#2
Politkom.ru
October 26, 2015
Survey shows president's rating up, Russians' social expectations worsening
Anatoliy Medvedev, The Worse Things Become, the Higher It Goes

On October 22 the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion on Social and Economic Questions (VTsIOM) presented the Russian president's work approval rating: In October it hit a record high, coming very close to 90 percent. At the same time, VTsIOM also registered a worsening in Russians' social moods and a decline in optimism.

Against the backdrop of the successful antiterrorist operation in Syria Vladimir Putin's work approval rating has reached a historic high and stands at 89.9 percent, VTsIOM reports. The indicator updated the previous high recorded in June 2015 (the average for the month was 89.1 percent). Sociologists attribute this to events in Syria and the Russian air strikes against the terrorists' positions (these events were called the main ones of the past week by 26 percent of respondents).

Assessments of the Russian President's activity for over 18 months now have been above 80 percent. Putin's rating began rising in spring 2014 against the backdrop of the reunification of Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia: In March 2014 it averaged 76.2 percent, in April it was 82.2 percent, and in May it was 86.2 percent.

At the same time, according to figures from another poll conducted by VTsIOM, the social moods index regarding the situation in the country has continued to fall for four months in a row. In September the indicator again updated this year's maximum, falling to 58 percent (minus 15 percentage points since May this year). This is noticeably lower than the figure a year ago (68 percent in September 2014) although higher than the indicators for previous years, VTsIOM reports. Thus the decline in social optimism is not leading at the present time to a restoration of the pessimistic moods of the period before the "Crimean consensus." The proportion of positive assessments from May through September fell from 85 percent to 77 percent whereas the negative ones rose from 12 percent to 19 percent. Respondents who do not approve the president's work and supporters of non-parliamentary parties have a lower assessment of the situation in the state than the sample average.

The index of social moods regarding people's own lives is also falling although it is less significant in character (from 82 percent in May-June to 76 percent in September). September 2015's indicator coincides entirely with the figure registered in September 2014 whereas it exceeds earlier figures. According to recent figures, 30 percent of those polled assess their life situation as "good" or "excellent," 57 percent as "normal," and 11 percent as "bad" or "terrible." Young people (86 percent gave the answers excellent/good/normal) and the well-to-do who were polled (82 percent) have a better view of their lives than the elderly (71 percent) and low-income people (60 percent) do of theirs.

The social expectations index also shows a negative dynamic: It is down13 percentage points (from -39 percent to -52 percent) from July through September. This year respondents were more pessimistic about the country's future only in January-February (-70 percent and -60 percent respectively). The increase in the negative figure is seen against the backdrop of a fall in the proportion of those who believe that "the difficult times are already past" (from July through September it fell from 27 percent to 19 percent) and an increase in the proportion of those who believe that the worst is still to come (from 40 percent to 48 percent). Optimism about Russia's prospects today is considerably lower than a year ago (-22 percent in September 2014) and is also lower than the 2009 result (-36 percent in September). At the same time it should be noted that in the past 6 years the index has never been out of the negative.

The population's attitude toward the authorities and the situation in the country is changing in different directions: On the one hand, there is a consolidation around the figure of Vladimir Putin -- Russians see no alternative to him and link the chance of the restoration of the country's former geopolitical positions to him. However, such an attitude is becoming increasingly divorced from everyday reality. And the perception of reality and of the future is becoming increasingly pessimistic and expectations are worsening which may lead to a build up of social risks. The negative, which is constantly building up, is consequently beginning to turn against the "bad boyars" which will spur the authorities on to tougher anticorruption and antibureaucratic actions.

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 #3
Armed conflicts and inflation stoke Russian fears for the future - poll

MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. International armed conflicts and rising prices are Russians' most feared threats, pollsters said on Thursday. These worries topped concerns of more than half the country's citizens, responses of 1,600 people surveyed across 46 regions suggested.

Sixty-two percent of those polled rated military conflict a Number One threat confronting the near future, twice the number of those doubting an imminent eruption when researchers toured at the end of October.

Fifty-eight percent of those interviewed feared inflation and 45% worried over health issues, said the state-run All-Russia Public Opinion Center (VTsIOM).

Fears also focussed on falling incomes (39%), natural disasters (31%) and unemployment (23%).

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 #4
Kremlin.ru
November 4, 2015
Visit to an exhibition on Russia's history in the first half of the 20th century

Vladimir Putin visited the 14th Church and Public Forum and Exhibition Orthodox Russia. My History. From Great Upheavals to the Great Victory. The exhibition runs at the Manezh exhibition hall on November 4-22.

Speaking at the opening of the 14th Church and Public Forum and Exhibition Orthodox Russia. My History. From Great Upheavals to the Great Victory. With Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill.

The exhibition is based on historical evidence and documents from various government archives and includes 'live' maps, books, animation and short films on Russia's history from 1914 to 1945. The exhibition was organised by the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ministry of Culture and the Moscow City Government.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Your Holiness, friends, I congratulate you on the opening of this latest exhibition in the Orthodox Russia cycle, timed to commemorate National Unity Day.

This educational project is the result of a big joint effort by the Russian Orthodox Church and leading research organisations, archives and libraries, and is evidence of the growing deep and real interest in Russia's history and in our spiritual roots and origins. I want to thank sincerely the organisers and participants for their work.

This extensive exhibition's central theme is the period from 1914 to 1945, a time of world wars, revolutions and upheavals. It was a time when old foundations shattered, destinies crumbled and millions of people became the victims of cruel social experiments.

But even in those harsh and difficult conditions, people lived, created, made discoveries and achieved breakthroughs, and always remembered what was most important when our homeland was in danger. They understood the importance of unity and standing together, and drew strength from timeless, eternal values and lofty moral ideals. Ideological stereotypes faded before the real historical Russia.

Love for the Motherland was the strongest and all-vanquishing emotion. It inspired, helped and saved. This was how our people came through the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War and not just survived, but preserved and strengthened our statehood and brought peace and liberation to the enslaved peoples of Europe.

This year, we celebrated our big national holiday - the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory. This victory was an event of tremendous historical and moral importance, a source of unquestionable pride and respect, and the symbol of our people's heroism. This is our history. It is our duty to know this history, respect it in full and without passing anything over in silence, to learn and remember its lessons, and respect and value this past experience.

I am sure that this exhibition, which is based on authentic evidence and documents and makes use of the latest technology, will be of broad interest to people of all ages, young people too. This is all the more true as the exhibition will take place not just here in the capital, but in other Russian cities too.

It is important that visitors and guests will have a chance to take a new look at well-known events and facts and form their own views and impressions. Once again, I congratulate you on the opening of this exhibition. I wish you success and all the very best.

Happy holiday!

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 #5
Kremlin.ru
November 4, 2015
Active citizens' forum Community

Vladimir Putin spoke at the active citizens' forum Community, which has brought together state officials with representatives of business, non-profit organisations, volunteer movements, and youth and student associations.

The two-day forum, organised by the Russian Civic Chamber and timed to mark National Unity Day, began its work on November 3. It includes several different discussion platforms on different themes, in particular, financing citizens' initiatives, public monitoring, interaction between the non-profit sector and the state authorities, and interethnic relations.

Regional-level Community forums took place in the nine federal districts earlier, where participants discussed development of the non-profit sector in the regions, the biggest issues and possible solutions, and support for the most effective civic activeness practices.

The discussions' results will be summed up in the forum's final resolution, which will be included in the Civic Chamber's annual report on the state of civil society in Russia.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Friends,

We are meeting today on a holiday occasion - National Unity Day. I think that when this date was first made a national holiday, many people in Russia, myself included, thought back then, "Another holiday, why this one, what, are we short of holidays, short of chances to gather together round the table with friends and celebrate?"

But now, I see clearly and understand well just why we need this holiday. It is important for any country and people, even more so one as complex and diverse as Russia with its many peoples and religions, to stop once a year and think back over all that we have been through, all the events, all of our triumphs and victories, and also our defeats and our tragedies.

If we look back at history, not so far back from our present day, we see that when we stood together, we always achieved memorable victories, and when we were divided, we faced tragedy, disintegration, disasters, and the suffering of millions of our citizens, and we found ourselves at the mercy of false values, criminal ambitions and national catastrophe. This is why, despite our great diversity, it is essential that we have a sense of ourselves as a united nation.

Unity, of course, does not mean uniformity of thinking and views on country's problems, future and development. It is important to remember just one thing, namely, that no matter how intense the debate may be at times, at its base should always be love for our homeland and a desire to make our country stronger, more powerful and effective, and give our people better lives.

It is not a simple thing, of course, to see clearly between personal or group ambitions, and aspirations for the good of all society and our entire people and country.

Our country has travelled a very difficult road since the early 1990s. Civil society and public organisations have travelled this road together with the country. Essentially, if we move away from scholarly definitions, they are the country and the people. What is a public organisation, after all? What is civil society? They are the country. They are society. They have various organisational structures of their own, but together, they represent the country. Of course, it is people with a particularly active stance in life who stand out in the country. Some of you are here today. I greet you and congratulate you on this holiday.

At the foundation of public organisations' work, of course, is the desire to improve our lives and help people. At the centre of this work is the Civic Chamber, which is involved in this work in daily ongoing fashion and is also involved in organising events like this forum, of course. I want to thank the Civic Chamber members for this and say that we will continue to support public and non-profit organisations in their various areas of activity. This includes political organisations and organisations with a social focus.

As you know, last year, we allocated decent funding for this work, nearly 6 billion rubles in grant funding, of which a little more than 4 billion is federal funding. I think though that this is already insufficient today, especially as concerns the socially-focused public and non-profit organisations, which often have a better understanding and keener awareness of the people's needs and demands than do the state or even local authorities. They are often more subtle and effective in their responses to problems, and I think they could do a more effective job of spending state money allocated for this work.

A solid sum has been earmarked for social support in 2016: nearly 250 billion rubles, slightly more than 236 billion rubles. Of course, we need to involve the socially-oriented public organisations that have proved their effectiveness and are capable of resolving the problems the state and municipal authorities face today. I think that we could put these socially-focused organisations in a separate group, select the most suitable ones and confirm their competency, and then open up access for them to the financial resources the state authorities have earmarked for social purposes.

Friends, I am absolutely sure that you and your colleagues will do everything you can to help people live better, no matter what the financing, because what you do, you do at your hearts' call.

Congratulations! I wish you the very best! Success to you all!

 #6
Kremlin.ru
November 5, 2015
World Congress of Compatriots

Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary session of the fifth World Congress of Compatriots Living Abroad.

The World Congress of Compatriots Living Abroad works to unite Russians abroad, defend their rights and lawful interests, build stronger ties with their historical homeland, and preserve the Russian cultural heritage and language abroad.

The Congress is meeting in Moscow on November 5-6 and is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Taking part are about 400 representatives of Russian communities in 97 countries.

With about 30 million people, the Russian diaspora is one of the four largest in the world.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends.

It is a pleasure to greet the participants in the fifth World Congress of Compatriots here in Moscow - the Russian capital that all of you and all of us hold dear.

Yesterday we celebrated our national holiday, the Day of National Unity, a day to remember the heroic pages of our history, the feats performed by our ancestors in the name of this country's freedom and prosperity. This holiday symbolises the unity of the multi-ethnic people of Russia and our compatriots living abroad.

The make-up of the delegates - and we have people from almost 100 countries here, 97 to be exact - demonstrates the size and diversity of the Russian community abroad. We are sincerely grateful to you, friends, for maintaining your deep internal connection to your historical Motherland, for being proud of Russia, for valuing its culture and its spiritual traditions and for sharing its fate and its current concerns.

We felt your solidarity during the reunification of the Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia. This was a historic event. The decisive support of our compatriots, who expressed their firm desire to be with Russia, to support Russia definitely helped unify Russian society and became an important factor in the consolidation of Russians abroad and the entire Russian community.

Russia highly values your contribution to the preservation and development of the Russian language and to promoting our common cultural values.

We can see that the Russian Orthodox Church and our other traditional religions are playing an ever-greater role in expanding humanitarian ties between our compatriots and Russia. The Russian expatriate community has always united people of different ethnicities and faith. It is important that today you are together resolving common issues and the tasks facing this country.

I would like to thank our compatriots who helped this year to organise and hold events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory over Nazism. My deep gratitude goes to those who honoured the veterans living abroad, who took part in the St George Ribbon and the Immortal Regiment campaigns, who countered attempts to distort the past and reduce the decisive role of the people of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazism.

Friends,

Far-reaching support for our compatriots has always been a priority for us, an area of joint action by the state and by public organisations. We will make every effort to make this work more efficient and less bureaucratic, so that any compatriot could make comments, proposals and suggestions and the feedback to the questions you ask and issues you raise is as quick and substantive as possible - to make the feedback more human.

This approach is the guiding one in the work of the Commission for the Affairs of Compatriots Living Abroad, the Foreign Ministry, the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, and our other agencies.

We have a corresponding programme of action for 2015-2017 directed at enhancing work with our compatriots. The Hello, Russia! project has become an important part of that programme. It includes educational trips to historical sites in Russia for winners of competitions on this country's history and culture. This year about 1,000 people from 47 countries have already taken advantage of this opportunity.

In addition, as envisaged in the programme, in April in Sochi we held the First World Junior Compatriot Games, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory. The Games involved about 600 children from 33 countries.

Russian regions are also implementing interesting and useful projects. They involve businesses, academics, cultural personalities and young people. Thus, the annual Forum of Young Compatriots organised by the St Petersburg administration enjoys great popularity. The government of Tatarstan has already held six World Forums of Tatar Youth. We expect our border areas to become more active in this sphere.

We intend to pay special attention to preserving and developing the Russian language, as I have already said. For centuries, it has been the language of interethnic communication for the numerous ethnic groups of the Eurasian continent, helping them to discover treasures of world culture and to acquaint themselves with advances in science and technology.

We cannot remain indifferent, we cannot help feeling concern when a number of countries are for political reasons consistently destroying the system of education in Russian and are using all sorts of pretexts to hamper the operation of Russian theatres, libraries and cultural centres.

A lot was said at the previous forum of the need to develop education in Russian abroad. We have already worked out a concept for Russian schools abroad. The purpose of such schools is to promote national methods of teaching and education, of developmental teaching, to assist in the study of the Russian language and of subjects that have to do with this country, with Russia, such as this country's history and geography, the history of its culture and the arts.

It is clear that we need to make more efficient use of extracurricular educational establishments, like Sunday schools at Russian Orthodox churches and educational centres of our other religions to set up courses and groups to study Russian.

We also intend to expand the network of Russian cultural and research centres and to more actively involve national businesses operating abroad in the organisation of Russian schools and cultural centres and communication platforms for the direct communication of people abroad.

We plan to develop the system of grants for the support of cultural and educational projects with the Russkiy Mir Foundation, as well as within the framework of the new federal programme Russian Language adopted in 2015, which has been allocated 6.5 billion rubles.

We will continue supporting the move of Russian expatriates to expand the common communication space. Today Russian-language media are represented in more than 80 countries. While retaining their independent unbiased position and often expressing varying points of view, a vast majority of these are striving to provide accurate and fair coverage of present-day Russia, its history, its achievements and the most important foreign policy developments.

All this definitely serves to strengthen this country's international authority and influence; it helps destroy the stereotypes and preconceptions of the past and respond to all sorts of propaganda ploys with the truth about this country. We will continue helping Russian-language media, including through the Foundation for Cooperation with Russian-Language Media Abroad, established last autumn.

To be continued.

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 #7
Moscow Times
November 5, 2015
New Museum Stakes Claim to Russia's Gulag Legacy
By Howard Amos
[Photos here http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/new-museum-stakes-claim-to-russias-gulag-legacy/542211.html]

Russia's largest museum devoted to the horrors of the Soviet gulag has opened, even as many Muscovites remain unwilling to talk about political repression.  

Moscow's new Gulag Museum opened Friday even as the country remains polarized by the legacy of its brutal system of Soviet-era prison camps that survivors and experts say is being sidelined.

"There are lots of people, particularly the young, who do not know they are walking on bones," Natalya Solzhenitsyna, the widow of Soviet writer and gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn, told city officials, historians and human rights activists who attended the museum's opening ceremony.

The state-owned Gulag Museum, the largest of its kind in the country, is located on the edge of downtown Moscow and replaces a smaller museum that was housed in cramped premises on Ulitsa Petrovka.

Inside the new building, which cost more than 300 million rubles ($4.7 million) to renovate, the decor is exposed brickwork, cast iron supports and a series of black metal staircases. One of the outside walls is made entirely of copper and will gradually turn black over the coming years.

"A visitor sees the exhibits on their own level and then ascends and sees the same thing from above. The idea is that we should climb up and look down from above on this history, which is painful and unrecognized in our country," says museum director Roman Romanov.

"It is a space where people - visitors - can meet themselves, meet with their personal history, or with themselves in this history. It is a moment of contact."

The opening ceremony for the building was timed to coincide with Russia's Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression - an annual event commemorating the millions killed during decades of Communist political terror that reached its apogee with multiple waves of arrests, executions and sentences of forced labor under Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

The Gulag - an abbreviation of Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerei, or Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps - was a network of labor, detention and transit camps that epitomize Soviet brutality and were famously described by authors including Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov and Yevgenia Ginzburg.

The Gulag Museum's exhibition describes the system of camps, as well as their legacy in modern Russia, with artifacts gathered from all over the country. But the museum will also collect testimony from gulag survivors, carry out tours and lectures for children, operate as an archive and run a volunteer center providing help to elderly people who suffered under Soviet-era repression.

Discussion of 20th-century political terror burst into the open in Russia after the fall of communism and remains a controversial topic, with many preferring to dwell on the Soviet Union's successes. In a survey conducted by independent pollster Levada Center in March, 45 percent of Russians said they thought the sacrifices of the Stalin period were justified.

"If Russia has an original sin it is the gulag," says Stephen Cohen, a U.S. historian who presented at the opening and says he plans to donate his personal archive to the new Gulag Museum.

"People are repelled by the memory [of the gulag] because it burns and brings them pain," says Romanov. "But no good will come of this because we cannot turn away from ourselves."

Earlier this year, the Russian government approved a new policy that unequivocally condemned attempts to justify Soviet repression and mapped steps to be taken ahead of the upcoming centenary of the 1917 revolution. A monument to victims of political repression ordered by President Vladimir Putin is due to be unveiled in Moscow next year.

But critics say Putin's ideological narrative of a resurgent Russia has seen a creeping rehabilitation of Stalin and helped marginalize the gulag in official histories, which tend to focus instead on industrial progress and victory in World War II. Earlier this year, a museum dedicated to Stalin was opened in the Tver region near Moscow and a new management team at Perm-36, a unique museum created on the site of a former gulag near the Ural mountains, has been criticized for downplaying the horror of the prison system after complaints of state pressure and a media campaign.

In most school history textbooks there are only a few paragraphs devoted to the gulag, says Sergei Lukashevsky, head of the Sakharov Center, a Moscow-based group defending human rights and working to preserve the memory of Soviet repression.

"There is a general tendency to show Soviet history as a series of victories with some tragic episodes," he said at the museum opening. "This museum is the treacherous paragraph of such a history."

Unlike other organizations, the Gulag Museum will be able to develop freely because it is under state control, Lukashevsky believes. The Sakharov Center and Memorial, an NGO that also defends human rights and publicizes Russia's totalitarian past, have both been hit by a 2012 law branding nongovernmental organizations receiving grants from abroad as "foreign agents" - a Soviet-era label.

The Gulag Museum was founded in 2001 after a long campaign by camp survivor and Soviet dissident Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko whose father, a leading Bolshevik, was executed and whose mother hanged herself in prison. Although almost completely blind, Antonov-Ovseyenko was involved in the early stages of the planning of the move to the current site before his death in 2013 aged 93.

New director Romanov, a professional museum administrator who says none of his relatives suffered as a result of Soviet repression, appears determined to transform Antonov-Ovseyenko's personal crusade into a professional, modern museum on par with counterparts around the world. With 10 times more floorspace in the new premises, nothing remains of the old museum's displays.

"It is not to frighten people, it is not about death," says Romanov of what he wants the new museum to evoke in visitors.

"It is to understand and feel that humans did this to other humans."

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 #8
Russia considers speeding up privatization regardless of economic outlook - agency

MOSCOW, November 5. / TASS /. Russia's Federal Property Management Agency is ready to speed up the privatization of Rosneft, Aeroflot and RusHydro companies regardless of the economic outlook, Olga Dergunova, head of the agency said on Thursday.

"At the meeting, which was held by Shuvalov [Igor Shuvalov, First Deputy Prime Minister -TASS] it was recommended that we should provide an opportunity for speeding up sale of major assets regardless of prices on international markets. Earlier we presumed that we should not sell state assets for any price. The situation on the international markets is not improving, and, if the president supports such a decision, we can come up with the list of assets which are ready for privatization. These are public companies Rosneft, RusHydro, Alrosa and Aeroflot. In fact, all the assets that are listed on the stock exchange," Dergunova said.

Dergunova added that, under the forecast for 2016, the Federal Property Management Agency plans to privatize only one large state company - Sovcomflot shipping company. Revenues from the sale of this package could reach 12 billion rubles ($189 mln).

The Federal Property Management Agency expects revenues from mass privatization of smaller assets to amount to 5.4 billion rubles ($85.2 mln).

Secretariat of Russia's First Deputy PM does not confirm recommendation to speed up privatization

A representative of the secretariat of Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said he did not hear anything about the government orders or recommendation to speed up sale of major state-owned assets regardless of their price on the international market.

"We are not aware of any instructions and recommendations to accelerate the sales of major assets, regardless of market conditions, including conditions on international markets. The position on privatization has not changed," the representative of the Secretariat told TASS.

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 #9
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 4, 2015
World Bank: Uncertainty is the main challenge facing the Russian economy
RD Interview: Dr. Birgit Hansl, the World Bank's lead economist for the Russian Federation, analyzes the key findings of the World Bank's recent report on the Russian economy and explains what steps the Russian government needs to take next.
By Alexey Khlebnikov

A year has passed since the West imposed sanctions on Russia over its policy in Ukraine and almost a year since global oil prices plummeted. Since then, the Russian economy has been adjusting to the new reality and trying to function under the changed rules of the game. Opinions have been mixed as to whether Russia's economy has been successful in addressing these factors or not.

With that in mind, Russia Direct get in touch with Dr. Birgit Hansl, the World Bank's lead economist for Russia, and talked with her about the main findings of the new economic report the World Bank recently released.

Russia Direct: What are the main findings of the World Bank's latest report on Russia?

Birgit Hansl: It has really four key messages. First, that we see that Russia is balancing a very difficult economic adjustment. As you know, it resulted in the first half of 2015 in the recession deepening in Russia, which had a severe impact on Russian households.

So we also see that the economy is still adjusting to the 2014 trade shocks - in this intense geopolitical context, which then resulted in economic growth dropping in the first half of the year to minus 3.5 percent. And this was mainly because of an accelerated contraction in consumption. This is related to the really high level of inflation that the economy still faces and that is, in turn, eroding real wages and incomes and makes households simply more vulnerable.

However, the [second] key message is that we still think that the policy response of the authorities during this first half of the year after the major shocks to the economy happened was very well balanced and helped to stabilize the economy.

The clear example here is successful transition to the free float exchange rate, which relieves pressure on external balances and helped the adjustment of the external balances. You can see that Russia still has a positive current account balance, which is quite an achievement and a very good macroeconomic adjustment.

On the other hand, there are remaining key challenges - the high inflation rate and completion of the fiscal adjustment. The fiscal adjustment is very important and it has to follow through shrewd budget policy, which is a big challenge. Also we should not forget about financial market restructuring, which addresses financial market risks.

The third key message is that Russia's economic growth prospects for this and the next year are still negative in our view. So we project minus 3.8 percent growth this year, which is based on the current low oil price of about $53 per barrel, and we project for the next year minus 0.6 percent growth.

But what is really more important in our view is that, due to the severity of this projected contraction of Russia's economic growth, we expect that the poverty rate is to increase very sharply this year to over 14 percent, compared to 11.2 percent in 2014. Most noticeably this is going to be the first significant increase in the poverty rate since the 1998-1999 crisis.

Thus, this negative growth outlook has a really severe impact on households, not just on the extreme poor. It is also going to stall the growth of the middle class.

And finally if we look at the current economic policy challenges, it is very interesting that the policy challenges that we originally thought more of a long-term issue (like Russia transforming its economy structure away from the natural resource sector, the growth of the fiscal impact of Russia's demographic transformation of an aging and shrinking population) are becoming much more pressing to tackle. So, overall it seems like this short-term adjustment process is really a good opportunity to fast-forward this general transformation process.

RD: It is been already a year since the sectoral sanctions against Russia are in place. What are the main changes in the Russian economy? Are their negative or positive?

B.H.: The economic impact of the sanctions is, of course, included in this recession story that we see for Russia. It is impacting Russia because it makes access to capital more expensive or restricts access to capital for certain parts of the economy outright - and this is not good news overall for investment activities because investments are based on capital.

So, a more limited pot of capital is naturally making investment more difficult or at the same time having more expensive capital also is negatively impacting investment. And this is in essence confirming the story we had in our previous report where we looked very deeply into the economic impact of sanctions in other countries that experienced them. That is ultimately impacting your investment profile and your investment level over time.

In addition, the longer the sanctions will remain in place, the more they will clearly have an adverse impact on investment.

RD: What do you see as the main challenges of the Russian economy?

B.H.: Well, I think at the moment the Russian economy still faces very adverse external conditions compared to previous years when we had really high oil prices, which helped to compensate for economic setbacks. And we see globally that trade is recovering much slower than the overall economic growth, which makes it very difficult we think for Russia to become competitive as a manufacturing exporter.

Thus, external challenges remain but it is not just them that we see impacting the growth path, but increasingly it is policy uncertainty that becomes a serious challenge to short-term growth.

When you look for instance at the business confidence indicators released by the business survey of Rosstat [Russian Federal Statistics Service] you can see that over the last half a year in 2015 compared to the same period of 2014 uncertainty about economic policy became a key constraint mentioned by businesses.

So it is not just that there is a weak domestic demand, which is of course expected in this difficult adjustment process, but it is now this uncertainty that businesses and households are not sure where the economy is going, what are main policies choices will be. One example here is the longtime uncertainty around budget decisions for the next years.

It creates a lot of uncertainty for households because many of them receive transfers from the government in the form of social benefits, pensions, and if they do not know what they can expect (because it is often a substantial part of their income), it makes it very difficult for them to make informed consumption decisions and most likely holds back consumption.

And the same is for the firms and companies. If they have contracts with the government (for some companies state contracts are a very important part of their business) and if there is no budget framework, it is also very unclear for these economic actors if they are to have, for instance, an income stream or if they are going to be profitable over the next years. It also makes them very cautions in terms of whether they should expand their capacity, should they invest.

Therefore, this uncertainty is having a real impact on economic decision-making and most likely in a negative way in terms of postponing decisions for consumption and investment or scaling back original plans for investment and consumption. And if you have less investment and consumption, you ultimately have less growth. That is the reason why it is the key issue. So, it is not just a question of confidence, it is ultimately reflected in real data.

So therefore what needs to be fixed in the first place is for the government to be clear about policy choices, to have a clear strategy what is the key policy for the next years which will give companies and households an opportunity to know what they can expect from the government's economic policies. So it is really an issue about signaling what are the strategic choices in a very difficult period of uncertainty.

RD: Recently Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev unveiled the new Strategy 2030, which is concentrated on four priorities: investment activity, import substitution, the quality of state governance, and budgetary policy. How timely do you think this new strategy is for the Russian economy?

B.H.: I think it addresses really the main constraints and issues the Russian economy faces. Of course the revival of investment activity is a priority but it is not just about the amount of investment, it is more about investment quality. And this issue is related to the decision-making around investment: Is there a vetting process that is transparent, what is the quality of public investments management, etc.? So, it is hopefully addressing the issue of not just how to increase investment as such but how to improve their quality, which is a very important task.

The quality of state governance and budgetary policy are without any doubt key issues that need to be part of the government priorities in Russia.

As for import substitution, it is an interesting concept but I think we should be very cautious about what kind of policies need to be created by the state for import substitution. In essence what you see in Russia is that now due to the weaker ruble, there is a greater advantage for local producers to become more competitive, at least in terms of relative prices. This raises the question of the necessity of additional state support, especially when budget and public resources are so constrained. So this is the area that is less grounded in economics, I would say.

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 #10
www.rt.com
November 5 2015
Ruble will make 'Made in Russia' a global brand - World Bank economist

The devaluation of its currency opens up new possibilities for the Russian economy, says Birgit Hansl, World Bank lead economist for Russia.

"For the first time in decades, "Made in Russia" might have a chance to become again a global trademark. As the weaker ruble created a price advantage for some industries, export volumes started to rise, in turn generating investment in certain sectors," she wrote in her blog.

According to Hansl, Russia has increased exports to countries outside the CIS in in the mining, chemical, and machine-building sectors. As a result, the country's overall export volume grew by 1.7 percent in the first half of 2015. The economist says that so far this has not been enough for an overall increase in non-energy exports, but this could change in the medium term.

The positive impact of the ruble collapse has been "limited and uneven," as some manufacturers still require additional investments, Hansl says. However, "this process seems to have started as investments in some sectors have already increased substantially, especially in the chemicals, rubber, plastics, electronics and machine-building industries."

The first half of 2015 has seen investment growth of 23.1 percent in the chemical industry, while investment in electro-technical equipment grew 30.7 percent compared to last year.

"Russia's investors still lack confidence for broader investments and much will depend on progress on Russia's overall structural reform agenda," says the economist.

However, the country's effort has been acknowledged by the World Bank's Doing Business Index for 2016, Hansl says. Russia was only 51st in the ranking, but it's an improvement compared to 62nd place last year.

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 #11
Bloomberg
November 5, 2015
Putin's Fortress Russia Takes Its Toll
By Leonid Bershidsky

It's difficult to quantify the damage Western economic sanctions have done to Russia. The country's slump is almost exclusively due to a drop in oil prices, which has led to a sharp currency devaluation and a jump in interest rates. Yet the sanctions have fueled the Kremlin's paranoia, lending Russia's economy an aura of autarchic defensiveness.

Russian exports are down 31.9 percent in January through September, and imports have dropped 38.8 percent. One could argue that this downturn in foreign trade is due to the ruble's devaluation. Self-isolation, however, has played a major role too. One form of this self-isolation is unilateral trade restrictions like President Vladimir Putin's vindictive and ineffective food embargo against countries that have sanctioned Russia. Another is the country's increasing financial lockdown.

The embargo has failed on multiple counts. An August government report showed that though food imports made a disproportionately large contribution to the general decline in trade, Russian producers were unable to fill the gap in the market immediately, resulting in rapid price growth and an increase in embargo-busting schemes. For example, European Union exports of milk and cream to Belarus increased in 2014 by a factor of 573; obviously, all the extra European milk went to Russia. Landlocked Belarus also became a major fish exporter. At the same time, EU agricultural exports just kept growing as if the Russian market never existed; Poland's, for example, increased by 7.1 percent last year and by 6.4 percent in the first half of 2015.

Undeterred by the debacle, the Russian government wants to re-enact the experiment in other markets. From January 1, 2016, government agencies have to prove they need foreign software before they can buy it. A separate government decree only allows such purchases if there is no equivalent Russian software. The reasoning for this is a noxious mixture of fear that Western countries could be spying on Russia through office applications and enterprise resource planning systems and a misguided desire to spur local development by shutting off competition. The European Business Association, the biggest foreign business lobby in Russia, recently sent a letter to the government expressing concern that Western tech companies may be unable to keep operating in Russia under these conditions.

The clumsy trade restrictions, however, are only part of the story. According to the Central Bank, the Russian private sector, long a huge net external debtor, has recently turned into a creditor: The world now owes it $73 million.

The Central Bank's definition of the private sector includes large state-controlled companies such as Sberbank, VTB, Rosneft and Gazprom, all hit by Western financial sanctions, but also real private companies for which access to Western funding is merely uncertain or more expensive. Because of these constraints, and also because of exchange rate uncertainty, these businesses have done their best to pay off foreign debts and load up on foreign assets.

As they did that, two trends became obvious: a rapid deterioration of the Central Bank's international reserves and significant capital flight. The reserves reached a nadir of $350.5 billion in March, having fallen by more than $160 billion since the beginning of 2014. In the same 15 months, Russia lost $185 billion in fleeing capital. After a debt balance was reached, both drains stopped abruptly. International reserves are now up to $374.6 billion, and capital flight in April through September reached just $7 billion.

This is great for Russia's currency reserves, which financial authorities are careful not to draw down as oil revenues shrink, instead allowing the ruble to devalue. Yet the implication is of a country in a defensive crouch. Business has stopped attracting cheaper foreign resources for domestic investment, and there's a 5.8 percent investment drop in January through September. It has also stopped expanding outside Russia.

At the same time, the government is making a special effort to curb illegal capital outflow. This week, police in Moscow detained banker Alexander Grigoryev -- a SWAT team laid him out on the floor of a restaurant where he was having dinner with his girlfriend -- and charged him with illegally moving $50 billion out of the country over the last three years. Most of the money was allegedly moved out through Moldova and the Baltic states. Russian firms, set up especially for the purpose, guaranteed the debts of companies in those countries. The companies defaulted, their fictitious creditors went to court in Moldova, Lithuania and Estonia, and the court decisions served as legal grounds for money transfers out of Russia.

The scheme was in existence for years, at last since 2011, but the crackdown has only come now that the government has gotten serious about keeping money inside Fortress Russia.

Russia's isolationist economic policy is a combination of misguided protectionism, vindictiveness, espionage fears, financial management aimed at minimizing external risks and harsh police action. It has a certain consistency and harmony to it, and it is synchronized with relentless propaganda aimed at making Russians feel besieged by a hostile world. More than anything else, it is a reflection of President Vladimir Putin's views on everything from economics to geopolitics. Fortress Russia is in Putin's head, and Russians, who are forced to pay for it with a drop in living standards -- disposable incomes are down 3.3 percent in January through September -- are OK for now with living within this mental construct.

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 #12
Moscow Times
November 5, 2015
Most Russians Won't Make It to Their 71st Birthday, OECD Report Shows

High alcohol and tobacco consumption mean most Russians will never reach the age of 71, with the average life expectancy in Russia lagging almost 10 years behind the average in developed countries - the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report published Wednesday.

The average life expectancy in Russia in 2013 was 70.7 years - with only India and South Africa having lower life expectancies, with 66.5 years and 56.8 years respectively, the study showed.

Life expectancy in Russia had increased by 2.7 years since 1970, compared to an increase of 10 years in OECD countries where life expectancy in 2013 was 80.5 years on average, the study showed.

The survey ranked Russia 43rd on a list of 45 countries - consisting of 34 OECD member countries and a number of other "partner countries," including Russia, Brazil and China.

The OECD attributed Russia's slow increase in life expectancy to "the impact of the economic transition in the 1990s and a rise in risk-increasing behaviors among men," a reference to the country's alcohol consumption.

Russia was among the countries with the highest percentage of male tobacco consumption, with roughly 45 percent of the male adult population smokers - roughly 20 percent above the OECD average. Russian women, in contrast, smoked less than the OECD average, according to the report.

Overall tobacco consumption in Russia has been falling, the report showed, with tobacco consumption dropping from 35 percent of the total population in 2000, to 24 percent in 2013.

In an opposing trend, Russia was among a handful of countries to have experienced a rise in alcohol consumption since 2000, the report said. Data showed 10 percent of the adult population consumed alcohol in 2000, compared to 11 percent in 2013.

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 #13
Russia lays foundations for carbon regulation amid calls for action
By Angelina Davydova

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, Nov 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Russia is preparing the ground for future regulation of carbon emissions, amid calls to wean the economy off its heavy dependence on polluting fossil fuels.

Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has published a draft law introducing a baseline for controlling planet-warming emissions.

It includes a legal definition of greenhouse gases and how to measure and report emissions, as well as enshrining the government's right to regulate them.

The draft is open for public consultation until the end of this week and is due to be passed to parliament in December, with a view to adoption in early 2016.

According to Vladimir Berdin, vice-director of the International Sustainable Energy Development Centre in Moscow, the draft sets out rules for potential systems to monitor and regulate emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other climate-changing gases.

Russia is lagging behind many other countries - including major developing-economy emitters - in this area, experts say.

Mikhail Yulkin, head of the climate desk with the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, noted that national carbon schemes have been introduced or are being created in more than 40 countries, with a further 20 systems being put in place at sub-national levels.

"The fact that (Russia does) not have such a system only increases our isolation, provokes suspicion and distrust among investors and consumers, and has a very negative impact on business and the economy," he said.

The new impetus for carbon regulation in Russia is coming from some government ministries and businesses, including the metals sector, and is backed by Alexander Bedritsky, a presidential adviser on climate change, amid growing calls at home and abroad for Russia to act.

In April, the government adopted a framework for a system to monitor, report and verify greenhouse gas emissions, which will be obligatory for companies and regions.

The system will be tested next year, and from 2017, all companies with annual emissions of 50,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent or higher will be required to report on them.

ECONOMIC RESILIENCE

Russia could reduce its emissions 80 to 90 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels, strengthening the resilience of its economy which is heavily influenced by global oil and gas prices, says a recent study by international energy researchers for the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project.

Today fossil fuels contribute around 70 percent of Russia's total export revenues, and if minerals and metals are included, the share goes up to 90 percent, the study says.

Russia is currently the world's fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter, following China, the United States, the European Union and India.

Its emissions fell for most of the 1990s and early 2000s as the economy declined after the break-up of the Soviet Union and shifted towards services and extraction of raw fossil fuels.

For the last five years, emissions have been on a slow rise, but the current level is still 29 percent below 1990.

In its pledge for a new U.N. climate agreement due to be finalised in Paris in December, Russia outlined plans to cut its emissions 25 to 30 percent by 2030 from their 1990 level.

But in practice that equates to keeping them at around the same level as now, provoking criticism by green groups.

The decarbonisation study says Russia could follow a far more ambitious strategy that would be both economically and technologically feasible, if the country invests heavily in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

It would also need to switch transport, residential heating and industrial production from fossil fuel to electricity use.

According to study co-author George Safonov from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia's abundance of natural resources offers huge benefits, but also creates risks, as demonstrated by the economic slowdown which has followed a drop in oil prices and international sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Official statistics from September put the number of poor Russians at 21.7 million, or 15 percent of the population - nearly 15 percent higher than in the first half of 2014. This is largely explained by inflation and a rise in the cost of living.

The decarbonisation study says higher emissions cuts would lead to growth in investments and energy bill savings that could boost GDP by at least 1 percent per year and jobs by a net gain of more than 3 percent by 2050.

SANCTIONS HIT FINANCE

Yet many experts doubt there is sufficient political will in Russia for a transition to low-carbon development.

"The country will probably reach its 2030 (emissions) target anyway, mainly due to the current economic crisis, so we have to find new motivation and incentives," said Safonov.

Legislation supporting the development of renewables and energy efficiency has been adopted in the last few years. But economic woes have put many such initiatives on hold, with both public and private investment drying up.

Oleg Pluzhnikov, a former senior official with the Ministry of Economic Development who now heads the climate desk at the EU-Russia Industrialists' Roundtable, said international sanctions are blocking Russia's access to global financing for emissions reduction measures.

In the next two to three years, it is unlikely to get any "cheap" money for energy efficiency from international financial institutions, he told a recent discussion on Russian climate legislation.

Lobbying by the fossil-fuel industry is another obstacle, Pluzhnikov noted.

"Some business representatives are standing against any carbon regulation, fearing it might increase the bureaucratic burden on companies," he said.

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 #14
Rossiya 1 TV (Moscow)
November 3, 2015
Russian state TV talk show discusses corruption among officials

The 3 November edition of the weekly political talk show "Vesti.doc" on Russian state-owned Rossiya 1 TV presented by Olga Skabeyeva was devoted to Arkadiy Mamontov's documentary titled "Golden Calf" on corruption among state officials in Russian regions. The talk show lasted over two hours and included the pre-film discussion, the film and commercial breaks.

The guests in the studio, apart from Mamontov, were deputy head of the State Duma committee for constitutional legislation and state-building Vadim Solovyev (CPRF), deputy head of the State Duma committee for security and countering corruption Aleksandr Khinshtein (One Russia), plenipotentiary representative of the Russian government in higher courts, lawyer Mikhail Barshchevskiy, head of the All-Russia People's Front (ONF) "For Honest Purchases" special project Anton Getta; Right Cause party leader Vyacheslav Maratkanov.

The discussion started with Mamontov's complaints about "unprecedented pressure" exerted on him, including threats to his health and life and attempts to bribe him, for the film to be not released, and then switched to measures to be taken to curb corruption.

Asked by Skabeyeva whether it is necessary to introduce death penalty for bribery to "scare officials like their scare journalists", Solovyev stood up for lifting the moratorium on death penalty and introducing the seizure of all property owned by a corrupt official as the "scale of corruption and state property theft has already been damaging the basics of the statehood and the country's defence capability". For his part, Barshchevskiy accused Solovyev of "populism" and opposed the introduction of death penalty. According to him, what helps eradicate corruption is the "amount of solved crimes: the more corruption scandals are revealed and made public, the lesser the corruption level will be". Khinshtein shared Barshchevskiy's view about death penalty and said that the main anticorruption measure is to "make punishment for officials for corruption inevitable" so that officials "do not feel themselves scot-free" and ensure law enforcement.

Among other points for discussion were foreign experience in combating corruption, operation of the All-Russia People's Front, law enforcement agencies and courts in revealing corruption, the existing corruption law and high-profile corruption scandals in Russia.

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 #15
BBC
November 4, 2015
Elton John 'to meet President Putin' to discuss LGBT rights

Sir Elton John told the Today programme, that he is currently arranging to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual (LGBT) rights.

It follows a recent hoax call from a radio presenter pretending to be President Putin to the musician, that resulted in a genuine phone call from the president.

A report by Human Rights Watch last year said Russia was failing to prevent and prosecute homophobic violence amid a rise in attacks against minorities.

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 #16
www.opendemocracy.net
November 5, 2015
Confession of a Russian internet provider
A firsthand account of how the internet is monitored, regulated and blocked in the Russian Federation.
By Dmitry Okrest
Dmitry Okrest is a former staff writer with The New Times and currently works as an independent journalist.
 
The internet is no longer free in Russia-that's according to Freedom Net, a report recently published by Freedom House. Freedom of expression on the internet has been under threat for some time in the Russian Federation, but the risks have increased since 2014. In the 18 months since Maidan, the annexation of Crimea and outbreak of conflict in eastern Ukraine, new laws preventing the dissemination of 'extremism' online and extending the authorities' surveillance powers have made the RuNet a far riskier environment.

On terms of anonymity, I spoke with the director of a Russian internet provider-who has worked in the Russian IT market for more than a decade-and found out how the FSB and prosecutor's office monitor the internet, why they reprimanded an FSB officer who bugged an opposition politician and why cutting Russia off from the global internet isn't so easy. Read his account below.

Black lists

'Since 2012, Russia has operated a register of banned websites. This isn't the federal list of extremist materials, where there's a heap of leaflets and video clips, which the court has tried to distort in its categorization. No, the register is a selection of 100,000 IP addresses. The FSB doesn't monitor how bans are put in place: they're more interested in making sure Roskomnadzor's [the federal body responsible for media oversight] recommendations come through on time.

According to the law, internet providers should contact Roskomnadzor on a daily basis, but people usually get in touch every three days. Each provider has a 'curator' from the FSB. Even we have one, although we're a typical example of a small company, with 10,000 domains. An FSB guy just sits with a list of providers to monitor. He has the statistics on downloads and if you're high, then you get a call-your curator starts reprimanding and threatening you. I know some people who were fined because their admins stopped looking at the updates for the black lists.

Unlike the FSB, the prosecutor's office checks to see if blocked websites can still be accessed. According to the prosecutor's logic, every provider who isn't aware that some site has been banned should be taken to court. We were recently fined 50,000 roubles [£500]. In 2011, it seems, we didn't block a certain site, and now they've realised. The state prosecutor himself says: 'Well, pay - be my guest! We need more cases for the quarterly report.'

The system of implementing black lists varies widely-from the wholesale blocking of an entire website, which is what the big operators do, to blocking specific links, which is what we do. Of course, this is more difficult technically and more expensive. Generally, if you use a small operator, you're more likely to see banned material-there's less strict implementation at this level.

I made all sites accessible to my friends. None of them are going to complain to the prosecutor. Theoretically, you could operate these black lists on a commercial basis.

Last summer, there was a bit of a panic over separatism. As a result, all the materials on federalising Siberia were blocked. They used semantic analyses, i.e. searching for specific markers in texts. Places like Yandex [Russia's most popular search engine] are now banning results for searches like 'Putin-terrorism-Caucasus, but this hasn't reached the ISPs yet.

We only block a site when we receive a prosecutor's order that refers to a court decision. But in the regions, state organs have to fulfill the norm. For example, take some neighbourhood prosecutor's office, which is connected to our network-they're constantly checking to see what else some court out in Khanty-Mansiisk [Siberia, i.e. a remote court] has banned. They don't contact Roskomnadzor, they don't request to include the banned site in the register-they go straight to court. Get them the hell off the net!

Of course, when we receive a court order, we block everything-it's just we couldn't have found out about the decision earlier, given that you can learn about the decision of the Khanty-Mansiisk court only on its website. In the court they ask me: 'Have you blocked it?' I answer: 'Yes, of course!' Then we go to check: the site, naturally, opens easily enough-after all, the court isn't connected to our network, and their provider isn't any more aware of the Khanty-Mansiisk court's decision. The court officials look at me in surprise, and I end up giving the judge and the prosecutor's assistant a lecture off-the-cuff about how the internet works. I try to explain that our company can't block the site everywhere, only on the territory of our neighbourhood. They seem to understand, and then they send me the court summons anyway-block this website now and everywhere.

The blacklists contain opposition websites (Grani, Kasparov.ru), religious websites too. Most of the time, it's all kinds of trash sites that are getting blocked-nothing particularly shocking or interesting. Often it's unreadable far left sites with long addresses. They recently blocked an online database of passport information-you couldn't find anything there either.

SORM-2

Most internet providers now operate SORM-2 [internet surveillance programme designed to track individuals, originally introduced in the late 1990s].

We're supposed to store addresses for two years. But SORM-2 hasn't come into full effect yet, it's expensive and complicated to make it work. Just one system test costs 200,000 roubles [£2,000]. All the work is done by a monopoly, that's why the price is so high. The big providers, of course, have more resources, but they also have more clients. The scale of the project makes it more complicated-we don't have the equipment to record all the information at 40 gigabits a second.

We don't have the hardware for SORM either. The security organs, of course, want SORM-2 fully operational. But they don't know anything without us knowing about it. When they need something, the FSB just rings up and I look at our database to find out who's up to what.

The Russian IT market is pretty small, on the whole. Everyone knows everyone else. For example, I know the guy who bugged Alexei Navalny's office. He got reprimanded for that, by the way-if they'd set the bugs up for passive collection and relay of information at four o'clock in the morning, then they wouldn't have been able to locate them. I don't know who ordered the bugging, though, or where else they've installed that kind of stuff.

'These people are really thick'

The standard of security service personnel is catastrophic today. They can't even use the tools they already have. Police officers see IP addresses like license plates, and don't understand that thousands of people access the internet through them.

Someone brought in a flash drive recently¬-it'd been lost by a security officer from a neighbouring district. There was a whole heap of criminal case files on there, hundreds of investigations. In the end, they found the owner through his account on Odnoklassniki [a Russian social networking site, particularly popular with older generations], though, to be fair, he'd been hacked there.

The guy was really happy: he literally kept his whole life on that flash drive. He didn't understand that you had to protect or back it up. Or, for instance, I went to the police station recently, I logged on to their local network-it was absolutely full of viruses. And they don't even have access to the internet there. What qualifications can you even talk about?

These are the officers who are trying to find people sharing 'incorrect' material on the internet. They use their personal email addresses from Mail.ru [highly popular and virus-ridden mail service], which is pretty easy to hack-these guys don't have an official email system.

They write the criminal case number at the beginning of the message, and then 'please issue information on so-and-so a user, who logged onto VKontakte [popular Russian social networking website set up by Pavel Durov, who now runs Telegram] at so-and-so a time'. It's surprising if they indicate an IP-address: 300 users log on to VKontakte every second.

Interestingly enough, they haven't made any requests for Facebook or Odnoklassniki yet. We get a lot of political requests when there's unrest: Bolotnaya Square [protest in Moscow following Vladimir Putin's victory at the 2012 presidential elections], the elections [2011 parliamentary elections; 2012 presidential elections]. They were sending five requests a month back then. Usually we get a request every three months.

In 80% of cases I have to ring them back to make sure the request is filled out correctly. Asking the right question is, after all, half the battle. We do have projects to collaborate on-I help them monitor underground gambling clubs on a voluntary basis. You don't need a lot of information for this work-all the computers have to be connected to one another and the net, but the police are used to burglaries and rapes. Computers are hard to figure out.

I've tried to talk to people from the Center for Combatting Extremism. We met at a seminar about cultures of intolerance, and I proposed working more efficiently together, but those people also turned out to be really thick.

'The best defence is to keep your head down'

Maybe there's no need to be paranoid then? In the last year, however, there's been some serious rules introduced. You can't build a network and remain unnoticed anymore.

They've started tightening the screws, and so our company isn't working with internet telephone services anymore. Everything was just a formality before, but now they've requested SORM for telecommunications.

The prospect of a shrinking official market, though, is a different matter: the black market will compensate. The more they carve up the official internet, the greater demand for the dark net.

I completely support the idea that we have to keep taps on people who are up to bad stuff. But in the current conditions, if this system is introduced 100%, then it will be used for illegal aims. When we move onto SORM-3, then the FSB will be able to just log in to a provider's network independently-without the prosecutor's sanction-and look at what photos someone's posting, what they're saying on private chat applications.

Internet providers will be obliged to store this information for two days: we'll have to record our five gigabit-a-second stream for 48 hours-the amount of information will be crazy. As far as I know, SORM-3 isn't operational on the civilian net, perhaps it's operational at the Federal Protective Service [Russia's equivalent of the Secret Service] level, or at defence installations.

On the whole, though, users aren't trying to hide from this. Only 0.01% of people use encryption. You have to really look on our database to find someone using TOR.

To remain unnoticed, though, you have to behave-you shouldn't go to demonstrations or repost content from opposition websites or social media accounts. The best defence is to keep your head down. That way you won't attract the interest of the FSB. And if you do stick your head out, well, it's useless, I think.

In any case, I recommend you buy a SIM card at the local market and register it to some "Kazbek Alievich" [i.e. a random 'migrant' name; most SIM cards bought on the black market in Russia are registered to someone else, often labour migrants], install VPN on your mobile, turn on secret chat on Telegram, otherwise it's useless. In principle, the FSB should have the keys to the encryption algorithms, otherwise it's illegal, but it seems that Telegram hasn't shared its keys.

'We'll build our own RuNet just like North Korea'

There was news recently that Roskomnadzor conducted a trial attempt at logging Russia off from the net. Apparently it failed due to the small providers, who still allow unmonitored traffic. We haven't seen any signs that the net has been cut off yet, although 30% of Russia's traffics goes through foreign companies. Just as there are underground pipelines, there's a mass of unregistered cables too.

Even physically, the prospect of cutting us off completely isn't easy. One of the world's main traffic exchanges is located in Frankfurt. A load of Russian internet providers use it too. It's convenient-you can connect various providers with a few short cables. If they block the exchange, that is, cut the cables to Europe, for example, then they'll have to build an exchange at the physical border too.

'Illegal' channels to Frankfurt will remain in use. To cut everything off, you'd have to control everything. There's a lot of exchanges at the moment and, with time, there'll be even more. You can't control everything. Cross-border traffic between countries is clearly not controlled whatsoever. There were attempts to create a single operator for foreign traffic, but that hasn't gone beyond the conversation stage.

If there really has been a trial run at logging us off, then I think that's probably to develop a protocol in case the sanctions get worse. Theoretically, it's possible that global services that deal with domain names or IP addresses will cut Russia off.

Naturally, it'll be chaos at the start, but in a few days we'll build our own RuNet. Just like in North Korea.'

Editor's note: this article was translated from an original publication by TheInsider.ru, a website dedicated to corruption, economy and society in Russia. We are grateful to the author and the editorial team of TheInsider for their permission to translate and publish this account here.

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#17
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
November 2, 2015
Syrian crisis: Vienna-2 has brought UN, Iran and hope on board
Several months after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran's nuclear program was concluded, the Austrian capital has once again become the center of global diplomacy. This time 19 global and regional powers have come together in an attempt to find a solution to the Syrian conflict, the ramifications of which are reverberating across the Middle East and beyond.
SERGEI STROKAN, VLADIMIR MIKHEEV, SPECIAL TO RBTH

The cautious assessment of the outcome of the Vienna-2 meeting might be justified and yet the sheer scope of participants and the value of the decisions reached - including compromises reached between irreconcilable rivals like Iran and Saudi Arabia - elevate the event to the status of a diplomatic breakthrough.

The assembly of peacemakers - with the addition of Iran - agreed to concentrate on setting up a sustainable nationwide ceasefire in Syria, persuade conflicting parties to work out a new constitution and hold elections to be supervised by the United Nations. These elections should include all Syrian nationals including members of the diaspora and refugees in other countries who should have secure guarantees to cast votes and decide the fate and future of their embattled homeland.

Moreover, the Vienna-2 negotiators consented to hold a separate meeting later to draw up a comprehensive list of terrorist groups that are operating in Syria.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN's envoy to Syria, reflected the mood on the ground by saying it was "unimaginable" even a few weeks ago that all parties with such diverging interests would have agreed to talks. What's more, no one could have envisaged that the United Nations would be placed back at the wheel with a powerful mandate from all the actors. In this context, it is a symbolic achievement that two archenemies, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are sitting at the same table and talking of bringing peace to Syria where they have been at odds over the survival of Assad's regime.

Was it a sudden change of mood? Probably not. More likely it was the end result of Russia's painstaking and consistent diplomatic efforts to convince and persuade other counterparts that without Iran, a major protagonist of the big game going in and around Syria, nothing would be achieved and in fact could turn out for the worse.

Iranian academic Lana Ravandi-Fadei, a senior scientific collaborator at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Middle East Studies, talked to RBTH on this sensitive subject:

"Iran is very important for the negotiation process. Bashar al-Assad and the opposition are unable to come to any substantial agreement. It is the external actors like Iran, Russia, United States and Saudi Arabia that must provide the foundation for any agreement. Iran and Saudi Arabia play a powerful role in the internal situation in Syria. Saudi Arabia not only sponsors different opposition groups in Syria but also employs special units in direct combat there.

On the other hand, Iran supports Bashar al-Assad's regime economically, financially and militarily. The latter is shown by the involvement of the Lebanese Hezbollah combat units in Syria, which have become a crucial player in the civil war and provide great support for the government. It is worth mentioning that Syria has been the only country with which Iran has signed an agreement on mutual defense in the case of external aggression. So it is virtually impossible to resolve the Syrian wart without Iran."

- To what extent do you think that Russia and Iran can act as tandem players at these negotiations?

"During the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, many wondered what was the logic of Russia in being part of the P5+1 negotiation team. Would Iran fall into the embrace of the United States? Would Iran flood the global markets with its oil and hurt the Russian economy? What was there in the deal for Russia? Now with cooperation between Iran and Russian in Syria we see that the two countries had developed more plans for working together than many had realized."

So, could the emergence of three Iranian high-ranking diplomats at Vienna-2 gathering be interpreted as a breakthrough and a feather in the cap of Sergei Lavrov?

Alexei Arbatov, a Russian academic and political scientist, provided his insight into the matter for RBTH:

"I think it's a victory. Moscow and Tehran will almost certainly act in tandem. Our interests coincide. These interests are focused on assisting the government of Bashar al-Assad and helping him regain control over a large part of Syria. Not all of it but the territory primarily populated by Alawites."

- What is the middle game for this multi-layered conflict in Syria? The expert community is thoroughly split on the forecasts of the provisional political settlement. Where are you in this dispute?

"I side with the realists. First, the negotiations will go on for a long time. The major powers involved in talks do not control all the factions warring on the ground in Syria and definitely do not control the Islamic State. Second, the most that I can expect from negotiations is to achieve a ceasefire, primarily between Assad's government troops and the Free Syrian Army, which is representing the so-called "moderate" opposition. A ceasefire would be essential as without it there is no point in talking about a political reconciliation to pave the way for a composite government embracing representatives of all ethnic and religious groups."

Yet, it is still a long haul. The most divisive issue remains the figure of Bashar al-Assad with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry firmly stating that in no way can this person "unite and govern Syria," while adding that "Syrians deserve a different choice." One can find echoes here of the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who reiterated Moscow's stance stating, that "the Syrian people should decide Assad's fate" adding that he "did not say that Assad has to go or that Assad has to stay."

For many observers it was a clear sign that Moscow and Washington have inched towards a more compatible position on Syria. The relative consensus of Vienna-2 negotiators gives ground for a modest hope of pacifying the ravaged region. Moreover, Vienna-2 is a testimony to the comeback of diplomacy as the ultimate means of settling disputes and conflicts.

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 #18
Foreign Ministry: Moscow does not consider all those fighting against Damascus terrorists

MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Moscow does not consider all those who took up arms against the official Damascus to be terrorists, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

"We have never said that all those involved in the Syrian conflict are terrorists," she noted. "We said that there were terrorists, extremists and there was the armed opposition."

"That was why at the Vienna meeting the lists were compiled and a common understanding was developed of who should be reckoned among terrorists," Zakharova said. "Otherwise, what was the point of compiling these lists?".

Moscow does not confirm meeting with representatives of Free Syrian Army in Abu Dhabi

The spokeswoman didn't confirm a meeting with representatives of the Free Syrian Army in Abu Dhabi next week, but she noted that contacts may take place through the embassy.

"Our embassies maintain contacts with the Syrian opposition, this may be one of such contacts," she said. "I am unaware of the contacts through a deputy minister or a department director. Such contacts may take place through the embassy, this is routine work. We are in contact with the opposition on a daily basis."

"We have always said that we are working with a wide range of the opposition. The Russian foreign minister and his deputy have repeatedly stated that we do not rule out contacts with the Free Syrian Army. Moreover, we ask our partners to provide specific information on them, we are trying to work with them," Zakharova said.

"The Syrian opposition is multifaceted, versatile, many call themselves representatives of the Free Syrian Army. Our task is to understand who they are," the diplomat said. "We have stepped up contacts with the opposition, including in connection with the meeting in Vienna."

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 #19
Foreign Ministry: Preserving Syrian statehood is principally important for Russia

MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Russia's position on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syria settlement has not changed and some media reports to the opposite effect aim to bring discord and confusion, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

"This is not the first time [such media reports appear]. Moreover, such statements are not based on anything at all. We have grown accustomed to this and, therefore, there is sense in dismissing them," the diplomat said in reply to a TASS question.

"Those journalists and experts who are dealing seriously with the Syrian settlement and people in the street know that our position is clearly expressed," she added.

"The talk is not about whether we support or we don't support Assad. This talk is not about personal support but what matters is that this is not the business of Russia or some other state to decide who must be the president. This is the matter of the Syrian people," the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

"Preserving Syrian statehood is a principally important issue for us. This statehood is the guarantee of the struggle against terrorism in the country and in the region as a whole," Zakharova said.

It is the Syrian army that is the force that is confronting the Islamic State terrorist organization on the ground, the spokeswoman said.

"A new change of power in the region will not bring about anything positive but will be an additional element to the chaos, which has already spread to some adjacent countries," the spokeswoman said.

"This is our basic position and we are confirming it again and again. There can be no talk about any changes," Zakharova said.

'We are considering this [media reports on the alleged change of Russia's Syria position] as the desire to cause confusion, discord, including among Syrians, and bring about unnecessary chaos," Zakharova said.

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#20
AFP
November 4, 2015
Russia: Working With US, Rebels in Syria Air Campaign

MOSCOW - Moscow said Tuesday it worked with opposition groups in its latest Syrian airstrikes while the US said its pilots communicated with Russian aircraft, in tentative signs the powers are working together to end the civil war ahead of UN talks.

Russian said its jets bombed 24 targets in Syria using coordinates supplied by "opposition representatives", the first time it has claimed to work with those fighting Syria's regime since beginning its air offensive.

"The coordinates of all of these targets were given to us by opposition representatives," senior military official Andrei Kartapolov said, without specifying the groups involved.

Hours later the Pentagon said its fighter pilots communicated directly with Russian jets in the skies over Syria, in the first test of a new strategy to ensure the two sides' parallel campaigns do not boil over into conflict between them.

Washington and Moscow signed an agreement on October 20 laying out rules keep their pilots away from each other in the air, after several close encounters raised the prospect of a mid-air collision or some other dangerous encounter.

A US-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State forces since December 2014, while the Russians opened an air campaign in September against a broader range of rebels that Western powers say is designed to support its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The burgeoning coordination between the two comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is set to meet the United Nations' Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura in Moscow on Wednesday.

The two met Friday in Vienna alongside top diplomats from 17 other international players including the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in the broadest push yet to end the four-year conflict.

The participants - who did not include any representatives of the Syrian government or its opponents - agreed to ask the UN to broker a peace deal between the regime and opposition to clear the way for a new constitution and elections.

But divisions remain on the fate of Assad, with Russia and Iran resisting pressure from Western powers and Saudi Arabia to force the Syrian leader from power.

Syria's deputy foreign minister Faisal Moqdad on Tuesday ruled out any transition period in the war-torn country, insisting that Assad is "the legitimate president elected by the Syrian people."

'United Front'

Russia offered Tuesday to host a meeting between representatives of the Syrian government and rebel groups next week in Moscow, and said it has given Saudi Arabia and the US a list of the opposition figures it is working with.

Moscow said it had set up "working coordination groups" aimed at bolstering the fight against the Islamic State, but that the identities of those involved were being kept secret.

"Such close cooperation will allow us to unite the efforts of the government troops with other patriotic forces in Syria that used to be in the opposition and act as a united front against the common enemy - international terrorism," the defence ministry said.

The latest strikes hit targets close to Palmyra, Deir Ezzor, Ithriya and eastern Aleppo with assistance from the opposition, destroying "terrorist" command posts, munition stores and anti-aircraft artillery, it added.

Moscow has been bombing targets in Syria since September 30, and said Tuesday it has hit 2,084 targets in 1,631 sorties, including 52 training camps and 287 command posts, causing "significant losses to the terrorists" and undermining their morale.

"Our aim both in Syria and anywhere else is to fight terrorism first of all," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Moscow.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said warplanes belonging to either Russia or the Syrian regime bombed IS's de facto capital Raqa on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people including 13 jihadists.

London on Tuesday denied it was abandoning plans for a parliamentary vote to join air strikes in Syria as an influential committee of lawmakers advised against action.

Newspaper reports suggested Prime Minister David Cameron had abandoned plans to seek parliamentary approval to extend missions against IS from Iraq into neighbouring Syria.

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 #21
www.rt.com
November 5, 2015
Russian jet was avoiding air defense system when it entered Turkish airspace in October - Air Force

A Russian fighter jet was forced to enter Turkish airspace in early October while performing an evasive maneuver against a surface-to-air missile system, the commander of Russia's Air Force said.

"Our fighter jet was on a combat mission in Northern Syria in very dense cloud conditions. When the aircraft was passing along the Turkish border, the onboard equipment set off an alarm indicating the plane was being targeted by some kind of air defense system," Commander-in-Chief Viktor Bondarev told Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.

"The pilot had to take a split-second decision to perform an anti-missile maneuver. Well, [the plane] went a little bit into Turkish airspace. We acknowledged it frankly," Bondarev added.

On October 3, the Russian Defense Ministry said that a Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet had violated Turkish airspace for several seconds due to unfavorable weather conditions. Turkey's prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said at the time: "There is no tension between Turkey and Russia in this sense. This was a mistake, they respect Turkey's borders and this will not happen again."

The incident with the Russian jet was used to include NATO in the media war against Moscow's anti-terror operation in Syria, Aleksandr Grushko, Russia's envoy to the Western military alliance, said at the time.

NATO ignored all clarifications from Russia about the plane incident, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg describing the situation as "unacceptable violations of Turkish airspace."

"The impression is that the incident in Turkish airspace was used in order to include NATO as an organization into the information campaign unleashed in the West, which perverts and distorts the purposes of the operation conducted by the Russian air forces in Syria," Grushko said.

"Similar incidents are clarified through bilateral or military channels," Grushko said. "This is common practice."

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 #22
Moscow Times
November 5, 2015
What Could Possibly Go Wrong in Russia's Syrian Gambit?
By Mark Galeotti
Mark Galeotti is professor of global affairs at New York University.

Modern wars tend to start well, with deceptive techno-thriller ease. The pre-planned air strikes, mapped in cockpit camera video; the cruise missiles slashing trails of smoke and fire through a blue sky. They quickly tend to degenerate in messy, unpredictable ways that favor the desperate, the unpredictable, the insurgent and the unseen. With the Kremlin's new adventure in Syria, it is likely soon to find itself losing the initiative and faced with a series of dangerous and unpalatable options.

Precisely in order to try and ensure that it fights the war against the Islamic State and the other rebels on its own terms, Russia is confiningf itself (so far) to the deployment of airpower and long-range missiles. It is Syrian troops, the pro-regime militias and Hezbollah fighters who are actually taking the war to the enemy on the ground.

If only life - and war - were as straightforward and easy to control. First of all, there will be accidents and blunders and plain unexpected reversals. A plane will tumble from the sky when an errant bird gets sucked into its engine, broadcast on the Internet to a triumphalist rebel soundtrack. Or a Syrian commander will defect, or an army unit find itself hammered by Russian bombs because of poor targeting data. And anyway, the government offensive already seems bogged down.

More to the point, this is the age of asymmetric war, of looking for unexpected ways to play to your strengths and not the enemy's.

Russia sent a battalion of naval infantry marines to Syria so as not to have to rely on local troops for their security. Nonetheless, as the Americans have discovered to their cost, it is impossible to guarantee security against enemies who are determined, imaginative and willing to die for their cause. Already one soldier has died in still-unclear circumstances, and the Russian Embassy in Damascus has been attacked. This is just the start and rebels will find some new ways - perhaps a suicide attack on supply ships unloading munitions at Latakia? - to retaliate on their terms.

So what will Moscow do when its shiny arm's-length war suddenly gets dirty? And when it realizes that rebels who have fought for years against a regime with control of the skies and an evident willingness to rain explosives indiscriminately down from them are unlikely to be beaten just because Russia sends 30 new planes?

Maybe Moscow simply keeps its nerve, accepts that in war there will be losses and mishaps, and sticks to its strategy. Ironically, this is often the hardest thing for any government to do: We seem conditioned to assume that any action demands a reaction. Besides, it is highly unlikely that the Russian deployment will in the longer term reverse the seemingly inexorable retreat of Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. After a certain point, holding the line may simply no longer be an option.

So will Putin instead opt to cut his losses when things start to get difficult? It may be the most sensible option, but also the most politically difficult. Given that in part at least the Syrian adventure is being hyped at home to distract from the stalemate (and possible gradual withdraw) from the Donbass, how many wars can Putin seem to lose?

Sadly, the most likely outcome is the familiar one, witnessed time and again when over-confident powers find themselves embroiled in wars that stubbornly refuse to go the way they planned: "one more push." Think of the World War I generals throwing their soldiers into the no-man's-land meatgrinder, convinced that this time an assault exactly like all the previous ones would break the enemy line. Or the Soviet escalation in the early years of the Afghan war, certain deploying a few more regiments and devastating a few more villages would cow the rebels.

Foolishness, but a familiar one, born of a mix of overconfidence and insecurity, a certainty that victory is just over the horizon and a fear of the consequences of defeat. For a Kremlin painfully desperate to show both its own people and the outside world that Russia is a great power not to be challenged, it is hard to see how it will avoid this vicious circle of escalation.

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 #23
AFP
November 4, 2015
Money, patriotism drive Russians to join Syria mission

SEVASTOPOL, CRIMEA - When Oxana's sailor father left his home in Crimea's Black Sea port of Sevastopol in September, he just said he would be going to "the Mediterranean Sea."

But the family soon realized the true purpose of his mission - Russia's military operation in Syria.

"They sent a bunch of ships from Sevastopol and everyone they could find to make up the crews," said Oxana, who agreed to speak on condition her family name not be published to protect her father.

Before he left, Oxana's father - a retired navy officer - was working on a vessel providing logistic support for Russia's Black Sea fleet.

While he is not saying much during phone calls home about his latest mission or how long he will be away, she is convinced that he is now onboard a ship backing up Moscow's intervention in Syria.

"My father knows when he will be back but he is not saying, he can't," Oxana said.

"It was thought that it would be a few months but it's already clear that this would go until the New Year and may last longer," she said.

"He calls from a satellite phone, tells us nothing, all their conversations are recorded."

Oxana said she was not worried for her father's safety as he was not planning to go on shore but felt indignant, accusing the authorities of exploiting his sense of patriotism.

"My mom said recently that his latest salary had been transferred to his account - less than 10,000 rubles ($156)."

"They are using them any way they want, and he thinks he needs to be there for the sake of Russia, out of a sense of patriotism."

On Sept. 30, Russia launched a bombing campaign in Syria, saying it needed to target Islamic State jihadis, but the West has accused Moscow of seeking to prop up the regime of Bashar Assad and hitting moderate rebels.

Moscow has not publicly put a time frame on its campaign in Syria.

There is one other reason why Oxana believes her father was sent to help the mission in Syria - she suspects he was already sent there back in the 1980s as part of a secret Soviet deployment.

"Those who remember our first Syrian campaign, from the Soviet era, are especially in demand," she said.

After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and chased Syrian troops from Beirut, the Soviet Union sent several thousand troops to prop up Damascus.

The 1983 intervention - dubbed Caucasus-2 military drills - was shrouded in secrecy and set in motion after Syrian leader Hafez Assad, the father of Bashar Assad, came to Russia for talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

The young woman said she believes her father was on a mission in Syria in the 1980s - "before I was born" - although he never directly confirmed this.

Another Sevastopol-based source, who knows some of those who served in Syria in the 1980s, said they are still reluctant to talk about the Soviet-era mission.

"Many did not even tell their families what they got their awards for," she said on condition her first and last names not be published because she was not authorized to speak on the matter.

The new generation of Russian servicemen are equally reluctant to publicize their role in the current intervention, she said, estimating that more than 1,000 people have been sent to Syria from Sevastopol including marines.

The source, whose son used to serve in the army, said the servicemen had been promised in August that they would be rotated.

"Three months there, two months at home," she said.

"They were told that they would now be going to Syria regularly. Those who believe that their families will not survive so much time apart are beginning to quietly resign."

Those who left town in August have not spoken to their families since, she said.

"There is practically no communication with them. Relatives are hoping that everything is okay with them."

Many men have been enticed by the opportunity to earn double what they usually make, she said, adding that their monthly earnings at sea begin from around 50,000 rubles ($790).

Russia's intervention in the distant conflict has divided local military personnel.

"Some want to go to Syria but are rejected because of their age and health and others collect papers to avoid going due to health," she said.

In the end, supply exceeded demand.

"This has more to do with money than patriotism," she said.

"Because the war is far it is hard to imagine that we are protecting our homeland. Although there are those who believe that the enemy should be strangled in his lair."

"Those of my acquaintances whose children went there - they went after money," she said.

"They have been promised good salaries. Some are even hoping to buy apartments when these events are over."

Last month the authorities said a 19-year-old soldier serving at Russia's Hmeimim base in Syria hanged himself, in what became the country's first confirmed casualty of the intervention.

The defense ministry chalked up the suicide to relationship trouble but his family contested the claim, pointing to a broken nose, jaw and other injuries.

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 #24
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 5, 2015
Is an Assad victory in Syria the lesser of two evils?
Washington's policies in Syria might backfire, making it almost impossible to come up with a compromise on the future of the Syrian regime that involves Syria's moderate opposition.
By Dylan Royce
Dylan Royce is a senior at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University currently studying abroad in Vladimir, Russia. Previously, he was an intern at the Hudson Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Elliott School's Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.

As Russia presses ahead with its intervention in Syria, the Obama administration is falling under mounting pressure to somehow counter Moscow's move, though it has so far limited itself to demanding that Moscow cease attacks on targets unrelated to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS). This response suffers from the same misconceptions that led U.S. Syria policy to the dead end in which it is now trapped.

Where are the moderates?

When Washington criticizes Russia for targeting the Syrian opposition rather than ISIS, Americans probably imagine Putin's missiles raining down upon the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other moderate groups. U.S. media supports this illusion with maps of the conflict that make no distinction between different non-ISIS rebel groups. The New York Times, for instance, supplied its readers with maps of Russian airstrikes through Oct. 8 that place the vast majority within an area simply labeled "Rebel."

Reality is more complicated. According to territorial control maps by the Institute for the Study of War, about a third of Russia's supposedly anti-"rebel" airstrikes depicted in the New York Times map were carried out in al-Qaeda-controlled or -dominated areas. In addition, virtually all rebel-held territories either host the terrorist group or are controlled by factions that are under its influence, ideologically similar to it, or militarily dependent upon it.
Most rebel-held settlements are jointly occupied by the FSA, al-Qaeda (whose Syria wing is called al-Nusra), and the radically-Salafist Islamic Front, and jihadist-free territory is barely visible on a Rand Institute map of the conflict.

Thus, it is actually understandable that the New York Times and others have lumped the territory controlled by all non-ISIS rebels together - it is impossible to divide it meaningfully. Instead, U.S. media do not explain that this territory is al-Qaeda's just as much as it is the FSA's. This has two important implications.

First, just because Russia is not striking ISIS does not mean that it is striking the FSA deliberately (although it is doing that, too). It has frequently targeted al-Qaeda and other Salafist groups that are hardly any better.

Forbidding Russia to strike any non-ISIS opposition amounts to diplomatically defending the same organization that flew planes into the World Trade Center, and which in other theaters the U.S. would itself attack with Predator drones.

Who are the moderates?

Second, the realization that practically all rebel-controlled territory is at least partly in the hands of Salafists and al-Qaeda ought to raise the question, from which Washington for four years has averted its eyes, of what exactly would come of a U.S. "victory" in Syria. To answer this question, we must decide first, which rebel groups would make acceptable rulers of Syria, and second, whether they have a realistic chance of victory, or whether the U.S. can give them one.

The main rebel factions in the Syrian Civil War are, in roughly descending order of strength, ISIS, the Islamic Front, the al-Qaeda-led Army of Conquest, and the FSA. The FSA is generally seen as secular or (genuinely) moderately Islamist. Its victory in the war could be an acceptable, even optimal, outcome.

Al-Qaeda, its fellow travelers, and ISIS are obviously unacceptable, as their triumph would likely produce chaos, genocide, a fundamentalist regime within Syria, and the export of radical Salafism and terror.

Despite probably being the most powerful rebel group, the Islamic Front receives little attention in the West, usually amalgamated along with the FSA into a generic group of "rebels." In fact, it is little better than the more infamous al-Qaeda or ISIS.

A Rand Institute report describes the Front's members as "Salafist, that is, they believe in a literal interpretation of the Quran, reject Western political concepts that place man above God (e.g. democracy), and support the strict imposition of Islamic law, or Sharia. They see the overthrow of Assad as leading to an Islamic state."

The highest praise the Rand report can offer is the caveat that "not all" of the Front's members "embrace al-Qaeda's ideology of an unending global jihad against infidels."

This is not very reassuring. An Islamic Front regime might actually be one of the most dangerous possible outcomes in Syria. Like the Taliban, it would probably enjoy sufficient acceptance amongst its Sunni neighbors, some of whom actively support it, to survive for longer than an al-Qaeda or ISIS regimes subjected to constant internal pressure.

At the same time, one should not rule out that the Islamic Front's supporters might pursue the internal imposition and foreign export of Salafist Islamism, and the genocide of Syria's Alawite, Christian, and Kurdish minorities, just as its more radical counterparts would have.

Can the moderates win?

If the FSA is thus the only major rebel group whose victory in the Syrian civil war is likely to be an acceptable outcome for the U.S. and the West, what is the likelihood of that victory?

Unfortunately, it is hardly likely. In September 2013, there were estimations that the FSA made up around a quarter of the Syrian rebels' strength. A 2014 Rand Institute report warned that, "Islamist hardliners will increasingly dominate the rebellion."

Its September 2015 sequel confirmed that the FSA was "the principal loser among the rebels in 2014."

"By the middle of 2015, the FSA had virtually disappeared, its fighters having joined the more religiously motivated formations in Syria," the Rand Institute report reads.

With the FSA so much weaker than all other major opposition groups, it stands no realistic chance of contesting their rule in the aftermath of a hypothetical opposition victory. No amount of aid to the FSA, or attacks against the Syrian government on its behalf, can bring to power a group that is so fundamentally weak, and thus such actions will ultimately amount to de facto support for the Salafists, whose rule of Syria is at this point synonymous with opposition victory.

If Syria turns into Russia's new Afghanistan, it could also become a proxy war between Russia and the U.S., with all its grave implications. The rebels Washington supports will accomplish little more than helping the radicals into power, at which point they will be absorbed or destroyed.

In this case, Syria might fall under the rule of those who will cause the country, its region, and the West far more harm than the victory of Syrian President Bashar Assad (and, thus, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin) ever could have.

It is therefore time to accept that the U.S. has run out of moves in Syria. It has been checkmated, not by Putin's decisiveness or Obama's weakness, but by the inevitable outcome of decisions made years ago.

From the beginning of the civil war, Russia backed its most powerful participant, whom it supports without limitation or reservation, as the Kremlin can be confident that Assad will not later turn against it, and that supporting him will not inadvertently secure victory for another, highly undesirable faction.
The U.S., on the other hand, has had no choice but to spend the last four years unsuccessfully searching for rebels who are both competent and moderate, of whom it has apparently found twenty, whose competence remains debatable.

It is now, at last, clear that this effort, never especially promising, is utterly doomed by the eclipse of Syria's moderate opposition.

Washington must recognize that continuing to pursue increasingly pointless, desperate, and risky policies will fail in the best case, catastrophically backfire in the worst. Instead, Washington should acknowledge not only that Assad and his backers are likely to win the war, but also that this is the best, most realistic outcome.

Cooperation with them might be distasteful to those who view international politics as a morality play, but it could grant some influence over the conflict's outcome, or at least help end the bloodshed slightly sooner.

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 #25
Moscow shocked by London's unwillingness to share info that may shed light on A321 crash - Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW. Nov 5 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry is outraged by the fact that, while saying publicly that an explosive device on board the Russian Airbus A321 airliner could have caused its crash in Egypt on October 31, the British authorities have not shared any information giving rise to such assumptions with Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

"Frankly speaking, it's shocking to realize that the British government has some information that could shed some light on what happened in the skies over Egypt. It just turns out that, if this information exists - and it seems to exist, judging by the fact that the foreign secretary aired it - nobody has passed it on to Russia," Zakharova said at a news briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

She also described it as perplexing that this information was publicly aired not by a specialist but by the British foreign secretary.

Zakharova also urged countries possessing official information on possible causes of the crash to share it with Russia.

"Finding the truth in this case is a crucial matter for us," she said.

"If this information is not provided but is used exclusively for some public statements, then it means that some special ends are pursued there, but we believe that, if a state possesses any information on the Russian plane's crash in Egyptian airspace, this information should be provided to the investigation," Zakharova said.

Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov had said earlier that the Kremlin expected parties possessing information on possible causes of the A321 crash in Egypt to share it with the investigation.

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 #26
New Eastern Outlook
http://journal-neo.org
November 5, 2015
West Secretly Elated Over Downed Russian Airliner
By Ulson Gunnar
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook"

A Russian airliner bound for St. Petersburg crashed while flying over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, killing all on board. With the peninsula seeing fierce fighting recently as the presence of foreign-backed terrorist organizations has grown, immediate suspicion was raised regarding a potential terror attack involving either a bomb brought on board or a missile fired from below.

As Russia carries out its investigation of the disaster, the rest of the objective world waits for answers. For others, they have already begun drawing up narratives to use the disaster to serve their purposes. One such individual is John Bradley, a frequent contributor for The Economist, The Forward, Newsweek, The New Republic, The Daily Telegraph, Prospect, and The Independent.

He has also lectured at the Washington-based policy think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and for over 2 years, was given almost unlimited access across Saudi Arabia while writing his establishment-lauded book, "Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis."

His most recent work is an unsavory op-ed for the UK Spectator titled, "The Russian plane crash could undermine Putin's Syria strategy." In it, Bradley conveniently answers the most important question that will be asked if investigators determine the plane's destruction was an act of terrorism, "cui bono?"

Bradley describes not only how the disaster helps further undermine Egypt, (a nation struggling to balance between placating Western interests and and averting a "Libya-style" collapse within its own borders) but also how the incident would undermine Russia's efforts in Syria.

Bradley states:

"It now seems fairly likely that an explosion brought down the Russian passenger airline over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula over the weekend. One Metrojet official has already suggested that the 'only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft' and they have ruled out technical failure or human error. If the ongoing investigation proves that to be the case, it will obviously have an immediate and catastrophic impact on Egypt's already decimated tourism industry."

Regarding Russia in particular, he states:

"But it would also be the most unwelcome news possible for Vladimir Putin, who sold military intervention in Syria to the Russian people as a way of making them safer. In turn, opponents of Russian intervention - the US, Turkey and the Gulf Arab despots - would be privately elated. For does this not prove their argument that Russian intervention only complicates the situation on the ground while increasing the threat of terror attacks?"

But should the downed airliner turn out to be the victim of terrorism, not only would "the US, Turkey and the Gulf Arab despots" be "privately elated," it also appears that ISIS would have provided them a much needed card to play during future negotiations regarding the conflict in Syria. After noting that ISIS took credit for the downed airliner as it was closing in on a motorway used to resupply Syrian forces operating in Aleppo, Bradley explains:

"All [at the negotiations], of course, realise that it is only worth negotiating from a position of strength. The anti-Assad allies will be hoping that Putin now fears a new Afghanistan, and will therefore be more flexible on the question of Assad's departure. They will also be determined to ramp up support for the so-called 'moderate rebels', especially given that Washington has recently sent in Special Forces to 'advise' them (or, in other words, act as human shields against Russian bombs)."

Bradley sums up his op-ed by almost celebrating the fact that those who assumed Russia's entry into the Syrian conflict would spell its quick conclusion were "sadly mistaken."

Should it turn out that terrorists brought down the Russian airliner, it certainly would fulfill Bradley's summary regarding "cui bono?" Bradley himself admits that US special forces are simply serving as "human shields" for Western backed militants against Russian strikes. These same militants have in recent days, been coordinating with ISIS openly in the advances mentioned by Bradley along the Syrian motorway. It is clear that ISIS is not a third team competing in this regional conflict, but rather a member of the very team that has been reaping the most benefits from its existence, "the US, Turkey and the Gulf Arab despots."

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 #27
www.rt.com
November 5, 2015
What's the big deal between Russia and the Saudis?
By Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of 'Globalistan' (Nimble Books, 2007), 'Red Zone Blues' (Nimble Books, 2007), 'Obama does Globalistan' (Nimble Books, 2009) and a contributing editor for a number of other books, including the upcoming 'Crossroads of Leadership: Globalization and the New American Century in the Obama Presidency' (Routledge). When not on the road, he alternates between Sao Paulo, New York, London, Bangkok and Hong Kong.

DOHA - Amidst the wilderness of mirrors surrounding the Syrian tragedy, a diamond-shaped fact persists: Despite so many degrees of separation, the Saudis are still talking to the Russians. Why?

A key reason is because a perennially paranoid House of Saud feels betrayed by their American protectors who, under the Obama administration, seem to have given up on isolating Iran.

The Saudis can't intellectually understand the see-saw of incoherent Beltway policies due to the power struggle between Zionist neocons and the old establishment. No wonder they might be tempted to move to the Russian side of the fence. But for that to happen there will be many a price to pay.

So let's talk about oil. In energy terms, an oil deal with the House of Saud would mean a lot to Russia. A deal could produce incremental oil revenue for Moscow of around $180 billion a year. The rest of the GCC does not really count: Kuwait is a US protectorate; Bahrain is a Saudi resort area; Dubai is a glitzy heroin money-laundering operation. The UAE itself is a wealthy group of pearl divers. And Qatar, as 'Bandar Bush' famously remarked, is "300 people and a TV station," plus a decent airline that sponsors Barcelona.

Riyadh - paranoia included - fully took note of the Obama administration's supposed "policy" of dumping Saudi Arabia over an alleged Iranian natural gas bonanza, which would supposedly replace Gazprom in supplying Europe. That won't happen, however, because Iran needs at least $180 billion in long-term investment to upgrade its energy infrastructure.

Moscow for its part fully took note how Washington blocked South Stream. It's also been trying to block Turk Stream - but that may come to nothing after Erdogan's recent election landslide in Turkey. Additionally, Washington has been pressuring Finland, Sweden, Ukraine and Eastern Europe to weaponize further against Russia in NATO.

The King goes to Vlad

From the House of Saud's point of view, three factors are paramount. 1) A general sense of 'red alert' as they have been deprived from an exclusive relationship with Washington, thus becoming incapable of shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East; 2) They have been mightily impressed by Moscow's swift counter-terrorism operation in Syria; 3) They fear like the plague the current Russia-Iran alliance if they have no means of influencing it.

That explains why King Salman's advisers have pressed the point that the House of Saud has a much better chance of checking Iran on all matters - from "Syraq" to Yemen - if it forges a closer relationship with Moscow. In fact, King Salman may be visiting Putin before the end of the year.

Tehran's priority, on the other hand, is to sell as much natural gas as possible. That makes Iran a natural competitor with Gazprom (not for the moment, as most extra exports will be directed towards Asia, not Europe). In terms of natural gas, there's no Russia-Saudi competition. Oil is a different story; a Russia-Saudi partnership would make sense in the framework of an OPEC cutback - if only they could find a deal over the Syria tragedy.

One of the untold stories of the recent Syria-driven diplomatic flurry is how Moscow has been silently working on mollifying both Saudi Arabia and Turkey behind the scenes. That was already the case when the foreign ministers of US, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia met before Vienna.

Vienna was crucial not only because Iran was on the table for the first time but also because of the presence of Egypt - incidentally, fresh from recent discovery of new oil reserves, and engaging in a reinforced relationship with Russia.

The absolute key point was this paragraph included in Vienna's final declaration: "This political process will be Syrian-led and Syrian-owned, and the Syrian people will decide the future of Syria."

It's not by accident that only Russian and Iranian media chose to give the paragraph the appropriate relevance. Because this meant the actual death of the regime change obsession, much to the distress of US neocons, Erdogan and the House of Saud.

That does not necessarily mean the Russia-Iran alliance agrees 100 percent on Syria. This week, IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari once again explained Iran does not see any alternative to Bashar al-Assad as leader of Syria. He even acknowledged Moscow might not entirely share this view - which is exactly what Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has been saying.

But that's not the main point. The main point is the death of the regime change option, brought about by Moscow. And that leaves Putin free to further project his extremely elaborate strategy.

He called Erdogan on Wednesday to congratulate him on his and the AKP's election landslide. This means that now Moscow clearly has someone to talk to in Ankara. Not only about Syria. But also about gas.

Putin and Erdogan will have a crucial energy-related meeting at the G20 summit on November 15 in Turkey; and there's an upcoming visit by Erdogan to Moscow. Bets are on that the Turk Stream agreement will be - finally - reached before the end of the year. And on northern Syria, Erdogan has been forced to admit by Russian facts on the ground and skies that his no-fly zone scheme will never fly.

Slouching towards Mecca

That leaves us with the much larger problem: the House of Saud.

There's a wall of silence surrounding the number one reason for Saudi Arabia to bomb and invade Yemen, and that is to exploit Yemen's virgin oil lands, side by side with Israel - no less. Not to mention the strategic foolishness of picking a fight with redoubtable warriors such as the Houthis, which have sowed panic amidst the pathetic, mercenary-crammed Saudi army.

Riyadh, following its American reflexes, even resorted to recruiting Academi - formerly Blackwater - to round up the usual mercenary suspects as far away as Colombia.

It was also suspected from the beginning, but now it's a done deal that the responsible actor for the costly Yemen military disaster is none other than Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the King's son who, crucially, was sent by his father to meet Putin face-to-face.

To compound the turmoil, the Yemen disaster has unleashed some hardcore shadow play in Riyadh involving those sidelined by the Salman reign, especially former King Abdullah's clan. A nasty mess does not even begin to describe it.

Meanwhile, Qatar will keep crying because it was counting on Syria as a destination point for its much-coveted gas pipeline to serve European customers, or at least as a key transit hub on the way to Turkey.

Iran on the other hand needed both Iraq and Syria for the rival Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline because Tehran could not rely on Ankara while it was under US sanctions (this will now change, fast). The point is Iranian gas won't replace Gazprom as a major source for the EU anytime soon. If it ever did, or course, that would be a savage blow to Russia.

In oil terms, Russia and the Saudis are natural allies. Saudi Arabia cannot export natural gas; Qatar can. To get their finances in order - after all even the IMF knows they are on a highway to hell - the Saudis would have to cut back around ten percent of production with OPEC, in concert with Russia; the oil price would more than double. A 10 percent cutback would make a fortune for the House of Saud.

So for both Moscow and Riyadh, a deal on the oil price, to be eventually pushed towards $100 a barrel, would make total economic sense. Arguably, in both cases, it might even mean a matter of national security.

But it won't be easy. OPEC's latest report assumes a basket of crude oil to be quoted at only $55 in 2015, and to rise by $5 a year reaching $80 only by 2020. This state of affairs does not suit either Moscow or Riyadh.

Meanwhile, fomenting all sorts of wild speculation, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh still manages to collect as much as $50 million a month from selling crude from oilfields it controls across "Syraq", according to the best Iraq-based estimates.

The fact that this mini-oil caliphate is able to bring in equipment and technical experts from "abroad" to keep its energy sector running beggars belief. "Abroad" in this context means essentially Turkey - engineers plus equipment for extraction, refinement, transport and energy production.

One of the reasons this is happening is that the US-led Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists (CDO) - which includes Saudi Arabia and Turkey - is actually bombing the Syrian state energy infrastructure, not the mini oil-Caliphate domains. So we have the proverbial "international actors" in the region de facto aiding ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to sell crude to smugglers for as low as $10 a barrel.

Saudis - as much as Russian intel - have noted how ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is able to take over the most advanced US equipment that takes months to master, and instead integrate it into their ops at once. This implies they must have been extensively trained. The Pentagon, meanwhile, sent and will be sending top military across "Syraq" with an overarching message: if you choose Russia we won't help you.

ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, for their part, never talks about freeing Jerusalem. It's always about Mecca and Medina.

So make no mistake; there's much more pointing to a possible Russia-Saudi deal than meets the eye.

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 #28
www.rt.com
November 5, 2015
Three-time winner: Putin tops Forbes' 'most powerful people' list

For the third year in a row, Forbes has ranked the Russian President as the most powerful person in the world, putting Vladimir Putin above Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama.

"Putin continues to prove he's one of the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants," the magazine said.

Putin's ratings haven't suffered a bit - even after sanctions imposed by the Western countries and Russia's deepening recession. On the contrary, his approval ratings in Russia have rocketed up to almost 90 percent.

Russia's ongoing anti-terror operation in Syria, in which targeted airstrikes have already killed hundreds of militants, destroyed tons of terrorist hardware and much of their infrastructure, as well as Putin's face-to-face meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad have contributed to "making the US and NATO look weak in the region, and helping rebuild Russian influence abroad," Forbes noted.

Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world according to Forbes, has risen from fifth place last year to second place in 2015. Her strong stances when dealing with the influx of Syrian refugees and the Greek financial crisis brought her up to the new level.

Barack Obama wasn't so lucky this year, giving way to both Putin and Merkel and coming in third. In the closing stages of his second term in office, Obama is losing influence and power. However, Forbes still lauds the United States as "the world's greatest economic, cultural, diplomatic, technological and military power."
 
"The men and women who are featured on Forbes' annual ranking of the World's Most Powerful People are the 0.00000001% - the global elite whose actions move the planet. These heads of state, financiers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs truly run the world," the magazine says in describing its list.

Forbes considers hundreds of candidates from various spheres and bases its decision on four criteria.

The first is whether the person has influence over lots of other people. A good example here is Pope Francis, who is regarded as a spiritual leader by more than a billion people, and thus came in forth.

The second criterion is the financial condition of a candidate. Heads of the states were compared according to their countries' GDPs, and CEOs by their companies' revenues. Personal financial assets were also taken into consideration, which obviously helped Bill Gates secure sixth place.

The number of "spheres" over which a candidate has power is the third criteria.

Lastly, it is also important how actively and successfully a candidate wields their power.

"Any ranking of the world's most powerful people is going to be subjective, so we don't pretend ours is definitive. It's meant to be the beginning of a conversation, not the final word," Forbes concluded.

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 #29
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
November 5, 2015
Is Putin the Most Powerful Man in the World?
By Anatoly Karlin

According to Forbes, yes he is, for the third time in a row.

A natural question would be - how on Earth do you actually quantify such things? Forbes relies on an index consisting of a political/demographic component (control over people), a financial component (wealth), prominence in various spheres (e.g. automative, space, financial, etc.), and whether they actually used their power.

Even so, is it really plausible for Merkel to be ahead of Obama? For semi-retired Bill Gates to be ahead of virtually all other national leaders? For the Pope to be ahead of Xi Jinping? (Stalin's jibes about how many divisions the Pope has regardless, I really don't see how the leader of an emerging superpower could be less powerful than a media celebrity priest).

Perhaps a slightly more interesting and legitimate way of calculating individual power would be to calculate what share any one person has over the "power" of his country or countries. (The reason for this is that, like it or not - and rhetoric about globalization to the contrary - the nation-state remains far and away the most dominant actor on the international stage. Even if you think that lobbying groups, corporations or even the Illuminati rule the roost, nation-states are still the vectors by which they exercise their influence).

According to my estimates of comprehensive national power (CNP) for 2015, the leading country is the US, set to 100, followed by China (52), Russia (28), UK/France (both 20), India (18), Japan (17), and Germany (15).

Does this mean that Obama and Xi Jinping are more powerful than Putin? Not necessarily.

Putin, arguably, has far more relative power over Russia than either of them. In particular, both Obama and Xi Jinping are subject to a two term limit (even if they are enforced very differently). Putin's two term limit is a mere formality. Although Putin has to satisfy some key interest groups, and as a fairly intelligent person consults widely with experts and opinion polls, he still has an astounding degree of leeway over Russian policy. In contrast, the position of the General Secretary in the Chinese Politburo has been characterized as merely "first amongst equals." Any US President needs to contend for power with the other branches of government, first and foremost, the legislature. This makes him even less relatively powerful.

So if we posit that, say, Putin "controls" 75% of power in Russia, versus 40% for Xi Jinping and 20% for Obama - this is just about plausible, I think - then the Forbes ranking would be confirmed. But it is impossible to imagine how Merkel could conceivably take second place. That is just the recent media furore making itself felt on Forbes' pages.

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#30
Bloomberg
November 5, 2015
Putin Thinks He's 'Vladimir the Great,' Condoleezza Rice Says
By Sangwon Yoon

As U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice knew Vladimir Putin up close. One thing he liked to remind her during her time in the Bush administration was how Russia had "only been great when it has been led by great men, like Alexander II and Peter the Great."

Hearing him eulogize former tzars, there was a little voice in her head that wanted to suggest "and Vladimir the Great?," Rice told a group of investors and bankers at an annual forum hosted by Fitch Ratings Ltd. in New York on Wednesday. As a diplomat she never did out of politeness, "but that is how he thinks."

Her musings on Putin's motivations seek to put Russia's growing assertiveness on the world stage, from the annexation of Crimea to the bombing campaign in Syria, as part of a grander scheme to restore Russian influence to its heyday. International sanctions and its first recession since 2009 have done little to blunt Putin's standing among Russians.

"He has decided that he will find a way to avenge what he considers the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, which is the collapse of the Soviet Union," said Rice, who served under President George W. Bush and was a diplomatic adviser to his father during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Economic Pain

Despite how much the Russian economy suffers from the low price of oil -- its budget is balanced at $105 per barrel not $80 -- Rice said she "would be very surprised if you see a change in the way that they approach the economy." She explained that was because Putin's largesse is rooted in the need to maintain his core constituents: the uneducated, the elderly, the retired military, and the rural populations.

His game plan for Syria -- Russia's first military foray outside the former Soviet Union since its occupation of Afghanistan in 1979 -- is not much of a mystery, Rice said.

"He doesn't want disorder and so he believes stabilizing Assad will stabilize Russian influence" but "let's not assume that he has the same definition of order that we do either," she said. "Partition of Syria, control a third of it call that Syria -- why not? So our idea of stability and his are not the same."

Dilma, Angela

Casting her net wider, Rice noted there is almost no government that isn't suffering from a governance crisis: from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, at risk of impeachment less than a year after getting re-elected, to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose political future is at stake because of her open-door policy for refugees fleeing Syria.

For Rice, when the U.S. backs away from its role as enforcer of international order, a more assertive Russia and China step in: "Great powers can't get tired because the international order is not self-governing."

"Let me let you in on a little secret," said Rice, a Stanford Graduate School of Business professor. "There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.

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#31
New York Times
November 3, 2015
Putin's Forever Wars
By Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen is the author, most recently, of "The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy."

This is war. Vladimir Putin will never tire of declaring it.

Every autumn since 2004 Mr. Putin has gathered a large group of international political scientists and commentators for a couple of days of discussions. The gathering, called the Valdai Discussion Club, has shifted shapes over the years, changing locations, personalities and topics. It used to be held in Valdai, a national park about halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, but this year it was held in Sochi, where facilities left over from the Winter Olympics had fallen into disuse. It used to focus largely on Russian politics and the economy, but in the last few years has turned increasingly to Russia's role in the world. It used to draw virtually all the Western Russia specialists who could get an invitation, offering, as it does, an opportunity to interact with a president who is usually inaccessible.

But in recent years a number of Western scholars have dropped out or been disinvited. Attendance peaked at over 200 in 2013, and dropped to roughly half that number the following year. Still, the basic nature of the event remains constant: It is a junket, an affair lavishly catered at the Kremlin's expense, at which Mr. Putin puts forward his vision of himself and his country.

This year's gathering was titled "Societies Between War and Peace: Overcoming the Logic of Conflict in Tomorrow's World," but in his keynote address Mr. Putin dispensed with the "between." The world is at war, he explained. And it is all the fault of the United States.

Back in the 1970s the underground Soviet singer-songwriter Alexander Galich sang of his country, "We stand for peace and we are preparing for war." The Kremlin punished him for this and similar songs by kicking him out of the country, but this particular phrase was actually an accurate rendition of Soviet rhetoric. Much like the American gun lobby today, the Soviet rulers claimed that the only way to stay safe was to be armed to the teeth. Mr. Putin has now taken this logic a step further by claiming that the only way to maintain peace is to actually wage war.

"Peace, a life at peace, has always been and continues to be an ideal for humanity," said Mr. Putin. "But peace as a state of world politics has never been stable." In other words, peace is an anomaly, a fragile state of equilibrium that, Mr. Putin explained, is exceedingly difficult to sustain. The advent of nuclear arms helped, he said, by introducing the specter of mutually assured destruction, and for a while - from the 1950s through the 1980s - "world leaders acted responsibly, weighing all circumstances and possible consequences." He thus cast the Cold War as the golden era of world peace.

Since the Cold War ended, the world has descended into disarray. "In the last quarter-century, the threshold for applying force has clearly been lowered," said Mr. Putin. "Immunity against war, acquired as a result of two world wars literally on a psychological, subconscious level, has been weakened." The United States is the primary culprit because it has thrown the world out of equilibrium by asserting its dominance. Mr. Putin, who has cited different examples of this American behavior in the past, this time focused on the missile defense system and its recent tests in Europe.

Mr. Putin's speech then took a short detour as he ranted about the United States not playing well with others, including France and Japan. Then he got on the topic of Syria. He repeated what he has said before: Russian military intervention there is legitimate because Russia is protecting Syria's sole legal government, that of Bashar al-Assad, and the United States can choose to accept this and negotiate with Russia, or find itself fighting a war against it.

It is important to listen to what Mr. Putin is saying. His narrative of resisting U.S. world domination is familiar, but the key point he made at his meeting concerns his views on war - and peace. The strategic purpose of his wars is war itself. This is true in Ukraine, where territory was a mere pretext, and this is true of Syria, where protecting Mr. Assad and fighting ISIS are pretexts too. Both conflicts are wars with no end in sight because, in Mr. Putin's view, only at war can Russia feel at peace.

A totalitarian society seeks to be mobilized, and in this sense Mr. Putin's statement is verifiably true: The more Russia reverts to its totalitarian habits, the more comfort it will derive from a constant state of war. It is useless, in the face of such single-minded determination, to caution against the return of the Cold War, as though Americans could stave it off simply by not wanting to be involved. The war is on, and Mr. Putin has been sparing no effort trying to get that message across.

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 #32
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
November 2, 2015
AFTER MERKEL FINISHES DESTROYING GERMANY, CAMERON EUROPE, AND AFTER OBAMA LOSES HIS WAR AGAINST THE KREMLIN, PUTIN WILL BE THE LAST MAN FLYING - THAT'S RUSSIA WITHOUT THE OLIGARCHS
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Footnotes, links, and photos here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14441]

Since the US started the regime dominoes falling in Kiev in February 2014, the Polish regime has already toppled, and the French one is doomed - President Francois Hollande will be defeated by every one of the candidates now running to succeed him, including Marine Le Pen of the National Front. The British Prime Minister David Cameron can postpone his day of reckoning, but on the margins of Europe, not inside. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has less time, fewer supporters. When Merkel topples, she will take the European Union (EU) into the shambles with her.

Russia, under constant attack by the US, Germany, France and Britain in the war to overthrow President Vladimir Putin, is now the only European country to show more, not less voter support for the incumbent leadership. It is also the only one with the capability to repel unwanted migration; convert its economy to domestically sustainable growth; and defeat its foreign enemies by force. The war to defend Europe from Russia is destroying Europe, fast.

When there is international war, international capital is obliged to become national. Historically, this transformation has been enforced by Elizabethan-type naval privateering, Napoleonic-type blockades, Trading with the Enemy statutes, or US-type sanctions. During these episodes international capitalism ceases to exist except as black marketeering or smuggling. The regulation (reform) of international markets becomes subordinated to national capital interests, so national cronies are bound to win over international reformers.

US and EU sanctions of the type introduced since March 2014 (individual, sectoral, scalpel, stealth) represent one front in the US-EU war against Russia. This form of warfare puts a stop to the internationalization of capital, such as US dollar pricing in commodity trade; the clearing role of US banks; and money transfer systems like SWIFT, Visa, and Mastercard. It requires Russia (China, India too) to nationalize their capital institutions, instruments, and apparatchiki.

The introductory justification for US sanctions as an attack on the "crony circle" around Putin was camouflage for a strategy of regime change, not a campaign for the clean-up of international capital abuses, tax avoidance, corruption. Extra-territorial prosecution by the US of corruption and crony capitalists is a warfighting tactic, not a business policy nor a jurisprudential doctrine. It is applied against "enemies", such as Dmitry Firtash [1], but not against "friends", such as Yulia Tymoshenko [2].

The disclosure last week of memoranda by US Government lawyers to President Barack Obama, justifying the planned assassination of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, confirms what is obvious in the war against Russia. "There was also a trump card," the New York Times reports [3]. "While the lawyers believed that Mr. Obama was bound to obey domestic law, they also believed he could decide to violate international law when authorizing a covert action, officials said."

Force isn't the only violation of domestic US law that can be employed abroad. Bribery is an ancient tool of state strategy; it is certainly not a monopoly of the Kremlin, nor of the White House. The ancient Roman empire, and the Byzantine empire which followed it for three times as long, illustrate the obvious. Paying money to neutralize your enemies, or to persuade them to be friends, is far more cost-effective, predictable, and less risky than deploying large standing armies capable of putting down local rebellions, cross-border raids, or invasions. For an accounting of the cost to the US of the unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, read this [4].

It is just as obvious that standing armies and their weaponry cannot defend borders or territories in depth without internal tax collection systems to pay the forces' bill. In the last years of the Soviet Union, the Politburo in Moscow unsuccessfully tried armed intervention in Lithuania, then Azerbaijan. But they swiftly gave up the force option, and abandoned the effort to enforce direct rule. They took longer to be persuaded to abandon the means to keep the rouble zone of the former Soviet states intact through a single central bank and a common system of rouble financing.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, instead of the military, administrative and financial controls of the old system, the Kremlin used (created) the Russian oligarchs to restore a significant measure of its previous influence. Not as directly nor as obviously potent as the Communist Party, KGB security, the Gosbank apparatus, and the Red Army commands had been before 1991; notwithstanding, the oligarchs were effective in restoring personal influence with the Central Asian governing elites, obtaining thereby unique means to anticipate and neutralize such threats to Russian state interests as may have been in contemplation. The Russians were able to do this by paying cash - at a minuscule fraction of the old Soviet price.

The US employed exactly the same means, both inside the Russian Federation, and inside the former Soviet Union. The case of the US Government's prosecution [5] of James Giffen (right) for bribing high officials in Kazakhstan is exemplary. Giffen's defence in a New York federal court against charges of foreign bribery and corruption was that he was acting on behalf of the CIA. The federal judge upheld the defence and dismissed the prosecution, saying: "Suffice it to say, Mr. Giffen was a significant source of information to the U.S. government and a conduit of secret information from the Soviet Union during the
Cold War. He undertook that effort as a volunteer and was one of the only Americans with sustained and reliable access to the highest levels of Soviet officialdom...These relationships, built up over a lifetime, were lost the day of his arrest. This ordeal must end. How does Mr. Giffen reclaim his reputation? This court begins by acknowledging his service."

In the Russian sphere of influence, the oligarch system (including the state energy corporations) has been successful in assuring the Kremlin's strategic interests in Armenia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It has been less successful, though still positively supportive, in Belarus. It has been unsuccessful in Georgia and Ukraine.

In these countries, once the US opted to use force - never mind whether this took hybrid or proxy forms - the Kremlin was obliged to react with counter-force. The defeat of US force in Georgia in August 2008 led to the much greater use of US force in Ukraine in 2014. In Ukraine the substantial asset holdings, energy supply controls, and political clientelism which Russia, its state banks and the Russian oligarchs had established in Ukraine proved unguarded and impotent when the US used force to overthrow the regime of President Victor Yanukovich. Once that occurred, inside the Kremlin Putin lost the balancing effect of his "internationalist" and "business" factions, and was obliged to follow the course predicted and mapped out, not by the siloviki (as they were customarily understood), but by the General Staff and the intelligence services. The consequence has been a quiet revolution noone outside Russia has noticed.

The Russian oligarch system (aka Russian crony capitalism) was first designed to keep a weak, corrupt, American client, President Boris Yeltsin, in power. It then turned out to be well suited to the projection of Russian economic power abroad and to the expansion of Putin's domestic support after he had eliminated threats from the front rank of the oligarchs - Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The system was volatile and competitive, but stable until the point when the US used force for regime change in Russia.

From then on it has become obvious the system lacks political clout in the countries and markets where the Russian oligarchs had tried convincing the Kremlin they were powerful. Mikhail Fridman had, continues to keep, valuable assets in Ukraine, but no political power when it came to the crunch last year. Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov are among the richest men living in the UK; they have proved impotent as British capital joined forces with the US to attack Putin. Alexander Lebedev owns two London newspapers and a television station, but his son Evgeny uses these media to bite the hand that has fed him. Mikhail Prokhorov, Alexander Abramov and Vagit Alekperov, the oligarchs with the largest capital commitments in the US, have failed to put up the resistance which their peers from other countries show, when the US Government or Congress turns hostile.

These oligarchs have proved they are maladapted for war-fighting. That's because they have been internationalizing their capital, and in so doing making themselves hostage to the instruments of US and European war-making. Three Russian political figures have understood this, and said so publicly - the deputy prime minister for defence, Dmitry Rogozin (below, left); sometime presidential advisor Sergei Glazyev [6]; and Colonel Igor Girkin (Strelkov, right)), proponent of the Novorussian war.

All three are on the US-EU sanctions lists [7].

Through the collapse of the international commodity trade and the cutoff of their international financing, the indebtedness of the oligarchs has resulted in their virtual nationalization by the Russian state banks. Individually, oligarchs remain for as long as Putin and the security services judge them to be patriotic and loyal; and on condition they accept their new role as state trustees rather than entrepreneurial capitalists.

Rearguard resistance, like that of Igor Zyuzin of Mechel towards the takeover of his bankrupt coal-mining and steel group by Sberbank, is the exception proving the rule [8]. More exemplary is Oleg Deripaska's recent conversion of Rusal, the aluminium monopoly, from global exporter of commodity metal to vertically integrated manufacturer for the domestic market of bauxite ore to aluminium window-frames; for the details, read this [9].

Then there is the case of Alexei Mordashov. The last time Putin called in the oligarchs for marching orders was over dinner at the Kremlin on December 19, 2014. Here's the guest list [10]; Mordashov was seated alphabetically on Putin's right. A month later, on January 19, he met Putin (below) at the Kremlin for a more intimate discussion [11].

The partial Kremlin transcript records Mordashov as telling Putin he is content to be focusing on Russia nowadays - indeed, he said, he is making more profit because of it. "Last year, we increased our production volume slightly: steel production went up by about 2 percent. Overall, we achieved good indicators, you could say, the world's leading indicators in terms of such important factors as production profitability and net debt volume. At the same time, we did a great deal of work abroad, but came to the conclusion that our future lies primarily in Russia, in the Russian market, and our production here is most efficient. We sold the North American division and are focusing almost entirely on our Russian assets. This has led to a fairly high profit level." For an accounting of the several billion dollars Mordashov invested in the US, instead of Russia, and then lost, read this [12].

"We believe our future lies primarily in the Russian market," he went to say what he has no alternative but to acknowledge. "Right now, there is a lot of talk about the difficult times and so on. But I think that what is happening now, in spite of some serious difficulties, also represents good potential for growth. In other words, what is happening is a serious correction to the macroeconomic indicators, but on the other hand, these events are making national production more competitive."

Mordashov doesn't make these trips to Putin's office just to kowtow. He usually asks for permission to spend money abroad; for what happened after Putin granted his request in May 2006, click to read [13]. On January 19 last, this appears to have been no exception. The Kremlin transcript breaks off with Putin saying: "Good. Thank you." Did Mordashov go on to say that he wants to spend more than a billion dollars buying shares in Tui, the London-listed, German-headquartered tourism group [14]? Mordashov's spokesman in Moscow won't answer, but the evidence appearing in Germany suggests that Mordashov asked for permission, and Putin gave it.

According to the German reports, which have been repeated in the Moscow business media, in August Mordashov lodged an application with the German anti-trust regulator to buy 12% of the shares of Tui, to add to his existing stake of 13%. The German report appeared [15] on August 21; the Russian report on September 4 [16]. Mordashov told the German government he is acting through a Cyprus company called Unifirm. The proposed purchase of 71 million Tui shares would cost Mordashov £859 million ($1.3 billion) at the current market price [17]. Without revealing the cost, he also told a Moscow newspaper: "I can and I want to [increase my shareholding], I think. I think that I will not pass the threshold of 30%, after which I would be required to make an offer to shareholders. My desired package - 20% to 25%, depending on the situation." This is the largest single investment by a Russian oligarch offshore, which Putin has personally authorized since he publicly announced he is forbidding it [18]. What next?

The American war - including the Ukraine front, the Syrian front, the North African front - cannot be supportable for long in Europe because the costs are too great for country budgets to pay, and for domestic constituencies to tolerate. The refugee crisis demonstrates that the spillover of these American wars is breaking up every form of European accord and consensus decision-making, threatening thereby all the governing parties, and most of the opposition parties across Europe. The Putin system of governance is better adapted now than the European system of governance for protracted war, although the domestic costs are heavy.

Cronyism in US governance is also maladaptive in the present situation. This is because no American ruler can implement any undertaking he makes, either to friend or foe, so US war gambits cannot be agreed on with allies (as the Afghanistan, Iraq and Libyan wars once were). Nor can negotiated peace settlements with rivals or adversaries be stable.

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 #33
http://112.international (Kyiv)
November 4, 2015
Labour migration: Ukraine is losing people and future
Branches of transnational corporations and valuable employees leave Ukraine
By Ivan Zatsarin

According to the rating published by Credit Suisse bank, Ukraine considered as the poorest country. Suddenly it turned out that even Moldova, the poorest European country as it has been considered, is at least twice richer than Ukraine (by GDP per capita).

Who, where, why?

Ukrainian proverb states on this regard, "Poor - because stupid, and stupid - because poor." But this is to general, nonobjective characteristic. Reasons for our poverty include low wages and high level of unemployment.

Ukrainians have been departuring to work abroad always, under the tsarist regime, then in the Soviet epoch. This continued during the era of independence, when Ukraine entered the top five countries with the highest percentage of labour emigration (13%). However, the most disturbing is not this, but the sharp increase in the number of Ukrainians working abroad illegally. Their number has grown since 2011 from 28% to 40%. What does it mean?

At least the fact that the economic situation is deteriorating rapidly, forcing the Ukrainians to literally flee to neighboring countries in search of work. And that is performed quickly, rarely with accordance to the law.

Data on the total number of migrants vary. According to Ukrainian Ministry of Labour, there are approximately 3-5 million. Unofficially experts state about up to 9 million labour migrants from Ukraine. In the opinion of most researchers, every third Ukrainian works abroad (6.5-7 million). And a certain share of these millions already are not actually labour migrants. They went to Italy, Poland, Russia a few years ago, gradually took out their families, and will not come back to their homeland. May be, just as tourists, in order to visit the graves of relatives.

Migration flows from Ukraine after rapidly intensified the Euromaidan. In Poland alone, the right to permanent or temporary residence in 2014 received 247 thousand Ukrainians - 60% more than the year before. On average across the EU countries, this figure rose to 30%. However, cash remittances from migrants to their homeland gradually decrease.

How does it work in practice?

The most easy it is for property owners, which can lease it or sell. That's how a few years ago did Larisa, landlady of one of my friends. She found agents who agreed to hand over to her apartment for a small percentage, sending her the money in euros. Then she looked for a job in Germany (teacher at the local vocational school). However, drop of hryvnia rates in 2014 and especially in 2015 significantly reduced her Ukrainian part of the revenue, but by the time she managed to get a slight increase, and even get married. Naturally, she does not plan to return.

Of course, not all are so lucky. Lack of savings and families force migrants to take any available job. That's what happened to do my classmate Dmytro. Zaporizhia even before the Euromaidan was the depressed city - youth ran out in search of work in Donbas, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv. But in the summer of 2014 it became absolutely unbearable. Otherwise, people with two higher education and homeownership would not go to work to the oil extraction plant in Poland. The work is not easy, especially for a man who learned to earn with his head, not the hands. But you need to know despair of Zaporizhia youth: it is not easy to find a job even with $200 salary.

The number of such "Dmytros" will only grow. According to the survey of GFK Ukraine, conducted at the request of the International Organization for Migration, about 3 million Ukrainians plan to go to work abroad in the nearest future. One out of five of them is ready to cross the border illegally to work under lock and key, or to give an employer it's passport - if it allows them to find a job.

But the picture of the Ukrainian labor migration is still not full.

Outsourcing - to the sidelines

In recent years, Ukraine rapidly developed markets of outsource programming (creation of software products for external customers). In 2014, Ukraine has entered the 1st place in Eastern Europe in the number of executed orders: according to the top$dev portal, Ukrainians performed 33% of all such work. According to the results of 2013, the volume of this market was estimated at $2 billion, in 2014 - $2.4 billion, and for 5-7 years, this figure could increase fourfold. Could. If it does not fall.

The relatively new trend in this market is flight of outsource developers from Ukraine. Due to the unfriendly actions of the Ukrainian authorities, the companies escape their offices abroad: for many of them it's easy to do, because they were originally created as joint ventures, or else they have branches in several countries.

In mid-October it became known that the Hewlett-Packard partly moves its Kyiv office in Warsaw - the unit that is engaged in the development of personal systems and PCs.

Just after this the media reported that half of the staff of the Odesa office of the Norwegian company Opera was moved to Ireland. The office was responsible for Opera Mobile Store application.

October became truly a black month for Ukrainian IT companies. Dnipropetrovsk company 908 did not waste time on trifles, and took out the whole office to Wroclaw, Poland. Asked about the reasons for this decision, co-founder of the company A. Horsey answered: "This country is f*cked up."

But this flight did not begin this year. In May 2014, the largest developer - Luxsoft company - announced that 500 of its employees will be transferred to Bulgaria. Cogniance moved the half of its Kyiv office to Warsaw - preferring not to attract the attention of the media.

Oleh, the friend of mine, is one of the staff of Cogniance. He asked not to cover in this article the reasons of such a step. But in fact he agreed to talk about the move.

Cogniance is the international company with a branch in Poland. Therefore, the move did not have any problems. Ukrainian workers were simply sat to the Warsaw office, preparing them to a separate wing.

The salary of transferred employees is higher than that of their colleagues in Kyiv. But because of the difference in taxation in Poland and Ukraine, need to buy insurance, the impossibility of "gray" employment and so on, the net salary is lower. But it did not scare the applicants, on the contrary, they had to fight for a place in the Warsaw office. As result, the best have left. According to Oleh, within a few years, Kyiv division may be closed at all, moving projects and customer service to the Polish office.

However, the question is still open and depends largely on the government and its willingness to stop scaring IT crews. But they do not just go to work - the programmer can work anywhere in the world, he don't even have to attend the office. With the departure of each employee of the IT-sphere, Ukraine is losing jobs, to which the government do not need to invest. Not to mention the fact that the loss of each such employee means loss of $12 thousand (at least) of foreign currency inflow in a year, which was spent on the domestic market.

The process, as we see, is self-sustaining. Ukrainians go to work, the domestic market is reduced, employers are cutting staff, who also is leaving, etc. The increase in tax revenues, reported by government, is provided by inflation rather than taxes from wages and company profits. What to do? That's right, it is necessary to impose a tax of migrant workers! The corresponding bill was taken into consideration by the Verkhovna Rada at the beginning of October. I wonder how many will return to pay these taxes?

Ukraine is a truly great and rich country if it can afford squandering people in such scale.

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 #34
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
November 4, 2015
Ukrainians Paying MORE Bribes After the Maidan
By Anatoly Karlin

They were promised Europe, they have arrived at... Gabon?

As shown by a recent KIIS/IFER poll, the incidence of corruption - far from going down, as a loyal consumer of the Western media might expect - has if anything gone up. 40% of Ukrainians in September 2015 admitted they had paid a bribe in the past 12 months, up from 37% in April 2014.

Surprising at it might be, but it seems that having bands of Neo-Nazi loons running about shaking down businesses and shoving hapless doctors and professors into garbage bins is not, in fact, an effective recipe for promoting civility and transparency in everyday life.

While it is hardly anything to write home about, it must be pointed out that similar surveys asking people if they had paid bribes in the past 12 months in the Russian "mafia state" have tended to be around 20%. After 2012, these surveys fell off, possibly because Transparency International - which had previously carried out most of them - found that the incidence of bribery had started declining sharply and as such the data no longer fit the official narrative.

This must also explain the disillusion rapidly settling down on Ukraine, which is confirmed by other segments of the KIIS/IFER survey. 56% of Ukrainians think the country is going in the wrong direction, up from a low of 42% in September 2014. In most areas - limiting oligarchic influence, police and judicial reform, democracy and rights, and the fight against corruption - the vast majority of Ukrainians have found no improvements since the Maidan. The only sphere in which some substantial fraction of Ukrainians - a quarter, to be precise - have found "some" or "significant" improvements is in the "protection of Ukraine's national culture." Presumably, they have in mind great peremogi like ahistorically asserting ownership of the medieval Russian state, celebrating the 100th anniversary of an Austrian-Hungarian victory over the Russian Empire, and forcing local authorities to rename streets named after Communist criminals like Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space) - at the expense of the people who happen to be living on said streets.

Likewise, superceeding even the speed of the dissilusionment after the Orange Revolution, the new bosses have been quick to plummet in the approval ratings, as living standards cratered and neoliberal "reforms" proceeded apace. Poroshenko himself went from an approval rating of 69% last September to 32% today. PM Yatsenyuk's drop from 60% to 20% was even steeper. The only major political figure who remained in steady place - albeit at a consistently low base - was Yulia Tymoshenko, the famously corrupt "gas princess" who at 25% is once again a credible potential challenger to Poroshenko. This disillusionment was what resulted in the lackluster results of the Presidential forces in the October 25 local elections, in which entrenched local elites swept to power across the industrial heartlands of east and south Ukraine. The old east/west divisions of Ukraine, temporarily dampened during the "crisis" period of the Euroaidan's first year in power, are resurfacing with a vengeance.

These local elites are not pro-Russian. They are opportunistic and pro-themselves, even if they have had to pay lip service to the Maidan. This means that any real reform - that is, the sort of reform that helps ordinary people, as opposed to privatizing assets to the regime's cronies, while keeping svidomy ideologues happy with the occasional lustration - becomes all that much more difficult, in the unlikely scenario that the oligarch Poroshenko is even interested in it.

Now to be sure, this survey doesn't paint a particularly sweet picture for Russia either. From broadly equal with the EU in 2010-13 in terms of its attractiveness towards Ukrainians, its reputation plummeted after April 2014 and remains in the doldrums to this day. Just because Ukrainians are growing tired with the Maidanist regime isn't translating into them reassessing their opinions of Putin/Khuylo. Nor is this going to change any time soon. But that is essentially the gamble Putin took in April 2014, when he refused to restore Yanukovych by force: That eventually, the revolution would come to hate its children more than himself.

On that score at least it is not clear that he is losing.

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 #35
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
November 4, 2015
Poroshenko's daughter is a Russian movie star
Politnavigator
http://www.politnavigator.net/dochka-poroshenko-stala-zvezdojj-ntv-i-snimaetsya-v-rossijjskom-seriale-vozvrashhenie-mukhtara.html
Translated by Krisitna Rus

Poroshenko's daughter became the star of NTV, starring in the Russian TV series "Return of Mukhtar"

While dad is "at war with Russia", the daughter of Ukrainian President Poroshenko, Evgeniya starred in the Russian TV series "Return of Mukhtar - 8".

This was reported by the wife of Ukrainian President Marina Poroshenko in an interview with Katya Osadchaya, the host of "Social life".

"Every girl dreams to become an actress. Now my children embody those dreams. Zhenya, for example, passed the casting for the TV series "Return of Mukhtar", was filmed there in a cameo role. And was very happy, " - said the first lady of Ukraine.

Yevgeniya Poroshenko had a part in the 8th series of the 8th season, which appeared in 2012. At the time she was 12 years old. The episode is called "In search of the Duke", and Zhenya got a small role of a girl with a cat. She appeared in the frame three times, writes Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine.

Part of the series "Mukhtar" was filmed in Kiev with the participation of many Ukrainian actors in secondary roles.

The series with Poroshenko's daughter is running on the Russian channel NTV [banned in Ukraine along with all the other Russian TV channels!]

By the way, the State Movie Agency of Ukraine banned the screening of several Russian TV series, "promoting the security structures of the Russian Federation". By a strange coincidence, "The Return of Mukhtar" was not among them.

KR: Remember when Poroshenko said about the children of Donbass: "Our children will go to schools and daycares and their children will sit in the basements!" [under Ukrainian shelling]

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 #36
AFP
November 5, 2015
Ukraine rebels complete small arms withdrawal

Ukraine's pro-Russian insurgents said Thursday they had completed the withdrawal of their smaller weapons from a buffer zone in the ex-Soviet state's separatist east.

The reported pullback was in line with a new trust-building agreement that was signed on September 1 since when only seven Ukrainian servicemen have been killed.

"Today, we have completed the arms withdrawal," Donetsk ground commander Eduard Basurin told AFP by telephone.

He said the last nine mortars had been pulled back from Ilovaisk -- a frontline town where Ukraine lost more that 100 servicemen in a rebel onslaught in August.

The pullback was witnessed by observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

But it remains unclear whether this seeming de-escalation in one of Europe's deadliest conflicts since the Balkans wars of the 1990s will last.

A similar deal regarding larger weapons that was struck during international negotiations in February was never fully implemented.

And over the past few days, AFP teams have heard repeated gun battles being waged after dark around the separatists' de facto capital Donetsk.

OSCE monitors say they have been barred by rebels from accessing the area and have seen arms that had been pulled back later returned to their original positions.

Kiev announced the end of a similar pullback from the smaller pro-Russian Lugansk region on Tuesday.

But Basurin said Kiev was not expected to move all its tanks and mortars from the Donetsk front until the weekend.

The proposed buffer zone is meant to stretch 30-kilometres (19 miles) wide and be overseen by OSCE monitors from both Russia and the West.

The September 1 deal was unexpectedly signed after a series of broken ceasefires that had left world leaders scrambling to find a way to halt a conflict which has killed more than 8,000 people in 18 months.

It was negotiated without the presence of the rebels' political backer Russia or Germany and France -- the main European sponsors of previous peace talks and close allies of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The OSCE is expected to issue a statement later on Thursday.

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 #37
Ukrainian military shells northern outskirts of Donetsk - media

MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. The Ukrainian army was shelling the northern outskirts of the city of Donetsk throughout last night, a source in the law enforcement agencies of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) told Donetsk News Agency.

"From 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled the village of Spartak and the industrial zone. At around 2 a.m. the Ukrainian military opened fire at the Volvo Center area. The artillery bombardment lasted for several hours," the source said.

He added that the enemy had used 82-mm and 120-mm mortars, automatic grenade launchers and small arms.

On Thursday, the DPR begins another stage of weapons withdrawal, mortars with caliber under 120 mm will be pulled back.

The supplement to the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements of February 12, 2015, with regard to the withdrawal of tanks and artillery pieces with caliber under 100 mm and mortars with caliber up to 120 mm was initialed on September 29 at the talks of the Contact Group on Ukraine in Minsk, Belarus.

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 #38
New York Times
November 5, 2015
THE DISPLACED OLEG
At 11, he is living in the ruins of his former life.
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Andrew E. Kramer is a reporter in the Moscow bureau of The Times and has covered the conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, Iraq and Ukraine
[Photos here http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/magazine/the-displaced-oleg.html]

Oleg Teryokhin was living with his mother and father in Nikishino, a rural village of fewer than 1,000 coal miners, farmers and their families in eastern Ukraine, when fighting broke out in April 2014. Hastily formed separatist militias, goaded and armed by Moscow, rose up in a rebellion against a new, pro-Western government in Kiev. In the first months of the conflict, the fighting was far from Nikishino, and Oleg, then 10, spent the early summer tearing about the village on his bicycle, zipping past its old brick cottages and apricot orchards. Then, in July, scorched scraps of clothing and bits of paper with foreign writing blew through the village - debris from the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the passenger jet that was shot down, killing hundreds of people whose bodies lay in fields just south of the village. When Oleg carried some of these items home, his mother, Galina, was horrified that the conflict had come so close.

A few weeks later, she and Oleg left their village, seeking shelter elsewhere in Ukraine. Oleg's father, Aleksandr, a coal miner, stayed to tend to their two cattle and Galina's elderly father. But by November the fighting had intensified, and a front line separated Aleksandr from the home of Galina's father. He abandoned the livestock and joined his wife and son and the more than 130,000 internally displaced people in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. The family spent most of the winter in a small, drafty cottage that they rented, struggling with boredom and a shortage of firewood.

Battles raged in and around Nikishino in the ensuing months, and the separatists eventually took control. Oleg's family heard nothing from Galina's father. As cease-fire talks halted the worst of the fighting in February, Oleg's family, along with a few dozen others, returned to the village. They discovered her father's body in the backyard of his house. He had probably been killed by shrapnel and had lain frozen outside for months. "Before the war, I visited him every day," Oleg, now 11, said. "Now I visit his grave."

Most of the village's 360 houses were wholly or partly destroyed. Oleg's home was one of them: A shell hit his bedroom and blew a hole through the roof. His school was hit, too. Looking at the ruined building, Oleg said, "When the teachers would yell at us, we used to say: 'Wouldn't it be cool if the school blew up?' I would never say that anymore."

The war has divided Ukraine into three parts: a main territory under the central government; the Crimean Peninsula, claimed by Russia; and the separatist zone where Nikishino lies. As the conflict settles into a stalemate - with a cease-fire but no final resolution, much less any plan for reconstruction - roughly 3.2 million people, including Oleg and his family, now live amid destruction or in dire need of humanitarian aid. Oleg's father has returned to work in the coal mines, and Oleg goes to school in a neighboring village. As his parents repair their home, the family lives in the portion of the house that is still standing. Once picturesque, Nikishino is today a tableau of shattered glass, broken concrete and scorched timber. "I tell myself: No matter what happens, even if shells are falling, I will never leave my home again," Oleg said. He still speeds around the village on his bicycle with his friends, roaming this no man's land.

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#39
Transitions Online
www.tol.org
November 5, 2015
Council of Europe Slams Ukraine Probe of Odessa Deaths
Kyiv's official investigation into street clashes and deadly fire that left 48 dead last spring falls short of European norms, CoE says.
[Video here http://www.tol.org/client/article/25207-odessa-ukraine-council-of-europe-yanukovych.html]

Ukrainian authorities have failed to adequately investigate the deaths of 42 pro-Russian protesters and six others in the Black Sea port of Odessa in May 2014, an international panel set up by the Council of Europe said yesterday.
 
"Despite the lapse of some 18 months after the events, not a single charge has been brought in respect of the deaths," the International Advisory Panel said in an e-mailed report, Bloomberg writes.
 
Kyiv's investigation has "failed to comply with the requirements" of the European Convention on Human Rights and European Court of Human Rights requirements, it said, presenting its finding in Ukraine's capital.
 
The panel's report further said no substantial progress had been made in investigating the events surrounding the 48 deaths, and that this failing has undermined authorities' ability to bring those responsible to justice, Radio Free Europe reports.
 
The unrest in Odessa was part of a wave of protests that swept across much of Ukraine before and after former President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. Ukraine's rulers have failed to convict those responsible over 100 killings in the Euromaidan street protests in Kyiv that brought them to power, Bloomberg writes.
 
The investigation in Odessa, like the probe in Kyiv, has "serious deficiencies in independence and effectiveness," the panel's report said.
 
Anti-government protesters had barricaded themselves in the Trade Union Building amid violent clashes between pro-Russian protesters and Ukrainian government supporters. Both sides were reported to have been throwing petrol bombs, the BBC writes.
 
The panel's report cites as "the most striking example of a lack of diligence" the fact that "the first real efforts to investigate an unexplained delay of over 40 minutes in the arrival of firefighters to the Trade Union Building were not made until December 2014," Radio Free Europe writes.
 
Given that Odessa's police were accused of complicity in mass disorder at that time, the probe into the fire should have been carried out by a body independent of the Interior Ministry, the report said, according to the BBC.
 
The International Advisory Group in Ukraine is led by former European Court Chairman Nicolas Bratza and includes a former judge of that court, Volodymyr Butkevych, as well as a former prosecutor of Ukraine, Oleg Anpilogov, according to Radio Free Europe.
 
The panel was established in April 2014 to oversee investigations into violence during the Euromaidan protest in Kyiv. Its mandate was later extended to examine the Odessa investigations' compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

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 #40
AP
November 5. 2015
Ukraine's rebel center in limbo as fighting dies down
By YURAS KARMANAU

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) - The fighting has subsided, but Donetsk is quickly sinking into the past - a shabby Soviet-like state of empty streets and deprivation. Huge portraits of Josef Stalin hanging in the city center only reinforce the impression of failure.

The wounds are raw in the capital of eastern Ukraine's pro-Russia insurgency and its prognosis not encouraging, even without the artillery barrages that terrified the city during the height of fighting between separatists and Ukrainian forces.

Only three years ago, Donetsk was proud of the glitter it showed to spectators at the European soccer championships. There was a brand-new international airport, luxury boutiques and expensive restaurants. Now, the airport is a grotesque ruin, destroyed in one of the longest, most grisly sieges of the war. The shops and eateries are mostly closed - and even if someone were feeling flush, there are no working ATMs to feed them cash.

"It's been a terrible dream; life was turned upside-down in a couple of years," said 34-year-old resident Sergei Debenko, who lost his rebel fighter brother in the war.

Donetsk's people today live in limbo. Effectively, they're no longer part of Ukraine, but Moscow has refused the rebels' pleas to be incorporated into Russia. Ukraine clamped down on the rebel-held parts of the Donetsk region and the neighboring separatist Luhansk region with a choking economic blockade; pensions and social benefits were cut off and business contacts frozen. Humanitarian convoys from Russia bring in food and medicine, and international groups also scramble to supply the region's people with medicine.

Russia is also paying pensions and benefits, and salaries are paid in rubles rather than the Ukrainian hryvna. But salaries and benefits are often months in arrears and tiny when they finally come.

Vadim Medchenko, an unemployed Donetsk resident, said he, his wife and infant child survive on 1,500 rubles ($25) a month in child-support payments.

Along with the economic blockade imposed by Kiev, there are also laborious transit regulations for Donetsk residents who want to travel to government-held territory to scrape together a better life. Painfully long and slow lines form at border crossings. Some people stand for two days or more at checkpoints, before they can cross into an area where the food is up to three times cheaper than in Donetsk.

For the officials of the Donetsk People's Republic, as the rebels call themselves, it is a tenuous existence. "We have no annual budget. We form a budget for a month," Ekaterina Matyushchenko, the finance minister, told The Associated Press.

Many Donetsk residents say there's only one way out - to become part of Russia.

"We don't have a road to return to Ukraine. We are too different," said high-school teacher Alla Andrievska, who earns 3,000 rubles a month, when she's paid at all. Her history classes fortify that belief, using Russian textbooks that echo Moscow's contention that the 2014 protests that drove out the Russia-friendly president and precipitated the fighting in the east were a "putsch."

Marchenko, the unemployed man, also sees joining Russia as inevitable. "We are part of the Russian world," he said.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose economy took a severe blow from Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, is showing no sign absorption could happen. And the Ukraine crisis, which once topped Russian newscasts, now takes a back seat to Russia's airstrikes in Syria.

Many analysts think Putin has a different end-game in sight.

"The Kremlin wants the (rebels) to get maximally wide representation in Ukrainian structures, and then to use them to make a constant dig at Kiev," said Volodymyr Fesenko of the Penta analytical center. "De-jure it will be Ukraine and de-facto it will be Russia: a frozen conflict."

In spirit, it is already Russia. There's little left of the Ukrainian past in Donetsk, aside from an outlet of the well-known Lviv Chocolate Studio, and here it doesn't sell one of its most famous products: comical chocolate figures of Putin.

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 #42
DFWatch
http://dfwatch.net
November 5, 2015
Former Georgian official appointed head of national police in Ukraine

TBILISI, DFWatch-One more former Georgian official was appointed to a high position in Ukraine on Wednesday.

Khatia Dekanoidze, who served as minister of education in Georgia in the final months of Mikheil Saakashvili's presidency in 2012, is now chief of the Ukraine's national police force.

A decree about appointed Dekanoidze was issued Wednesday evening during a cabinet meeting. Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov nominated her to this post. Earlier she used to be Avakov's advisor.

Previously, Dekanoidze was head of administration of Georgia's National Security Council. She has also been head of the Police Academy, and from July, 2012, to October, 2012, she replaced Dimitri Shashkin as education minister in Georgia.

Another former Georgian official, Eka Zghuladze, is a deputy interior minister in Ukraine. She held the same post in Georgia.

Saakashvili became governor of Odessa in May.

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 #43
Politoco.eu
November 4, 2015
Ukraine's most popular politician
Mikhail Saakashvili wants to be the "standard-bearer for reforms" - and possibly the next prime minister.
By MAXIM TUCKER
Maxim Tucker is a Ukraine-based journalist. He is a former news editor of the Kyiv Post, previously worked as Amnesty International's Campaigner on Ukraine and the South Caucasus, and has spent most of the past six years working on and in the former Soviet Union. Follow him on Twitter: @MaxRTucker.

ODESSA - Former Georgian President and current Odessa Governor Mikhail Saakashvili says he would be prepared to take on the premiership of Ukraine in order to turn the country into a bulwark against Kremlin expansionism in Europe.

"I would like to take part in big changes and reforms, and in whatever capacity I can do it - I can do it," he told POLITICO when asked about a potential prime ministerial campaign.

Speaking as regional elections revealed the crumbling powerbase of the country's western-friendly government, he argued that only a strong and stable Ukraine could prevent Moscow from devouring more territory across the region.

"If Ukraine doesn't contain Russia, I think Russia can easily wipe Georgia and the Baltic states from the map," Saakashvili said during an exclusive interview in his new role as governor of Ukraine's Odessa region. "A strong Ukraine is the biggest check on Russia."

Ukrainians expressed widespread disillusionment with their political leaders at the recent elections, allowing pro-Russian candidates to win mayor and council positions across central and eastern Ukraine.

By contrast, a recent opinion poll found Saakashvili was the most popular politician in Ukraine. A petition calling for him to be made prime minister has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

Working characteristically late on the top floor of a deserted regional administration, he stressed that leading the cabinet was not a position he "aspired to," and that he would not be joining any political parties as long as they maintain ties to the country's billionaire businessmen.

"It's not the job I am dreaming of. I refused to run on a party list, I don't want to have anything to do with oligarchs," he said. "I want to be a standard-bearer for reforms."

But he delivered a withering indictment of current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his decision not to participate in the elections.

"It's not a normal thing for the prime minister's party not to run in local elections - if you don't want to test your popularity I don't think you have a mandate to make reforms," said Saakashvili.

He accused Yatsenyuk of bypassing ministers and creating a "shadow cabinet" that represents vested business interests, including those of Mykola Martynenko, a lawmaker wanted for questioning in Switzerland over bribery allegations.

"We need to reset this government. We should crack down on the shadow government ... shadow figures who run the government's oil and gas companies. Recently they did a huge reshuffle in the oil and gas sector and it's all according to the blueprint of Martynenko, not the energy minister."

As president of Georgia from 2004 until 2013, Saakashvili led his tiny post-Soviet nation to war with Russia in 2008 over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. Defeated in that round, Russian soldiers have continued to slowly shift the South Ossetian border towards Georgia's capital.

Now he finds himself fighting Moscow's interests on the cobbled streets of Odessa, a pro-Russian heartland on Ukraine's Black Sea coast and home to the embattled country's largest port.

The picturesque city has become a haven for gunrunners, drug smugglers and sex traffickers since the collapse of Soviet rule in 1991. When pro-European demonstrators ousted the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, Odessa's mob turned against the new government in Kiev.

Saakashvili, an early supporter of the demonstrations, asked post-revolutionary President Petro Poroshenko to let him clean up Odessa as regional governor in May this year.

He arrived with formidable credentials. A political dynamo who dominated Georgian government for the best part of a decade, Saakashvili is widely credited with turning his country from a corruption-riddled rump state into a functioning democracy. But by the end of his tenure that dominance was veering towards authoritarianism. He left Georgia with criminal charges looming after his second term in office.

As a regional governor in Ukraine, he is far less powerful than he was as president of Georgia, though he competes with similarly entrenched interests. Last week Odessa's electoral commission announced the return of the city's mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov, a former Russian army captain accused of having ties to mobsters.

Officials claimed Trukhanov had beaten Sasha Borovik, the Saakashvili candidate, taking more than 52 percent of the vote and doing away with the need for a second round of voting. But with exit polls putting the incumbent's vote at only 47 percent and observers reporting numerous incidents of ballot stuffing and counting fraud, the governor and his team have been challenging the result - in the courts and on the streets.

On Thursday they began a series of demonstrations against the mayor. The result will be unpredictable, Saakashvili cautioned.

"No one has ever tested this mafia, they have been so fixed in place. We're running into unknown territory. But in the nineties here there were lots of killings, when they were dividing up the city."

Sprawled out but constantly shifting in his chair, the new governor rarely finishes a sentence before he jumps into the next. His energy and drive have attracted a swelling of youthful support, from which he has handpicked a group of idealistic young lawyers prepared to take on the region's gangsters for a pittance.

"We can't give them much money ... but a first job, they don't have to look after children, working in a nice office and a position they can be proud of," he said. "We're opening cases against Kivalov, the main boss - an MP but also a guy deemed to be untouchable. We already opened cases against all his right hand men, including local council members."

Oligarchs despise the Georgian for upsetting the status quo. Their media outlets rarely give him airtime. On Tuesday, a broadcaster took him off the air mid-interview when he suggested the country's tycoons should be locked up. But Saakashvili's team constantly updates supporters with YouTube videos and Facebook posts. It's had a knock-on effect in his native Georgia, where his party has edged ahead of their rivals in power.

Georgia's ruling party has responded by releasing wiretaps of his telephone conversations and accusing Saakashvili and other party leaders of plotting a coup - allegations he dismisses as "schizophrenia."

With next year's Georgian parliamentary elections drawing closer, I asked whether the Odessa job was simply a springboard back into politics in his homeland.

"I'm deeply involved in Ukraine and I don't think I should jump ship and swim back to Georgia," Saakashvili responded. "Georgia is just my retirement plan," he said, smiling.

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 #44
www.rt.com
October 31, 2015
Leaked tape exposes Georgia ex-President Saakashvili for 'inciting bloodshed'
[Video here https://www.rt.com/news/320269-georgia-coup-leak-president/]

Georgia is demanding explanations from Ukraine after a leaked tape implicated the governor of the Odessa region Mikhail Saakashvili (also Georgia's former president), in calling for a violent coup in his home country.

Saakashvili, who resigned his presidential office in 2013 after almost a decade in power, is wanted at home on allegations of embezzlement and abuse of power. He was appointed a governor in Ukraine after a violent armed coup ousted its president in February 2014, an event that Saakashvili supported and praised.

The website called "Ukrainian revolution" has published a tape implicating Saakashvili in orchestrating a similar uprising in Georgia. In the conversations, which have not been independently verified, a man with a voice strongly resembling Georgia's ex-leader is heard to be advising such a course to Nika Gvaramia, the head of Rustavi 2, one of Georgia's biggest TV stations, and opposition leader Georgy Bokeria.

Rustavi 2 is currently in the middle of an ownership conflict. Opposition parties accuse the Georgian government of being behind it because the channel gives a lot of airtime to criticism of the country's leadership. Some Georgian officials said Rustavi 2 is not a media outlet but a propaganda vehicle for the United National Movement, Saakashvili's former party, to which Bokeriya belongs.

In a phone call Saakashvili is heard telling his two friends they should raise the stakes by turning the conflict into a violent confrontation. He suggests that hiring 1,500 to 2,000 "militants" and turning the station into "a fortress" to defend it from an expected court-ordered eviction of the management would be required.

When Gvaramia noted such a move would hurt Rustavi 2 profits, Saakashvili responded: "To hell with the profit... It's an ordinary revolution, war."

"You have to go for the revolution here, call on the people for defense. You have to fortify, build barricades, right, exactly barricades. Just seal yourselves off. Stockpile water and stuff and go for a weeks-long standoff," he said, adding it would be fine if the conflict turned violent and even involved shootouts.

After the scandalous recording was leaked online, both Gvaramia and Bokeria confirmed its authenticity, but pointed out they didn't agree with the plan.

"The tape was recorded on October 19, but as you can see there are no barricades here. We are not a political party - we are a TV station. Our job is using cameras, not violence. But we promise we would not let anyone get our station and will continue to protect our right to free speech," Gvaramia said on Thursday.

Bokeria said his party would only use legal methods in its opposition to the Georgian government.

The leak sparked an international scandal between Georgia and Ukraine, where Saakashvili holds a senior governmental position. Georgian President Georgy Margvelashvili said: "It was impermissible for a senior official of a foreign country to meddle in a country's domestic policy and plan riots."

Tbilisi issued a formal complaint through its Foreign Ministry, demanding Kiev clarify its stance on the "statements that threaten Georgia's security and stability," which came from the governor of one of Ukraine's regions. The Georgian Justice Ministry also requested legal assistance from Ukraine to investigate the leak. The incident is being treated as a "conspiracy for a coup" by the Georgian authorities.

Saakashvili is no stranger to taking power trough street politics. He became president of Georgia in the first place after ousting his predecessor Eduard Shevardnadze during the so-called Rose Revolution of 2003. Those events were bloodless, unlike the uprising in Ukraine in 2013-2014 that gave Saakashvili a chance for a comeback to politics.

"He was caught red-handed in a conspiracy to incite conflict and instability in Georgia presumably with the intention of returning himself or his clique into power," geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser told RT. "It's interesting to compare the tactics that we saw in Maidan in 2013 and early 2014 versus what Saakashvili is talking about in those recordings. In fact, they are identical."

The scandal came as Georgia is seeking to revoke Saakashvili's Georgian citizenship. The country's constitution forbids dual citizenship with the exception of foreigners given Georgian citizenship by a special presidential decree. Saakashvili was given Ukrainian citizenship in order to become Odessa's regional governor in May.

The paperwork confirming this was delivered to Georgia on October 23. The Georgian Justice Ministry has commenced the process of revoking his Georgian citizenship, it announced on Friday.

The former president himself said Tbilisi was acting on orders from Russia to block him from running for Georgian president. Saakashvili has not been in Georgia since 2013, when his term in office ended.

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#45
Civil Georgia, Tbilisi
October 31, 2015
U.S. Embassy Statement on Saakashvili's Leaked Wiretapped Recordings

The U.S. embassy in Tbilisi said in a statement on leaked wiretapped recordings of Georgia's ex-President and governor of Odessa region in Ukraine Mikheil Saakashvili that "it is unacceptable for anyone to advocate for violence in politics."

"The U.S. Embassy continues to follow events in Georgia very closely. While we cannot authenticate recent intercepted conversations, we believe it is unacceptable for anyone to advocate for violence in politics. Such assertions have no place in a democratic society," the U.S. embassy said in the "statement on the release of audio recordings by Ukrainian website".

"We applaud statements from the Prime Minister, as well as from opposition leaders, calling for calm and restraint."

"While these statements are important, what is needed is dialogue, and a widening, not a restricting, of the political and media space," the U.S. embassy said.

In two leaked wiretapped recordings, involving phone conversations with Tbilisi-based Rustavi 2 TV head Nika Gvaramia and one of the leaders of Georgia's opposition UNM party Giga Bokeria, Saakashvili discusses "defending" Rustavi 2 TV through erecting barricades, calls for "going through revolutionary scenario" and speaks about the need for "physical confrontation". Gvaramia and Bokeria have confirmed authenticity of the recordings.

Asked about these recordings, leaked onto internet on October 29, U.S. ambassador to Georgia, Ian Kelly, told Batumi-based Adjara TV on October 30: "I can't really comment on it, except to say that, by all appearances, these seem to be private conversations, and I think you know an important part of responsible media is, again, accountability and transparency and [attributing] sources."

"I cannot imagine any local media intercepting private telephone conversations and then broadcasting them. So I am not going to give any credence to any kind of conversations that do not have proper provenance, don't have proper sourcing," he added.

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 #46
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
November 5, 2015
Democracy in Ukraine: Dead on Arrival
Recent elections in the country merely reconfirm that Ukraine is now a failed state; wrecked by extremism backed by Western meddling
By Michael Lehner

Originally appeared in German at Neo Presse.
http://www.neopresse.com/europa/ukraine-die-vom-westen-gewollte-spaltung-des-landes/
Translated by Thomas Trautzsch

The elections in local communities in Ukraine (except the "separatist" Donbass Region), which took place on October 25th provide a good opportunity for a health and reality check of the democracy in this country. The expected has happened - the deeply unpopular governing alliance of President Petro Poroshenko actually suffered a humiliating defeat.

Prime Minister Arsenij Yatsenyuk, whose popularity polls are below 20% did make a clever chess move when he overtly rejected participation in the local elections. It is perfectly clear that the Ukrainian government in Kiev, which was brought into power by the West, is not capable of gaining traction and remains deeply unpopular.

Put in simple words, a corrupt, decrepit government of oligarchs installed by oligarchs did replace a previous corrupt and decrepit regime of oligarchs. The conditions for Russia to conduct a "color revolution" in Kiev would be there, if Moscow wanted it. But the (post-soviet) Russia is not in the regime change and "colour revolution" business and leaves this monopoly to the United States of America.

The surprising part of last Sunday's election in Ukraine is the fact that the alliance of the former president Victor Yanukovich (which was toppled by a western-backed coup in february last year) could hold on to its base in the south and east. A particularly embarrassing rebuff for the ruling government in Kiev, especially for Poroshenko's compatriot Mikhail Saakashvili (another descendant of another colour revolution), who lost the election in the southern harbor city of Odessa. The elections in the southern harbour town Mariupol were cancelled due to inappropriate conditions.

All in all, Ukraine remains divided into two almost equally sized parts - the western and central regions, which are pro-West and the eastern and southern regions, which are pro-Russian. Twenty months after the colour revolution nothing much has changed - except that the West has installed its government, which is anti-Russian. This is a dubious success and it begs the question of the necessity of the USA-backed coup d'Etat in February of last year. Expressed in a different way, all this destruction and the chaos could have been avoided for Ukraine, if there would have been a constitutional transition of power, as it was agreed upon with Yanukovich, by which there would have been new elections - instead of a putsch by the USA and her allies.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine is such a hopeless case today, that the IMF came under pressure to change his credit policy in order to loan money to the country, even though Kiev does not serve its outstanding credit debt toward Russia.

There is no doubt that Moscow is looking at this with a deja-vu feeling. Moscow is seeing that the West is holding a can of worms in its hands and that the West said goodbye to the IMF credit standards. This was also deliberately ignored by the local elections on Sunday. Ironically, it could be the best from Europe's standpoint under the circumstances, if Russia could be persuaded to reach out her helping hand in order to repair the broken spine of Ukraine. This is indeed the core of what Germany's vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday.

Hopefully, some day around the year of 2020, there will be an act of reconciliation with then Ex-President Barack Obama. Hopefully, he will make a statement on CNN about his serious mistakes and his catastrophic failure by not standing up to the neo-conservatives in his government, who pushed him to follow their sectarian agenda toward Russia. Indeed it should not be a weak apology, like the one of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which he recently issued relating to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The destruction of Iraq was a horrible war crime - and it was no small mistake to invade a sovereign country and kill more than quarter a million people in a pre-planned act of barbarism.

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 #47
Defenseone.com
November 4, 2015
Obama Should Have Given Weapons to Ukraine, Says Former Pentagon Russia Official
BY MARCUS WEISGERBER

Evelyn Farkas, who stepped down last week as the Pentagon's top policy official for Russia and Ukraine, says the U.S. should open a military base in Eastern Europe to send a message to Vladimir Putin.

The Obama administration should send Ukraine antitank weapons to fend off Russian-backed separatists in the eastern region of the country, a recently departed top Pentagon official said.

Evelyn Farkas, who stepped down Friday as deputy assistant secretary for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said she advocated for sending these lethal weapons to Ukraine while at the Pentagon.

"I happen to personally fall into the camp that believes we should provide lethal defensive assistance to Ukraine, primarily antitank weapons," she said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast Wednesday.

Ukraine has been pleading with the U.S. and its NATO allies for lethal weapons and other types of equipment for its military. The U.S. has promised to send small, unarmed drones, humvees and other basic equipment, but Ukraine has wanted more substantial gear.

"We need further military assistance, namely modern anti-tank systems, reconnaissance and combat unmanned aerial vehicles," Army Gen. Viktor Muzhenko, chief of the general staff of Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Defense One in an email through a spokesman this week. "Another crucial area is electronic warfare and modern anti-aircraft systems."

Muzhenko said Ukraine's military is "sufficiently equipped and trained to adequately react to challenges that threaten Ukraine's territorial integrity."

Farkas said the White House decision to not send these types of weapons to Ukraine did not factor in her decision to leave. She complemented the Obama administration's efforts to send Ukraine $266 million of "real assistance" through equipment and training, which "has improved" Kiev's military forces.

"My departure has nothing to do with the ongoing work," she said. "It's a good time personally for me to leave and I feel that we actually have achieved a lot over the last three years."

The U.S. should also consider basing troops in Eastern Europe, Farkas said, a move that Poland has called for on numerous occasions since Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

"We could examine whether we need to adjust our force posture to put more forces in further east," Farkas said. "I think we should consider that."

Instead, NATO has opted to preposition military equipment in Poland.

Farkas also argues money for the European Reassurance Initiative, which funds training and temporary military deployments to the continent, should be put in the Pentagon's base budget. That would signal more of a permanence to allies in Europe, she said. The project is funded through the Pentagon's war budget. So far, Congress has approved nearly $1 billion for the effort.

"The [European Reassurance Initiative] itself has to be tailored a bit so that it is more effectively focusing on deterrence and not so heavy on the presence," Farkas said.

Applauding Secretary of State John Kerry's current trip through Central Asia, Farkas also argues that top U.S. officials need to pay more attention to countries that feel threatened by Russia, including not just Ukraine, but Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

"The countries around the periphery of Russia, they need our political attention; they also need our economic assistance and then they need our military assistance," she said. "All of that attention and all of that very real assistance will deter Russia."

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 #48
http://newcoldwar.org
November 4, 2015
Western media sees nothing, but food blockade against Crimea is real and ongoing
[Video and attached articles here http://newcoldwar.org/western-media-sees-nothing-but-food-blockade-against-crimea-is-real-and-ongoing/]

Just because you didn't read about it in Western mainstream media doesn't mean a food blockade against Crimea and threats to people traveling to there from Ukraine are not happening.

Conveniently unreported by Western media is the ongoing food transport blockade against the people of Crimea. It is being waged by extreme-right forces of Ukraine with the blessing of the NATO/EU-backed regime in Kyiv and its police and border officials.

The blockade began on September 20 at the three road crossings from Ukraine into Crimea. It was mentioned for a brief time in Western press, which called it an initiative of "Crimean Tatars". This was false and misleading. Here is an example in Reuters of blatantly false reporting, dated September 20. Reuters went so far as to headline its article 'Tatar activists block roads into Russia-annexed Crimea'.

The New York Times headlined, 'Tatars, foes of Russia in Crimea, block shipments of food'.

The 'Tatar' claim was based on the fact that a few Tatar figures appointed years ago as deputies to the Ukrainian Rada called for a blockade. Refat Chubarov and Mustafa Dzhemilev threw in their lot with the Maidan movement at its outset in 2013 and they have urged a blockade of Crimea ever since a large majority of Crimeans voted in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine.

This recent video report (or click screen below) shows the blockade in action, and there is no doubt who is waging it-the extreme right of Ukraine. What we see in the short video, dating from October 28, are vigilantes of the neo-Nazi 'Right Sector' and 'Azov Battalion' stopping civilian vehicles en route to Crimea. They check papers and temporarily detain a young man suspected of being a "separatist". They check his name against a list of 'separatists' in their own database.

Who controls Ukraine's borders? The national government? Along the Ukraine-Crimea border, it is extremist vigilantes who control it, with the full connivance of Ukrainian government authorities. You did not read this in the pages of the New York Times, Guardian or Globe and Mail.

Enclosed below are news articles reporting on the ongoing food blockade against the Crimean people. One article reports on the attempts of Ukrainian people in the region bordering Crimea to end the blockade because it is harming local farmers and truckers. A planned protest by Ukrainians against the blockade on October 28, including by residents of the nearby city of Kherson, was called off because of threats and intimidation by the right-wing vigilantes.

Another article reports on a recent visit to Crimea of the head of Federation of Crimean Tatar Communities of Turkey. He compares the actions of Ukrainian extreme rightists against Crimea to the actions of ISIS extremists in Syria.

Recall that Ukraine has cut water supply to Crimea and has interrupted electricity supply at times to the region. You didn't read that in reports by Western media or human rights agencies.

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 #49
Ukraine must reform to get EU visa-free travel, says Juncker

BRUSSELS, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The European Union wants Ukraine to pass a set of judiciary and human rights reforms before granting Ukrainian citizens visa-free access to the 28 countries of the bloc, the head of the EU Commission told Ukraine's President in a letter on Thursday.

Grappling with pro-Russian separatists in the Eastern part of the country and a shattered economy, Ukrainian authorities are keen to obtain better terms in their relations with the EU.

An agreement on visa-free travel for Ukrainian citizens to the European Union is seen in Kiev as a key priority to be achieved next year, when a free-trade pact with the EU is expected to come into force despite Russian opposition.

"Progress in reforms in the area of the fight against corruption remains a key priority for achieving visa-free travel to the EU for Ukrainian citizens," EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in the letter seen by Reuters.

EU visa-free travel agreements usually concern specific groups of people who are more likely to travel, such as researchers, businessmen or students.

In the document, sent to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Juncker urges quick establishment of independent anti-corruption bodies to reduce graft in the ex-Soviet state.

Ukraine should also amend labour legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and should create an agency dedicated to recover assets confiscated from, Juncker told Poroshenko

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 #50
www.rt.com
November 5, 2015
Communists ask Russian govt to blacklist Ukrainians responsible for Donbass war

Two communist MPs have asked PM Dmitry Medvedev to issue a lifelong ban for entering Russia for Ukrainian police and military who waged war against people's militia in the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions of that country.

"We are asking you, in cooperation with law enforcement bodies, to create the fullest possible list of persons who were taking an active part in the so-called 'anti-terrorist operation' [in eastern Ukraine] in order to issue them with a lifelong ban from entering Russia," reads the letter by Valery Rashkin and Sergey Obukhov.

Copies of the letter have been also forwarded to the head of the Federal Migration Service, the prosecutor general, interior minister, director of the Federal Security Service and the head of the Investigative Committee.

In the same letter, Rashkin and Obukhov expressed concern that recent violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Ukrainian military could be a sign of preparations for a resumption of the full-scale operation against the people of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

"Considering the disastrous consequences of the crimes committed by Ukrainian punishment units, every participant of the so-called anti-terror operation must be slapped with a lifelong ban from entering Russia. The lists of such people must be available for the Federal Migration Service as well as to border guards of the Federal Security Service and police," they wrote.

The two lawmakers also reminded the PM and other recipients that Russia's Investigative Committee had earlier started a criminal case against Ukrainian military over the use of banned methods of warfare.

In September this year the committee launched several criminal cases against pro-Kiev politicians on charges of using banned methods of warfare and committing genocide of ethnic Russians. The suspects in the case include Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and the governor of the Dnepropetrovsk Region, Igor Kolomoyskiy.

In March, MP Vyacheslav Nikonov of the majority United Russia party proposed the establishment of Russia's own version of the international court for war crimes as the existing body in The Hague is dependent on nations that sponsor the war crimes in Ukraine.

In May 2014, MP Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist party LDPR said that the CIS - the Russia-led economic and political bloc uniting many of the former Soviet republics - could set up a criminal court of its own in order to adjudicate on everything that took place in Ukraine.

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 #51
https://davidrmarples.wordpress.com
November 4, 2015
Communist Heroes of Ukraine
By David Marples
David Marples is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Canada.

In a recent interview cited in The New York Times, Volodymyr Viatrovych, head of the National Institute of Memory of Ukraine and an author of the "de-Communization" laws approved by President Petro Poroshenko in May, equated Lenin statues with "totalitarian propaganda" and a sign of the presence of "polite people," by which he signified troops of the Russian Special Forces, in Ukraine.

The May laws remain controversial, particularly their implicit and now actual ban on all forms of Communist propaganda and ultimately on the former Communist Party of Ukraine as a legal entity. Lenin is an obvious focus given the plethora of Lenin statues throughout the former Soviet republics but as far as Ukraine is concerned he is among the least relevant.

The Law of Ukraine (2015, No. 25, 190) "On the legal status and honoring the memory of fighters for the independence of Ukraine in the XX century" is a long one, but notable by the absence from it of any former Communist parties. By definition, Communists could not have been struggling for the independence of the republic, but operating only on orders from Moscow. Today streets named after former Communist leaders such as Mykola Skrypnyk (1872-1933) are being renamed.

Yet denying Communists any positive role in the 20th century history of Ukraine is simply distortion, if not outright denial of historical events. Skrypnyk, no doubt, was a committed follower of Lenin, but even he recognized the threat of "Great Russian chauvinism" and became a pioneer of "Ukrainization" of culture and language in the 1920s. He was also determined to maintain the ethnic unity of Ukraine, resisting efforts by Russian Bolshevik leaders to form a Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Soviet republic in 1918. Disillusioned by Stalin's centralization, and by the arrival of Pavel Postyshev to take over the leadership (in practice, though he was in fact Second Secretary) in January 1933, Skrypnyk committed suicide.

Perhaps even more notable than Skrypnyk are two other Ukrainian Communists who merit the status of "heroes" just as much as the leaders of the parties mentioned in the May 2015 decree: Mykola Khvliovyi and Oleksandr Shumskyi. Khvyliovyi, who was born in Kharkiv region in 1893, was a prominent writer who joined the Communist Party in 1919, and he is best known for his romance stories and prose and his activity within the Free Academy of Proletarian Literature. By the mid-1920s he was speaking out against Russian oppression in what became a series of pamphlets culminating in his slogan "Away from Moscow!"

Stalin was quick to respond to such "bourgeois nationalism," even though it was a natural outcome of the new focus on all things Ukrainian. Khvlyiovyi was forced to recant his views though he continued to publicize them in unofficial sources. Like Skrypnyk, he was dismayed by the arrival of Postyshev and even more so by the mass famine of 1933, and committed suicide in May of this year. Notably many of the political positions enunciated at the Maidan in 2013-14 echo the writings of Khvyliovyi. But like that of Skrypnyk, his part in the Ukrainian renaissance and the 1991 independence of Ukraine is to be erased.

Third, there is the remarkable national Communist Oleksander Shumskyi (1890-1946), a former Commissar of Internal Affairs and Commissar of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, who joined the Communists by an indirect route: an alliance of the Borotbisty and the CP(b)U, that resulted in a full merger in March 1920. Like his two contemporaries, Shumskyi wished to deepen Ukrainization and have Ukrainians appointed to leading positions in the party. By 1925, the phenomenon of "Shumskyism" was at its peak within the CP(b)U.

By 1927, however, the Soviet leadership had removed Shumskyi and moved him to Moscow. He was denounced as a "nationalist deviant," and accused of causing problems not only in the Soviet Ukrainian party but also the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (KPZU) in Poland. Both parties underwent severe purges and in 1938 the Comintern dissolved the KPZU on Stalin's orders. Shumskyi was arrested in the same month that Khvliovyi committed suicide (January 1933) and given a 10-year GULAG sentence. After the war, he tried to return to Ukraine from the Russian city of Saratov, but never arrived in Kyiv. His death, like so many of those during Stalin's rule, remains unexplained.

These three biographies all pertain to individuals who were committed both to Communism and the future of Ukraine, and they are likely the best known of the Ukrainian leaders of the 1920s. But there were many others. They were characterized precisely by their concern for their native land and lack of subservience to the leadership in Moscow. Yet they served a party that does not feature in the long list of those "fighting for the independence of Ukraine" in the May Laws. That list includes incidentally even the Hetmanate under Pavlo Skoropadskyi, which requisitioned grain from Ukrainian peasants to feed the Imperial German army in the latter stages of the First World War.

Their omission from Law No. 25, 190, not only politicizes the Decommunization procedures; it represents an unfortunate and selective manipulation of the past by the authors of the decree, including the director of the Institute of National Memory. None of this is to suggest that the Communist leadership did not commit crimes in Ukraine; only that there were meritorious Communists in Ukraine who died for their beliefs and love of their country well before the Second World War broke out.

FURTHER READING

Mace, James E. Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1983.

Palko, Olena, "Ukrainian National Communism: Challenging History," Journal of Contemporary Central and East Europe, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2014): 27-28.

Shkandrij, Myroslav, Modernists, Marxists, and the Nation: the Ukrainian Literary Discussion of the 1920s. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1992.

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