#2
The Nation
www.thenation.com
November 9, 2015
Obama Administration Officials Insist Russia Is to Blame for the Syrian Crisis
Will it finally dawn on the American political establishment that the US and Russia are in this fight together?
By James Carden
JAMES CARDEN James W. Carden is a contributing writer at The Nation and the executive editor for the American Committee for East-West Accord's EastWestAccord.com.

Last week, on November 5, The Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA will be stepping up its illegal war in Syria by increasing the number of weapons it is providing to the so-called Syrian moderate opposition, putting the lie to President Obama's pledge not to lead the United States into a proxy war with Russia. If a hearing held by the House Foreign Affairs Committee last Wednesday morning on "Russia's Escalation in Syria" is any indication, the president should expect little to no opposition to the CIA's action.

The committee heard testimony from two assistant secretaries of state, Victoria Nuland, under whose purview Russia falls, and Anne Patterson, who has the unhappy responsibility for overseeing American policy in North Africa and the Middle East.

The first thing that needs to be said about the hearing is that it highlighted the remarkable dexterity of the American war party, that bipartisan coalition of congressional war hawks that-to borrow a line from the British statesman John Morley-changes its aim, but never changes it stand. The war party's stand, or goal, is to forever ruin US-Russian relations. But rather than being preoccupied by Russia's much-decried invasion of Ukraine, it is now focused on Russia's "escalation" over Syria.

Assistant Secretary of State Nuland kicked things off by declaring that "Russia's new direct combat role in Syria has exacerbated an already dangerous refugee outflow, straining even the most generous Europeans' ability to cope."

Nuland's assertion, supported by neither evidence nor chronology, was eagerly taken up by several members of the committee.

Congressman Ami Bera claimed that Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war is "exacerbating" the situation and is the primary cause of the refugee crisis. Bera seemed particularly exercised that the refugee crisis may be taking a toll on Turkey. Bera might do well to take some time to think things through a bit. The reason Syrian refugees are flooding into Turkey (and from there, Europe) is because for years Turkey has been aiding efforts to overthrow the Assad regime.

Congressman Gerry Connelly demanded to know if Russia will "cease and desist" its excursions into Turkish airspace. Connolly's time might have been better spent asking whether Turkey will cease and desist aiding ISIS.

Alone among his colleagues, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher spoke of his frustration over the hostility with which the United States continually treats Russia, especially considering the solicitous nature with which we treat the Sunni Gulf-state tyrannies.

Further, Rohrabacher pointed out that countries like Saudi Arabia are ruled by cliques of extremists who are "no better than Assad." Indeed, the war Pparty policy of antagonizing Russia has caused a great deal of great harm, according to Rohrabacher our rejection of a deal proffered by Putin regarding Syria five years ago has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of displaced persons.

Yet the war party's refrain remains the same: "It's all Putin's fault."

If Nuland's testimony was bad, Patterson's was worse. With a straight face, Patterson told Representative. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen that ISIS and Assad "are linked." Could she possibly believe this? It would certainly come as a news to Assad, among others.

Basically, Patterson picked up where Nuland left off, noting, quite incorrectly, that "85-90 percent of the [Russian] strikes are aimed at non-ISIS opposition." About the mythical "moderate" Syrian opposition, Patterson was asked if we are "in coalition building" with al-Nusra? Patterson conceded that it is possible that some of our "moderate" opposition forces "were forced to join" them. Sure.

Guess who wasn't having any of it? Dana Rohrabacher. If we succeed in overthrowing Assad, Rohrabacher asked, why shouldn't we expect Syria to become a failed state, as Libya has become in the wake of NATO's disastrous 2011 intervention?  Patterson assured Rohrabacher that this was most unlikely, since there is a "broad consensus" that Syria's governing institutions would survive Assad, whereas no such governing institutions existed in Libya.

This-it must be said-is a curious claim: Is Patterson suggesting that the Libyan government, which in 2003 negotiated with the American and British governments to end its WMD program, didn't actually exist?

Overall, there seemed to be no recognition that Russia's "escalation" in Syria might be helping in the fight against ISIS. It seems our own government's obsession with ousting Assad, not the Russian airstrikes, is the real problem.

The picture the witnesses painted before the House Foreign Affairs Committee was as duplicitous as it was simplistic. And this is nothing new.

From the earliest days of the Cold War, policymakers have abided by Dean Acheson's dictum to present their arguments in a way that is "clearer than truth." For nearly 70 years it has been an article of faith within the Beltway that the American people don't "do" nuance, and so the only alternative left is to, well, lie to them.

"Clearer than truth" is so deeply embedded in Washington's genetic code that what results are congressional hearings in which highly intelligent, capable, and dedicated civil servants like Victoria Nuland and Anne Patterson find themselves uttering the most extraordinary balderdash.

Though perhaps all is not lost. A rare and welcome contrast to the regnant New Cold War pieties rolled out by Nuland and Patterson took place in the Rayburn building later that afternoon where four distinguished members of the newly re-formed American Committee for East-West Accord appeared before an informal hearing convened by the dean of the House of Representatives, Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers. (Full disclosure: I work for the committee and Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen is a founding board member.)

At the Conyers hearing there was no hint of the Manichaeism of the new cold warriors. Professor Cohen, Professor Ellen Mickiewicz, Ambassador Jack Matlock, and former Procter and Gamble CEO John Pepper urged Congress to eschew a deeply prejudicial approach to Russian relations, such as took place that very morning before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

By the end of the day, news came via that leakiest of vessels, the United States government, that intelligence sources were now suggesting that ISIS was indeed behind the downing of the doomed Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed 224 civilians, including 25 children. An AFP report issued over the weekend said "black box data from the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt last week indicate it was bombed."

If so, might it finally dawn on the American political establishment that perhaps the United States and Russia are in this fight together?   

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 #3
http://readrussia.com
November 9, 2015
The Russians Are Either Weak or Strong
By Mark Adomanis

Russia, the cliché goes, is a country of extremes.

Whether it is its physical vastness (Russia famously spans 11 time zones from East to West and around 2,000 miles from North to South), its range of climates (which vary from the sub-tropical to the arctic), the diversity of its population (there are more than 150 different ethnic groups), the economic differences between regions (some parts of Russia have a level of per capita income similar to Sub-Saharan Africa, others are at or above the level of Western Europe), or income inequality more broadly (a handful of Moscow-based oligarchs own more than a third of Russia's total wealth) the differences between and among the various oblasts, krais, and autonomous republics are pretty difficult to exaggerate.

That Russia is, in comparative perspective, somewhat unique is not just a matter of romantic notions like the "Russian soul" or of some obscure academic theory. Simply as a matter of fact, Russia really does have an extreme level of diversity in comparison to other countries. Its economic, social, and ethnic diversity isn't necessarily bad or good, but it is most definitely not "normal."

Why this extended digression? Well because Russia's extreme level of diversity certainly appears to be reflected in Western news coverage and analysis. I am far from the first to notice this phenomenon, but when confronted with Russia Westerners frequently tend towards extreme (and contradictory) positions.

For some, particularly those of a more classically "liberal" perspective, Russia is a shambolic, decaying hellhole of a country, a place that is thoroughly and hopelessly corrupt and decrepit. This is the view of Russia that we often get from dash cam videos or websites like English Russia. Basically, Russia is "Nigeria with snow," * a pithy phrase that is employed in equal measure by opposition activists and foreign politicians, or a "rich country with poor people."

Russia, in the liberal view, is a country that should be pitied at least as much as it should be feared, a danger to its own repressed and mistreated people far more than it is a danger to the rest of the world. It's a place where the roads have cavernous potholes, the planes fall out of the sky, bridges collapse of their own accord, and where (perhaps most damningly of all) the bathrooms have two toilets. Not the sort of place, in short, that is likely to take over Europe or dominate the Middle East.

Another perspective on Russia, however, pays little heed to the "backwardness" that is the hallmark of the view outlined above. This perspective focuses on the ruthlessness and bloody-mindedness of the Russian state, its willingness to pay any price (human or financial) to achieve it desired ends. While second to none in its contempt for and disgust with the Kremlin, the more hawkish perspective has a healthy respect for Russian military capabilities. It paints Russia not as a feeble third-world country but as an imminent, mortal danger to the US-led international order.  

Either of the two perspectives outlined above, is, on their own, internally consistent and logically coherent. The problem is that they all too frequently get mashed together. Thus someone can start an article with a lengthy rumination on the Russian state's mind-bending level of corruption and incompetence before immediately switching gears and moving into an extended description on the efficacy of the Kremlin's military reform and the threat posed by the Russian armed forces.

I came across an interesting example of this recently in Politico, where several US Army officers went on the record arguing that, if it invaded the Baltics, the Russian army would be likely to prevail against any American military response. This, obviously, accords the Russians an enormous degree of respect and suggests that (in a remarkably short period of time!) the Kremlin has managed to put behind the nightmare of the 1990s and has successfully built the world's most effective fighting force. The contrast with previous Politico reporting, in which the Russian state was about as competent as the Keystone cops, could not have been more stark.

Now, logically speaking, both of these narratives can't be true at the same time. Russia cannot simultaneously be completely and entirely hamstrung by omnipresent corruption and so well-run that, on a shoestring budget, it has swiftly created a military capable of defeating America's own-lavishly funded armed forces. No government, not even one in a country as diverse as Russia, can be both so weak and so strong at the same time.

People can and should disagree about Russia, about whether it is a pitiable and poverty-stricken hellhole or whether it is a disciplined, quasi-fascist nation marching in lockstep. I certainly find one of these narratives more compelling than the other, but it's not my job to tell people what they should and shouldn't think. However, people should keep in mind that they can't have their cake and eat it too: if Russia is nothing more than a "mafia state," that exists solely for the enrichment of its rulers, it obviously cannot succeed in the incredibly complex and difficult task of training, funding, and deploying a high-tech fighting force. That is something that is far beyond the capabilities of even the best-run states, let alone "Nigeria with snow."

*Please note that I am not making this argument (one which is remarkably condescending towards Nigerians!) merely noting its existence

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 #4
RFE/RL
November 10, 2015
Russian Justice Ministry Accuses Memorial Of Calling For Regime Change
by RFE/RL's Russian Service

Russia's Justice Ministry has accused the prominent nongovernmental organization Memorial of "undermining the foundations of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation" and of calling for "a change of political regime" in the country.

The ministry sent the Memorial Human Rights Center notification of the accusations on November 9 in a report of its annual examination of the group's work triggered by its official status as a "foreign agent."

The Memorial Human Rights Center was officially placed on the government's register of "foreign agents" on November 6.

The Justice Ministry report does not amount to legal charges against the NGO and it is not immediately clear what, if any, legal ramifications it may entail. Memorial Legal Director Kirill Koroteyev told Kommersant the NGO believes the ministry might use the report as the basis of a legal request to shut down Memorial or even to open criminal cases against Memorial officials.

The report cites an August 2014 statement by the organization that concluded that Russia's actions in Ukraine "fall under the definition of aggression" and asserted that active-duty Russian troops were participating in the conflict there.

The report also cited a February 2014 statement that alleged that prosecutors and judges had "fabricated" the cases against Russians who were charged with fomenting public disorder at an antigovernment rally on Bolotnaya Square in May 2012.

Memorial on November 10 posted a defiant statement on Facebook saying that "the Justice Ministry is equating criticism of the government with attempts to overthrow it."

"We are exercising our freedom of thought and speech and freedom of association, which are guaranteed by articles 28 and 30 of the Russian Constitution," the statement says. "We do not consider it appropriate to remain silent if we see that officials, including the highest officials, are violating human rights and the norms of international law."

The NGO charges that the ministry is "returning us to the days of the Soviet government's fight against dissent."

Memorial says it will appeal the Justice Ministry's report as itself unconstitutional.

The law requiring nongovernmental organizations that accept foreign funding to register as "foreign agents" was adopted in 2012, and the list now includes 10 NGOs.

Memorial was founded informally in 1987, and the Memorial Human Rights Center was created in 1991. It is devoted to researching the political repressions of the Soviet Union and commemorating their victims. It also investigates and reports on human rights violations in conflict zones and maintains a list of political prisoners in Russia.

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 Kremlin.ru
September 28, 2015
70th session of the UN General Assembly [Putin on climate change]

Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary meeting of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. It is in our interest to ensure that the coming UN Climate Change Conference that will take place in Paris in December this year should deliver some feasible results. As part of our national contribution, we plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions to 70-75 percent of the 1990 levels by the year 2030.

However, I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue. Admittedly, we may be able to defuse it for a while by introducing emission quotas and using other tactical measures, but we certainly will not solve it for good that way. What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.

We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change.

It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities, and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia is willing to co-sponsor such a forum.

#6
Reuters
November 10, 2015
Special Report: Putin's daughters and Russia's second-generation elite
By Stephen Grey, Andrey Kuzmin and Elizabeth Piper

Since Vladimir Putin began cementing his grip on Russia in the 1990s, many of his friends have grown famously rich.

Not so the president himself, say his supporters, who insist Putin is above the money grab that has marked his reign. His public financial disclosures depict a man of modest means. In April, Putin declared an income for 2014 of 7.65 million rubles ($119,000). He listed the ownership of two modest apartments and a share in a car parking garage.

His daughter Katerina is doing considerably better, supported by some of the Russian president's wealthy friends, a Reuters examination shows.

After unconfirmed media speculation about Katerina's identity, a senior Russian figure told Reuters that she uses the surname Tikhonova. Andrey Akimov, deputy chairman of Russian lender Gazprombank, said he had met Katerina when she was little and more recently, and that Tikhonova was Putin's daughter.

Reuters has also learned that earlier this year Katerina, 29, described herself as the "spouse" of Kirill Shamalov, son of Nikolai Shamalov, a longtime friend of the president. Shamalov senior is a shareholder in Bank Rossiya, which U.S. officials have described as the personal bank of the Russian elite.

As husband and wife, Kirill and Katerina would have corporate holdings worth about $2 billion, according to estimates provided to Reuters by financial analysts. That wealth stems mainly from a large publicly disclosed stake in a major gas and petrochemical company that Kirill acquired from Gennady Timchenko, another longtime friend of Putin.

Also among the young couple's holdings is a seaside villa in Biarritz, France, estimated to be worth about $3.7 million. That asset, too, was acquired by Kirill from Timchenko, a commodities trader who has known the president since at least the 1990s.

Katerina is also thriving in academia and running publicly funded projects at Moscow State University. A Reuters examination of public documents shows that the president's younger daughter has signed contracts worth several million dollars from state-owned organizations for work at the university to be carried out by organizations she directs. There is no indication she has made any personal financial gain from this work.

She holds a senior position at the university, and helps direct a $1.7 billion plan to expand its campus. Katerina's official advisers at Moscow State University include five members of Putin's inner circle - including two former KGB officers who knew her when she was a toddler. They served with her father in the 1980s when he was deployed to Dresden, East Germany.

Putin's elder daughter, Maria, is linked to Moscow State University as well. She is a graduate of the school's Fundamental Medicine Department and is forging a career in endocrinology, according to publicly available documents.

Katerina, Maria and Kirill Shamalov all declined to comment for this article. Asked about the Biarritz home, a spokesman for Timchenko said he would not comment on personal matters.

The stock acquisitions, state business deals, French property and oligarch connections offer a rare glimpse into the lives of Putin's children. The president has been very protective of his private life and his daughters, who seldom appear in the media. The transactions also provide insight into the family finances of Russia's most powerful man and the elite that has formed around him.

Katerina and Kirill, 33, are among a new generation of Russians enjoying a rapid rise in the wake of their well-connected parents. The phenomenon bears similarities to the "princelings" of China - the children and grandchildren of Communist Party leaders who have gone on to gain positions of power and amass great wealth.

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist and former member of Putin's United Russia political party, told Reuters that a "new aristocracy" was emerging in politics and state companies, with a second generation inheriting the status of the current circle around Putin. "Many in society think they haven't worked for it, and they question who these people really are," she said.

Among other children of the Putin circle with growing influence are:

Boris Kovalchuk, son of Yuri Kovalchuk, the largest shareholder of Bank Rossiya and a close Putin associate;

Gleb Frank, son of former transport minister Sergei Frank and son-in-law of commodity billionaire Timchenko;

Igor Rotenberg, son of the billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's former judo partner;

Sergei S. Ivanov, son of Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei B. Ivanov.

In an interview with Reuters, Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader, described what he called a "neo-feudal system" that threatens to dominate state offices and big business.

"Today in Russia, it is absolutely normal that the boards of directors at state banks are headed by children of security service officials, who aren't even 30 years old when they are appointed," he said. "It is more than just a dynastic succession. Children don't just inherit their parents' posts, but also the right to choose any other post they fancy. The danger is that very soon all key resources will end up in the hands of five to seven families."

Reuters asked the Kremlin whether Katerina Tikhonova was the daughter of Putin and whether she is married to Kirill Shamalov, and other questions. Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian Federation, replied: "We have no information whatsoever about the personal life, family connection, marital status, academic activities, involvement in particular projects and family tree of Ms Tikhonova, or about other individuals mentioned in your letter.

"In recent years there has been an enormous quantity of gossip on the subject of the family ties of V. Putin, and, in particular, his daughters. The proportion of accurate information in all these publications is laughably small."

"TALENTED RESEARCHER"

Katerina has largely escaped public attention since her father became president in 2000. In 2011, Putin told Russian television that Katerina had read Oriental studies, specializing in Japanese and history, at St. Petersburg University.

Little else was known about her adult life until a Russian blogger, Oleg Kashin, reported in January that the president's younger daughter was active at Moscow State University and had taken the surname Tikhonova, derived from the name of her grandmother, Yekaterina Tikhonovna Shkrebneva.

As well as Gazprombank's Akimov, two senior academic sources - one at Moscow State University and one scientist with close contacts there - also confirmed to Reuters that Tikhonova is Putin's daughter.

She has made rapid progress since her Oriental studies as an undergraduate.

According to the website of Moscow State University, she is attached to the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty. Under the name Tikhonova, she is listed as an author, along with other academics, of a chapter in a math text book and at least six scientific papers since 2011. The papers include studies on medicines and space travel; one is listed as a study of how the human body reacts to zero gravity.

Most of the papers were co-authored with the university rector, Viktor Sadovnichy. He did not respond directly to requests for comment, but the university issued a statement.

It said Tikhonova had proved to be a "talented researcher" who had "reported results of her research at scientific seminars and conferences many times." The statement added: "We do not have information about the private life of employees."

Tikhonova is also the director of two initiatives connected to the university, the National Intellectual Development Foundation (NIDF) and the National Intellectual Reserve Centre (NIRC). She became director of the non-profit NIDF in May 2013 and later became director of the NIRC as well.

The NIRC and NIDF created and run a project at the university called Innopraktika, which is also headed by Tikhonova. It sponsors and supports young scientists.

Innopraktika has a raft of advisers and partners who are close to Putin, including Sergei Chemezov and Nikolai Tokarev. The two men were KGB associates of Putin during his days as a spy in Dresden, Germany, living in the same apartment block as the future Russian leader and his young family.

Chemezov is now the head of state-owned technology giant Rostec, and Tokarev is head of state-owned Transneft, a gas pipeline company. Tokarev did not respond to a request for comment. Chemezov's company Rostec said in a statement that Rostec assists in the state's development of industry, and that Chemezov's involvement with Innopraktika was therefore "natural and logical."

Also among the trustees of Innopraktika, according to its website, are Igor Sechin, head of the state oil company Rosneft, and Andrey Akimov, deputy chairman of Gazprombank. Rosneft and Sechin declined to comment.

Asked about Tikhonova and Innopraktika, Akimov told Reuters: "I knew it was Putin's daughter. But of course we took the decision to support MSU's projects irrespective of any family connections." Innopraktika's program coincided with the bank's own priorities, he said, including Gazprombank's "global idea of supporting scientific development."

He said he did not believe that Tikhonova had received any special treatment, and that he supported the expansion plan of Moscow State University, regardless of Tikhonova's involvement.

The university's rector, Sadovnichy, said in a May 2014 presentation published on the university website that NIDF, along with other entities, would be tasked with conducting an expert review of the expansion of the university. Tikhonova's role is to confer with and represent the views of the wider business community, she told Interfax in an interview this month.

The $1.7 billion expansion plan involves both public and private funding, and aims to double the size of the university campus by 2018 with new laboratories, academic buildings, schools, student accommodation, and a museum.

The NIDF did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Innopraktika referred questions about its activities to Moscow State University and said it could not comment on Tikhonova's private life.

The university said in a statement that many people were involved in its expansion plan, including university employees and outside experts.

According to Russian state public records, since 2013 the NIDF has won contracts worth 182 million rubles ($2.8 million) from Rosneft, Rosatom and Transneft, all state-owned companies. Of 10 contracts reviewed by Reuters, eight were awarded without competitive tender. The contracts were mostly to carry out research at the university.

Transneft declined to comment. A spokesman for Rosatom said: "Rosatom cooperates with Innopraktika as well as other institutions ... As part of its strategy Rosatom aims at developing new projects." He said contracts were awarded openly and transparently.

A spokesman for the oil company Rosneft said it was cooperating with Moscow State University on 17 projects that were worth a total of 530 million rubles.

In March 2015, Tikhonova was appointed as a deputy vice-rector of the university. It is not known whether the post pays a salary. Tikhonova's role in the expansion project, though not her family tie to Putin, was laid out in a report in January by Russian business news channel RBC TV. Her title at the university was first reported by opposition leader Navalny. Her appointment is noted in an official order by Sadovnichy posted on the university website. She does not appear on the ordinary list of staff, but she is listed as a member of the university's scientific council.

Asked about Tikhonova's title, pay and role, the university said in statement: "The National Intellectual Reserve Centre supports specifically young people in innovative activity of MSU, and that is why its activity is coordinated by the Rector's office ... Consequently the Centre's director Katerina Tikhonova is the deputy vice-rector within this department."

OCEAN VIEWS

Tikhonova is active beyond the university. Under that name, she has competed for years as an acrobatic rock'n'roll dancer. In 2013, she and her dancing partner came fifth in a world championship event in Switzerland.

Today, she is chairman of two organizing committees of the All-Russian Acrobatic Rock'n'Roll Federation, according to its website. The Federation's sponsors include Sibur, Novatek and Gazprombank - companies that are co-owned or co-controlled by friends and associates of the president. These people include Timchenko; Kirill Shamalov; and Kirill's elder brother, Yury Shamalov. The same companies are also mentioned on Innopraktika's website as among its corporate partners.

A spokesman for Sibur said: "As for sponsoring the (Acrobatic Rock'n'Roll) Federation - the motives are the same as in partnerships with other types of sport. At different times Sibur has supported the Russian basketball federation, Formula One team, many Russian hockey and football teams and many others."

The spokesman said Sibur provided advice but not money to Innopraktika, and had long collaborated with Moscow State University. Novatek did not respond to requests for comment.

News of a possible relationship between Tikhonova and Shamalov surfaced early this year. RBC TV and Kashin's blog both reported in January that the two visited Switzerland together.

Reuters has independently confirmed that Tikhonova identified herself as Shamalov's "spouse" during her visit to Switzerland.

The young Shamalov has a valuable property in France. Perched atop a sea cliff in the resort of Biarritz is a four-floor house with a swimming pool, which Shamalov acquired three years ago.

The elegant house on Avenue du General Mac Croskey in Biarritz covers about 300 square meters inside and has 2,000 square meters of garden. Built in the 1950s, it is now worth about 3.5 million euros ($3.7 million), according to Pierre Fourreau, an architect who renovated the property seven years ago.

Public records show the property was previously owned by Putin's old friend Timchenko. In September 2007, Timchenko and his wife, Elena Ermakova, registered a French property company called SCI Atlantic to acquire the house. On Nov. 15, 2012, the couple's shares in SCI Atlantic, which still owns the Biarritz house, were transferred for an undisclosed price to Kirill Shamalov.

People living near the Biarritz house say they have not seen the young couple there.

The Biarritz house is a small part of Shamalov's growing assets. In 2008, the young businessman became a member of the management board of Sibur Holding, a large, privately held gas-processing and petrochemicals company. He acquired a 4.3 percent stake.

In 2014, he acquired an additional 17 percent holding in Sibur from Timchenko and became a member of Sibur's board of directors. Timchenko has known the Russian leader at least since Putin's days as deputy mayor in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, and the two prospered together. While Putin went on to become president, Timchenko co-created Gunvor, a company that traded Russian oil, and became a multi-billionaire.

Sibur recorded revenues of 361 billion rubles ($5.6 billion) and net profit of 25 billion rubles in 2014. Last year it began a project with the U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) to develop basketball in Russia. The project is continuing, said spokesmen for the NBA and Sibur.

Shamalov's 21 percent stake in Sibur is worth about $2 billion, possibly more, according to estimates by three financial analysts.

The price Shamalov paid for his stake in Sibur has not been disclosed, and it isn't clear where he obtained the capital to purchase the shares. In an interview with Kommersant in August, Shamalov said he had acquired the stake at a market price and had borrowed money to buy it, but did not specify how much. When Reuters asked about the stake, a spokeswoman for Shamalov declined to comment.

A spokesman for Sibur said: "According to corporate rules, we do not comment on the personal lives of our managers and members of the board of directors."

A spokesman for Timchenko declined to comment on the Biarritz house. He said Timchenko's sales of shares to Shamalov were "monetary transactions, made at market prices."

In comparison to this rising young Russian generation, Vladimir Putin remains a man of the middle class, according to his asset declaration. As well as his salary, he declared the ownership of one apartment in Moscow and another in St. Petersburg. He listed no property abroad.

The president's spokesman has repeatedly denied that a luxurious estate built on the Black Sea and popularly known as "Putin's palace" was intended for the Russian president. As Reuters reported last year, the mansion was partly funded by Nikolai Shamalov - father of Kirill, the man who the president's daughter has described as her spouse.

 

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#7
Reuters
November 10, 2015
Rising stars among children of Russia's elite
By Stephen Grey and Elizabeth Piper

BORIS KOVALCHUK. Born in 1977, he is the son of Yuri Kovalchuk, the founder and largest shareholder of Bank Rossiya, and founder with Putin of the Ozero dacha cooperative, an exclusive lakeside settlement of weekend homes near St. Petersburg. His son Boris is CEO and chairman of the management board of state electricity holding firm InterRAO. He did not respond to a request for comment.

YURY SHAMALOV. Brother of Kirill and elder son of Nikolai Shamalov, an old friend of Putin. Yury Shamalov is deputy chairman of Gazprombank, one of Russia's largest lenders and the owner of a strongly pro-Kremlin media group. He is also president of Gazfond, the largest pension fund in Russia. Gazfond is the largest shareholder in Gazprombank. Requests for comment from Shamalov sent to Gazfond went unanswered.

SERGEI IVANOV. Son of former KGB general and current Kremlin chief of staff, Sergei B. Ivanov. The younger Ivanov, 35, is a director of Gazprombank and has been chairman of the management board of Sogaz, one of Russia's largest insurance companies, since 2011. Last year, the younger Ivanov told Reuters his father's position had "only hindered" his work at Gazprombank. He did not respond to a request for comment.

GLEB FRANK. The son of Putin's former transport minister, Sergei Frank. In 2010, the younger Frank married Ksenia, the daughter of oil billionaire Gennady Timchenko, who is an old friend of Putin. A year later, Frank, 32, joined the board of directors of Stroitransgaz, a large construction company co-owned by Timchenko. Frank also increased his stakes in Russkaya Akvakultura, a fish farming company, by buying shares from Timchenko. In June, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported that his 37.13 percent stake in the company was worth 1.68 billion rubles ($26 million). A source close to Frank said the young businessman had few interests connected to his father-in-law and that he had acquired the stake in Russkaya Akvakultura for a market price. The source did not say how Frank had acquired the capital to make the purchases.

IGOR ROTENBERG. Aged 42, he has acquired significant assets from his 63-year-old father, Arkady Rotenberg, a former judo partner of Putin. The older Rotenberg became a billionaire from business interests developed while Putin consolidated political power. The assets Arkady has sold to his son Igor include 79 percent of drilling company Gazprom Drilling (Bureniye); 28 percent of road construction company Mostotrest; and 33 percent in TPS Real Estate Holding. Igor Rotenberg, in a written statement, told Reuters: "Of course my father gave me a good start in business. Today I am an independent businessman and I am developing my assets with my team in a competitive, market environment."

ROMAN ROTENBERG. Igor's younger brother. Born in 1981, he plays ice hockey, Putin's favorite sport. The young Rotenberg has developed ice hockey in Finland, and is vice president of the St. Petersburg SKA hockey club, whose president is Timchenko. He has also worked as a vice president of Gazprombank since 2010. He did not respond to a request for comment.

IVAN SECHIN. Son of Igor Sechin, head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft. In January, Rosneft announced that Putin had given an award to Ivan Sechin, for his "substantial contribution" to the country's fuel and energy sector and "longstanding conscientious" work. Sechin is said by Russian media to be about 25 years old. He had been working for Rosneft as a deputy director of a department for less than a year when he got the award. He did not respond to requests for comment.

ANDREY MUROV. Son of ex-KGB general Evgeny Murov, who has run the Federal Protective Service since 2001. The service safeguards Putin, other VIPs and presidential buildings. Murov's son Andrey, born in March 1970, is chairman of the management board of the state-owned Federal Grid Company, which is the main supplier of electricity in Russia and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. He did not to respond to a request for comment.

DMITRY PATRUSHEV. Son of the head of the Russian Federation Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev. Dmitry, 38, has headed the Russian Agricultural Bank, one of the largest state-owned banks in Russia, since 2010. He did not respond to a request for comment.
 

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 #8
Sputnik
November 10, 2015
Modern Technology Prevents Media Censorship - Rossiya Segodnya Chief

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Speaking at the eighth Forum of European and Asian Media (FEAM) organized by Rossiya Segodnya in Moscow, the news agency head described the concepts of propaganda, censorship and canvassing as "obsolete."

"Censorship is impossible with current technology these days. No one is able to pull it off, no one can shield a person from someone else's information or propaganda. No one has a monopoly on this information," Kiselev said.

"The world describes itself entirely differently," he observed, arguing in favor of the importance of shaping information. "Once you give up on this, the audience will turn away from you because people face the need to understand the modern world to make vital decisions for themselves and their families."

Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan seized on the use of the human interest angle to explain the world, distinguishing the benefits to ratings with the drawbacks of "inspiring people with a less stable psyche."

"A journalist should approach this responsibly. Not showing what is interesting to the audience, prioritizing other considerations that should probably be under the authority of security services, would be wrong for us as journalists," Simonyan suggested.

The eighth FEAM plenary session organized by Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency brought together chief editors and top managers from 14 post-Soviet countries to discuss mass media interaction under various political and economic conditions.

Established in 2006, FEAM provides a unique platform for leading media experts from CIS countries, the Baltics and Georgia to discuss trends and developments in media.

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 #9
Russian minister: Decision on floating ruble rate was absolutely correct

BEIJING, November 10. /TASS/. The decision on the floating ruble rate was absolutely correct and no grounds exist for devaluation shocks at present, Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukayev said on Tuesday.

"I believe this decision [on the floating rate] was absolutely correct and was taken in challenging environment. I think highly of actions taken by the management of the Bank of Russia in this area," the minister said.

This is a comprehensive issues related to the opportunity of providing currency refinancing and to exporters, Ulyukayev said.

"We see at present the situation with the current account is fairly stable and is improving for the capital account. Therefore I think we have no grounds at present for any devaluation expectations or shocks," the minister added.

Prospects for reduction of Central Bank's key rate to single-digits in Q1 2016

Ulyukayev also noted that he sees potential for reduction of the Central Bank's key interest rate to single-digits in the first quarter of 2016.

"I stick to my estimate," he said, adding that in general he sees potential for that. The Minister refused to give his estimate of potential for reduction this year.

Inflation in Russia may be 12.7-12.8% at yearend

The official said inflation in Russia may total 12.7-12.8% in annual terms by the end of the year.

"Accumulated inflation is 11.2% at present. If weekly inflation is 0.2% as it has been recently, it means inflation will be about 12.7-12.8% at the year-end," the minister said.

"I think the upper limit will be closer to 13%," Ulyukayev said. The lower limit of inflation is 12.2% in the ministerial outlook, he added.

"There is a chance there will be no usual December acceleration. This is related to consumer behavior. Savings are growing at present but the situation is highly unstable and I cannot therefore say anything more accurate," Ulyukayev said.

Russian GDP drops 4% in annual terms in October

According to the minister Russian GDP dropped 4% in annual terms in October.

"In October the decline in annual terms was rather deep - around 4%," he said.

As was reported earlier in September Russian GDP dropped 3.8% in annual terms.

The Minister added that in October the economy demonstrated a slight seasonally adjusted growth month-to-month. "There is indirect evidence, meaning railway loadings and electricity consumption in October stood approximately at the same level as in September thus, there was a very slight seasonally adjusted growth month-to-month while in annual terms it was all the same a recession," Ulyukayev said.

The Economic Development Ministry projects a 3.9% GDP decline by the end of the year in Russia.

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 #10
Bloomberg
November 9, 2015
How the Unshackled Ruble Has Changed Russia's Economy Forever
The weaker currency has hit consumers hard but helped oil producers
By Anna Andrianova and Andre Tartar
[Charts here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/how-the-unshackled-ruble-has-changed-russia-s-economy-forever]

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the freeing of the ruble for the first time in its post-Soviet history.

In five charts, we show how the central bank's decision to stop depleting international reserves to prop up the currency has upended every facet of the Russian economy, from decimating wages to enriching oil exporters.
1. Runaway Inflation

The ruble has shed about 30 percent against the U.S. dollar, stoking inflation to a 13-year high that the central bank sought to counter with repeated interest-rate hikes up to 17 percent last December. The Bank of Russia has since unwound much of that emergency rate increase.

2. Rising Poverty
Runaway inflation eroded consumers' purchasing power. The resulting drop in wages and disposable income has been so dramatic as to make more Russians destitute. The World Bank predicts Russia will experience for the first time since the 1998-1999 financial crisis a significant increase in its poverty rate, which had almost halved since 2000 when President Vladimir Putin assumed power and oil prices began to rise.

3. Salary Cuts
As it has done so many times in its history, the Russian labor market adapts to hard times by cutting salaries and reducing the number of work hours rather than laying off workers. The unemployment rate, which was at 5.2 percent in November 2014, shrugged off a brief increase and has since returned to 5.2 percent in September.

4. Goodbye Travel
With dwindling incomes, consumers have cut back on expensive shopping habits. They travel less abroad and have switched to Russian food brands. A ban on certain imports slapped on top of a weaker ruble means coveted foreign goods are off limits.

5. Oil Exporters
Russia's key oil producers have benefited from the weakening currency thanks to the tax system and the fact their costs are mainly in rubles and their revenue is in foreign currencies. It's helped counter their losses from the slump in crude. The government is now considering a windfall tax on oil and gas companies for next year, which would limit oil exporters' benefits from the ruble's devaluation.

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#11
The National Interest
November 10, 2015
Russia's Economy: What Do the Numbers Tell Us?
By William T. Wilson
A former chief economist for Ernst & Young, William T. Wilson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.
[Chart here http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russias-economy-what-do-the-numbers-tell-us-14300]

Before the Bolshevik revolution, Vladimir Lenin supposedly said "the worse the better."  Essentially what he meant was that the more conditions deteriorated under the Russian czar (and in its aftermath) the more likely the Bolsheviks would obtain power. In this, Lenin was quite prescient.   

Today, the Russian economy has fallen into a "worse" phase. The collapse in oil prices, coupled with economic sanctions, has significantly impaired economic growth.  The question is: How bad is it, and what are the future prospects for recovery?

In short, the prospects currently look dismal. Even a rapid and sustained resuscitation in energy prices is unlikely to restore growth to levels experienced earlier this decade.  Let's glance at the numbers (see above for graph):  

One striking fact is that Russian growth started to decline rapidly in 2012 Q1, well before oil prices fell or economic sanctions took hold. Growth had plunged to approximately one percent before either phenomenon occurred.

Russia's 4 percent GDP growth rate was largely manufactured by enormous growth in consumer credit, which was not sustainable. The World Bank estimates that, by 2017, Russia's real GDP will be smaller than it was in 2012.

The Russian economy is seriously dependent on energy. Approximately 70 percent of its exports are hydrocarbons, and 50 percent of government revenue comes directly from the oil sector. Given this addiction, the exchange rate has collapsed to 62 rubles per dollar (as of October 2015), compared with its average of 29 rubles per dollar for the 10-year period preceding last year's decline. Over the last year, inflation has increased from 7.8 to 15.8 percent.

After being in surplus as recently as 2012, Moscow's budget deficit is expected to run 4.5% of GDP in 2015. This is an enormous swing over a short period of time. According to Moody's, the Russian Finance Ministry plans to pull more than 2 trillion rubles from one of its two sovereign wealth funds to cover the shortfall.  Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia could exhaust both its funds in less than two years if it continues to rely on the reserves to balance the budget.

The Russian Central Bank Governor stated that international reserves stood at $370 billion in early October, down from last year's high of $510 billion. After crowing about an investment-grade sovereign debt rating for several years, Russia saw both Standard & Poor's and Moody's downgrade its rating this year.    

Meanwhile, consumption spending has fallen at its fastest pace since the 1998 crisis--contracting 7.5 percent in the second quarter. And the poverty rate has risen by two percent in just the last four quarters.  Twenty-two million Russians now live in poverty.  

While it is true Russia's population has stabilized in recent years, that's only because birth rates were relatively high during the 1980s. With birth rates collapsing during the 1990s, Russia's population decline is set to quickly accelerate soon.     

The economic sanctions imposed after the invasion of the Crimea peninsula have produced deeper damage than anyone expected. Strict sanctions from many western countries have prevented Russian companies from raising money in Europe and the United States and have also blocked arms trades.

The drop in the value of trade is indicative of the collapse in economic activity. During the first eight months of this year, imports have declined by 39 percent while exports have dropped by almost 30 percent.

Looking longer term, without deep and sustained structural economic reforms, Russia, now classified as a high-income country by the World Bank, faces a bleak future. Snow blanketed Moscow the first week in October.  Russians should prepare for a long winter.

As for that classic Lenin quote, it sparks the question: Will history repeat itself?  Russia had hoped to cut its defense spending-but given its campaign in Syria (and its earlier incursion into Ukraine), that has proved problematic. Vladimir Putin's poll ratings are still high in Russia. But unless the economic fundamentals improve, such high poll numbers could be short lived.

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#12
Russian Sports Ministry urges WADA to focus on real facts in anti-doping investigation
[WADA report here https://wada-main-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/resources/files/wada_independent_commission_report_1_en.pdf]

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. Russia's Sports Ministry has called on the World Anti-Doping Agency to focus on real facts during the investigation against Russian athletes, the ministry said in a statement posted on the website of the International Sports Press Association.

WADA's independent commission has released a report on Monday, it which it recommended to suspend Russian athletes from the competitions under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations as well as to strip the Moscow anti-doping laboratory of its license and dismiss its director Grigory Rodchenkov because of numerous violations of the anti-doping rules.

"The Russian Ministry of Sports will carefully study all the decisions and facts on which this report was made and take the appropriate measures," the statement says. "However, there is a big difference between information that journalists provide and proven facts and evidence which naturally an investigation such as this should be based on. So, we urge WADA to rely on the real facts and evidence."

Half of problems in WADA's report ungrounded, others can be rectified

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said on Monday that half of the problems stated in Monday's report of the Independent Commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in regard to the Moscow anti-doping laboratory can be rectified, others are ungrounded.

"The [Moscow anti-doping] laboratory's was suspended before the Olympics in Sochi," Mutko said in an interview with Rossiya-24 television channel. "Within the course of six months about 30 WADA experts were studying the work of the laboratory disintegrating it up to a single molecule. Eventually they ruled that it's [laboratory's] work complies with WADA requirements."

"Afterwards we hosted outstanding Olympic Games [in 2014]," the Russian minister said. "We received not just the grade A, but grade A++ for the work of the laboratory. Then we held the World Aquatics Championship in Kazan [on July 24-August 9, 2015] and once again received the highest possible grade."

"I have no clue what had happened over the past six months, but there are problems with the laboratory once more," Mutko said. "Half of these problems can be rectified if necessary, the other half has no proof except some allegations. There are no facts."

Following the commission's report, Interpol announced that it would join a coordinating work led by France into "an alleged international corruption scam involving sports officials as well as athletes suspected of a doping cover-up."

"The announcement follows today's publication of a report by an Independent Commission established by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) investigating a number of individuals, including former officials of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)," Interpol said in a statement posted on its official website.

"The Independent Commission's findings follow its investigation into doping allegations aired on German television in December 2014," the statement said adding that the investigation would be headed by French investigative magistrate Renaud Van Ruymbeke.

Russian Sports Minister Mutko said "Interpol had been recommended to carry on with the investigation. This recommendation is the right one."

"But this is no criminal case for us. This is the criminal case against the IAAF president," Mutko said. "Let us see what is going on over there. It is them, who set out the rules for the rest of the world."

"I would like to reiterate that there were no new facts. But if there are any, we will treat them very scrupulously," Mutko added.

The Russian sports minister added that Russia was involved in the fight against doping abuse under the leadership of WADA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for a long time.

"Russia signed the Anti-Doping Convention," Mutko said. "Since 2009 we had covered a great way under the leadership of WADA and UNESCO. We [Russia] passed a relevant law. We opened the borders of the Russian Federation."

"Today any [doping] sample can be taken here and allowed to be transferred abroad," he said. "We have invested enormous money to set up the laboratory. We did everything we were recommended. We have set up the anti-doping organization RUSADA, based on the exemplary requirements of WADA and IOC."

"We have worked with them and worked in order with all of their requirements," Mutko said. "If such work cannot be appreciated I can hardly find any words."

"We pay WADA $1 million in mandatory annual contributions," he said. "We deposit an annual sum of $300,000 into WADA foundation and UNESCO researches. I have no clue what else should we do in order for them to say that we comply."

"The fight against doping is the fight against our common evil," Mutko added.

In December 2014 German TV Channel ARD aired a series of documentaries on alleged doping abuse in Russian sports. The ARD's two-part documentary titled Geheimsache Doping (Secret Doping Case) claimed that Russian athletes systematically took banned substances on instructions from their coaches.

The Sunday Times too alleged that Russian athletes suspected of doping abuse had won 80% of medals for their country at Olympic Games and World Championships between 2001 and 2012.

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 #13
Bloomberg
November 9, 2015
Russia Fears Islamic Terror Blowback Over Syria After Sinai
By Ilya Arkhipov

As evidence grows that a bomb may have downed a Russian passenger jet over Egypt, the Kremlin is focused on countering the threat of terrorism at home from sympathizers of Islamic State.

Officials insist they were prepared for the risk of terrorist reprisals after President Vladimir Putin ordered air strikes against militants in Syria. Even if an attack on Russians abroad wasn't among their most likely scenarios, the loss of 224 lives in the Metrojet crash is underlining the importance of keeping a simmering domestic insurgency under control.

"We need to ring the alarm bells, there's a significant increase in the level of risk," said Rizvan Kurbanov, a member of parliament for Dagestan, a North Caucasus region that's experienced some of Russia's worst terrorism. "If the problem was a local one in the past, now it's in a number of other regions of the country."

An Islamic State affiliate claimed it blew up the jetliner that left Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg on Oct. 31, saying it was in retaliation for Russian bombing in Syria. Russians becoming the targets of international terrorism adds another element of risk that Putin must navigate in his quest to restore his country's role in global affairs. He built his political strongman image while fighting home-grown attacks and the Kremlin will be keen to avoid a new wave of violence undermining support for the military campaign that began Sept. 30.

'Activate Groups'

Russia's Federal Security Service says people suspected of financing international terrorism, a term usually used to describe Islamic State and similar groups, have been found in 77 of the country's 85 regions. There's also been a steady stream of arrests of suspects linked to Islamic State, which was named as the prime target of the Syria air strikes.

"We understand of course that, with the start of this operation, all these terrorist organizations in Syria and those that morally and financially support them will try to activate groups in the underground who remain in Russia," Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defense committee in the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, said in an interview.

Russian authorities should set up a program to "conduct ideological warfare against Islamist terrorism," particularly on the Internet, as children as young as 12 are playing at being militants in schools, said Kurbanov, a former top security official in Dagestan. "We know very well how to destroy and pre-empt" terrorists "though we're doing little to fight their ideology."

'Ensure Security'

Putin ordered Russian flights to Egypt halted on Friday to ensure "the safety of our citizens," his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters. The U.S. and the U.K. said a bomb may have caused the plane crash in the Sinai desert, a view echoed by France. Egypt and Russia said they have no evidence for this, though they haven't ruled anything out and investigators are probing a last-second noise heard on the flight data recorder.

The ban on flights won't be lifted soon and "it will take time to ensure security for a vacation in Egypt," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with his deputies in Moscow on Monday. "Let's not indulge in illusions, this won't be a short period."

Putin justified the military campaign in part by saying that 5,000 to 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet states have joined Islamic State and "can't be allowed to apply later on at home the experience they are gaining today in Syria." Until the bombing campaign began, however, officials in Moscow had played down the threat from Islamic State within Russia.

Caucasus Insurgency

Russia's entry into the Syrian civil war may have revived a terrorism threat that had been in decline as home-grown extremists flocked to the Middle Eastern battlefield, according to a senior Caucasus region official, who asked not to be identified discussing security issues.

"Now every Russian tourist, every Russian businessman, every Russian diplomat is a target," Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said. "Putin has put a giant bullseye on every single one of them."

In the North Caucasus, where an insurgency has festered for years, "about 10 groups have sworn allegiance" to Islamic State, said Grigory Shvedov, who runs Caucasian Knot, a news and analysis center in Moscow. "That's the majority of fighters in the region but not all of them."

'Combat Capabilities'

Few see a return to the outrages of the early 2000s when Islamists from Russia's Chechnya region killed hundreds in attacks that included the September 2004 seizure of children and adults at a school in Beslan eight days after two passenger planes were blown up in suspected suicide bombings.

Still, the campaign in Syria may broaden anger against the Kremlin since Putin is lining up with Shiite Muslims by supporting the Assad regime and its allies in Iran, while the majority of Muslims in Russia are Sunnis.

Russia's engagement in Syria "risks antagonizing many within the Sunni world," Robert Danin, senior fellow at the Belfer Center's Middle East Initiative at Harvard University, said.

The "combat capabilities of our armed forces" have improved and "this is strongly confirmed by the anti-terrorist operation we're conducting at the request of the Syrian leadership," Putin told defense-industry officials in Russia's Sochi on Monday.

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 #14
Russia set to work constructively at Vienna meeting; calls for regime change in Syria will not lead to success - Lavrov

BOCHAROV RUCHEI (Sochi). Nov 10 (Interfax) - Adherence to abstract ideas about the need to change the regime in Syria will have no success at the Vienna meeting; Russia is nevertheless expecting it to be constructive, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

"If, instead of concrete work on these two issues (forming a list of terrorist organizations and a list of opposition forces), someone will again put forward abstract ideas such as 'let us change the regime and everything will sort itself out on its own', then this meeting will achieve no success, of course," Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday.

The key to success at the upcoming Vienna meeting is to bring full clarity to the list of terrorist organizations and the list of opposition forces for negotiations, he said. "But the Russian side is expecting its constructive work. We have long sent the partners our proposals both on the terrorist list and on the list of the united opposition; they too promised to respond long ago, but somehow they are running a bit late, and we have not received anything yet," the minister said.

He said he hopes that the reply from the partners will be received in the coming days. "Otherwise, it will be very difficult to talk about anything at the Vienna meeting," he said.

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 #15
www.thedailybeast.com
November 9, 2015
U.S. Spies Root for an ISIS-Russia War
Six U.S. intelligence and military officials tell The Daily Beast that they hope an apparent ISIS attack on Metrojet Flight 9268 would force Putin to finally take the gloves off.
By Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef

In the days following the crash of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which mounting evidence suggests was felled by an ISIS bomb, many U.S. intelligence and security officials weren't panicking about the so-called Islamic State unleashing a new campaign of attacks on civilian airliners. Instead, they were wondering how the bombing might hurt Vladimir Putin, and potentially help the United States.

Ever since Putin started dropping bombs on militants in Syria, officials have privately been arguing that the Russian leader committed a major strategic blunder, and that his intervention in Syria would weaken both his military and his reputation and likely ignite a backlash from Islamist militants, who have attacked inside Russia in the past.

One U.S. intelligence official, speaking prior to the airliner crash, called the Russian campaign in Syria "Putin's folly."

Now, six U.S. intelligence and military officials told The Daily Beast that they hoped an ISIS attack on Russian civilians would force Putin to finally take the gloves off and attack the group, which the U.S. has been trying to dislodge from Iraq and Syria for more than a year, without success.

"Now maybe they will start attacking [ISIS]," one senior defense official smugly wondered last week. "And stop helping them," referring to ISIS gains in Aleppo that came, in part, because the group took advantage of Russian strikes on other rebels and militant outfits.

Since the plane crashed, Russia has struck two ISIS-controlled areas in Syria: Raqqa and Palmyra.

"I suppose now he'll really let ISIS have it. This should be fun," one senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast.

Some in the U.S. government are also wondering, in undeniably hopeful tones, if a terrorist attack will compel Putin to commit more military forces to Syria and thus draw him deeper into what the Obama administration calls a "quagmire." Indeed, some privately delighted in the news that Russia was made to pay for its intervention in Syria. (ISIS had vowed to attack Russia after it began its airstrike campaign on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.)

While the American officials weren't blithe about the loss of life-224 people died in the crash, most of them Russian vacationers-they said it could change the calculus in Syria in ways that ultimately benefit the United States. All the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to comment publicly on the possible bombing.

President Obama has ordered 50 additional Special Forces to Syria, to act in an advisory capacity. But Putin already has some troops on the ground serving in combat positions. And Russia began a new round of airstrikes on ISIS positions in Raqqa on Friday, as officials in Moscow concluded that a bomb may have caused the Metrojet crash.

The U.S. officials' focus on the geopolitics of the possible bombing, and less so the immediate threat to U.S. security, underscored the degree to which ISIS is still seen as a different kind of terrorist threat from al Qaeda.

For several years now, intelligence and security officials have been frantically trying to stop al Qaeda from bringing bombs onto airplanes. Now ISIS had apparently succeeded where America's longtime terrorist enemy had failed. But alarms weren't sounding across Washington-even as leaked intelligence suggested a bomb had taken down the doomed jet.

"This wasn't an American airliner. If it were, we'd be having a different conversation," one intelligence official said.

Another U.S. official echoed that sentiment.

"It is not the United States' responsibility to secure Sharm el-Sheikh airport and the facilities there," he said. "Why the muted response? Because that is the best one to have."

Several officials noted that the security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport was notoriously weak-that's one reason the U.S. government does not allow direct flight from there to any American airports.

The U.S. shares intelligence pertaining to airport security with its European and Israeli allies, one official noted. And while Egypt is the strongest Arab ally in the region and Sharm el-Sheikh airport repeatedly welcomed U.S. cabinet secretaries during the final years of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's tenure, the intelligence sharing on airport security is not as broad as with other allies.

Officials and counterterrorism experts also questioned whether ISIS could easily replicate the attack, which seems to have relied on an insider at the airport who either placed the bomb aboard or gave access to the person who did.

"If this was ISIS, I don't know if they can scale or replicate this. Sharm el-Sheikh is notorious for being in a high risk area with a low quality security operation," Christopher Harmer, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast.

One former U.S. security official pointed out that airline bombs were nothing new for Russia. On Aug. 24, 2004, two Chechen suicide bombers blew themselves up on separate airplanes departing from Moscow, killing 89 people. U.S. and Western security procedures, the former official said, were more likely to catch these kinds of attacks, though they're certainly not foolproof. In 2009, an al Qaeda operative smuggled a bomb in his underwear aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, but it failed to go off.

Another reason not to fear immediate attacks against U.S. carriers was that the Metrojet crash was not the result of failed U.S. intelligence or prevention measures, several officials argued. While U.S. intelligence did pick up communications among ISIS fighters warning about "something big" in the days before the crash, it was vague and inconclusive.

For weeks now, Obama administration officials have been hoping that Putin's intervention might produce unintended consequences and weaken him at home. Last month, when 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft said that Putin was challenging Obama's leadership, the American president replied, "If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership."

But the Obama administration is in a difficult position if it wants to use the crash for political advantage. Officials cannot celebrate the killing of innocent people-nor did they in interviews.

And yet the U.S. strategy for dealing with Putin's aggression is clearly predicated on the bet that his Syrian adventure will end badly.

"Putin's actions create great risks for him and his country," one U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast last month, prior to the airliner crash. "It is not just a Russian-backed failed regime at risk, it is now Russian prestige on the international stage. There is a risk of extremist backlash from the hundreds, maybe thousands, of foreign fighters from Russia and its near-abroad who may return to strike Russia at home."

But there may be an upside for Putin, too. If he can portray the bombing as an attack on Russia and then step up airstrikes against ISIS fighters-whom he has generally been avoiding-then Putin could turn Syria into a magnet for other jihadis, including those in Russia.

"He may look at Syria as a honey pot," said Harmer. "A jihadi who wants to get his swerve on will go to Syria, which means they won't be blowing up subways in Moscow."

"This is exactly what the U.S. did in the surge," Harmer continued. In 2007 and 2008, President George W. Bush sent tens of thousands of additional combat forces to Iraq, arguing in part that it was better to fight terrorists there than on U.S. streets. The war in Iraq drew thousands of foreign fighters, and U.S. intelligence agencies and special forces worked together to capture or kill many of them.

The surge strategy provided a temporary victory, as it turned out, but it succeeded in devastating al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS.

The Metrojet crash, if it turns out to be caused by a bomb, "will probably have a rally around the flag effect" for Putin, said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism expert and fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Beast. If that's true, the public reaction to the bombing will run counter to U.S. hopes.

The threat of more ISIS attacks can't be discounted until this one is fully understood. And not everyone was skeptical of ISIS abilities to mount a repeat.

"If this is a bomb by the affiliate of ISIS in the Sinai, ISIS has now fully eclipsed al Qaeda as the gravest terror threat in the world," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News' This Week on Sunday.

"I think there's a growing body of intelligence and evidence that this was a bomb, still not conclusive, but a growing body of evidence," Schiff noted. "ISIS may have concluded that the best way to defeat the airport is not to go through them, but to go around them with the help of somebody on the inside. If that's the case then I think there are at least a dozen airports in the region and beyond that are vulnerable to the same kind of approach, which is exactly why we have to harden those defenses."

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 #16
Interfax
November 9, 2015
Cooperation with USA, Saudis against ISIS possible - top Russian diplomat

Moscow, 9 November: Russia, Saudi Arabia and the USA can cooperate to fight ISIS and other terrorists in the Middle East if there is mutual interest in this, says special envoy of the Russian president for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Bogdanov.

"As regards the trilateral format of cooperation on the antiterror track which you mention, coordination of this kind is certainly possible, given the understanding that all parties in this triangle will be really interested in creating this mechanism and ensuring its successful operation," he said answering a question on the subject in an interview to the Russian View magazine.

In Bogdanov's words, "the ISIS phenomenon has become cross-border, international, and no country in the world is currently guaranteed against the emergence of radical elements within its borders identifying themselves with this group".

"This objectively pushes our countries to! wards a more trusting dialogue on counterterrorism matters. These contacts do take place, and they do bear fruit," he added.

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 #17
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 9, 2015
Why Russia and the West won't be teaming up against ISIS anytime soon
Russia and the West fundamentally differ in their interpretations and responses to the crash of a Russian civilian airliner in Egypt. As a result, they are losing another opportunity to unite against the global threat posed by ISIS.
By Dmitry Polikanov
Dmitry Polikanov is Vice President of The PIR-Center and Chairman of Trialogue International Club. Author of more than 100 publications on conflict management, peacekeeping, arms control, international relations and foreign policy. Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the International Sociological Association, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center Research Council.

The crash of the Russian A321 in Egypt has become another apple of discord for Russia and the West. Contradictory versions of the accident serve mainly political purposes and, contrary to the position of Moscow in 2001 when it responded to the West's call for solidarity in the global war against terror, Russia these days sees little solidarity from the transatlantic community on this matter.

Whatever the reasons for the accident are - whether it is a technical issue or the result of an explosion - the economic and political implications of the crash are much more important. The tragedy is broadly covered in the media and the interpretations of the tragedy have great impact on the decisions that are taken. It is clear that Russia and the West are captured by their own myths and legends and each party strictly follows its own "true version" regardless of the arguments of the other side.

In the West, the dominant point of view is that the terrorist attack was caused by Islamic extremists supposedly based in Egypt and, perhaps, with some British roots. There is little sorrow about the fate of more than 200 people - no manifestations of grief in Western capitals, like there was over the shooting in the offices of Charlie Hebdo or the crash of Flight MH17 in Ukraine. We can see no appeals to set up a tribunal and to bring the culprits to justice at the international level.

The Western media narrative is totally different. It is necessary to describe the A321 story as a logical outcome of Russia's completely wrong policy in Syria, leading to the types of civilian casualties that the West warned Moscow about. Besides, it is easy to "prove" that the regime in Kremlin is "lying again" to its citizens and to the rest of the world by inventing and promoting other "incorrect" versions.

Another reason behind the media coverage may be the need to protect the interests of the large aircraft-building corporations - if the accident was a result of improper repairs and problems with the tail, this could mean bans on repaired Airbus planes and a significant blow to the reputation and markets for the European manufacturer as well as for Boeing.

Finally, some conspiracy theories indicate that it could be a good chance to hit Egypt through its major asset - tourism - and to block its potential alliance with the Moscow-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS).

The Western media, opinion-makers and politicians have completed this puzzle. It fits into their picture of the world and explains their vision of Russian policy. Hence, it makes little sense for them to step away from the terrorist attack version, whatever evidence Russia and international would present in the near future.

The line of behavior is clear as well - to extend the sanctions, to supply more weapons to the Syrian opposition, to reinforce them with U.S. special units, and to condemn Russia publicly as a security threat shaking the foundations of the existing global order.

ISIS should be happy as well. It no longer matters whether they are responsible for the alleged explosion or not - they were the first to claim the responsibility for the crash. In fact, this tactic is not new - it was extremely popular with the Chechen terrorists in the 1990s and early 2000s when they grasped every opportunity to prove their combat status.

Thus, such a message sent to the general public is intimidating enough - by making it, ISIS pretends that any object in any country can be a target. It sounds strange that the alleged attack occurred in Egypt and not somewhere in Central Asia or in Russia, which would be even more frightening.

It is noteworthy, too, that it did not happen in Turkey. On the one hand, Ankara is in the U.S.-led coalition; on the other hand, it fights Kurds rather than ISIS and most probably serves as a transit route for many ISIS-plundered assets - from oil to pieces of art.

The future actions of ISIS are evident, too. Several more incidents like this (claimed responsibility should be enough) could be quite convincing for many countries to stop their anti-extremist campaigns and, perhaps, even to suspend Russia's relatively successful airstrikes, which, if they last for another month, could become a game-changer in Syria before the desert storm season starts.

It may sound strange, but the results of the investigation will hardly have any effect on Russian policy either. So far Moscow's official line is quite prudent - the Kremlin does not favor any specific version, does not reject the possibility of a terrorist attack, and emphasizes the need for fact-checking and patience. Therefore, the state formally does not deceive the Russian public.

If eventually it turns out to be a flight accident, Russia will be able to take extra measures to regulate the airlines and to provide for further centralization of the market in favor of the state-run carrier - Aeroflot. If the tragedy is a terrorist incident, the Kremlin is also in a good position. Russia will gradually take out all its tourists from Egypt and suggest that the airstrikes should continue as a preemptive move against the terrorists.

The attack version would mean that the authorities were right when they started the operation in Syria to prevent a terrorist offensive on Russian territory. Moreover, this would be a trump card for the Kremlin to intensify the bombings with the full consent and solidarity of Russian society.

Ultra-patriots and domestic business may also benefit - they were allegedly right when they persuaded Russians to spend vacations at home, so during the long New Year holidays more money will stay within the Russian borders and not abroad. Besides, the crash, if proven to be the result of an attack, would be a good pretext for criticizing the West, both for its insensitivity to Russian victims in the crash and for taking the Kremlin to task for its ineffective struggle against ISIS.

The worst thing about all this is the habit of taking catastrophes and then politicizing them in the public discourse. Unlike in 2001, when both the U.S. and Russia were driven by human feelings in their decision-making, now the developments follow the line of pragmatic reasoning and only aggravate the differences.

It's a real pity that even the global evil of ISIS cannot help Russia and the West to overcome their ambitions and form a new "anti-Hitler coalition," as it was in the previous period of a deep ideological gap between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world.

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 #18
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 9, 2015
Egyptian air crash will not lead to Russia-West coalition against ISIS
If a terror attack is indeed the real cause of the crash of the Russian aircraft in Egypt, it remains to be seen how the Kremlin will frame this version of events, given the current political situation in the country and Russia's direct involvement in the Syrian war.
By Ivan Tsvetkov
Ivan Tsvetkov is Associate Professor of American Studies, International Relations Department, St. Petersburg State University. He is an expert in the field of historical science and contemporary U.S. policy and U.S.-Russian relations. Since 2003, he has been the author and administrator of the educational website "History of the United States: Materials for the course" (http://ushistory.ru)

The causes of the tragic downing of the Russian A321 aircraft over the Sinai Peninsula have yet to be officially determined, but the world is already beginning to point the finger at terrorism. According to British newspaper The Sunday Times, the British authorities have named the mastermind of the terror attack as Abu Osama al-Masri, the leader of the terrorist organization "Province of Sinai," a branch of ISIS.

Meanwhile, the fact that both Russia and Britain have reacted by suspending all airline flights to Egypt indicates that the threat of new attacks is very serious.

The new danger could perhaps revive the atmosphere of September 2001, when post-9/11 many squabbles and conflicts were brushed aside in the face of the common threat. However, such an optimistic scenario is unlikely in the present circumstances.

The international situation in 2015 differs significantly from that in 2001. Today we live in a state of fundamental destabilization, in which the established world order has been shaken to its foundations. Through its actions in Ukraine and Syria, Russia has thrown down the gauntlet to the U.S.-centered international system in a bid to restore its lost superpower status.

Without discussing the prospects of such a strategy, we shall note that its implementation has already wrought significant changes, both in the nature of international relations and in the social and political situation in Russia. In addition, it has changed the perception of terror attacks, and the way their significance and possible consequences are assessed.

The essence of these changes can be summed up in one phrase: Everything has been turned upside down. What once led to unity today leads to disunity. What once demolished politicians' approval ratings today raises them to high heaven. And what was once used for political points is now becoming a risky asset, which everyone wants rid of as quickly as possible.

It seems that many Russian, European and U.S. politicians are beginning to recognize the new reality, although official statements and even some decisions continue to follow the old, pre-crisis paradigm of behavior.

However, it is clear, for instance, that U.S. and European trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot return to the level of 2001, no matter how much Russia suffers from terrorism. Similarly, it is naive to expect the threat of terror attacks to put an end to the anti-Western propaganda campaign in Russian state media.

On the contrary, there is likely to be a new wave of criticism targeted at Russia's "Western partners," who are not doing enough to help Russia defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS) - and preserve a unified Syria led by President Bashar Assad. The procrastination and indecision of the United States and its allies will be treated in media loyal to the Kremlin as a sign of Russophobia and maybe even the secret desire to bring Russia and ISIS into conflict to let the two enemies weaken each other in mortal combat.

There are grounds for thinking that by starting a military operation in Syria, Putin had faith in the ability of the Russian security services to protect Russian citizens from terrorism. In recent years Russian security officials have repeatedly proven their worth: They have managed to keep the domestic political opposition under control, prevent terror attacks during the Sochi Olympics, and conduct an exemplary operation with the help of "little green men" in Crimea.

The A321 crash has blemished their track record, but not ruined it completely. After all, if it is established that a bomb was smuggled on board the plane, Egypt's special services, not Russia's, will be to blame. Nevertheless, the idea of a "small victorious war" in Syria without casualties on the Russian side is now defunct.

To neutralize this negative trend, Russian media have deployed the same scenario that Kremlin spin doctors tried and tested to perfection during the Ukraine conflict. Diverse, contradictory and often bizarre versions of what happened are being churned out in the information space, and well-known commentators and politicians are trying to outdo each other in their accusatory theatrics, causing ordinary viewers to literally clutch their heads and despair at the mind-boggling complexity of the incident.

This method of information noise works better than the cover-up tactics they used during the Soviet era. Both deprive ordinary citizens of a chance to form their own rational understanding of the situation. But the advantage of the former is that the authorities need not hurry to impose their own version, since they themselves need time to determine which interpretation of events will extract maximum benefit.

Indeed, the traditional terror mechanisms for exerting influence on public opinion in modern Russia are changing before our very eyes. In days gone by, a large-scale terror attack would provoke widespread criticism of the ruling government (for letting it happen), and also increase the public's feeling of danger and insecurity, allowing the government to take certain restrictive measures, including on civil rights and freedoms. And, of course, the authorities always gave themselves carte blanche when it came to retribution.

However, in the case of A321 almost all these stereotypical reactions are irrelevant in the context of today's Russia. Putin does not need carte blanche to destroy Islamic State - he already has it without any new terror attacks. Earlier statements that there would be no ground operation in Syria were most likely sincere. That being the case, rather than giving the Kremlin new political leverage, the A321 disaster merely muddies the waters for the Russian president.

Moreover, it would make little sense for Putin to introduce any new restrictions on rights and freedoms. More than enough has already been done in this area, and an additional "crackdown" could disrupt the fragile socio-political balance, which is already threatened by the economic crisis.

As for criticism of the government for not preventing the terror attack, the scenario typical for Europe and the United States should not be expected.

Russian television viewers will be told that the Egyptians are to blame for everything, and some of the more zealous commentators will openly hint that patriotic tourists should take into account the international situation when planning their vacations.

As a result, the Russian military operation in Syria will be interpreted not as the cause of past and future terror attacks, but as "Putin's pre-emptive strike" without which things would be even worse. The Russian president's ratings will climb to new heights, and anti-Western sentiment will snowball.
Thus, the crash in the Sinai Peninsula is unlikely to help Russia and the Western countries to reconcile their positions.

In an international system devoid of equilibrium, new destabilizing factors, instead of triggering mechanisms of self-preservation, only increase the chaos.

The image of the common enemy, which is the topic of much debate, especially in the Kremlin, is nebulous, while the pent-up antagonisms between Russia and the West are stronger than the fear of ISIS.

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 #19
Vineyard of the Saker
http://thesaker.is
November 9, 2015
Russia's intervention in Syria - a reality-based evaluation
[Chart here http://thesaker.is/russias-intervention-in-syria-a-reality-based-evaluation/]

It has been over one month since the Russians launched their military and political operation in Syria and the time for hyperbole and flag waving has clearly passed.  Gone are the "most anticipated showdown in recent history" along with rumors of MiG-31s, Russian paratroopers, "thousands" of military personnel, ballistic submarines and other such nonsense.   And, contrary to what some wrote, none of what happened was "coordinated with the White House".  What I propose to do today is to evaluate what has really has happened and to look at the Russian options for the future.  But first, a short restatement of what really took place.

A very daring operation by a small military force

I will never repeat this enough: the Russian military forces is a small one.  Yes, they are flying an impressive amount of sorties every day (anywhere between 50 to 80).  But let's compare that to the Israeli air force effort during the war against Hezbollah in 2006 when the Israelis flew 400 (four hundred) sorties every day.  Add to this the massive Israeli artillery barrage and even attacks from the Israeli Navy.  Finally, let's remember that Israel was not fighting all of Hezbollah at all, but only 2nd tier Hezbollah forces south of the Litani River totaling less than 1000 fighters (Hezbollah kept all the best trained forces north of the Litani River).

So let's compare the two operations:
[chart]
--

Keep in mind that the AngloZionist propaganda always presents the Israeli military in general and the Israeli Air Force in particular as some kind of quasi-invincible super-force of uber-trained heroes who are the best of the best.  One quick look at the chart above tells you who the real super heroes are in reality.

But my main point is not to ridicule the Israelis but to point out the huge difference in size between the two forces and to ask a simple question: if a huge Israeli force could not defeat about 1'000 2nd tier Hezbollah fighters, what could the small Russian force realistically achieve?

This, really, is THE key question.  And, the answer, is quite obvious: the Russian force was never sent to Syria to defeat Daesh or even change the course of the civil war.  The real goal of the Russian interventions were very limited in purely military terms.

First and foremost, the Russian tried to break the US and Turkish momentum for an overt military intervention.  In that they undoubtedly succeeded.  The second goal was to provide limited but nonetheless crucial support for the Syrian military (including moral support).  Again, in that they also undoubtedly succeeded and on most sectors the Syrians are on the offensive, however slowly.  Third, it now appears that one of the goals of the Russian intervention was to basically provide the Syrians with a modern air-defense capability and, in that, the Russians have also succeeded, even if partially.  Why do I say partially? Because while the current air-defense capabilities of the Russian forces in Syria are adequate to defend the Syrian airspace against a limited attack, they are far from being sufficient to prevent the US from a determined large scale attack.  All the Russian did is raise the costs of intervention for the USA, but they did not make it impossible.  Interestingly, the Iranians have declared today that they have (finally!) finalized the sale of Russian S-300s to Iran.  In doing so Russia not only helps protect Iran, but the Russian military also helps a friendly country secure an airspace which might be vital for Russian efforts in the future.

The real "action" however was never military but political: Russia literally forced the US to negotiate with Iran and, eventually, Syria by making it politically impossible not to.  The mantra "Assad must go" is now gone and the AngloZionists have to at least give the appearance of being willing to negotiate.  Again, this is undoubtedly a major victory for Russia.

Now let's look at the (predictable) bad news

Of course, this is "bad news" only for those who from day 1 bought into the "game changing" narrative about the Russian military intervention.  For those who, like myself, prefer facts to slogans, none of the following came as a big surprise.  In fact, all this was predictable and predicted.

First, Daesh did rapidly adapt to the Russian air campaign.  The first thing Daesh realized is that regardless of how intensive the Russian bombing campaign was, it would have a very limited impact on the actual line of contact, on the front line.  As far as I know, the only location where the Russians did provide some limited close air support was in the Latakia province and along the main highway to the north.  This is now slowly changing as the Russian are now gradually shifting from operational targets to tactical ones, i.e. instead of hitting command or training centers or ammo dumps, they are now gradually increasing their support for the Syrian military engaged in direct combat.  Until last week or so, all the Syrians had to support them on the ground were 30 year old MiG-21s and MiG-23s.  This is now reportedly changing in some key sectors of the front.

Second, instead of just hunkering down, Daesh went on the offensive in several sectors of the front, thereby forcing the Syrians to send troops to these sectors and that, in turn, prevented the Syrians from concentrating enough firepower and manpower along their chosen axes of attack to achieve an operational breakthrough.  The lack of manpower (the 4 year long civil war took a terrible toll on the Syrians) is a crucial Syrian vulnerability which Daesh has very skillfully exploited.

[Sidebar: for those confused by the above, let me explain this: the general rule of thumb - not an absolute rule for sure - in the military is that the defending side has a big advantage over the attacker and that therefore the attacking side needs roughly a 3:1 advantage over the defender.  Again, this is a very rough approximation and in certain situations such as urban or mountain warfare this ratio might go much higher up, to 6:1 and even higher.  Now, the attacked does not need to achieve this 3:1 ratio in the full length of the front, only in the primary and, possibly, secondary sector of attack, which is typically very narrow.  Hence the importance of making deliberately detectable false attacks - to have the defender concentrate his forces in the wrong place.  By constantly going on the offensive along various parts of the front Daesh is forcing the Syrians to send in reinforcements which they would otherwise use in the offensive.  This is why the Syrians did not achieve any operational breakthrough, at least so far]

The (truly) unpredictable bad news: Flight 9268

More and more signs are pointing to the very high probability that Kogalymavia Flight 9268 was destroyed in mid-air by a bomb.  Interestingly, even Egyptian experts which everybody suspected of wanting to cover this up are now saying that they are 90% sure that a bomb caused the crash.  The Russians ain't saying much, but all their actions are consistent with the same hypothesis.  While we will have to wait for the official report to get the facts (yes, I trust this report simply because there are too many countries involved and the Russians have no reasons to lie) I personally have come to the conclusion that by now the destruction of Flight 9268 by a bomb is a reasonable working hypothesis.  I believe that this bomb was placed inside the aircraft by one or several individuals either sympathetic to Daesh and the Muslim Brotherhood or simply for money.  I am aware that there are already plenty of goofballs out there offering much more exotic explanations (from a fly-by-wire backdoor to an Israeli missile to an energy weapon) but, being a great believer in Occam's razor, I will stick to the simplest explanation until I am provided with fact-based logical reasons to think otherwise.

As I have written in the past, I don't believe that this tragedy will have a significant impact on the Russian operation in Syria or on Russian policies, if only because there is really nothing much the Russians can do.

In this case again, there is a lot of hyperbole around what the Russians might do if it is proven that Daesh or Daesh sympathizers placed this bomb on the aircraft.   Furthermore, since Daesh is really a creation of the AngloZionist Empire, then the latter would have to be held accountable, at least under the Command Responsibility doctrine.  The Washington Post has already decided to preempt any such suggestions by ridiculing any possible Russian or Egyptian statements that the CIA might be involved.  And considering the "special relationship" the USA has the Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE or Qatar, any suggestions that these countries are involved would also put Russia on a collision course with CENTCOM.  Personally, I think that it is perfectly fair and reasonable to place the responsibility for all the atrocities committed by al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh & Co on the AngloZionist Empire, including the wars in Bosnia, Chechnia and 9/11.  Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, Qatar or Israel are all just parts of the "Empire of Kindness" created by the US deep state and while they might have disputes with each other they are basically all serving the same interests.  And there is no doubt in my mind that Putin fully understands that.  The problem is that Russia is too weak a country to be able to declare that or even to acquiesce to any such statements.  Not only does the Kremlin want to avoid a direct war with the USA, but even an open-ended political and economic confrontation with the so-called "West" is something which Russia is trying hard to avoid due to her comparative weakness.  I therefore don't believe that Russia will take any direct actions against the countries sponsoring and controlling Daesh.

There is another interesting hypothesis made by some observers.  According to them, the real purpose of the bombing of Flight 9268 would  be to draw Russian into a ground operation against Daesh.  Here again, if that was the goal behind this atrocity, I don't believe that it will work.  Just like Russia did everything in her power to avoid openly intervening militarily in the Donbass, Russia will do everything possible to avoid any ground operation in Syria (for a detailed discussion of the Russian reasons please see here and here).  If 60% of Russians are opposed to an direct intervention in the Donbass, then there will be even much more opposition to any Russian ground operation in Syria.  Finally, as I have written many times, the Russian military (as a whole) was never designed to operate at beyond 1000km from the Russian borders and Russia therefore simply lack that kind of power-projection capability.

Frustrating as this might be, the right thing do to for Russia is to do nothing or, more accurately, to do nothing different from what she has been doing so far.

Russia does have the capabilities to increase her military involvement in Syria and I have already mentioned these options in the past.  They include using long-range aviation from Russia or, better, using an Iranian air base.  Alternatively, Russia could decide to build a "Khmeimim 2" airbase near Latakia and commit more aircraft.  Maybe I am wrong here, but I don't see that as a solution.  In my opinion, there is a limited timeframe for the Syrian military to achieve an operational victory against Daesh, after that I see no other option left but an Iranian ground intervention (which, by itself, would be a very complex matter and which would trigger a massive anti-Iranian hysteria in the US-controlled part of our planet).

So all I am left with is the hope that the Russian General Staff's modeling capabilities are as good as they are supposed to be and that the very limited but highly effective Russian intervention will be sufficient to go from having a quantitative effect to a qualitative one.  I hope that the sum of small tactical victories will eventually bring Daesh to a breaking point significant enough to allow for a Syrian operational success.  I will gladly admit that at the end of the day I trust Putin and the superb team of generals he has placed at the head of the Russian armed forces.

In conclusion I want to say that I am very proud of what the Russians are doing in Syria, both militarily and politically.  They have shown an immense amount of courage and skills, at all levels of the game.  But I also think that it is crucial for all of us, who are sympathetic to Russia and the anti-imperial Resistance worldwide, to stop presenting this intervention like some kind of "game changing" "done deal" in which the Russian Bear will crush all the terrorists and restore peace to Syria.  Alas, we are still very very far from that.  What the Russian have provided is an absolutely vital and very daring last minute temporary solution to a very dangerous situation about to get much worse.  They did that knowing full well that they were at a huge political, geographic and military disadvantage and that their move was extremely risky.  I would not say that Putin is risk averse, but he is certainly very cautious and for him to have authorized such an operation must have been very difficult.  My guess is that what made him decide in favor of this intervention is the (correct) belief that the Russian forces in Syria are not only fighting for Syria, but that they are first and foremost fighting for Russia.  Every Wahabi/Takfiri organization on the planet has already declared a jihad against Russia and Russia has been fighting these crazies ever since the USA and the Saudis literally federated them in Afghanistan (the "brilliant" plan of Brzezinski and, later, Reagan).  The Russian people know and understand that, and Putin has repeated that often enough to have this message fully sink in.  This is why the Russians will hold the course even if a major setback occurs and this is also why they will not have an events like the bombing of Flight 9268 by US-run puppet distract them from their real objective: help the Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians defeat Daesh.

The Saker

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 #20
New York Review of Books
November 9, 2015
Egypt: Why Putin Needs the FBI
By Amy Knight
Amy Knight is a former Woodrow Wilson fellow. Her books include Who Killed Kirov: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery, Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors, and How the Cold War Began: The Igor Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies.

The investigation of the crash of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on October 31 took an unexpected turn on Friday, when unnamed senior US officials told CBS News that Russian authorities had requested the help of the FBI. Relations between the US and Russia are at their lowest point since Putin came to power in 2000, and there is already overwhelming evidence that Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, carrying 224 passengers and crew, was brought down by a bomb. Moreover, it could be particularly embarrassing if US intelligence was used to establish definitively that the plane was targeted by ISIS. If this is the case, it seems likely that the extremist group was responding to Russia's recent intervention in Syria, an intervention that has already been resolutely condemned by the West.

Why, then, would the Kremlin want the FBI involved in a case that could seriously compromise public support for its Syria campaign? The Kremlin apparently is trying to make the best of a very bad situation. The Sinai crash comes just weeks after Russia began its controversial air strikes on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus-a decision that Russian President Vladimir Putin has described as an essential effort to contain the threat of terrorism. In his speech to the UN in late September, Putin said

"there are fighters [in Syria] from many different countries, including European ones, gaining combat experience with Islamic State. Unfortunately, Russia is no exception. Now that those thugs have tasted blood, we can't allow them to return home and continue with their criminal activities. Nobody wants that, right?"

According to polling data gathered before the crash, Russians have broadly supported the Syria intervention, although many are also concerned that Russia will become involved in a protracted military conflict. These fears could be greatly heightened if the Russian public comes to believe that the air campaign in Syria has actually increased the threat of terrorism and turned Russians into new targets of extremist groups in the Middle East. As I wrote recently, Russia has a population of 15 million Muslims, most of whom are Sunnis, and Russia has been attacking Sunni strongholds in Syria.

The Russian government probably does not need the FBI's help in its investigation of the plane crash. But Putin has to convince his people, as in the past, that he cannot be held responsible for acts of terrorism against Russia: it is a global problem beyond his control-rather than a direct consequence of his policies. In reaching out to the FBI, the Russian government may be resorting to its old argument, dating back to the days after September 11, that Russia and other global powers are all in it together, fighting the same enemy. And there is also the possibility that Russian cooperation with Western powers on the Sinai crash could dampen international criticism of Russia's intervention in Syria.

Already last Friday, Putin's government acknowledged the strong evidence that ISIS targeted Flight 9268 in retaliation for Russian involvement in Syria. (Although, Sputnik News, a Kremlin mouthpiece, has also suggested that British intelligence might have bombed the plane.) This follows the apparent conclusion of several Western governments, including the United Kingdom, which last week halted flights to Sharm el-Sheikh. A day later, following a joint meeting of the Russian Security Council and Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee, Putin suspended Russian flights to Egypt. But how to portray the disaster at home without undermining his popular support is a delicate task for Putin.

Writing on the New Yorker website, veteran Kremlin watcher Masha Lipman observed that Putin will, as on previous occasions, use the air crash for "patriotic mobilization":

"This patriotic message will almost certainly ensure that the plane crash does not affect Putin's overwhelming popularity or prompt people to question his military campaign in Syria."

Lipman is right in that, thanks to the sophisticated propaganda machine of government-controlled television (still the main source of news for most Russians), feelings of patriotism and national pride-pitted against what most Russians perceive as a terrible threat from the West-have led Russians to accept the economic hardships that have come with the Kremlin's military forays in Ukraine and now Syria.

But Russians do not take well to large losses of life among their innocent countrymen, especially when their government has often justified authoritarian measures as necessary to keep the population safe. There is also a history of Russian counter-terrorism efforts at home actually contributing to loss of life, such as with the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, which resulted in the deaths of around 130 hostages and the 2004 school siege at Beslan, where hundreds were killed, including many children. As journalist Mikhail Kostrovsky observed in the newspaper Moskovskii komsomolets:

"When the price of 'defending the country's national interests' is abstract, albeit high, then society is ready to pay for it without hesitation. But when this price suddenly becomes a specific disaster and takes the form of sudden mass deaths of happy people full of vital energy, then the situation changes."

Recall the August 2000 Kursk tragedy, which led to an unprecedented wave of nationwide outrage against Putin. The nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine sank during naval exercises in the Barents Sea and all 118 seamen aboard died. Putin remained on vacation in the Black Sea, returning to Moscow only five days after the submarine sank. Even worse, the Russian government refused offers of help for the crew from the US, Britain, and Norway and initially tried to blame the disaster on a collision with a foreign vessel, rather than admitting the actual cause-an explosion of the fuel from a torpedo that the ship test-fired. Last summer, I visited Murmansk, the home of the Russian Northern naval fleet, where many of the submarine crew who perished came from. I was struck by the anger that Russian citizens there still have toward Putin, fifteen years after the Kursk affair, which still lingers on in Russia's collective memory.

The challenge for the Kremlin posed by the Sinai crash goes well beyond the grief caused by the disaster itself: there are more than 70,000 Russian tourists in Egypt right now, many of them at resorts like Sharm el Sheikh and Hurghada. With all regular Russian flights cancelled, Russia has begun airlifting its citizens back home. But many other Russians are affected too.

Egypt is one of the few places Russians can go on vacation at prices they can afford. (Western Europe is now beyond the budgets of most Russians because of the decline in the Russian ruble as a result of the drop in oil prices.) The Russian media is reporting that 200,000 Russians have already paid for holiday vacations to Egypt up through December. If tour operators have to reimburse them, they will go broke. And many Russians will be disappointed to have their holidays ruined.

There is a deep irony in Russia's sudden appeal to the FBI for help in the investigation of the Sinai air crash, in view of its own dubious record in previous international investigations. As we now know, in the years leading up to the 2013 Boston Marathon case, Russia's interactions with the FBI concerning one of the bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, raised many questions. The Russian FSB, after initially doing a "fishing expedition" to find out how much US intelligence knew about Tsarnaev, never informed the US about his later six-month sojourn in the Russian North Caucasus, home of many radical Islamists.

And the Russian government has done everything in its power to refute the evidence of the Dutch-led investigation of the downing of the Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine in July 2014. They tried initially, with faked satellite photographs displayed publicly by the Russian Ministry of Defense, to claim that the plane had been shot down by a Ukrainian government fighter jet. When the Dutch investigation showed beyond doubt that a Russian BUK missile had hit the plane, the Kremlin got the manufacturers, Almaz-Antey, to claim that the date the missile in question was produced meant it was in the Ukrainian government arsenal. (The chairman of the board of Almaz-Antey is Viktor Ivanov, one of Putin's closest allies from the St. Petersburg KGB.)

The Russian explanation for the Malaysian disaster has been completely discredited by Western researchers, including the independent research team, Bellingcat, which produced a meticulous account, through satellite photography, of the transit of the BUK missile from Russia into rebel-held Eastern Ukraine, where it was fired on July 17 and brought down the Malaysian airline. The research team also documented the trajectory of the missile, showing it had to have been fired from areas controlled by the rebels.

Constituents of democracies tend to accept that their governments are not perfect and that huge mistakes, which lead to significant loss of lives, happen: they may hold their leaders accountable, and eventually vote them out of office, but they do not question the legitimacy of their government. Russia has become a dictatorship, whose citizens have been told that their leader is faultless and whose strong-arm policies are keeping the country safe. When there is a disaster such as the apparent bombing of Flight 9298, government accountability becomes a huge problem. (The same could be said of President Sisi's Egypt, a state that is extremely authoritarian. Its government is loath to admit that its airports are not secure, not only because it will lose valuable tourist dollars, but because it creates a crisis for a regime whose popularity is based on national security.) This is why Putin waited almost two days before making a public statement on the recent crash, causing much speculation in the Russian press.

Putin has justified Russia's military involvement in Syria by saying that it is better to fight terrorists abroad rather than in Russia. And there is every reason to believe he will use the Sinai crash to argue for an even more robust Russian involvement in the Middle East. But the crash of Flight 9298-and the decision by the Russian government that Egypt is no longer a safe country for Russian tourists-may lead Russians to question that logic.

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 #21
Asia Times
November 9, 2015
The Pentagon's Empire of Whining
BY PEPE ESCOBAR

Donald "known unknowns" Rumsfeld was a nasty piece of work ("iron-ass," as Daddy Bush would have it). Fellow neocon and current Pentagon supremo Ash Carter - whose job will last shortly over a year - now runs the risk of forging a reputation as a discount diva on the lam.

After eight days traveling in Asia, Ash hit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California sounding like a stray ballistic whining missile. And he hit where it hurts: the Russia-China strategic partnership. How dare they? Don't you step on my blue Pentagon shoes.

So Russia is guilty of undertaking "challenging activities" at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace. Not to mention "nuclear saber-rattling."

Ash once again enumerated all those "pillars of the international order" that Russia-China are allegedly violating; peaceful resolution of disputes, freedom from coercion, respect for state sovereignty and freedom of navigation. Considering Exceptionalistan's recent record in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and myriad assorted latitudes, one can always count on the Pentagon to bolster the annals of hyper-unrealism.

Dr. Strangelove, sorry, NATO supremo Gen. Philip Breedlove, had already blurted out on the record he has no clue what Putin is up to in Syria. Ash, his boss, doubled down; Putin "hasn't thought through very thoroughly" his objectives in Syria, and his approach is "way off track". Certainly because one month of Russian air strikes did way more to debilitate ISIS/ISIL/Daesh than over a year of the "track" followed by the Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists (CDO) led by the US and featuring Salafi-jihadi/"moderate rebel" enablers such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Ash deviated from whining just to concede it's "possible" that "Russia may play a constructive role in resolving the civil war" in Syria. He wouldn't elaborate on "constructive."

Then back to a non-denial denial; "We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot, war with Russia ... We do not seek to make Russia an enemy." And yet Cold War 2.0 is actually in effect since Maidan in Kiev; and the hysterical demonization campaign of both Putin and Russia shows no signs of abating.

Earlier last week Ash was aboard a US aircraft carrier in the South China Sea demonstrating commitment to "freedom of navigation" - as in "our naval way, or the highway." Beijing not so much reacted but floated, with Chinese subtlety, that any fooling around will come with a price; what about feeling the love of the DF-21D carrier killer ballistic missile with a 2,500 km range?

On China, Ash once again displayed Pentagon half-baked Orientalist condescending; it all depends on "how China behaves" when demonstrating commitments to peace and security.

Expect Ash's whining missiles to proliferate unchecked. They're embedded in the new US military doctrine, which ranks Russia and China - with Iran a not so distant third - as major threats. The British loved it so much they went copycat; "rising aggression from Russia" is among top potential threats included in the UK's next national security strategy to be unveiled by David Cameron on Nov. 23.

Deterrence or bust

It all gets curioser and curioser - or at least muddier - when we remember that roughly a month ago Ash was warning, at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, that Russia would "soon" start paying the price for its "escalation" in Syria.

The price might have been paid via the Metrojet crash. Nothing of course links Ash and the Pentagon with it; wishful thinking, at best. Still, the possible bombing by the Sinai branch of Daesh was cracked by GCHQ in London profiting from its vast "we spy on everyone" NSA-style network. James Bond in Spectre - good old ground intel - would never had had that kind of knowledge.

The same meeting in Brussels also decided to boost NATO's so-called "spearhead force" to "deliver deterrence," in the words of NATO secretary-general, Norwegian figurehead Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg even bragged that the sole existence of this force would scare the hell out of Russia - as well as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) - about alleged "incursions into Turkish territory." Still, no NATO force was deployed to Turkey. After all, NATO was too busy invading Spain.

We're excused for allowing a Bubba Clinton "I feel ya" moment as we consider Ash's whining. There are so many "we didn't have a clue" Pentagon instances he cannot possibly acknowledge on the record.

For instance, the performance of Russian Kaliber missiles compared to Tomahawks. Launched by the Caspian Sea fleet, they flew over 1,500 km before hitting their ISIS/ISIL/Daesh targets, which implies their maximum range, according to Russian military sources, is about 1,800 km - much larger than the Tomahawks. On top of it, each target was hit with only two missiles, and in very few cases, three. This suggests ultra-high precision and reliability, considering that the US usually targets command centers or depots with as many as four missiles.

Russia has also deployed ultra-sophisticated electronic warfare systems in Syria, such as the Krasukha-4, easily capable of jamming AWACS and satellites. Ash cannot possibly admit on the record Russia de facto controls the skies over Syria. Sultan Erdogan at least was clever enough to understand that his no-fly zone across the Turkish-Syrian border will never fly.

What's left is, well, a Vietnam post-modern remix; send more troops. Ash is enthusiastic, as long as the US can find more "capable" local forces to partner with.

So let's take a quick look at the "capable" local scenario.

ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is active in central Syria alongside Jaysh al-Fatah, an Islamist coalition with quite a few members affiliated with Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria. In the Hama frontlines, the fake "Caliphate" and al-Nusra are de facto allies. Ash cannot possibly find "capable" allies here.

But there's an enormous back door. Al-Nusra got into camouflage, changing their gear for Ahrar al-Sham's, which the Beltway hails as "moderate rebels." Ahrar al-Sham is in fact a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, fully supported by Turkey.

So no wonder everyone wants to join the "moderate rebel" bandwagon, hoping to be showered with made in USA anti-tank TOW missiles. That includes outfits such as the brigade Tawhid Al Asimah in Damascus, the brigade Wa Atasimu also in Damascus, the Abu Amarah batallion in Aleppo, the brigade martyr Ahmad Al-Omar, and the Binaa Umma movement active in Deraa and Quneitra. Working with this lot may be Ash's opening. But that implies sending fresh American troops all over Syria.

And now, the 50 immortals

But first the Special Forces deployed to northern Syria - Obama's 50 immortals - need to fulfill their mission. Say one name: Kuweyres. Everything depends on what happens in Kuweyres, a military airbase.

Here are the facts on the ground. The SAA, at least for now, has secured its all-important supply route to Aleppo. What they're aiming for next - supported by Russian air strikes - is much more complicated; cut off for good the resupply routes from Turkey for the gaggle of Salafi-jihadis/"moderate rebels."

Arguably the only local "capable" force for this mission is the Syrian Kurd YPG. But to solidify their position, the YPG  need to build a strong link between Kobani and the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

And guess why they can't do it; because the Pentagon is telling them to strike south instead, towards Raqqa, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh "capital." And Turkish intelligence - which controls the resupply corridor - warned the YPG they will be bombed to oblivion if they try to expand their northern Syria base.

So the YPG needs protection to keep moving. It won't come from Ash's people. And the Russians are far away, with no boots on the northern Syrian ground.

The SAA though is only a few kilometers away from Kuweyres. It will be a nasty battle. But if they capture the military air base, they get the perfect hub for Russian and Syrian jets to protect the YPG as they close the gap between Kobani and Afrin.

The Pentagon well knows the Russians have made a deal with the Syrian Kurds; the SAA, with as much Russian support as possible, takes Kuweyres; the YPG advances towards Afrin; and the Russians keep the Turks in check. Without this chain of crucial events, it will be virtually impossible for the "4+1" - Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah - to cut off the Turkish-enabled resupply corridor for the myriad Salafi-jihadi/"moderate rebel" gaggle.

And here's where Obama's 50 immortals come in. They have been sent to the YPG command to "assist" them in not fulfilling the deal. What else is new? It makes more sense for Ash's boys to work side-by-side with Ayman al-Zawahiri's goons. The Pentagon and al-CIAaeda; what could possibly go wrong? Gotta keep the global war on terror (GWOT) as much an endless war (remember Rumsfeld?) as possible. Now that's a good reason to stop whining.

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 #22
The Toast
http://the-toast.net
June 16, 2014
Every Russian Novel Ever
By Mallory Ortberg

1. A Philosophical Murder

2. A Washerwoman Is Insulted

3. The Student's Emotional Isolation Is Complete

4. The Estate Is Sold Off

5. Uuuuuughhhh

6. An Argument That Is Mostly In French

7. It's Very Cold Out And Love Does Not Exist Also

8. The Nihilist Buffs His Fingernails While Society Crumbles

9. There Is No God

10. 400 Pages Of A Single Aristocratic Family's Slow, Alcoholic Decline

11. Is This A Dinner Party Or Is This Hell?

12. The Wedding Is Interrupted

13. Friendship Among The Political Prisoners

14. A Lackluster Duel

15. The Countess Attempts Suicide

16. Back From Siberia, Unexpectedly

17. A Fit of Impetuousness

18. Someone Middle-Class Does Something Awful

19. A Prostitute Listens To A Ninety-Page Philosophical Manifesto

20. I Advise You To Display More Emotional Control In The Future

21. The Manservant Dies Alone

22. Is This A Murder Mystery Or An Exploration Of The Nature Of Religious Faith? Turns Out, A Little Bit Of Both

23. The Mayor Tells A Self-Serving Lie

24. The Countess Finds Religion

25. New Political Waves of Liberalism, Radicalism, and Nihilism Wash Over Russia

26. The Time When We Might Have Found Happiness Together Has Passed

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 #23
The Duke Chronicle
www.dukechronicle.com
October 29, 2015
Q&A: Former U.S. ambassador Matlock reflects on Cold War
By Adam Beyer

Jack Matlock, Trinity '50, is the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and is currently teaching classes as a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke. Matlock was the ambassador from 1987 to 1991 and spent more than 35 years in the U.S. Foreign Service with postings in Austria, Germany, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Since retiring, he has held appointments at Columbia University, Princeton University, Hamilton College, Mt. Holyoke College and the Institute for Advanced Study. The Chronicle's Adam Beyer recently sat down with Matlock to discuss how Duke has changed since he was a student and his time as an ambassador.

The Chronicle: You were involved in translating messages between President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile crisis-what was that like?

Jack Matlock: I was at the embassy in Moscow, and at that time we didn't a have a means of transmitting directly messages between our governments, so Khrushchev's urgent messages to Kennedy were delivered at night, usually around 10:30 or 11 and we had to translate them in order to transmit them to Washington. I think we did it pretty fast and I know one 14-page letter we had completely translated and sent it out in about two hours. Nevertheless, Kennedy didn't like that delay and that's why they arranged after the Cuban Missile crisis for a hotline. That hotline still exists between the U.S. and Russia.

TC: What would you tell whoever is elected president in 2016 to do about our relationship with Russia and other former Soviet countries?

JM: Well, as far as Russia is concerned, I think that in dealing with the most important problems we have, problems like global warming, the threat of terrorism, the impact of failed states, international drug trade, international crime in general, organized crime, these I think are the crucial problems and in dealing with them, Russia is either going to be part of the solution or part of the problem.

It seems to me our efforts should be to try and give them every incentive to be part of the solution. You don't do that if you seem to be competing with them over control over neighboring countries, countries for centuries that were part of their countries.

We know how Americans react if-Germany, say during the first World War, tried to make an alliance with Mexico. We know what happened when Castro seemed to be developing ties with the Soviet Union, so why we allow some of our people to talk about making a military alliance with say Georgia or a Ukraine, I think is crazy because one thing, no Russian government is going to allow that, and second, in doing it, you actually stimulate them to be more aggressive than they would have been otherwise, so it is counterproductive. So I feel that much of our policy since the late 90s has been misdirected, in fact, I wrote a book about it called "Superpower Illusions."

TC: Much of the millennial generation has no memory of the Cold War, how do you think this changes the way we understand relations with Russia?

JM: I think the tragedy that has happened is that the tensions that have grown up because of the things that I have talked about before with Russia have created the atmosphere of your generation in Russia that the U.S. is an enemy and they're afraid of us. When they see us bombing Serbia over human rights things and invading Iraq and so on, they say, "Well, if they don't like what we do here, maybe they'll start bombing us."

I think the triumphalism, you know, people are saying, "Well, we won the Cold War. We are the only super power. You guys lost." That has been the thing, which is wrong, but this conveys to the Russians that we consider them a defeated power and we are not going to consider their interests.

TC: What was it that led you to an interest in Russia?

JM: I developed an interest in Russia and the Soviet Union starting actually when I was in high school during World War II and then it was added to when I began reading Russian literature in translation and was very attracted by it. Duke did not offer Russian language until 1948 when I was a junior, and I was in the first class here. I was number one attracted by Russian literature and culture and number two, politically it was extremely important at that time to prepare for diplomacy with the Soviet Union.

Actually when I was at Duke, my wife and I were both in an organization-United World Federalists, thinking that we needed a world government to make sure there's no more horrendous conflict like World War II or use of nuclear weapons, but as I learned more I decided that was not going to happen and probably was not a good idea.

By the time I graduated from Duke with a major in history, I decided I wanted to specialize in Soviet and Russian affairs, and so I went to graduate school at Columbia to the Russian Institute but with a major in literature and the idea being that I was going to try and go into the Foreign Service or else do common teaching. I've been lucky that I've been able to do both.

TC: How has Duke changed since you were here as a student?

JM: Probably the biggest difference is when I was here as an undergraduate, the East campus was the Women's College, Trinity College was all men and although we had a lot of classes together, the dorms were all quite separate with the men on west and the women on east, except for the nursing school, where they had their own dorm near the hospital. So things are organized quite differently now in many ways.

Also, when I was a student, it was back in the times when there was racial segregation in North Carolina and in fact, we had a [North Carolina] student legislature, I don't know whether there still is one, and my wife and I-who were both undergraduates-the first one we went to, the first move we had was to start desegregating the school system, but there was a good amount of opposition among our elders in Raleigh at the time. So a lot of things have changed, the University itself is much larger than it was.

TC: You're teaching a class this semester. How is that going?

JM: As far as I'm concerned, it's going well but ask some of the students. The course is on leadership in international affairs. We are studying case studies of decisions that leaders made that were not maybe obvious to all at the time they were made.

My feeling is that having worked in this is that the individual leader makes a great difference-that you shouldn't think of international relations as a sort of mechanic, mechanistic process of billiard balls colliding or something like that which some theories tend to do, but rather the interaction of human beings. It sort of adds a dimension to what is often taught in theoretical international relations. Next semester, I'm going to do a course on U.S.-Russian relations since the break-up of the Soviet Union. These courses are both in the Russian department and Public Policy.

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 #24
DukeTODAY
http://today.duke.edu
November 4, 2015
The Geneva Cold War Summit: 30 Years Later
Rubenstein Fellow Jack Matlock recalls the Reagan/Gorbachev summit of 1985
By Ezgi Ustundag

Thirty years ago, on November 19, 1985, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev convened in Geneva for talks that helped usher in the end of the Cold War. While the summit did not end with a formal arms reduction agreement, the two sides made a pivotal joint statement on the "impossibility of war" between the two countries, signaling the end of the nuclear arms race.

Duke alumnus Jack Matlock ('50), the final United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, worked closely with President Reagan in the months leading up to the Geneva summit during his tenure on the National Security Council (NSC). A career diplomat and academic and the author of three books on the final years of the Soviet Union, Matlock was present at several of President Reagan's key meetings with Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders, including the Reykjavik summit in 1986. Matlock, a 2015-2016 David Rubenstein Fellow based in Duke's Slavic and Eurasian Studies department, shared his memories of the pivotal summit on the eve of its 30th anniversary in an interview with Duke Today.

Q: Prior to President Reagan's meeting with Gorbachev in November 1985, you were tasked with giving the president a primer on Soviet history, culture and government. What were some of your goals in putting the president through that crash course, and how might the summit have been different without it?

I've never had a better student than Ronald Reagan. He knew that he didn't know a lot of things. He was not an intellectual, and he was not arrogant. When the meeting with Gorbachev was coming up, McFarlane told me that the president didn't know much of anything about the Soviet Union and that we had to get him up to speed before the meeting. So then I went to organizing "Soviet 101," and we sort of called it that jokingly. It was about 24 papers that ran from six to 12 pages single-spaced. I wrote two or three of them about the psychology of the Soviet people. For the rest, I called the deputy director of the CIA and the head of intelligence for the State Department, whom I knew at the time, and asked them to assign their best analysts to each of the topics I had drawn out.

We got some excellent papers, about half from the CIA and State Department. Reagan really liked this curriculum. They also gave me almost unlimited briefing time with the president. Normally, you'd be happy to get 15 minutes with him, but we could get two hours with him each week.

Reagan also recognized that he needed these materials and he was not one to say, "how dare you try to teach me, I'm the president!" He was a man who didn't know everything and was comfortable with it. When you corrected him, he wouldn't take it as an insult-he would thank you!

Q: How was President Reagan as a negotiator prior to the summit? Was the art of negotiation something that your curriculum also covered?

I think the president was an experienced and almost natural negotiator. A lot of people forget that, when I say he was an actor, he was also a chairman of the Screen Actors' Guild and he negotiated contracts with the studios. One of the points that he would make to us at times, particularly when we had people on the staff who insisted to we get 100 percent [of our demands of the Soviet Union], he would say "look, when we went to the studios, we'd be happy to get just 80 percent." He would've never acted like the Tea Party types or any of the right-wing Republicans today.

Q: There must have been some anxiety before the summit. What was President Reagan most nervous about?

I don't think Reagan was nervous at all. I think Nixon was very nervous when he was going into the meeting with Brezhnev before their 1972 summit. I was there for that, and I actually watched him sweat beforehand. I was almost ashamed, as an American, to have a president who was nervous about meeting with someone like Brezhnev. But no, Reagan was not nervous and, on the contrary, quite relaxed and confident. There were some on his staff, like the neo-cons and [Secretary of Defense Caspar] Weinberger, who were convinced that he didn't know enough and that he would be taken advantage of.

Reagan just knew that he had to convince Gorbachev that we did not want an arms race, but if Gorbachev did want one, he would lose. That's why Reagan was building up our arms, to prove to Gorbachev that it was in their interest to build down. There was no evidence that they would build down in a safe way without first being convinced by Reagan.

Q: How would the summit's outcomes differed-if at all-had it been held in Moscow or Washington, rather than in a neutral third city?

Reagan was actually quite amenable to going to Moscow. But many on his staff and certainly Weinberger were saying that it would be misrepresented, that people would think he was going there hat in hand, especially since the last meeting [between US and Soviet leadership in 1974] was in Vladivostok and it was "their turn" to come over here.

At the time, I pointed out the advantages of going to Moscow. I didn't think it would be like going over there hat in hand but a chance to address the Soviet people because they would have had to give Reagan a television address, and knock off the propaganda about him being a warmonger. They had shut down a lot of their anti-American propaganda with Nixon's visit, and I thought this could make a tremendous impression on the Soviet people. But I think Shultz felt that maybe he'd be running a political risk and that the right wing would criticize this. I think there was just such sensitivity on both sides as to how it would look politically or if the public thought one side was caving to the other.

I can't honestly say that things would be radically different if we would have gone to Moscow or they had come to Washington. Certainly, the right wing would have accused Reagan of kowtowing to the Soviets by going first, so maybe that wouldn't have been great politically. And I'm sure some people in the Soviet Union would have accused Gorbachev of going to Washington prematurely. So maybe it was in the political interest of both to do it on neutral territory.

Q: It seems there was a lot of attention paid to public perceptions of the summit. What was the American side hoping to achieve in terms of public reactions to the summit?

Our American publicity team was made up of the same people who run campaigns. They are very sensitive to what the media sees-where you position the president, where you position the flag. And Reagan himself was sensitive to a lot of these things. During the meeting with Gorbachev, it wasn't planned specifically that Reagan would go down the steps without an overcoat. It was a pretty cold day, overcast, and Gorbachev got out of his limo in a top hat and overcoat. Reagan bounded down the stairs in his suit and shook their hands. As some of the Russian people said, the image was very clear that, even though Reagan was much older, Gorbachev came across as the spiritually older person. Reagan seemed bolder, and Gorbachev more cautious. Part of that was spontaneous, but the American team set this up so that the press would see our president in the most favorable light.

Q: And Reagan and Gorbachev actually had private dinners together with their wives after each day of negotiations, correct? What impact did those private meetings have on their political relationship?

Including those dinners [in the summit program] was built on the idea that these two leaders must not only respect each other but also like each other to accomplish [peace between the United States and Soviet Union]. It was also a signal to the bureaucracy that it was okay to be friends with the other side. We wanted to create an environment where representatives from the two sides could speak privately if we thought we had a problem rather than going to the press and having a big brouhaha. It helped reduce tensions, ultimately. Being friendly personally does not achieve everything, but it becomes a lot harder to achieve your common goals if you're not being friendly.

Q: You wrote that although Reagan couldn't get Gorbachev to discuss a number of key issues, the President still considered the summit a success. Why is that?

I think Reagan found that, while talking to Gorbachev, this was a man he could do business with. I think Reagan understood from the beginning that Gorbachev is not free to simply deal without the approval of the Politburo. He recognized that Gorbachev was a politician and had his own problems at home, and that Reagan could not emerge as the victor and humiliate Gorbachev and expect a good outcome. And later on, Reagan himself never said that we won the Cold War.

Q: Now that we're just a few weeks away from celebrating the Geneva summit's 30th anniversary, what would you consider its greatest achievements?

There are certainly lessons to be learned from it in terms of reestablishing contact after a period of tense relations between two world powers. Before this meeting was scheduled, as we later found out, the Soviet leaders really thought that we might be planning a nuclear attack on them, which was a very dangerous situation. The Geneva summit was important because we put into text that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought and that therefore no war could ever happen between us. To Gorbachev, this was a very powerful argument for arms reduction.

I still think the two biggest things that came out of it were the joint statement on the impossibility of war and the [student] exchange agreement. Reagan and the others may have considered the exchange agreement to be a window dressing, but I considered it very important. It did a lot to penetrate the Iron Curtain and eventually bring it down. And a third achievement was Reagan and Gorbachev deciding they could work together as equals. Both of them came out of the summit with a personal respect that would blossom into a real friendship. And to this day, if people criticize Reagan in Gorbachev's presence, he corrects them.

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 #25
www.mcclatchydc.com
November 9, 2015
Ukraine's military has rebounded despite budget and battle woes
BY MATTHEW SCHOFIELD

Ukraine military now at 240,000 troops - with no international weapons aid

Tank production up 2,300 percent in 2 years; spending to reach 5 percent of GDP

Military now among largest in Europe
 
When five Ukrainian soldiers were wounded recently by pro-Russian separatist gun and grenade fire in southeastern Ukraine, the news created little in the way of official outcry.

Part of the reason for that, despite the fact that Ukrainian officials insist that a cease-fire is holding in the embattled area known as Donbas, is that small-scale attacks are still commonplace in the region. A soldier was killed a week earlier. A soldier was wounded the day before that.

But the bigger reason for the silence on an attack that six months or a year ago would have triggered outrage is that fears about the staying power of Ukraine's military have faded. In fact, experts on the Ukrainian military believe it's now far stronger than thought possible 18 months ago.

Without international weapons assistance, burdened by a domestic economy that's been teetering on the edge of collapse for the past year and despite being locked in the middle of a civil war where the opposition has active support from powerful Russia, Ukraine has managed to build one of Europe's largest standing armies in the last year and half.

The Ukrainians have nearly doubled their military spending and look likely to significantly increase spending next year. Corruption remains a significant problem, with some estimates that even now as much as 20 to 25 percent of the budget is wasted. Still, that is a significant decrease. In past years, there were estimates that as much as 90 percent of the budget was stolen.

Experts around Europe caution that while what's been accomplished has been impressive, it's unlikely to be sustainable. Ukraine's new military budget accounts for 5 percent of the gross domestic product, more than double the percentage NATO recommends and four to five times what many of Ukraine's neighbors spend.

"There is no doubting the fact that we've come a long ways in a short time," said Serhiy Zhurets, the director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies in Kiev, Ukraine's capital. "Maintaining this level of commitment - or going any further - means making a choice between education and defense, the economy and defense. But at this time, under a clear and persistent threat, this was a decision we had to make."

To understand how far they've come, it's important to remember where Ukraine was when this began. Not long after Russia's "little green men" (the Ukrainian euphemism for Russian troops from their Black Sea Fleet) took control of Crimea in March 2014, Ukrainian officials looked at the country's defensive capabilities and realized they had no military options for opposing what they deemed an illegal move.

So, despite pledging never to give up on Crimea being a part of Ukraine, they did not respond. Instead, the newly formed government realized it had to scramble quickly to cobble together some sort of armed services or risk the entire nation quickly falling to Russian aggression.

In the years leading up to the current crisis, when military officials openly augmented their incomes by selling off pieces of Ukraine's old Soviet weapons stockpile, there was a pretty standard rule: The military would come up with an estimate of what it would take to modernize the Ukrainian military, and the Rada, Ukraine's Parliament, would approve a budget of about a tenth of that.

So the budget requested 2013 for 2014 was about $11.3 billion (at today's exchange rate about $5.7 billion). The budget awarded, however, was about $1.3 billion, or about $690 million at today's exchange rate.

That was the budget as Russian troops took control of Crimea and pro-Russian separatists with Russian military assistance began a fight for control of two Ukrainian states, Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively called Donbas.

As the fight in Donbas intensified, Ukraine could send only battalions of volunteers into battle. Those volunteers were asked to bring their own uniforms, plus one for someone else if they could afford it, as well as any weapons and ammunition they might have.

Being in the middle of war with Russia, however, prompted the Rada last year to approve a defense budget of about $2.2 billion. The planned budget for next year appears to be about $3.8 billion.

Craig Caffrey, a military budget analyst with IHS Jane's, a defense consultancy, notes that there are often revisions to Ukrainian defense budgets, "so that's not set in stone at this stage."

But he expects defense spending to increase, at least in the short term, despite pressure on Ukraine from the International Monetary Fund to reduce its budget deficit.

"Defense is necessarily a prioritized area at present, though," he wrote in an email, "so we're certainly expecting to see a significant increase in spending next year."

Ukraine won't be the only player in the conflict with budgetary problems.

"On the Russian side of things, their defense budget is coming under a lot of pressure, too," he wrote. "Military spending has more than doubled there over the last five years, but that is starting to put strain upon government finances."

Russian defense spending has increased rapidly, as much as 26 percent last year alone. "But we're expecting that to be the last major increase," he wrote. "Spending in Russia reached 4.2 percent of GDP in 2015 and we're expecting it to gradually fall back from that level over the remainder of the decade."

Dmytro Tymchuk, a member of the national security and defense committee of the Rada and one of the foremost military experts in Ukraine, is tasked with overseeing Ukrainian defense spending.

Sitting at a table outside the chambers of the Rada recently, he excitedly discussed the country's newly developed military strengths.

"Much of our equipment is old Soviet-era stuff," he said. "The plants that make replacement parts, or which can upgrade them, are in Russia, and that market is off limits to us. So we've had to come up with ways to work around Russian suppliers. We've been quite creative."

He repeated the number of Ukrainian troops that others here do: 240,000. He noted that when the fighting began, Ukraine had a fleet of more than 2,500 tanks, but that almost none of them was operational. In fact, when the Ukrainians sought to dispatch tanks to Donbas, it could find only a couple ready for use in battle.

Now, he said, Ukraine has 500 battle-ready tanks and crews to run them. Broken tanks are being repaired and new ones bought at a furious pace.

The state-owned UkrOboronProm arms factory this year is expected to churn out 40 of its Oplot main battle tank, and next year will make 120. That's a 2,300 percent increase over the five the factory produced last year.

Despite the gains, Mykola Sungurovskyi, the director of military programs at the Razumkov Center, a research center in Kiev, believes that Ukraine must improve its planning if the improvements of the last 18 months are going to be sustainable.

"The Defense Ministry reorganizes in the way it sees fit, while the Interior Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs reorganize in their own ways," he said. "In the end, there's no integration and the system is unworkable. We had to change rapidly at first, under constant threat of collapse. But now we have to step back and look at the big picture."

Stephen Long, an international security expert at the University of Richmond, said there is no reason to question the rate at which Ukraine's military has improved, particularly because previously it was in such horrible condition.

But Ukraine shouldn't start to be feel comfortable with its ability to stymie Russian aggression anytime soon.

"Right now, Ukraine is protected not so much by an improved military force, but by Russian attention being turned elsewhere," he said.

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 #26
Kiev redeploys two squadrons of combat helicopters to Donbas - DPR intelligence

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. The reconnaissance service of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in the southeast of Ukraine has detected redeployment of Ukrainian army's combat helicopters, artillery and tanks to the conflict zone near Gorlovka, DPR defense spokesman Eduard Basurin told a briefing on Tuesday.

"We have become aware of arrival of two squadrons of combat helicopters to the Konstantinovka settlement, presence of tanks in the Zhovanka settlement, and artillery - comprising four self-propelled artillery systems - in the Novoselovka settlement," he is quoted by the Donetsk News Agency.

A new process of weaponry withdrawal is currently underway in the region. Under the Minsk agreements, tanks should be withdrawn first from the contact line, after that - artillery with calibre under 100 mm and then - mortars with calibre under 120 mm. The withdrawal was planned to be completed by November 10.

Since September 1, the sides to the Ukrainian conflict agreed a complete cessation of fire along the contact line in line with the Minsk peace deal. The ceasefire became the main condition for a new withdrawal of weapons in compliance with the document initialed by the Contact Group on September 29 and later signed by the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and Kiev as well.

On September 29, the Trilateral Contact Group initialed a document envisaging withdrawal of weapons under 100 mm calibre to a distance of 15 kilometres for the line of engagement. In line with the agreement, the Ukrainian military are due to pull the weapons back from the current contact line while the militias of the self-proclaimed republics from the line determined on September 19, 2014, when first agreements on ceasefire were achieved and the Contact Group signed a memorandum on cessation of fire.

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 #27
OSCE mission confirms recent shelling of Donetsk from Grad rocket launchers

VIENNA, November 9. /TASS/. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine confirmed on Monday the fact of shelling of the city of Donetsk in the southeast of the country from the Grad multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). The attack on the city was launched from the northwest, the SMM observers' report for the past weekend says.

According to the observers, fragments of a shell found in the territory of a private household in the Kuibyshev district of the city allowed them to make a conclusion that the attack was launched from the Grad MLRS.

According to the SMM report, "Following up on information about a potential multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) attack in "DPR"-controlled Donetsk city, the SMM visited on 7 November the city's Kuibyshevsky district. The owner of the affected house described to the SMM the details of the attack and confirmed its timing. The SMM observed a 30cm hole on the roof and wall of the house's patio, caused by a projectile that penetrated from a north-westerly direction.

It found in the patio two pieces of a large tube, which were consistent with the remnants of an MLRS projectile, most likely a BM-21 (Grad, 122mm) type.

Other remnants of the projectile, including an unexploded warhead, were found in the garden. The SMM assessed that the dust and the projectile residues were fresh - and the SMM could smell the odour left by a recent explosion."

On September 29, the Trilateral Contact Group initialled a document envisaging the withdrawal of weapons under 100mm calibre to a distance of 15 kilometres for the line of engagement. In line with the agreement, the Ukrainian military are due to pull the weapons back from the current contact line while the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics from the line determined on September 19, 2014, when first agreements on ceasefire were achieved and the Contact Group signed the memorandum on cessation of fire.

On October 3, the first stage of withdrawal began in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the entire weapons withdrawal process is expected to take 41 days. Representatives of the Joint Centre for Coordination and Control (JCCC) are entrusted with monitoring the withdrawal.

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#28
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's comments and answers to media questions following the Normandy format ministerial talks, Berlin, November 6, 2015
 
We have had a productive discussion. It concerned the need to provide support to the talks that are underway within the framework of the Contact Group and its four working subgroups on issues that are to be addressed in accordance with the Minsk Agreements in the spirit of the decisions made at the Normandy format talks in Paris on October 2.

First, we focused on security issues. We noted with satisfaction that the withdrawal of weapons with a calibre of 100 mm or less, including tanks, is proceeding on schedule. It should be completed on November 12. The Normandy format ministers have sent a collective message to the sides in the process that they must comply with the schedule.

Second, the method used to withdraw weapons smaller than 100 mm can be also applied to weapons of a larger calibre. We have asked the Contact Group and the working subgroups to consider this possibility and to coordinate a schedule for the withdrawal of heavier weapons as soon as possible.

We also highlighted the demining issue. Mines are seriously complicating life in Donbass and can also create major problems in winter, because the restoration of the economic and transport infrastructure and the operation of the economy and social facilities will be impossible without clearing the mines.

We also discussed the humanitarian situation in Donbass. We pointed out that the continued blockade, the insufficient number of checkpoints and the difficulties with the provision of social services and the payment of pensions, allowances and other benefits are further complicating the grave humanitarian situation. The humanitarian situation has not improved. We noted that this has been described in detail by Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznieks in a recent report, in which he writes about crisis-related problems, primarily those that have been created by the Kiev authorities.

The ministers also agree that the humanitarian organisations that are willing to work in Donbass should be given this opportunity. We urge the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics to continue discussions on the forms of this assistance with the UN humanitarian agencies and the NGOs that are helping the affected people.

The solution to issues pertaining to the political reform is of great significance in the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. The leaders of the Normandy format countries highlighted this at their meeting in Paris. This includes primarily the coordination of a law on local elections in Donbass, an amnesty and the constitutional reform that will permanently seal the special status of Donbass in accordance with the Minsk Agreements.

We will encourage the Contact Group and the working subgroups to focus on these aspects of the Ukrainian settlement and to find solutions to them in strict compliance with the Minsk Agreements of February 12.

Question: Did you discuss the timeframe of the Minsk Agreements? Can they be extended?

Sergey Lavrov: There is little doubt that the Minsk Agreements will remain in force until their full implementation. Considering that it will take time to draft a mutually acceptable Ukrainian law on local elections in Donbas and 90 more days to prepare such elections, it's obvious that the agreements cannot be implemented this year. Therefore, this process will continue next year.

Question: Mr Lavrov, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and you have a positive view of the implementation process. But our sources and local reports say that shooting has resumed and the situation in Donbass is dangerous. Is there a feeling of discrepancy between the local reports and the political assessment of the situation?

Sergey Lavrov: Security problems have grown, to a degree. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) has reported shooting on both sides and also the sides' violations of the commitment to withdraw weapons and to keep them at their permanent storage sites. Today we analysed the SMM update for the past week. As I said, the sides are respecting their commitment to withdraw weapons under 100 mm. They must also withdraw weapons with a calibre above 100 mm. All of us agree that the SMM should continue to work in the area, cutting short any violations that have not become large-scale. I very much hope that an escalation of the conflict can be prevented.

The SMM members believe that the recent outbreaks of violence might be provoked by the radicals' and nationalists' desire to send a certain signal to Kiev, including over the arrest of [the Ukrop party leader Gennady] Korban whom the Right Sector and its sponsors are defending.
 

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 #29
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
November 9, 2015
Bershidsky: Ukraine as a Failed State?
By Anatoly Karlin

Who would have the temerity to even suggest it? What kind of paid up Kremlin propagandist would even countenance such a possibility?

Leonid Bershidsky is who.

Bershidsky is a Russian journalist who left Moscow for Berlin a year ago on account of his distaste for Russia's direction under Putin, and where he now agitates for increasing immigration to the EU in Bloomberg's opinion columns when he isn't lambasting the World Bank for increasing Russia's position in its Ease of Business rankings. In short, he is an able and eloquent voice of the Atlanticist-Yuropean Consensus.

That said, Leonid Bershidsky is one of the more objective anti-Putin journalists around, and this level-headedness means that he does have to acknowledge reality on the ground.

Hence his latest article: Ukraine Is in Danger of Becoming a Failed State.

"Despite attempts at change by a new generation of bureaucrats, Ukraine's economy remains unreformed. Taxes are oppressive but widely evaded, the shadow economy is growing and the regulatory climate for business has barely improved. The International Monetary Fund, the country's biggest source of hard currency after a steep drop in exports, is optimistic about next year's economic growth prospects, forecasting a 2 percent expansion, but last month it revised this year's projection to an 11 percent decline...

"Equally unreformed is Ukraine's incredibly corrupt justice system. In September, Christof Heyns, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said after visiting Ukraine that the country lived in an 'accountability vacuum.' Heyns bemoaned the failure of the Ukrainian authorities to investigate the deaths of more than 100 people on the streets of Kiev in the final days of the revolution and of 48 pro-Russian protesters in a burning building in Odessa in May, 2014. Those investigations are stalled, and attempts by the victims' lawyers to speed them up have been stonewalled by authorities as some of the suspects in the Kiev shootings are still employed by the Interior Ministry."

The Maidan has had zero compunctions about purging the old elites, so the allegation that the investigations into the Kiev and Odessa massacres aren't moving forwards on account of ancien regime protection networks is tendentious in the extreme. People are getting protected alright, but they are the nationalist radicals who set up the Snipergate false flag in the first place. (The evidence for it is so overwhelming - here is a 79 page summary by Canadian academic Ivan Katchanovski, not to mention the fact that even big Western media organs such as the BBC have been forced to point out inconsistencies in the official narrative - that it cannot be treated as a mere conspiracy theory).

"Heyns also said Ukraine's Security Service 'seems to be above the law.' Apart from raiding a number of tech companies in an apparent scare campaign in recent weeks, last weekend the service arrested Gennady Korban, a top lieutenant of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who has been resisting the consolidation of power by Poroshenko. The arrest gave rise to accusations of selective justice in the Ukrainian press. Other oligarchs, after all, face no reprisals - perhaps because they've accepted Poroshenko's dominance."

Out with the new boss, in with the new.

Elite corruption, though virtually impossible to measure, appears to remain as high as ever going by the anecdotal evidence. We also know from the latest opinion poll surveys that everyday corruption hasn't decreased either.

"Two years after the corrupt team of President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine corruption is still rife and the country's intrepid investigative journalists have been especially busy again. Setting the tone is Poroshenko - the only of the country's 10 richest people to see his net worth increase in the past year - who seems to have forgotten his promise to sell off his businesses; his bank has only expanded as many others lost their licenses. Poroshenko's and Yatsenyuk's close allies are routinely named in connection with corrupt schemes involving Ukraine's customs service and state energy companies."

A year ago there were many people seriously arguing that electing someone like Poroshenko is a good thing because he is so rich he wouldn't feel any need to steal further. And then people wonder why plutocrats find it so easy to hoodwinkle the sheeple.

"Americans are highly visible in the Ukrainian political process. The U.S. embassy in Kiev is a center of power, and Ukrainian politicians openly talk of appointments and dismissals being vetted by U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and even U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. 'Pyatt and the U.S. administration have more influence than ever in the history of independent Ukraine,' Leschenko wrote."

Surprised to see him go thus far and so candidly admit that the Maidan regime is run from Washington D.C.

"Europe's requirements for the visa-free regime center on Ukraine's seriousness in fighting corruption. The European Union recently refused a request for more funding for the anti-corruption prosecutor's office, because of 'concerns raised with regard to some people who participate in the selection' of prosecutors for the office. This is a clear reference to the team of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, a Poroshenko appointee and long-time associate, who has been accused of undermining the anti-corruption efforts."

But evidently they are just about sovereign and independent enough when it comes to their personal financial interests.

"Ukrainian civil society is stunted by these powerful vested interests. I doubt it can push the country to a more civilized direction with the usual tools of electoral democracy: The local elections have proven that post-Soviet practices of fraud, bribery and intimidation have not been overcome. There's little will for further upheavals so soon after the revolution and the war in the east. But unless the current political elite finds it in itself to clean up - a highly unlikely turn of events -Ukraine's history of violent regime change is probably not over yet."

Here I have to put in a more "upbeat" note.

Although Bershidsky is correct to be pessimistic about Ukraine's reform prospects, ultimately, the threat of revolt in a place like Kharkov or Odessa that could unravel the rest of the country has been contained. The economy is steadily stabilizing and, although the implementation of the DCFTA from January 2016 may produce a second derailment, frankly the country is already at such rock-bottom - even Moldova is now ahead - that I really don't see how it could fall much further before resuming growth. The chances of a new Maidan are very small regardless of how unpopular Poroshenko gets or how much corruption increases even further (this is because the Maidans have always been primarily driven by deep ideological and ethnic factors, not the we're-tired-of-corruption tropes presented to slack-jawed Westerners). Meanwhile, due to the exit of Crimea and the LDNR, not to mention the emigration of the more pro-Russian orientated elements of society, demographics has completely extinguished any change of an electoral challenge to the Maidanist course.

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 #30
Ukraine's inflation skyrockets by 33.3% from January 1 - report

KIEV, November 9. /TASS/. Ukraine's inflation has skyrocketed by 33.3% as of October 2015 since the beginning of the year, the national statistics service said in its report made public on Monday.

According to the report, "the basic index of consumer prices [inflation] made up 100.8% in October, and 133.3% - since the beginning of the year."

In January-October, 2015, the country's inflation hiked by 41.3% as compared to the same period of 2014.

In the meantime, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) registered higher inflation rate. Under the EBRD report made public on November 5, "as of September, the year-on-year inflation in Ukraine amounted to 51.9%"

Ukraine's Finance Ministry, in turn, said earlier that the republic's inflation will be at 12% in 2016. According to the minister, the forecast was coordinated with the International Monetary Fund. The forecast envisions the 2% GDP growth, 12% inflation rate and hryvnia-to-dollar rate at 24.1 HRN.

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 #31
Analysts: Kiev needs tensions in Donbas as excuse for belt tightening
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, November 9. /TASS/. As winter time is round the corner, the authorities in Kiev need a surge in tensions in the southeast of Ukraine as an excuse for their belt tightening policies, polled experts have told TASS in the wake of reports Ukrainian weapons were being moved closer to the disengagement line in Donbas.

At last Friday's foreign minister level Normandy Quartet meeting in Berlin the negotiators discussed the pullback of weapons from the front line in the southeast of Ukraine. The foreign ministers stated that the pullback of weapons with calibers under 100 mm and tanks was proceeding in accordance with the timetable by and large. "This process is to be over by November 12," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the media.

However, on Saturday the spokesman for the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Eduard Basurin, said the reconnaissance units had identified the arrival of a group of Ukrainian self-propelled artillery pieces and tanks at the engagement line in Donbas. "Last Saturday's strike against Donetsk confirmed that in the Ukrainian armed forces there are certain people and units who are against peace and who have been trying to provoke us into hostilities by hook or by crook," Basurin said.

Analysts have emphasized the fact that the redeployment of Ukrainian artillery and tanks towards Donbas is underway on the eve of the November 15 local runoff elections. In the first round on October 25 the ruling coalition failed to score victories in one-third of the country's regions and cities. In several major localities the elections were disrupted altogether.

The president of the Geopolitical Problems Academy, Konstantin Sivkov, believes that on the eve of the elections runoff, when the winter is about to set in with all the ensuing problems in the housing and utilities sector, Kiev is desperate to find an external enemy.

"The internal political strife in Kiev is gaining momentum. The split in the ruling coalition is getting wider. The Petro Poroshenko Bloc does not rule out it may vote for a motion of no confidence in the Arseny Yatsenyuk government. In the meantime, ever more people tend to take to the streets to press for political demands. Naturally, a surge in tensions in Donbas would provide the authorities in Kiev with an excuse for going ahead with austerity measures," Sivkov told TASS.

The deputy director of the CIS Studies Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, believes that the current situation on the line of disengagement in Donbas is not so much a military aggravation as a propagandistic one. "When military people stay idle for too long, they tend to relax. In order to keep them on the alert both the Donetsk Republic and Kiev have been exchanging counter-accusations of violating the weapons pullback regime. There is no smoke without fire, though," Zharikhin told TASS.

According to his sources, Donetsk last weekend must have come under a fire attack by volunteer squads beyond Kiev's control. On November 8 the residents of a village in the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk Region complained to the authorities of the Donetsk People's Republic about rampaging marauders from the volunteer battalion Aidar. "Last weekend's bombardments may have been due to the same sort of outbreaks of arbitrariness locally. The very presence of uncontrolled forces in the zone of the conflict in the southeast of Ukraine shows how weak the vertical chain of command in Kiev is. The authorities in Kiev should be aware that full compliance with the Minsk Accords will be impossible without the establishment of full control of the volunteer squads of the Aidar type. But President Petro Poroshenko is mostly busy with the struggle against the oligarchs, such as Igor Kolomoisky and with bolstering his personal power," Zharikhin believes.

And the director of the Globalization Problems Institute, Mikhail Delyagin, sees certain risks the armed standoff in the southeast of Ukraine may resume. "The Ukrainian regime is unable to carry on without war. While Russia as a member of the Normandy Quartet has been exerting every effort to ensure the physical survival of people in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, West-leaning Kiev has been trying to strengthen its armed forces and subdue the self-proclaimed republics. To the accompaniment of speculations about compliance with the Minsk Accords the West has all the way put all the blame on Russia and prolonged sanctions against it again and again."

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 #32
United Nations
www.un.org
November 9, 2015
UN refugee agency delivers aid to eastern Ukraine for first time in months

The United Nations refugee agency has managed to deliver aid for the first time in over two months to areas of eastern Ukraine beyond Government control where two million people are in urgent need of assistance, reaching 12,000 people - a "small drop in the ocean of needs" - with plans to expand greatly as the harsh winter sets in.

The vital aid, including plastic sheeting, construction material and thousands of blankets, reached the city of Luhansk in a convoy of nine trucks on Saturday, the first UN convoy to reach the city in three months, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced today.

"This is a small drop in the ocean of needs we see in the conflict-affected areas," said Jean-Noel Wetterwald, agency head of operations for Ukraine, where according to UNHCR, fighting that broke out last year has displaced over two million people within the country and abroad, with another two million in need of vital aid in non-Government-controlled areas.

"However, with winter approaching, we hope to speed up the dispatch of humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable civilians living in the conflict-affected areas," he added.

The last major delivery announced by UNHCR was on September 1 when shelter material and basic relief items reached Horvlika and nearby areas north of Donetsk that suffered heavy fighting in August - the first aid to get through there in several weeks.

The latest delivery included 10,000 blankets, 10,000 towels, 5,000 buckets and a similar number of jerry cans and plastic sheets, as well as cement and timber for shelter repairs. It was unloaded at a warehouse in the city for distribution in a drive that began today.

The convoy is the first of many planned deliveries carrying much needed winterization, domestic items and shelter materials into Luhansk. In the coming weeks, UNHCR is planning to send nearly 1,000 metric tonnes of humanitarian materials and emergency aid for the affected population, while considerably more resources are currently being mobilized for future dispatches in the non-Government-controlled areas.

As winter sets in, conditions are expected to be harsher for people in villages and towns close to the frontline where the conflict has damaged infrastructure and housing.

With restrictions to movement, many people face insecurity and challenges in reaching medical and educational facilities. In some remote locations, access to basic services and goods remain limited, especially for the elderly and ill.

As temperatures fall across the region, shelter assistance has to be delivered fast to those living in buildings that lack windows, doors, roofs and heating. In addition, thousands of displaced people require warm blankets, winter clothing and shoes, as well as coal and heating fuels.

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 #33
www.opendemocracy.net
November 20, 2015
Ukraine: Europe's forgotten refugees
While the world focuses on refugees arriving in Europe from warzones in the Middle East, the plight of those fleeing war in Ukraine has been forgotten.
By Sara Cincurova
Sara Cincurova is a freelance journalist focusing on human rights. She is a former family support worker and holds a Master's degree from the Paris Descartes - Sorbonne University.

Across the world people are concerned by the current European refugee crisis, however there are thousands of Ukrainians who have fled war in their own  country and are now living as refugees on the borders of Eastern Europe. Their destinies remain overlooked and unknown.

The very Western parts of Ukraine have become home to several thousand refugees who have fled the armed conflict in Donbas; some of them are now living no further than two kilometres from the EU border. They have fled the war, traveled thousands of kilometres, lost their loved ones and risked their lives so that they can get closer to European borders. Unlike those who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea, however, Ukrainian refugees know that entering Europe is impossible for them - no matter how close it may be.

"I would like to go and visit my family in the East of Ukraine", confesses Misha, a refugee who has been on the run with his wife and three children for more than a year, "but my priest wouldn't let me go. He says I am going to get killed straight away".

Misha's mother, like many other elderly people, stayed in Donbas; she was unable to flee the war. Misha is still waiting for the blessing of his priest so that he can go and visit her.

Most families that have moved towards Western Ukraine are now homeless in their own country. They do not have the possibility to proceed any further West since the EU borders are impossible to cross. Their only other alternative would be to make a U-turn, cross the country once again and move to Russia or Belarus, which is often not a viable solution.

Altogether, more than two million people have been forced to leave their homes since the beginning of the armed conflict. While the situation of migrants in Serbia, Hungary and other surrounding countries is the subject of much focus and debate across social, political and media discourse all around Europe, the refugees living only a few kilometres northeast of the European borders have almost no help available to them at all. Most people simply don't know about them. They have become internally displaced persons or "IDPs"; refugees in their own country.

Uzhgorod, a town on the Slovak-Ukrainian border is full of families on the run who live in conditions that are similarly precarious to the ones encountered by refugees arriving in other European countries. "We had to leave everything behind and run", explains Svetlana, who escaped with her elderly mother and two sons, aged nine and eleven. Her husband decided to stay in the Donbas region so that he could carry on earning money. It is now too late for him to change his mind; he is no longer able to leave the war zone that has been surrounded by soldiers.

"Our life is an infinite dilemma: we have lost everything over there, and here, we have got nothing at all," Svetlana says. The whole family - grandmother, mother and children - are now sharing a 15 metre square hotel room. They have been living in the hotel for more than a year now - without a kitchen, without enough beds and without a fridge or a washing machine to use.

Some IDPs with nowhere to go are forced to live in tents, gardens or lodges. Others live in hotels: just like Svetlana and her relatives, entire families of five, six or seven people have been sharing single rooms for a year. Some of the hotels in the region allowed the refugees to settle in at the beginning of the conflict, however, most of them didn't realise that it was going to last months, or even years.

Many families have been divided, since most of the elderly or ill were unable to flee the war zones. In the meantime, new technologies have become crucial for keeping contact. Some of the children born on the run have only seen their fathers through Skype: many of the men have chosen to stay in the East of the country. Their children have become used to being raised through webcams.

There is very little help available in the far western parts of the country since there is no urgent humanitarian crisis taking place there. The situation, therefore, remains largely unknown to many Europeans. In Slovakia, a crowd-funding campaign is being run by local NGO Usmev ako dar, which believes that Slovaks can, and should, help Ukraine as their neighbouring country. This, however, is one of very few initiatives trying to raise awareness of the situation in Ukraine.

Even though cities like Uzhgorod are almost 1500 kilometers away from the zones of conflict and only two kilometres away from the EU border, they are now home to several thousand refugees: the exact numbers are impossible to estimate since a significant number of male refugees are in hiding. With the country the way that it is, it is safer to keep their whereabouts unknown.

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 #34
Kyiv Post
November 9, 2015
Right Sector activists, volunteer soldiers aren't willing to give up on Crimea blockade
By Stefan Huijboom

CHONGAR, Ukraine - It used to be a small peninsula where families gathered to enjoy the view of the Azov Sea before they continued their journey to Crimea. Now, it has become a place where Ukrainian soldiers guard a border point that will lead to the Russian-occupied peninsula.

Vladik Tkachuk, a 28-year-old volunteer soldier from Right Sector is one of them. He used to fight in Pisky near the Donetsk airport, but as violence ceased in the eastern regions, he decided to join the Right Sector unit that has formed the Crimea blockade in Kherson Oblast's Chongar since Sept. 20. Tkachuk points his buffy arm in the direction of Crimea.

"One or two miles down this road, and you will find yourself in Mordor," he said, referring to the evil lands in the Lord of the Rings books. "The Ukrainian government is doing nothing to stop the Russian oppression of the Crimean people!" Tkachuk quickly added, explaining that that is one of the reasons why Right Sektor soldiers are forming a blockpost to prevent trucks from entering the Russian-occupied peninsula.

"Right Sector has always been doing what is right for the Ukrainian people. Without us the Russian terrorists in Donetsk would have captured more territory. So standing here on the Crimean border is not only to boycott the Russian occupants, but also to defend our homeland. We'll shoot them if they even dare to think to claim Chongar," Tkachuk further explained, referring to the time when Russian soldiers, commonly referred to as the "green men", also occupied the small island Chongar in Kherson Oblast.

On Feb. 27, 2014 Crimean Berkut officers occupied the village of Chongar and its neighboring territory amid the violent protests in Kyiv.

After Russia annexed Crimea on March 14, 2014, the territory on the small Chongar peninsula became a de facto border zone patrolled by Crimean Berkut and the Russian-backed separatists. Eventually, by Dec. 9, this Russian border checkpoint was abandoned and recaptured by the Ukrainian army.

Since Sept. 20, Crimean Tatars and activists have formed the Crimean blockade on the three highway entries that lead to the Russian-occupied peninsula. After Russia occupied the Ukrainian peninsula, Crimea adopted the Russian legal system, resulting in a significant suppression of the Crimean people, especially the Crimean Tatars.

Leaders of the Mejlis, a representative body of the Crimean Tatars, were banned by Russia from entering their homeland. Those who openly expressed their allegiance to Ukraine were arrested or even abducted by Russian occupants. Crimean tatar activists suffered too, the Russian prosecution of Oleh Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolshenko being the best-known cases.

The Crimea blockade was formed with the goal of ending Russia's occupation of Crimea and returning it to Ukraine.

A Ukrainian government soldier, who only gave his first name Nikita is not authorized to speak with the media, said that that would be a "hopeless dream."

"It's really simple. We're Ukraine and on the other side is Russia, the biggest country on earth with a more advanced army than we do. Volunteer soldiers suffer from conceit. It's unthinkable that we can take back Crimea. At least not militarily, maybe diplomatically, but I doubt that," he told the Kyiv Post.

As trucks aren't even trying to enter Crimea anymore, all that is left on the road to Crimea is civilian vehicles.

One woman, who did not identify herself because she feared hardships in the Russian-occupied town of Dzhankoy, said that life under a Russian authoritarian regime has become more difficult.

"There's less freedom. My children aren't learning Ukrainian in school anymore. On Ukraine's Independence Day I wanted to hang the Ukrainian flag outside my house, but it wasn't allowed. I could be fined for it. It's as if you need to be pro-Russian to live her, but I'm neither. Pro-Ukrainian nor pro-Russian. I just want to live in the beautiful landscapes of Crimea that I call my home," she said, as Right Sector soldiers searched her car.

"Look, they're doing this because they think everyone in Crimea is a Russian terrorist!" she yelled, slamming the door of her car when the soldiers finished their search.

A few days earlier, on Oct. 18, the special monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europea visited the Crimea blockade in Chongar.

They quoted local residents on an explosion in an electricity pylon near the Crimean blockade, presumably intended by activists to cut off electricity to Crimea.

Right Sector activist and volunteer soldier Vadim Yutilenko, introducing himself as the head of his unit, said that what the OSCE reported is nonsense.

"Right Sector was not involved in this. Maybe it was a provocation, but Right Sektor was not involved," he kept repeating.

What the Crimea blockade shows in Chongar is that the activists and volunteer soldiers aren't willing to give up.

"If it takes years to stay here until Crimea has been returned to Ukraine, let it be," Yutilenko said, pointing his finger into the sky. "The sun is shining, that means God is with us."

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 #35
Interfax-Ukraine
November 10, 2015
Rada fails to introduce "anti-discrimination" provision into Labor Code
 
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has failed to introduce the "anti-discrimination" provision into the Labor Code of Ukraine.

Corresponding bill No. 3442 on amending to the Labor Code of Ukraine (concerning the harmonization of legislation in the area of preventing and combating discrimination with the legislation of the European Union) was put on the parliament's agenda on Tuesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

However, the document was supported by only 207 MPs, with the required minimum being 226 votes.

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 #36
www.rt.com
November 10, 2015
Kiev has enough gas to last 4 days - Gazprom CEO

Ukraine has sharply reduced the volume of Russian gas purchased in November, according to Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller. He says this is due to Kiev's financial straits, and that Ukraine's prepaid gas will run out on Saturday.

Ukraine's gas company Naftogaz has enough funds to pump 10 million cubic meters per day, a quarter of the gas pumped at the beginning of the month, said Miller. At the same time Ukraine reduced gas purchases from Europe, he added.

According to Ukraine's Energy Ministry Vladimir Demchishin, Kiev has already pumped a million cubic meters of gas more than last winter into its underground storage facilities.

Demchishin says the 17.1 billion cubic meters currently stored is enough to last the winter season. He added that Ukraine began using gas from its underground storage facilities on November 1.

Russia has been urging Ukraine to pump more gas from Gazprom over concerns that its clients in Europe could face gas shortage this winter. The Kremlin is trying to avoid a gas crisis similar to the winter of 2006 which left parts of Europe without heat. Nine years ago, Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine after Kiev failed to pay. Transit through Ukraine to Europe continued, but with shortages reported by European countries. Moscow accused Kiev of siphoning gas destined for Europe for its own needs.

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#37
Counterpunch.org
November 10, 2015
US Spy Sats See Everything, Except when the Government Says They Didn't
by DAVE LINDORFF

There is something fishy going on in the way the US is talking about civilian plane crashes that are in some way linked, or said to be linked to Russia.

In the case of the latest tragic mid-air break-up of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed all 224 people aboard on a flight from Egypt back to Russia a few days ago, CNN is reporting US that intelligence sources say US spy satellite showed a "heat signature" that could indicate an explosion aboard the plane.

Here's the CNN report:

"A U.S. military satellite detected a midair heat flash from the Russian airliner before the plane crashed Saturday, a U.S. official told CNN.

"Intelligence analysis has ruled out that the Russian commercial airplane was struck by a missile, but the new information suggests that there was a catastrophic in-flight event - including possibly a bomb, though experts are considering other explanations, according to U.S. officials.

"Analysts say heat flashes could be tied to a range of possibilities, including a bomb blast, a malfunctioning engine exploding or a structural problem causing a fire on the plane."

Now note that this information about a spy satellite image comes just days after the crash.

Meanwhile, it's been over a year and a half since the 2014 crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine - an incident that also saw a civilian airliner destroyed in midair. In this case, the US insists the crash was caused by a Russian-built BUK anti-aircraft missile provided to, and launched by pro-Russian separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine.

The US has made this claim ad nauseum, but has never provided a shred of evidence to support its charge. Meanwhile, as a number of critics have pointed out, with Ukraine in a hot civil war in which one side - the post-coup Ukrainian government forces - were getting NATO backing, and the other, the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, were receiving Russian backing, it is a certainty that the US had moved not one but multiple spy satellites into position to monitor the region around the clock by the time of the Flight 17 shoot-down.

So where are the satellite images to support a claim that a BUK missile fired from rebel-held territory and by rebel forces downed that plane, killing all 298 people aboard?

As critics like award-winning journalist Robert Parry and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern have pointed out, if the US had satellite imagery showing a BUK missile contrail - and this large, fast-moving rocket leaves a dramatic contrail all the way from its launch site to its high-altitude target (see below), making assessing of blame quite easy - it would long since have been released or leaked to a US corporate media that have been quick to rub with anti-Russian assertions and propaganda put out by the US government.

This leaves us with two possibilities to ponder:

Either there simply are no satellite photos showing a BUK launched by ethnic Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine at Flight 17, or those photos that exist show something quite different, like a BUK being launched by Ukrainian government forces, or else, perhaps the current claim that satellite images show a heat signature around the Russian plane in Egypt are false (no image has been provided to back up the assertion of a heat signature).

Of course, there may eventually be evidence pointing to a bomb - the Russians are now looking for signs of explosive residue on the wreckage. But until such evidence is found, why, one might ask, would the US jump to make a false claim of a bomb being responsible for the Russian plane crash over the Sinai Desert, when it could as easily have been a fuel tank or engine explosion that wrecked the plane?

Well, consider that at the moment, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been trumping the US in a number of conflict regions, stymying US plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, blocking a US plan to establish a no-fly zone over Syria by openly sending fighter-bombers and cruise-missile-equipped ships to Syria to attack President Bashar al-Assad's Islamic State and Al Nusra enemies at Assad's invitation, and backing Iran in its support of both Assad and the embattled Iraqi government. All the while, Putin's popularity at home has been soaring into the high 80-90percent range according to polls.

Perhaps the thinking at the White House is that by suggesting it was a bomb, and not a structural defect that brought down a Russian civilian aircraft, killing hundreds of Russian citizens, the Russian people might logically link that purported bombing to Putin's actions in Syria and his antagonism of IS and Al Nusra, and might then turn against him.

On one NPR program last week, the reporter was fishing for exactly that idea in an interview with a Washington analyst, saying, "Isn't it likely that if it turns out to have been a bomb by ISIS that took down the plane Russians would get upset about Putin's backing of Assad in Syria?" A listener couldn't miss the unseemly enthusiasm the interviewer had for this gruesome notion.

Whatever the investigation of Flight 9268's flight recorders and wreckage concludes, one thing is clear: If the US has satellites monitoring the Sinai, where there is no war going on, it most certainly had satellites monitoring Ukraine at the time of the downing of Flight 17, and if it's willing to announce that its satellite caught the moment of the explosion of Flight 9268 and is willing to talk about that, it should also be willing to show what its satellites saw when Flight 17 was downed.

The American people, and the people of the world, should demand this of the US government.

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

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 #38
Euromaidanpress.com
November 9, 2015
Moscow laying groundwork to annex Belarus, open second front against Ukraine next year
By Paul Goble

For Vladimir Putin, Viktor Kaspruk argues, "Ukraine is the key to a future Russia or more precisely a future Russian Empire," and consequently, even if he has lowered the temperature in the Donbas in recent weeks, the Kremlin leader is likely to renew his attacks on Ukraine next year having first moved to annex Belarus.

In a commentary for Radio Liberty's Belarusian Service, Kaspruk argues that "if Putin begins thinking about opening a second front for an attack on Ukraine, then it would not be possible for him to find a better place des armes for that than a Belarus occupied by Russia."

Such a move, the Ukrainian political analyst says, would be extremely popular in Russia. "On a wave of hurrah patriotism, euphoria from 'getting up from its knees,' and the PR bombing in Syria, the consciousness of Russians has completely atrophied. Therefore it would support with joy the next political adventure of Putin - the return of Belarus 'home' to Russia."

There are already signs that the Kremlin leader is preparing for just such a move. Kaspruk points to the attacks on Lukashenka that have appeared in Kremlin-controlled media and the dispatch already of "'little green men' to Belarus under the guise of protecting Russian military objects on its territory."

Such units could quickly link up with pro-Moscow officials and people in Belarus and then "take under their control state institutions and strategic objects in Mensk and key industrial cities." After which time, a new government would declare that it wants to realize the ideas of the "union state" between Russia and Belarus by being absorbed by the Russian Federation.

Lending support to this argument is that over the last month, Russian embassies in Lithuania, Poland, and Latvia have organized conferences on the "union state" between the Russian Federation and Belarus.

On the one hand, these conferences have led analysts in these countries to be dismissive of the idea that the union state is anything but "a chimera" without any future.

But on the other hand, such meetings appear intended simultaneously to test the waters in their neighboring countries about new Russian moves in this direction and to put additional pressure on Belarus by signaling that some in Moscow are thinking about taking steps to make a Russian version of "the union state" a reality.

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