #37
www.offiziere.ch
September 21, 2015
The Pentagon Is Far From 'Entrenched' in Ukraine
By Joseph Trevithick, a freelance journalist and researcher. He is also a regular contributing writer at War is Boring and a Fellow at GlobalSecurity.org.

In response to Western criticism of actions in Ukraine, Russia has accused the United States of refusing to comply with a fragile international peace deal. But the Pentagon's involvement in the country as a whole is actually relatively minor.

In February, the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany came up with a new agreement to end the fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Kiev's troops. Commonly known as Minsk II, the leaders signed the protocol in the Belarusian capital in hopes of rebooting an earlier, failed protocol.

"U.S. soldiers are firmly entrenched in Ukraine, which constitutes a flagrant violation of article 10 of the February 12 Minsk Agreement", Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters on Sept. 3. Article 10 does require all foreign forces and military equipment, as well as mercenaries, to leave Ukraine without specifying any particular zones. However, the language in the rest of the document clearly focuses solely on the contested Donbass area.

Moscow denies that is supplies weapons to the separatists or has troops actively engaged in the conflict. But estimates from the Pentagon, NATO and independent monitoring groups such as Bellingcat based on traditional intelligence, commercial satellite imagery, local interviews and social media suggest the Kremlin has sent thousands of troops to Ukraine. These "volunteers" have brought heavy weapons such as T-64 tanks, mobile rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers and more to aid separatist forces.

By comparison, American forces are barely in the country on any sort of permanent basis or in any significant numbers. Much to the dismay of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and members of Congress in Washington, the Pentagon's aid has been relatively limited.

After Moscow's troops seized the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, the Pentagon rushed troops and warplanes to NATO's eastern borders. At the same time, Washington has sent almost $250 million worth of military gear to the Ukraine's own military.

Washington had originally planned to give Ukraine around $140 million worth of foreign aid in total during the 2015 fiscal year, according to the official ForeignAssistance.gov website. In the next fiscal period, the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) nearly quadrupled that number..

But the bulk of those funds will go to economic development activities to help the country try and recover from a series crises that began with massive political protests in Kiev in November 2013. American officials have earmarked less than $100 million for "peace and security" programs at base.

In contrast, Washington allotted almost three times as much aid Iraq's security forces this past year at the outset. American authorities planned to give Afghanistan troops and police - where the Pentagon is currently drawing down its involvement - a similar amount.

In Ukraine, the Pentagon and State Department have had to rely on other, more complicated funding streams to find money for everything. Created specifically to respond to the current situation, the United States' new European Reassurance Initiative has only paid for a third of the gear.

In 2014, the White House announced the initiative after American and NATO officials became "deeply concerned by Russia's [...] other provocative actions in Ukraine", an official fact sheet stated. Washington directed the bulk of the effort at NATO member nations near Russia, such as Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

U.S. President Barack Obama has also used his executive authority to transfers $25 million worth of equipment straight from American stocks. Under the present amended version of the Foreign Relations Act of 1961, last enacted in 2014, the president can tell the Pentagon to "drawdown" up to $100 million worth of equipment and send it overseas in an emergency every year.

Despite raiding the warehouses of one of the most powerful militaries in the world, all of the American aid to Ukraine so far has also been "non-lethal" - so no guns or ammunition. Under this definition, these deliveries still included small drones, bomb-disposal robots, up-armored Humvees, trucks, bulldozers, radars, communication gear, body armor and other significant military equipment.

In March, the American embassy in Kiev held a major ceremony to mark the arrival of the first 10 Humvees. "President Poroshenko thanked the United States for its ongoing assistance and promised that Ukrainian soldiers would make good use of the vehicles", an official statement noted.

But the American shipments contained relatively mundane items like fuel pumps, water tanks, generators and tents, a Pentagon spokesperson explained in an email. Washington even sent $3 million worth of combat rations - so-called "Meal, Ready-to-Eat", or MREs - to help Kiev's embattled troops.

Russia's support to separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk has no doubt included many of the same sorts of gear. But the Kremlin has not shied away from sending light and heavy weapons in the aid packages to rebel groups on top of this basic equipment.

"We have seen month on month more lethal weaponry of a higher caliber, of more sophistication, poured into Ukraine [...] by the separatist Russian allies", Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, said at the 2015 Brussels Forum in March. "The kinds of equipment that the Ukrainian forces are confronting are much more sophisticated than what they have".

This fact hasn't been lost of Ukrainian officials or American lawmakers. Poroshenko has argued for deadly weapons to go along with the food and bedrolls. American politicians such as Arizona Senator John McCain are eager to arm Kiev's troops.

"One cannot win the war with blankets", Poroshenko told a joint session of the U.S. Congress during an emotional plea for more aid in September 2014. Five month later, McCain grieved. "I'm ashamed of my country, I'm ashamed of my president and I'm ashamed of myself that I haven't done more to help these people," McCain said on CBS' Face the Nation five months later.

Congress and the White House are still sparring over whether to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukrainian forces. Obama's main concession has been to send troops to train Kiev's soldiers how to use their new American equipment and existing arsenal more effectively.

These shared practice sessions have been small. Right now, some 300 U.S. Army paratroopers are training members of the Ukrainian National Guard at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Yavoriv. This facility is less than 20 miles down the highway from the Polish border - far from the fighting.

By the end of their six months stint, nicknamed Fearless Guardian, the Army soldiers will train a paltry contingent of around 900 guardsmen. The Pentagon hopes the next run of exercises will be larger. "The second phase of Fearless Guardian will train up to five battalions of Ministry of Defense personnel", a public affairs officer with the U.S. Army's headquarters in Europe wrote in an email. "Planning for Fearless Guardian II is currently ongoing, but it will be very similar to the training currently being provided to the National Guard".

Unlike the thousands of Russian infantry, tankers and Spetznaz commando troops the Pentagon estimates are in Ukraine, these advisers are the only American troops deployed to the country outside of military staff at the U.S. embassy in Kiev. Other training programs are just business as usual. In July, another 300 troops from the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team joined their comrades already in Ukraine for the Rapid Trident exercise. Since 1995, the Army's European headquarters has run this event sometime between the end of summer and beginning of fall. This year, nearly 2,000 troops from almost 20 nations - including non-NATO members Moldova and Georgia - descended on the training center in Yavoriv.

Out in the Black Sea, the U.S. Navy finished up its own yearly Ukrainian training session in Odessa on September 12. The sailing branch started holding these exercises 14 years ago as a way to get friendly naval forces to practice together. This year, sailors from the 11 participating nations launched fake raids and other mock operations on land, as well as testing out their skills on the waves. But the Navy's European command doesn't have any personnel permanently stationed in the country.

American commandos have been at the country at least once. Between November and December 2014, the special operations headquarters for the region sent a small team to teach first aid and other "primary point" medical techniques to Ukrainian troops.

Other cooperation has been even more muted. Two months after Moscow's invasion of Crimea, Washington and Kiev formed a joint commission to discuss the eastern European country's defense strategy. Now including representative from the Canada, Lithuania and the United Kingdom, the group also mentors Ukrainian officials, the Pentagon public affairs official added.

With no plans to directly aid Kiev's air arm, the U.S. Air Force's top headquarters for the region told us that it has no personnel working in Ukraine at this time. All of this is a far cry from the Kremlin's direct involvement in the crisis.

In reality, the Pentagon wouldn't have to do very much if it decided for some reason to cede to Russia's demands to follow the exact wording of the Minsk II agreement. A contingent of 300 soldiers and American diplomats handing out Humvees are hardly "entrenched" in the country or its conflict. Still, that's not likely to happen. McCain and other members of congress have included specific provisions to help arm Ukrainian troops in the proposed defense budget for the next fiscal cycle.

"Much of the debate in Washington has been focused on whether we should provide additional defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine", Vice President Joe Biden said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. in May. "That's a debate worth having and continues". Ukraine has indicated it still wants to join NATO, too. The alliance generally doesn't rush to admit countries - like Georgia - actively fighting wars with nuclear armed regional powers though.

So while American troops and arms have only a small impact on the fighting now, maybe Washington's forces will be more active in the coming year.

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#38
www.rt.com
September 23, 2015
'Ukraine in NATO would be declaration of war against Russia'

During the first visit to Kiev of the NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg Ukrainian PM Arseny Yatsenyuk reiterated his hope that the country will join the alliance. But the organization's head did not seem overly enthusiastic about this idea.

RT: Reality appears not to be living up to Ukraine's ambitions. Why is that?

Daniel Patrick Welch: Really, because it was an insane idea from the get-go. I mean can you imagine, if the Soviet Union had sponsored a coup in Mexico and then decided that Mexico should immediately join the Warsaw Pact? This is one of the really obvious redlines for President Putin and for the Russian Federation. It's dangerous and it's an act of war. And if they went ahead with that, it would be an act of war against Russia which, of course, Yatsenyuk and his fellow crazies in Kiev are all for. They want to restart Ukraine's nuclear program. Their job security depends on the maintenance of this very hostile belligerent stance toward Russia. And, of course, Yatsenyuk has always been one of Washington's men in Kiev. But he is seeing what happens when you depend on your puppet masters too much. Like, "wait a minute, we can be partners without having to be a member," that was a beautiful rip-off.

RT: NATO has already been carrying out military drills in Ukraine. What would it gain further from having Ukraine as a member?

DW: Absolutely nothing except for the final antagonistic act toward Russia and an actual declaration of war in no uncertain terms. And they will continue to do what they've been doing behind the scenes. But you've noticed they have agreements, understandings, cooperation but certainly not membership. And it is not going to happen. And Yatsenyuk would be wise to see around the world and throughout history what has happened to the discarded shields of empire and how disloyal the West is to the people - this kind of local nobodies - that they brought from their wings into power only to abandon them when the going gets tough. And it certainly is getting tough in Ukraine.

RT: President Poroshenko has claimed he wants to hold a referendum on NATO membership in the country. But even with positive outcome - will NATO pay heed?

DW: Absolutely not. He can talk about a referendum; he won't talk about the sham election that put him in power or the refusal to allow the East self-determination. But he would say that this referendum should pass. The problem is it is a geopolitical 'hot potato'. And Russia would never stand for it and NATO would never press for it. It is not going to happen.

RT: Poroshenko claims around 60 percent of the population support NATO membership, which means that means that around 40 percent wouldn't. Is that another East-West divide in the country?

DW: It is partly an East-West divide. I don't know where they're polling these numbers from; I don't know who they are polling. They probably didn't poll anyone in Donbass anyway - they are out to kill them all. The other thing is: the journalists that they have not banned, imprisoned or assassinated are completely loyal to the oligarchs. The media is completely owned by the oligarchy. So, whatever percentage that they are ginning up in this is through this brainwashing process of the Ukrainian press - which is some of the only press on Earth that is worse than the Western corporate media.
 

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 #39
Russian opposition activist Maria Gaidar to run in Ukraine's regional election

UKRAINE, September 23. /TASS/. Russian opposition activist Maria Gaidar, who was in July appointed as deputy to Odessa's Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, intends to run in local elections from Petro Poroshenko Bloc Party, regional parliamentarian Petro Obukhov said on Wednesday.

Maria Gaidar is the daughter of Yegor Gaidar, an ideologist of liberal economic reforms in Russia in the 1990s. He was Russia's acting prime minister from April to December 1992. He also held prominent state government posts under President Boris Yeltsin.

Maria Gaidar represents the so-called "non-systemic opposition" in Russia. She is the former vice-governor of Russia's Kirov region and the head of the Social Inquiry foundation. In 2014, she intended to run in elections to the Moscow State Duma but was not registered as a candidate. Gaidar is an active participant in a number of liberal pro-Western movements in Russia. In 2011, she studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In July Odessa Region Governor Mikhail Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, appointed Maria Gaidar his deputy.

On August 4, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko granted Ukrainian citizenship to Maria Gaidar.

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 #40
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
September 22, 2015
SIKKIE & SAKKIE, BIM & BOM - RADOSLAW SIKORSKI AND MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI MAKE A CLOWN SHOW, BUT THE MONEY IS NO JOKE
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Links, footnotes and photos here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14205]

Something funny happened to the clown in the laundry. When he went in, the pockets of his pants were empty. When he came out, they were overflowing with money. "What kind of washing detergent do you use here?" he asked.

Not even under the circus big-top, with a troop of elephants trumpeting in the background, does this sound particularly funny. But if you know that the laundry the clown means is a political metaphor (the elephants, too), then the audience will fall out of their seats with laughter. That was what made Bim & Bom (lead, left) , the most famous clowns to perform in Russia between 1890 and 1940, too endearing for the authorities, even the Cheka and Stalin, to stop.

In today's tale, the clowns are Sikkie and Sakkie (right) - Radoslaw Sikorski, sacked foreign minister of Poland, sacked Marshal of the Sejm (parliament Speaker); and Mikheil Saakashvili, indicted President of Georgia. The money laundries in their performances are better known as think-tanks - the Polish Institute of International Relations (PISM), the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), the Saakashvili Presidential Library. In this show the bit parts and pratfalls are played by Marcin Zaborowski, Anne Applebaum, Edward Lucas, and several Greeks.

A few days ago, in Kiev, Sikorski offered himself for appointment as a new official for the Ukrainian government. To start, President Petro Poroshenko (below left) announced [1] he is appointing Sikorski a member of his International Advisory Council for Reforms, an initiative of the US Agency for International Development. Saakashvili was put in charge of the council by Poroshenko earlier in the year. Unlike the other appointees on the council, but like Saakashvili, Sikorski is unemployable at home, and of no name value outside Kiev and Washington.

If Poroshenko will succeed in his present scheme to replace Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk (above, right) with Saakashvili, Sikorski is positioned for a ministerial job under Saakashvili. "I support the country's reform," Sikorski was quoted [2] as telling the Polish media after his council nomination, adding he is "delighted that Ukraine will be looking to learn from the Polish experience."

On the other hand, if Yatseniuk proves to be stronger than Poroshenko and keeps the prime ministry, Sikorski has also put himself in the running with him . "I salute you, Prime Minister," Sikorski tweeted, "for starting reforms of energy sector that other UKR governments promised, but you delivered." "Nice to meet good friend Radek Sikorski," Yatseniuk tweeted [3] in less fervid response.

It is uncertain whether the US Government - it's funding [4] Saaksahvili's council chairmanship and the Odessa governorate staff since Saakashvili's appointment there in May - wants to do the same for Sikorski. The reluctance follows the publication of tapes of Sikorski's table talk revealing [5] him as foul-mouthed, two-faced, ungrateful towards the Obama Administration.

The Polish parliamentary election is now a month away, on October 25. The latest polls are showing that voters reject the escalation of conflict with Russia which Sikorski, the Ukrainians, and the US represent. This conflict the Poles understand to be triggering war zone migration flows which the government in Warsaw is accepting, but the voters will not. The two lead parties, the governing Civic Platform (PO) and the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), have now exchanged the positons they have held in the Sejm since the 2011 election [6], when the PO was in front with 39%, the PiS behind at 30%. According to this month's polling of voter intentions, PiS is holding its lead over PO, 35% to 24%:

The protest candidate against all, Paweł Kukiz, was down to 9%, less than half the 21% of the votes he drew in the first round of the presidential election in May [8]. In the past week [9], Kukiz's support has dwindled even further. The margin between the PiS and PO is holding firm at 11%, while the smaller left and right parties, the United Left (ZL), the Peasant Party (PSL), and the KORWiN coalition are contesting for the votes to cross the 5% threshold and take seats in the Sejm. The migration issue is polarizing the electorate to their disadvantage. With a month to go, just 11% of Polish voters indicate they have yet to make up their minds.

These figures mean that in Poland Sikorski is now entirely virtual. A politician without a single vote, he announced this week he counts 502,703 followers for his Twitter account [10]. It is the role of the think-tanks to make the virtual appear to be real, and generate the income which Twitter, by itself, does not. For Sikorski the instrumental think-tanks are the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) in Warsaw; and the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington.

On September 13, Polish investigative journalists Agnieszka Burzyńska and Michał Majewski investigated PISM and reported [11] what its money is paid for, and by whom. The Polish state budget - at Sikorski's direction when he was foreign minister - covers the overheads of PISM. But its research projects and publications are separately funded. It is this money, according to Burzyńska and Majewski, which puts "[Poland's] foreign policy on sale". The reporters analysed financing by Areva, the French nuclear power company, and Raytheon, the US arms manufacturer, to produce PISM research; this in turn promoted the Polish Government's purchase of Areva reactors and Raytheon missiles.

The reporters identify Marcin Zaborowski (right), director of PISM, as personally involved in the Areva and Raytheon payments, and writing in endorsement of the reactors and missiles. In August, PISM's website reported [12] that the institute is now headed by an acting director, and Zaborowski is no longer listed on PISM's official roster of experts [13]. He has turned in his PISM job for a better paid one as the head of a newly established Warsaw office for CEPA. Here is CEPA's announcement [14] on June 15. Zaborowski's new role, the think- tank says, is "to guide major strategic programs and organizational growth in CEPA's Washington, DC headquarters while overseeing the institute's strategy for expansion in the Central and Eastern European region, including the former Soviet space."

The Polish investigators asked Zaborowski to clarify his relationship with the Areva and Raytheon promotions. "He did not want to talk to us," they report. After refusing to respond directly, Zaborowski accused the journalists of "Russian propaganda".

Warsaw political analyst Stanislas Balcerac comments: "PISM is a joke financed by taxpayer's money. On its board sit people like Bartosz Jalowiecki, Sikorski's friend whom he made ambassador in Luxembourg; Hanna Jahns, third wife of a former minister in [ex-prime minister Donald] Tusk's government; and Zbigniew Niemczycki, an oligarch who has a nice hotel on the sea coast, where Sikorski goes from time to time."

As Zaborowski moved across Warsaw to switch desks, CEPA released [15] a paper by Zaborowski endorsing the Raytheon missile installation in Poland, "although the value of the contract, around $5 billion-$8 billion, is exceptionally high by Central European standards." CEPA identifies [15] Raytheon as one of its sources of money. Others listed include the US Defense Department and weapons builders Lockheed Martin, Bell Helicopter, Textron, and Sikorsky Aircraft.

The Polish Sikorski is included on the CEPA website as advertising the think-tank for providing "some of the finest analyses in Washington and is frequently discussed in the Polish government." The endorsement refers to Sikorski as "Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland", still.

From the funds that flow into CEPA from the US military sources, two of the analysts Sikorski has promoted, Anne Applebaum and Edward Lucas, are on the CEPA receiving end. Applebaum, Sikorski's wife, is a member of CEPA's Advisory Council and "senior adjunct fellow". Her income was required for reporting by Sikorski when he was foreign minister. Their income statements can be read here [16]. In 2014 Applebaum's income was reported in Polish zlotys so that less trace of how much she was being paid from US sources is visible [17]. Sikorski's and Applebaum's final income report for the six months of this year, before he was relieved of his post as parliamentary speaker, isn't due until April of next year.

Lucas is listed at CEPA as Senior Vice-President and head of the Center's Baltic Sea Security Program. Lucas's most recent CEPA report [18], issued in June, is entitled "The Coming Storm". Lucas warns: " if the region's security is not improved, NATO, the world's most successful military alliance, could be revealed as powerless, perhaps without even a shot being fired. America's role as the ultimate guarantor of European security would be over in a matter of hours." So too the roles of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Textron, Bell and Sikorsky. Not to mention the spillover effects for them all. "Such a humbling of America in Europe would have a huge and potentially catastrophic effect on security elsewhere. Allies such as Japan, Taiwan (Republic of China) and South Korea would find it hard to believe American security guarantees."

Lucas makes CEPA's pitch for an across-the-board increase in defence spending by the European members of NATO in order to fill the $100 billion gap he calculates between them and Russian defence spending (Lucas doesn't count US defence spending in the "gap"). He also makes special endorsements for the Baltic states to buy Raytheon's Patriot missile; JASSM, a long-range, air-to-ground missile for sale by Lockheed Martin [20] and the Tomahawk missile for the Polish Navy [21]. The latest model of Tomahawk [22] is in Raytheon's sales catalogue. According to CEPA, it accepts US Government grants "for specific projects approved by the contracting federal agency." The think-tank says it "does not accept foreign government funding." Not so CEPA executives. Exactly who is paying for Lucas to run CEPA's Baltic Sea Security Program isn't disclosed.

For more on the enrichment relationship between Lucas, Sikorski and Applebaum, and the role their think-tanks play as cashiers, read this [23]. For Lucas's special relationship with Sikorski, click [24].

For CEPA's reporting [25]on Georgia, it's necessary to start in Poland with Zaborowski. On his recent visit to Tbilisi, he reported immediately spotting that "former President Mikheil Saakashvili's modernization drive certainly made an impact on the city's architecture and its spirit." As for the corruption and other criminal charges for which Saakashvili is being prosecuted by the current government, that depends, for CEPA and Zaborowski, on "where you stand in relationship to Russia and ultraliberalism."

Back in 2011, Lucas was so keen on Saakashvili he recommended [26] that "if Armenia had a Mikheil Saakashvili, it might be doing better." He also quoted Sikorski on the "special contribution" Poland could make on how to fix "the process of transition across North Africa."

Two years later, in December 2013, by the time Saakashvili had left Tbilisi, Lucas wrote to recommend [27] his example for a new US policy for Kiev - " Georgia... had such leadership in the Saakashvili era. But this factor is simply missing in Ukraine." Was Saakashvili himself paying for this? And did the money originate from the US Government through Saakashvili's Security Council or his own think-tank, the Saakashvili Presidential Library?

According to US law, the Georgian government is a foreign one. Because of an old statute aimed at Germany in the 1930s, it is obliged to register the Americans it hires, and the money it pays in the US for American lobbying operations. The Saakashvili record can be followed in the files [28] of the Foreign Agents Registration Unit of the US Department of Justice.

Starting in 2009, immediately after Saakashvili's war against Russia had ended badly (for him), he registered Gregory Maniatis, a Greek-American (right), as his agent. So long as Saakashvili was president, he paid Maniatis [29] to finance a campaign officially labelled "support generally for the foreign and domestic policies of the Government of Georgia, including Georgia's relations with Russia." After Saakashvili was indicted in Tbilisi, and fled to the US, Maniatis was engaged by the "United National Movement of Georgia" (UNM), an opposition organization Saakashvili left behind in the capital.

Maniatis insisted on getting his cash up front. From 2009, when he trousered an initial €360,000, Maniatis took $1.7 million over four years, plus expenses. If state money was fungible in Tbilisi in that period, this may have been a small fraction to return to Washington of US Government payments for Georgian military and police operations. In total, Saakashvili's administration was given $419 million during the Maniatis lobbying contract [30].

In 2014, on the UNM tab, Maniatis received [31] $42,000 for six months to September 30. This year, once Saakashvili moved to the Ukraine on the US Government tab, Maniatis has been short-changed. He reports [32] that from this month to February of next year, he is being paid just $15,000.

Saakashvili's script for Maniatis is the same now as when he was fronting for the government. Again according to the Justice Department files, Maniatis's task has been "building partnerships and relationships with relevant US audiences and constituencies, including the administration, the US Congress, think tanks, and other organizations, as well as the media." There is no record of direct contacts Maniatis made with US Government officials or members of Congress. The think-tank trail is obvious.

A source close to the US Embassy in Athens says Maniatis got his start when a group of wealthy Greek-Americans hired him to promote their interests with George Papandreou, then the Greek prime minister. Papandreou then hired him for political promotion of Papandreou in media aimed at the Greek diaspora. "He was Papandreou's man," the source said from Athens this week. "He got money to connect rich Greek-Americans to support Greece. The whole matter became a fiasco because [the Greek-Americans] wouldn't contribute. That's how Maniatis started. Papandreou's connection wired him into other lobbying."

When Alexander Stefanopoulos, a Greek reporter, investigated in 2010 [33] he found that Maniatis's job was to persuade US think-tanks that Papandreou was more open to US Government and business influence than his father Andreas Papandreou had been. The money for Maniatis's mission to the American think-tanks came from a Greek think-tank, financed in Athens by Papandreou with state budget money. The Greek investigation also revealed the names of several front companies through which Maniatis was selling his services, initially in Athens, then in Tbilisi.

The intermediary between Papandreou (right), Maniatis, and Saakashvili was another Greek, Alex Rondos (right). His record on Russia can be followed here [34], when Rondos had stopped calling himself Papandreou's advisor, and was titling himself advisor to Saakashvili. After Rondos had moved from the Greek to the Georgian payroll, Greek government auditors uncovered controversy in the handling of Greek state aid to Georgia through think-tanks reportedly controlled by Rondos and Papandreou [35].

The Maniatis file in the Justice Department doesn't reveal what Maniatis did to persuade CEPA executives Lucas, Zaborowski and Applebaum to produce Saakashvili promos. Maniatis himself has moved on to another US think-tank; he is now titled "senior Europrean policy fellow" at the Migration Policy Institute. This reports [36] its funding is from the State Department, George Soros's Open Society Foundations, and a handful of European government organs.

Saakashvili has also created his own think-tank. He announced his call for donors in a promotion published year ago in the New York Times. This reveals that "Mr. Saakashvili is writing a memoir, delivering 'very well-paid' speeches, helping start up a Washington-based think tank and visiting old boosters like Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state."

The newspaper also disclosed [37] that Saakashvili's home in New York was "his uncle's apartment in a tower on the Williamsburg waterfront, where he luxuriates." In the financial history of Georgia, Saakashvili's kin are famous. The story of Uncle Timur (Alasaniya, his mother's brother) was spelled out here in the case of the privatization of Madneuli, Georgia's richest mining company [38].

Saakashvili hasn't disclosed [39] the name of his think-tank, nor has he registered it as a foreign agent in Washington. Instead, Saakashvili claims to be collecting money for it through the Saakashvili Presidential Library in Tbilisi. The library website identifies the think-tank, but when the links are opened for its staff, research projects, and publications, the pages are empty [40]. Not so, the bank accounts.

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 #41
The American Interest
www.the-american-interest.com
September 22, 2015
Ukraine's Security Challenges and the Crisis of Global Order
Russia's internal pathologies are creating a zone of instability in its periphery that could easily spread to the rest of the world.
By Olrksandr Turchynov
Oleksandr Turchynov is Secretary of the Council of National Security and Defense of Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is entering a new stage. Although the shelling has stopped as of earlier this month, Russian troops in our country are attempting to implement Vladimir Putin's strategy of undermining Ukraine's independence and freedom. In response to this aggression, Ukraine mobilized its people, built up its military and is now holding the line between Putin and Europe. In doing so Ukraine has demonstrated that it can be an actor on the world stage.

However, we cannot effectively withstand the full force of Russian aggression if we fail to clearly comprehend the scope of the events and understand the place and role of our struggle in the global context. The conflict in eastern Ukraine has a complex and long-term character. Together with military conflicts in the Middle East, instability in Northern Africa, growing tension in relations between China on the one hand and Japan and Vietnam on the other, as well as aggressive provocation of DPRK against South Korea, the war in eastern Ukraine is a symptom of the crisis of the global system of international security and increasing destabilization of world order more broadly.

Very likely, in the near future these conflicts will intensify and create new zones of instability that may require increasing direct or indirect military involvement of such countries as the U.S., EU member-states, China, the Russian Federation, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran among others.

These threatening tendencies can bring the world to the brink of a worldwide armed conflict that could translate into a full-scale war involving the use of nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction, or a welter of smaller conflicts of varying intensity. In either case, the result would be the creation of a new world disorder.

For Ukraine this means the possibility of being dragged into a continental war, the likelihood of which increases because of the militaristic psychosis enveloping the Russian Federation. This militarist insanity intensifies due to the Kremlin's complete incapacity to solve urgent domestic political, economic and social problems without the employment of imperial-chauvinistic rhetoric and the creation of phantom external enemies. In contemporary Russia, psychological hang-ups and propaganda clichés of Stalin's USSR are whimsically intertwined with stereotypes from Hitler's Germany: a notion of "besieged fortress" is surreally combined with allegations of "back-stabbing" by "treacherous traitors." From the TV screens, billionaires talk about the need to maintain the social standards of workers at Uralvagonzavod at the same time as bureaucrats and clergy proselytize Russian exceptionalism and superiority.

Simultaneously, Putin's regime is quickly relinquishing its vestigial "democratic facade" and employing increasingly more totalitarian practices of governing society and state. Integral to this process is the infringement of economic freedoms, the shrinking of the free market and Russia's tendency toward self-isolation from the global markets, which will further deepen its economic crisis, technological backwardness and social degradation. An apt example of the economic and social insanity engulfing Russia is its current battle on the "sanctioned produce." Russian media proudly report from the front lines of this "war" about the burning of Ukrainian ducklings and the crushing with bulldozers of Spanish peaches.

The processes of deep economic isolation and social degradation in Russia that started decades ago and have only intensified since the beginning of the aggression against Ukraine in February 2014, will yield, in the near future, a sharp weakening and profound destabilization of the Russian Federation. Current processes and tendencies in Russia bear an uncanny resemblance to those that took place in the late USSR. The absence of rational motivation for development, the monopolization and harsh administrative handling of the economy, the despotism of military and security structures, the hyper-centralization of power and the lack of alternatives to personalized decision making at the top: this entire Stalinist skeleton of the Soviet empire could not withstand the consistent and coordinated political and economic pressure of the West at the end of the previous century. Their firm position, combined with the complex of sanctions and restrictions of the Cold War, allowed the leading democracies of the world to prevail over the Evil Empire. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen states, Germany was reunited and Eastern Europe liberated from Soviet imperial clutches. However, concerned with preserving the Soviet nuclear inheritance, the West tried to prevent further disintegration of the remnants of the empire.

By lifting all restrictions, extending credits and helping Russia overcome its technological backwardness, the West created conditions for socio-economic stabilization of the Russian Federation, allowed it to cruelly snuff out the national liberation movement in the Caucasus and take under full control all multinational constituents of the Federation. However, the Russian Federation failed to adapt to the democratic rules of peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Putin's third presidential term has clearly underscored the dominant political trait of today's Russia: the ideology of imperial revanchism. In his attempt to fit Russia into the "Procrustean bed" of the old empire, Putin is leading the country toward an irreversible collapse by launching processes similar to those that precipitated the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Aggression, degradation, decline and collapse - this is the pattern confirmed by the history of many empires and which in today's world will only transpire at an accelerated pace. Therefore, there is a real possibility that Russia may cease to exist in it present borders.

Indeed, the pull of the regions away from the Moscow center is growing. Take the North Caucasus, for example. Although the Chechen boss Ramzan Kadyrov outwardly acts as a loyal vassal of Putin, his loyalty is only as deep as the hefty financial support he receives from Moscow. In real terms, the Chechen republic is de facto independent: the Russian law-enforcement agencies must ask Kadyrov's permission to operate on the Chechen territory and the Russian legal system is being gradually replaced by Sharia law. Skirmishes and tensions continue in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Federal Security Service, successor of the KGB, keeps close tabs on the national liberation movements of the Chuvash, Mari, Tatar, Bashkir and the Volga peoples. For instance, in July 2015 a Bashkir man, Airat Dilmukhametov, was sentenced to three years of hard labor for publishing an article on the internet calling his people to struggle for their freedom. Such harsh punishments are an indicator of the growing apprehension of the Russian security structures.

The Urals, Siberia and the Far East all have a rich history and ancient traditions of statehood. In August 2014, Novosibirsk and other Siberian cities were engulfed by a wave of popular protests calling for restoration of sovereignty in these lands. It is hardly coincidental that the direct Russian military intrusion into eastern Ukraine happened exactly at the same time.

Economic decline gave rise to renewed calls for sovereignty in the Kaliningrad oblast, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania. The citizens of the northern region of Karelia repeatedly compare their impoverished state to the flourishing in the neighboring and ethnically kindred Finland.

Additional tensions arise from the continued labor migration from China to Siberia and the Russian Far East, the Chinese lease of large tracts of Russian soil, as well as thousands of kilometers of border dividing vast sparsely populated Russian lands from heavily populated China.

In August 2015, one of the few remaining independent Russian analysts, Vladislav Inozemtsev, published an article titled "Impossibility of Disintegration" which attests to deep anxieties of the Russian establishment about territorial integrity. The impending catastrophe is occupying the minds of pragmatic members of the Russian elite. It is time the world prepared for it as well. The future of the Russian nuclear arsenal is the key question of the global security, which must be solved in close cooperation of all nuclear weapons states. It is not too late to start discussing safe and controlled dismantlement of the nuclear legacy of the former empire.

The more complicated the situation inside Russia, the more aggressive its foreign policy will become. It is this tendency that explains Kremlin's persistent attempts to get involved in the complex processes in the Middle East. In his desire to prop up his fellow dictator Syrian president Bashar al Assad, Putin increases Russian military presence in the eastern Mediterranean under the hypocritical cover of struggle against the Islamic State.

All of this will only exacerbate destructive processes within Russia. Such destabilization and agony will inevitably translate into profound and unpredictable deterioration of the security situation within the Russian Federation as well as along its borders. These are challenges of global scope and our country stands at their epicenter. In short- and medium-term, the security threats facing Ukraine stem from a complex combination of both internal and external challenges. The reaction to these threats must also have a systemic character: they must be countered with common mission and under united leadership while making flexible use of all available forces and methods of political, diplomatic, military, economic and informational struggle.

Taking into consideration Russia's chosen paradigm of aggression, combined with its political and economic situation, the Ukrainian state must prepare for the worst-case scenario.

Putin has taken to threatening the democratic world with his military, and in particular with his nuclear arsenal. In mid-August, Russian strategic air force held exercises that honed nuclear missile strikes on the Straits of Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and practiced blockading the entrance of the U.S. Navy into the Black Sea. In September, the Russian military is due to hold another set of large-scale exercises of strategic armed forces, this time involving the entire Russian nuclear triad.

The leading democratic countries must understand that this totalitarian-militaristic agony and the ensuing collapse of the Russian Federation are inevitable processes. They must accept this calmly and rationally without aiding Russia in prolonging this agony. Democratic nations must adjust their medium-term plans to provide for isolation of this country. Accordingly, harsh sanctions must be viewed not as a temporary campaign but as a coherent policy that facilitates conditions for the self-destruction of the remnants of the aggressive empire.

Undoubtedly, in order to prevent the spread of Russia's self-defeating bellicosity and provocations, NATO must be considerably strengthened by erecting a formidable barrier along its entire eastern flank. Ukraine, which has been bravely countering the aggressive designs of the Kremlin, has an important role to play in this process. Therefore, reinforcing Ukraine's military and technological capacity contributes to the renewal of peace and security on the entire European continent. It also reasserts a world order that rests not on nuclear might but on reasonable, responsible and predictable behavior of the leading democracies of the world.

Ukraine acknowledges with gratitude the political and economic support extended by our strategic partners in this difficult time. We hope that this support will continue and translate into further dismantlement of barriers to military and technological cooperation and the recognition of our right to pursue European integration, a path chosen by the Ukrainian people.

Ukraine has many problems that it must tackle on its own. Neither Europeans, nor Americans can overcome the corruption that plagues us and the temptation to substitute painful systemic reforms with flashy PR presentations. Only we Ukrainians can build for ourselves a functioning modern, efficient state, strong army, effective police, just courts and a stable competitive economy.

The most vitally important task for Ukraine is the acceleration of the reform of security and defense sectors-in particular, military reform.

Once again these are challenges of a global character, since the stakes are not simply about reforming and modernizing one country, but about our capacity to formulate a new security order by reforming a number of international organizations in which Ukraine participates and which are now in a state of deep crisis.

Ukraine must become one of the key players in the region, the one establishing effective formats of operational interaction with the states that are potential objects of Russian aggression.

Ukraine's development must be based on practical implementation of humanistic values of the new Europe and the open world which counterweights the belligerent and authoritarian Russian chauvinism. The formulation of such doctrine in the humanitarian sphere is a primary task for Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians today.

Freedom, the fundamental value for Ukrainians, is the best environment for realizing intellectual potential of an individual as the key capital in the modern world. Therefore, the reform of the state apparatus must aim at creating effective conditions for the development of each individual's potential in all spheres of life. This must become the key objective of the state: security of its citizens, their development and wellbeing.

Only a state built upon the trust of its citizens, based on justice and rule of law, and working for the interests of its people and their development can create a new and effective security system, reinstate and defend its borders and become an influential and consequential subject of world politics.

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