Johnson's Russia List
2016-#216
6 November 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

You see what you expect to see 

In this issue
 
 #1
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
November 6, 2015
Russia Is Sobering Up From Its Drunken 1990s America-Worship
Yet sadly American politicians' uninformed groupthink about Russia has not changed much at all
By Oleg Makarenko  
The author is popular blogger fritzmorgen. [http://fritzmorgen.livejournal.com/]

-Bygone are the days when Russians idolized everything western
-The US-inspired economic reforms cost Russia half of her industrial production
-Self-confident Russia could be a better partner to America than a subservient one

I lived in Leningrad when the heavily rusted Iron Curtain collapsed and Russians could see the Western world. We imagined the West to be a communist paradise where everyone, including those idles who lived on welfare, could afford jeans, video-recorders and cars.  

The winter of 1991 came with two memorable events. Firstly, Freddie Mercury had died (people in USSR loved his songs just like any other people). Secondly, our class went to Denmark on a student-exchange trip.

The trip was a real shock to teenagers from crisis-stricken USSR, where shopping for basic foodstuffs entailed grueling queues.

Soviet authorities regarded the art of advertising with contempt, so everything enraptured us, from sweet soda to colorful advertising leaflets printed on glossy paper. We probably looked like savages staring at bright beads at an imitation jewelry store. We were stunned and delighted by capitalistic reality.

In the same year, Leningrad was renamed Saint-Petersburg, the Soviet Union passed away, and we with our hearts ablaze embarked on building capitalism, the showcase of which had seemed so alluring to us. We expected, in all seriousness, that we would all become rich people.

As befits diligent cargo-cult neophytes, we drew an airstrip on a beach as accurately as we could, and a few savages from our tribe started swinging torches in an attempt to imitate runway lights. But somehow a huge silvery bird didn't come to give us valuable cargo.

After the first seven years of democratic reforms in Russia, the Industrial Production Index fell by more than 50%, and agriculture was in such disarray that it was hard to find any Russian merchandise. To be honest, nobody was even looking for Russian products, as during that time we believed that real quality was only to be found in the West.

In 1998 Russia defaulted because of the reckless speculation with government bonds of our politicians and their oligarch companions. We became seriously dependent on IMF loans and our Western partners felt free to exploit this dependence for their own benefit.

Recently Michael Bohm, an American journalist, took part in a popular TV show in Russia. He started to explain that there is nothing wrong with having foreign citizens occupying high positions in the Ukrainian government. "Are there foreigners in the US government?" the anchorman asked. "But we are not Ukraine!" the journalist explained.

Michael Bohm's double standards are forgivable. It doesn't make sense to compare the US and Ukraine. However, the problem is that Washington treats Russia in the same dismissive manner.

In the 1990s, Washington's condescension was justified. Russia was a poor and thoroughly corrupt country. The average pension was 30 dollars a month, while public officials faithfully obeyed their American advisors. At the time, Russia looked like a wretched drunken cowboy from a Hollywood film.

I'm not proud of that period of our history. Nevertheless, 17 years have passed since the default of 1998. The Russian cowboy got himself together. He sobered up, bought his weapon back from the pawnshop and is now back in the saddle, just like in the good old Soviet days - a period which a lot of Russian people reminisce about with unconcealed nostalgia (which, I suppose, is not altogether unreasonable).

In the year 2000 Vladimir Putin took power from Boris Yeltsin's weakening hands. Putin removed thieving oligarchs from power, forced businessmen to pay taxes, and rebuilt industry that was nearly destroyed in the 1990s. He put the country back in order. For Russians, it was a welcome sight.

I live in Saint Petersburg, near the Finnish border. In 1991, a Soviet teenager believed Finland to be a wonderland full of luxury, treasure and the glittering light of neon signs. When I went on a trip to Finland in 2014, I was looking around and couldn't understand: how could I have admired these backwoods twenty years ago?

Sadly, in terms of perception, American politicians are stuck in the 1990s. Barack Obama was deeply mistaken when he bragged that he had left the Russian economy "in tatters". The blow that Washington dealt to Russia when it blocked Russian access to dollar loans can be likened to a cowboy who has been barred from buying whiskey on credit in a saloon. The drunkard of 1998 would probably have died without cheap whiskey. In 2015, the cowboy can easily enjoy some Chinese tea for a change.

I suppose Uncle Sam should reconsider his merry band of sovietologists and self-styled experts, and then proceed to analyze the situation in Russia not by reading his own tame activists' reports but by reading articles in the Western business media, which are at least more objective. Now, after Vladimir Putin helped Barack Obama solve the Iran problem, is the best time to move towards a de-escalation in the US relationship with Russia, especially given that the Russians may still believe there is a chance for a mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries.
 #2
Russia: Other Points of View
November 5, 2015
RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP
By Patrick Armstrong
Patrick Armstrong received a PhD from Kings College, University of London, England in 1976 and retired in 2008 after 30 years as an analyst for the Canadian government, specializing in first the USSR and then Russia. He was a Political Counselor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow from 1993 to 1996. He has been a frequent speaker at the Wilton Park conferences in the UK.
[Text with links here http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2015/11/russian-federation-sitrep.html]

RUSSIAN ATROCITIES!!!! The Americans attack an MSF hospital in Afghanistan and lie about it. (The lack of response to their demand for an international inquiry is "embarrassing" says MSF. Today's gruesome details.) The Saudis attack an MSF hospital in Yemen and lie about it. Negligible! Russians bombed four hospitals in Syria! no, it's seven! no, it's twelve! Sources? The usual GONGOs, including the ever-compliant Bellingcat, and mumbles from the State Department. Not ours, says MSF, nor ours says Red Cross. Oh well, push a new one out there. The usual tame sources shriek that Russia is killing civilians. That didn't work the last time - the fakery was swiftly exposed.

MORE PROPAGANDA. "This is the first time that Russia has publicly acknowledged that Assad may have to go" or "Changing stance?". Nope - unchanged since June 2012: "This issue has to be settled by the Syrians themselves." It's the West that's changed its line on "Assad must go": UK, USA. In fact, the recent Vienna declaration is everything Russia wanted: another Russian diplomatic victory (or victory for realism and coherence, I prefer to say). Which probably explains the rash of atrocity stories above.

WASHINGTON ON SYRIA. Incoherent. We are somehow supposed to think that US special forces have been put into Kurdish areas and will be supported from Turkey by US aircraft at the same time that Turkey is attacking the Kurds. How does that work? What does NATO do if the Turks bomb Americans? Does that make sense? Is your local MSM outlet asking any questions? No wonder Jordan has signed on to the Russian effort, Iraq is baulking and Afghanistan is interested in Russian help. Meanwhile Canada is pulling out of the US led effort and the UK is wobbly. Watch the video - do you see any plan there that you would want to follow? On the other hand, Washington has been trying to get rid of Assad for years. Why? "Barrel bombs" we're told.

MOSCOW ON SYRIA. Coherent. Assad visited Moscow - the whole thing was announced after he returned home. Contrary to silly claims from the NYT - "chilly reception"! - it's clear it was a series of important meetings with Russia's relevant leadership. Moscow's position is coherent and consistent: 1) to destroy the state structure of Syria will create chaos that only Daesh will profit from (vide Libya); 2) Assad is the legitimate head of the Syrian government; 3) if the Syrian people choose someone else in the future, Moscow will work with him; 4) support the forces on the ground that actually fight Daesh.

PLANE CRASH. The latest theory, based on the "black boxes", is that the crash was caused by an engine explosion. But what caused that?

IN CASE ANYONE HAD FORGOTTEN... Two ICBM tests and two SLBM tests this week.

RUSSIA INC. Has the Russian economy turned the corner? This astute observer argues that it might have.

UKRAINE. Local elections were held and I am amused to see that they have received little coverage in the WMSM. That's of course because they didn't go the way they were supposed to. A rather low turnout, even if you believe the official numbers. Yatsenyuk's party had so little support it didn't even run, Poroshenko's party didn't do that well, the nazis (in this case Svoboda. Don't like "nazi"? well see J8 for the European Parliament's view before fashions changed) did well in the west and the Opposition Bloc did well in the east. Better not have elections in Mariupol at all. The country is every bit as divided as it always has been. Are we in the Night of the Long Knives, or Thermidor? The security police have arrestedthe leader of one of the nazi battalions and there is a story that the leader of another has been taken. Some sort of investigation of the Maidan shootings is happening which could implicate another. Was there an assassination attempt on the Prosecutor General? Stay tuned. But I'm sure you will all be happier now AFP has told us President Poroshenko is richer than before.

GEORGIA. There is a phone recording of Saakashvili plotting a coup in Georgia; Tbilisi has opened a criminal investigation. PM Garibashvili is not amused. The recording is apparently real although Saakashvili blusters that "the Russians" touched it up.

MEANWHILE, PIVOTING TO ASIA. Washington did its sailpast. Watch this short video of the Chinese response; do you think Beijing is joking? I don't. Something to think about: a Chinese attack submarine closely followed a US carrier last month.

 
 #3
The National Interest
November 5, 2015
Reviving D�tente?
By John Richard Cookson
John Richard Cookson is an assistant managing editor at the National Interest.

On Capitol Hill yesterday there were echoes of the closing decades of the Cold War in which first d�tente, then Ronald Reagan's direct engagement with Mikhail Gorbachev prevailed in Washington's relationship with Moscow. On Wednesday, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) convened a panel of four experts from the recently re-founded American Committee for East-West Accord, an update on a similarly titled organization established in 1974. The four speakers, with backgrounds in diplomacy, business and academia, set out, in the words of board member and noted Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen, "to promote debate and discussion about American-Russian relations at a time when these relations are really lousy, and getting worse."

The panel's concerns, however, dated not from the 1970s and '80s, but rather were very much of the present. Borderless terrorism, the fallout from failed states and civil wars and rogue groups obtaining loose nuclear or chemical materials are threats common to both the United States and Russia. They are also threats that have been undercut by unnecessarily abrasive relations between the two countries, the panelists argued. "Much of the rhetoric today is reminiscent of the Cold War," said former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack F. Matlock. "Actually," he added, "our deepest interests with Russia are consistent."

Former Procter & Gamble chairman and CEO John Pepper spoke of his long-standing business and personal ties with Russia. "It's so clear that Russian men and women," Pepper said, "really care about the same things that U.S. men and women care about, and that's how their families grow up, safety in their country, being free from terrorism."

Washington and Moscow have substantive points of disagreement, the panelists noted, in Ukraine and in Syria, for example. The intention was not simply to ignore these differences. Indeed, Cohen said, "the chance for a permanent Washington-Moscow partnership was lost sometime after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, and it was lost so completely, so profoundly, that we are now in a new American-Russian cold war."

Instead, the speakers outlined what amounted to an argument for nuance and syncopation against a steady drumbeat bringing these two countries nearer to conflict. The goal should be a realistic security partnership, Cohen explained, and one that starts from acknowledging that there were fumbles by both the United States and Russia in the post-Cold War years. In practice, this would take the form of programs the U.S. Congress had undertaken in the past, including formal meetings and exchanges between the representatives of the two countries, as well as more hearings in Congress.

The stakes go beyond simply the post-Cold War settlement, and even beyond Russian president Vladimir Putin and the issues of the moment. Duke University emeritus professor Ellen Mickiewicz outlined research into the next generation of Russian leaders, research collected from detailed surveys of the country's top three universities. They are critical of Russian media, she said, speaking of the next generation of Russian leaders, seeking out other reports from foreign news organizations, for example. However, she adds:                                   

"They are not cynical. They're idealists. Patriotic in the sense of the great nineteenth-century writers. They rarely refer at all to the Soviet era. And they have no interest in empire. They are disappointed with the United States and have real fear of being targeted by bombs. A path to solution must make it clear that no such policy is contemplated."

Risk-aversion is a key feature of this next generation, Mickiewicz said. "They have learned not to take on the possibility of what they call betrayal. Trusting is just too risky. It takes time and has to survive tests." She pointedly added, "These are the ones who will be sitting across negotiating tables."

Congressional hearings in the 1970s and '80s, Cohen said, largely revolved around the question of whether to work with Russia on de-escalation or whether that was simply not possible at that given moment. In recent years, the former has been lacking, Cohen summed up, adding that the new American Committee for East-West Accord sought to be a start at correcting this melancholy state of affairs.   

 
 #4
Moscow Times
November 6, 2015
New Editor-in-Chief Appointed to The Moscow Times

Liberal Russian journalist Mikhail Fishman was appointed editor-in-chief of English-language paper The Moscow Times on Thursday, the newspaper's owner Demyan Kudryavtsev said.

"He is a decent, well-known and well-connected person," Kudryavtsev, who bought the paper earlier this year, said in e-mailed comments to The Moscow Times.

The appointment of Fishman comes less than three weeks after former editor-in-chief, and veteran The Moscow Times reporter, Nabi Abdullaev, resigned because of what he said were "differences" with Kudryavtsev.

Prominent journalist Fishman was the editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek when it was shut down - reportedly because of financial losses - five years ago. He has since hosted his own show on liberal television station Dozhd and is an editor at Internet news site Slon.ru.

First published as a daily paper in 1992, The Moscow Times switched to a new, 16-page weekly format this week.DJ: We all face difficulties and obstacles in trying to find a balanced assessment of current issues. One neglected problem may be the heavy burden of the overconfident Maidan Versteher who insists on always being right. No one is completely right but some have a hard time accepting that.

 
 
  #5
The Guardian
November 6, 2015
Russia's last independent English newspaper ends daily edition
Weekly version of The Moscow Times adopts magazine-style format amid fears over loss of important news source
By Alec Luhn in Moscow

Russia's only independent English-language newspaper, The Moscow Times, has stopped publishing daily issues in favour of a new weekly format.

The new owner says the move will allow him to save the loss-making publication, but some correspondents fear it spells the end of an important independent news source and training ground for correspondents.

Founded by Dutch publisher Derk Sauer in 1992 and distributed in cafes, hotels and airplanes, The Moscow Times often covered Russian news and issues in more depth than western publications. Former correspondents have gone on to success at other publications, including Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Ellen Barry.

As the Russian economy has slowed down and expats have begun to leave the country, other English-language publications such as the entertainment newspaper The Element have shut down.

In addition to economic difficulties, independent media also face political problems. Amid rising tensions with the west, Russian officials regularly accuse foreign media of waging an information war against Moscow.

In October 2014 Vladimir Putin signed a law barring foreign investors from owning more than a 20% stake in Russian media outlets. Following this legislation, the Finnish publishing group Sanoma sold The Moscow Times to Demyan Kudryavtsev, who previously directed the publishing house of the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant and was a business partner of the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

Kudryavtsev admits that he bought The Moscow Times as part of a package that included the important Russian business daily Vedomosti, as well as the more profitable Men's Health and National Geographic. But he chose to try to revamp the newspaper rather than shut it down, he said.

"I do it from my own pocket, and all I'm hearing is that I'm killing The Moscow Times," he said. "The Moscow Times was already dead as a business, for eight years. If the audience needs it, it needs to be proved economically, that's what we call the free market."

But some former and current Moscow Times correspondents called it the end of an era.

"The newspaper is basically a feature pile, city guide kind of thing," said one reporter who declined to be quoted by name. "It has some newsy kinds of things but no aspirations to anything particularly serious, as was shown in new edition. It's not that it's badly written, it's just the format."

The first weekly issue that came out on Thursday includes several reports on the troubled Russian airline industry following the plane crash in Egypt this weekend. But its new magazine-style cover also features a piece on a local women's football team and a story with the teaser, New Ways to Get Drunk in Moscow.

Although no mass layoffs have ensued, the newspaper has fired a photographer as part of what Kudryavtsev said was a restructuring of the photo department, and at least five other employees have left since he became owner. But Kudryavtsev has hired a respected Russian publisher, as well as a well-known editor, who will determine the content, he said.

"If they continue to populate the website with relevant news stories each day (and this was a plan), then The Moscow Times will remain a meaningful source of news," said former editor Nabi Abdullaev, who left the newspaper last month over personal disagreements with Kudryavtsev.
 #6
Moscow Times
November 6, 2015
More Russians Attending Pro-Putin Rallies
By Peter Hobson

The number of Russians attending pro-government rallies has increased tenfold since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, a study found, while enthusiasm for opposition meetings has grown only slightly.

A survey by the social research center at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) showed that 16 percent of people said they had participated in a rally, up from 4 percent in 2012, the RBC news agency reported Thursday.

However, the increase was almost entirely thanks to government supporters taking to the streets: Only one percent of people had attended a pro-government rally in 2012. This year, 10 percent said they had attended.

By contrast, 3 percent of respondents this year said they had participated at opposition meetings, up from 2 percent in 2012. Three percent of those polled said they had been to both government and opposition rallies.

The surge in pro-government activity follows a crackdown on opposition demonstrations and independent media since Putin was elected to a third term as president in 2012. Within months of his election victory, authorities began making arrests at a protest movement against alleged violations at parliamentary elections the previous winter.

More recently, state media have portrayed Russian support of separatists in Ukraine and bombing in Syria as heroic battles against nationalism, terror and malign U.S. influence, fueling a surge in support for the government and pushing Putin's approval rating last month to a new record of almost 90 percent.

One-quarter of respondents to the RANEPA survey said they were ready to attend a pro-government rally, up from 6 percent three years ago, according to RBC. Six percent said the same about opposition demonstrations, up from 4 percent in 2012.

Most staunch in their support were pensioners, one third of whom said they would attend a pro-government meeting. But support has risen fast among young people: Twelve percent of Russians aged 18-25 said they would come out to support the government, up from only 1 percent in 2012.

The swelling willingness to back the government also comes amid a recession that is worsening Russians' quality of life. Wages have shrunk in real terms by nearly 10 percent in the past year, and pensions are set to rise in 2016 by far less than the rate of inflation - a first in recent years.

On Wednesday, authorities said that 85,000 people had attended an official rally for Unity Day in Moscow, compared to 75,000 last year.

Valery Federov, chief of state-run pollster VTsIOM, told RBC that just as important as Putin's popularity was effective organization by pro-government forces.

"In some sense this is a demonstration of power ahead of an election year," he said. Russia will hold parliamentary elections in 2016.

The RANEPA survey polled 6,104 people in 10 Russian regions, according to RBC. No margin of error was given.
 #7
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
November 5, 2015
Vladimir Putin again tops list of world's most powerful people
Vladimir Putin has been named the most powerful man in the world once again. The president of Russia took first place in Forbes' annual ranking for the third year in a row. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama took second and third place, respectively. In addition to the Russian president, the Most Powerful People list includes three other Russians - Igor Sechin, Alexei Miller and Alisher Usmanov.
YANA LUBNINA, SPECIAL TO RBTH

Vladimir Putin topped the Most Powerful People list for the first time in 2013. At the time Forbes noted the efforts of the Russian president in resolving the crisis concerning Syrian chemical weapons and the situation surrounding ex-CIA employee Edward Snowden.

Putin regularly appears at the top of the list in such rankings. In the spring of 2015, readers of the U.S. magazine Time named him the most powerful man on Earth. Similar results were presented by the Agence France Presse (AFP) in December 2014.

Experts believe that this time Putin's recognition was influenced by Russian military's operations in Syria against the Islamic State terrorist organization. The organization is banned in Russia.

For a long time, Russia was considered an outsider on the world stage. In many ways Putin has been able to recover the country's original positions.

Pavel Salin, director of the Center for Political Studies at the Financial University under the Russian Government, has taken note of this. "In the past few years, the entire global political system has gone into a state of permanent instability," Salin says. "In other words the influence of the fundamental players has decreased significantly. In such a situation, the role of players that were already written off, at least as primary ones, increases, and Russia has recently been a force that - of course, not always successfully, but nevertheless - balances some of the other forces."

Putin's ratings in Russia

Forbes points out that Putin's approval rating has increased inside Russia, as well. According to the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) in October, almost 90 percent of Russians approved of the work of the president despite the deterioration in the economy.

A survey conducted by the Public Opinion Fund showed that 75 percent of Russians would vote for Putin if presidential elections were held today. However, such surveys do not always directly relate to the activities of the president, says political scientist Pavel Svyatenkov.

"As a student I myself participated in such polls and realize that often when people respond to the question, 'Do you trust the president?,' they primarily are answering the question, 'Is the president a good guy?' Very often people respond that he is good based on psychological notions," Svyatenkov said.

"Secondly, it often happens that respondents consider it a kind of test of loyalty to the authorities and also usually respond that they have great respect for the president," Salin says. "At the same time, the rating of the government, for example, is much lower."

As a rule, Putin does not comment on such lists. In 2013, he said that his work should be evaluated by Russian citizens. The influence of the country is shown not by magazine rankings, but by the real power of the state, the president said.
#8
www.rt.com
November 5, 2015
The secret of Putin's success: Defending Russia like a modern-day Bismarck

The Russian leader knows what he is doing because he knows exactly how far to go, he knows where the red line is, he doesn't go beyond that red line, says author and Russia analyst Martin McCauley.

RT: Are you surprised that Vladimir Putin tops the Forbes' 'most powerful people' list again?

Martin McCauley: No, I am not. Because he is the one who has been in the news all the time. He outmaneuvered the Americans over Syria, he outmaneuvered them over Crimea, he outmaneuvered them over Ukraine. So, he is the one who is in the frame all the time - everyone around the world knows him. Xi Jinping, he meets him and you have this Russian - Chinese friendship. He doesn't go to America because he hasn't been invited there. And President [Barack] Obama doesn't go to Moscow. And perhaps that will come up in 2016.

But at present Vladimir Putin is number one. But, of course, 'number one' doesn't mean you represent a number one country from a military or economic point of view. Because America is still number one in economics and military. But from the view of politics, from the view of name-recognition, Vladimir Putin is number one.

RT: What kind of image do magazine front covers give of the Russian leader?

MM: In the West, if you look at American magazines, it is basically negative. If you look at the English press, it is basically negative because he is a man who they view as worse than [Otto von] Bismarck.

Bismarck created 'Realpolitik' which means pursuing your sovereign interests, your national interest without concern for morals and ethics. Therefore, they see him as worse than Bismarck. He is a realpolitik and [the Western world] hoped that Realpolitik should be in the past. And because of this they have very negative views. They say: "He breaks international law". He says: "It is your law, we don't recognize that law and we are acting according to certain precepts."

The number one precept is national sovereignty: we must protect our state - Russia must be protected from the outside world. We see the outside world - the US, European Union societies - as decadent. We don't wish to join them. We want to be separate from them, and so on. And many people respect that - it is a different vision and a different view. Many people disagree with it, but they accept it.  

RT: Forbes claims that Putin can do what he wants and get away with it. Do you agree that he wields that much power?

MM: That is basically what he is doing because he knows exactly how far to go, he knows where the red line is, he isn't going beyond that red line. He is not going to start a war with the US because Russia would lose it. He is not going to start a war with China because he would lose it. Therefore, in his policies he knows exactly how far to go.

And he knows the EU with all its members they all have to come together and they have to agree on a policy. NATO has 28 members, and they all have to agree. Germany will not agree to any aggressive policy in Europe. So, therefore, because of all this he can judge how far he can go. He has done this very skillfully... He is devoted to Russia. Ukraine is now weak. In Syria, he is playing a major role. And he is calling together the major powers there, and talking to them.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm, in his book, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914, noted that Bismarck "remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871 [and] devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers."
 #9
The Economist
November 7, 2015
Russia's Sergei Shoigu
Master of emergencies
The trusty defence minister is the only person to serve in every government since the fall of the Soviet Union. He could be the next president

ON VLADIMIR PUTIN'S birthday in October, his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, brought him a gift: the latest briefing on Russia's military campaign in Syria. It included news that cruise missiles fired from the Caspian Sea had struck targets nearly 1,500km away. "We know how complicated such operations are," Mr Putin replied approvingly. That evening the pair celebrated by playing an ice-hockey match with their amateur club. Mr Putin knocked in seven goals, and Mr Shoigu scored one for good measure. Their team won handily.

Since Mr Shoigu took over the defence ministry in late 2012, his partnership with Mr Putin has flourished off the ice, too. The Russian armed forces have emerged as the primary instrument of Mr Putin's foreign policy. In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, along the edges of NATO airspace and now in Syria, Russia has projected power with newfound effectiveness. Under Mr Shoigu, Russia's armed forces have "demonstrated a capability and organisation and logistics skill-set that we have not seen before," says Evelyn Farkas, who was until recently the Pentagon's top official on Russian affairs.

But Mr Shoigu is much more than Russia's latest defence minister. At 60, three years younger than Mr Putin, he is the longest-serving member of the Russian government; his tenure stretches back to 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Mr Putin was still toiling in obscurity in the St Petersburg mayor's office. He made his name at the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS), a semi-militarised rescue service with a wide remit that he built himself and led for nearly 22 years. By skilfully navigating Russia's Byzantine bureaucracy, he has accrued power and popularity without making any notable enemies. "There's no one else like him in the ruling class," says Evgeny Minchenko, an analyst who studies the Russian elite. "It's an absolutely unprecedented story."

Russia is a land of emergencies, from droughts and forest fires to sinking submarines, apartment-block bombings and school hostage dramas. The most recent addition is the crash of a charter plane over the Sinai peninsula, possibly due to terrorism (see article). So it is hardly surprising that the minister of emergency situations should become one of the best-known figures in Russian politics. Although Mr Shoigu does not belong to Mr Putin's coterie of ex-KGB men from St Petersburg, he is a trusted insider. Mr Minchenko, who releases a widely circulated yearly report called "Politburo 2.0", puts Mr Shoigu second in influence among Mr Putin's associates, trailing only his chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov. When big decisions like the operations in Ukraine or Syria are made, Mr Shoigu is indispensable. His combination of loyalty, competence and popularity also makes him one of a handful of potential successors to Mr Putin.

Mr Shoigu grew up in southern Siberia, in the little-known republic of Tuva (see article). He had a liking for sports, backyard brawls and risky stunts, such as hopping the ice floes across the powerful Yenisei river. Such high jinks earned him the nickname Shaitan("Satan"). An engineering degree in Krasnoyarsk and several successful construction projects led to a summons to Moscow in 1990 by the Communist Party leadership. After a stint on an architecture committee, Mr Shoigu took over a new corps of rescue workers, turning it into the highly effective organisation that eventually became MChS. He also showed unflinching loyalty, coming to the aid of Boris Yeltsin during the attempted coup in August 1991 and again during the constitutional crisis of October 1993.

In the chaos of the 1990s, Mr Shoigu became a reassuring presence. Besides handling fires and natural disasters, he served as a mediator in conflicts from South Ossetia to Tajikistan and Chechnya. In 1999, as Mr Yeltsin prepared to hand the reins to Mr Putin, his team tapped Mr Shoigu to lead a new political party called Unity, which later morphed into United Russia, the current ruling party. Mr Yeltsin described Mr Shoigu as "our greatest star".

When Mr Putin took power, his strategists needed to define the amorphous new leader for the public. Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin adviser, says the administration "consciously crafted" Mr Putin's image in part on Mr Shoigu's: "Putin was supposed to be a rescuer, too." Mr Shoigu, who had never wanted to enter party politics, wisely ceded the spotlight. He understood, as Mr Pavlovsky puts it, "that one log can't support two bears".

Instead, Mr Shoigu ingratiated himself. In 2000 he gave Mr Putin a black labrador, Koni, who became the president's favourite dog. He accompanied Mr Putin on his macho, shirtless adventure trips. He patriotically took holidays in Russian forests rather than on French beaches. The men shared an interest in history; Mr Shoigu became president of the Russian Geographical Society, a revived tsarist-era group that serves as a club for the Russian elite.

Officer and gentleman

After Anatoly Serdyukov, the previous defence minister, fell out of favour, Mr Putin put the armed forces in Mr Shoigu's hands. Mr Serdyukov oversaw much-needed reforms, but alienated the top brass. Mr Shoigu has largely preserved the changes while restoring morale. "Under Shoigu, the army began to believe in itself," says Mikhail Khodarenok, editor of the Military-Industrial Courier, a defence weekly.

Mr Shoigu has concentrated on military readiness-and public relations. He has ramped up exercises and snap inspections, says Dmitry Gorenburg of Harvard University, an expert on the Russian army. Early decisions, such as ordering soldiers to switch from archaic cloth foot-wraps (portyaniki) to socks, helped restore the reputation of an army that had been derided throughout the post-Soviet era.

At first his pragmatic attitude held for relations with the West, too. Mr Shoigu affably called Chuck Hagel, then the American defence secretary, by his first name. "Whereas the default position for many Russian security officials is to throw up roadblocks, he seemed to relish blowing through them," says Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary of defence.

The Ukraine crisis ended that chumminess. When Mr Putin decided to seize Crimea, Mr Shoigu dispatched a deputy, Oleg Belaventsev, to oversee the invasion. (Mr Belaventsev is now presidential envoy to Crimea.) Mr Shoigu's experience as a crisis manager served him well. "The Crimean operation demonstrated a new Russian army," says Mr Minchenko. "And Shoigu became a symbol of that army."

On May 9th, during celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, Russian television cameras fixed on a black convertible ferrying Mr Shoigu onto Red Square. Decked out in full military regalia, he crossed himself as he passed under the Kremlin walls. The highly unusual gesture was seemingly designed to allay any questions about the half-Tuvan, half-Russian's Christianity. The attention bestowed upon Mr Shoigu became the topic of fresh speculation: was he destined for higher office?

The ultimate emergency

The question of what comes after Mr Putin haunts Russia's political system. The president's grip on power is based in part on the idea of bezalternativnost, the lack of alternatives. If a real number two were to emerge, it would "be the start of a game that [Mr Putin] fears because he cannot control it," argues Mr Pavlovsky.

But if a shortlist exists, Mr Shoigu is probably on it. He remains Russia's most trusted and popular politician not named Putin. He has avoided scandals and is perceived as relatively clean. (The anti-corruption campaigner, Alexey Navalny, has accused him of building a gaudy pagoda-style home worth $18m-charges Mr Shoigu's representatives have denied.) Mr Shoigu has long denied having political ambitions. Yet that may work in his favour. "He's not obviously desperate to climb the greasy pole," argues Mark Galeotti, a Russia scholar at New York University, "which might mean that he's precisely the one who ends up on top of it." When the ultimate emergency strikes, Russians may well turn to their first rescuer-in-chief.
 
 #10
Forbes.com
November 5, 2015
For Business, World Bank Says Russia Better Than These Countries
By Kenneth Rapoza

Russia is getting better. Slowly but surely the economy is modernizing and streamlining the way businesses are run. It's not Europe, and certainly not the U.S., but according to the World Bank's annual Doing Business report, it's got the BRIC countries beat my a country mile. On the Ease of Doing Business Ranking, Russia even scores higher than Luxembourg. Luxembourg!

This year Russia was ranked 51 out of 189 countries measured. Last year, it was ranked 62. Russia has maintained "a strong reform momentum," according to the Russia program leader for the World Bank, Sylvie Bossoutrot.

Russia scored among the top 10 best performers globally in registering property (8) - better than the United States - and is fifth worldwide in enforcing contracts. By comparison, the U.S. is ranked 21.

Russia has made headlines over the last year, but not because of its economic reforms, which are far from explosive. They've been the bad guys from Washington to Brussels since the March 16 annexation of Crimea, then a Black Sea peninsula owned by Ukraine. After that, they helped bankroll and support separatists in the Donbass region of Ukraine, an important industrial hub that has bee laid to waste because of pro-Russia fighters trying to follow in Crimea's footsteps.

Then there is the Syria bombardment, where Vladimir Putin is seen propping up another candidate for American Middle East regime change, Bashar al Assad. Both the U.S. and Russian military are tag-teaming a fighting against ISIS, but it is unclear just how well the partners are getting along on the battlefield. The two together would make a legionary force against Islamic terrorism. Instead, most of the English language media see (or want to see) the beginnings of a proxy war between Obama and Putin.

All of this turned Russia into the black sheep of the world economy. But while sanctions and oil prices sent the economy into a recession this year, the central bank leadership has managed what everyone thought would become another ruble crisis last year. Elvira Nabiullina was ranked as the world's best central banker for 2015 by EuroMoney magazine in September. Inflation is declining. The ruble is stable and in lock-step with oil, not geopolitics, and most investors expect Russia's economy to grow next year after adjusting to lower oil prices and important bans.

World Bank researchers said Russia has been busy streamlining licensing procedures and reducing the number of state inspections required for small businesses this year. The change helped Russian businesses increase annual sales in

regions with strong government institutions. Simplifying licensing requirements in these regions is associated with a 4.5 percentage point increase in annual sales growth, while reducing the number of state inspections per business led to a 12 percentage point increase in sales growth.

The report also shows that regulatory reform to encourage business entry was most successful in regions with greater government transparency, not greater government control. Businesses were most attracted to stable, open governments operating in areas of Russia with an above-average educated citizenry and greater fiscal autonomy from Moscow.

In Russian states meeting these criteria, the probability of fully implementing reforms was expected to be 8 percentage points higher, and the probability of meeting business entry targets was 11 percentage points higher.

The share of new firms using illegitimate business licenses also dropped by more than half.

"In some ways Russian corporate governance is better than in Western Europe or the US," says David Herne, a fund manager at the Specialized Research and Investment Group in Moscow. "Where Russia falls down today is in implementation of the law."
 
 #11
Russia approves Far East development strategy for 2015-2025

MOSCOW, November 6. /TASS/. The Russian government has approved a concept to develop Far Eastern territories, including the Kuril Islands, to spur regional economic growth.

An instruction signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and posted on the government's website stipulates measures to ensure the sustainable development of the Far Eastern economy and social stability of border regions and make them competitive with the territories of adjacent countries.

The program is designed to encourage the local population to stay at the places of their living, expand the local system of entrepreneurship and the tourist potential and create hi-tech production facilities.

The program will be implemented in two stages. In 2015-2016, organizational measures are planned along with the elaboration of an action plan. In 2017-2025, regional plans will start to be implemented.

In particular, the Russian government approved a state program in August for the development of the Kuril Islands in 2016-2025 intended to expand the size of the local population by 25% and develop the agrarian, tourist and mining industries.

The program is worth 70 billion rubles ($1.1 billion). The program envisages building 200 km of asphalt roads on the Kuril Islands and connecting all the populated settlements of the Islands of Kunashir, Iturup and Parmushir, increase the number of air flights and sea carriages and build a network of enterprises.

Under the program, the gross regional product of the Kuril Islands is expected to expand at least twofold in the next 5-6 years. Also, a new powerful Russian air base will be deployed on the Islands.

All the Kuril Islands were integrated into the USSR after the Soviet Union's victory over Japan in World War Two.
 
 #12
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
November 5, 2015
The Soviet Parallels of Fishtown's Middle-Aged Male Mortality Crisis [excerpt]
By ANATOLY KARLIN
[Full text with charts here http://www.unz.com/akarlin/soviet-fishtown/]

The newly released paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton showing that mortality rates amongst middle-aged White American males (MAWAM) increased from 1999-2013 has been generating a lot of discussion of late. This mortality increase was concentrated amongst MAWAMs with a high school degree or less ("Fishtown," to borrow from Charles Murray's archetype of a White working class town), who now have a mortality rate even greater than that of US Blacks with their much-discussed health and violent crime problems. But mortality continued falling amongst the better educated Whites ("Belmont," Murray's archetypical White American upper middle class suburb).

This mortality increase was apparently driven by a surge in deaths from external causes, especially poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver cirrhosis. Even MAWAMs with a BS degree or higher saw a tiny increase in deaths from external causes, to the extent that MAWAMs are now more likely to die from external causes in their middle age than Latinos, or even Blacks.

It is worth pointing out that it seems to be a very unusual pattern relative not just to other ethnic groups in the US but to other developed European and Anglo countries. The graph below shows all-cause mortality for 45-54 year old MAWAMs relative to their peers in France, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Sweden. Americans went from being middle of the pack to an outlier.

As someone familiar with Russian demographic history, this was a depressingly familiar pattern to me.

Russian demographic history 101: By the mid-1960s, Russian life expectancy - both male and female - had basically converged with that of the First World.

Then it essentially stagnated... for half a century.

Remarkably, a Russian 50 year old man in 1964 had a smaller chance of dying (1,129/100,000 annually) than his grandson in 2010 (1,655/100,000) - regardless of all the medical advances in the intervening half century.

This mortality tsunami was driven by a huge rise in alcoholism from the 1960s, coupled with the Soviet Union's lack of interest in creating a modern hi-tech medical system (as the West started to do in earnest from the 1970s). Although there was a modest interruption to these negative trends in the mid-to-late 1980s, when there was a modest improvement thanks to Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, the decline resumed with a vengeance in the 1990s as the Soviet state lost its monopoly on vodka production and vodka prices plummeted. In the 2000s things started looking up again, as the Putin government raised excise taxes on vodka, invested in modern medical care, and changing social mores and the labor discipline promoted by capitalist economics started making binge drinking less cool. Even so, as of 2015, the health profiles of Russian men - though far improved relative to the days of the late Brezhnev, to say nothing of Yeltsin - have yet to exceed their mid-1960s peaks.

Although there were some "bad trends" in terms of healthy lifestyle in the West as well from the 1970s - it was from this period onwards that the US got started on its obesity epidemic - these were much less detrimental to overall health than the hardcore vodka binge drinking that became prevalent in Soviet life by the 1970s, and their negative effects were in any case more than fully counteracted by vast improvements in emergency response and cardiac medical care.

The great stagnation in MAWAM mortality in the 1990s and 2000s revealed by Case and Deaton - down to the social differentiation, with the situation improving slightly in well-educated, upper class Belmont, but positively plummeting in poorly-educated, lower class Fishtown and more than cancelling out improvements in Belmont so far as MAWAMs as a whole are considered - seems to have a striking parallel with what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Although the post-Soviet mortality crisis was felt across all social groups, it impacted middle-aged Russian men (MARMs) especially hard. Mortality for the best educated segments of the population, while rising initially in the early 1990s, quickly reversed and soon fell below Soviet-era levels. In contrast, the lower class Russians - the "gopnik" class of popular culture - have far poorer health today (despite the Putin era recovery) than even in the most vodka-drenched days of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. Here is a 2005 article from the American Journal of Public Health:

The mortality advantage of better-educated men and women in 1980 increased substantially by 2001. In 1980, life expectancy at age 20 for university-educated men was 3 years greater than for men with elementary education only, but was 11 years greater by 2001, reflecting not only declining life expectancy in less-educated men but also an improvement among better-educated men. Similar patterns were seen in women.

Looking at causes of mortality, mortality increases were driven above all by the rise in deaths from poisonings - almost exclusively alcohol deaths, in Russia's case - and associated factors, such as deaths from external causes (these are linked: When you imbibe vodka in regular binges, you will be more likely to commit suicide, have car accidents, murder your drinking partners in a fit of drunken homicidal rage, etc). Moreover, increases in alcohol death were also reflected in and magnified to a large extent by deaths from cardiovascular diseases - chronic bingeing, needless to say, has bad effects on your overall health - which was further compounded by Russia's traditional lack of modern medical facilities to treat expensive modern ailments. That is because neither the USSR nor Yeltsinite Russia cared much for the health and welfare of ordinary Russians: So far as the Soviets were concerned, the main thing was to get people through military and reproductive age in more or less adequate shape, and not bother themselves overmuch with what happened to them from their 50s; while the oligarchs who ruled Russia from behind the scenes in the 1990s didn't care even about that.

To be sure, there are also major differences between the American and Russian experiences. For instance, in Russia, the 1990s and 2000s saw a big dip, and then a big recovery back to late Gorbachev levels of MARM mortality, whereas the mortality rates of MAWAMs simply stagnated at a more or less steady level throughout from 1990 to 2013.

And critically, 1980s Soviet mortality levels themselves began from a much higher base relative to the US. While according to Case and Deaton's graph MAWAM annual mortality levels for the 45-54 age group were 415/100,000 in 2013, rising to 736/100,000 for poorly educated MAWAMs, that is still far less than the 1,655/100,000 mortality rate for 50 year old MARMs in 2010 (or even in 2014 when it is now perhaps 1,300/100,000).

Nonetheless, regardless of the fact that the US mortality crisis is far less severe in absolute terms, and didn't undergo the catastrophic "spike" that post-Soviet Russia experienced, the similarities - a major demographic group experiencing a sustained deterioration in its mortality prospects over a period of decades in an industrialized country - are otherwise quite remarkable....

Some suggest a connection between neoliberal reform and rising mortality. Contrary to that, after a brief mortality shock in the early 1990s, even decommunizing countries with their own "shock therapies" like Poland started to rapidly increase their life expectancy. This suggests that the primary cause of Russia's mortality crisis in the 1990s and early to mid 2000s was not so much the much-hated "shock therapy," as suggested in a famous 2009 Lancet article, but the specific fact of the collapse of the state's authority, which expressed itself in the loss of control over the hard liquor monopoly, as well as the inability to check the proliferation of underground moonshine operations to serve the alcohol needs of the most far gone Russian alcoholics. At the end of the day, the simple fact was that hard booze got a lot cheaper, and there were many Russians who were willing to take advantage of it. Since vodka is so dominant as a driver of Russian mortality, to the extent that neoliberal reform was responsible for the 1990s Russian mortality crisis, it was because it made cheap hard alcohol more accessible to many Russians.

To wrap this up - while I don't have any particularly good explanations for the great stagnation in MAWAM mortality prospects, I will suggest the following scenario:

As Case and Deaton state, from the mid-1990s, the US pharma industry has pushed all sorts of painkiller prescriptions including opioids onto the American population. Americans enthusiastically gobbled them up to deal with the bodily pains and discomforts caused by the contemporaneous advance of the obesity epidemic.

The increase in midlife morbidity and mortality among US white non-Hispanics is only partly understood. The increased availability of opioid prescriptions for pain that began in the late 1990s has been widely noted, as has the associated mortality. The CDC estimates that for each prescription painkiller death in 2008, there were 10 treatment admissions for abuse, 32 emergency department visits for misuse or abuse, 130 people who were abusers or dependent, and 825 nonmedical users (23). Tighter controls on opioid prescription brought some substitution into heroin and, in this period, the US saw falling prices and rising quality of heroin, as well as availability in areas where heroin had been previously largely unknown (14, 24, 25).

While rising obesity and the growing reach of the pharma industry has been prevalent throughout the First World in the past two decades, nowhere have both of these trends gone as far as in the United States. Possibly it is their combination that has magnified the effects of each to create a much bigger overall effect on the segment of the population most vulnerable to them?

So why, then, did this trend not affect Blacks and Hispanics? After all, their obesity crises are even bigger than those of White Americans. They are also far poorer than Whites. However, possibly their innately much more positive outlooks - Latinos clearly have a higher joie de vivre, while even the poorest Blacks have higher levels of self esteem than the richest Whites - might have translated into a tendency to use fewer pain meds, and perhaps greater defenses against getting seriously hooked on them or gatewaying into stuff like heroin and deciding to end their lives, as far more neurotic Whites are wont to do. In other words, Africanist rhetoric about the psychological dispositions of Sun People vs. Ice People does have some validity to it.

East Asians are relatively neurotic too. But they are also the one racial group in the US that is not having a major obesity crisis, plus their high average IQ ensures few of them live in depressed Fishtown anyway. Their mortality profile has therefore also continued to improve unimpeded.

In effect, maybe MAWAMs have won a sort of genetic anti-lottery: Intelligent enough to be deeply neurotic and prone to suicide, but not intelligent enough to almost entirely avoid Fishtown like Asian-Americans; and wealthy and privileged enough to have bottle of Vicodin as a retirement plan, but not wealthy or genetically endowed enough to avoid obesity on a large scale, which in turn further feeds into the pain meds and neuroticism spiral.

Last but not least, they live in a country where untramelled market forces and technological preeminence have resulted in the complete commercialization of agriculture and healthcare, paradoxically resulting in suboptimal outcomes like the spread of cheap empty carb diets that have led to mass obesity, and the usage of addictive and harmful pharma products to treat those very symptoms.

I am not sure this is anywhere near the correct explanation but I have yet to hear of anything more convincing.

Finally, it's worth pointing out at least in passing that it is precisely these Fishtown MAWAMs who constitute the core of Donald Trump's support base. The ordinary, lower class Russians hit hardest by the 1990s mortality shock - for instance, the Uralvagonzavod workers, so despised by Western liberal journalists - are likewise the class showing the biggest support for Putin. As such, this is just the latest if rather small commonality on which there is a kind of Trump-Putin convergence.


 
 #13
TASS
November 5, 2015
Arrest of Ukrainian library director is "disgrace" - Russian rights council head

Head of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) Mikhail Fedotov has said that the arrest of the director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow, charged with extremism, was a disgrace, state-owned TASS news agency reported on 5 November.

"I believe this was disgraceful. If all that the library director is accused of is that a book included in the register of extremist materials has been found in the library, then, such accusation is absurd," Fedotov said.

He added that the HRC was planning to hold a joint meeting with the Presidential Council on Culture and Art to discuss libraries and publishing in Russia. "There is a whole variety of issues here, and they are all interconnected. We have plenty of libraries whose directors are not being prosecuted by the law-enforcing agencies, but the libraries are being shut down," Fedotov said.

Head of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow Natalya Sharina was put und! er house arrest on 30 October for allegedly distributing publications containing "anti-Russian propaganda."
 
 #14
Moscow Times
November 6, 2015
No Way Back for Russian Women
By Natalia Antonova
Natalia Antonova is an American playwright and journalist.

For women's rights in Russia, the situation is not cut-and-dried. Conservative - one might even say backward - ideas about "a woman's place" certainly get a lot of airtime. But even in a society traditionally viewed as politically passive, a recent call to roll back abortion access was met with instant resistance.

Speaking personally, I've always found Russia to be a surprisingly mixed bag when it comes to women's rights. Working mothers, for example, are a normalized phenomenon in modern Russia, no matter how much conservatives beat their chests on the subject of women needing to get back into the kitchen (and preferably barricade themselves in there, and never be heard from again).

When I went back to work soon after having a baby hardly anyone questioned my decision to do so, or to pump milk at work - in fact, the one colleague who genuinely attempted to prevent me from pumping met with such outrage that I almost felt bad for him. Out in public, I've always found Russians to be much more understanding, even indulgent, of overtired women with small children - they'll generally give up their seats on the metro, help you get the stroller up a flight of stairs, offer to let you go to the front of the huge grocery store line and let you breastfeed in peace.

While a depressing number of my American acquaintances and even friends wound up accusing me of "trying to have it all" and "failing my child," Russians mostly have a shrug-and-get-on-with-it attitude to working motherhood. That obviously has a lot to do with the fact that children aren't viewed as a "quirky lifestyle choice" in Russia, but a natural part of life - and yet it also has to do with the fact that Russians, including the tiny middle class and the pampered elite, understand basic survival so much better than the American chattering classes do. Millions of Russian families would never make it if women were forced to stay at home. That's the economic reality.

The days of an agrarian economy, where male brute strength was so thoroughly valued, are getting further and further away in the rearview mirror. Russian families remain traditionally small, and even though the Church pushes the ideal of at least five children, few families can �realistically afford this (and should the economy further worsen, that number will be fewer still).

Hypermasculinity is celebrated - but then again, so is hyperfemininity, which means that femininity in general isn't so much pathologized as it is exaggerated. Even attitudes to domestic violence - idiotic sayings such as "if he hits you, he loves you" notwithstanding - are slowly (too slowly for many of the victims) beginning to change, with domestic violence now an actual topic of discussion, as opposed to something to be shamefully covered up.

Of course, there is a big difference between the way women are treated in the countryside and in urban centers. But Russia overall is generally becoming more urbanized.

Even as conservatives hearken back to the stereotypical image of the Russian woman as a village girl in a scarf, helpless, male-dependent, and "pure," the average Russian today lives in a city and has a college diploma. This goes for both men and women.

Russia's "village romance" has long been over. Russian women today have made too much progress to go quiet into that good night simply because the government is now flirting with bearded conservatives as opposed to suit-clad modernizers. Time to face the music.
 
 #15
Forbes.com
November 5, 2015
Could The Russians Defeat The US Army?
By Mark Adomanis
[Chart here http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/11/05/could-the-russians-defeat-the-us-army/]

Within very recent memory, the near-universal consensus on Russia's military was that it was a hollow, empty shell of its former Soviet might. It was widely agreed that the Russian army had been fatally weakened by a combination of corruption, incompetence, greed, and the demographic crisis of the 1990's (which greatly limited the number of healthy military-age males). Budgets were being stolen,  there was an "absence of real reform," and the head of the Russian defense ministry was personally implicated in theft and murder. It did not seem like a promising institutional framework in which to build a lean, modern, and effective military.Consider, for example, the following quote, which comes from an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School:

"Events in the Crimea do not alter this basic fact. Russia is passing from the scene in this sense, with an unsustainable economic and maybe even political model. It could be argued that a central challenge of the 21st century will, in fact, be the collapse of the Russian state when the oil runs out and Putin's mafia cronies are all enjoying themselves in their villas in the French Riviera"

Opinions varied as to precisely how decayed and desiccated Russia's military was, but what virtually no one was arguing (at least in public) was that Russia's recent military reforms had quickly led to the creation of a fighting force that was a "near peer" of the US army. A year or two ago if you had argued that, if they met on equal terms, the Russian army would have a decent chance at beating its American counterpart you would have been relentlessly mocked as a "useful idiot" or even labeled a Kremlin agent. Now, however, the expert consensus has rapidly shifted to the opposite extreme. The Russian military hasn't simply been able to modestly increase its combat power, it is now supposedly capable of besting the US army in a fair fight. As recounted in a recent story for Politico:

"In early September he circulated a PowerPoint presentation showing that in a head-to-head confrontation pitting the equivalent of a U.S. armored division against a likely Russian adversary, the U.S. division would be defeated. 'Defeated isn't the right word,' Macgregor told me last week. 'The right word is annihilated.' The 21-slide presentation features four battle scenarios, all of them against a Russian adversary in the Baltics - what one currently serving war planner on the Joint Chiefs staff calls 'the most likely warfighting scenario we will face outside of the Middle East.'"

An honest reading of the article suggests that the struggle within the Pentagon is at least as much about bureaucratic turf wars and office politics as much as it is about facing down the Russians, but you nonetheless have senior army officers publicly going on the record describing the Russian military as a potent, capable fighting force that is a major threat to and "near-peer" of NATO.This is rather surprising. If you look at the amount of money spent on the Russian and American militaries you would not expect them to have even remotely similar combat capabilities. Here is what spending per soldier has looked like since 2000 (the enormous disparity would be even larger if the 1990s are taken into account, but I wanted to keep the comparison as simple as possible).

On average, over the past fifteen years the US military has spent about $10 per soldier for every $1 that the Russians have spent. That is an enormous, yawning gap that has only moderated very slightly in the past 2-3 years.The only way that the Russian military could have combat capabilities that even remotely approximate America's is if the supposedly corrupt and incompetent Russians have developed sophisticated methodologies that enable them to radically increase the amount of combat power generated per dollar spent.Knowing what I know about the Russian government I have strong doubts that the Kremlin has succeeded in doing that, but that is the inevitable conclusion if, like many of the people cited in that Politico story, you now consider the Russians a "near peer."

 
#16
Russia takes another long stride to bring Syrian settlement nearer
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Political negotiations involving the authorities in Damascus and the oppositional forces will be the sole way of settling the conflict in Syria, and Russia has just taken one more important stride to prepare for such a dialogue, polled analysts have told TASS.

After the two rounds of Syrian settlement consultations in Vienna Russia has shared with the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey a list of 38 members of the Syrian opposition members who, in Moscow's opinion, might be invited to join the political process, including future elections to be held under the UN auspices. As Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said, "the ball is now in the partners' court."

Most proposed negotiators are members of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, recognized by the European Union and Saudi Arabia. On the same list there are representatives of religious and ethnic associations in Syria - the Christian Movement for Democracy and Peace, the Assyrian community, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the tribes of Syria's northeast and even the Muslim Brotherhood. On the same list one finds the names of several influential businessmen and intellectuals. These figures, the Russian Foreign Ministry believes, may be involved in the political settlement process in Syria and take part in parliamentary and presidential elections which, as it is expected, are to be held under the UN auspices.

Senior research fellow Vladimir Akhmetov, of the Oriental Studies Institute under the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that in the course of the previous negotiations in Geneva Russia gained tangible experience of selecting not only potential negotiators capable of steering Syria towards a settlement, but also likely members of a future interim government. "That Moscow's proposed list of negotiators contains mostly the names of National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces members complicates the search for a compromise. It is a Britain-backed organization and its leaders have hardline views regarding possible cooperation with the Assad Regime," Akhmetov told TASS.

Moscow makes it very clear that keeping Assad in power is not a matter of principle. His future is to be decided by the people of Syria. But for Russia it is of fundamental importance to keep intact Syria's government institutions, including its army and special services. On the contrary, the Opposition leaders insist on the lustration of the officers' corps because, they claim, the army and special services in the past used force against peace demonstrations in Syria. Reconciling the opponents in the course of negotiations will be really hard," he believes.

The key argument that might persuade the warring factions looks like this: the military are unable to settle the intra-Syrian crisis, which involves civilian, religious and ethnic factors.

"Doing away with this Gordian knot will be possible only through a political process, by drafting a new law on elections in Syria and changing the status of parliament to turn it from a purely decorative agency into a real body of power," Akhmetov believes.

The president of the Religion and Politics Institute, Aleksandr Ignatenko, believes that representatives from the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces were included in Russia's list of Syrian settlement negotiators with their consent.

"It could not be otherwise. So there should be not a shade of doubt that NCSROF members find it acceptable to come to the negotiating table with the Syrian government delegation," Ignatenko said.

In his opinion, Russia took one more important step forward in preparations for future talks: "Moscow has already held meetings behind closed doors with Free Syrian Army members. Although its representatives are absent from the list of negotiators, Moscow has agreed with the FSA leaders on coordinating operations in the struggle against the terrorist Islamic State."

"The FSA leaders are going to be more active in the struggle against radical Islamists to be able to take part in the transitional political process in Syria when the victory of the Islamic State has been achieved. For its part Moscow has promised the FSA leaders that Bashar Assad's troops will not be attacking FSA positions if it joins the war against the Islamic State in earnest," Ignatenko said.

He speculates that Russia's list of Syrian settlement negotiators will be discussed, changed and complemented at follow-up meetings in Vienna. "Far from all buttons have been fixed on this coat, so to say. It's a continuing process."

"It is very important that alongside drawing up the list of Syrian opposition politicians in Vienna, according to a communique adopted there, an expanded list will be agreed on of terrorist organizations subject to elimination. The combination of measures the international community has been taking in Vienna with Russia paying an active role in them is to bring about the beginning of a political dialogue, which will let the Syrian people determine their future," Ignatenko concluded.
 
 
 #17
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
November 6, 2015
Stalemate in Syria
By Jonathan Steele
Jonathan Steele is a British journalist and an author of several books on international affairs. He has reported for the Guardian on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and scores of other countries.

In recent months there has been much talk of "game-changers" in Syria's long-running war. Since August it has been the massive exodus of Syrian civilians to Europe, and the hundreds of family catastrophes as refugees drown in rickety boats or suffocate in locked trucks. Suddenly the war came home to the European public who clamoured for a decent response from their governments and demanded action to end the killing in Syria which made so many families want to escape.

At the end of September the game-changer was said to be Russia's decision to start bombing in support of Bashar al-Assad, a move which must have been planned for several months, though it took the rest of the world by surprise. Would this dramatically alter the battle-lines on the ground in Syria, and give a boost to the Syrian army?

At the end of October came another new development. A meeting of foreign ministers in Vienna for the first time brought Iran and Saudi Arabia to the same table for talks on the Syrian crisis. Was it really a breakthrough to have Iran, one of Bashar al-Assad's main backers, sitting down with Saudi Arabia, one of the main financiers and arms suppliers of the anti-Assad jihadi forces? Could their encounter even have regional implications by reducing the mutual demonisation of Sunnis and Shias which has been escalating destructively for a decade around the Persian Gulf as well as in Iraq and Syria?

At a lesser level we have also seen growing doubts in Western countries about the effectiveness of the US-led bombing campaign. In Canada voters elected the Liberal Party into government on a manifesto which included pulling Canadian aircraft out of the coalition. In Britain the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, though dominated by members of David Cameron's Conservative party, rejected the Prime Minister's wish to join the bombing of Syria, saying it was more important to look for a political solution.

Wishful thinking has long been in plentiful supply in the Syria crisis. Indeed the worse the human catastrophe gets, the more wishful does the thinking become. But the reality is that there have been no game-changers and Syria is still a stalemate, however much the outside players hope it were otherwise.

Take the Russian bombing. Like their counterparts in the Pentagon when it comes to proclaiming the results of US air strikes, Moscow's military spokespeople boasted of success for the first month of the Russian air campaign. They were backed up by glowing reports from embedded Russian TV crews. Yet none of this alleged military progress is borne out by the latest aerial maps produced by the Palantir company and made available by the Carter Centre in Atlanta. They show the Syrian army has gained no more than 50 square kilometres in an area south of Aleppo, while in Homs there has been no change in the front lines. In Hama, Idlib and Lattakia where the bulk of the Russian bombing has been concentrated, initial Syrian ground offensives were soon neutralised after the armed opposition received increased supplies of TOW anti-tank guided missiles from their foreign suppliers. In some areas ISIS has even advanced.

Russian officials may argue, just as Pentagon spokespeople do in favour of the much longer US bombing campaign, that results cannot be expected overnight. It takes a long time to degrade the enemy, and we should be patient. The Russians can also argue that they at least have allied "boots-on-the-ground" in the shape of the Syrian army, and that eventually a combination of bombing and ground offensives will make a difference. It can also be claimed that, although the Syrian army has not yet gained much ground, it has stopped losing it thanks to the Russian bombing. If one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin intervened was fear that Assad would collapse militarily, initially by losing Aleppo and perhaps even Damascus, then standing firm has to be counted as success.

The "boots-on-the-ground" argument is certainly powerful. In September I spent a week with the Kurds in northern Syria. With the help of US airstrikes their militias, known as the People's Protection Units (YPG), managed to drive ISIS out of Kobane on the Turkish border in January this year, and out of Tal Abyad, another border town, in July. They also resisted ISIS counter-attacks on Hasakah and Ayn Issa in the summer. These were important victories.

But, however successful they are in territory that is predominantly populated by Kurds, the YPG cannot expect to lead an offensive to take Raqqa, the ISIS capital, which is only eighty kilometres from their front lines. It has to be done by Syrian Arabs. So it was no surprise when Saleh Muslim, the Syrian Kurdish leader, told me he would like the Russians and Americans to co-ordinate their air strikes in support of the Syrian army if it were to try to re-take Palmyra, which was lost in May this year, and then move on to Raqqa.

His only caveat was that this should not be done exclusively to support Assad, since he backs the plan, originally agreed at Geneva in July 2012, for a transition to a government of national unity. Saleh Muslim has no doubt that the immediate threat comes from ISIS, and that foreign governments need to give priority to defeating ISIS in defining their objectives in Syria. Asked if the Assad regime was close to being toppled by ISIS, he told me: "If it collapses because of the Salafis [i.e., ISIS], it would be a disaster for everyone. If it collapses by agreement with other forces, it would be all right."

This leads on to the diplomacy in Vienna. It sounds optimistic in that all powers agreed to revive the political talks between Syrians, led by the UN and aimed to bring about "non-sectarian governance, followed by a new constitution and elections". But according to diplomatic sources, the Saudis continued to insist that there must be a clear date for Assad to leave power and that Iranian forces must leave Syria at the start of any political process. The Russians and Iranians say that Assad's future has to depend on elections, in which he could be a candidate. So the gap remains as wide as it always has been.

In any case, are the governments which met in Austria really willing to use their political leverage to win concessions from those they back? Did Putin, for example, extract a quid pro quo from Assad in return for coming to his aid with Russian air power? In the published part of his remarks to Assad in Moscow last month the Russian president spoke of the need for reform and an inclusive political process "that involves all political forces, ethnic, and religious groups". Were those statements backed by private warnings that Russian aid will be limited in time and is conditional on Assad making serious overtures to his opponents about transferring power to a transitional body, as envisaged in the Geneva communique of 2012, or were Putin's remarks just a repetition of Assad's own sequencing, that is, first defeat the terrorists and only after that is done can some sort of political reform be contemplated?

A major difficulty is that most of Assad's armed opponents are jihadis who have no wish to compromise on the lines of the Vienna meeting's formula, or indeed on any other non-sectarian basis. They view Assad's Alawite community as Islamic heretics who have to be overthrown by force or killed. The "moderate opposition" which the Americans support and whose leaders could subscribe to the Vienna formula are minor, if not insignificant, players on the battlefield. A ceasefire between them and the Syrian army would be a useful step forward, but it would only affect a small geographical area.

The big problem is the strength of the jihadis. Could the Saudis, the Qataris and the Turks be persuaded to stop their support for them, given that they will never compromise? Would an arms embargo on the jihadis be effective? The very act of raising these difficult questions shows how intractable the Syrian crisis has become.
 
 #18
Carnegie Moscow Center
November 6, 2015
The Concert of Vienna: Russia's New Strategy
By Alexander Baunov
Alexander Baunov is a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor in chief of Carnegie.ru. Before joining Carnegie, Baunov spent five years working as a senior editor at the independent news website Slon.ru, where he worked since its launch.

Russia sees the renewal of diplomacy on Syria as a chance to lose the status of international pariah. It has found relevance by getting involved in a crisis where Western strategy is full of holes.

For Russia the recent diplomatic talks on Syria in Vienna reflected the kind of world it likes to see-a latter-day version of the 19th century Concert of Europe. It was a vision of a multilateral world order in which several major powers came together to do a deal, but no single one was in the ascendant.

For this very reason, the October 30 talks-and United States acquiescence to Russia's role in them- have been criticized. President Obama is being attacked, by domestic critics and much of the Sunni world, for giving Russia a role in the first place. The West is doing a terrible job as the global board of directors, the critics say, and Obama is failing as its chairman.

But Obama's alleged weakness may actually be a sign of strength. Russia's new role may be a convenient way to fill gaps in the United States' failing Syria strategy.

How did Russia end up getting involved in Syria? Quite simply, to avoid complete international isolation, Russia had to prove it could help solve a problem that it didn't create.

It is easy to rule an isolated country, but Putin has no desire to be an international pariah governing a hermetically sealed state. Ruling a country of the enormous size of Russia gives you the prospect of a place in the global elite. That ambition is laid out in Russia's latest national security concept. Even though it was authored by the prickly counter-intelligence chief Nikolai Patrushev, the document explicitly rejects the notion that the country should seek isolation.

Simply waiting for the conversation to change was not an option. In early 2014, the West didn't want to talk to the Russian leadership at all after its intervention in Ukraine. Then it engaged Moscow through Minsk-2, the Normandy Process, and talks on "special status" for the Donbas region. Russia could have remained in this Ukraine-focused cocoon indefinitely. There had to be a way out.

Where could Russia be relevant? If it was to play a part in resolving someone else's crisis, it had to be absolutely indispensable. The world is full of crises in which Russia has no reason to get involved. There is not much use in sending your only aircraft carrier to the South China Sea or dispatching paratroopers to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram.

The Iranian nuclear issue, in which even Obama praised Russia's constructive role despite the Ukraine crisis was a different story. And now Syria is on the table.

The fact that the question was even asked as to whether the Vienna talks were a "diplomatic success for Russia" was significant in itself. After four years of destructive conflict in Syria, the meeting marked a moment where substantive discussions were head, with not just Russia and the United States, but also Iran and Saudi Arabia sitting at the table.

Russia won agreements on many of the points on its agenda. The list of named terrorist organizations operating in Syria will be expanded, which means that ISIS will not be the only name on it. There was a commitment to keep Syria's state institutions intact.

The Americans have said several times that if Russia was serious about winning the fight against ISIS it would have joined the already existing coalition. But the chances are that it wouldn't have been accepted in the alliance.

More importantly, the coalition already has a conductor. In Russia's world-view, where there is a conductor, there is no need for an orchestra. Russia wants multi-polarity-a chamber orchestra concert where there is no conductor.

So the world order reflected at the Syria talks in Vienna resembles the one of Putin's dreams. It was a concert of 19 global and regional powers, including some actively hostile to one another, who had proved themselves as musicians.

It was not quite the era after the Congress of Vienna, where the mere possession of power conferred legitimacy. But Russia could take some satisfaction in the formulations on the Assad regime. Despite its "bad behavior," it was conceded that Assad should at least have a role in determining the country's a future. For the Russian leadership, which hates being left out of the conversation or any talk of regime change, that was very welcome.

Recently Barack Obama hit home with the observation that Russia was an important regional power with a GDP roughly equal to that of Spain. And yet, Russia is still projecting power outside his region and proving that GDP is not everything.

No Western leader is using the word "cooperation" in relation to Russia but contacts are much closer than the bitter rhetoric being exchanged between Moscow and Washington might suggest. Obama and Putin had a one-on-one meeting for the first time in two years in New York. Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet practically every week and worked together on the Vienna talks. High-ranking officials now routinely call one another. The Normandy Four summit was relatively successful, and there is tactical cooperation between the states to avoid military incidents.

Some might say this is not real cooperation but merely, as in the Cold War, operational agreements to avoid conflict. That may be true, but Putin and many others in Russia regard this arrangement as infinitely better than the situation only six months ago when the mere fact of Kerry visiting Putin in Sochi was described as "sensational."

It may be that Russia's unexpected intervention in Syria helped the Western coalition to rethink a plan which was no longer attainable-but which they could not abandon without losing face.

If that is the case, Obama's approach is a sign of strength, not weakness. A strong politician is not afraid of appropriating elements of someone else's strategy if his own is not working.

Russia's military involvement in Syria and the new diplomatic efforts to end the civil war confirm that Russia's political significance exceeds its GDP-not that anyone doubted that. But it also shows Russia the limits of its global reach-that it can make an impact in the world only in places where Western policy is full of holes that need covering.
 
 #19
Russian Defense Ministry gets impression location of IS facilities is US state secret

MOSCOW, November 5 /TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry denies US allegations that Russian warplanes in Syria are bombing regions, which are out of President Assad's control, rather than terrorist infrastructure, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said on Thursday.

He explained that US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told Congress hearings held earlier that the Russian air group in Syria delivered most of its strikes at regions which were no longer under the control of President Assad's regime rather than at terrorists.

"If we analyze what various US officials say, there is an impression that the location of terrorist-held facilities is the most classified state secret in the United States. Representatives of the Pentagon and the State Department keep mentioning them all the time without specifying their exact location," Konashenkov said.

Once again, he stressed that the Russian air group in Syria was not bombing regions or areas but objects of terrorist infrastructure.

Konashenkov recalled that Russia had officially handed over maps with detailed information on terrorist-controlled regions and facilities to the military attaches of countries members of the US-led coalition.

"Please note that neither the State Department nor the Pentagon has denied the information which we provided to them. Therefore, I believe, that comments are unnecessary," the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman concluded.
 
 #20
Russia's Putin suspends all flights to Egypt on security advice
By Andrew Osborn and Polina Devitt

Nov 6 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin ordered the suspension of all Russian passenger flights to Egypt on Friday until the cause of a deadly plane crash at the weekend was established.

Putin's decision was a response to the unexplained crash of an Airbus A321 operated by a Russian carrier on Saturday over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. All 224 people on board were killed.

The move, which follows decisions by Britain and Ireland to suspend flights to and from Sharm al-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort where the downed Russian airliner originated, is the first sign that Moscow is attaching credibility to the theory that Islamist militants somehow planted a bomb on the aircraft.

Putin acted after Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's FSB security service, recommended that Russia suspend all passenger flights to Egypt until it knew exactly what caused the crash.

"The head of state agreed with these recommendations," Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

"V. Putin has tasked the government with working out a mechanism to realise the recommendations of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee and to ensure the return of Russian citizens to the motherland."

Putin had also ordered the government to open talks with Egyptian authorities to guarantee the safety of flights, said Peskov.

A Sinai-based group affiliated with Islamic State, the militants who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the crash, which, if confirmed, would make it the jihadist organisation's first attack on civil aviation.

But before Friday afternoon, the Kremlin had firmly said it was too early to say what caused the crash and that all theories, including the possibility of technical failure, should be examined by the official investigation.

Britain and Ireland have already suspended regular flights to Sharm al-Sheikh amid growing concerns over what caused the plane crash and the level of security at the resort's airport.

Egypt is one of the most popular holiday destinations for Russians and any decision to suspend flights would cause major logistical problems for Russia's airlines and stranded tourists.

 
 #21
Christian Science Monitor
November 5, 2015
As US, UK point at 'bomb' in Sinai plane crash, Russia takes cooler approach
British statements and US intelligence leaks are pointing toward the possibility of a bomb downing a Russian plane over Egypt. That wouldn't bode well for Kremlin participation in Syria.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW-Russia is asking foreign governments to stop "speculating" on the causes of the Sinai airbus crash that killed 224 Russians over the weekend, after British Prime Minister David Cameron said publicly that it was "more likely than not" a bomb planted by Islamic State terrorists.

The issue is politically sensitive for the Kremlin, which is just over a month into an escalating air war in Syria, officially designed to destroy IS and other terrorist groups. Any firm conclusion that extremists had managed to strike back by bringing down an airliner full of Russian tourists would quickly deflate the war's antiseptic media image and bring it home in the harshest possible way for a Russian public that remains deeply averse to foreign military adventures.

There seems little doubt that outside prodding and advice is deeply unwelcome in Moscow. And few appear ready to believe that the meddling is well-meant.

The Kremlin appeared to react calmly Thursday to the British statements, and similar suggestions emanating from US intelligence sources. President Vladamir Putin spoke with Mr. Cameron by telephone today, asking him to wait for the results of the investigation to become clear.

Although Russian media has, perhaps surprisingly, given considerable coverage to the possibility that the Russian airliner was brought down by a terrorist bomb, some analysts say they are deeply dubious.

For one thing, accidents have occurred with frequency among Russian airlines, especially marginal operators such as the carrier in this case, Kogalymavia. Though its officials insist that only an "external force" could have brought down the plane, the airline's own history suggests otherwise. It rebranded itself as MetroJet after a bad runway accident in 2011 that killed three people. And though there has been a shaking out in Russia's airline industry in recent years, it is still ranked as one of the most unsafe places to fly.

"As one who has survived two near catastrophes in Russian airplanes, I find myself perfectly ready to believe that technical flaws caused the Sinai disaster," says Alexei Malashenko, an Islamic scholar with the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

More seriously, he says, the claim of responsibility attributed to IS does not sound authentic. "It's most unlikely that IS, as an institution, would do this. They don't need it," Mr. Malashenko says. "They aren't Al Qaeda, and they are trying very hard to position themselves as a state nowadays."

Malashenko allows that some smaller group, perhaps linked to Al Qaeda, might have done it. If that should prove to be the case, he adds, the political impact in Russia will be much the same as if IS were responsible.

A few Russian analysts say they frankly smell "disinformation" in the flurry of leaks from unnamed US intelligence sources and statements by British leaders.

"They're not even involved in the investigation, and they aren't exactly trying to be helpful with these so-called disclosures," says Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow.

"It looks to me like they want to send a signal to Russian society, to exploit this tragedy by planting the suggestion that [President] Putin made a big mistake by going into Syria. They want to stir up opposition," he says.

Russia endured over a decade of terrorism, which killed hundreds in Moscow and other heartland cities, during its second war to subdue rebel Chechnya after Putin came to power.

"The record shows that Russians only toughen their attitude when they are attacked, just as Americans do," says Mr. Mukhin. "The threat of more terrorism is only likely to make people rally around Putin."
 
 #22
The New York Observer
http://observer.com
November 5, 2015
Obama Cracked Jokes While the Rest of the World Mourned
President declines to join world leaders in offering condolences for Russia's worst ever air disaster
By Mikhail Klikushin

On November 2, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, President Barack Obama poked fun of the Republicans, joking that if they cannot handle CNBC moderators how could they possibly handle Russia's Vladimir Putin?

"Every one of these candidates says, 'Obama's weak, Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out.' ...and then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators!" Mr. Obama said.

"I mean, let me tell you: if you can't handle those guys," he continued, laughing, "I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you."

While Mr. Obama had his fun, he neglected to mention more serious matters-the Russian plane crash over the Sinai peninsula on October 31 that took the lives of all 224 passengers on board.

Where Mr. Obama failed, other Western and world leaders expressed their condolences-British Prime-Minister David Cameron, Polish President Andzej Duda, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping among them.

On his Twitter page, Mr. Cameron wrote: "PM expresses condolences to President Putin over Sinai plane crash. Britain shares Russia's pain and grief."

Mr. Hollande wrote: "[A]fter the occurred tragedy [President] sends his condolences to President Putin and expresses his solidarity with the Russian people.."

Even Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took to Twitter with the following: "I express my personal condolences to all the families of those perished in the catastrophe of the Russian passenger plane over Egypt."

Not Mr. Obama.

The Kremlin isn't worrying why Barack Obama didn't send condolences, reported Interfax. "Probably, this should not be explained by the Kremlin," said Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary to the Russian President, answering why there was no official telegram from Mr. Obama. Mr. Peskov said there were "a lot" of messages from other world leaders.

Secretary of State John Kerry expressed condolences on behalf of "all American people" to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov-that was all, said Putin's press secretary.

Russia's national news service Information Agency outed Mr. Obama as "the only world leader that did not express his condolences [to Russia] on the air catastrophe A-321."

"This is personal," wrote Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding "the current American administration will go down in history as one of the most weak and unprofessional with no affinity for etiquette and good manners."
 
 #23
Charlie Hebdo caricatures on A321 air crash outrage Russian public

MOSCOW, November 6 /TASS/. Charlie Hebdo's satirical caricatures on the A321 plane crash in Egypt that claimed 224 lives have outraged the Russian public. But the absence of any official French reaction to the satirical weekly's sacrilegious behavior has made the Russians even more indignant.

"The caricatures are overgrowing the boundaries of French journalism. They are so sacrilegious that they require some kind of reaction from the French officials. Their silence will mean their taciturn consent to Charlie's usurped right to mock and scoff at the tragedy," Alexey Pushkov, the head of the Russian State Duma (parliament's lower house) Committee for Foreign Affairs, told TASS on Friday.

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Russian Federation Council (parliament's upper house) Committee for International Affairs, has described the cartoons "as another example of consistent amorality."

"It is impossible to try to expand the boundaries of what is possible by breaking the limits. What comes next is inadmissible indifference to moral values and indifference to human suffering," the Russian deputy stressed.

"The Charlie Hebdo journalists danced on the memory of people who died in that terrible air crash. These caricatures will deliver a hard blow at the image of France and Europe where such things are possible," Vyacheslav Nikonov, the head of the Russian State Duma Committee for Education, said.

"The magazine's actions are designed to foster terrorism which is shameful and insulting for France," Irina Yarovaya, the deputy head of the Russian State Duma Committee for Security and Counteraction to Terrorism, said.

"The caricatures fall short of human ethics," Boris Reznik, secretary of the Russian Journalists' Union, said.

His colleague Pavel Gusev, who heads the Moscow Union of Journalists, has described Charlie Hebdo's behavior as cynical.

"There was a tragedy in which people died. What Charlie Hebdo is doing is pure cynicism and mockery at the dead," Gusev said.
 
 #24
Antiwar.com
November 6, 2015
Who Downed Metrojet Flight 9268?
Was it ISIS - or somebody else?
By Justin Raimondo
Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles.

First they said the downing of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 was most likely due to Russia's "notorious" regional airlines, which supposedly are rickety and unreliable. The Egyptian government denied that terrorism is even a possibility, with Egyptian despot Abdel Fatah al-Sisi proclaiming:

"When there is propaganda that it crashed because of Isis, this is one way to damage the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt. Believe me, the situation in Sinai - especially in this limited area - is under our full control."

However, it soon came out that the person in charge of Sharm el-Sheikh airport, where the Russia plane had landed before taking off again, had been "replaced" - oh, but not because of anything to do with the downing of the Russian passenger plane! As the Egyptian authorities put it:

"Adel Mahgoub, chairman of the state company that runs Egypt's civilian airports, says airport chief Abdel-Wahab Ali has been 'promoted' to become his assistant. He said the move late Wednesday had nothing to do with media skepticism surrounding the airport's security. Mahgoub said Ali is being replaced by Emad el-Balasi, a pilot."

Laughable, albeit in a sinister way, and yet more evidence that something wasn't quite right: after all, everyone knows the Egyptian government does not have the Sinai, over which the plane disintegrated in mid air, under its "full control." ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the crash hours after it occurred, is all over that peninsula.

Still, the denials poured in, mostly from US government officials such as Director of National Intelligence James "Liar-liar-pants-on-fire" Clapper, who said ISIS involvement was "unlikely." Then they told us it couldn't have been ISIS because they supposedly don't have surface-to-air missiles that can reach the height attained by the downed plane. Yet that wasn't very convincing either, because a) How do they know what ISIS has in its arsenal?, and b) couldn't ISIS or some other group have smuggled a bomb on board?

The better part of a week after the crash, we have this:

"Days after authorities dismissed claims that ISIS brought down a Russian passenger jet, a U.S. intelligence analysis now suggests that the terror group or its affiliates planted a bomb on the plane.

"British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond said his government believes there is a 'significant possibility' that an explosive device caused the crash. And a Middle East source briefed on intelligence matters also said it appears likely someone placed a bomb aboard the aircraft."

According to numerous news reports, intercepts of "internal communications" of the Islamic State/ISIS group provided evidence that it wasn't an accident but a terrorist act. Those intercepts must have been available to US and UK government sources early on, yet these same officials said they had no "direct evidence," as Clapper put it, of terrorist involvement. Why is that? And furthermore: why the general unwillingness of Western governments and media to jump to their usual conclusion when any air disaster occurs, and attribute it to terrorism?

The answer is simple: they didn't want to arouse any sympathy for the Russians. Russia, as we all know, is The Enemy - considered even worse, in some circles, than the jihadists.  Indeed, there's a whole section of opinion-makers devoted to the idea that  we must help Islamist crazies in Syria, including al-Qaeda's affiliate, known as al-Nusra, precisely in order to stop the Evil Putin from extending Russian influence into the region.

In a broader sense, the reluctance to acknowledge that this was indeed a terrorist act is rooted in a refusal to acknowledge the commonality of interests that exists between Putin's Russia and the West. The downing of the Metrojet is just the latest atrocity carried out by the head-choppers against the Russian people: this includes not only the Beslan school massacre, in which over 700 children were taken hostage by Chechen Islamists, but also the five apartment bombings that took place in 1999. The real extent of Western hostility to Russia, and the unwillingness to realize that Russia has been a major terrorist target, is underscored by the shameful propaganda pushed by the late Alexander Litvinenko, and endorsed by Sen. John McCain, which claims that the bombings were an "inside job" carried out by the Russian FSB - a version of "trutherism" that, if uttered in the US in relation to the 9/11 attacks, is routinely (and rightly) dismissed as sheer crankery. But where the Russians are concerned it's not only allowable, it's the default. A particularly egregious example is Russophobic hack Michael D. Weiss, who, days before the downing of the Russian passenger plane, solemnly informed us that Putin was "sending jihadists to join ISIS." Boy oh boy, talk about ingratitude!

This downright creepy unwillingness to express any sympathy or sense of solidarity with the Russian people ought to clue us in to something we knew all along: that the whole "war on terrorism" gambit is as phony as a three-dollar bill. If US government officials were actually concerned about the threat of terrorist violence directed at innocent civilians, they would partner up with Russia in a joint effort to eradicate the threat: that this isn't happening in Syria, or anywhere else, is all too evident. Not to mention our canoodling with "moderate" Chechen terrorists, openly encouraging them to carry on their war with Putin's Russia. Our "war on terrorism" is simply a pretext for spying on the American people, and most of the rest of the world, and cementing the power of the State on the home front, not to mention fattening up an already grotesquely obese "defense" budget.

With the belated admission that the downing of the Russian passenger jet was an act of terrorism, we are beginning to hear that this a tremendous blow to Putin's prestige at home - something no one would dare utter about Obama's or Cameron's "prestige" if the Metrojet had been an American or British passenger plane. They say it's "blowback" due to Russia's actions in Syria, with the clear implication that it's deserved. And yet, according to US officials and the usual suspects, the Russians aren't hitting ISIS so much as they're smiting the "moderate" Islamist head-choppers - the "Syrian rebels," as they're known - who are being funded, armed, and encouraged by the West.

If that's true, then what kind of blowback are we talking about - and from which direction is it coming? Given this, isn't it entirely possible that Metrojet Flight 9268 was downed by US-aided -and-supported "moderates," who moderately decided to get back at Putin?

 
 #25
Subject: A-321 crash - Comment on HMG decision.
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015
From: Andrei Liakhov <[email protected]>

A-321 crash - Comment on HMG decision.

My money is on a technical defect. It is either a computer glitch which the crew tried to correct and swang the aircraft into critical G or the tail was weakened in a previous incident and reached critical metal fatigue (like the famous 757 accident when the vertical fin fell off in midflight).  

I need to explain the first in more detail - A321 is a full fly by wire aircraft with no hydraulic booster backup like US or Russian designed airliners. On top of that the French designers think that computer is more intelligent than pilot and have built in the ability of the computer to override pilot decision if the comp thinks the pilot made a mistake.
The stick is operated by a program called "I-shoot" which imitates a real steering column.
Now, judging by the flight patten of the last 2,5 minutes the sequence of events could have been as follows:
1. The on board computer erroneously commands the plane to descend (gently at this stage - 100 m/minute).
2. The crew detects the descend at c. 8200 meters;
3. The crew attempts to manually correct the computer error;
4. I-shoot detects what it thinks is the erroneous action requiring correction when the plane climbs back to c.9,100 m and overrides the pilot push;
5. Plane dives and gains speed;
6. The crew attemps to correct what they think is the obvious I-shoot error;
7. By the time pilots manage to switch off/re-program I-shoot (no idea whether possible on this particular as-321), the plane reaches critical dive speed;
8. When the crew attempts finally to get it out of the dive  the tail (bulkhead 13 judging by the photos) fails and falls off;
9. It sends the plane into almost vertical dive;
10. At this point everyone is dead;
11. At 8 above the US satellite detects a thermal burst typical for catastrophic loss of pressure (caused by massive leak of very warm (+24 C) air into -35C environment.

As to the bomb theory - a bomb could only be brought onto the plane by one of local service teams - cleaners or ground mechanics.

It was reported that the tail fell off mid flight some 46 seconds before the crash. Thus if it was a bomb, it could only have been placed in the rear of the plane near the bulkhead No.13 (last in the passenger cabin). There is neither a luggage compartment nor any technological entry points in this section. Thus it could only have been placed by the cleaners (into one of kitchen spaces, as the toilets are to the front of the kitchen and the back door landing) - the only ground crew which are left in the plane unsupervised by the crew.

Level of sophistication required of a bomber to achieve such a clean cut break off of the tail (judging by the photos I have seen) has never been seen before.

The initial examination did not confirm presence of traces of combustible substances in the tail section. If that was a small bomb designed only to weaken the structure to cause a "natural" rupture - these traces will be very difficult to find.

Terrorists are usually very unsophisticated people. They do not usually attempt to conceal traces of their explosive devices.

Having regard to the totality of the above and what I have seen to date in terms of evidence - I am inclined to think that the crash was caused by a technical fault (Or a combination of several defects) rather than by a bomb.

However, it will only become clear once several quote sophisticated chemical tests are carried out on the relevant parts of the fuselage. Until then - any theory remains just that - a theory. Precautionary move by HMG to suspend commercial flights to Sharm Al Sheikh may be justified. However the explanation given publicly just plays into ISIS propaganda of omnipotent force present everywhere. Not good.
 
 #26
Moskovskiy Komsomolets
November 3, 2015
Mikhail Rostovskiy: If it is terrorist act. Political consequences of air disaster in Egypt

What if this was a terrorist act after all? How, in that case, will or should the Russian regime's political strategy in and beyond the Near East change? Until all those who died in the terrible air disaster in Egypt have been buried and mourned, even such a way of putting the question itself may appear if not blasphemy, then a manifestation of a profound lack of emotional feeling. In fact, it does constitute a lack of feeling - a lack of feeling and, at the very same time, an absolute necessity.

A matter of weeks after the start of the Russian military operation in an Arab country a Russian civilian aircraft that had taken off from the territory of another Arab country is mysteriously destroyed in the air. Is this a chance coincidence? In the search for the answer to this question we must not try to anticipate the results of the investigation or engage in speculation and conjecture. But we - what I mean in this instance by the word "we" is both Russian society and the Russian state - are obliged to count all the options. The ultimate "bottom line" is obvious. Those who were on board that aircraft can no longer be saved. But it is possible to save thousands of other people whose lives may also be in jeopardy.

If the malevolent actions of some persons are deemed to be the cause of the Kogalymavia airliner's destruction, then the first, most visible consequence of this fact is self-evident. Until the present time the military operation in Syria had enjoyed broad public support in Russia. Nobody - with the exception of individual people who like "sabre rattling" - was particularly delighted that our pilots had engaged in combat operations in a distant, unfamiliar, and somewhat incomprehensible country. But the Kremlin managed to convince the population that it is not a question of a senseless adventure for the purpose of showing everyone "the greatness of the Russian superpower."

It is a question of a difficult, painful, risky, yet essential decision designed to protect the country's most important national interests.

If the aircraft carrying vacationers fell as the result of a terrorist act, then cracks will certainly appear in the armour of this broad public support. Against the background of such a monstrous tragedy any logical arguments fade before and yield to emotional arguments. When the price of "protecting the country's national interests" is abstract, albeit high, then society is ready to pay it without hesitation. But when this price suddenly becomes terribly specific and takes the form of the sudden mass deaths of happy people full of vital energy, then the situation changes.

I do not know how widespread will become the sentiments whose essence is expressed in the sentence "this would not have happened if we had not gone into Syria." But such sentiments will be sure to appear. They will appear, but no way will they be able to change the main direction of Vladimir Putin's strategy in the Near East.

"The large-scale threat of terrorist acts existed long before the start of our military operation in Syria," my interlocutor from the president's closest entourage explained to me the Kremlin's view of the situation. "Islamic extremists have not forgotten or forgiven us either for Chechnya or for our struggle against Wahhabites in other regions. All talk along the lines of 'we did not have to go into Syria' is profoundly flippant. What else could we have done - waited passively for them to come and start killing us?"

If the terrorist act theory is confirmed, then Putin has no intention either of curtailing the Russian military operation in Syria or, conversely, of widening it in a way that had not been planned. "Any Russian ground military operation in Syria would be an extremely dangerous mistake for us. No way will this mistake be made," my aforementioned interlocutor in Putin's entourage told me.

I regard this as an exceptionally important statement. If the aircraft's destruction really was the result of a terrorist act, then the purpose of that crime was, with a high degree of probability, not only revenge, nor so much revenge. I believe that this purpose was precisely to provoke Russia into taking counteractions and rash emotional steps and to lure Russia deeper and deeper into the quicksand of the Syrian crisis. The Kremlin seems to think along similar lines.

This is probably all that can be said for now about what will happen if the terrorist act theory is confirmed. But it makes sense to understand some things very clearly for ourselves even if this theory is deemed false. I have realized from conversations with Russian officials that our government circles regard security measures in Egyptian airports as plainly inadequate.

This is in no way a hint that just this circumstance caused the Russian aircraft to crash. But it is definitely a "pointer" for the future. There has always been a terrorist threat to tourists in Egypt. In November 1997, for example - when many people in the West and in Russia had not yet even heard of Bin Ladin - a mass killing of foreign tourists occurred in the famous temple complex at Luxor.

But whereas it used to be possible to speak simply about the existence of a serious and real threat, now the size of this threat has increased many times over. Again, I am not calling for anything specific: I do not possess the necessary level of competence for that. But I can see how, by putting out preliminary statements about the causes of the air crash, each "player" clearly watches over his own interest. Egypt is doing everything not to ruin its tourist potential and not to lose a vitally important source of revenue. The airline, conversely, is hinting at some mysterious "external influence."

Of course, such a struggle on the part of absolutely everyone for their own interests is natural and inevitable. But the Russian state's struggle for its own citizens' interests must also be no less natural. Egypt and its present military leader are the friend and strategic partner of Moscow. But if it turns out that the aircraft's destruction was caused by a lapse in the Egyptian security system, we must not be afraid to "offend an ally."

The same will apply if it turns out that the disaster was "rooted" in the actions of Russian aviators - managers, not pilots. The president has promised repeatedly to instil order in this sphere. It is time finally to do so once and for all.

Many people now are rebuking Vladimir Putin for not appearing on our television screens at a time of terrible grief for the country and not uttering the necessary words of sympathy. Call me a cynic. But in such a situation the president's words are not very important to me. On the other hand, his actions are very important to me. It is on these, not on rhetorical oddities, that the Russian regime's conduct following the nightmare in the skies over Sinai should be assessed.
 
 #27
RFE/RL
November 5, 2015
Putin's Dilemma: How To Respond If A Bomb Caused Sinai Air Crash
by Steve Gutterman

Mounting evidence that an onboard bomb brought down the Russian jet that crashed on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, killing 224 people, poses a tough new dilemma for President Vladimir Putin: how to respond. If the theory of a terrorist attack is borne out, it will look like exactly what Islamic State militants have said it was: swift and deadly retaliation for Russia's military operation in Syria.

There are several paths the Kremlin could take, but each has potential pitfalls and none is guaranteed to ward off the problems the crash could create for Putin at home and abroad. Here's how Russia might react:

Denial

Until and unless there is powerful proof the crash of Kogalymavia/Metrojet Flight 9268 was caused by a bomb carried on board or stowed in the baggage hold, Russia will be tempted to drag its feet on acknowledging that possibility. A technical cause would be embarrassing for Putin, too, but less so than a terror attack because plane crashes caused by mechanical failure or pilot error are an all-too-familiar phenomenon since the 1991 Soviet collapse, and few Russians would blame Putin personally for the tragedy.

Terrorists have brought down Russian planes before: In 2004, days before militants attacked a school in the North Caucasus town of Beslan, two women from Daghestan boarded separate domestic flights and blew them up in quick succession on a single night, killing all 89 people aboard. But the Airbus jet that broke apart high over the Sinai was outside Russia, headed from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown. The death toll -- all 224 people aboard -- was the highest in the history of Russian and Soviet aviation.

The idea that such flights are vulnerable further undermines a crucial element of the unwritten contract Putin has forged with middle-class Russians in more than 15 years in power: Fall in line politically and you will enjoy perks that were far out of reach for your parents -- like beach vacations abroad. And all but the most slow-witted slaves to Kremlin propaganda might wonder about the value of Putin's pledges to protect compatriots worldwide -- a group that was the subject of a high-profile meeting in Moscow on November 5 -- if they see Britain and other countries cancelling Sinai flights and Russia making no changes.

The main problem with denial is that it can only work if it is plausible. As evidence of a possible bombing has mounted, both Russian and Egyptian officials have warned loudly against rushing to judgment. Putin made no mention of a possible cause when he broke two days of silence on November 2 and described the crash as an "enormous tragedy." Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on November 5 that talk of a bomb on board was "speculation," and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said it was too early to draw any conclusions about the cause.

Blame Egypt

Russian officials have decades of experience with the blame game, and pointing the finger at Egypt might seem like an obvious course. In its efforts to deflect accusations of involvement in the missile strike that brought down a Malaysian jet in eastern Ukraine last year, killing 298 people, one of Moscow's arguments is that Kyiv is ultimately to blame because it did not entirely close the airspace over the zone where Russia-backed separatists were battling government forces.

But blaming Egypt would fit badly into Russia's new power politics in the Middle East. Putin has assiduously courted the country, long a much closer partner of the United States, and even endorsed President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi before his election in 2014. Also, Kremlin criticism of Egyptian security measures might make Russians wonder why their government never raised the issue before, as hundreds of thousands of them flew in and out of Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, another Egyptian resort, for vacations in recent years.

Blame The West

The tried-and-true approach for Putin, particularly in his third term. He has blamed the United States for street protests that shook the Kremlin in 2011-12 and accused Washington of giving direct backing to militants in Russia's North Caucasus. It would be a stretch to lay the blame for the Sinai crash squarely on the West, but it seems likely the Kremlin will point the finger as much as it can. Jabs at the West may fit into the Russian narrative that holds that U.S. and European actions in the Middle East have facilitated the rise of the Islamic State (IS) group.

Since Putin launched the campaign of air strikes in Syria on September 30, officials in Moscow have lashed out angrily at Western political and military leaders who have warned that the intervention could lead to Russian casualties or other painful consequences in short order. Faced with evidence that a bomb brought down the jet -- and with alleged statements from militants saying that the victims were "crusaders" punished "in response to Russian air strikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land" -- officials in Moscow might go so far as to claim that such statements have encouraged IS to attack Russians.

Already, the head of the International Relations Committee in Russia's upper house of parliament has claimed that Britain's decision to suspend all flights to Sharm el-Sheikh -- a response to concerns that the Russian plane was bombed -- was motivated by London's opposition to Moscow's actions in Syria. "There is geopolitical opposition to the actions of Russia in Syria," state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted the lawmaker, Konstantin Kosachyov, as saying on November 5.

Hours later, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova lashed out at Britain over the move, accusing its government of failing to share intelligence about the plane crash. While such a statement will not hold water among Western officials, it could work with a domestic audience -- and dovetails with Russian calls for the United States to share more information about IS fighters and other militants in Syria.

Embrace And Employ

Proof that IS-allied militants brought down an airliner full of Russian vacationers a month after Moscow launched air strikes in Syria would be a heavy blow for Putin. But if he is forced to accept that it was a bomb attack, he will seek to soften the impact and use the tragedy to further his agenda at home, in the Middle East, and in relations with the West.

Domestically, Putin could see the crash as a chance to flesh out his portrayal of Russia as a defiant nation that must be unified in the face of threats from outside, whether they come from the West or from IS. Putin provided a glimpse of that response on November 3 in Daghestan, a Russian region plagued by the country's own Islamist insurgency: Without mentioning the plane crash, he said that "nobody has ever been able to frighten...the Russian people" and called any efforts to do so "hopeless."

Abroad, as he did when Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, Putin might use the tragedy to bolster his case that Russia and the West face a common foe and must work together -- on Moscow's terms -- to defeat it. In the Kremlin's eyes, that means that the United States, Europe, and Gulf Arab states must drop their criticism of the Russian campaign in Syria and accept Moscow -- and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government -- as allies in the fight against IS.

On a simpler level, Putin could use the incident to counter Western accusations that Russian air strikes are not targeting IS, portraying such an attack as proof that the militant group sees Russia as major adversary on par with others it has called "crusaders."

But this is a double-edged sword: Depicting his country as a strong, defiant state under attack from IS raises the pressure on Putin to go after IS more aggressively in Syria rather than pursue the more modest goal of shoring up Assad and positioning Russia to maintain influence in the event of a political settlement of the civil war. That, in turn, could mean getting more deeply involved in the conflict -- a costly endeavor that could hurt Putin's popularity at home if Moscow's biggest military operation outside the former Soviet Union since that country's demise goes awry.

There are signs Russia could be headed in this direction. A few days before Russia began its bombing campaign in Syria, Putin told a U.S. television interviewer that he would not deploy combat troops in Syria, but then he added, "at least, we do not plan on it for now." And Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told Congress on November 4: "Now Russia is fielding its own artillery and other ground assets around [the Syrian cities of] Hama and Homs, greatly increasing their soldiers' vulnerability to counterattack."
 
#28
Wall Street Journal
November 5, 2015
U.S., Allies to Boost Aid to Syria Rebels
Shipments of arms, supplies are aimed at pressuring Assad while countering Russia, Iran
By ADAM ENTOUS

WASHINGTON-The U.S. and its regional allies agreed to increase shipments of weapons and other supplies to help moderate Syrian rebels hold their ground and challenge the intervention of Russia and Iran on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials and their counterparts in the region said.

The deliveries from the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Arabia and other allied spy services deepen the fight between the forces battling in Syria, despite President Barack Obama's public pledge to not let the conflict become a U.S.-Russia proxy war.

U.S. officials said the Obama administration is pursuing what amounts to a dual-track strategy, which aims to maintain military pressure on Mr. Assad and his Russian and Iranian supporters while U.S. diplomats see if they can ease him from power through negotiations. U.S. officials said the pressure track was meant to complement the diplomatic track by giving the U.S. leverage at the negotiating table.

Saudi and Turkish officials say the level of U.S. support for rebel groups remains insufficient, despite the latest U.S. promise to do more. Pledges to expand the weapons pipeline came as Washington sought support from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other allies in the region for a new diplomatic track that includes Russia and Iran, diplomats in the region said.

Saudi officials not only pushed for the White House to keep the arms pipeline open, but also warned the administration against backing away from a longstanding demand that Mr. Assad must leave office.

The White House has opened the door to Mr. Assad remaining in power during a transition that could last six months or longer but has said he can't be in power at the end of that process.

In the past month of intensifying Russian airstrikes, the CIA and its partners have increased the flow of military supplies to rebels in northern Syria, including of U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles, these officials said. Those supplies will continue to increase in coming weeks, replenishing stocks depleted by the regime's expanded military offensive.

An Obama administration official said the military pressure is needed to push Mr. Assad from power.

"Assad is not going to feel any pressure to make concessions if there is no viable opposition that has the capacity, through the support of its partners, to put pressure on his regime," the official said.

In addition to the arms the U.S. has agreed to provide, Saudi and Turkish officials have renewed talks with their American counterparts about allowing limited supplies of shoulder-fire man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, to select rebels. Those weapons could help target regime aircraft, in particular those responsible for dropping barrel bombs, and could also help keep Russian air power at bay, the officials said.

Mr. Obama has long rebuffed such proposals, citing the risk to civilian aircraft and fears they could end up in the hands of terrorists. To reduce those dangers, U.S. allies have proposed retrofitting the equipment to add so-called kill switches and specialized software that would prevent the operator from using the weapon outside a designated area, said officials in the region briefed on the option.

U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that a few older Manpads may already have been smuggled into Syria through supply channels the CIA doesn't control.

Without commenting on the CIA's covert role supporting anti-Assad forces, Mr. Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, warned this week that the intervention in Syria today risked becoming for Russia what the intervention in Afghanistan became for the former Soviet Union in the 1980s.

"I wonder whether he has a strategy for an off-ramp and whether or not he will avoid another Afghanistan quagmire," Mr. Clapper said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The administration's strategy was first adopted by Mr. Obama in 2013 when, under pressure from Saudi Arabia and other allies, he authorized a limited CIA program to covertly build up moderate rebel forces. U.S. intelligence officials told Congress that Mr. Assad and those protecting him would only negotiate a settlement once the opposition posed a serious threat to the regime's survival.

While it agreed to help strengthen vetted moderate rebels committed to fighting Mr. Assad, the administration didn't want to see the Assad regime collapse outright, which could clear the way for extremist groups, including Islamic State and al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, to fill the void.

In 2013 and 2014, the CIA struggled to recruit, arm and retain rebel fighters, who grew frustrated with the slow trickle of arms and came under attack, not only from the Assad regime but from the Nusra Front, particularly in northern Syria.

A year ago, however, U.S. intelligence officials began to see signs that rebel factions, including CIA-backed groups, were taking ground away from the regime. In the spring, the CIA began picking up intelligence that those closest to Mr. Assad were starting to worry the regime could collapse. Within the CIA, officials thought the 2013 strategy was starting to work, current and former U.S. officials said.

In late September, Russia made its surprise intervention on Mr. Assad's behalf, which changed the calculus. U.S. officials concluded that Moscow was intentionally going after the very elements of the moderate opposition the West was supporting.

The Russian attacks sparked a debate within the Obama administration about the future of the CIA program. Some Obama administration and military officials advocated abandoning the rebel units and using the Russian intervention as an opportunity to shift the U.S. mission entirely to fighting Islamic State, which they argued was the paramount threat, U.S. officials said.

Defenders of the program said the U.S. had an obligation to support the Russian-targeted units, who fared better on the battlefield under Russian fire than Washington had expected. The administration concluded the units were "an asset instead of a liability," a U.S. official said.

Before Secretary of State John Kerry opened a new diplomatic track in October, Saudi leaders pressed the White House to stick with the CIA program, arguing that it was more critical than ever to keep military pressure on Mr. Assad now that Moscow was signaling a willingness to consider his departure. Mr. Obama agreed. "It gives the diplomats leverage," a senior U.S. official said of the decision to expand support to the rebel groups.

After an inconclusive first negotiation session in Vienna, Mr. Obama discussed the two-pronged approach to removing Mr. Assad with Saudi Arabia's King Salman on Oct. 27.

According to a statement issued by the White House after the call, the leaders agreed to coordinate closely "to establish the conditions for a political transition" and "committed to increasing support for the moderate Syrian opposition."

U.S. officials said it is unclear whether Moscow and Tehran are serious about removing Mr. Assad or if they are playing for time. U.S. officials said they believe Moscow may be more interested in cutting a deal than Iran, which has more at stake in maintaining Syria as its proxy as a way to counter its arch rival, Israel.
 
 #29
www.valuewalk.com
November 4, 2015
Europe Turns Away From U.S. Toward Russia
By Polina Tikhonova
Polina Tikhonova is a writer, journalist and a certified translator.

Europe and the Obama administration have had a number of differences lately, particularly on everything that has to do with Russia. But American journalists noted a sharp increase in criticism from European leaders and media toward the U.S., and particularly toward U.S. President Barack Obama.

"For years, Europe treated Mr. Obama as virtually untouchable, an off-limits symbol of positive change in America," American journalist John Vinocur told Sputnik News. Vinocur reminded that back in 2008, the entire Europe was enchanted by Barack Obama's promises to change the world for the better.

Seven years and hundreds of unfulfilled promises later, the enchantment - or spell - has worn off, and the "continent is growing disenchanted with Barack Obama," Vinocur said. Moreover, "there is a willingness in Europe to place blame on [Obama] himself."

Today we see that European "politicians are naming him specifically in their rationalizations for cozying up to Russia. Commentators are mocking what they see as Mr. Obama's boundless caution," the journalist noted.

Growing pro-Russian, anti-Obama sentiment in Europe

The sharp shift in European attitude toward the U.S. took place about two weeks ago when German Chancellor Angela Merkel's former chief of staff Ronald Pofalla criticized Obama for "antagonizing" Russia. "It wasn't clever of Barack Obama to have downgraded Russia, in connection with the Ukraine conflict, to the level of a regional power," the journalist quoted Pofalla as saying.

And it wasn't just that. Last week, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that unlike the U.S. President, he has always considered Russia a "global power, not a regional one."

"The US president is getting openly dissed," Vinocur concluded.

And it must be noted that European media has openly been expressing its disdain with the U.S. policy toward Russia lately. In October, Berlin-based Tagesspiegel called the U.S. President a man "no longer feared in the Middle East" in an article titled 'Indecisive and Half-Hearted'.

How desperately does Europe really need Russia?

Moreover, there has been numerous remarks from top European officials that Europe needs Russia's help in solving various crises around the world.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that foreign policy is not about placing countries into "black-and-white" categories.

"Whatever you call it, we need Russia to solve numerous crises and conflicts across the world," Steinmeier said in an interview to the local Neue Westfaelische newspaper, published Wednesday. The minister added that a consistent dialogue is required even if the countries have differences.

Despite Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and EU sanctions against Russia, Berlin has maintained dialogue with Moscow, Steinmeier noted. He added that the lifting of sanctions would not immediately heal up Russian economy, but Germany is still willing lift the sanctions once the Minsk peace agreement is fully adhered to.

Putin's big game in Europe and Syria

While Russia had claimed that its intervention in the Syrian Civil War is supposed to bring down Syria's refugee crisis, it seems like it's the other way around. Russian airstrikes, which claims to be targeting ISIS militants, are forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee the constant bombings.

And it's Europe who has to suffer from the migrant crisis, not Russia, according to The Jerusalem Post. Holdouts for refugees "will not appear on the roads of Russia, mind you: Unlike Germany or France, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not hesitate, while terrorizing tomorrow's refugees, to slam the door in their faces," the article wrote.

And Putin does not seem to be secretive about his intentions in the war-torn country. According to reports in Russian media, Moscow has recently deployed the missile cruiser Moskva, as well as dozens of anti-aircraft missiles, to the port of Latakia.

But the newspaper notes that ISIS has never acquired an air force that needs to be neutralized. "Rather, the Kremlin evidently will view as a legitimate target any aircraft that might pass over territory that it comes to regard as being under its control," the article said.

The newspaper also warned that Russia could bring down a plane flying under the flag of the U.S., U.K, France, Turkey or any other member of the U.S.-led coalition, which is why the Syrian crisis could easily spiral into a war between the world's largest nuclear powers: Russia and the U.S.

But The Jerusalem Post also notes that Russia's military operations in Syria, which have been largely aimed at making Russia the master of the Syrian airspace and protecting the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime, are not bolstering efforts to defeat ISIS.

Putin's Party in Europe is becoming a reality

"Putin is not just a fireman who sets fires; he is an old-school imperialist," as noted in the article. Putin's Syrian operation is partly designed to deflect attention away from the Ukrainian crisis, the newspaper notes, adding that his "thinly veiled threats" against the Baltics, Poland, Finland and Turkey, the airspace of which has been violated by Russia MiG fighters, reveal a "strategy of aggression" that is aimed to weaken Europe.

The article urges Europeans to wake up to Putin's ploys "before it is too late." The newspaper refers to the example of the far-right National Front to far-left elements in France to prove the growing pro-Moscow sentiment in Europe.

"Indeed, the Kremlin has assiduously cultivated party secretariats across Europe. A web of invisible links has brought into being what could be called "Putin's Party" in Europe," as noted by The Jerusalem Post.

The newspaper concludes that it's not just "the usual European populist demagogues" such as Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom to Viktor �rban in Hungary, who would be the first ones to join the "Putin's Party," but also leaders who have a bigger influence in Europe such as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who is now justifying Putin's actions.

"Europe risks frittering away the very security on which its union and, yes, its prosperity, is built," the author of the article said.
 
 #30
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
November 5, 2015
Poland: Could anyone spell PiS as 'peace?' Is it worth trying?
Several experts ponder the future of Russian-Polish relations.
SERGEI STROKAN, VLADIMIR MIKHEEV, SPECIAL TO RBTH

Recent Polish parliamentary elections, if viewed at face value, present a major setback compared to the moderate and pro-EU policies pursued by the dethroned Civic Platform-Polish People's Party coalition government, and slim chances of bettering relations with its immediate big neighbor, Russia. However, the right-left political pendulum often swings in mysterious ways.

True, the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), chaired by hard-line politician and former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, subscribes to a set of values that do not promise easy times for neither Brussels nor Berlin or Moscow.

Among other things, Kaczynski keeps blatantly accusing Moscow of masterminding a hideous plot to assassinate his brother, the then President Lech Kaczynski who perished in a plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk in 2010. With no facts to support this allegation, the PiS leader invokes a Russophobe ethos that some parts of Polish society hold as tradition. It works, since prejudices are known to die hard.

The EU is no less apprehensive as to how to engage with the right-wing government in Warsaw, notably on several crucial dossiers including: refugee quotas; the dismantling of the heavily-polluting coal industry, regarded by PiS as the pillar of national energy sovereignty; the handling of the eroding European unity crisis in Eastern Ukraine; and dealing with Moscow and in particular applying EU sanctions, which are hailed by Polish nationalists as the ultimate and only way of dealing with Russia.

What's more, there is the likelihood that PiS will in no way be a "party of peace" but rather a party of war. Warsaw was heavily involved in the agreement that led to Viktor Yanukovich's removal from power and remains until now the formal patron of the pro-U.S. and pro-EU government of Petro Poroshenko. But...

Since some politicians in Kiev sympathize with Nazi collaborators in order to help mold an ideological platform and beef up nationalist sentiment, Polish public opinion has become more and more disgusted with the elevation of those who are responsible for the massacre of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which took place between 1943 and 1944, to the status of "heroes of Ukraine." The change of mood in Poland with more citizens leaning towards nationalist ideology leaves little chance for preserving the status quo in relations with Ukraine.

This week Russia marked the Day of National Unity. Basically, this holiday commemorates the expulsion of the Polish invaders back in 1612, with local bloggers rekindling patriotic sentiments with an unfortunately inevitable aversion to Slavic neighbors with whom they share a lot in terms of common history (the Russian empire for some time incorporated Poland), culture and other similarities.

Now, under the new circumstances, is it all gloom and doom for re-starting a dialogue between Moscow and Warsaw? Will relations still be handicapped by the legacy of this constructed animosity? Sergei Utkin, head of the Strategic Assessment Department at the Center for Situation Analysis at the Russian Academy of Sciences, sounded cautiously pessimistic for a change when discussing the matter with the Troika Report.

"The troubles in Russian-Polish relations started a long time ago and were exacerbated by the Ukrainian crisis."

"In the years to come we probably can't expect any progress to turn the relationship into better shape. But small steps could be made to stabilize the relationship if both sides are willing to do it. So far in Poland politicians of various leanings welcome a larger NATO military presence on their soil and this will not endear Russia. It is not an easy task to find common ground. Yet both countries would gain from more stable political relations and economic cooperation."

A slightly more positive scenario was drawn up for the Troika Report by Nadezhda Arbatova, head of the European Political Studies department within the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and co-chairperson of the Trialogue Forum involving Russia, Poland and Germany.

"The victory of the right-wing Law and Justice party will not necessarily result in the deterioration of bilateral relations. A great deal will depend on how far to the right the party's pendulum swings. If it goes too far in this direction, it risks losing all the advantages achieved by the previous government. There are objective restrictions to PiS anti-EU sentiments and its Euroscepticism. I think it would be tempting for the new government to establish workable relations with Russia on a pragmatic footing."

The formidable obstacle, as phrased by Polish liberal journalist Ziemowit Szczerek, is the heavy dependence of PiS on the "naivet� and fanaticism" of its supporters. This unmerciful verdict might be a bit of an exaggeration. At least, these two qualities can hardly be the dominant trait of the PiS leadership if we consider Jaroslaw Kaczynski (and his role in the party). Conservatives by definition tend to calculate properly what they deem as the "national interest," and this could be the lynchpin of a newly launched rapprochement between Moscow and Warsaw.

After all, the PiS-appointed Prime Minister Beata Szydlo while saying the usual mantra that "Russia is first and foremost an adversary" preceded it with a conciliatory overture: "we would like to see Russia as an economic partner." The finale of the sentence was no less positive: "We must remember that wise economic policy and diplomacy can be very helpful on this issue."

This is exactly what Troika Report is supportive of: "wise" diplomacy. Over last two years Moscow has proved it has the brains and guts to conduct a proactive and effective foreign policy.

Let's take into account several worthwhile breakthroughs on thorny issues, including setting the four-party Minsk negotiations into motion over the civil war in Ukraine and the future of rebel republics in Donbass, coming to a settlement on the Iranian nuclear deal and persuading archenemies like Saudi Arabia and Iran to start talking to each other to bring peace to Syria.

In all of these "cause c�l�bres" Moscow showed restraint and eagerness to accommodate opposing opinions and alternative options. It never allowed itself or others to take the "my way or the highway" approach, while building up the image of an honest broker.

PiS would be a difficult partner. But Moscow has a track record of establishing workable relations with conservative political forces in many places, from Republican administrations in the U.S. to Gaullist politicians in France.

Today could be another moment of truth. Moscow would be "wise" to capitalize on these gains to positively engage with Poland, irrespective of the initial response, and keep trying to open up and activate all channels of communications.

 
 #31
Sputnik
November 5, 2015
Pentagon's Former Russia 'Expert' Proves She Doesn't Know Much About Russia

After announcing her resignation in September, the Pentagon's top-ranking expert on Russia left her office on Friday for the last time. But evidently unable to let the job go, she's already making off-the-cuff recommendations to DoD officials - especially in regards to an imaginary "Russian threat."

When Evelyn Farkas announced she was leaving her position as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, US officials expressed deep regret.

"There are not a lot of Europe experts in this administration who have a long record of accomplishment," a senior official told Politico. "There's no doubt this leaves the Pentagon weaker in terms of its policy-making on European issues."

But, good news! Farkas may no longer be a defense employee, but she's not done offering advice - albeit based largely on misinformation.

"We have to continue reassuring, but we have to do one better, we actually have to deter," she told reporters at a Defense Writers' Group breakfast on Wednesday, according to Breaking Defense.

"First of all, clearly, Russia is not the Soviet Union and they are not strong economically and they are brittle politically, but that doesn't mean they're not a danger."

According to Farkas, that "danger" refers to modern Russia's brazen disregard for the horrors of nuclear war.

"In the Cold War...there was a healthy respect for the immense, horrific power of nuclear weapons and that was really the last resort," she said, adding that Russia currently follows a doctrine of "escalate to deescalate," which she finds "highly alarming."

Of course, this criticism seems rather misplaced, given that the United States is the one positioning nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe and preparing to spend over $100 billion developing a new long range strike-bomber capable of carrying a nuclear payload.

But she goes on.

"I'll go out on a limb beyond what [the Obama] administration would say: the NATO-Russia framework agreement is broken. The Russians broke it," she said, referring to the West's belief that Moscow sent troops into Eastern Ukraine, a claim for which officials have provided no evidence.

To respond to that "broken agreement," Farkas referenced a part of a 1997 accord which stated that NATO pledged "additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces."

"I was very excited to see this past week Secretary Kerry go through Central Asia. We need more high-level attention being paid to the countries that feel directly threatened by Russia...not just Ukraine but Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan...The countries around the periphery of Russia, they need our political attention," she said.

"They also need our economic assistance and they need our military assistance [to] deter Russia."

This type of alarmist attitude toward Moscow certainly isn't unheard of in the US government, but at least we can rest assured that Farkas is no longer a part of making policy decisions.

Still, her influence is certainly being felt.

"I want to actually commend Deputy Secretary [Robert] Work because he really took on the challenge of how do we better deter Russia, very seriously and I would say aggressively," she said.

"He has made sure that there is funding directed to deterring Russia in areas where we have specific concern - and I can't go into all of them, obviously - but he is taking a sharp look at the budget for of course FY16 but also more importantly FY17."
 
 #32
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
November 3, 2015
Testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation
Russian Propaganda: Ways and Means
By Leon Aron
Leon Aron is a resident scholar and the director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies Russian domestic and foreign policy, US-Russia relations, and the economic, social, and cultural aspects of Russia's post-Soviet evolution. Since 2015, Aron has been serving on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the operations of several international broadcasting outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

First, a disclaimer: the testimony I am about to give will be given in my capacity as a private expert and not as a Governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Mr. Chairman, the Ranking Member, Members of the Committee:

The aggressive, often sophisticated and Internet-savvy propaganda campaign, underwritten by the Russian government to the tune of at least half a billion dollars a year, is flexible and skillfully adapted to the geography of the audience. While general patterns are similar and I will discuss them in a moment, content may differ considerably depending on the ethnicity, political culture and geography of the intended audience.

Thus, in Western Europe and the United States, the RT television network aims not so much to "sell" what might be called the "Russia brand," but rather to devalue the notions of democratic transparency and accountability, to undermine confidence in objective reporting, and to litter the news with half-truths and quarter truths.

"Question more!" is RT's advertising motto - and it is not coincidental. For the Russian network seeks to exploit several key conventions and tendencies of Western media:

First, truth is in the eye of the beholder. As a keen and formerly inside observer of the Russian media effort put it, Russian propaganda uses "the idea of a plurality of truths to feed disinformation, which in the end looks to trash the information space." [1]

Second, that there are two sides to every story, and the credibility of the source is secondary."The medium is the message," Marshall McLuhan famously proclaimed in the 1960s. Half a century later, the message is increasingly detached from the medium, and words from those who utter them. After all, post-modernism postulates that "there is no author, there is only the text." My favorite modern English poet, Robert Graves, started the poem, titled "Forbidden Words," with these four lines:"There are some words [that] carry a curse with them:
Smooth-trodden, abstract, slippery vocables.
They beckon like a path of stepping stones;
But lift them up and watch what writhes or scurries!"But when showered by these smooth-trodden and slippery vocables, how often do Western media bother to lift the stones?

Third, since the credibility of the source is of secondary importance, Russian propaganda finds itself fitting rather smoothly into a panoply of Western media. (Just to be on the safe side, RT, which does not broadcast in Russian, never identifies itself as a Russia-based and government-funded network.)

Fourth, RT and the Sputnik news network, launched last year, find the soil of the Western media markets already fairly loosened and fertilized as far as conspiracy theories are concerned. Did the US government orchestrate 9/11? Why not? 23 percent of Germans thought so, as did 15 percent of Italians. [2] Seven years after the fall of the Twin Towers, between a quarter and one-fifth of Britons, French and Italians told the pollsters they had no idea who was behind the attack. [3] Well, then, after the CEO of France's largest oil company, Total, who had opposed economic sanctions on Russia, was killed when his plane slammed into a snowplow operated by a drunken driver at a Moscow airport, Russian commentators asserted that he was killed by the CIA. [4]  And why stop there? Did the CIA aid Ukrainians in shooting down the MH 17 Malaysian airliner (one of the "versions" suggested by Russian propaganda)? Plausible. Did the Russian opposition kill its own leader, Boris Nemtsov, to embarrass Putin? Possible.

Fifth, with all the so-called value judgments to be taken out of the reporting, there are no more "just" wars or wars of "aggression" - only "conflicts." Just as there are no "victims" and "perpetrators," only "violence."  So when RT and Sputnik editors read or see or hear news in the leading Western media about "renewed violence" in the "conflict" between Ukraine and Russia, they find it easy to build up on and extrapolate from them to twist the truth. Especially, when almost one in three Germans was reported last summer to find Russia not responsible for the violence in Ukraine, that's another opening for RT to exploit.

Yet for all this seemingly fertile soil for Russia's distortions, the impact of the Russian disinformation campaign on the democracies of Western and Central Europe appears paltry, if not to say negligible. Where the ratings were credibly established, RT was barely visible, apart from the "pre-sold" audiences on the extreme left and right. [5] The main reason is a highly competitive media environment that exposes people to a wide range of facts and interpretations.

The situation is quite different when we go east, to the countries collectively known as the Former Soviet Union. There the effectiveness of Russian propaganda is greatly enhanced by two factors. First, the presence of ethnic Russian minorities, some of whom nurture grievances; and, second, the existence of far fewer alternative sources of credible information than in West-Central Europe.

It is here that what is known as the "weaponization of information" occurs:  news and analysis as a means of provoking strong negative emotions, potentially leading to hatred, incitement and, ultimately, the justification of violence.

A couple of months ago, while searching Russian-language sites for information on the growing presence of Russian fighters with ISIS in Syria, I was directed by one of the links to one of Russia's most popular sites, an equivalent of Facebook called VKontakte, which has hundreds of thousands of visitors each day both from Russia and the Former Soviet Union. Before I could get to the articles I was looking for, I saw pictured at the top of the opening page a cartoonish Uncle Sam holding on his lap a baby clad in a black uniform with a Kalashnikov on its back. The caption read: "ISIS is a project of America's two-party system."

As an expert on Russian propaganda in Estonia put it, this effort has produced "a separate reality created by Russian media" in which he claims many ethnic Russian Estonians already live and which creates enormous problems for democratic politics.

In Kyiv earlier this year one of my most memorable meetings was with the Dean of the School of Journalism at the Kyiv-Mohila Academy, Professor Evhen Fedchenko. Together with his students he runs a website called StopFake.org, which records some of the Russian propaganda masquerading as news. Here are a few examples:

A report in the Russian media that the U.S. President has extended a decree that bans balalaikas (which are traditional Russian musical instruments) in the United States until 2020.

Russia's most widely watched Pervyi Kanal, or First Channel, television network, broadcast an interview with a terrified woman identified as a refugee from the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. She said she witnessed Ukrainian soldiers publicly executing the wife and son of a pro-Russian separatist. The child was crucified on a bulletin board, while the woman was allegedly dragged behind a tank until she died. The story was proven to be a complete fake.

Another popular Russian television channel posted on VKontakte and other social media sites an invented conversation between a Ukrainian military commander and a German doctor in which they discuss in detail the harvesting of internal organs, presumably of deceased members of the pro-Russian population caught up in the fighting. The officer is "quoted" as saying that "we would have a great deal of material to work with, thanks to our Western partners."

Again, bear in mind that Russian television, especially the news programs I just mentioned are viewed by millions of people, especially ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, outside Russia.

Fortunately, there is an antidote to this poison. It is impossible, of course, to sanitize all of the lies, given the lopsidedness of the manpower, but there is enough of it to deflate the effort considerably.

As usual, the strongest antidote is a rich, diverse, and uncensored democratic media environment. But as such an environment does not yet fully exist in most post-Soviet states, the U.S. international media effort could be of great help.

Despite being barred from domestic outlets in Russia, the online audience of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America online has been growing, reaching 4.7 million this summer. In my office last week, a top Russian pro-democracy leader, Vladimir Milov told me that "Radio Liberty is by far the finest and most influential of unofficial sources of political information and analysis in Russia today!"  According to independent research, nearly two million Russians are watching RFR/RL's flagship 30-minute nightly news program Nastoyashchee vremya or Current Time online every week.

Last year, a nation-wide Gallup survey in Ukraine showed that the size of the VOA audience across all of its media platforms in the Ukrainian and Russian languages had doubled since 2012 to nearly 7 million adults using VOA every week - that is 18 percent of all adults in Ukraine plus nearly 3 million using RFE/RL.

In Kyiv I was repeatedly struck by the deep appreciation by Ukraine's political and media elites of the content provided by Radio Liberty. RFE/RL content is being recognized as superior not just to the Russian propaganda but, to the output of the oligarch-dominated Ukrainian media, which is just as important. As a result, several top Ukrainian television networks competed for the prime time broadcast rights for Current Time.

Mr. Chairman, we are facing a determined and often refined propaganda effort. From the sophisticated exploitation of Western media patterns and vocabulary to outright lies and crude fakes, the goal remains the same: to undermine the people's trust in democratic politics and policies and in free and fair media. As this effort is vital to the maintenance of the present Russian regime, it will be with us for a long time.

Time, and, talent, and risk-taking innovation and yes, money for US international media will continue to be needed to counter it.

Thank you.

1. Stephen Castle, "A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine," New York Times, February 13, 2015.
2. "International Poll: No Consensus on Who Was Behind 9/11." World Public Opinion, September 10, 2008.
3. Ibid.
4. Alan Cullison, "Russia Uses MH17 Crash for Propaganda," Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2015.
5. The Daily Beast reports that in 2012, RT's daily viewership did not reach the minimum Nielsen rating threshold of 30,000 people in the United States, and that in Europe, its audience has amounted to less than 0.1 percent of total viewership, except in Britain where it does slightly better, garnering 0.17 percent of the total viewing population in 2015. RT's oft-cited figure of "630 million people in 100 countries" refers to the potential geographical reach of its programming based on where RT is available-not on how many people are actually viewing it.
See: Katie Zavadski, "Putin's Propaganda TV Lies about its Popularity," The Daily Beast, September 17, 2015.

 
 #33
www.rt.com
November 6, 2015
Get Unlucky? Commandos 'abduct' Russian Army choir singing James Bond Spectre theme (VIDEO)
[Video here https://www.rt.com/news/321013-russian-choir-spectre-arrest/]

The Russian Army choristers are used to rave reviews for their renditions of pop classics such as "Get Lucky." But a group of commandos took exception to their version of the new James Bond "Spectre" theme, it seems - and "abducted" them mid-song.

Five members of the Russian Army choir were hitting the high notes in their performance of Sam Smith's "Writing's On The Wall," the latest Bond theme hit, when they were suddenly "attacked" in a St. Petersburg shopping center.

But rather than an angry reaction from Russian special services, the incident appears likely to be a huge joke - a publicity stunt on the eve of "Spectre" opening in Russian cinemas.

In a video released Thursday, the masked men interrupt the guys in the middle of their performance, putting the uniformed singers on the ground and later taking them away with their hands behind their backs.

The video, widely thought to be a viral marketing ad for the film, comes as the latest Bond film is expected to be big hit in Russia. "Spectre" opens in Russia on Friday November 6.

The Russian Army choir is famous for its versions of pop classics such as "Get Lucky" and Bond theme "Skyfall."
 
 #34
If the Russian Elite is to Preserve Itself, It Must Change,' Gudkov Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, November 5 - Many commentators are speculating on whether Russia's elite groups, now threatened by Vladimir Putin's policies, will find a way to remove him from office and install someone more to their liking. Andrey Piontkovsky has focused particular attention on this issue (nv.ua/opinion/piontkovskiy/putin-protiv-rossijskih-elit-78063.html).

But this is only part of a larger issue, Dmitry Gudkov suggests in "Vedomosti." The real question, he says, is this: Can Russian elites transform themselves in such a way to transfer their positions and influence to their descendants or will they like their predecessors be cast aside and the system start over from square one? (vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2015/11/05/615604-smena-elit-nepoddayuschiesya).

Under what conditions, the Duma deputy asks, can representatives of one generation give place to those of another? Or, as this question is posed by Russian realities, "under what conditions can the elite retire with security?" Russian history in the 20th century, he says, is "an example of the incorrect answer to this task."

During that century, he says, "there was not a single generation of the elite [in Russia] which retired voluntarily and was not killed, imprisoned, exiled or - in the best case - cast aside with contempt." Indeed, "every 20 to 25 years, the entire elite in practice was reset and began again from a blank slate," a pattern that has kept Russia from evolving.

The 1917 revolution and Stalin's times provide the clearest evidence of this, Gudkov suggests, but perestroika has the same effect, casting into the outer darkness people who had played a central role in the country only a few years earlier. "Who, besides elderly members of the KPRF now recalls Yegor Ligachev?"

Every leader and every elite imagines itself as immortal, but in fact, the evidence in Russia is that few leaders can do anything to maintain their influence or hand it off to their children, the Duma deputy and commentator writes. Consider for example the case of the offspring of the Soviet elite.

Stalin's granddaughter owns a store in Portland, Khrushchev's son is a scholar in America, Suslov's daughter lives in Austria, and a relative of Brezhnev's lives in California, he points out.

"Do any of the current people deciding the fate of the country think that everything will be otherwise with them?" Gudkov asks rhetorically. Do they think they will go on and on like the Kims in North Korea? There is little reason for them to think so, and that explains their fear of taking the first step toward change.

Members of Russian elites can see how different things are in the West where political dynasties are the norm and where those who served in office often retain influence and standing long after they leave it. But few of them recognize the reason that this is the case: in the West, the elites rely on the people as their source of power.

In the Russian system, on the other hand, "the people have never been the source of power." Instead, power has been based in arms ("in bad times") or on oil (in better ones), "but this does not have any relationship to people, and that means there is not feedback loop." Consequently, when the chosen resource runs out, so too does power.

There is an obvious and simple conclusion from this, Gudkov suggests.  "If the current elite wants to preserve itself, it must change" the basis of its power and rely on the support of the people via a democratic process.  Only if it moves in that direction, he says, can the elite hope to peacefully stay in power and, when the time comes, peacefully and with dignity, exit it

If Russian elites don't decide to move in that direction, he says. "the days of the current era are already numbered" not just for the supreme leader but for the elites around him.
 
 #35
Politico.eu
November 6, 2015
Growing up in the shadow of 'Brother Putin'
He dominates Russian consciousness like no other, especially among children.
By MARC BENNETTS
Marc Bennetts is Moscow-based journalist and author of "Kicking the Kremlin: Russia's New Dissidents and the Battle to Topple Putin."

The latest hip-hop hit in Russia is a bass-speaker-shaking tribute to the ex-KGB officer who has ruled the country for over 15 years. "My best friend is Vladimir Putin," raps Russian star Timati, in a slick video released in October in honor of Putin's 63rd birthday. In the background, rappers in Putin masks chill on Red Square. "The whole country is down with him ... He's cool, a superhero."

I was marveling at the video when my six-year-old daughter, Masha, walked into the room. "My brother," she said, glancing at the screen and smiling. "Putin is my brother! He's a good guy." (She also muttered some other strangely affectionate stuff about Putin's bald head.) Unsure how to respond, I said nothing, and hoped she wouldn't say it again.

But she did. And often.

A few weeks later, I took Masha to one of Moscow's excellent theaters. Halfway through the 6-plus-rated performance, a conjuror stretched out his hands and addressed the audience of pre-teens. "I am the great and all-powerful..." He paused, for dramatic effect. A boy in the front row finished his sentence for him. "Putin!" he said. Masha beamed with delight.

Russia is soaked in Putinism. And children are clearly not immune. Granted, the Putin mania that exists in Russia today can't be compared to the cult of personality surrounding Soviet tyrant Stalin. There are - as yet - no Putin statues in the squares of Russia's cities. Children are not taught, as they were under Stalin, to thank the "national leader" for their "happy childhoods." And Putin expresses, publically at least, a staid disapproval of attempts to glorify his person.

Yet in the atmosphere of fervent patriotism that has gripped Russia since the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Putin dominates the national consciousness like no other figure. "Our president has taken the wise decision to annex Sevastopol and Crimea/ A Russian president / The best in the world!" went the lyrics to a song performed at a recent traditional music festival in Russia. He is everywhere - his face on popular t-shirts hailing his "manliness," his name used to represent the letter "P" in "patriotic alphabets."

A growing intolerance toward what the Soviets called inakomyslyashchie - literally, those who think differently - has seen the Kremlin finance a number of previously fringe groups who make no secret of their desire to influence young minds. Perhaps the most notorious recipient of Kremlin funds is the leather-clad Night Wolves gang - "patriotic" bikers who have staged grotesque children's shows that preach hatred for the West and an unconditional love for Putin. "Our shows should be really frightening to convince children of the seriousness of the Western threat to their homeland," the group's heavily tattooed leader, Alexander Zaldostanov, said. The Night Wolves have received over €1 million from the Kremlin in recent years, he told me when we spoke a few months ago.

And things are about to get worse. In late October, in a move that brought back memories of the Soviet youth organizations Pioneers and Komsomol, Putin announced that he had ordered the foundation of the "Russia Movement of Schoolchildren." While details on the exact activities of the federally funded organization remain sketchy, officials have said it will attempt to "formulate children's personalities" in accordance with the "system of values inherent in Russian society."

The order came as the Education Ministry proposed prohibiting schools from teaching "alien values," a common term in the Soviet era. For Russian parents opposed to the Kremlin's current policies, the development was cause for anxiety. "I'm worried they'll make membership of [the Russia Movement of Schoolchildren] compulsory for entry to university," said Alexei, a Muscovite businessman. "Or those schoolchildren who refuse to join will be ostracized as 'traitors.' Or they will be taught to inform on their parents. We've been here before," he said with a sigh.

Even six months ago, the suggestion that Russian children could be encouraged to turn on their "unpatriotic" parents Pavel Morozov-style - Morozov was the Soviet schoolboy "hero" who denounced his father to the secret police - would have seemed outrageous. Now, with Russian police rounding up librarians and shop assistants on "extremism" charges, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

State sponsored television programs seem poised to pick up where schools leave off. They have already successfully engineered unthinking passion for Putin and hatred of the "degenerate" West through vitriolic, primetime broadcasts. Now a national television channel for children is in the pipeline. Its remit? To encourage the rise of "patriotism" in Russia's youth. The TV channel is part of a five-year government project with a €5 million budget to facilitate "love for the homeland, loyalty to the Fatherland, and the striving to serve its interests and the readiness to defend it."

The level of pro-Kremlin proselytizing in Russian nurseries and schools still depends very much on the staff. Both my daughter's school and nursery have been largely politics-free - which has made her childhood crush on Putin all the more surprising. The situation elsewhere is very different. Anya, a Muscovite friend, recently told me her son was taught at school that Crimea's entire Tatar population "deserved" to be deported to the steppes of central Asia in 1944 under Stalin because they had "helped the Fascists" in World War II. (A statement that is as heartless as it is inaccurate).

At another school in Moscow, according to social media, children were taught to recite a poem - apparently made up by the class teacher - which contained the lines: "Russian land, who has offended you? There is no forgiveness for your foes. We are Russians and God is with us!" In the eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk, in what opposition supporters worry is a terrifying glimpse at Russia's future, Putin's portrait was recently hung alongside those of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, and his grandfather, the isolated East Asian state's "Eternal President," Kim Il-sung. (The school has close ties to North Korea, and its children attend summer camps in the country, in case you were wondering.)

Luckily, children being children, they can't help but point out everyday absurdities. Especially if the child has had exposure to other cultures. Lily, the 8-year-old German-Russian daughter of a Muscovite poet friend, Gregory Petukhov, was struck by a particularly strange element of life in modern Russia. "Hitler killed lots of people and he is hated in Germany," she said, with iron logic. "Stalin killed lots too, but he seems to be liked in Russia. Why, Dad?"

My daughter, for all her admiration for Putin (which I am still hoping is merely a form of childhood rebellion), has also been moved to question the often surreal nature of PutinWorld. "Why are they crushing those dead geese?" she asked me recently, eyes wide in horror, as I watched a bizarre video of the public flattening of three frozen, vacuum-packed Hungarian geese.

Zealous officials seeking to uphold Putin's ban on U.S. and European food imports had found them in a shop in the central Russian town of Apastovo. These three geese, weighing 3.6 kilograms each and garnished with vegetables and seasoning, had been taken to a local landfill, where - in the presence of state witnesses - they were rendered inedible with the help of a bulldozer. The entire operation, which one former Kremlin adviser described as something akin to a "long-lost Monty Python sketch," took up half a day and involved almost a dozen people.

I struggled to come up with an adequate answer to Masha's question. How exactly, I wondered, does one explain away, in child-friendly terms, the whirlwind of xenophobia and paranoia that leads to grim-faced public officials destroying "Western" frozen geese in a bid to keep Russia free of foreign gastronomic invasion? As ever, kids ask the toughest questions.
 
 #36
Russia does not see Ukraine as enemy despite Kyiv's new military doctrine - Russian Security Council

MOSCOW. Nov 5 (Interfax) - Russia does not see Ukraine as an adversary despite a new military doctrine approved by Kyiv.

"For its part, Russia does not consider Ukraine an enemy," Mikhail Popov, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, told reporters on Thursday.

"While calling our country an enemy, the Ukrainian government continues buying from what it calls its 'military enemy' oil, gas, electricity and diesel, and cooperating on railway transport and nuclear power," the Russian official said.

"Kyiv pursues a sure line towards militarization, continues betting overtly on a military resolution of the existing domestic conflicts and on the escalation of tensions right on the Russian borders," Popov said.

Commenting on the latest version of Ukraine's new military doctrine, Popov said: "Kyiv has firmly decided for itself that today Russia is to blame for all of Ukraine's misfortunes. Initially this tale was part of public statements by the country leaders, media reports, then it reached such a degree of credibility that the folk oral tradition turned into strategic planning documents. Wishful thinking."

"For the first time in its history Ukraine has defined its adversary and aggressor. Yet in reality, it was the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine which led to Kyiv's armed clash with its own people. The provisions of the new military doctrine confirm the extent of the inadequacy and hypocrisy of the Ukrainian leadership," Popov said.

The official also criticized Ukraine's approved 2016-2020 strategy for the national-patriotic upbringing of children and young people.

"As well as the bombastic words of educating children on the examples of the Ukrainian national struggle, the text of the strategy contains a list of pseudo-heroes from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, who operated alongside fascists against their own people during the Great Patriotic War," Popov said.

"It is obvious that Kyiv is trying to erase our centuries-long historical past, rewrite the history of the joint struggle against the common enemy, and forget the years of creation, peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, we are witnessing deliberate attempts in Ukraine to create a public image of Russia as an enemy by strengthening the nationalist ideology," the Russian security official said.

On September 24 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree enacting a decision made by the National Security Council, "On the new version of the Ukrainian military doctrine" on September 2, 2015. The document defines Russia as Ukraine's current military threat.