#2
New York Times
November 11, 2015
In Russia, Doping Accusations Are Taken in Stride
By NEIL MacFARQUHARN

MOSCOW - The sweeping accusations that a Kremlin-backed program facilitated doping by elite Russian track-and-field athletes in the Olympics and other top sports events earned a collective shrug Tuesday from the Russian public and even, to some extent, from the officials who oversaw the debacle.

Was there public outrage over the destruction of positive drug tests, the intimidation of laboratory technicians by secret agents and the extortion of the athletes by the officials in charge who wanted to cover up the test results? Almost none. Were there questions about the capability of President Vladimir V. Putin to run a clean, competent administration? Even fewer.

And this was just the latest in a series of nasty shocks to Russia, some of them direct results of Mr. Putin's actions.

Choked by low oil prices and Western sanctions imposed after the invasions of Crimea and Ukraine, the economy is shrinking. The ruble has lost more than half its value, inflation is at 11.2 percent, and a much-vaunted national project to create local substitutes for banned Western imports seems to have produced mostly stuff like dubious cheese made from palm oil.

And last week, a Russian charter flight plummeted into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board, in what British and American intelligence agencies suspect may have been a terrorist attack in response to the Kremlin's military intervention in Syria.

Yet, the basic reaction is to shrug and point a finger elsewhere, preferably at the West.

"The West is envious that our athletes achieve good results, so they pushed forward the doping claims," said Boris Ivanov, a rail-thin retired construction engineer, without a trace of irony. "Everybody takes dope! Americans and other nations, all of them!"

Russia was singled out, he said, because the Americans run most such organizations and "they want to attack Russia."

As in Soviet times, sports remains a government affair and another facet of global prestige, so any blow to the image of the athletes is also a blow to the Kremlin. Mr. Putin announced that he would meet with senior athletic officials on Wednesday.

After initial outrage over the accusations, the official Russian reaction was somewhat more circumspect, with officials promising to investigate and to take steps to correct the situation (something they promised back in 2013, before the Sochi Olympics, where the Russian antidoping agency was the lead tester).

Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of the Moscow lab accused of malfeasance, whom the report suggested be replaced, resigned. But Russian officials still minimized the import of what experts call one of the most damning public reports in the history of sports - "worse than we thought," said a co-author and doping expert, Dick Pound.

"Believe me, there are many similar doping scandals all over the world," Vitaly Mutko, Russia's sports minister, said in his initial public reaction, arguing that doping should be considered an international issue, since elite Russian athletes spend some 10 months of the year abroad competing. "Doping is not a problem of Russia."

A number of factors contribute to Russians' readiness to accept such explanations, the primary being the survival instinct. Most of the 140 million Russians struggle just to get by, and do not involve themselves too deeply in larger issues.

Traditionally, though, the first line of defense against any problem is stoicism. This is especially true since Mr. Putin has painted any current problems as the side-effects of a national effort to "pull Russia off its knees," where the West is said to have shoved it in the first place.

"We have had more difficult times before," said Viktoria Troschanskaya, a middle-age Russian lawyer wandering through a Moscow park.

"Russia is a country that is ready to tolerate pain for the sake of national greatness," said Natalya V. Zubarevich, a professor who specializes in Russian demographics. "The simple rational explanation - the economy went down, people must be angry - does not work in Russia."

Second, when they look for answers, state-run television tells them exactly what to think. Ever since the March 2014 annexation of Crimea, the mantra has been that Mr. Putin seeks to restore Russia as a great power, a goal the West is determined to thwart. It is a circular argument that magnifies any gains and explains away any setbacks.

Given that some 90 percent of Russians rely on state-run television as their primary news source, and that for at least 18 months there has been a steady drumbeat of anti-Americanism across all news programs, many people react automatically.

What the West considers a doping scandal in Russia will most likely "be stretched to be understood as something done for the public good," said Andrey Babitsky, a former editor of Russian Esquire who recently founded a libertarian website, www.inliberty.ru.

"We are in a kind of competition, not to say a war with the West," said Mr. Babitsky, explaining the general reaction, not endorsing it. "Everybody knows that everybody cheats, and if we were caught red-handed, it just means that they cheat better than we do."

Finally, Russian officials face little accountability, and Mr. Putin in particular has sought to insulate his loyalists from any public rebuke. There is a dark historical precedent at play. Since Czarist times, Russians have been told that their leader will always protect their best interests and they have been conditioned across centuries never to question that fact.

As with doping, so with the catastrophic crash of the charter jet.

Russian officials starting with Mr. Putin expressed dismay that Western governments were quick to point to a terrorist bomb as the likely cause. When Britain canceled all flights and began an emergency airlift home, the initial Russian reaction was that the West was trying to put pressure on Russia over its policy of deploying warplanes in Syria since the end of September to bolster the fortunes of its ally - and Western bête noire - President Bashar al-Assad.

No Russian officials acknowledged that Prime Minister David Cameron might face domestic political problems if British citizens were harmed just months after 30 were shot dead in a terrorist attack on a Tunisian beach. Instead, Dmitry Kiselyov, the television anchor who uses his Sunday night news show to set the agenda for the Kremlin, questioned whether the United States and other Western nations might have bought off the terrorist groups so they would attack a Russian jet.

"It is well known that the Americans easily agree with terrorists about their security," he said. "They pay or they bargain: We close our eyes on something and you don't touch us. This is a common practice with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Why wouldn't this practice be replicated with the Islamic State?"

Calling it "just a theory," he said, "Isn't the explosion on our plane that the Egyptians say is 90 percent certain a product of an agreement not to touch civilian planes of the Western coalition?"

The Russian reaction to moral questions is complicated by their association of national greatness with Stalin, who oversaw Russia's industrialization and victory in World War II, but during his long rule millions died in prisons, forced collectivization, purges and mass deportations.

Russia tends to avoid confronting the crimes committed in tandem with its 20th-century climb to greatness, analysts said, especially since it is trying to regain the same stature. In defending Russian history, given that the government plays down what Stalin did, a doping scandal appears fairly minor in comparison.

Just last week, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church defended Stalin's legacy without naming him. "Achievements of one or another state leader who stood at the roots of the country's revival and modernization should not be called into question, even if that leader is known for villainies," he said at an opening of a museum exhibition on Russia's 20th century history that also showed how Stalin decimated the ranks of the clergy.

At the deepest levels, analysts say, the idea of morality in public policy died out decades ago, if not centuries, under the weight of government repression.

"It is not that Russian people are bad," Mr. Babitsky said. "It is just that for 100 years they have not seen a politician who lives by any moral standards. When you bring up a moral argument, everybody looks at you as a kind of crazy person, like those people on Times Square shouting about the end of the world."

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 #3
The Daily Telegraph (UK)
November 11, 2015
Vladimir Putin's use of sport for political ends is grotesque - but grimly effective
Russia are not alone in seeing their sporting institutions tainted by doping and corruption scandals, but they are the most cynical in exploiting them
By Paul Hayward, Chief Sports Writer

Sport in Putin's Russia appears to serve three functions. Boosting nationalism, provoking the West, and providing opportunities for Kremlin allies to ransack vast construction budgets, as in the Sochi Winter Olympics.

It does all three exceptionally well. To gold medal standard, in fact. Along the way, the country that has stirred political conflict with the West over Crimea, Ukraine and now Syria has also managed to heap discredit on at least two world governing bodies. First Fifa, where Putin thinks Sepp Blatter should win a Nobel Prize, and now at the IAAF, where it is alleged that Russian officials paid €1million in bribes to the president, Lamine Diack, to suppress positive tests from Russian athletes.

Those who say sport and politics should not mix will have a hard time separating Putinism from the engulfing scandals of our age.

And this is not said from any pompous western perspective. The bulk of the corruption inside Fifa did not start in Moscow. It runs back 40 years or more and is truly global. Only last week, 50 police and tax inspectors raided the Frankfurt headquarters of the German football association (DFB) to investigate allegations that a £5million slush fund was used to secure the 2006 World Cup.

Cut to the World Cup four years later and South Africa is still chewing on the news that $10million (£6.6million) was handed back to Fifa in 2008 with a note specifying that it should be redirected to a 'Diaspora Legacy Programme' run by the infamous Jack Warner.

So by the time football touches down in Moscow for the 2018 tournament, the 2006 and 2010 World Cups may already be severely tainted, with Russia and Qatar next along the catwalk. Seen through this lens (and that of doping controversies in America, China, Jamaica, Kenya and beyond), you can quite see why Putin has shoehorned sport into his default global view, which is that the West is incurably hypocritical.

It may well be, but moral relativism cannot conceal the threat posed by Russian policy, Russian nihilism. Their response to Wada's revelations of state-sponsored doping and alleged bribery was predictably Orwellian. Putin's officials in the sports ministry both attacked the explosive Wada report as unsubstantiated while promising to help clear up any "irregularities."

Students of 1984 will recognise this as classic Double Think - intended, no doubt, to head off the threat of a ban on Russia competing at next year's Rio Olympics.

The dread of a World Cup in Russia, meanwhile, is well founded. Its chief official, Vitaly Mutko, also a Fifa executive committee member, was implicated in the Wada report when Dick Pound, one of its authors, said it was "not possible" for him to have been ignorant of the institutionalised doping on his watch.
Mutko has since responded: "There is an attempt made to cast a shadow all over all [Russian] sport. It is unacceptable. And I can reassure you that Russian sport is today one of the leaders of the world sport. And it is both in fighting doping and taking part in competitions. And we will continue this work."

Right there you see sport falling into the freezer of the new Cold War. There is infinite cynicism on Putin's part. In July Russia's leader said of the Fifa president, now suspended for a "disloyal payment" to Uefa's Michel Platini: "People like Mr Blatter or the heads of big international sporting federations, or the Olympic Games, deserve special recognition. If there is anyone who deserves the Nobel Prize, it's those people."

In May, Putin called an FBI swoop on Fifa exco members "another blatant attempt by the United States to extend its jurisdiction to other states," and drew links with Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.

By then, the Garcia report into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding races had revealed: "The Russia bid committee made only a limited number of documents available for review, which was explained by the fact that the computers used at the time by the Russia bid committee had been leased and returned to their owner after the bidding process. The owner has confirmed the computers were destroyed in the meantime."

It was hard not to draw from that passage a subliminal connection between "destroyed" computer records and 1,417 "destroyed" Russian doping samples in the Wada report.

The wider political machinations are, of course, fascinating, if grim. In a London Review of Books essay on Luke Harding's book, 'Mafia State,' Stephen Holmes wrote of Russia: "Escaping the draft, registering a company, buying an apartment, getting into school, passing an exam, being acquitted of criminal charges, trumped up or valid, [and] receiving medical treatment may all require the bribery of public officials. The kickback plague is endemic, inflating by as much as 50 per cent the cost to the state of everything from weapons to highway construction."

But this is not some remote political spectacle, as Fifa and the IAAF will testify. In his book, Harding points out: "Russian bureaucrats have their houses and families in London, and their children are going to Cambridge and Oxford. They keep their money outside Russia because none of them believes in Russia and none of them believes in official stability."

Analysts like to say Putinism knows exactly how to push western double standards to their limits. But some lines can still be drawn to stop politics eating sport, starting with a ban on Russia in Rio.

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 #4
Wall Street Journal
November 11, 2015
Editorial
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Russia reverts to Cold War-type with its doping of athletes.

Vladimir Putin has spent the better part of his presidency trying to bring the Soviet Union back into style, whether by invading countries, sending dissidents to prison or creating a global propaganda apparatus. So it's no surprise that his regime has also reverted to Cold War-type on sports.

That much is clear from Monday's report by a commission of the World Anti-Doping Association. "We found cover ups, we found destruction of samples, we found payments of money in order to conceal the doping tests," said Dick Pound, who led the three-man commission over a 10-month probe. Among its recommendations is that Russian athletes be banned from track-and-field events at next summer's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Russian officials promptly denounced the findings, with Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko calling them "very made up." That's not surprising since the report implicates top officials. It accuses an "anti-doping laboratory" in Moscow of soliciting and taking bribes and destroying more than 1,400 samples on the eve of a visit from WADA. The report also says Russian athletes were required to go along with the doping to stay on their teams.

Doping is a world-wide problem and the bane of sports from swimming to cycling. But WADA performed a particular service by putting the scale of Russia's bad behavior in perspective. In 2013 the country ranked first in doping violations across 30 sports, with 225 cases as compared to 108 for France and 43 for the U.S.

In 1986 Yuri Vlasov, chairman of the Soviet Union's weightlifting federation, lamented the practice of subjecting his athletes to "coach-pharmacologists." In the end the doped-up athletes pay the highest moral and physical price for their political masters' lust for national glory. That is reason enough to ban Russians from Rio until the regime cleans up its act.

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#5
Stanford News
http://news.stanford.edu
November 9, 2015
NATO commander calls for recalibration in Europe
By Clifton Parker

NATO must bolster its presence in Europe as a way to counter Russian aggression in the region.

That was the message from General PHILIP M. BREEDLOVE, the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), when he visited Stanford on Monday.

"Europe is clearly at a crossroads," he said.

Breedlove addressed the need for a strong NATO amid the evolving geopolitical climate in Europe. Of great concern are Moscow's intrusions into Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia in Eastern Europe in recent years.

"We have to recalibrate what we're thinking," he said. NATO is building up its troop rotations to deal with hostile moves in the region, for example.

Breedlove spoke to a couple hundred people at the Koret Taube Conference room in the Gunn Building. Breedlove's speech was sponsored by The Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).

"Highly dynamic" is how Breedlove described Europe's security situation as a resurgent Russia seeks to "rewrite" the rules of international order. "They have been aggressive and coercive in their use of diplomatic, military and economic tools," he said.

Lies and distortions characterize Russia's attempt to change borders and bully its neighbors, Breedlove added. Russian President Vladimir Putin's greater goal is to destabilize NATO and chip away at the alliance. Russia is acting in the east, south and north of Europe, including forays into the Arctic Circle and near Japan.

"This is all about extending Russian control" over its neighbors, Breedlove said.

Massive, seemingly endless migration coming from the Middle East into Europe poses a monumental crisis, he added. "The situation is creating serious political problems for political leaders" in European countries, he said. On top of this, possible terrorists and foreign fighters within the sheer numbers of migrants are extremely difficult to track, he added.

These European and NATO challenges intersect in the case of Syria and Russia's involvement there, Breedlove said. "Russia's striving to project [itself] as a world power."

Syria is an opportunity for Putin to shift the world's attention from his country's aggressions in the Ukraine to the Middle East, he said. Breedlove disputed Putin's rationale - fighting ISIS and terrorism - for intervening in Syria. "There's a clear gap between his words and actions."

Time will tell if Russia overextends itself in its adventurism, Breedlove said. For NATO, it must "rebuild its capacity" to address such threats. "Defend territory, people and values" is how he defined NATO's mission.

A free, peaceful and prosperous Europe is much more attractive to the world than a menacing Russia that lacks similar values and attributes, he noted.

The security of Europe is Breedlove's "daily business," said MICHAEL MCFAUL, director of FSI. "You could not have a more well informed person speak about European security."

McFaul noted that a new initiative series on European security, sponsored by the Europe Center, will bring other speakers and events to campus.

Breedlove, a distinguished graduate of Georgia Tech's ROTC program, has flown combat missions, mostly in the F-16 jet, and has served as vice chief of staff for the U.S. Air Force and commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe and Africa.

"I feel right at home, because this is the type of weather we have in Belgium," he quipped on a rainy day at Stanford.
 

 #6
Stanford University
Freeman Spogli Institute
October 28, 2015
Stanford's new European Security Initiative focuses on changing geopolitical landscape
By May Wong
 
The new European Security Initiative at Stanford will examine the long-term policy issues and trends in Europe's changing geopolitical landscape, especially given Russia's growing aggression in the region.

First, it was the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Then, it was the intervention in eastern Ukraine. Most recently, airstrikes and naval cruise missiles are hitting targets in Syria.

What, many are wondering, is Russian President Vladimir Putin up to?

Russia's spate of aggressive tactics has thrust Europe into a new era of uncertainty and has raised pertinent policy questions that Stanford scholars have set out to explore more deeply with the launch this fall of a new European Security Initiative (ESI).

The working group of a dozen senior faculty members - whose breadth of expertise in Russian and Eurasian affairs spans multiple administrations - portrays Russia's actions as constituting the greatest challenge to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, Russia's own unstable economy and political landscape complicate the matter; policy changes moving forward will be high-stakes decisions, as Russia and the West step into a period of sustained competition.

Stanford, with its heavyweight lineup, is poised to play a role. The European Security Initiative - formed by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Europe Center, the Hoover Institution and other university partners - will serve as the collaborative framework for the policy research.

"Policymakers in Washington have to react immediately to events in the world, making it difficult to develop longer-term strategies for dealing with ongoing challenges," said FSI's director, Michael McFaul. "At Stanford, we have the luxury of being able to think about longer trends and then recommend more enduring strategies to our colleagues in government.

"We also have deep expertise on Russia and Europe, which assigns us a special responsibility to tackle these new challenges to European security."

The initial group of Stanford faculty involved in the initiative includes: McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia and a professor of political science; Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state and a professor of political science; international studies Professor Coit Blacker, former special assistant to President Bill Clinton and director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council; David Holloway, professor of history and of political science, and one of the world's leading authorities on Russia's nuclear weapons program and defense policies; and Kathryn Stoner, an expert on Russia's governance and political economy and a senior fellow at FSI.

Analyzing Russia's actions

One of the first objectives of the initiative is to understand the nature of the conflicts at hand and develop theories on Russia's domestic and international intentions.

For example, is Putin trying to re-establish Russian dominance over former Soviet states? Is he trying to distract internal constituencies from an array of domestic problems? Depending on the answers, the initiative's faculty members say the United States would have to pursue different policy options.

Working group discussions and a series of public events featuring key figures in U.S.-Russian and European policy will facilitate the Stanford-based dialogue and help broaden the academic discussion among students.

In September, for instance, ESI launched the new academic year with a talk at the Europe Center by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was at the center of European and global politics as the former secretary-general of NATO.

Other fall quarter ESI events, past and upcoming, include an Oct. 14 talk by Sergey Aleksashenko, a former deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank; a Nov. 2 visit by Vladimir Milov, the former Russian deputy minister of energy; and a Nov. 9 visit by General Philip M. Breedlove, supreme allied commander, Europe.

Students, scholarship

In addition, Stanford students are showing a growing interest in Putin's actions and the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe. Applications for new student fellowships on European issues in Brussels this past summer far outstripped the six spaces available. To capitalize on this renewed interest, the initiative will involve students through events, new fellowships and a new seminar.

The initiative aims to rebuild scholarship in an area of academic interest that waned as the Cold War ended.

"At the end of the Cold War, many thought that we no longer needed to study Russia. I myself even stopped teaching courses on Russia and Eastern Europe," McFaul said. "That was a mistake." He noted that Stanford is ideally positioned to seed a new generation of expertise on Russia and Europe.

FSI provided the startup money to create the initiative, but it will be looking for funds to sustain the program.

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 #7
www.army.mil
The Official Home Page of the United States Army
Milley: Russia No.1 threat to US
By J.D. Leipold
 
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 4, 2015) -- Russia should be considered the No. 1 threat to the United States for two reasons, its capability and its intent, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley.

"In terms of capability, Russia is the only country on earth that has the capability to destroy the United States of America," Milley said here at the Defense One Summit, Nov. 2.

"It's an existential threat by definition because of their nuclear capabilities. Other countries have nuclear weapons, but none as many as Russia and none have the capability to literally destroy the United States."

Milley noted that while neither he nor anyone else knows what Russia's true intent is, his best guess at intent is based on past behavior over the last few years - a reorganized military, increased capabilities and aggressive foreign policy.

"The situation with Russia in my mind is serious and growing more serious," he said. "I see Russia as aggressive, not just assertive. They attacked Georgia; they illegally seized Crimea; they have attacked Ukraine... all those countries were free and independent and have been sovereign nations now for a quarter century, since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"I would say, Russia's recent behavior is adversarial to the interest of the United States," Milley said, adding that the United States and its allies have to approach Russia with a strength and balance approach.

"So, we want on the one hand to maintain strength in order to deter further Russian aggression and we need to stand firm where that aggression manifests itself, hence things like sanctions and what NATO is doing right now," he said.

"On the flip side, you don't want to shut them off completely, so we have our hands outreached where you have common interests and there are a variety of areas where the U.S., NATO and other friends to the U.S. have common interests with Russia... so, it's not a zero and one calculation... there's more nuance than that."

U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said during the recent Association of the United States Army annual meeting that he too would like to see the Russians back at the bargaining table and in the international community.

Meanwhile, the United States and the European Union continue to demonstrate the collective security of NATO through ongoing military exercises called Operation Atlantic Resolve, which began when Russia went into Ukraine. Hodges said the objective is deterrence. Units participate for about three months in the non-stop Atlantic Resolve rotations, which are multinational in scope.

Over the last several weeks, Milley had the opportunity to visit Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Afghanistan, then went into Europe and over to Indonesia and South Korea to meet with the chiefs of armies in the Pacific. Last week, he returned to Europe and met with the chiefs of the European armies and followed up with a trip to Ukraine.

"The Ukrainian desires continued military support by the United States and continued political and economic support," Milley said. "They're a proud people; they've been sovereign for 25 years and they're determined to remain a free and independent country."

Turning to the Middle East, the chief said the issues were strategic and that the radical terrorism in its current form of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, doesn't lend itself to easy solutions and will probably be there for a while.

"The president has given us charge to go ahead and degrade, then destroy ISIS - and we're doing that," he said. "We're adjusting our strategies... adjusting our tactical and operational approaches to achieve the strategic end state. The Middle East, specifically ISIS, is a problem that we're coming to grips with right now."

Milley next addressed the geopolitical challenges in Asia, specifically the situation on the Korean Peninsula, then the rise of China.

"In Korea you have a state of armistice since 1953," he said. "We have helped the Korean military and people maintain their independence, but Korea is artificially divided by the 38th Parallel, yet they are one ethnolinguistic group and at some point in the future... I don't know when, I don't know how... but at some point in the future it is highly probable that Korea will be one country again... whether that happens peacefully or violently, that's the $64,000 question.

"My concern is there would be a provocative incident initiated by North Korea that could lead to something more violent and that would be really tragic for Korea," he said.

"China is not an enemy and I think that's important for people to clearly understand," Milley continued. "China is a rising power that has been clicking off at 10 percent growth for almost 30 years. They dropped down to 7 percent last year and they will probably drop down to the range of normalcy and 3 to 5 percent growth, but that's still significant economic growth."

The chief summed up his thoughts saying that his main concern was Army readiness.

"None of us can see the future, so the readiness of the military is a fundamental concern and the greatest sin that I or any other general can commit is to send a Soldier, sailor, airman and Marine into combat and harm's way who is not well equipped, trained and ready," he said. "And, we want over-match... we do not want a level playing field or a fair fight; we want it all in our favor."

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 #8
Bloomberg
November 11, 2015
The Pentagon's Lonely War Against Russia and China
By Josh Rogin

At last weekend's Reagan National Defense Forum, top Pentagon officials warned about the coming great power battles with Russia and China. But the U.S. approach to both countries shows that other parts of the administration view those relationships in a very different way.

Before Defense Secretary Ashton Carter's keynote speech at the Reagan Presidential Library in California, his staff sent out the message that Carter would be making significant remarks about Russia and China, following his recent trip to Asia.

"We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot, war with Russia," Carter said. "We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake; the United States will defend our interests, our allies, the principled international order, and the positive future it affords us all."

Carter criticized Russian occupation of territory in Ukraine and Georgia, and he castigated Russia for what he called a destructive military intervention in Syria. He said that the Pentagon was doing a range of things -- some public and some secret -- to push back on Russian and Chinese "aggression."

Republicans and Democrats alike praised Carter's remarks as a sober assessment of the real and growing great power competition between the United States, Russia and China. They also noted that Carter often speaks in harsher terms about the two countries than do other top administration officials, especially those at the White House and State Department.

"Secretary Carter gave a sober, stark review of national security challenges that seemed out of line with the administration's approach on Russia, Syria, Ukraine and even China," said Eric Edelman,  a former undersecretary of defense for policy in the Bush administration.

In his nomination hearing to become defense secretary, Carter publicly endorsed the idea of sending lethal arms to Ukraine, a policy President Barack Obama does not support. Carter's top Russia policy official, Evelyn Farkas, who resigned recently, said this month the Pentagon was still pushing for arming the Ukrainians but had been repeatedly overruled by the White House.

In his speech Saturday, Carter expressed skepticism that Secretary of State John Kerry's outreach to Russia on the Syria crisis would bear fruit, saying that "it's possible" Russia could play a constructive role. That message is different in tone from what top State Department officials are saying. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed confidence earlier this month that the Russians would soon be pushing for a real political process in Syria.

The Pentagon has also been pushing internally against White House and State Department resistance for a more aggressive response to China's military construction on artificial islands in the South China Sea. Carter himself warned China in June that the U.S. would not respect Chinese demands that U.S. ships stay at least 12 miles away from the disputed features.

The Pentagon waited for months for the White House to approve a "freedom of navigation" exercise in the South China Sea. When the Pentagon was allowed to conduct the operation, the White House placed several restrictions on the mission to minimize the risk of confrontation with the Chinese. For example, the U.S. ship was not allowed to turn on sensors or fly its helicopters, actions that military experts say would have made clearer that the U.S. was conducting a freedom of navigation operation.

After the exercise, Pentagon officials scrambled to assert the U.S. was serious about confronting China's claims that the artificial islands are sovereign Chinese territory deserving of borders and associated privileges. Some reports said the mission wasn't a freedom of navigation operation at all, but actually resembled "innocent passage," a less confrontational action.

Pentagon officials at the forum told me the White House also forbade Pentagon officials from talking publicly about the operation, but Carter confirmed it when pressed by senators at a hearing last week. Experts briefed by the Pentagon said that it was a freedom of navigation operation but that the message wasn't clear at all.

"To ensure that China and other nations around the world fully understand what took place, the Pentagon should explain the legal basis for its operation and clarify what message it intended to send," China experts Bonnie Glaser and Peter Dutton wrote in the National Interest, after being briefed by Pentagon officials.

Stephen Hadley, who was national security adviser to President George W. Bush, told me the Pentagon has had some success in implementing responses to Russian and Chinese aggression, such as with increased U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe. But he said the White House is so cautious in applying military tools that they are deployed incrementally and late, minimizing their impact.

"The administration always says there is no military solution, and that's true. But if you are dealing with a Putin or a Xi, there is no political solution that does not have a military element," he said.

At the end of the Reagan forum, Carter's deputy Bob Work laid out the long-term challenge of a rising China and an aggressive Russia in even starker terms than his boss had.

"We have two great powers. This is totally different, something than we haven't had to deal with in the last 25 years," he said. "The primary thing we've done in the last 12 months is to organize ourselves for combat and to actually think about this problem."

Work presented what he calls the "third offset" strategy to avoid a confrontation with Russia and China, focused on developing a new way of conducting warfare that would enable the U.S. to deter Russia and China from ever engaging in a military conflict with the United States.

The third offset, which includes concepts like "human-machine collaboration," is designed to play out over the next 30 years. For the Pentagon, it's a project they can work on without meddling from the White House. But the Pentagon's struggle with the White House is not limited to Russia and China. Carter also said he thinks the U.S. needs to do much more in the fight against the Islamic State.

Carter's team at the Pentagon is sounding the alarm about the need to address long-term national security challenges now. But he does not have authority to do what he thinks necessary. The result is a muddled approach to the U.S.'s great power competitors. There is not much hope for it to be resolved until the next administration.

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 #9
RFE/RL
November 10, 2015
Congress Passes Bill Giving Lethal Aid To Ukraine

WASHINGTON -- Congress has passed a defense policy bill that authorizes up to $50 million in lethal military aid for Ukraine and mandates a White House response if Russia is deemed to be violating a key arms control treaty.

The White House said hours after the $607 billion bill was passed by the Senate on November 10 that President Barack Obama was likely to sign the legislation.

The House of Representatives passed a similar version of the bill last week.

Obama vetoed the previous bill over provisions that forbade the White House from moving the remaining prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba to U.S. prisons.

But he does not appear to be threatening a veto on the latest bill over the Guantanamo prisoner issue.

Among other things, the package appropriates $300 million to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.

That includes $50 million for lethal weaponry such as antiarmor weapon systems, mortars, grenade launchers, small arms, and ammunition.

The Obama administration has previously resisted calls to provide Ukraine with lethal aid, fearing that could provoke Russia.

The legislation also sets a deadline for the administration to tell Congress whether Russia continues to be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear-capable missiles from Europe in the late 1980s.

The State Department's most recent arms control report released in June said Russia was testing a missile system that violated the treaty.

Moscow, for its part, has denied the allegations and accused the United States of deploying banned weapons systems.

The legislation also includes $715 million for Iraqi forces battling Islamic state militants.

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 #10
RFE/RL
November 9, 2015
When In Doubt, Blame The West
by Brian Whitmore

So Russia went there after all.

The crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 in Egypt on October 31, which killed all 224 people on board, was more than the worst aviation disaster in the country's history.

Once it became clear that the cause of the crash was probably terrorism, it also became a messaging nightmare for the Kremlin's propaganda machine.

Since Russia's Syria campaign began, Kremlin officials and the state media have been framing it as a painless war that was boosting Moscow's international prestige. All patriotic citizens needed to do was sit back and enjoy the grainy footage of terrorists being obliterated by Russia's shiny new military machine.

The deaths of hundreds of Russian civilians threatened to change that, especially after Islamic State claimed responsibility and the evidence that a bomb -- and not technical failure -- destroyed the aircraft mounted.

Suddenly the Syria campaign wasn't cost-free anymore.

So Russian state media did what came naturally: they blamed the West.

Sputnik got the ball rolling with a piece on November 6 claiming that "British officials have made an unseemly leap to speculate on a terrorist plot in the Russian airliner crash over Sinai last weekend."

The story concluded: "The confidence by which these assessments of terror methodology are being made raises an even more troubling, darker question: was it really terrorists, or was it British MI6 agents palming the deed off as terrorists?"

On the same day, the conspiracy website WhatDoesItMean.com published an article claiming that Russia had captured two "CIA assets who are believed to have masterminded the downing of Flight 9268."

And then came Dmitry Kiselyov.

On his flagship news show Vesti Nedeli on Russian state television, the bombastic pundit suggested on November 8 that it was suspicious that after two years of U.S. air strikes against Islamic State, no American passenger planes have been targeted. And yet a Russian civilian aircraft was downed after just 40 days into Russia's military campaign in Syria.

Kiselyov went on to suggest that the United States and its allies cut a deal with Islamic State "not to touch the civilian aircraft of the Western Coalition." He added that "dividing terrorists into good ones and bad ones is standard practice for the West. If the terrorist is targeting Russia, he's a good terrorist and even a supporter of democracy."

Writing on his blog, Anton Shekhovtvov, a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute and a research associate at the Kyiv-based Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation noted that "this version may seem absurd to everyone who is not prone to conspiracy theories, but it is also extremely dangerous. It means that, indeed, the consolidation of Putin's criminal regime at home is far more important for the Kremlin than the international cooperation, and that Moscow is ready to escalate its war on the West."

The Kremlin could have used the downing of Flight 9268 to repair its relations with the West, Shekhovtvov noted. They could have made the argument that: "the Russians are fighting the war on international terrorism, and Russia and the West are in this together, hence Russia is no longer a pariah state, so do lift the sanctions and accept us to the club of the global powers."

But, of course, they chose another route.

"The Kremlin keeps on instilling anti-Western hatred into the Russian society by feeding it with conspiracy theories, and this hatred may lead to psychological acceptance of even more aggressive approach towards the West," Shekhovtvov wrote.

"As Voltaire wrote, 'those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.'"

Blaming the tragedy of Metrojet Flight 9268 on the West might work at home. But that will do little to change the dynamic that Moscow has set in motion with its Syria campaign.

"The Kremlin's propaganda channels feted the air strikes against Syrian rebels as a sign that the country was once again a geopolitical force to be reckoned with," veteran Kremlin-watcher Edward Lucas, author of "The New Cold War," wrote in The Telegraph.

"But the reckoning may be a bloody one. Russia is now firmly [and probably irrevocably] positioned as an enemy of conservative and radical Sunni Muslims."

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 #11
Kremlin's Campaign against Russophobia Threatens both Russia and the West, Polish Experts Say
Paul Goble

Staunton, November 11 - The Kremlin's revival of a campaign against what it calls "Russophobia" constitutes a threat not only to Western countries but to Russia's future as well, according to two Polish experts. As such, they argue, it can properly be described as "a weapon of mass destruction."

In a new study, "Russophobia in the Kremlin's Strategy," Jolanta Darczewska, Piotr Zochowski of Warsaw's Centre for Eastern Studies point out that the term itself has a long history with "deep roots in nineteenth century imperial discourse."  (The complete 28-page text is available at osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/pw_56_ang_russophobia_net.pdf.)

From the beginning, they say, it was used to define "the zone of the Russian Empire's domination" as well as to present a "vision of a distinct 'Russian world' constructed in opposition to the consumerist, 'decaying' West,' two themes that continue to echo to the present day.

Its reinstatement as a core meme of Russian propaganda now "represents the declaration of another stage of Russia's communications war with the Kremlin's opponents, both foreign and domestic." But even more than 150 years ago, those using this term "give it a universal dimension," equating it "with anti-Semitism."

For the Kremlin and its supporters, Darczewska and Zochowski say, "the Russophobe ... is a kind of classic 'enemy' of Russia" and thus can be used to inflame emotions and opinion both at home and abroad.

The two Polish analysts offer eight theses about the current anti-Russophobia campaign:

1.      As in the nineteenth century, the current Kremlin rhetoric about Russophobia is intended to "neutralize the West's criticism of the ... regime's policy of expansionism" by casting Russia as the defender of an Orthodox Christian world against a rotting and degenerate West.

2.      The Russian authorities have used campaigns against Russophobia for tactical goals including suppressing non-Russians, democrats and Jews within the country but always with "the strategic objective" of presenting the world as "the rivalry of two cultural and civilizational models."

3.      Campaigns against Russophobia are also intended to "legitimize" the Rattussian state's domestic and foreign policies among Russians by portraying the rest of the world as hostile to them and thus requiring special defense.

4.      "That which is called 'state propaganda' is actually a form of planned and long-term special operation, which employs techniques of manipulating information and elements of 'manually controlling' the general public."

5.      "This new strategy of the fight against Russophobia" entails "dangerous trends" because it "treats Russophobia as a form of intolerance toward ethnic Russians," thus tying them to the state but making all others real or at least potential enemies.

6.      The Kremlin's use of this term provides for the Russian people "a simple explanation for the ongoing tensions in relations between Russia and the West" and forecloses any questions about why such conflicts have emerged.

7.      The Kremlin's attack on Russophobia is an effort to fill the gap left by the Russian government's failure to offer "a positive program" about the future that could mobilize the population.

8.      This campaign is "a breeding ground for Russian chauvinism which in a multi-ethnic country" can be counter-productive to the goals of its authors and points to a future in which the Kremlin will further isolate Russia by increasing aggressiveness to the outside world.

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 #12
Forbes.com
November 10, 2015
ISIS, Ukraine, Georgia: In Putin's World, It Is All Connected
By Melik Kaylan

With Putin's lateral side-step to Syria, much of the world's attention to strategic matters moved away from Eastern Europe-which might explain why the Georgian Dream government in Tbilisi thought it was a good moment to persecute the main opposition TV channel Rustavi 2. And why Russian proxies are attacking in Ukraine again. During the bad old days of the Cold War, the Western world understood that Moscow coordinated its actions throughout the Eastern Bloc in places like Tbilisi and other areas of influence. We saw the significance of such a seemingly remote event. The Kremlin acted wholistically; the world understood that. These days, you're considered something of a Jeremiah having lurid visions if you argue that Russia orchestrates the sequence, timing and polemical uses of far-flung geo-strategic events.

Let's look at recent chronology and see what it yields, prima facie, about the Kremlin's coordination:

-Ceasefire in Ukraine followed by military incursion into Syria
-Ukrainian local elections preceded by a smear job on former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, now governor of Odessa
-Same smear job used to justify Tbilisi's crackdown on pro-Saakashvili TV Channel Rustavi 2 in Georgia

Now for most Westerners this switching between countries causes the mind to swim so they switch off instead. (Ukraine and Georgia at the same time, but aren't they different countries?) The Kremlin knows this full well from years of post-Soviet impunity. Distraction and disinformation surround every action, not least for Russian domestic consumption. The next incident, the horrific ISIS bombing of the Russian tourists' aircraft, instantly triggered a sudden spike in renewed attacks by pro-Russians on the Ukrainian front. This happened, in tandem with a blizzard of Russian media speculation about how the CIA was possibly complicit in the atrocity, or even Britain's M16.

Drill down a little more and you get a fascinating education in how deliberately Moscow's propaganda machine works. Having arrived at an impasse in Ukraine under pressure from global sanctions, Putin moved onto Syria. Distraction-then disinformation. On the eve of Ukrainian local elections, reports of a Saakashvili phone conversation advocating violent revolution in Georgia appears all over Georgian media. The source, they claim, is Wikileaks Ukraine. Keep in mind that a pro-Saakashvili candidate is running for mayor in Odessa against a pro-Russian candidate (who won). The Ukrainian local elections matter to Moscow. But the leak is first funneled through Georgia with the apparently legitimizing tag of Wikileaks Ukraine, thereby imitating the democratic grass-roots voice of Euromaidan truth-telling. Therefore everyone initially thinks it has to be believable.

The post later turns out to originate physically from an IP address in Russia. But in the meantime the damage is done. The leak says Saakashvili is advocating physical resistance against the Georgian government's assault on the independent TV station. True enough. But it says more. It says he's trying to provoke confrontation in Tblisi order to overthrow the Georgian Dream government. Above all, a truly slimy thread runs through the leak in which Saakashvili seems to embrace the prospect of children being hurt as a way to enhance the provocation.

If you don't know recent Georgian history you won't know the meaning of that. You have to go back to the Georgian national elections of 2012. On October 1, the day of the 2012 national election, which Saakashvili's party lost, the opposition accused his government of drowning a child in the wine vat of a private house as an act of intimidation because the child's uncle worked for the opposition. At the time, a dark cloud already hung over the country (and Saakashvili) in the wake of deeply unpleasant prison abuse videos leaked just a week before-even though the videos manifestly originated from Georgian mafia sources. Election Day proceeded with the Russians openly threatening to invade anew in case of civil strife in Georgia, while the opposition leader threatened to cause just that if Saakashvili won. Understandably, the public opted for a quiet life. A kind of mass Stockholm syndrome gripped the country. Saakashvili's activism and confronting of Russia got tarred with causing all the trouble. (Some months later the dead infant's mother retracted the accusations against Saakashvili's party.)

So, the recent Wikileaks' unmistakable message to Odessans and Ukrainians must be understood against that background echo spilling over from the past Georgian election. Get it? Saakashvili only causes strife and grief. If bad things happen, it's only because of Saakashvili's megalomania. Look, he's trying to meddle in both Georgia and Ukraine. He doesn't care about Ukraine or Odessa. And he will bring the same dark times and doings to Odessa as he did to Georgia. That's the message. Now let's look closely at the recent leaks. The posted transcript allegedly came from a conversation between now governor Saakashvili and one of his allies within Georgia. Some days after the purported transcript is posted, actual audio of the conversation is posted. The fake transcript had Saakashvili saying the following-which never happened in the audio version: "If a woman dies that will be better, even better if it's a woman with children" among other callous statements.

By the time that the real recording came out (illegally wiretapped and leaked) the details merged and got confused. The smear travelled around the Russosphere at just the right time. It wasn't until over a week after that, on November 7, that a group of young Ukrainian media activists released an analysis in Russian  detailing how the recent transcripts fit into a pattern of Kremlin disinformation especially through the channel of "Ukrainian" Wikileaks. But by then, the elections already took place in Odessa, Rustavi 2 was raided, and its management sacked and replaced by government loyalists.

In fact, both Saakashvili and his allies everywhere should engage in both countries, resist with their bodies if necessary because they're resisting Moscow proxies throughout the former Soviet bloc. The Kremlin is coordinating to dominate the region and the region's democratic activists must coordinate in response. Putin has a huge advantage because he operates ruthlessly and monolithically, invades and kills and muzzles in order to shape public opinion, reigns as a leader for life. He launched into Syria knowing the potential cost of taking on ISIS, but he had to create another crisis after Ukraine to maintain nationalist fervor in Russia. Innocent Russian tourists paid with their lives. His propaganda organs, by word and deed, rose to the occasion with blood and lies. So the conflict in Ukraine was reignited to distract from ISIS. In effect, Ukrainians had to die to distract from Putin's misstep in Syria. That's how geo-strategically the Kremlin works.

In the Cold War we understood that. It's time to understand it again.

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 #13
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
November 9, 2015
The Monster Is Dead: How Mikhail Lesin managed to kill Russian journalism
By Vitaly Portnikov
Vitaly Portnikov is a Ukrainian and Russian journalist and political expert. This article originally appeared in Kontrakty.ua

The death of the former Russian press minister Mikhail Lesin went almost unnoticed by the national media. However, Lesin is worth taking a closer look at, at least to understand the emergence of this militant, low Russian anti-journalism, which has become a part of the military intervention of Vladimir Putin's regime in our country.

15 years ago, Russian journalism was absolutely different. At that time, we were all comparing Russian and Ukrainian journalism, and admitted crestfallenly that 'there', in Russia, despite the oligarchic stranglehold, you could write the truth about what was happening; it was the place where the real political struggle took place, the one that newspapers and TV channels reported. The reports were professional. Everything was according to standards. Can anyone of sound mind say that today, Russian journalism is an example of anything but dishonesty and disregard for these standards? Yes, certainly, there are several resistant outlets, fewer of those who try to resist; fewer still pretend to be resisting. There are several journalists who have not betrayed the ideals and principles of their profession and respect their reader or viewer. But otherwise it is bottomless gloom!

Now, the engineer who created this gloom was Mikhail Lesin. Now that he is no more, we must try to understand how he created it.

The first time the red line was crossed, and when it was not just about the fight of power clans and debates of prominent analytical TV programmes, was the airing of a compromising bed video featuring "a person who looked similar to Yuriy Skuratov," the then Prosecutor General of Russia. The video appeared on the state-owned (!) TV channel, and led, in the end, to the dismissal of the Prosecutor General, who in cooperation with Switzerland's Prosecutor General Carla Del Ponte had come close to revealing the corrupt schemes of the family of then Russian President Boris Yeltsin. A special operation was launched to save the noble family, which still keeps its power levers in Russia; in Skuratov's opinion, the operation was managed by the then FSB Head Vladimir Putin. The person who prepared the footage for airing was Mikhail Lesin, deputy head of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. Just a couple months later, a person, with whom no self-respecting person should shake hands with, was appointed the minister of press of Russia. But how can this be compared to the success of the chief of the special operation, who was at first appointed by the Yeltsin's family as Prime Minister, and then as the President of the Russian Federation? And all the damaging bed videos, dirt, low blows and other nasty things will in the end join the arsenal of Russian media as the main ammunition in political struggle. And they will later be borrowed in Ukraine.

Under the new president, the new minister had new tasks. The major one was to mop up the media market, eliminating those who had not understood: the family and its appointee is their single option. The first victim of Lesin's mop-up was the Media-Most holding company [incorporating Russia's NTV TV channel] owned by Vladimir Gusinsky, who at that time, supported the power group of Yury Luzhkov and Yevgeny Primakov. The pretext for taking away the NTV channel from Gusinsky was the debts owed to Gazprom, although other Russian TV channels were not that debt-free either. Gusinsky was arrested. Lesin showed up in his cell - just think about it, a minister of press came to a prisoner's cell - and practically forced the businessman to sign the documents needed to give up his business, exchanging the bonds of the holding for his freedom. Eventually, the journalist team that used to work with Gusinsky left the channel, and NTV turned into a tool for manipulation and lie spreading, which continues today. TV debate programmes on the channel were replaced with manipulative political shows of football commentor Savik Shuster, heralding the discredit of any political struggle and the premature death of Russian politics. When this politics is dead, Shuster would transfer the manipulation model into our country, achieving the same success during the times of Viktor Yanukovych.

Of course, NTV was just the beginning. Gradually, Lesin's team brought all Russian television under Putin's control, including the regional channels. And then it became clear that the pus of Russia's propaganda was held within its furuncle, while Lesin wanted the stench to be felt by everyone. So he initiated the creation of the Russia Today TV channel headed by the lying and immoral Margarita Simonyan. The true purpose of this channel would only become clear after Russia's aggression towards Georgia and Ukraine.

Having destroyed Russian journalism and transformed it into a propagandist mouthpiece of the Kremlin criminal gang, Lesin was leading a life of a rich man occupying minor posts. His mission was accomplished, his money was earned. As any Russian Putin-stream official, he despised Russia and wanted to secure a life of ease in the United States for himself and his family. He died in the US, in Washington DC, in a high-profile hotel. No surprise in the circumstances of such a death: Lesin's Russian colleagues understood perfectly well how much he knew and how dangerous he was in his new western life, under close surveillance by the American intelligence, who were definitely interested in the former Russian minister and President Putin's advisor.

Mikhail Lesin died in a right time and in a right place.

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 #14
World Affairs
www.worldaffairsjournal.org
November 10, 2015
Morality, Pragmatism, and Orwell in Rhetoric and Policy
By Alexander Motyl
ALEXANDER J. MOTYL is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, as well as a writer and painter. He served as associate director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University from 1992 to 1998.

We've all gotten very familiar with Vladimir Putin's Orwellian logic, according to which peace is war, intervention is non-intervention, democracy is fascism, and fascism is democracy. His latest comments at the Valdai discussion club just reinforced, if any reinforcing were still necessary, the point that the man is a master of mendacity.

We generally don't expect equally bizarre ethical or logical standards from Western commentators. And yet they do occur, especially with regard to Putin, Russia, and their war in Ukraine.

On October 20th, Professor Mark Galeotti of New York University argued that the "West has lost the right to lecture Putin." According to Galeotti:

"This is not simple 'whataboutism,' that classic trick of deflecting criticism through raising the other side's real or alleged flaws. Rather it is to note that Washington is currently seeking to have its cake and eat it. It can choose to base its foreign policy on strict moral principles or geopolitical pragmatism.

"At present, it seems happy to act pragmatically but think morally. Thus it genuinely considers Putin not simply an antagonist, but an immoral one.

"This is dangerous and foolish.... Castigating [Putin's Russia] on moral grounds, without behaving in an unimpeachably moral way, is simply going to alienate Moscow, undermine Western credibility, and create a wholly false series of assumptions on which to base policy.

"The uncomfortable truth is that in Syria, as in so many other ways, Putin is simply ruthlessly exploiting and expanding precedents already set by the West."

Galeotti's suggestion that the choice before policymakers is either "strict moral principles" or "geopolitical pragmatism" is absurd. The fact is that Western democracies do indeed attempt to combine both principles; they do not just "act pragmatically but think morally." True, Western democracies as often fail to combine both principles as they succeed. But 100 percent success is not the point. Instead, the point is to try to be both pragmatic and moral-no easy task.

In this respect, Western democracies differ fundamentally from authoritarian dictatorships, fascist states, and autocracies such as Putin's Russia. Putin makes no effort whatsoever to combine morality with pragmatism. Indeed, he twists morality as need be in order to pursue his ends. A guilty conscience is thus impossible in Putin's warped moral universe, while guilty consciences are built into the very fabric of Western thought. When the West criticizes others for their misdeeds, it effectively criticizes itself. Although the West is frequently hypocritical, its hypocrisy is testimony to the fact that it does have ethical standards, even, or especially when, it violates them. As a result, the West doesn't just have the right to criticize Putin: It has the obligation to do so.

Take Galeotti's argument to its logical conclusion, and you'd have to claim that no one but a saint should dare to express ethical reservations about anything or anybody.

Even more bizarre standards are found in a commentary by Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, who believes that the recently released "MH17 crash report shows no side was innocent." According to Bershidsky, while it's true that "the Buk missile that destroyed the plane must have been launched from rebel-held territory," Ukraine "failed in its duty by allowing passenger jets to fly over the conflict area." To be sure, says Bershidsky, "while there can be no moral equivalency between arming or protecting the perpetrators of that crime, and failing to close the skies, the uncomfortable truth laid bare by the report is that both sides in the conflict were glaringly incompetent."

Come again? The rebels or the Russians commit a heinous crime by deliberately shooting down a plane, and that's mere incompetence? Even if they believed it was a military plane-which may be unlikely, given the high altitude at which MH17 was flying-the fact is that they deliberately decided to shoot it down. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians fail to imagine that the rebels or Russians would actually shoot down passenger planes and they, too, are as incompetent as the rebels or Russians who actually commit the crime?

Competence or incompetence is not the issue here, just as it is not the issue in any crime. The only relevant questions are: Was a crime committed and who committed it? And the answers to both questions are: Yes, a crime was committed because a plane was deliberately shot down, and the Russians or their proxies fired the missile that destroyed the plane.

Bershidsky doesn't take his argument far enough. Logically, he should also accuse the pilot of MH17 and its passengers of being equally incompetent and hence indirectly complicit. After all, who but an incompetent would decide to fly over a war zone? Who but an incompetent would fail to determine beforehand whether the plane would be flying over contested territory?

The questions are as obscene as the moral standards of Putin and his apologists.

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 #15
Kennan Institute
November 9, 2015
Russia's Way of Managing Responsibility or Why the Kremlin Will Have To Escalate in Syria
By Maxim Trudolyubov
Maxim Trudolyubov is a Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute and the Editor-at-Large of Vedomosti, an independent Russian daily.

The cause of the most terrible plane crash in Russian history has not yet been named. Officially, there is still a possibility that the crash of the Russian passenger plane that went down on the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, on October 31st was due to a technical failure, not an act of terror. But still, there is a responsibility to be assumed: either for aircraft maintenance or for Russia's role in the Syrian war. The two types of responsibility are vastly different, but they both involve holding state officials accountable for protecting citizens' safety.

I do not expect anyone high-placed to admit guilt for what happened in Egypt two weeks ago. One thing to understand about Russia is that responsibility does not work in our country the way it does in many other places. If a Russian politician does something that leads to a disaster, he or she would work to change the narrative, not to change the policy, let alone assume responsibility and quit.

Prime Minister Victor Ponta of Romania resigned a few days ago after a fire at a nightclub killed 32 people and triggered a wave of protest against corruption. Martin Winterkorn stepped down last month as the CEO of Volkswagen over the emissions scandal at the German automaker. John Boehner resigned as Speaker over political turmoil in his own party and left the U.S. Congress in October. Not all of those who should leave office actually do so. Not all of those who leave do it in good faith. But still, even cynical politicians and rampant careerists sometimes assume responsibility and make an exit.

Moves like this are extremely rare in our country. In Russia, people don't quit voluntarily. When they do, we remember it for years: these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Boris Yeltsin's resignation in 1999 is probably the best-known and highest-level retirement throughout the post-Soviet years.

None of the terrible accidents, corruption scandals, or cases of gross mismanagement that I can think of ever caused voluntary resignations. A deadly fire in a nightclub where more than 150 people died in a stampede (Perm, 2009) did not lead to a resignation. A special forces operation that lead to 130 civilian deaths (the Dubrovka hostage crisis, 2002) did not either.

I actually don't even mean this as social or political criticism. We have seen so much of this kind of official behavior in Russia that it is probably time to recognize it as the norm. One might even call it a tradition. "As personal servants of the Tsar, officials of the Imperial civil service stood above the law," Richard Pipes wrote in his book on the Russian Revolution. "A chinovnik (official) could be indicted and put on trial only with the permission of his superior." (Pipes, Richard. The Russian Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. P.63)

An official is accountable to his or her superior, not to voters or society in general. This is a tradition that persisted throughout Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. The Kremlin does sometimes fire and even prosecute government ministers and regional governors, but this usually happens a year or two after exposure so it can't be said that these people were dismissed as a result of popular indignation. The Kremlin doesn't want ordinary citizens to develop a sense of being able to influence political outcomes.

But how about the Kremlin itself? How does presidential responsibility work? The current rules of the political game in Russia tell us that the incumbent has to keep the upper hand in all situations. This means the supreme leader is infallible in policy matters. The Kremlin will do more of what it is doing now, not less.

The wrong logic, from the Kremlin perspective, would be to let everyone think that Vladimir Putin led the Russian military into Syria to help out the embattled Bashar al-Assad and to undermine American strategy in the Middle East, and that this resulted in 224 innocent deaths. The Kremlin will have to inverse the logic of cause and effect and make sure the terrorist act is seen as a reason for Russia to fight terrorism in Syria. Russia, almost surely, will now ramp up its troop deployment in Syria.

And it will likely cause cheers domestically. In today's Russia, every reaction goes through the filter of emergency, because Russia exists in an unannounced emergency situation fueled by television and the general influence of the Kremlin. If the cause of the plane going down in Egypt is to be officially recognized as terrorism, the Russian popular thinking, the way I see it, would be as follows: we have to take it as a blow and move on. We are at war and to leave Syria would mean accepting a defeat. We have to uproot and fight the cause of the terrorist threat, which is somewhere in Syria. We have to kill it before it kills us. Russia is eager to go in. A long time will have to pass before Russia would be eager to get out.

The Kremlin has taught Russians to believe that every bad thing is an act of aggression from some outside force. The Kremlin and Putin are not seen as responsible for the tragedy of the plane crash. Even if the decision to intervene in Syria was a disaster, it does not mean, in popular thinking, that Russia has to withdraw. Even if the Kremlin did not plan for a larger-scale campaign in Syria, it will now have to escalate. This is the result of the Kremlin's success in avoiding responsibility and blaming everything on foreign sources. Domestically, Putin is now expected to escalate Russia's war effort in the Middle East.

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 #16
Wall Street Journal
November 10, 2015
Ukraine: Cyberwar's Hottest Front
Ukraine gives glimpse of future conflicts where attackers combine computer and traditional assaults
By MARGARET COKER and  PAUL SONNE

KIEV, Ukraine-Three days before Ukraine's presidential vote last year, employees at the national election commission arrived at work to find their dowdy Soviet-era headquarters transformed into the front line of one of the world's hottest ongoing cyberwars.

The night before, while the agency's employees slept, a shadowy pro-Moscow hacking collective called CyberBerkut attacked the premises. Its stated goal: To cripple the online system for distributing results and voter turnout throughout election day. Software was destroyed. Hard drives were fried. Router settings were undone. Even the main backup was ruined.

The carnage stunned computer specialists the next morning. "It was like taking a cold shower," said Victor Zhora, director of the Ukrainian IT firm Infosafe, which helped set up the network for the elections. "It really was the first strike in the cyberwar."

In just 72 hours, Ukraine would head to the polls in an election crucial to cementing the legitimacy of a new pro-Western government, desperate for a mandate as war exploded in the country's east. If the commission didn't offer its usual real-time online results, doubts about the vote's legitimacy would further fracture an already divided nation.

The attack ultimately failed to derail the vote. Ukrainian computer specialists mobilized to restore operations in time for the elections. But the intrusion heralded a new era in Ukraine that showed how geopolitical confrontation with Russia could give rise to a nebulous new cabal of cyberfoes, bent on undermining and embarrassing authorities trying to break with the Kremlin.

In the last two years, cyberattacks have hit Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense and the presidential administration. Military communications lines and secure databases at times were compromised, according to Ukrainian presidential and security officials. A steady flow of hacked government documents have appeared on the CyberBerkut website.

Ukraine offers a glimpse into the type of hybrid warfare that Western military officials are urgently preparing for: battles in which traditional land forces dovetail with cyberattackers to degrade and defeat an enemy. It also illustrates the difficulties that nations face in identifying and defending against a more powerful cyberfoe.

Unprepared

Ukrainian leaders are lacking in capabilities needed to mount a response to the electronic attacks. North Atlantic Treaty Organization members last year agreed to fund and build a new cyberdefense command center for Kiev, but legislative and bureaucratic delays have stalled the project. Ukraine is still working on passing a new law designed to step up its digital defenses.

Officials in Kiev are united in their accusations about who is orchestrating or commissioning the hundreds of cyberattacks they have tallied: Russia. They cite Russia's military doctrine that describes cyberweaponry as a key pillar of the country's armed forces and the adoption of "enhanced and nonmilitary measures" to achieve military goals. The officials, however, didn't offer any smoking gun linking the attacks to Moscow's security services.

"We consider that there is only one country in the world that would benefit from these attacks, and this is Russia," said Vitaliy Naida, Ukraine's head of counterintelligence.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the accusations, calling them "absurd" and noting that Russian computers are also regularly attacked by hackers. The Kremlin has denied that Russian military personnel played a role in occupying parts of east Ukraine and in backing rebels there.

CyberBerkut posted its claim of responsibility for the election commission hack on its website a day after the attack. The group presents itself as an independent Ukrainian organization. It didn't respond to requests sent via its website for comment about allegations that it works on behalf of Russia. It has never revealed the names of its members.

U.S. spies and security researchers say Russia is particularly skilled at developing hacking tools. They blame Russia for breaking into President Barack Obama's email and infiltrating unclassified servers at the Pentagon and State Department. Russia has denied the accusations.

Ukraine has a plethora of criminal hackers, who are pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Ukraine's recently launched cyberpolice for their alleged role in bank fraud, among other crimes, but the Ukrainian government hasn't recruited them for cyber counterattacks or defense against Russia, according to Mr. Naida.

When Russia seized Crimea and backed the uprising in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in early 2014, cyberinvaders had easy access to the country's largely unguarded electronic frontiers.

The country was particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks and espionage, given its high reliance on Russian technology, ranging from the telecommunications backbone to the antivirus software that was running on many government computers. At the same time, Russia loyalists riddled the ranks of the security service, challenging any attempt to put up defenses.

Ukrainian government officials, including those in the security services and military, habitually conducted official business via personal email addresses hosted by Russian-language email platforms with servers based in Russia, according to Mr. Naida, the counterintelligence chief.

Even today, more than half of Ukrainian government computers operate pirated software, lacking proper security updates, and many also use Russian antivirus software, according to Dmytro Shymkiv, the deputy head of the presidential administration and a former Microsoft executive in Ukraine.

These vulnerabilities mean that since last year hundreds of government computers have been compromised by malware designed for espionage, according to Ukrainian officials and computer experts who have investigated the attacks.

Computer engineers say most of those infections trace back to four unique computer virus families that have developed independently of one another but share certain basic characteristics. The virus creators typed in Cyrillic; they worked in a time zone that encompasses Moscow and Kiev; and they included sophisticated coding likely requiring full-time efforts, indicating sponsorship by a nation-state.

"These are very customized," said Alan Neville, from the computer security response department at Symantec Corp., a global computer security company. "No one is going to take time to develop a tool unless they are under orders to do so or have a contract to do so."

One computer virus strain targeting the Ukrainian government was malware first used in a Russian Ponzi scheme in 2012, which hackers have retooled for cyberespionage, according to security company ESET, which analyzed the malware for its Ukrainian clients.

Another separate strain is an evolved version of malware that attacked U.S. military's Central Command computer servers in 2008, a virus that U.S. officials believe was developed by Russian state agencies.

Russia has denied this allegation.

The enhanced virus-dubbed Turla, or Snake in English-infected Ukrainian diplomatic computers, according to computer experts familiar with the situation, as an intrusive tool to steal sensitive data.

Primary targets were Ukrainian embassies in Europe, including those in Belgium and France, these people said. Through the summer of 2014, Ukraine's diplomats lobbied Western capitals to take a stronger stance against Moscow's aggression.

"Turla started to appear in Ukraine starting with the beginning of the conflict early last year," says Alex Gostev, chief security expert at Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab.

Dmytro Shevchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said cyberattacks against the ministry's institutions took place "steadily, all the time" during 2014, aimed primarily at espionage. He didn't detail the type of viruses.

Mr. Naida said that infections haven't penetrated the ministry's classified servers.

Western officials said the Foreign Ministry breach was inconvenient, but that it didn't adversely affect Ukraine's diplomatic goals.

The ministry's attempt to parry the infection last year was to delete work email identities of its diplomats and assign them new email addresses on new servers. Ukraine's government computer specialists also tackled the infection.

Within the armed forces, cyberattackers have targeted security units battling pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, including a classified computer network at the military headquarters in Kramatorsk, according to Mr. Naida. "The aim was to kill all the information, to destroy all the information on those computers" to cripple intelligence-gathering and decision-making by commanders, he said. He declined to give specifics about the damage caused by the attack.

Political upheaval

By the time of the May 2014 election, Ukraine's new pro-Western leaders were desperate to cement their authority. Pro-Western demonstrators in Kiev had forced President Viktor Yanukovych to step down. Russia was covertly supporting a territorial grab by rebels in the east, and the new acting president lacked a mandate to lead Ukraine's troops.

Ukraine itself was divided. Russian propaganda regularly assailed the acting authorities in Kiev as an illegitimate "junta" installed by the West. A large swath of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east sympathized.

Amid this political friction, election commission officials finished the routine preparations for a national vote. They commissioned a commercial computer company to help set up the necessary IT infrastructure to upload preliminary results and voter turnout numbers.

Three days before the Sunday election, CyberBerkut issued a statement denouncing the vote. "The anti-people junta is trying to legalize itself by organizing this show, directed by the West," the group said. "We will not allow it!"

At around 3 a.m. Thursday, the group launched its attack, spending hours rooting through the network and destroying data, according to Ukrainian officials and computer experts.

When the workday started, the agency's staff discovered the damage. They no longer had the ability to provide a real-time tally of the voting results. Although Ukrainian voters would still be able to cast their paper ballots, a lack of immediate official results could hurt the election's legitimacy.

With just over 48 hours until the start of the election, Ukraine's cyberspecialists, including those in the security service, camped out at the election agency headquarters, some fueled by Red Bull to keep them awake, as they tried to rebuild the system. "Our people didn't sleep for five days," Mr. Zhora said.

The details of the events in the days after the attack come from interviews with four Ukrainian security and election officials and computer experts involved in the investigation.

The specialists immediately had a lucky break: The original team that had set up the network had created a second backup of the system, disconnected from the Internet, giving them a timesaving head start.

CyberBerkut taunted the commission. It released a string of documents from the election agency's network, including photos of the election commissioner's bathroom renovation, pictures of his and his wife's passports and emails sent by Western officials to Ukrainian election organizers.

"Before there were little things-[distributed denial of service] attacks and viruses. But this was a serious, preplanned attack," said Valeriy Striganov, the head IT operator at the election commission.

The attackers published online what they called a "report on the hack," which included a detailed map of the Central Election Commission's computer network. The group claimed to have penetrated the system using a zero-day vulnerability-an unknown hole in a software application-in the network's Cisco firewall.

Ukrainian authorities later passed the information to Cisco Systems Inc. The U.S.-based company said it found no vulnerability in its product.

At election headquarters, the team scrambled to bolster the system's defenses against any fresh attack. They tightened restrictions over who could access the election results data. They also cut off Internet access to computers at commission headquarters.

By the time the sun rose on May 25, the downed system had come back to life, and Ukrainians headed to the polls. But a fresh assault had already started.

Hackers bombed the Central Election Commission website with a distributed denial-of-service attack, attempting to bring the system down again by causing it to seize up from the volume and intensity of computer messages.

The site stayed up, thanks to the stronger defenses.

As Sunday progressed, preliminary results indicated that Petro Poroshenko, a chocolate tycoon and former foreign minister, was on pace to win a majority. Exit polls also suggested a poor showing by far-right candidates, despite Russian state media warning of a fascist takeover in Ukraine.

Then, one of the far-right candidates appeared to get a strange boost. A hoax chart depicting a victory for extreme-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh appeared online. The Central Election Commission seemed to be hosting the file.

Soon, Russia's most popular state news program was showing the chart on air. Hackers appear to have placed the file on the server that usually hosts the election commission website, and then circulated that Web address, according to people familiar with the incident, who said the image wasn't accessible to the general public from the main home page at the time.

In a statement, CyberBerkut suggested it wasn't responsible for the faked results, saying those looking for answers should ask Ukraine's election commissioner. No other claim of responsibility has been made.

The faked results were almost immediately debunked, and Russian television posted authentic tallies from the election commission. The day ended with Mr. Poroshenko winning 55% of the vote.

The head of the Special Communications Service at the time characterized the election attack as an urgent warning of Ukraine's vulnerabilities. It was one of the few sizable attacks publicized by Ukrainian authorities, in part because specialists managed to salvage the system.

Attacks that cause irreparable damage tend to go unrevealed. "Very often when there is a real penetration you will never hear [about it], because it's never disclosed," says Mr. Shymkiv. "At the same time, when somebody defends it, you will hear the stories."

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#17
YaleGlobal Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu
October 27, 2015
Wanted: Competent Foreigners to Work for Ukrainian Government
Ukraine welcomes foreigners for cabinet posts - ending bureaucracy for other sectors could break corruption, encourage innovation

Ukraine is in political and economic turmoil after Russia's takeover of Crimea and support of separatists in the eastern part of the nation. The government cannot afford inefficiencies, and a new law allows the government led by President Petro Poroshenko to hire foreigners for top ministerial posts. The goal is to curtail corruption and encourage innovation. "While the process has been eased for appointing foreigners to government positions, other sectors are subject to strict regulations on hiring foreign nationals," writes Olena Lennon, former Fulbright scholar from Horlivka, Ukraine, who teaches foreign policy and conflict resolution at the University of New Haven. "Considering the deep penetration of corruption in daily routines, simplifying employment and entrepreneurship for foreign nationals could make economic sense." The government has simplified procedures for hiring IT professionals from abroad, and she recommends streamlining the process for hiring teachers, economists and many other professionals to save money and strengthen Ukraine's business culture. - YaleGlobal

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Wanted: Competent Foreigners to Work for Ukrainian Government
Ukraine welcomes foreigners for cabinet posts - ending bureaucracy for other sectors could break corruption, encourage innovation
By Olena Lennon
Olena Lennon, PhD, is a former Fulbright scholar from Horlivka, Ukraine, teaching foreign policy and conflict resolution at the University of New Haven. Her hometown of Horlivka, located in the Donetsk province of Eastern Ukraine, Donbas, has been one of the main strongholds of Russian-backed separatists in recent months. She has written for Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Journal of Political Risk, Higher Education in Europe and other publications.

NEW HAVEN: At the onset of Russia-backed separatism in early 2014, some in Donbas of eastern Ukraine would say "better to have our own stupid master than a smart foreign master." It's a spin on the Russian proverb about husbands - "Better your own idiot than a smart stranger."

The expression would suggest that the newly installed Ukrainian government, however inadequate, is  better than a foreign Russian government, however more adequate that might be perceived by the people of Donbas.

In announcing comprehensive reforms targeted at breaking the circle of "our people" and inviting foreigners to lead the country, President Petro Poroshenko is not taking such proverbs to heart. Instead, he has pursued a skilled team, proposing a law last November to allow foreigners to take top government positions and simplify procedures for granting Ukrainian citizenship through fast tracking with presidential approval.

The move to invite foreigners into the government, while controversial, is an effective strategy for breaking corruption links and adopting new ideas.

Within a month of his proposition, three foreigners were appointed to Ukraine's new government: US-born Natalie Jaresko as finance minister, Lithuania's Aivaras Abromavicius as economy minister and Aleksandre Kvitashvili of Georgia as health minister. Each was granted Ukrainian citizenship by presidential decree and joined a 19-member cabinet, of which 15 percent is foreigners. In May, Poroshenko appointed the fiercely anti-Russian former Georgian leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, as governor of the strategic Odessa region. Back in Georgia, a chief prosecutor had indicted Saakashvili on the violent crackdown of peaceful demonstrators in 2007 among other charges. The International Prosecution Advisory Panel approved the indictment. As of August, Interpol refused to issue a warrant for the former Georgian president.

Appointment of foreign nationals to ministerial posts in Ukraine shocked the international community.

The appointment of foreign nationals to the ministerial positions in a notoriously corrupt, patriarchal and patrimonial society came as a shock to the international community, evidence of Ukraine's dire economic situation and western pressures for reform. Incorporating foreigners, including the diaspora, into domestic politics is rare in post-Soviet countries. Prominent examples include Valdas Adamkus, president of Lithuania from 1998 to 2003 and again from 2004 to 2009, despite his US citizenship, and Vaira Vike-Freiberga, president of Latvia from 1999 to 2007, who held Canadian citizenship.

Poroshenko's move received mixed reviews in Ukraine, as well. Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko questioned if the new ministers were prepared. "These people do not have any experience of how our government system works, and yet they will have to quickly decide how to reform it," he said.Ukrainian politologist, Vadym Karasyov, called the three ministers "pigs in a poke," in an interview with the newspaper Segodnya. In response to Saakashvili's appointment, Georgia expert Lincoln Mitchel criticized the move for reflecting "a belief, on the part of Mr. Poroshenko, that in a country of well over 40 million people, there is not one person who is sufficiently smart, incorruptible, loyal to the President and visionary enough to serve as governor of this key region."

Supporters of the new law said outsiders would have fewer links to existing networks, which could facilitate anti-corruption reforms. Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danylo Lubkivskij, insisting there's nothing wrong with expertise "made" abroad, drew an analogy with iPhones, pointing out "we don't make iPhones, but we use them and it is good for us." Ironically, among the first parties in the parliament to approve the appointment of foreign ministers was "Self Reliance." Yet, party members noted that they would prefer foreign experts to be of Ukrainian origin and at least from the diaspora.
While the process has been eased for appointing foreigners to government positions, other sectors are subject to strict regulations on hiring foreign nationals. Considering the deep penetration of corruption in daily routines, simplifying employment and entrepreneurship for foreign nationals could make economic sense.

The process is eased for placing foreigners in government posts, yet other sectors are under strict regulation.

Ukraine is notorious for cumbersome procedures for foreigners either seeking a work visa or as permanent residents, typically through a Ukraine-born spouse, seeking legal employment. Social networking sites maintained by the expats include personal tips on legal loopholes, bribery networks and lawyer referrals.

For example, a native English speaker with a master's degree from an accredited public university with experience in higher education tried to get a job teaching English at a college in eastern Ukraine. Obtaining the required documents - translated, notarized and verified by Ukraine's Ministry of Education - took six months. The determination: The teacher could speak English, but was not qualified to teach the subject. The school, in dire need of native speakers, denied the individual full employment, but offered temporary, entry-level employment at minimum pay, about $100 a month. Anecdotes about the near impossibility for foreigners of opening a bank account or registering a company are common.

The World Bank Group ranks Ukraine 96th out of 189 countries for ease of doing business.

Talent is needed. In January 2015, Ukraine adopted a resolution on Deregulation of Business Activity, simplifying issuance of work permits for foreign nationals. The resolution also simplified procedures for employment of foreign IT specialists and graduates from leading foreign universities. The resolution is a move in the right direction yet not sufficient for needed transformation of Ukraine's economy and the fight against corruption.

According to Ukraine's National Migration Services, at the end of 2014, Ukraine had some 250,000 foreigners permanently residing in Ukraine and more than 75,000 on a temporary stay. These two categories combined make up less than 1 percent of Ukraine's population. Based on Ukraine's State Border Guard Service data, during 2010-2013, the number of foreigners entering Ukraine had grown steadily: on average 1.5 percent annually. The number decreased by a staggering 50.8 percent in 2014, coinciding with conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

Industries employing the greatest number of foreigners, from 2010 to 2014, included processing, trade, repair of motor vehicles and household appliances, and construction. Most workers were contracted for short-term work. Foreign professionals in education and finance make up a mere 4 percent. The top three sending countries: Turkey, 18.4 percent; Russia, 17.6 percent; and Poland, 5.8 percent.

Ukraine needs a critical mass of people to change old mind sets, promoting transparency and open-mindedness.

Ukraine needs a critical mass of people willing to invest in the economy, changing an old mindset and business culture to promote transparency, rule of law and open-mindedness. Targeted professions should be expanded beyond IT specialists to include teachers, economists, social workers and more. Foreign professionals are particularly relevant with Poroshenko's declaration of 2016 as the year of English language in Ukraine, with knowledge of English to be required for public service positions. To be effective, these initiatives must be accompanied by normative and legal changes in employment procedures.

Resources are few for Ukraine's government, and efficiency could save money. For example, the Ministry of Education could accept that US university accreditation is rigorous enough for Ukraine; the resolution simplifying the procedure for "leading" foreign universities should be expanded to include accredited institutions. The government should also differentiate among countries for level of scrutiny applied in verification of credentials.

Ukraine is in dire need of foreign investment, entrepreneurship and world-class specialists. Inviting foreigners to participate in the country's political life is not without controversy. The president is making an attempt to put meritocracy above bureaucracy. The next step is to extend the invitation to qualified foreigners in other sectors of Ukraine's economy and simplify cumbersome procedures. In the list of Ukraine's popular proverbs, "picking the cream of the crop" may soon replace "picking the lesser of two evils." 

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 #18
www.christiantoday.com
November 10, 2015
U.K. lumps Russia together with ISIS and Ebola virus as major threats to its national security
By Shianee Mamanglu-Regala

The United Kingdom has tagged Russia as the biggest threat to its national security alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and the Ebola virus.

In its latest list of potential threats, Britain cited Russia's increasing aggression, in particular President Vladimir Putin's "willingness to display force,'' as having unnerved its defence security network, the Daily Express reported.

Global terrorism, radicalisation by the ISIS and other extreme groups, migration crisis and global health threats like Ebola also made it to the list.

The new roster of potential threats was put together by the British government after a major security review that the U.K. performs every five years. It is expected to become a key part of the U.K.'s National Security Strategy which Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to announce on Nov. 23, according to The Sunday Times.

According to the report, Russia made it to the top spot due to the Ukrainian crisis. The crash of a Russian Airbus 321 jet in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula also reportedly added to British security concerns.

"Russia's actions in Ukraine have introduced question marks over the role and future of NATO operations in neighbouring countries and re-awakened the threat posed by Russia to states in Eastern Europe and the Baltic, some of which are NATO and/or EU member states,'' the Strategy document said, according to the Times.

Moscow's increased involvement in the Middle East, such as Russian airstrikes against terror targets in Syria, renewed flights by strategic bombers, and submarine activity in the north Atlantic have also alarmed the U.K. leadership.

In addition, the country's increasing isolation in international politics, increased military spending and apparent willingness to display force in the face of universal condemnation "suggest the next five years could well see an escalation of the Russian threat to the security of Western Europe.''

In the previous security strategy released in 2010, Russia was not mentioned as a threat, The Daily Mail noted.

Another country that has unnerved U.K. authorities is China, which it claimed is responsible for "authoritarianism and persistent human rights abuses.'' The strategy likewise cited as concerns in the escalating tensions in the South China Sea and China's closer relations with Russia.

The ongoing migration crisis in Europe as well as climate change and organised crime; the global increase in religious fundamentalism and intolerance across religions are also among those considered major concerns in Britain.

"In particular Islamic separatists and fundamentalists are now seen a serious threat in destabilised parts of the world,'' said the report.

The other danger that made it to the list is the rampant health epidemic such as the Ebola crisis this year, which killed more than 11,000 people worldwide mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in South Africa.

As of August 2015, there were 28,041 Ebola cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

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 #19
National Public Radio (NPR)
November 11, 2015
A Post-Soviet Baby Bust Comes Back To Bite Russia
By Corey Flintoff

Moscow may be projecting a tough image abroad, but Russia is facing severe internal problems, including worrying trends that suggest the world's biggest country could run short of people.

That's not what you might assume, judging by the number of babies in buggies and strollers in any large Russian city. At a neighborhood park in St. Petersburg full of young families with children and toddlers, it looks like this country is in the midst of a baby boom.

Natasha and Shariv Azizov are here with their three children. Natasha says they're looking forward to having more, because, as Christians, they regard children as a blessing. "We don't know how many more children God will give us, but we're grateful to God for those we have so far," she says.

Her husband Shariv just grins. "We'd stop at 15," he says.

They say that even though Russia is facing a financial crisis, they regard a big family as a good investment, because brothers and sisters will take care of each other - and their parents - in the future.

Gayane Safarova, head demographer at the Institute for Economics and Mathematics in St. Petersburg, says couples like the Azizovs aren't unusual for Russians in their 20s and 30s.

"At present," Safarova says, "the total fertility rate is about the same as in the majority of developed European countries."

Young Russian women are having babies at a rate of 13 per 1,000 people, roughly the same as their contemporaries in Germany or France. But those countries have demographic issues of their own, and Russia, meanwhile, doesn't have enough young women.

During the turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many people chose not to have children, leaving Russia with a demographic deficit.

The population was around 148 million at the time of the Soviet breakup. Russia then saw its population decline - something that is extraordinarily rare for a country during peacetime.

The numbers dipped as low as 142 million, but have edged back up to about 144 million today. (Russia also includes the more than 2 million people in Crimea, which it annexed last year from the Ukraine. That would bring the number to 146 million, though the annexation is not recognized internationally).

Regardless of how you count, Russia's population is still smaller than it was at the time of the Soviet breakup nearly a quarter-century ago.

"The number of potential mothers is not big, so we can't expect the growth of the number of births in the future," Safarova says.

Russian planners fear that this smaller group of mothers may continue the trend - by having fewer children themselves. That would have implications for whether Russia will be able to find enough workers for its factories - or soldiers for its armies.

Mark Adomanis, who analyzes Russian economic trends for Forbes, says there's another disturbing statistic: Russia's death rate recently rose by 5.2 percent between early 2014 and early 2015, after several years of declines. And one trend in particular stood out.

"There's been a modest increase in alcohol poisonings over the first part of 2015," Adomanis says. "They had been on a sharp downward trend for almost all the 2000s, and that is very disconcerting, because any uptick in that death rate has in the past gone alone with some pretty worrying trends."

Adomanis says those trends include other indicators that add up to an increase in accidents and health problems. Russians, especially men, used to be notorious for smoking, drinking and reckless behavior.

Even now, with steady improvements in life expectancy, Russian men - whose life expectancy was about 56 years in 1995 - today have an average life span of just under 66 years. Men in Europe live on average 10 years longer.

Analysts say Russia's economic crisis is likely to affect both the rate of deaths and births. When times are tough, people tend to take less care of their health, so death rates rise. If people are uncertain about their financial future, birth rates fall.

Take, for example, another couple I met in that park in St. Petersburg. They didn't want to give their names because they're unmarried, she's pregnant and their parents aren't happy with the situation.

The young woman says most of her friends are putting off having children because of the economy.

"Maybe it's because of the crisis, that's why so few people are planning to have kids," she says. "It takes a lot of money to feed the baby, to buy everything. It costs a lot more than it did before the crisis."

The latest economic figures suggest that Russians could be facing more years of financial hardship. And that could make the country's demographic problems even worse.

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 #20
CNN.com
November 8, 2015
Billionaire investor: Russia faces demographic disaster
By Matt Egan   

It's no secret that Vladimir Putin wants modern day Russia to be larger -- much like the Soviet Union.

But the Russian president's imperialistic flair may be driven more by economics than political ambition.

At least that's the theory put forth by billionaire investor Jeffrey Gundlach, who says that Putin's efforts to reclaim Russian-speaking territories are fueled by a looming demographic disaster.

Russia is aging rapidly. Its working-age population is on track to shrink by 14% over the next 35 years, posing a real risk to economic growth.

"Russia will have the largest implosion of population in the history of the world," Gundlach said last week at ETF.com's Fixed Income Conference. The legendary investor said that's excluding war, famine or disease.

"No wonder Mr. Putin wants to take over other nations that are Russian-centric. He needs people," he said.

In recent years Putin has brought Crimea back under Russian control and has sought to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. There are concerns that he will try to reassert power over other Russian-speaking territories in countries like Estonia and Latvia too.

Gundlach, who is the founder of elite fixed-income firm DoubleLine Capital, pointed to Russia's elevated mortality rates and a very low fertility rate.

Even the World Bank is worried about these issues. It recently urged Russia to try to reduce the impact of aging by encouraging individuals to save more, raising the country's relatively low retirement age and cutting down on bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking.

"Without adequate adjustments of policies and behaviors, an aging population could impair national growth and fiscal sustainability," the World Bank said in a report that pointed out Russia's population of those over 60 more than doubled to 18% in 2010 from 7.7% in 1950.

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 #21
Carnegie Moscow Center
November 3, 2015
Russia's Stable Stagnation
By Andrey Movchan
Andrey Movchan is a senior associate and director of the Economic Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Russia is reverting to the same economic level it had fifteen years ago. Small and medium-sized businesses, which could boost the economy, are held back by regulation and corruption. As a major economic catastrophe is unlikely, this state of affairs looks set to continue into the long term.

Predictions about the future of the Russian economy have generally proved wrong. After the turn of the millennium, there were hopes that the enormous influx of  oil money would finally turn Russia into a civilized country. Corruption would disappear, political competition would emerge, and private entrepreneurs would get the chance to shape new laws.

This didn't happen. In fact, the country is now regressing to the level it was at in the late 1990s-and it risks remaining there for decades.

The Russian economy does have one hidden resource-small and medium-sized businesses. They currently account for less than 20 percent of the GDP, but could potentially comprise as much as 50 percent. But this resource remains untapped. On the contrary, the state's role in the economy keeps growing.

To ruin the environment for business, the government doesn't need to arrest businessmen or tax them excessively. Heavy regulation and preferential treatment of state-run enterprises do the job perfectly. Take a look at the banking sector. The state enables some banks to conceal their losses, undermining competition. It forces private banks to invest in infrastructure to comply with regulations and hands out money to large state-run banks, allowing them to lower the costs of their services and increase their market share.

This situation will definitely deteriorate, but it is unlikely to become catastrophic. The fusion between the state and big business will continue. The small and medium business sector will manage to survive as long as the market economy does. It will do so despite absorbing the high price of capital and paying exorbitant costs to defend its rights by measures that include avoiding taxes and recruiting criminals for protection.

A few little islands of private-sector activity in Russia-such as engineering-remain, where private companies are still working for Rosneft or Gazprom. But even this zone is quickly disappearing as certain well-known individuals tell private businessmen, "I get 75 percent, or you get no contract."

Take a look at the United States, where the entire service sector consists of small and medium-sized businesses. They dominate the hotel and hospital sector, construction, architecture and engineering, and even supply the army. Of course, businesses of this size can't build an airplane, but they can produce most of its parts.

Russia's problem is that this sector is stuck on the level of retail stores, cafés, and beauty salons. Private schools or clinics, for instance, do not stand a chance in today's Russia. They could be tremendously important drivers of economic development, training the future workforce or treating workers and raising productivity.  But private schools are stifled by regulations, and good private medical facilities require enormous capital investment. The risks are just too high-and here I am talking from my own experience. After hearing that it would take eight years for a return on investment for a medical clinic project, a large investor told me, "There won't even be a Russia in eight years."

A few tweaks cannot turn around this situation. If we give out low-interest loans, as we are doing in the agricultural sector, what do we get in return? Company A got a high-interest loan, and Company B-a low-interest one, but it had to pay a bribe in order to get it, losing its advantage in the process.
Tax breaks are just as ineffective. They may save a business 5-10 percent of its tax burden, but that is nothing compared with the threat it faces from racketeers or law enforcement raids. And what's the point of talking about tax breaks anyway, when 80 percent of Russia's regions are on the verge of bankruptcy?

The example of Argentina is proof that the current system can endure almost indefinitely. Almost nothing has changed there in the last 100 years. Sometimes members of the opposition are shot, and sometimes they are invited to serve in parliament, but no major changes occur. Argentina has a hybrid economy with a very high share of state control. It makes enormous expenditures on social welfare, even though people's standard of living is still quite low.

The Russian government can take a number of steps that will enable us to exist at the level of, say, the year 2000. But our lag from the rest of the developed world will keep growing. Russia is the eighth largest economy in the world, but we will become the 30th.

As our oil and gas will not keep us afloat for a hundred years, the state needs to find alternative sources of revenue. It can generate more money from the China-Europe transportation corridor than from gas. We have Siberia and can use it to bury waste. We can make a handsome profit on building new nuclear power stations. We can also hurt our competitors by, for example, destabilizing the Middle East and driving up oil prices.

This kind of thinking is a trap. We will break out of it if we face a catastrophe. If we suffer a complete economic blockade, the oil price plunges, and we crash to the same level as Ukraine, then change is inevitable.

Or else, if we have a change of elite and new politicians take over who are brave enough to attempt radical reforms. Well, miracles do happen. In 1986, on the eve of Deng Xiao Ping's reforms, China was very stable-unlike the Soviet Union. So was South Korea, which had a lower GDP than its neighbor to the north before Roh Tae-woo embarked on his reforms. Everything is possible. But I am a pessimist and I believe that the most likely scenario for Russia's future is stagnation for many years to come.

This publication originally appeared in Russian in Secret Firmy.

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 #22
Washington Post
November 11, 2015
Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and the Republican quest to know Vladimir Putin
By Adam Taylor
Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.

During Tuesday's Republican debate, Donald Trump repeated his claim that if he became president he would strive to work with Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin. The American billionaire went so far as to suggest he supported the Russian president's intervention in Syria, adding that he understood Putin as "I got to know him very well because we were both on '60 Minutes,' we were stablemates, and we did very well that night."

Trump's friendly message to the Russian leader received a rebuke from another candidate, Carly Fiorina, who explained that she would not work with Putin. "I have met him as well, not in a green room for a show, but in a private meeting," she said in a line that was greeted with laughter and applause.

Despite both these candidates implying they understood the Russian leader because of specific meetings with him, their accounts were quickly challenged.

It appears that when Trump and Putin appeared on the Sept. 27 edition of the "60 Minutes" show, they were in two very different cities (New York and Moscow), suggesting that Trump met Putin as readers did - on a screen during a taped "60 Minutes" interview. And it turns out that Fiorina met with the Russian leader before the 2001 APEC Conference in China, during a meeting she just recently described as "sorta a green room setting."

In fact, during her speech at that conference, Fiorina offered a view of Putin that could be interpreted as relatively positive, describing the "change" Putin was bringing Russia.

That both Trump and Fiorina felt compelled to suggest they understood Putin because of interactions with him was understandable: To many Americans, the Russian leader is a puzzle waiting to be solved. There have been countless books written that seek to investigate Putin's personality in a bid to better understand his policy. President Obama has made telling comments about his meetings with Putin (in particular, his posture) and former president Bill Clinton has praised his intellect, if not his intentions.

However, Putin's difficult political personality has a special history of roiling Republicans. George W. Bush, the second U.S. leader to have a president-to-president interaction with Putin, famously found him charming. "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," Bush said after first meeting his Russian counterpart in 2001. "I was able to get a sense of his soul: a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

(Bush later admitted than his relationship with Putin became more "fraught" as time went on - noting one incident where the Russian leader seemed to mock the size of his dog, Barney.)

Perhaps in response to Bush's attitude, Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Republican candidates in 2008 and 2012, respectively, have taken harder lines on Putin. "I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B," McCain said in 2007. However, they've been somewhat contradicted by other voices in the Republican camp who have, like Trump, felt that they could understand and even relate to the Russian leader. Many high-profile right wing names, including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, have contrasted his leadership favorably with that of Obama. Matt Drudge, the enormously influential political commentator, once even dubbed him "leader of the free world."

Perhaps part of the issue is that some on the right wing can look at Putin, and - if they squint - see a mirror image. "Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?" Pat Buchanan wondered in an article for Townhall in 2013, apparently reaching an affirmative answer.

There's some logic to that question. Fiscally, Putin is a pro-business leader who favors low taxes and a balanced budget. Socially, he's conservative and has ties to the Christian church. And on the foreign front, he likes to focus on the terror threat posed by Islamic terror groups. Perhaps he even has a view of Russian exceptionalism that corresponds to American exceptionalism. "I am sure I could put together a long list of quotes that would make Putin seem like a card-carrying member of the Tea Party," Brookings Institution economist Clifford Gaddy, co-author of "Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," once explained to me.

As recently as last year, WorldViews was finding that when we wrote about Putin we'd be bombarded with supportive messages from conservative readers. As The Post's Philip Bump has pointed out, polls show that many Republicans (and a fair amount of Democrats) view Putin as a strong leader.

However, Putin's overall popularity remains low among Americans and much of his foreign policy and background flies in the face of American interests. These mixed feelings on the American right may explain the muddled messages from GOP presidential candidates. While Trump (and, to a lesser extent, Sen. Rand Paul) might express a desire to have a working relationship with Putin, Fiorina and other candidates were dead opposed to it. "I've never met Vladimir Putin, but I know enough about him to know he is a gangster," Sen. Marco Rubio said, perhaps taking the hardest line.

Whether any of these candidates will actually get to meet Putin anytime soon is unclear. Trump said he wanted to meet Putin during the Russian leader's recent trip to New York, but it appears that meeting never took place. It's possible that a meeting with the Russian leader could make Putin's critics rethink their stances. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, had a drunken arm-wrestling match with Putin, then a rising political star, during the Russian's trip to D.C. in the early 1990s.

He lost, but he doesn't seem to bear a grudge, now consistently criticizing U.S. attitudes to Russia.

"He's a tough guy, and he's supposed to be a tough guy. That's what the Russian people want," he told KPCC-FM in 2013. "But that's not a reason we shouldn't try to work with him."

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 #23
Atlantic Council
November 9, 2015
Putin's Victories in Syria
BY STEPHEN BLANK
Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.   

To the great British military analyst Basil Liddell-Hart, it was axiomatic that the purpose of war was a better peace. In other words, for military operations to be successful, they must be correlated with political outcomes and strategic gains. Unfortunately, the idea that the United States can successfully employ military power to achieve clear political objectives seems to be lost upon both the Obama administration and Washington's pundits.

Whatever defects Russia and its armed forces have, this disdain for strategy is not one of them. Washington's elites, with a few exceptions, cannot accept that Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks and acts strategically. As of October 28, Putin has been conducting a tutorial in Syria on how the limited application of force can achieve concrete political objectives-that is, Liddell-Hart's better peace.

Thanks to Russia's intervention, the administration has been pushed to sign an agreement with Russia to "deconflict" the two governments' aerial operations over Syria, and the US' own sortie rate has diminished considerably as a result of Moscow's deployment of air forces in Syria. General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently testified that thanks to the insertion of Russian and Iranian forces in Syria, Assad's position has become stronger, even though the Russo-Syrian-Iranian offensive on Aleppo has not made much progress, and Moscow's aircraft cannot match US forces and may be encountering technical difficulties.

Most tellingly, the United States has invited Iran to participate as a legitimate player in negotiations on Syria's future, once again conceding its own "red lines" and those of its allies.

The explanations that the administration has given-that no military victory is possible, that Putin will make the same mistakes the United States made, that he will own the Syrian quagmire, or that he will find himself trapped in Syria as the United States found itself trapped in Iraq-are all elegant evasions of fact and justifications for the administration's failure of will and intelligence. All of these statements serve merely as rationalizations for the US' abdication of power in the Middle East, much like its actions in Ukraine. And they all stem from the refusal of US elites to take Russia-its interests, capabilities, demands, and threats-seriously.

It is this abiding cluelessness about Russia and strategy in general that leads many European diplomats and pundits to openly admit that they fear the United States neither understands Russia and Putin nor is capable of acting strategically in defense of its interests and allies. This growing sense of abandonment is surely one reason Jordan and Israel have made their own arrangements with Moscow, and why many Europeans still fear being exposed to Russian threats with no certainty of allied support.

This essay is not a paean to Putin's abilities as a strategist. Clearly, he has made grievous mistakes in Ukraine, overestimating the extent of popular support for Russia in the Donbas and underestimating the West's ability to impose and sustain long-term sanctions on Russia. But it is important to acknowledge that he is a strategist, or is at least attempting to think and act strategically-and according to a Russian, not an American, calculus.

The disdain expressed by the administration for Putin and Russia overall conceals a failure to grasp the urgency of thinking seriously about Russia, and an abdication of our commitments to our allies. Putin may ultimately lose his game in Syria, because nothing is as unpredictable as war. But that possibility cannot justify the complacency, arrogance, and intellectual laziness that threaten US interests and allies. Unfortunately, what is a better peace for Putin is a worse one for Europe and the Middle East.

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 #24
RFE/RL
November 11, 2015
Activist Says Russia Using 'Hybrid Warfare' In Syria
By Tony Wesolowsky and Mark Krutov

The head of a team of Russian cybersleuths who have uncovered what they argue is a much more robust Russian military role in Syria than officially claimed, says the Kremlin seems to be following the "hybrid warfare" playbook perfected in eastern Ukraine.

Activists from the Moscow-based Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) said in a report released on November 8 that Russia's military is taking an active role in ground operations of the Syrian army's fight against the opposition, contradicting Kremlin claims that its intervention is limited to air strikes and providing military advisers and equipment.

Ruslan Leviev, who heads CIT, said the scenario is similar to the one the Kremlin used in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has been accused of directly backing separatists fighting Ukrainian forces with arms, weapons, and regular troops, while admitting only that Russian volunteers were taking part.

"There is the 'official part' which no one denies: In Syria it is the bombing campaign; in Ukraine it was the 'volunteers'," Leviev explained in an interview with RFE/RL's Russian Service. "Then there is the 'unofficial part', which the authorities vehemently deny, but which is obvious: the participation (of Russian forces) in ground operations, the deployment of various heavy weapons. It's this type of "hybrid warfare," where there is the official, open part, and the hidden, unofficial part," Leviev said.

Russia's deployment to Syria -- its largest outside the former Soviet Union in two decades -- has included advanced fighter jets, antiaircraft missile systems, tanks, and armored-personnel carriers.

But much of the Russian weaponry has been positioned -- officially anyway -- at the Latakia air base in western Syria.

Russia first launched air strikes to support President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's four-year civil war on September 30, but has repeatedly stated it has no intention of launching a ground offensive.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has refused to comment on the CIT finding, the latest to leave the Kremlin squirming.

In the past, CIT has used its social-media investigative skills to uncover information about Russian military deaths in Ukraine. In late October, CIT was first to report the first confirmed death of a Russian soldier in Syria.

In its latest report, CIT said three serving or former Russian soldiers had been geolocated by photographs on social media in Syria, including locations near Hama, Aleppo, and Homs.

Russia's military jets are based at the base in Latakia, far from where the three men were geolocated.

CIT published screenshots from a social-media account belonging to Ayas Saryg-Ool, a soldier it said served in Russia's 74th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, and from an account belonging to Vladimir Boldyrev, who it suggested was a Russian marine from the 810th Separate Marine Brigade.

It showed both of them had recently posted pictures with geolocation tags in Hama Province. Saryg-Ool's page, which had previously shown him posing with a heavy machine gun and in the cab of what CIT said was an artillery tow truck, was not available as of November 8, the same day CIT issued its report.

CIT also published screenshots from the Instagram page of Ilya Gorelykh, who it said had served in Russia's GRU special forces in the past.

In late October it showed he had uploaded pictures from Aleppo, one of which showed him holding an assault rifle while wearing civilian clothes. Another image of him posing in camouflage with three other armed men was apparently taken in Homs.

The pictures were not available on his account on November 8.

The CIT report follows statements by U.S. security officials and independent experts on November 4 to the Reuters news agency that Russia's military force in Syria has doubled to 4,000 troops.

Leviev told RFE/RL's Russian Service that the growing number of Russian military personnel was being deployed beyond the air base in Latakia, in small groups numbering between 20 and 30.

"It's obvious, the contingent is being increased at other places as well -- for example, the air base in Hama, where, as we've seen, there's been an increase in Russian military jets. All of this is still officially dismissed and denied," Leviev explained.

"We are seeing that our columns of military hardware and soldiers are appearing more and more in those provinces in Syria where [Russia], in principle, should not be very close to sites where heavy fighting is taking place. We've sighted our soldiers and our military hardware in the cities of Hama, Homs, Aleppo, those parts of Latakia Province, where heavy fighting is taking place," Leviev told RFE/RL.

The CIT report seems to reinforce statements by a top U.S. State Department official that Russia had deployed heavy artillery and other ground forces near Homs and Hama.

Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, also said Moscow's air campaign in Syria was costing between $2 million and $4 million a day. She described the effort, which has reportedly hit civilian areas, as immoral.

While Moscow insists it is hitting Islamic State group targets, U.S. officials said on November 4 that up to 90 percent of Russia's targets have, in fact, been moderate Syrian rebel groups -- including some that have been trained and supplied weaponry by the United States.

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 #25
Putin Needs a Victory and Annexing Belarus on the Cheap Could Give Him One, Oreshkin Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, November 10 - Having suffered increasingly obvious "fiascos" in Ukraine and Syria, Vladimir Putin now needs "a victory," Dmitry Oreskhin says. "And it turns out that Belarus and Lukashenka are the most suitable variant whom he could defeat with minimal costs" because "Belarus could not hold out for two weeks" if Moscow moved against it.

In an interview with RFE/RL's Belarusian Service, the Russian political analyst says his conclusion reflects not what "fascist and nationalist groups" in Russia want - their influence on the Kremlin is minimal - but on Putin's needs, something "much more serious than aggressive young people who take part in Russian Marches" (svaboda.org/content/article/27353597.html).

According to Oreshkin, "Putin is seeking a formula which will allow him to justify his remaining in power without any change. The formulas can be various: opposition to the West, ingatheringn of the Russian lands, the restoration of the USSR - something that will create a crisis situation so that people won't be inclined to change horses in the middle of a stream."

"During the last two years, such a crisis situation was created in the east of Ukraine, as a result of which Putin's ratings in Russia strongly rose," Oreshkin says. "But now people are beginning quietly to understand that things haven't worked out as planned: Ukraine hasn't joined the Eurasian Union, many people have been killed and Ukraine is moving toward Europe."

Now it appears to them that Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka is also turning toward Europe because he needs money, and "everyone understands that Putin doesn't have any." Lukashenka has refused to agree to the opening of a Russian base there, and that has left Putin in a cold fury," the Russian analyst says.

Everywhere he looks, Putin sees "fiascos" in Ukraine and in Syria "where the more involved he gets the more obvious that will be," with Russians "gradually beginning to understand that someone blew up the airliner and the tragic losses of life as a result are "somehow connected with Syria."

Consequently, Putin needs a victory, Oreshkin concludes, and Belarus and Lukashenka are "the most suitable" candidates that could give him one, especially since Moscow could overthrow the one and occupy the latter at "minimal cost."  If the Kremlin leader sends in the Russian army, "Belarus would not hold out for even two weeks."

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 #26
Meduza/Vedomosti
https://meduza.io
November 10, 2015
Opinion: The doomed past and uncertain future of Russia's elite A member of the Duma explains how the authorities must change, if they want to survive

Since New Year's Eve in 1999, Russians have been living in a political era dominated increasingly by Vladimir Putin, who today has been in power for nearly 16 years, keeping him on track to spend more time as Russia's leader than Leonid Brezhnev had as head of the USSR. If Putin is reelected in 2018 to another six-year term, his era could stretch 25 years-just four short of Joseph Stalin's reign. As Putin and Russia's elites age, reflections on the country's turbulent past, and speculation about its political future, have grown. In a recent opinion piece for the newspaper Vedomosti, opposition lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov assessed the crisis he believes Russia's modern-day elites face. Meduza translates that text here:

It's fairly obvious that no society can exist without an elite, but this concept begs at least two questions: what is the elite exactly, and under what conditions should its members give way to the new generation?

The answer to the first question is fairly simple: the elite is composed of those who have the ability to influence the life of the country. This isn't just the politicians and the businessmen of various ranks and sizes, but also the creative intellectuals and scientists. For this conversation, though, it's the first two categories that are of interest: their influence has an impact on the "here and now," and the gap between their actions and the consequences of those actions is virtually nonexistent. This is precisely why politicians and businessmen have to be responsible for their actions.

But that's only true in an ideal world. Where we live isn't just the real world-it's Russia, where sudden displays of good, if they don't make you laugh, are certainly a surprise.

And then there's the second question: under what conditions should members of the elite give way to others? What can and should serve as a call for change, ushering a new group of students into history class? Take note that we're not talking about morals here. Morality and history, regrettably, have nothing to do with each other. (Otherwise, you can bet that Stalin would never have lived to the ripe old age of 74.) So the question we should ask is this: under what conditions can members of the elite retire safely?

In fact, the entire history of the 20th century is one big example of how not to solve this puzzle. Time and time again, history has held Russia back, whether it's because we can't hear the teacher from the back of the classroom, or for some other reason. Whatever it is, we haven't learned the lesson. Judge for yourself: in the past century, there wasn't a single generation of Russian elites that left power voluntarily, that wasn't killed, supplanted, exiled, or-at best-marginalized with contempt.

Now you're remembering, of course, it was all upheavals. The elite, you recall, basically resets to zero every 20-25 years, starting over with a clean roll call. Before long, spilled all over that list, is either red ink or blood. I suppose it all started back then, after the October Revolution, when the old elite-after being branded "gilded officers" and told to get lost by Mayakovsky-all at once lost its main quality: the ability to influence the life of the country. Those events reflected and still reflect the fate of all future generations of the Russian elite.

Is there really any difference between Count Vladimir Frederiks, Tsar Nicholas II's Imperial Household Minister, and the Russian President's chief of staff today? Frederiks counter-signed the Tsar's decree of abdication, and later the Soviet authorities sent him to Finland, where he soon died in obscurity. Ivan Shcheglovitov, the Chairman of the State Council (what would be the Senate Speaker in Russia today), was shot in 1918 as part of the "Red Terror." Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov was executed by the Cheka the same year. I could go on with these examples. Those lucky enough to survive managed to emigrate, like Duma chairmen Alexander Guchkov and Mikhail Rodzianko, who died nursing dreams about restoring Russia to its Tsarist days.

Big businessmen who enjoy the favor of the authorities can't assume it will last forever, either. Consider the fate of Vyacheslav Tenishev: a remarkable man, a philanthropist, and an industrialist who thankfully never lived to see the October Revolution. In 1917, however, his body was pulled from its coffin in Smolensk by peasants, who desecrated it, and his family's estate, Talashkino, the heart of Russian culture, fell into disrepair.

The merchant Grigorgy Eliseev lived out his days happily in emigration, even managing to hold onto his capital. But when it came time to distribute his far-from-modest wealth, the Soviet government seized all the inheritance meant for his relatives still living in the USSR. (Though his granddaughter was ultimately allowed a small fraction of the money-enough to buy a Soviet GAZ-M20 Pobeda automobile.)

History, incidentally, didn't spare the new Soviet elite, either. The Bolsheviks who came to power scarcely had time to celebrate their triumph at the Congress of the Victors before they were mowed down to the root in 1937. Then, in the late 1950s, things changed again, and it was the turn of the "Stalinist hawks" to find themselves looking in from the outside, as they lost their place to a new political generation, which generally and importantly offered nothing in the way of "genetic continuity."

Next came the Brezhnev era of stagnation, when the system's key feature became its fragility. And then the catastrophic erosion was accelerated again, this time by Perestroika. Just look at the cosmic speed with which the old tribunes and arbiters of our fate stepped down from the stage of history. Who today, except for the graying members of Russia's Communist Party, remember someone like Yegor Ligachyov? And what about Viktor Chebrikov? Once the all-powerful head of the KGB, Chebrikov was working in private security by the time he died. These men and many others like them-once the people who determined the country's very fate-could only cling to decorative posts for a short while, before retiring into political and historical obscurity.

And history is already quietly reaching the desks of figures from the Yeltsin and Putin eras, too, though they're too self-satisfied to notice. The first heads have already started to roll, tangled in their own scarves.

I'm sure every generation of self-appointed gods thinks, this time, things will last forever. They think Jupiter was talking precisely about their regime, when he said in The Aeneid, "For these I set no limits, world or time." But time catches up to everyone. Just ask Khrushchev, who toddled off to work his garden as a pensioner, and was lucky for it.

Can we even compare Russia to the likes of the United States, where political and business dynasties maintain a firm grip on their elite status for decades (and soon centuries)? If the US is too dissimilar, then we can instead consider the other BRICKS nations-the same countries to which Kremlin-friendly analysts so enjoy comparing Russia. But the stability of India's political life, its continuity, for instance, is already light years more developed than Russia, with its constant upheaval.

What's wrong with us and what's the reason for this-pardon the phrase-historical diarrhea? Why can't a single generation of elites hold on long enough to pass its influence to its own descendants (both in blood and in spirit)? The elites can't even manage the simple process of securing their own children's future in Russia. Just look at the fate of the heirs of the "Soviet nobility" and you'll understand. Stalin's granddaughter now owns a vintage clothing store in Portland; Khrushchev's son is a scholar in Rhode Island; Mikhail Suslov's daughter lives peacefully in Austria; Brezhnev's niece is in California; and his grandson is involved in various shady political projects. And these are the stories that turned out happiest.

Do today's rulers at the helm think it will be any different with them? Do they think they're to Russia what the Kims are to North Korea-generations that have finally taken root in the Russian soil? I fear that instilling that kind of Juche in Russia won't work. It would require recreating the elite from scratch, and raising the new one to be slavishly devoted to a single master, with nothing to its name but the gifts of that master. But over the past quarter century, we've built a market economy of sorts. Too much, fortunately, has been privatized (though that process was hurried and often dishonest).

That's why North Korea and its quiescent elite can't exist in Russia. Instead, gradually (and we can already see it happening now), that lovely word "elite" is coming to signify bulldogs fighting under a carpet, and soon enough it will be spiders packed in a jar. This perhaps is where we exit the senseless and bloody lessons of the 20th century. The problem for Russia is that the West, with its entrenched elites, ultimately relies on the people as its source of authority. An obvious bond forms in the West: the people (and not just in the United States) become the source of authority for the elite, who in turn influence the people. And so you get both unity and struggle. In our country, the people have never been a source of authority for the elites. Even in Sergey Uvarov's Triad ("Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality"), there wasn't so much as the concept of the people.

In Russia, the source of authority is something else entirely: in rough times, it's weapons, and on brighter days, it's oil. But it has nothing to do with the people. As a result, there's no feedback. So, when one resource is exhausted, like we're seeing with falling oil prices now, the authorities have no alternatives to which they can turn. You can't form a civic bond with oil prices.

All this leads to a very simple conclusion: if today's elite wants to survive, it must change. It's no wonder that all the world's successful developed nations arrived at one or another form of democracy, whether it's a parliamentary republic or a constitutional monarchy. With democracy, humanity has stumbled onto a certain universal law, not unlike the discovery of the periodic table. Are you committed to sustainable development? Would you rather not end up suddenly swept away in some meaningless, merciless revolt, or in a meaningful, but nonetheless very unpleasant, palace coup? Take a cue from the real leaders out there (and I don't mean Mr. Putin). Then it becomes clear that surviving peacefully in power and quietly, gradually withdrawing into retirement is possible only with functioning democratic institutions.

If Russia refuses to learn this lesson, the next hundred years are as good as written. History might even get bored of holding back a slacker like Russia and sooner or later just expel it from class altogether. The choice is simple.

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 #27
Foreign Affairs
www.foreignaffairs.com
November 5, 2015
A Case of Putin Envy
Behind the Obsession With Russia's Leader
By Valerie Sperling
VALERIE SPERLING is Professor of Political Science at Clark University and the author of Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin once said, "A bear doesn't ask permission from anybody." Indeed, over the past two years, he has shown the world that he is a political bear-from land grabbing and perpetuating conflict in Ukraine to the recent military intervention in Syria. And yet, even as Western leaders have been angered and unnerved by Putin's actions, conservative political figures in the United States have experienced a bit of Putin envy. While bemoaning U.S. President Barack Obama's supposed weakness, for example, Sarah Palin seemed to pine for a president who, like Putin, "wrestles bears and drills for oil." Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has also hinted at his admiration for Putin, saying, "He makes a decision and he executes it...That's what you call a leader."

Since winning a third term as president, Putin has achieved the remarkable feat of approval ratings purportedly hovering in the 80 to 90 percent range. Even with a "dictatorship discount"-the assumption that some fraction of those stellar approval ratings is fictional-Putin is far more popular than his Western counterparts, who must endure a relatively independent and muckraking media and a lively public debate over every policy and every personal issue, from sexual liaisons to the proper use of e-mail servers. Putin, unlike politicians in a democratic regime, can happily avoid the endless stress of political campaigning, of having to defend his policy positions, vie for attention, and build an arsenal of post-hoc justifications for gaffes, misstatements, and errors.

Although Putin is free of such pesky inconveniences, his administration-like all governments that aim to stay in power-still needs a modicum of public support. Few regimes survive for decades purely on coercion, an expensive option in any case. Much of what Putin has been doing abroad is calculated for his domestic audience. What might look like aggressive, risky, or even dangerous foreign policy decisions have been largely welcomed by the Russian populace as evidence of their leader's muscularity and clout.

Part of the public's popular enthusiasm for Putin, and for what appears to be an increasingly rash foreign policy, stems from resentment about the deterioration of Russian power and influence in the 1990s. Following the Soviet collapse, the newly independent Russia-under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin-saw its economy atrophy and its superpower status evaporate. Russians soon formed the impression that the Western countries that had advised Yeltsin's administration were out to destroy the Russian economy, undermine their country's military might, and gain influence in Russia's "near abroad" (the former Soviet states).

By the time Putin won his first presidential election in 2000, Russia was regarded at home and abroad as a weak state in a unipolar world dominated by the United States. The Russian public and the Kremlin were therefore eager to resuscitate the country's pride and its international image-what Russian social scientists Tatiana Riabova and Oleg Riabov have referred to as "remasculinizing" Russia. When Putin came to power, his machismo was mobilized as a public relations tool, as a way to broadcast his legitimacy as well as Russia's strength. Because weakness is like kryptonite to an individual's perceived manliness and to a country's perceived power, Putin's propaganda stunts (riding a horse bare-chested, subduing a Siberian tiger, and so on) and foreign policy pugnacity were designed mostly to portray him as strong, assertive, tough, and unmoved by other countries' conniving efforts to mellow him.

The ploy worked. After Russia's annexation of Crimea, his approval ratings skyrocketed: from 65 percent in January 2014 to 85 percent in December 2014, despite the ruble's collapse. In October 2015, a major Russian polling agency marked Putin's approval rating at an astonishing 89.9 percent, and judged that this "surge" in popularity reflected Russia's initiation of "anti-terrorist" air strikes in Syria, a move that more than 70 percent of Russians were said to have supported. The use of Russia's semi-new "Kalibr" cruise missiles, fired into Syria from Russian ships in the far-off Caspian Sea (the footage was released in a video by Russia's Defense Ministry), and the sight of Russian fighter jets targeting terrorists from above seemed to signal to Russians that their country was once more a star on the world stage.

Putin has successfully painted his actions as defending Russian national interests against the West, and particularly from the United States and NATO, which are ostensibly trying to weaken the Russian state and prevent it from occupying its rightful place in the international arena. Putin, for example, remarked in January 2015 that in Ukraine the fight was not against the Ukrainian army but against a "foreign legion" sponsored by NATO aimed at containing Russia. Public opinion reflects Putin's view. In June 2015, 86 percent of Russians surveyed reportedly agreed to some extent that the United States was "taking advantage of Russia's current difficulties to turn Russia into a second-rate power and raw materials appendage of the West."

These themes are also present in propaganda from pro-Kremlin groups, such as the Young Guard (the youth arm of the pro-Putin United Russia Party). This group believes that Putin is protecting Russian national interests in the face of Western-sponsored meddling, including the supposedly U.S.-led overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych. In October of last year, for Putin's birthday, the Young Guard organized an exhibit of political posters, several of which featured Putin dominating U.S. President Barack Obama, taking him down in a martial-arts move or gripping him by the ear. Also as a birthday present, another pro-Putin group called Network produced an art exhibit emphasizing Putin's achievements as an unshakeable national leader navigating a hostile international environment. This exhibit was titled "The Twelve Labors of Putin," modeled after the Twelve Labors of Hercules. In one illustration, Putin could be seen shielding Russia from the Western economic sanctions imposed after Russia's annexation of Crimea. The sanctions were portrayed as a multi-headed serpent (the Hydra), with Putin having chopped off the head belonging to the United States.

Along similarly patriotic lines, to mark Putin's birthday this year the Young Guard released a collection of excerpts from interviews where their members talked about Putin and what he represents to them. "Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]'s wisdom, will, the speed of his decision making, his honesty, and his strength are helping Russia achieve new heights in the global arena," one activist said. Another said, "I consider Vladimir Vladimirovich's main achievement during his presidency to be that Russia regained its former glory and has taken a leadership position on the world stage. I'm proud of Russia. I'm proud of Putin!" Darya Kriukova, the Young Guard coordinator for the Siberian Federal District, summed it up when she said, "I want to wish a happy birthday to the strongest and most respected politician in the world: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin."

The views of these pro-Kremlin groups, although not necessarily shared by all Russians, do reflect the sentiments of a broad subset of them. For example, a number of popular signs and slogans have cropped up comparing the United States to Nazi Germany or showing Russia metaphorically raping the United States. One widely circulated bumper sticker encapsulating this "patriotic" ideal appeared on cars' rear windshields in Russia following the start of the war in Ukraine. Framed by the words "We can do it again!" and "Love your enemies in such a way that your friends will be afraid!" it depicted a stick figure dressed in the Russian flag's colors violating a stick figure dressed in the red, white, and blue of the U.S. flag

A Russian website selling these stickers explained the parallel between the Nazi government and the contemporary United States as follows: "The victorious defeat of fascist Germany in 1945 has apparently not cooled the contemporary ambitions of the United States; they have not only forgotten history, but are doing their best to reshape it to suit themselves. This is visible in the events currently happening in Ukraine. But, just as before, fascism and Americanism achieve nothing other than people's hatred toward them as invaders. There will be only one outcome of their atrocities-the complete defeat of the aggressors."

Another bumper sticker from that website-specifically, from their "Our retaliation against NATO" series-portrays an enormous phallic-shaped nuclear missile with the jocular pun-loving caption "We're not ashamed of our complexes." Whether it is the self-consciously humorous focus on Russia's bigger missiles or the violently sexual image of Russia "dominating" a United States on its knees, there is an unmistakable comparison between Russian masculinity and Western weakness in these decals.

In other words, in Russia, Putin's supporters may have found symbolic ways to top the United States, but the country has some power envy of its own as it strives to compete with the United States' projection of military, economic, and political influence far beyond its borders. By claiming to decisively protect Russia's interests against threats (whether in Ukraine or Syria), Putin's displays of symbolically masculine strength abroad reinforce his standing as someone who is tougher than the other guy, and thus bolster his position at home.

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 #28
World Affairs
Fall 2015
Détente Plus?: How Should the West Deal with Russia?
By Walter Laqueur
Walter Laqueur is the author, most recently, of Putinism.

Russia was a great power until 1989 and Vladimir Putin wants to make it a great power again. Should America help him? Veteran commentator Leslie Gelb speaks for much of the US foreign policy establishment when he says that we should, as he did in a recent cover story for the National Interest: "It is totally unrealistic...to think that the West can gain desired Russian restraint and cooperation without dealing with Moscow as a great power that possesses real and legitimate interests, especially in its border areas."

Gelb, an acknowledged authority on military affairs, is an American. His optimism about a diplomatic trade-off for "restraint and cooperation" in return for acknowledgement of great power status may reflect a loose consensus among "realists" in US policy circles, but it is important to understand how an influential Russian of equal or greater standing than Gelb sees the issue. Take Nikolai Patrushev, for instance. For many years Putin's successor as the head of FSB, the Russian foreign intelligence service, and since then head of the Russian National Security Council, Patrushev has talked about America's Russian policy in two detailed interviews with Russian media-with Rossiyskaya Gazeta in October 2014 and Kommersant in June 2015. Both would be worth the close attention of Gelb and those who share his views.

In the 2014 interview, Patrushev said that the crisis over the Ukraine was entirely expected-just another episode in continuous aggressive behavior by the US and its close allies over a quarter of a century. According to him, if it had not been Ukraine, America would have found another cause. In the years following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US "behaved particularly shamelessly." American ruling circles did everything possible to take complete control over raw materials, transport lines, etc. as part of a plan to dismember the USSR. It was only owing to the firm and principled leadership of President Putin that these attempts were stopped. There was a slight weakening of American aggressiveness after 9/11, but it soon became clear that America was not inclined toward real cooperation and positive dialogue as US policy became reminiscent of the Cold War.

In the 2015 interview, Patrushev went considerably further in anatomizing American ill will. The United States, he maintained, wanted Russia to cease to exist as a country; neither Siberia nor the Russian Far East should belong to it. (He cited Madeleine Albright, a former US secretary of state, as the source of this statement, but Western researchers have not yet managed to locate it.) After the comments, the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta commented editorially: "Americanophobias have now acquired the status of an official picture of the world" in the Putin era. "For those [in Russia] who support normal relations with the West Patrushev's words are a warning bell. They indicate that anti-Westernism and especially anti-Americanism are not a maneuver but a strategic choice and that Russia's conflict with the outside world has reached a point of no return."

Patrushev may not be well known in the West, but he certainly belongs to Putin's inner circle. In fact, he is one of the three or four figures thought most likely to succeed Putin even though he is slightly older than his present master. When Putin disappeared from public view for more than a week earlier this year, rumors immediately had it that Patrushev had overthrown him.

Patrushev has accompanied Putin on various diplomatic missions and handed President Obama personal letters from the Russian president. He went to Tehran to discuss Iran's nuclear program, which he called an "inalienable right." Among his many other functions, Patrushev served as chief coordinator of Russian counterterrorism; he made it known in 2015 that more than a thousand Russian nationals had left their homeland and joined one of the radical Islamic terrorist groups.

All this tends to show that the statements he made in these two interviews were not those of an outsider but rather reflect the views of a mainline silovik well placed in the hierarchy. Other such figures have said the same thing in recent months and years, reflecting anti-American emotions in the Kremlin even more intense than those of the Reagan era. There can be no doubt that the policy people around Putin believe that Russia has been constantly humiliated by the West and especially the United States; that hatred of Russia is not just part of the American ideology but "rooted in their genes" (as one commentator has put it); that day in, day out, it is American strategy to harm and humiliate Russia in
every possible way.

According to one school of thought, Putin believed in close collaboration with the West when he came to power. However, after a few years (some say in mid-2003) he came to believe that the West was not interested in close collaboration and as a result changed his mind and adopted a confrontational strategy, as outlined in his speech at the Munich security conference of 2007 (called by the Western press his "return to the Cold War speech"), where he accused the United States of undermining global security eight years before the events in the Crimea and Ukraine.

The Kremlin's attitudes toward the outside world and especially America have been marked by strange and sometime inexplicable contradictions. On one hand there is a striking increase in anti-Americanism and xenophobia in general along with a new nationalism; on the other an equally striking rise in emigration. The impulse for a new "Russian idea" (as Putinist state ideology is called) came almost entirely from the extreme right. But while "Zionists" are now accused of having been the gravediggers of the great Russian revolution, the "anti-Zionists" also believe that Lenin and the other revolutionaries were Jewish masons (Zhidomasonstvo) and that the defeat of the White armies in the civil war had been a disaster. In the new dispensation, logic and coherence of ideas are missing in action.

Some European observers of the Russian scene are adopting the views of the Putinist clique in putting the blame for the country's inchoate bitterness toward the West squarely on their own governments. Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, the author of the current German bestseller Understanding Russia, asserts that it was because of Western mishandling of the situation in 2005-06 that forces gained influence in Moscow who had claimed all along that it had been a mistake "to open the windows to the West." The subtitle she uses-"The Battle for the Ukraine and the Arrogance of the West"-indicates her point of view. She believes that the post-Cold War European Union should have helped Russia as much as possible.

Krone-Schmalz's failure is to ignore the fact that such help would probably not have resulted in greater Russian gratitude toward the West. What many Russians wanted-or could be made to want by a figure such as Putin-was respect, rather than economic development. Having been accustomed to being treated as a superpower and a major player in all international events, they felt ignored after 1989. Even degenerate Europe (as Russians were accustomed to think of it during the Soviet era) had lost its past fear of their country.

Should Europe have assisted Russia to achieve its deepest post-Cold War desire-the restoration of the old empire or at least large parts of it? Whether such a "selfless" Western policy, unprecedented in world history, would have led in the long term to a more friendly attitude toward the West and a more democratic order inside Russia (as commentators such as Krone-Schmalz apparently believe) cannot be taken for granted. It might perhaps have borne diplomatic fruit if accompanied by more enthusiasm by the Europeans for other major Russian foreign policy aims-a loosening of ties with the United States and NATO and the acceptance of Russia as the senior partner in an "Eurasian alliance." But while there was a growing dependence on Russian oil and gas, few Europeans wanted a substantial increase in the Kremlin's political influence.

"Understanding Putin" became a duty for some Europeans who thought policy toward Russia was hard-hearted. Jörg Baberowski, a leading Berlin academic specializing in modern Russian history, declared in a widely noted TV interview that "no one in the West was understanding Putin" except apparently Baberowski himself and Krone-Schmalz, whose book he praised.

For years a television journalist stationed in Moscow, Krone-Schmalz later became a leading member of the "Petersburg Dialogue," a German-Russian big-business lobby interested in expanding economic ties. But the popularity of the "Understanding Putin" faction was not restricted to business interests. Understanding Putin was followed on the bestseller lists by several other likeminded books, such as Wir sind die Guten (We are the Good Ones), which proclaimed that the fate of Ukraine was none of Germany's business, that the German public had been manipulated into hostility toward Russia's ruling elite by the "lying media," and that America was occupying Europe.

There had, of course, always been a "Russian party" in Germany. Bismarck had been a leading (but not uncritical) exponent of Russia, which may explain his current popularity in Moscow. After 1917, such support had come mainly from the left, but more recently right-wingers have been at least equally enthusiastic. The current foreign policy leader of the European Union, Federica Mogherini, has also called for closer relations with Russia (and with political Islam). She is a former Communist and former Italian foreign minister.

A similar debate developed in Britain in 2015, triggered by a longish report from the prominent London think tank Chatham House. Written by a group of experts including two former ambassadors to Moscow, the report concluded that Russia, now acting from a position of strength, felt secure in flaunting international rules. Its recommendations included expansion of NATO and the imposition of harsher sanctions. The report was enthusiastically attacked by a number of other experts who argued that it was wrong to regard present Kremlin policy as a continuation of the Cold War and that doing so in fact was war by literary means. One of the critics, Andrew Monaghan, titled his critique "A 'New Cold War'? Abusing History, Misunderstanding Russia." The fatal flaw with such works is that they ignored the harsh statements of Nikolai Patrushev and other leading Putinists that show it was Russia doing the misunderstanding, and in a flamboyantly paranoid way that threw facts and logic out the window.

The inclination of Russian policy experts in the West to consider Putin's role in decisionmaking as decisive seem to be correct. Present evidence does not show the existence of a collective leadership. But Putin is still subject to influences and pressures, and there are indications of differences of opinion not only between the siloviki and the more moderate advisers-such as, for instance, Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who has expressed deep concern about the economic consequences of Moscow's present foreign policy-but also among the more belligerent siloviki advisers themselves.

Among the more aggressive figures who have been on the record are contributors to the Moscow weekly Zavtra, such as Aleksei Anpilogov, or military adventurer types such as Igor Strelkov, who was among the central military commanders in Ukraine. They believe that Putin's besieged fortress strategy, accompanied by occasional Kremlin threats (Russia being the only country able to destroy America), cannot win a war. Only a full-scale attack can achieve this. Russian strategy has therefore to be changed accordingly.

Whether they have in mind a conventional military attack or a nuclear war is not certain. Advocates of this strategy, also known as "the war party," are thought to include present and former heads of the intelligence services such as Alexei Kudrin and Mikhail Fradkin, as well as establishment figures such as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Dmitri Rogozin, who in the past represented Russia at NATO, and others. Their influence seems to have greatly increased in recent years.

Leslie Gelb maintains that the policy he advocates-call it détente plus-does not imply that America should cease its criticism of Russian misbehavior. Carping about violations of human rights causes considerable irritation in Moscow even though both sides know it has no practical consequences. Russia should be honored and respected as it is, namely as a great power and not as some Westerners wish it should be. In other words, a good measure of self-censorship is needed to create the climate needed for an improvement in relations.

But the problem with this "realist" analysis is that it is filled with wishful thinking and contradictions that ignore reality. Its adherents claim that the sanctions on Russia have no effect at all, and in fact help the Russian economy-but they also say that the sanctions drive Russia to ruin and to despair. They argue that Russia is weak and that this weakness could drive it into frenetic action. But they also maintain that Russia is strong and that the West should be greatly afraid of it. They report that Putin is a pragmatist and surrounded by likeminded advisers but also say that the wild people in his entourage now have the upper hand (or will get it) unless the West exhibits greater "understanding."

The quest for a détente is vital. But it will go nowhere unless the present mood of Russia is taken into account:

"Let us imagine a person healthy in body and strong, talented and not unkind-for such is quite justly the general view of the Russian people. We know that this person or people is now in a very sorry state. If we want to help him, we have first to understand what is wrong with him. Thus we learn that he is not really mad, his mind is only afflicted to a considerable extent by false ideas approaching folie de grandeur and a hostility towards everyone and everything. Indifferent to his real advantage, indifferent to damage likely to be caused, he imagines dangers that do not exist, and builds upon them the most absurd propositions. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, that they insufficiently bow to his grandness, and in every way want to harm him. He accuses everyone in his family of damaging and deserting him..."

These lines were written not by a contemporary Russophobe but by the 19th-century theologian and philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, one of the greatest Russian thinkers. His words, unfortunately, still seem to be largely true today.

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