#2
Kennan Institute
www.wilsoncenter.org
November 17, 2015
The Beginning of the End of Russia's Estrangement from the West
By Maxim Trudolyubov  
Maxim Trudolyubov is a Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute and the Editor-at-Large of Vedomosti, an independent Russian daily. Mr. Trudolyubov was the editorial page editor of Vedomosti between 2003 and 2015. He has been a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times since the fall of 2013.

Perceived threat from Russia has been a recurring theme in Western thinking in the past two years, at least. But Russia's standing with the West has been changing with mind-boggling speed over the past few days. The coordinated strikes in Paris were the latest in a new wave of terror. But Russia recently  officially recognized that the downing of its passenger jet in Egypt on October 31 was also an act of terrorism. Russia has launched cruise missiles against targets in ISIS-held territory, becoming a de-facto ally of the West in retaliation for the attacks.

In the first public statement on the cause of the plane crash, Russia's Security Chief said on Tuesday that it was a terrorist attack. President Vladimir Putin called the attack "one of the bloodiest crimes in terms of the number of victims." He went on to vow to avenge the civilian deaths. "We will not wipe away the tears from our soul and hearts. This will stay with us forever, but will not stop us from finding and punishing the criminals," Putin said in comments released Tuesday.

Almost simultaneously with this statement, Russia launched a series of missile strikes on targets in Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold in Syria. Russia gave the United States advanced notice before the launches, a U.S. defense official confirmed to Reuters. The French newspaper Le Monde reported that the strikes were coordinated with the French military and launched from Russian war ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Coordination with Turkey was also implied, because the missiles flew over Turkish territory, Le Monde reported.

The Kremlin hesitated to call the Russian plane crash an act of terror for more than two weeks. But on Tuesday, Putin placed the crash in Egypt on the same map of terror that also includes the explosions in Ankara, Turkey, on October 10 (95 dead), the attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, on November 12 (43 dead), and the massacre in Paris, France, on November 13 that caused 129 deaths. This chain of events now appears to be a centrally planned campaign of attacks. Terrorist networks moved from focusing on holding their "state borders" in Syria and Iraq, to targeting civilians on distant territory. "They have crossed some kind of Rubicon," William McCants, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of "The ISIS Apocalypse," said to the New York Times.

The Russia of the Ukrainian conflict, the Russia of the 2008 war with Georgia-an assertive and aggressive player that has not shied away from using military force-has been viewed as a threat by many in the West. The issue was often framed as a comparison between the threat posed by Russia and the dangers of terrorism. "Russia is a bigger problem than ISIS for Obama," wrote Financial Times' international affairs columnist Gideon Rachman, exactly one year ago.

"ISIS or Russia? Labour needs to decide which is the bigger threat," journalist Paul Mason asked in an opinion piece for the Guardian newspaper as recently as mid-October. "Putin is [by far] a bigger threat than the Islamic State," Garry Kasparov, a chess grand master who has been in fierce opposition to Putin, said recently in an interview.

But during the Sunday meetings of the G-20 group of nations that took place in Turkey immediately after the Paris attacks, Putin went from a pariah to a fully engaged player. Perceptions change quickly if one thinks in relative terms. On the scales that commentators use to compare dangers, the threat of terrorism is now the heaviest weight.

"Paris changes everything," Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soeder told Welt am Sonntag newspaper immediately after the terrorist attack on the French capital. Soeder's comments were his contribution to the heated European debate on refugees. It's still unclear how deep the inevitable backlash against Europe's open door policy toward war refugees is going to be. What is clearer is the fact that Paris has indeed changed Western perceptions of Russia's role in international affairs.   

With ISIS back at the center of the Western agenda, Russia can be a partner and Vladimir Putin himself was quick to point this out. "We proposed cooperation on antiterrorism; unfortunately our partners in the United States in the initial stage responded with a refusal," Putin said. "But life indeed moves on, often very quickly, and teaches us lessons. It seems to me that everyone is coming around to the realization that we can wage an effective fight only together."

It is too early to tell how, exactly, a new agreement between Russia and the West is going to look. It is still on the drawing board. "The West has to understand that Moscow's position should not be confused with the stickiness of the official Damascus," Alexander Axenenok, a Russian diplomat, said in a commentary for Vedomosti. This probably means that Moscow is indeed going to be flexible about the fate of Bashar al-Assad.

But one also has to keep in mind that the Russia of the Ukrainian conflict has not evaporated. The forces that were driving that conflict are still pretty much alive and they are thinking in terms of a big bargain that Russia may now strike with the West, in exchange for becoming a more agreeable partner on ISIS. "[In Ukraine] We should replace the junta with a technocrat government, change the constitution, drive away the neo-Nazis, and hold a new election. The Kiev junta is an obstacle to a joint struggle of Russia, U.S. and Europe against terrorists," the fiercely pro-Kremlin commentator Sergei Markov said in a post immediately after the Paris attacks. Moscow is apparently hoping that there will be a deal in which cooperation over Syria leads to an easing of Western sanctions over Ukraine. Up until now, both American and European officials have resisted any such linkage.

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 #3
Asia Times
November 18, 2015
Vladimir Putin, Leader of the Free World
BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN
David Paul Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler.

If Mikhail Bulgakov had come back to life and written a Levantine sequel to The Master and Margarita, he could not have devised a scenario more lurid than what we now observe in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin is now the leader of the Free World against Islamist terrorism, directing the efforts of France and Germany and setting terms for American involvement. Reeling from last week's massacre in Paris, France lacks both the backbone and the brute force to avenge itself against ISIS, but in alliance with Russia it will  make a more than symbolic contribution.

In 2008 I endorsed Putin for the American presidency, in jest, of course. Now he is leading America's president by the nose and directing the anti-terror efforts of France and Germany. No-one could have anticipated Putin's sudden ascent to global leadership during the past several weeks. Russia is in the position of a a vulture fund, buying the distressed assets of the Western alliance for pennies on the dollar. Faced with an American president who will not fight, and his European allies whose military capacity has shrunk to near insignificance, the Russian Federation seized the helm with the deployment of a mere three dozen war planes and an expeditionary force of 5,000 men. One searches in vain through diplomatic history to find another case where so much was done with so little. As an American, I feel a deep humiliation at this turn of events, assuaged only slightly by Schadenfreude at the even deeper humiliation of America's foreign policy establishment.

The world runs by different rules than it did just a few weeks ago. Putin has answered the question I asked in September ("Vladimir Putin: Spoiler or Statesman?"). President Obama declared at the Nov. 17 Antalya summit, "From the start, I've also welcomed Moscow going after ISIL...We're going to wait to see whether, in fact, Russia does end up devoting attention to targets that are ISIL targets, and if it does so, then that's something we welcome." After this week's Russian and French airstrikes on ISIS' stronghold in Raqqa, that is a moot point. It seems like another epoch when Mitt Romney declared that Russia was America's greatest geopolitical threat. Russia, on the contrary, is pulling America's chestnuts out of the fire. Obama is utterly feckless; by the time the next American president is sworn in, the world will be a difference place. Ukraine? Never heard of it.

Obama wants to follow, not lead, as he told reporters at Antalaya: "What I'm not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France.. I'm too busy for that." Russia is happy to give him the opportunity to follow. Obama's reluctance to put American forces on the ground took America out of contention, along with aerial rules of engagement so risk-averse that only one in four American sorties against ISIS released it bombs. The Russians are not squeamish about collateral damage and likely to be far more effective.

Putin meanwhile told his commanders, "A French naval battle group led by an aircraft carrier will arrive in your theatre of action soon. You must establish direct contact with the French and work with them as with allies." Just what sort of alliance this will be is clear from raw numbers. The Russian air force has 67 squadrons flying modern fighters (against France's 11), including 15 bomber squadrons (the French retired their Mirage VI bomber in 1996) and 14 assault squadrons. 25 squadrons fly ground-attack aircraft a bit lighter than America's A-10 "Warthog," namely the SU-24 and SU-25. Even allowing for poor Russian servicing, which leaves many planes unable to fly, Russia has vastly more air power than its French ally.

To make more than symbolic contribution to the Syria campaign, France will have to remove fighter aircraft now supporting its more than 5,000 military personnel in Africa. Germany's air force, I am told, will assist by picking up the slack in Africa so that French aircraft can redeploy to the Levant. Although Germany is not officially part of the Syria campaign, Berlin appears to be coordinating closely with Russia and France, although its own military air fleet is in notoriously poor condition.

Russia's willingness and ability to use force in Syria gives Putin considerable diplomatic flexibility. Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull suggested today that Russia might throw Syrian President Basher Assad under the bus and agree to a power-sharing agreement along ethnic and confessional lines on the Lebanese model. As the leader of a military coalition to reduce ISIS, Putin can afford to let Assad go, provided that the West agrees to preserve its naval station at Tartus. In the broader diplomatic context, Putin would expect the quiet expiration of economic sanctions against Russia directed at its seizure of Crimea as part of the overall bargain.

A very different sort of Middle East might emerge. Russia and China in the past have allied themselves with Iran against the Sunnis, largely because their own restive Muslim populations are entirely Sunni. If the Russian-led coalition succeeds in humiliating ISIS, the two Asian powers will have less use for their obstreperous Shi'ite allies of convenience. Although Russia and Iran are allied against ISIS, they have quite different objectives, according to Saheb Sadeghi, the editor of the Iranian foreign policy journal Diplomat. Writing in Al-Monitor, Sadeghi explais:

Russia is thus pursuing the revival of the Syrian military as its leverage in the country, with the belief that the only way to influence the future of Syria is through restoring the Syrian military to its condition before the eruption of the civil war in 2011 - in other words, a secular army that can easily be controlled.

Iran, on the other hand, has chosen a completely different path. When Iran saw that the Syrian army was near collapse, it sought to strengthen irregular forces made up of volunteers. The Islamic Republic thus established a massive force composed of Alawites. The latter has now become the main force combating the different armed opposition groups and is more powerful than the Syrian army on the battlefield. These volunteer forces, which number about 200,000 men, take orders from Iran rather than the Syrian government. According to some reports, about 20,000 Shiites from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan have also joined them. These forces may very well come to play an important role in the future of Syria. Moreover, the Islamic Republic hopes to use them as a viable alternative to the Assad government.

The Iranian-backed irregulars have been singularly ineffective in taking territory back from ISIS, however, compared for example to the Kurds, by far the most effective fighting force on the ground. Russia and its allies probably will solve the problem by sending in ground forces. ISIS cannot stand up to the combination of a modern ground army with close air support. That will devalue Iran's contribution to the military effort and its ability to influence a future political outcome. Russia wants to win the war on the ground and control the terms of the peace without interference from the apocalyptic adventurers in Iran.

It is noteworthy that Russian officials and news media kept mum about Israel's reported air strikes against a Hezbollah weapons depot at the Damascus airport last week. As usual, Israel's defense ministry neither confirmed nor denied the reports in the Syrian media, but the working Israeli press reports reflect off-the-record confirmation. Israeli sources tell me that the attacks did indeed occur, and under the nose of the Russian air force. BBC's Russian service notes that previous Israeli strikes drew official condemnation from Moscow.  Russia's silence on this occasion suggests that Moscow sanctioned the strikes. If so, Moscow will have sent a message to Hezbollah that it should avoid a fight with Israel and stick to killing Sunnis in Syria.

There have been reports in fringe media that China has gotten involved in the Syrian conflict, repeated by the hapless US presidential candidate Ben Carson. That is surely wrong; not only does China lack the intelligence and diplomatic resources to involve itself in the Syrian tangle, but its air force does not currently possess a single ground attack fighter like the American A-10 or Russian SU-24. The People's Liberation Army is not equipped for foreign intervention, and China has neither the intent nor ability to intervene. Beijing is happy to stay in the background and quietly support Russia's role in the region.

Beijing has enormous economic influence over Iran, though,  and could use it to dissuade Tehran from stirring up trouble in the region. I speculated two years ago that China might preside over a "Pax Sinica" in the Middle East. Former Reagan National Security Advisor Bud McFarlane and Ilan Berman argue in the Nov. 18 Wall Street Journal that "pressing Beijing to exert its extensive influence over Tehran to force it to steer a more moderate course can and should be a top American priority."

China has a great deal to worry about from its Sunni Muslim population, especially the 15 million Uyghurs in its westernmost province of Xinjiang. Hundreds of Uyghur separatists are fighting for ISIS in Syria, and the Chinese accuse Turkey of providing passports and safe passage for separatists leaving China for Turkey through Southeast Asia. A Chinese official told me that Turkish embassies in Southeast Asia have stockpiled 100,000 blank passports for the use of Uyghurs. Wealthy Saudis are funding Wahhabi madrassahs in China, and a large part of China's Muslim population has become radicalized.

For all these reasons, China has a deep interest in the defeat of ISIS. It has as much reason to fear the metastasis of Sunni jihad as does Russia, as well as the quiet support for the jihadists coming from Istanbul and some elements in Saudi Arabia. A humiliation of the self-styled Islamist Caliphate would crush the morale of its emulators in China as well as Russia, and Beijing will find ways of supporting Putin's efforts without any direct or visible commitment of military resources.

As for France: several days ago I wrote that France will do nothing in response to the Paris massacre. I may have been wrong. Russia will do a great deal, and in consequence, France will do more than round up the usual suspects.

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 #4
Islamic State was set up by 'guys' US had kept in jail but released afterwards - Lavrov

MOSCOW, November 19. /TASS/. The terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State has been created by some "guys" the United States had kept in jail in Iraq and Afghanistan for sometime only to release them afterwards, Russian Foreign Minister said in a radio interview.

"The period when our Western colleagues and some of their friends in the region systematically evaded the political process (in Syria) involved a great number of terrorists, extremists and foreign militants, commissioned to try to overthrow the regime (of Bashar Assad)," Lavrov said. "At a certain point those who were encouraging that must have lost control of the situation and the foreign militants' terrorist instincts gained the upper hand. They suddenly realized they had a great chance to translate into reality the idea the so-called Islamic State had harboured back in the middle of last decade. And to do that with the hands of the guys that the Americans had kept in jail in Iraq and Afghanistan to release afterwards."

"The process went out of control of the foreign powers to have turned into a self-developing movement: vast territories have been seized, including cultural and historical heritage sites. These monuments and artefacts are being put up for sale or destroyed," Lavrov said. "Also, several oil fields have been captured and crude oil is being sold on the commercial scale."

"Everybody has long been aware that this threat is a like a gene let out of the jar. There is no way of driving it back," he said.

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 #5
www.rt.com
November 19, 2015
NATO is actively inventing enemies, Russia is not - Lavrov

Russia has never invented enemies and never will, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told reporters, adding that it was "only natural" for nations to disagree, despite NATO's attempts to impose uniform opinions all over the world.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that we are not trying to look for enemies, we have never looked for them, and we never will," Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Radio Russia.

"Most nations that have their own positions on various issues...because uniform thinking on all issues is impossible. A harsh 'stick' approach to discipline is also impossible, even though they attempt to impose it in the North Atlantic Alliance [NATO] and, frankly, in the European Union as well. But they fail," the Russian Foreign Minister said. "Even the closest allies cannot have a 100-percent match in all of their interests and this is why diplomacy is needed - to search for a compromise," he added.

The top Russian diplomat noted that when Western nations operated with slogans such as "all those who are not with us are against us," this was in fact a tactic to turn whole countries into enemies.

Lavrov said that NATO is actively searching for an enemy at the moment, because the bloc needed an excuse for its very existence after the failure of the Afghanistan campaign. The developments in last year's coup d'etat in Ukraine and Crimea's accession into the Russian Federation were used as part of these hostile policies, he added.

"Today they are yet again shaping an enemy image out of us. We are not engaged in this. On the contrary, we are confirming our proposal to sign a treaty on Euro-Atlantic security that would include not only the European Continent, but also North America," Lavrov told reporters. "This proposal was stalled, but its main principle remains - equal and undivided security where no state is building defenses at other countries' expense."

In February this year, FM Lavrov told reporters after a major security conference in Munich that Russia was ready to restore contacts with NATO when the Western military bloc was ready to do the same. He noted that many NATO members expressed interest in continuing dialogue with Russia and that this interest included military contacts and airspace coordination.

In September the head of the Russian Upper House of Parliament Valentina Matviyenko openly accused leading US politicians of "suffering from an anti-Russian virus" that prevented effective talks on the settlement and prevention of international conflicts.

She noted that the origin of the anti-Russian sentiments of American politicians lay in the geo-political struggle and the desire to contain Russia's development in economic and social spheres, as well as its growing influence in international politics.

#6
Bloomberg
November 18, 2015
Putin's Thaw With U.S. Gives Russia Room to Phase Out Stimulus
By  Maria Levitov

Reining in stimulus just became a lot easier for at least one of the world's policy makers: Elvira Nabiullina.

Signs this week that Russia's isolation in global politics may be coming to an end set off a rally in the nation's assets as investors bet sanctions over Ukraine will get scaled back. That's giving Nabiullina, the central bank governor, the space she needs to pull the plug on a program introduced a year ago to help companies meet external debt payments.

The governor said last week she saw no need to resume foreign-currency repurchase agreements due in one year, meaning that the $26 billion that matures between now and Aug. 5 can't be rolled over. While Bank of America Corp. warned phasing out the facility may undermine a Eurobond rally after some of the cash was used to buy debt, the equation shifted as President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama looked poised to consider setting aside their differences over Ukraine to focus on fighting Islamic terrorists.

"A calming in geopolitical noise was the missing piece in the puzzle, which would certainly help the central bank's policy-making backdrop," Simon Quijano-Evans, the chief emerging-markets strategist at Commerzbank AG in London, said by e-mail Nov. 18.

With one less crisis program on her plate, Nabiullina can devote more of her attention to addressing the recession and inflation. Even after Bank of America analysts said the move posed risks to the developing world's second-biggest Eurobond rally this year, yields on 30-year dollar bonds in U.S. dollars declined 28 basis points this week to 5.56 percent, the most among major emerging markets as geopolitics upstaged other drivers.

"The central bank would like to continue to unwind the emergency measures and any environment that would allow them to do so would be welcomed," Steve Hooker, a money manager at Newfleet Asset Management in Hartford, Connecticut, who helps oversee about $12.5 billion of debt including Russian government Eurobonds, said by e-mail on Nov. 17. "Any easing in perceptions of political risk or the normalizing of Russia relations with the West would boost sentiment toward Russian assets."

For Bank of America, dwindling support for Eurobonds from Russian banks means shorter-maturity debt due in 2023 might suffer more than the longer end.

Nabiullina's decision is "marginally negative for the whole curve, but not to the point where we say let's underweight Russia," Vadim Khramov, an analyst at Bank of America in London, said by phone Nov. 16. Khramov recommends a "market weight" on Russian Eurobonds and favors notes due 2043.

Ready Cash

Russia's loan program was designed to help Eurobond issuers weather sanctions that denied some of the nation's biggest companies access to international capital markets. By making foreign-currency repos with one-year maturities available to local banks at interest rates ranging from 1.1 percent to 3.5 percent starting in November 2014, the government insured a source of ready cash for companies to keep up payments on foreign bonds. Lenders bought $26 billion in one-year repos through the last auction in August, central bank data show.

It worked. Foreign-currency deposits at Sberbank PJSC, the nation's largest lender, soared 33 percent this year to almost $90 billion as of Oct. 1, underscoring ample liquidity at Russian banks a year after sanctions were expected to leave them short of dollars.

Bond Arbitrage

There was so much extra cash available banks ended up redeploying them into Eurobonds yielding three times more than the central bank's borrowing rate. That drove returns of 19 percent for Russian Eurobonds this year, second only to Ukraine, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, the need to meet foreign debt maturities is less acute now than a year ago when the program was introduced: Eurobond maturities are set to drop to $16.7 billion in 2016 from almost $30 billion this year.

"We don't see any need at this point to resume" the program, Nabiullina told reporters at the State Duma Friday. "Everything is fine with FX liquidity on the market."

The central bank continues to provide one-week and 28-day foreign-currency loans and regarding one-year loans, policy makers are "watching the markets" in case the need arises again, Nabiullina said.

"The central bank can always restart the 12-month FX repos whenever it wants and it can reduce the maturity profile in the meantime," said Quijano-Evans at Commerzbank. "It is quite a flexible instrument."
 

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 #7
Bloomberg
November 19, 2015
Russia Sees Biggest Decline in Wages, Retail Sales Since 1999
By Anna Andrianova

Russian wages and retail sales declined by the most since 1999, a sign consumer demand will remain a weak link in the economy's efforts to break out of its first recession in six years.

Real wages fell 10.9 percent in October from a year earlier, a deeper contraction than the median estimate by economists for a 9.7 percent decrease, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said Thursday in a statement. The office revised down September's wages contraction to 10.4 percent. Sales declined 11.7 percent from a year earlier after shrinking 10.4 percent the previous month. That compared with forecast of a 10 percent drop.

Russian consumption, battered by persistent inflation and a weaker ruble, is lagging improvements in industry that propped up the economy last quarter. The loss of purchasing power is deepening the prospect that the recession will extend into next year as a glutted oil market leaves little hope for a recovery in crude prices to ignite growth.

"It is more like crawling out of the recession rather than rebounding," Liza Ermolenko, a London-based analyst at Capital Economics Ltd., said by phone before the data was released. "In consumer-facing sectors, the situation is still extremely difficult. Inflation is slowing down much slower than expected, meaning that real incomes are still falling very sharply."

Ruble, Inflation

The ruble is down 4.1 percent against the dollar in the past month, bringing its loss in the past year to about 30 percent after the central bank allowed the currency to trade freely.

Real disposable incomes fell 5.6 percent in October from a year earlier after contracting a revised 4 percent in September, the statistics service reported.

The median of eight estimates in a Bloomberg survey was for a 5.8 percent decline. Fixed-capital investment slipped for a 22nd month, falling 5.2 percent after a 5.6 percent drop in September.

The decline in capital spending isn't yet past its low point and the prospects for a revival in consumption and investment remain "questionable," economists at the central bank's research and forecasting department said in a report last week.

Inflation is likely to ease below 13 percent by year-end, with gross domestic product contracting no more than 3.7 percent this quarter, Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Wednesday. GDP shrank 4.1 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier after falling 4.6 percent in April-June. Annual inflation eased to 15.6 percent in October, down from a 13-year high of 16.9 percent in March.

"It now appears that Russia's recession may have bottomed in the second quarter," Olga Sterina, an analyst at UralSib Capital in Moscow, said in a report. "However, consumer demand still appears to be very weak."

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 #8
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 18, 2015
Why a free-floating ruble is not in freefall
One year ago, the Central Bank of Russia refused to place restrictions on the foreign currency exchange market, releasing the ruble into a free-floating state. What have been the results?
By Dmitry Dokuchaev
Dmitry Dokuchaev is a Russian journalist and columnist, who deals with economic issues. He has extensive experience in different Russian media, including Izvestia, Moscow News, The New Times, The Echo of Planet.

Almost exactly one year ago, the Bank of Russia abolished the exchange rate corridor for the ruble and stopped carrying out regular interventions, reserving the right to do so in the event of a threat to the financial stability of the country. Thus, the ruble was made fully free-floating.

More than a year has passed since that time, and it is safe to say that this event has significantly changed both the Russian currency and the financial markets.

The path to floating freely

We should recall that a system of freely floating exchange rates involves a system in which state authorities do not try to influence the supply and demand of the currency on the market.

The management of the Russian Central Bank started talking about plans to move to a free-floating currency in the middle of the 2000s. This was necessary to carry out the policy of inflation targeting (controlling inflation via monetary methods), but the process was delayed, and this question was finally settled only in November 2014.

Prior to that, a managed floating exchange rate regime operated in the domestic foreign exchange market, which for some time allowed the Central Bank to smooth out currency fluctuations. However, during the 2014 crisis, the Central Bank could not rescue the ruble.

The first alarm bells rang in March of last year, amid the political crisis in Ukraine. At that time, the volatility in the currency market increased significantly, and to overcome this, the Central Bank had to spend huge amounts from its reserves. In that month, the regulator sold foreign currencies worth $22.3 billion and €2.3 billion - volumes comparable to interventions carried out in late 2008 and early 2009. Moreover, six months later, the Central Bank increased its foreign currency sales, and in October 2014, it sold $27.2 billion and €1.6 billion.

Right after the October 2014 sales of currency, the Bank of Russia started to understand that the country could afford such a "salvation" of the ruble only at an exorbitant cost - the continuation of such a policy would completely "burn up" the reserves, leaving the country's economy fully exposed to the crisis.

Initially, the Central Bank of Russia was planning to let the ruble float freely by January 2015, but the tense situation on the foreign currency market, the problems in the economy due to falling oil prices, and a tense geopolitical situation, made the regulators' work extremely confusing. These combined factors forced the Central Bank to carry out the transition to free-floating ruble two months ahead of schedule.

The public as well as the expert community saw these actions of the regulator as controversial moves. In the "free-float" state, the national currency fell sharply - in just three weeks, the exchange rate moved from 44 to the 61 rubles to the dollar. The peak of the drop came in December 2014. This caused much criticism to be levied against the Central Bank for the "dismantling" of the exchange rate corridor.

Most economists then said that the transition to a floating exchange rate should have been carried out earlier, which would have saved a part of foreign exchange reserves. Over the past year, the international reserves of the country were "depleted" by more than $120 billion. At the same time, at the beginning of November 2015, they still form quite an impressive amount - $370 billion. According to this indicator, Russia, in spite of all the losses, is confidently among the top six nations in the world.

Pros and cons

"The transition to a floating exchange rate was done correctly, but with a certain delay - it should have been done a year earlier. Things would have been quieter on the foreign currency market, and the ruble would have devalued more smoothly," Sergei Dubinin, former head of the Central Bank and now a member of the Supervisory Council of VTB Bank, told Russia Direct.

According to him, the main result of the changes in monetary policy of the Central Bank was that the price of the ruble began being shaped under the influence of market factors. Thus, on the one hand, the population felt the loss of all the "amenities" that a cheap ruble had brought - imported goods became more expensive and less available. On the other hand, this depreciation of the ruble benefited export-oriented companies, which are the main source of income for the state budget, and thus the country was able to maintain budget stability.

Of course, the free-floating ruble has plenty of opponents and critics. One of the most powerful and consistent is presidential advisor Sergei Glazyev, who a year ago proposed that the ruble should not be allowed to float freely, but rather to fix its exchange rate, and thus, sharply restrict the activities of speculators.

Financial news and data provider Bloomberg, marking the one-year anniversary of Russia's transition to a floating exchange rate, listed the five main results of this process. Four of them were negative - unprecedented inflation, a sharp rise in the number of poor in Russia, a decline in real wages and incomes of the population, and reduced foreign travel and purchases of imported products by Russians.

The only positive result, according to Bloomberg, was the benefits gained by Russian exporters, mainly the oil companies, which due to the weak ruble and the current tax system, were able to increase their revenues. This, in turn, compensated for the losses they suffered due to the drop in world energy prices.

At the same time, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev sees no reason for a new devaluation of the ruble. "Now we see that the situation with the current account balance is quite stable, and the capital account balance has improved. Therefore, I believe that no reasons exist today for us to expect any further devaluations or shocks," said Ulyukayev.

For his part, Mr. Ulyukayev supports the decision that the Central Bank took one year ago, when it placed the Russian currency into free-float. "I believe that this decision was absolutely correct, and was made under difficult circumstances, I highly praise the actions of the Bank of Russia in this direction," said the minister.

German Gref, former Minister of Economic Development and now the head of Sberbank, also agrees with this view. According to him, the Bank of Russia let the ruble float freely just at the right time, and thereby managed to prevent serious problems from occurring in the economy.

"If the Central Bank had repeated the mistakes of 2008, when it supported the stability of the ruble, we would have a good situation in the banking sector now, but we would have killed the entire commercial sector."

According to Mr. Gref, during the current crisis, Russian companies are behaving differently than they did during the last crisis seven years ago, when their profitability fell sharply. "If we exclude the banking sector, the vast majority of other sectors are showing an increase in profitability. Of course, this is due to the intelligent monetary policy followed by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which resulted in the beginning of weak growth in industrial production in Russia in September," said the head of Sberbank.

Thus, what happened during the year that the ruble was allowed to float freely? On the one hand, during this period the national currency weakened by 50 percent against the dollar, and inflation has surpassed 15 percent - all this was a painful hit to the wallets of the population, significantly reducing people's real incomes by as much as 8 to 9 percent.

On the other hand, Russia was able to avoid a sharp decline and a cataclysm in the currency market, as well as prevent a banking crisis and panicking of depositors. The government has managed to maintain stability of the overall state budget, and monetary authorities were able preserve a considerable amount of foreign currency reserves. Moreover, in the manufacturing sector there was observed, even though small for now, yet nevertheless, a turn towards growth.

It seems that the pros outweigh the cons, and so the ruble continues to float freely.

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 #9
Reuters
November 19, 2015
Exclusive: EU's Juncker dangles trade ties with Russia-led bloc to Putin
BY ANDRIUS SYTAS

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, suggesting closer trade ties between the 28-nation EU and a Russian-led economic bloc once a ceasefire is implemented in Ukraine.

In the letter, written after a G20 summit in Turkey and seen by Reuters, Juncker underlined the importance he attached to good relations between the European Union and Moscow, "which to my regret have not been able to develop over the past year".

He said he had asked Commission officials to study options to bring the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union - a grouping of former Soviet states dominated by Moscow - closer together.

"The decision on the circumstances in which to proceed along this path is in the hands of the member states of the European Union and should in particular be synchronized with the implementing of the Minsk agreements," Juncker wrote.

The initiative could offer Putin an incentive to cooperate in Ukraine at a time when France and some other west European states are trying to re-engage with Moscow after the Paris attacks to fight Islamic State and forge a peace deal in Syria.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said he was surprised by the letter, which he said did not reflect a common view of EU member states and made no reference to EU sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea and the destabilization of eastern Ukraine.

Baltic and central European member states are worried that the EU executive and west European partners may be preparing to let Moscow off the hook of sanctions over Ukraine in return for cooperation in the Middle East.

A Commission spokeswoman confirmed that Juncker had written to Putin after they had a brief conversation at the G20 summit but said he had not made any new commitments in the letter.

"NOT SEXY"

Juncker caused controversy last month when he said at an event in Germany that Europe must improve its relationship with Russia and should not let this be decided by Washington.

"We must make efforts towards a practical relationship with Russia," he said on Oct. 8 in Passau. "It's not sexy but that must be the case, we can't go on like this."

The Eurasian Economic Union is a newly-formed trade bloc which, aside from Russia, includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

EU officials said nothing in Juncker's letter called into question the extension of the financial and personal sanctions against Russia when they come up for renewal in January.

Linkevicius said he was confident that there would be agreement to roll over the measures in January.

"I would prefer an improvement of the situation in Ukraine, but all indications at the moment show that the Minsk agreements are not kept. And our agreement is that in such case we will extend sanctions," he told Reuters.

Concluding the brief letter, Juncker said he had asked his diplomatic adviser, Richard Szostak, to follow the issue of closer trade ties closely.

"I can assure you that the European Commission will be a helpful partner in this process," he wrote.

Russia seized Crimea militarily last year after pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted by a popular uprising in favor of closer economic and political ties with the European Union.

The EU has imposed successive waves of sanctions over the annexation of the Black Sea peninsula and support for separatist rebels in eastern Europe.

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#10
'Traditional Family' Said Making a Comeback in Russia-- But It's Mostly Rural and Muslim
Paul Goble

Staunton, November 18 - The "traditional" family that Vladimir Putin and Russian nationalist want in which couples marry early and have three or four children is in fact becoming more numerous in the Russian Federation, but that comeback may not please everyone because most such families are either in villages or in traditionally Muslim ones.

Urban Russians continue to behave more like their European counterparts, marrying later and having fewer or even no children.  As a result, villagers will continue to increase at more rapid rates than urban residents, and Muslim regions and many non-Russian regions will grow relative to Russian ones, thus shifting the ethnic balance in the country still further.

Using unpublished Rosstat data, Sergey Zakharov, the deputy director of the Institute of Demography at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, focused on the transformation of the Russian family with the urban one going in one direction and the rural and non-Russian one going in quite another (opec.ru/1893286.html).

Examining statistics for the Russian Federation as a whole, he says, shows that "on the one hand, the number of childless women is growing" and approaching 15 percent, the level in most developed countries but "on the other hand, a segment of Russian families measured by number of children and the speed of forming a family is moving in the opposite direction," with more children born and over a shorter period of time.

If one looks at the first, one would conclude that Russia is completing its second "demographic revolution;" but if one considers the second, it would appear that Russia is making "a step backward" in that regard.  Zakharov used by longitudinal and regional data to consider which trend may win out.

Birthrates in the country as a whole have been falling more or less constantly since the 1920s, with each following generation having on average fewer children than its predecessor. That leads some to "pessimistic" conclusions. But in the last two years, the fertility rates for women in many rural and non-Russian areas of Russia have been "above 2.7."

That figure is far above the replacement level of  2.1 children per woman per lifetime that is needed - and also far above the figure for Russia as a whole which in 2014 was 1.75 children per woman per lifetime.  The explanation is that figures in urban areas and among ethnic Russians were much lower than that, well below replacement rates.

The number of multi-child families is also growing, Zakharov says, with about 20 percent of younger women having three children and 10 percent having four. But at the same time, the share of women having two children has remained over the last 40 year largely unchanged at 40 percent, although the share of those with one has fallen over that period.

At the end of Soviet times and in the first decades of Russian ones, the age at which women gave birth to their first children fell dramatically but now that decline has stopped overall, a reflection of moves in the other direction among rural Russians and non-Russian nationalities.

There is thus an increasing gap between city and countryside in Russia, reversing an earlier trend toward its reduction, and "territorial variations in rural areas 'exceed the level of the end of the 1970s and even the level of the 1950s,'" Zakharov says, with non-Russian ones having far higher fertility rates than Russian ones.

The growth in the number of women having three of four children is found largely in rural areas and especially in non-Russian republics and among non-Russians more generally who had high levels of fertility in the past and have not yet "completed the demographic transition to lower fertility."

Pro-natalist policies are having some effect, he suggested. In 2013, the only groups showing an increase in birth were in families where at least one parent was a non-Russian. In 2014, these groups, who are far outnumbered by ethnic Russians, accounted for only 30 percent of the increase. But clearly most of the rise came in rural areas, not Russian cities.
 

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#11
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 18, 2015
How Russia fits into the changing structure of world trade
Interview: Radhika Desai, professor at the Department of Political Studies, director of Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba (Canada) and member of the Valdai Discussion Club, discusses the growth of regional trade agreements and possible implications for developing economies, such as Russia.
Ksenia Zubacheva Q&A

The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit started in Manila, Philippines on Nov. 18. This year, one of the most urgent topics expected to be discussed during the summit will be the U.S.-led project of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the text of which has been already released.

The free trade pact already includes 12 Pacific Rim economies - Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam - and thus will constitute the creation of one of the largest trade agreements ever attempted.

While  some experts claim that the TPP benefits over the short-term will most likely be limited, there is some degree of concern that the agreement might put those states not involved in the partnership in an unfavorable position. Some even suggest that if the TPP in the future acquires its own institutional structures (its own secretariat and a dispute resolution mechanism), it then might even make APEC irrelevant. In that case, Russia, China and other states might find themselves outside and will not be able to benefit, which certainly poses a threat to these countries' interests.

With more and more regional trade agreements (RTAs) signed and planned in the future (612 notifications of such agreements were submitted to the WTO), what implications will this have on the world economy as a whole and local economies in particular? What does the "backward" trend from more open economies toward more closed economies and managed trade means for the World Trade Organization?

Russia Direct reached out to Radhika Desai, professor at the Department of Political Studies, director of Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba (Canada) and member of the Valdai Discussion Club, to discuss these questions and assess where Russian interests fit in this changing environment of the world economy.

Russia Direct: How could the current trend towards more economic trade regionalization influence international trade dynamics over the long term?

Radhika Desai: The most important thing to know about the RTAs, such as the TPP, is the following: In 1995 the WTO was launched with great fanfare. Everybody thought that it would eventually include the whole world and everyone would benefit. But the reality of free trade is different. The WTO actually has made no progress in concluding any new trade deals.

Naturally there are conflicts between Western countries and the emerging economies, and there are other conflicts between emerging economies and still developing economies. All these conflicts mean that if you decide to create a single set of rules for the whole world, there are bound to be countries that are going to object because it doesn't quite fit them.

RTAs are the rational response to coming to trade agreements that are suitable for a smaller group of countries.  In theory there is nothing particularly wrong with them. In practice what has often happened when regional trade agreements have involved Western countries is that they demand rules which are good for their big corporations but are not good for ordinary people, not only in other states but also in Western countries themselves.

The second problem with RTAs concerns the question of how significant they are. If you look at the most recent statistics and analysis that are even coming out from the IMF and the World Bank, both of which would love to say that world trade is growing, it is clear that they are forced to admit that the trade growth has slowed down, for a number of reasons. The most important of them are the following.

More and more, domestic markets are becoming really important for countries. The bigger countries like Russia, China, and India are well-placed because they have large populations, so they can develop their own markets and use that as an engine of growth for quite a long time. That's very good but it definitely means that trade becomes less important.

Another reason is "tertiarization" [A shift from the primary and secondary sectors to the tertiary sector. - Editor's note]. As more and more economies develop, they leave behind the phase of manufacturing where you are producing tradable goods. You then enter into a more sophisticated and complex economy in which the bulk of your consumers and producers are in the same country. This also makes trade less important.

For these reasons the significance of TPP should be questioned. The TPP has just been signed and it still needs to be approved by the respective parliaments. In Canada, for example, a new liberal government was elected which doesn't agree with what the previous hyper-conservative government has done during the past ten years. So you can't really know whether a country like Canada will actually approve it.

Of course, economic partnerships are very good but the important thing is to engage in economic partnerships that are beneficial for the economy as a whole and that means beneficial for ordinary people.

RD: Today we are seeing the situation in which the old traditional ideas of a global liberal economy are not popular anymore and states are pursuing the opposite, in the form of protectionist policies. Economic sanctions are once again imposed on specific countries like Russia and the number of regional agreements is growing. Will this trend continue in the coming years?

R. Desai: The signs are that we will see more possibilities for managed trade. However, there is one very important caution. Countries, particularly those like India and Russia with a relatively powerful capitalist class, should be aware of the role this class plays. It's better if the capitalists' role is such that it will benefit the economy as a whole rather than just a small number of people.

When you have powerful capitalists, they want more freedom for capital, both domestic and foreign, because they want to tie up with foreign capital. If that trend prevails over a concern to develop the economy as a whole, it will prevent countries like Russia and India from fully realizing the potential that multipolarity has for creating very dynamic and vibrant economies capable of expanding growth and material prosperity of ordinary people.

Think about the golden age of capitalism - the 1950s and 1960s. Because the power of the West was circumscribed, Russia, China and many of the developing countries were trying to pursue autonomous growth. The West could not impose its policies on these countries and because of that we had more state-managed economies.

The most state-managed period in the history of capitalism was the most dynamic. Why? Because if the states are able to manage their economy so that everybody is employed, economic growth is fast, then there will be more prosperity, more trade and more benefit all around.

RD: If we have more state-managed economies around the world, then what implications will it have for the future of the WTO?

R. Desai: Frankly speaking, the WTO is dead, it's not going anywhere. Part of the reason why the U.S. and Europe are pursuing regional trade agreements (TPP, Canada-EU trade agreement) is because they want to entrench in a kind of supra-constitutional level freedoms for capitalists, particularly for financial capital.

I think it's bad for their own economies but the governments are in the pockets of financial capitalists so they are doing these things but it's not good for the EU and U.S. economies and ordinary people. It's very likely that we will see opposition to these agreements building up in these countries.

The thing that the liberal government was elected in Canada showed that the people were fed up with the policies carried out by the conservatives. In the U.S., Bernie Sanders, the left-wing politician, is attracting huge crowds. He is not very radical and he is going to compromise with Hillary Clinton but the people believe what he is saying. The fact that they are there shows that the opposition to these sorts of things is increasing. If Sanders doesn't fulfill the expectations of these people, they'll find another leader.

The same goes for Jeremy Corbin in England. Nobody imagined that he would be elected the leader of the Labour Party. The discontent is now erupting in different Western countries and it will also erupt elsewhere.

RD: What is your take on the development of the BRICS? Which direction are they moving toward?

R. Desai: They are now standing at the crossroads. One way is to move toward managed trade and prosperity; another way -  towards free trade and financial flows but for the sole benefit of the capitalist class.

I would say that what is happening In China is very important. There is a struggle within the government: Pro-capitalist forces want to go towards free trade while others and the Communist Party are pushing towards fighting inequality and corruption. China's fate depends on which one wins. If the pro-capitalist faction wins, the ability of Communist Party to continue to rule China will be in question.

In Russia and India, the governments seem to be aware of these risks. On the other hand, the capitalist class will pull them in one direction, while on the other, the need for reelection and people's support will pull them in another direction. Which way it turns out, we will see.

RD: What is your forecast for the development of Russian economy in the coming year? Do you think the sanctions regime will be lifted any time soon?

R. Desai: My personal opinion is that sanctions are not bothering Russia. Russia's problem is not sanctions. Since 2000 they have managed to stabilize the economy, but that was 15 years ago. You need a new project how are you going to develop the Russian economy and ensuring it's diversified away from energy dependence.

I have been to St. Petersburg and Moscow Economic Forums and met many people there who agree that Russia needs an industrial policy. Sergey Glazyev [Russian politician and economist, member of Russian Academy of Science since 2008. - Editor's note] who is quite close to Vladimir Putin believes that as well. I think voices like these need to be heard. I am not saying everything he is saying is right, but the general direction is good. If the government takes this road and sets out a clear plan, the Russian government has a lot of potential.
 
RD: The past two years have showed that what seems to be beneficial from the economic point of view is often sacrificed in order to gain some political leverage which counters the ideals of economic liberalism. From your point of view, what comes first - economics or politics?  

R. Desai: I would say it's always politics. Economics has certain logic to it, but politics is always in command. One of the goals of politics is to create a good economy. So politics should be directed at helping the economy which benefits the whole of society and can be dynamic and competitive, that allows the people to fully realize their potential and creativity.

All this rhetoric of free markets is a lot of rubbish, because in reality the very countries that espouse these policies, they don't practice them themselves. They want other people to practice them. [Ronald] Reagan was the great free market proponent, but he also was the most protectionist president in the history of America.

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 #12
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
November 18, 2015
Toss Your MSM Subscriptions and Buy The Saker's Book
You'll save money and learn more
By Patrick Armstrong
Patrick Armstrong received a PhD from Kings College, University of London, England in 1976 and retired in 2008 after 30 years as an analyst for the Canadian government, specializing in first the USSR and then Russia. He was a Political Counselor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow from 1993 to 1996.

The Essential Saker (ISBN 978-1608880584) is available at Amazon.com (print and ebook).

Additional information at http://www.nimblebooks.com/index.php/saker.html

and http://www.nimblebooks.com/index.php/where-to-find-nimble-books.

Like thousands of others, I discovered The Saker early on in the Ukraine disaster and quickly added his site to my list of essential reading. His writing is an example of the finest that can be found on the Internet and and an illustration of just how important that resource is. Formerly working for some Western security organisation, he was sickened by the parade of wars and regime changes unanimously promoted by the Main Stream Media as a response to some atrocity later revealed to have been exaggerated if not entirely faked. For a long time he felt alone - a "submarine in a desert" - and it has only been with the explosion of readership that he has realised that there are many other beached submarines. The Internet is very liberating this way - no matter how much the monovoice of the MSM shouts you down with Party Line infomercials - you are not alone. As a small illustration, I invite the reader to Google images of "democracy freedom": a lot of "submarines" know they are being lied to. The Saker is one of the forces leading dissident thinkers out of their isolation. And he understands what keeps us unpaid writers going: "So yes, knowing the truth does make one free, and the truth is the most powerful empire-buster ever invented. It brought down the USSR and it will bring down the AngloZionists too. It is just a matter of time now."

One of the things that jarred me when I first began reading The Saker was his use of the phrase "AngloZionist". Oh oh, I thought: what have we here? The Elders of Zion marry the Masons and bring forth lizardoids? Other people had a similar difficulty and, eventually, he wrote an essay explaining what he meant by the phrase. (Part IV) I think he means "exceptionalism"; the sort of belief that, on the one side there are ordinary, unexceptional states, and on the other, there are the pure, the exceptional. A perfect example of completely uncritical rah-rah exceptionalism may be found in this piece by the Cheneys: "Our children need to know that they are citizens of the most powerful, good and honorable nation in the history of mankind-the exceptional nation." That's the "Anglo" bit of The Saker's expression; the other "exceptional nation" is "the only democracy in the Middle East". Because of their exceptional virtue and excellence, the USA and Israel aren't bound by the rules that apply to other, ordinary, countries. When "exceptional nations" bomb a hospital for half an hour it's a "tragic mistake" to be swiftly forgiven because of the purity of the bomber's intention. Other, lesser, countries, bomb hospitals because that's what they do. So I would recommend, if the phrase offend you (and I don't much care for it myself), that you mentally replace it with "exceptionalists"; or you might even prefer "neocons" where the two exceptionalisms meet and merge into one exceptionalism.

Which leads us to this important theme; a theme that grounds most of the book: "For better or for worse, Russia is objectively the undisputed leader of the world resistance to the Anglo-Zionist Empire". How this situation came to be - and it's certainly not something anyone in Moscow wanted - and when Moscow decided that enough was enough and predictions of where it will go form a great part of the book.

Moscow's fightback began in 2008. I suggest you start your reading at his chapter on the Ossetia war (Part III). It's early Saker, he was not a great admirer of Putin, but the key points of his thinking are there - the USA/NATO/EU are trying to bring Russia down; Russia has had enough and began its fight back in Ossetia; Russia is in a much stronger position than they think.

He thinks - I agree - that the Ukrainian mess marks the beginning of the end of the empire of exceptionalists. He sums it up: "In conclusion and to put things simply: what the AngloZionists are openly and publicly defending in the Ukraine is the polar opposite of what they are supposed to stand for". Hypocrisy will do them in: "What really brought down the Soviet Union was something entirely different: an unbearable cognitive dissonance or, to put it more simply, an all-prevailing sense of total hypocrisy". He's right. Look at the Google search again. People see it.

Russia has confounded the exceptionalists: "Thus the USA is in a lose-lose situation: it cannot threaten Russia and seek world domination, but it cannot give up world domination and hope to be able to threaten Russia". Not many people could have written that in 2008. And, from the perspective of today, there are still remarkably few who understand its truth.

He doesn't always get it right (but who does? Washington? Brussels? Western intelligence agencies?) and here is an example: "One more thing: the notion that the Russians could somehow protect Syria or meaningfully oppose US//NATO plans is laughable". He, I, we, but especially Washington and Brussels, continually underestimate the cleverness and coolness of Putin and his team.

I am not going to attempt a summary of the book: it is almost 200,000 words long (that's two PhD theses); I haven't mentioned the essays on Russia and Islam with which he leads the pack. Nor have I mentioned his assessment of power struggles inside the Russian government or much of what he has to say about Ukraine.

Many collections of essays bore after a while because so many of them are the same thing over and over again. The Essential Saker is an exception - he has thought a great deal about a lot of subjects (mostly related to Russia, but that is a large subject) and they are all worth consideration. Not a book for one sitting then: read an essay or two and take time to reflect. There is much there.

Dr Johnson once said "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money"; today he would probably add page-views. Well, The Saker has the page-views, now it's time to give him some money. Buy his book; you won't be sorry: there's more about what's really going on in it than the last ten years of the NYT and The Economist rolled into one. And, of course, don't forget to bookmark and faithfully read his blog http://thesaker.is/.

And, a final zinger: "As for Obama, he will go down in history as the worst US president ever. Except the next one, of course".

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#13
Christian Science Monitor
November 18, 2015
Sinai plane bomb puts Russia in familiar situation: in terrorists' sights
The Kremlin confirmed that the Russian jetliner destroyed last month, killing 224, was felled by a bomb. History indicates that Russians will stand behind Putin against terrorism.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW - The destruction of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula last month that killed 224 people may have been the first attack by an external enemy that Russia unambiguously shares with the West.

But the MetroJet bomb, confirmed on Tuesday by the Kremlin and claimed by the so-called Islamic State, is an all-too familiar terrorist blowback for the Russian public.

National solidarity, and the urge to hit terrorists harder and rally around strong leadership, follows most terrorist attacks around the world. And in Russia, which has experienced more than a dozen horrific terrorist strikes in its cities over the past 16 years, this pattern is deeply embedded.

Just as the IS attacks in Paris on Friday brought out both resolve and anger in France, including a declaration of "war" against the terrorist group from French President François Hollande, so too has Russian President Vladimir Putin urged solidarity while vowing to hit the terrorists with stepped-up airstrikes. If history is any indicator, Russians will broadly support Mr. Putin's leadership, even if it means further restrictions of political liberties.

A history with terrorism

The now-confirmed bombing of the MetroJet Airbus over Sinai is the first major terrorist attack against Russians in almost two years. But Russia's heartland has been hit more than a dozen times by Chechen terrorists over the past 16 years, sometimes in spectacular acts that killed hundreds and sent the public reeling. In late 1999, a wave of apartment bombings - sometimes described as "Russia's 9/11" - killed almost 300 people in their sleep and radically changed the political climate.

Amid the wave of public fear, rage, and confusion, a virtually unknown new leader, recently appointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, ordered the Russian Army to invade Chechnya. Mr. Putin's popularity spiked, and after being appointed acting president by an ailing Boris Yeltsin, he handily won presidential elections a few months later.

During subsequent years of bloody warfare, Chechen-based jihadists struck repeatedly in Moscow and other cities. In 2002, scores of Chechen terrorists wearing suicide belts seized a downtown Moscow theater with 1,000 people. Russian security forces pumped poison gas into the hall, then slaughtered the attackers; critics maintained that many of the 130 dead hostages were actually killed by the gas.

Two years later Chechens seized a school in Beslan. Amid the subsequent assault by security forces, 300 people, half of them children, died. Putin used the public anguish over Beslan to crack down on civil liberties and abolish some elections.

In each case, the Kremlin acted to quell criticism, and to double down on the use of force. After several years, Russia pacified Chechnya and turned it over to a local pro-Moscow strongman. Terror attacks did not abate immediately, but lessened in frequency and scale.

'We must strike back even harder'

For the Russian public, the Kremlin policy of tough response regardless of the cost in lives became almost routine. "Over the years there has been a militarization of Russian society, people have gotten used to the idea that there will be losses," says Alexei Malashenko, an Islam scholar at the Moscow Carnegie Center.

That has included Russians' acceptance that political liberties will be curbed and state powers will grow, even if those shifts may prove to be of limited benefit to the public.

"Here in Russia the achievements of the actual anti-terrorist fight are fairly modest, but the advantages gained by the state to limit movement, crack down on anything seen as 'extremist' have been very substantial," says Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

The pattern does not look set to change with respect to Syria. Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the Levada Center, Russia's only independent polling agency, says that public support for Russia's intervention in Syria remains strong. Though no surveys are yet available on reactions to the latest events, he says he's sure from past patterns that "the logic will be that if we are hit, we must strike back even harder."

Putin will be seen as defender against, not provoker of, IS attacks against the Russian homeland, says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. "It runs totally counter to the mood in this country today to think there will be any significant criticism of the war in Syria, or that people will blame Putin for terrorism," Mr. Lukyanov says. "That's just not going to happen."

And even if some voices are critical, "they will be much more on the defensive after these latest terrorist attacks," says Mr. Malashenko. "Putin gains greater public approval by demonstrating that we will strike back."

An anti-terrorist alliance?

Some analysts believe terrorist responsibility for the MetroJet flight's crash may help Russia and the West get on the same page when it comes to Islamic threats. Putin has already ordered the Russian navy to coordinate with their French counterparts "as allies."

"The fact that the airliner tragedy was announced as terrorism in the wake of those terrible attacks in Paris enables the Kremlin to show that Russia is a normal member of the world community, facing down the same threats," says Malashenko. "Russia will now step up its war against IS, and it will be seen as part of the general response of the civilized world."

But others say a common enemy may not be enough to foment a broad East-West partnership.

"Now that we see IS is prioritized as the common enemy of all, we can hope to see some cooperation. But I don't think anyone believes a grand anti-terrorist alliance is very likely," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based foreign policy journal.

"Whatever successes we may enjoy against IS - and that's all to the good - you can bet that once the dust settles, the hard geopolitical bargaining over the fate of Syria will resume."

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 #14
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
September 17, 2015
Lavrov answers question on Syria conflict

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov takes a question from the creators of The Arithmetic of Terror documentary (Rossiya-1 TV channel), Moscow, 17 November 2015

Question: Why has the antiterrorist operation in Syria only started showing results after Russia joined it? NATO actions were completely futile. Why is that? It seems that those who benefit from the terrorist activity in the region are the ones who fight it. Does it seem like a conspiracy theory to you?

Sergey Lavrov: Before I answer your question, there are no NATO troops there, but rather a coalition created by the United States, which is in no way related to the organizational structure of NATO.

Our assessment of the developments that have been unfolding since the start of the antiterrorist operation in August 2014 is based on monitoring specific results. The results are insignificant, not to say that there are no results at all, except that the Islamic State has since expanded across the territories controlled by it. There were some tactical successes when the coalition managed to take over a couple of cities in Iraq. But by and large, the Islamic State has expanded and strengthened its territories and has, in fact, built a quasi-state - the Islamic State - knowingly choosing such a name. They did achieve certain results in organizing everyday life and providing services to the local population - this is true - but they have also introduced brutal rules that discriminate people of other faiths. The people of Islam, not to mention the Christians, reject the absolutely radical, extremist, and inhuman tenets that ISIS is guided by in ruling these territories. They are persecuted, and often executed.

The trouble with the United States and its coalition is that even though they announced that the coalition had been created exclusively to fight the Islamic State and other terrorists and would not conduct any military operations against the Syrian army (they have remained true to their word in this particular aspect), their strikes against terrorists and the analysis of these strikes for over one year lead to the conclusion that their strikes were selective, I would even say, sparing; and in most cases those ISIS units which could represent a serious threat to the Syrian army were not targeted.

This is a rather dangerous and certainly ambiguous game, which leaves US intentions unclear. Clearly, this is some kind of "I wish I might" mentality when they want ISIS to weaken al-Assad [Bashar al-Asad] as soon as possible so that he leaves office this way or the other, but at the same time they don't want ISIS to grow too strong so as to be able to take over the country. Of course, half-heartedness, hesitation and attempts to sit on two chairs at the same time boded poorly for Syria as it strived to remain a secular state, guaranteeing the rights of all ethnic and religious groups. The ability of that country to preserve the civilisational culture that was created on its territory by Muslims, Christians and other religions and peoples thus became questionable.

The Islamic State has become dangerous as it started expanding its offensive actions and was nearing Damascus. In this situation, the legitimate Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad approached us with a request to provide military assistance to the Syrian army by way of air strikes, which we did. Perhaps because we have been doing so consistently and do not make distinctions between terrorists, singling out those who could be instrumental in addressing certain tactical issues and hoping to deal with them later, we are delivering our strikes against all those who, in one way or another, profess and preach this terrorist ideology. I think that all the wailing that we hear about "Russia delivering strikes at the wrong targets and hurting moderate opposition" stems from the ambiguity that underlies the coalition's activities. They want to keep the terrorists in check but at the same time let them do their thing when they can be used to weaken the regime. Hence comes all this talking and allegations that we are breaking the laws of war and bombing civilians.

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#15
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 19, 2015
Why Russia can invoke the right to self-defense to attack ISIS
After the Paris attacks and the act of terrorism against a Russian airliner in Egypt, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a clear signal to terrorists and those who are behind them.
By Anton Varfolomeev
Anton Varfolomeev is an associate professor at the National Research University, Higher School of Economics. He has worked as a member of Russian delegations at the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on Terrorism, and anti-terrorist units of the OSCE and G8. He holds a Ph.D. in political science.

On Nov. 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting on the results of the investigation into the crash of the Russian airliner in the Sinai. At this meeting, Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), confirmed what had already been speculated since the earliest days of the crash of the Russian Boeing A321 - this was a terrorist attack.

In response, Putin said that Russia would invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter, which enshrines the right to individual and collective self-defense. What does that mean, and will it be legitimate to carry out air strikes on the positions of terrorists located in the territory of another state?

Is it legitimate to refer to the right of self-defense as a response to a terrorist act?

Indeed, the UN Charter was written at the end of the Second World War, when everyone's understanding of what constituted threats to peace and security was unequivocal. Accordingly, for many years the right to self-defense was perceived solely as an opportunity for a state to put an end, using all possible (but legal) means, to aggression coming from another state or combination of states.

However, for nearly 15 years now, the right to self-defense has been interpreted by the UN Security Council in a much broader sense. After 9/11, the UN Security Council (in Security Council resolutions 1368, 1373 and subsequent ones) qualified the terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, being supported by the Taliban, as a threat to international peace and security, and essentially confirmed the right of the United States to defend itself and, in general, legalized the actions of the anti-terrorist coalition in Afghanistan.

Thus, the UN Security Council equated the terrorist attacks against the United States with armed aggression within the meaning of Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Interestingly, the author of this idea of self-defense against terrorists was not the United States, but their strategic partner, Israel. Already in the 1980s, this country carried out bombing raids against Lebanon and Tunisia, claiming its "right to self-defense" against "terrorists" of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

In all fairness, it should be noted that international law norms of self-defense in response to terrorist attacks are still poorly developed today.

As Leonid Skotnikov, judge at the International Court of Justice, noted, even with respect to the response of the United States and its allies after 9/11, the UN Security Council did not determine whether the U.S. had a right to attack a particular state or non-state actor. Moreover, it did not set any time limits for the exercise of the right to self-defense. The resolutions of the Security Council contained only generalities, reaffirming the inalienable right of any state to defend itself.

Nevertheless, the precedent of attacking the terrorist bases of Al-Qaeda, with the approval of the Security Council, to this day continues to place into practice the implementation of the relevant norms of international law.

Who has the right to invoke self-defense provisions?

As we already mentioned, the right to self-defense has historically been implemented against aggressors. In principle, the concept of "self-defense against terrorists" is still legal nonsense. The specific people carrying out terrorist acts are criminals, whose deeds are certainly ambitious, and do have global impact.

However, they are not the same as states, and cannot be placed at the same level and treated as equal opponents of nation-states. Terrorists are not arbiters of destinies, but criminal elements. The "war on terrorism" is only a figurative expression. Countering them in practice is the job of law enforcement agencies, albeit often in the form of special operations units.

It is another matter, when we speak of states that order terror attacks and/or are the accomplices of the terrorists. These may be justifiably subject to the full-scale application of the right to self-defense. Thus, the UN definition of aggression recognizes this to also mean the sending, by or on behalf of a state, armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed aggression against another state. The legal response to such actions is the same right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

In the case of the banned Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS), this situation applies. Within nation-states, in particular Syria, being carried out are terrorist activities directed against the interests of other countries, particularly Russia. Of course, the Syrian government is unable to stop the terrorist activity on its own, because it simply does not control a part of its territory. Accordingly, it cannot be held responsible for the actions of the terrorists.

Confirmation of this is the request made by the government of President Assad, seeking Moscow's help in the fight against terrorists in the territories not controlled by Damascus. Large parts of the country are under the control of a number of terrorist groups, the largest and most organized of which are ISIS and the al-Nusra Front. The leaders of these organizations claim the role of a peculiar type of "government," and generally position themselves as independent autonomous actors, something that has been often noted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Accordingly, against the administrative centers of these quasi-public entities, Russia can now carry out attacks, invoking the right to self-defense.

A similar story was observed during Operation Enduring Freedom against Afghanistan, which was then ruled by the Taliban. This movement not only exercised effective control of most of the state and exercised the corresponding powers, but also positioned itself as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, with which, by the way, a number of countries even maintained diplomatic relations.

Thus, the U.S. and its allies exercised their rights to self-defense not against an abstract terrorist network or individual, disparate militant groups, but against quasi-state with a territory under its control, administrative centers, etc.

Did Russia now adopt this concept of self-defense against terrorists, and what are the causes?

In fact, the idea of imposing possible self-defense measures in the event of terrorist attacks was announced in the early 2000s, by the then Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov. He and then Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky talked about Russia's readiness to strike terrorist bases in any region of the world. The necessary legal framework for this was also developed.

The Federal Law "On Combating Terrorism" of 2006 (Article 10) authorizes the use of weapons from the territory of Russia against terrorists residing abroad and (or) their bases, as well as the use of military units to carry out the tasks of combating international terrorist activities abroad.

Another law - "On the Federal Security Service" - indicates that the Russian president can decide to use special units against terrorists located outside of Russia and (or) against their bases.

However, we should note that the use of weapons, and even armed forces, to perform counter-terrorism tasks abroad can be assigned to defense and/or law enforcement agencies, depending on against whom such measures are being taken.

If the objects are a state or quasi-state structures, then we can talk about invoking self-defense. If the counter-terrorism measures are directed against individuals and their associations, then this is a law enforcement function, regardless of the agency, volume and duration of use of particular resources and capabilities.

Therefore, we are not talking about defense in relation to the use of Russian armed forces for domestic counter-terrorism operations. Counter-terrorist operations were carried out in the territory of the North Caucasus, and the right self-defense against terrorists was not invoked. It is inappropriate to talk about self-defense also when it comes to counter-terrorism operations by special operations abroad.

The complexity of defining terrorism at the level of international institutions

We should not forget the old axiom - one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter." Unfortunately, this is the practice of "double standards" - and it was always like this is the past, and continues at present.

That is the reason we cannot, nor will be able to, in the foreseeable future, agree on an international definition of terrorism, the absence of which many experts like to talk about. For many years, the UN has been trying to reach agreement on the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, initiated by India. The stumbling block here is the same as in the question of distinguishing terrorist acts from the right of self-determination.

On the other hand, the absence of a common definition is no reason to sit back and do nothing. At the national level, terrorism is considered a criminal activity, and is accordingly treated in all countries of the world. This is not a common internationally accepted definition, but it is better than nothing.

At the UN level, the existence of any threat to the peace or an act of aggression, in accordance with the UN Charter, is defined by the Security Council.

Moreover, the Council does this ad hoc. In each case, it takes into account all the circumstances, coordinating positions and often the different approaches of its members.

A single definition of terrorism will not help here, because no influential state is likely to change its political motives and recognize, or not recognize, a certain organization as "terrorist," if relying just on the definition of terrorism in international law.

Another matter is the right to self-defense. Under the United Nations Charter, until the Security Council adopts measures to remove threats to the peace, or an act of aggression, each country has the right to act alone, or collectively, in implementing this right.

Thus, if the Security Council cannot make a quick decision when there is a real threat to security, a state has the right to take urgent measures on its own (with subsequent notification of the Security Council).

Thus, if after a major subversive terrorist attack, there appears irrefutable evidence that some state or states were behind this attack, the affected country has the right to retaliate. States that act as accomplices to a terrorist attack can be reasonably held responsible for indirect aggression against a country that is a victim of such an attack.

It seems that this was what President Putin was referring to when he spoke about the right of Russia to defend itself after the A321 was blown up. Putin promised retribution against all those involved in the crash of the Russian Boeing over the Sinai, regardless of where they are located now. This was a warning for countries that are playing their games using ISIS as a cover.

Thus, awaiting terrorists is the implementation of law enforcement special operations, including in other countries. Moreover, in respect to the states, Russia will gather information about their implication in the preparation of the terrorist attack against the airplane - be it negligence, criminal connivance, or direct assistance and support. Depending on the collected evidence, a response will be prepared, and it is possible that the right to self-defense will be invoked.

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 #16
Sputnik
November 19, 2015
Why is Washington Turning Blind Eye to ISIL's Gulf Funding Sources?

Why hasn't the United States yet cut off ISIL's funding sources, Peter Van Buren wonders, adding that by halting the flow of money to the Islamic State Washington could have long ago dealt a lethal blow to the terrorist organization.

War is a brutal and expensive business that requires hundreds of millions of dollars; the existence of the notorious Islamic State is dependent on a perpetual money flow from different sources.

"Follow the money back, cut it off, and you strike a blow much more devastating than an airstrike," Peter Van Buren, an author and a 24-year veteran of the State Department, recommends, posing a question:

"Why isn't the United States going after Islamic State's funding sources as a way of lessening or eliminating their strength at making war?"

In his blog WeMeantWell.com Peter Van Buren calls attention to the fact that the US State Department has long been aware that Gulf monarchies, longstanding America's allies, are funding numerous Sunni extremist groups. It has never been a secret to Washington's policymakers.

In a leaked 2009 action request cable Deputy Assistant Secretary Douglas C. Hengel pointed out the necessity to cut off "terrorist fundraising in the Gulf by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT, and other Af/Pak-based violent extremist groups, all of which undermine the security of the entire international community."

"Direct links are difficult to prove, particularly if the United States chooses not to prove them," Van Buren noted.

To complicate matters further, the money usually comes from private "donors," not directly from national treasures, and could be routed through "legitimate charitable organizations" or "front companies."

However, at the G20 in Turkey Russian President Putin has disclosed what has long remained swept under the carpet: Putin said that he had shared information on ISIL sponsors with the other G20 members. The list contains 40 countries, including a number of G20 states.

"Putin's list of funders has not been made public. The G20, however, include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the European Union," Van Buren underscored.

The former State Department official pointed out that oil sales have been one of ISIL's major sources of income. Interestingly enough, during the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria, Washington avoided bombing terrorists' largest oil producing facilities under the pretext that they remain the property of the Syrian people.

"Conservative estimates are that Islamic State takes in one to two million dollars a day from oil sales; some see the number as high as four million a day," the US author remarked.

However this is only a part of the story.

In June 2014 French intellectual and political analyst Thierry Meyssan posed a question, how could al-Qaeda's affiliate al-Nusra Front and ISIL sell oil on the international market which is closely monitored by Washington.

"A question arises to which the Atlanticist media and the Gulf still have no answer: how can these terrorists sell oil on the international market so monitored by Washington? In March [2014], the Libyan Benghazi separatists had failed to sell the oil that they had seized," Meyssan wrote in his piece for Voltairenet.org.

If al-Nusra Front and ISIL are able to sell oil on the international market, they are either authorized by Washington or linked to influential oil companies, the French analyst suggested.

Needless to say, it is no easy task to bring the stolen oil to the market.

"Oil must be taken from the ground using heavy equipment, possibly refined, stored, loaded into trucks or pipelines, moved somewhere and then sold into the worldwide market," the former US official elaborated.

According to Van Buren, Turkish officials could have been possibly behind this secret oil trade. However, there is also the possibility that private Iraqi and Turkish buyers traveled to Syria and transported the stolen crude on their trucks.

Still, it is becoming clear that Western powers involved in the year-long anti-ISIL campaign have chosen the wrong strategy.

In his another piece Van Buren addresses the Western establishment, saying:  "Leave the Middle East alone. Stop creating more failed states. Stop throwing away our freedoms at home on falsehoods. Stop disenfranchising the Muslims who live with us. Understand the war, such as it is, is against a set of ideas - religious, anti-western, anti-imperialist - and you cannot bomb an idea."

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 #17
www.rt.com
November 18, 2015
In the fight against ISIS, Russia ain't taking no prisoners
By Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of 'Globalistan' (Nimble Books, 2007), 'Red Zone Blues' (Nimble Books, 2007), 'Obama does Globalistan' (Nimble Books, 2009) and a contributing editor for a number of other books, including the upcoming 'Crossroads of Leadership: Globalization and the New American Century in the Obama Presidency' (Routledge). When not on the road, he alternates between Sao Paulo, New York, London, Bangkok and Hong Kong.

The so-called Islamic State should have learned by now: they've picked a fight against the wrong guys. We have entered "take no prisoners" territory. For Russia, now all the gloves are off.

Especially after online terrorist magazine Dabiq published a photo of the alleged bomb that downed the Metrojet: a crude device inside a can of Schweppes Gold, placed under a passenger seat. Also published were photos of passports of Russian victims, allegedly taken "by the mujahedeen."

Their collective fate was sealed the minute the Director of the Federal Security Service Aleksandr Bortnikov told President Putin, about the Metrojet crash on October 31 in Egypt that: "We can say with confidence that this was a terrorist act."

Caliphate goons may run - in the deserts of 'Syraq' and beyond - but they can't hide, as per Russia's presidential message: "We will search for them everywhere - wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any spot on the planet and we will punish them." The message comes with extra enticement; the $50 million bounty offered by the FSB for any information leading to the perpetrators of the Sinai tragedy.

Putin's message instantly turned heavy metal in the form of a massive, impressive Russian barrage over 140 Caliphate targets, delivered via 34 air-launched cutting-edge cruise missiles and furious action by Tu-160, Tu-22, and the Tu-95MC 'Bear' strategic bombers. This was the first time the Russian long-range strategic bomber force has been deployed since the 1980s Afghan jihad.

And there's more coming - to be stationed in Syria; an extra deployment of 25 strategic bombers, eight Su-34 'Fullback' attack aircraft, and four Su-27 'Flanker' fighter jets.

The tanker truck riddle

At the G-20 in Antalya, Putin had already, spectacularly, unveiled who contributes to Daesh's financing - complete with "examples based on our data on the financing of different [Daesh] units by private individuals."

The bombshell: Daesh's cash, "as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them." It doesn't take a Caltech genius to figure out which members. They'd better take the "you can run but you can't hide" message seriously.

Additionally, Putin debunked - graphically - to the whole G20 the myth of a Washington seriously engaged on the fight against Daesh: "I've shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil." He was referring to Daesh's oil smuggling tanker truck fleet, which numbers over 1,000.

Apparently acting on Russian satellite intelligence, the Pentagon then miraculously managed to find tanker truck convoys stretching "beyond the horizon," smuggling out stolen Syrian oil. And duly bombed 116 trucks. For the first time. And this in over a year that the 'Coalition of the Dodgy Opportunists' (CDO) is theoretically fighting Daesh. The only such bombing that happened before was by the Iraqi Air Force.

The US "strategy", which Obama recently turbocharged, is to bomb (aging) Syrian oil infrastructure currently expropriated and exploited by Daesh. Technically, this is the property of Damascus, and thus belongs to "the Syrian people."

And yet Washington seemed so far to be more focused on other "people" who could make a bundle rebuilding the devastated infrastructure, disaster capitalism-style, in case "Assad must go" works.  

Russia once again went straight to the point. Bomb the transportation network - the oil truck convoys - not the oil infrastructure. That will eventually drive oil smugglers out of business.  

The key reason the Obama administration had not thought about this before is Turkey. Washington needs NATO member Ankara for the use of the Incirlik air base. And then there's the sensitive subject of who profits from Daesh's oil smuggling.

Turkish Socialist party member Gursel Tekin has established that Daesh's smuggled oil is exported to Turkey by BMZ, a shipping company controlled by none other than Bilal Erdogan, son of "Sultan" Erdogan. At a minimum, this violates UN Security Council resolution 2170. Under the light of Putin's message of going after anyone or any entity engaged in facilitating Daesh's operations, Erdogan's clan better come up with some really good excuses.   

That jihadi boot camp

Putin's vow to go after anyone or any entity that facilitates/collaborates with Daesh should logically imply a trip back to 'Shock and Awe 2003': the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq that created the conditions for the establishment of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, "directed" by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi up to 2006.  

The next significant step was Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq; a mini-Guantanamo where at least nine members of the future metastasis of al-Qaeda - Islamic State (IS) - was spawned.

ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was born in an American prison. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim did time there, as well as Daesh's previous number two, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, and most of all Daesh's conceptualizer: Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein's Air Force.

Hardcore Salafi-jihadist meet former Ba'athist notables and find a common purpose; an offer the Pentagon could not refuse and in fact - willfully - let prosper. GWOT (the Global War on Terror), after all, is a Cheney-Rumsfeld-coined "Endless War".  

The US neocon regime change obsession ended up bolstering Daesh's reach in Syria.

The whole process exhibits multiple ramifications of imperial folly, past and future, that can be identified like splinters from a suicide bomb; from CIA-trained/weaponized, Wahhabi-drenched mujahedeen ("Reagan's freedom fighters") metastasizing into 'Al-CIAada', to Hillary Clinton admitting Saudi Arabia is a top source of terrorist financing.    

Paris 2015 - as well as Sinai 2015 - essentially is a side effect of Baghdad 2003. Putin knows it. For now, the task is to smash those mongrel imperial offspring once and for all.

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 #18
Washington Post
November 19, 2015
Editorial
Teaming up with Russia in Syria could be a dangerous false step for the U.S.
 
THE PARIS attacks created a tactical opportunity for Vladi­mir Putin. For two months the Russian ruler sought to persuade Arab and Western nations to join what he described as an alliance against the Islamic State, even as a Russian offensive in Syria targeted Western-backed Syrian rebel forces. He was spurned, and his military campaign bogged down. Now, in the wake of Paris, French President François Hollande suddenly has become a convert to the grand-alliance idea; he has scheduled visits to Washington and Moscow next week to promote it.

Mr. Putin is doing his best to look like a potential partner. On Tuesday, after weeks of obfuscation, his government suddenly confirmed that the Islamic State was responsible for the bombing of a Russian airliner last month, and Russian forces carried out a rare wave of attacks against the Islamic State capital, Raqqa. The Kremlin has much to gain: An alliance could mean the end of European sanctions against Russia, which will expire in January unless renewed, and the concession of a Russian say over the future of Syria and perhaps also Ukraine, where Russian-backed forces have resumed daily attacks.

The question for Western governments, including a rightly skeptical Obama administration, is whether joining with Mr. Putin would help or hurt the cause of destroying the Islamic State. For now, that's not a hard call. Russia has little to offer the U.S.-led coalition in military terms, even if it proved willing to focus its attacks on the Islamic State rather than rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, Mr. Putin's strategy of bolstering rather than removing the Assad regime is, along with Iran's similar strategy, the single biggest obstacle to defeating the jihadists.

Russia has sought to demonstrate in Syria that its military forces have been modernized since they struggled to defeat Chechen rebels a decade ago. But military analysts haven't been impressed with the Russian-led assault on anti-Assad forces in northern Syria. Moscow's planes have mostly dropped dumb bombs, while Syrian and Iranian troops have lost scores of Russian-supplied tanks and armored vehicles to the rebels' U.S.-made TOW missiles. Having failed to recapture significant territory, the Russian mission appears doomed to quagmire or even defeat in the absence of a diplomatic bailout.

Mr. Putin duly dispatched his foreign minister to talks in Vienna last weekend on a Syrian political settlement. But Moscow and Tehran continue to push for terms that would leave Mr. Assad in power for 18 months or longer, while - in theory - a new constitution is drafted and elections organized. Even a U.S. proposal that Mr. Assad be excluded from the eventual elections was rejected, according to Iranian officials.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry was rather elegant in explaining the dangers of accepting Russian terms. If the West "cut a deal" such that "Assad can be there for a while longer," he said, "the war won't stop." The Syrian dictator "has become the magnet for the foreign fighters" joining the Islamic State, Mr. Kerry said. His atrocities, from chemical weapons to "barrel bombs," have convinced the vast majority of Syrian Sunnis that he - and not the terrorists - is their principal enemy.

The only productive contribution Mr. Putin could make to an anti-Islamic State coalition would be to reverse himself, use Russia's leverage to obtain the removal of Mr. Assad and stop attacks on Western-sponsored forces. Failing that, an alliance with Russia would be a dangerous false step for the United States and France.

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#19
Washington Post
November 19, 2015
A dogged fighter for the rule of law in Russia
By Fred Hiatt
Fred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of The Post.
 
Whether or not the United States and France are wise to join a grand alliance with Russia against Islamist terrorism (not, in my view), it is critical that people like Natalia Taubina not get run over as collateral damage.

Taubina, 45, in Washington to receive the annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award on Thursday, is one of those stubborn and remarkable people who continue to fight doggedly for the rule of law inside Russia even as President Vladimir Putin does everything he can to impose his brand of arbitrary authoritarianism.

Since 2004, she has led the Public Verdict Foundation, an organization that seeks justice for victims of torture and other police abuse while promoting systemic reforms in law enforcement. Until recently, it enjoyed surprising success, not only in holding individual abusers accountable but also in persuading the government to take such abuse more seriously. As recently as last year, the organization even got some funding from the president's office.

Now, however, as Putin tries to rub out every vestige of independent civil society, Public Verdict has been labeled a "foreign agent," presumably because it also received some funds from U.N. groups and other non-Russian organizations. Taubina has gone to court to fight that designation, which sounds even more sinister to Russian ears than it does in English, and she says she will not use the label, as required by law, on her publications, for the simple reason that it is not true. This resistance may subject Public Verdict to fines that could quickly bankrupt the modest organization (it has a staff of 15). Which is, no doubt, what Putin has in mind.

I asked Taubina, when she visited The Post on Wednesday, how the West should respond to Putin's crackdown. "Keep a focus on internal issues - not just Ukraine and Syria," she replied. "The lives of ordinary people, their human rights and their dignity - I'm afraid this is almost forgotten."

Taubina cautioned that public opinion polls are notoriously unreliable in countries where people are understandably afraid to speak honestly. "Around the world, people tend to think that Putin equals Russia - they don't think of people like us, fighting for human rights," she said. "Russia is not only Putin."

After dismembering two neighboring countries and squelching freedom at home, Putin hopes to buy his way back into the West's good graces by dropping a few bombs on Raqqa. Taubina's courage should serve as a reminder that the West should not let itself be so easily bought.

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 #20
Washington Post
November 19, 2015
As France seeks a grand coalition, Obama is wary of allying with Russia
By Karen DeYoung and Carol Morello
 
French President François Hollande called on world powers Wednesday to overcome their "sometimes diverging interests" to unite in the fight against the Islamic State. On Tuesday, he will make his case in Washington to President Obama and then travel to Moscow with the same message for President Vladi­mir Putin.

Both say they share Hollande's sense of urgency after last week's attacks in Paris, and in light of the threat of similar attacks in the United States and the downing of a Russian commercial jet by a presumed Islamic State bomb three weeks ago.

In recent days, Russia and the United States have seemed almost to be competing with each other to strike militant targets in Syria. This week, the U.S. Central Command said it hit 116 tank trucks used to transport smuggled Islamic State oil in Syria, and various targets in and around Raqqa, the de facto militant capital.

On Wednesday, the Russian general staff said that its airstrikes had destroyed 500 oil tankers and that its TU-22M3 long-range bombers, flying over Iraq and Iran from a base on the border of Georgia, struck six sites in northern and eastern Syria.

But so far, U.S.-Russian cooperation extends only to "deconfliction" notifications to ensure that their warplanes are not operating in the same airspace at the same time.

The Obama administration remains leery of Putin's eagerness to form a grand military coalition, to include intelligence sharing, against the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS. The administration wants first to test Putin's willingness to follow through on a political agreement to end Syria's civil war and to stop bombing U.S.-backed Syrian forces seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client.

"If we get a better understanding with Russia" on the diplomatic front, Obama said Wednesday in the Philippines, "that obviously opens up more opportunities for coordination with respect to ISIL. And so the two things can't be completely separated."

"We're going to wait and see whether, in fact, Russia does end up devoting more attention to targets that are ISIL targets" than to the opposition, he said.

Administration officials said they welcome Hollande's efforts to coordinate more closely with Russia. But when he meets with Putin, they say, they hope his pitch will be for Moscow to help quickly settle the Syrian civil war so that they all can turn their full attention to the militants.

France agrees with Obama that Assad's continuance in power and the war against his own people have provided fertile territory for the terrorist group to grow.

"We are striking with the Russians and also with the Americans, because we have a common enemy, obviously, which is ISIS," Gérard Araud, France's ambassador to the United States, said in an MSNBC interview Wednesday.

"But you don't win a war with planes, so we need ground forces. And to have ground forces, we need to put an end to the Syrian civil war," Araud said. "So I think it's very important that our military coalition is transformed also into a political coalition and so that we have a political transition in Syria."

On that matter, he added, "we are on a different page with the Russians and we are very close to our American friends."

But understanding and agreeing with the administration's determination to bring leverage to bear on the Russians has not alleviated European anxiety and the simultaneous conviction that something major needs to be done, and immediately.

In his upcoming visits, Araud said, Hollande hopes "to really try to impress on President Obama and on President Putin the sense of urgency. We can't wait 18 months, two years; we have to solve it right now."

Another senior French diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity about internal discussions in Paris, said that "because of our different geography, we have a different vision of the crisis."

Whatever tensions the terrorist actions have provoked in the United States, there is a sense of looming catastrophe on the other side of the Atlantic. The administration needs to understand that "the core interests of Europeans, your best allies, are at stake. We have to act. And we have to act quickly," a European diplomat said.

"The crisis is beginning to have the result of destabilizing Europe," this diplomat said. "There is an emergency. It's the foreign fighters, but it's also the migrant crisis, which is dividing Europeans."

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing both the civil war and the Islamic State have sought refuge in Europe, leading to political and humanitarian turmoil.

One of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks appears to have traveled among migrants legitimately seeking refuge, and there are fears that other militants are among the migrants fleeing danger and are also planning attacks.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry hopes to use the rising anxiety in Europe and Russia to forge a negotiated solution to the civil war that has eluded the international community and the Syrians for the past four years.

At a meeting last weekend in Vienna, members of the U.S.-led coalition supporting the Syrian opposition met with Assad backers Russia and Iran and agreed to a tight timeline for forming a transitional government in Syria.

The participants left the issue that most divides them - Assad's future - to one side while they formulated a several-step process that Kerry said could lead to a cease-fire within weeks.

But several goals must be met before that process can begin, including achieving agreement within the deeply divided opposition groups over who will represent them in talks with the Syrian government.

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 #21
RFE/RL
November 19, 2015
Possible Russia-West Rapprochement Over Syria Stokes Fears In Europe's East
by Pete Baumgartner

France's surprise embrace of Russia in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris has raised concerns across the former Soviet bloc that Moscow wants to leverage the fight against Islamic extremists in Syria to secure Western concessions over Ukraine.

Just days after the massacres in the French capital killed 129 people and injured hundreds of others, President Francois Hollande called for the formation of a grand coalition -- including Russia -- to destroy the Islamic State (IS) group, which claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Putin followed by ordering his navy to cooperate with the French Navy in the eastern Mediterranean, where Russia has a base in the Syrian port of Tartus.
Hollande's push for cooperation with Russia was a major pivot for France, which has been a loyal partner in the multinational U.S.-led coalition fighting IS militants in Syria and Iraq.

The French government had also objected vehemently when Russia began its Syrian air campaign on September 30, saying Moscow's ulterior motive was to keep embattled President Bashar al-Assad in power.

Former Ukrainian diplomat Bohdan Yaremenko told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on November 18 that following the Paris attacks, Putin had "created the opportunity for dialogue with the West that he had lost due to the situation in Ukraine."

Concessions On Ukraine?

Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were the key EU leaders in establishing the economic sanctions regime against Russia in response to its illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and support for separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.

The two leaders also led the way for the West in forging the Minsk cease-fire agreement in February.

"Now the French and other diplomats have to decide if it is possible to cooperate with Russia in Syria without changing their positions on Ukraine -- on maintaining sanctions and possibly expanding them if the Minsk [peace] agreement fails," Yaremenko said.

Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas told parliament on November 17 that "there cannot be bargaining over compliance of the [cease-fire] conditions." He added, "Cooperation elsewhere does not mean for Europe concessions in its neighborhood."

Hollande is set to meet Putin in Moscow next week in what would be the first bilateral visit to Moscow by an EU leader in half a year, Reuters reported on November 18.

Splitting Europe?

Kalev Stoicescu, a research fellow at the International Center for Defense and Security in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, says that Russia is using the Paris attacks "to again split European solidarity in terms of sanctions and the promulgation of sanctions."

But he says that while Russia and the West "may unite forces to combat IS, the common enemy, and sweep the caliphates from the face of the Earth, that doesn't solve the Assad question or resolve Syria's [political] future."

Paul Goble, a longtime Russia analyst and author of the Window on Eurasia blog, says there is concern among some Baltic governments that "the French could be peeled off from Germany and then things would go downhill fast."

Such worries were compounded by comments from Merkel's deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, who suggested that the EU sanctions against Russia were counterproductive because Moscow has become a partner in resolving problems in the Middle East.

Goble adds that he does not think anyone "expected [U.S. President Barack] Obama and Hollande to cave in [to Putin] as far and as fast as they have."

Yuriy Ruban, a political analyst and head of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's Humanitarian Policies Department, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that if the West forgets about Ukraine, then "in several months [Russia's] hybrid war will expand to the Baltic states and beyond, something that our Baltic colleagues are lamenting right now."

Some politicians in Poland, where a new government deeply distrustful of Russia was sworn in on November 16, have likened Hollande's decision to join forces with Moscow to siding with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to fight the Nazis during World War II.

Russian political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky said on November 16 that the West can deal with IS militants without Russia, but that this will take "political will."

He added that it would even be easier for the West to fight IS if it did not have to compromise with Putin and his dependent ally, Assad.
But Stoicescu and Goble say that Putin is mistaken if he believes he will get a pass on Ukraine or be able to slouch on the Minsk agreement because of Russia's bombing raids in Syria.

The Wall Street Journal on November 18 quoted EU officials and diplomats as saying that the 28-member bloc was likely to extend Ukraine-related economic sanctions on Moscow, which are set to expire in January.

"All of Putin's dreams about the handing over to him of Ukraine in the context of an 'anti-Hitler coalition' in the same way that Eastern Europe was handed over to Stalin, were not realized" at the November 15-16 Group of 20 summit in Turkey, Piontkovsky said.

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 #22
Carnegie Moscow Center
November 18, 2015
Paris, Russia, and the New Borders of Darkness
By Alexander Baunov
Alexander Baunov is a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor in chief of Carnegie.ru. Before joining Carnegie, Baunov spent five years working as a senior editor at the independent news website Slon.ru, where he worked since its launch.

The Paris attacks signify the broadening of an "area of darkness," of places targeted by the Islamic State, into Europe. The jihadists are not making a distinction between Russia and France. This compels Russians and Europeans to reflect on what they have in common despite their many differences.

Russians can be evacuated from Egypt and they do not have to return there, but you cannot take Parisians out of Paris or keep Frenchmen out of France.
The massacres in Paris last Friday represent what could be called the opening of a "second front" for the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The jihadists' main area of operations remains the Middle East and their main victims are still the people of Iraq and Syria. In the last few weeks, the jihadists have committed horrific atrocities in Ankara and Beirut.

But by attacking Russian and French civilians, the Islamic State is extending the "borders of darkness" within which it operates. It is throwing down a challenge to Russia and the Western powers, who are still adversaries over Ukraine but now find themselves sharing the pain of suffering attacks by the same perpetrator.

For the jihadists, there is no difference between Paris and St. Petersburg, the home city of the passengers who died on the Metrojet Airbus A321 that crashed over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31. They believe that they are waging war against the Western world, Western culture, and global modernity. Paris is getting punished for being one of the places that gave birth to modernity, just as New York was in 2001.

The Western culture that was assaulted in Paris is grounded in rationality, and the right response at this critical moment should be a rational one. It would be odd for the West to be swayed by the approach of the most emotional critics of the Russian regime, who insist on not doing, writing, or saying anything that Putin might like.

Of course, the Ukraine issue cannot simply go away. There is still a lot of difficult negotiating to do and Ukraine cannot just be traded away. On the other hand, Ukraine should not be a reason for carrying on as before when other threats emerge.

The Islamic State problem is bigger than the Iranian nuclear program, the maintenance of the International Space Station, or the transit of NATO cargo to Afghanistan. It deserves separate consideration, irrespective of grievances against Russia on other issues. The Obama-Putin meeting at the G-20 summit in Turkey reflected that and showed that the two presidents have an interest in more than merely frustrating one other.

The synchronized attacks on the Russian airplane over Egypt and in Paris connect the Russian and Western campaigns in Syria. True, Russia was not invited by the West to join the campaign in Syria. Russia did so for its own reasons. Russian citizens have the right to question their government's actions-though unfortunately few channels for doing so. But Western politicians should respect the fact that residents of both Paris and St. Petersburg have now been targeted by the same perpetrator. It is not really appropriate to discuss whether one country or another is more to blame-we should only say that the Islamic State is above all a consequence of the 2003 Iraq War, and that everything else is secondary.

There is a deeper reality here, which is that the jihadists' attacks render meaningless all talk of Russia as a "unique civilization." Russian ideologists and politicians have gotten used to describing Russia as "a good Europe" or, better still, as not Europe at all. To them, Russia is not the West, but rather a world of traditional conservative values that Russia shares with "the East."

The Islamic State has reminded Russia that this argument cuts no ice with the hardest-core Middle Eastern conservatives, who see Russia as just another part of the Western world that deserves to be attacked.

So Russia needs to cure its split personality disorder. All of Russia's weird anti-Western rhetoric, and the references to "Orthodox Iran" or "our own Islamic State", stand in the way of the foreign policy goal that Vladimir Putin set out in his speech to the UN General Assembly in September: creating a global alliance against terrorism.

The geography of terrorism is losing its borders. For years, there has been a tendency to make a distinction between terrorist threats in Russia and Europe. For the average Westerner-and the average Russian for that matter-if something bad happens in Russia, the root cause lies within Russia itself, but if misfortunes befall the West, we should seek causes outside the West's borders.

The average person-and this includes politicians and journalists-does not divide the world into categories of democracies and authoritarian regimes, old and new markets, or developed and developing countries. He is more likely to perceive two zones, one of light and one of darkness. In what the Indian writer V.S. Naipaul called an "area of darkness," tragedy and disaster are regarded as everyday occurrences, while in other parts of the world-areas of light-tragic events are viewed as an aberration.

When we look at last Friday in Paris and the recent litany of terrorist attacks in France, we see this distinction blurring. This year, France more resembles a country from the dark zone, where the terrible has become almost commonplace. Its troubles evoke Mikhail Bulgakov's poetic description of Jerusalem in The Master and Margarita: "The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea blotted out the great city. The suspension bridges, the crenellated palace, the bazaars, the caravanserai, the alleyways, the pools... Jerusalem, the great city, vanished as though it had never been. The darkness devoured everything, frightening every living creature in Jerusalem and its surroundings."

The lesson of the Paris attacks is: as the area of darkness shifts, even a strong state's borders do not protect against it anymore. Europeans can no longer neatly divide the world into a realm of light, where bad things aren't supposed to happen, and a dark realm, where they routinely occur. Darkness from one place will creep into others. Perhaps the world needs to regain its clarity, but the biggest priority is to make an honest effort to tackle the real heart of darkness.

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 #23
Moscow Times
November 19, 2015
Moscow Faces Terror Threat It Can Handle
By Mark Galeotti
Mark Galeotti is professor of global affairs at New York University.

As Muscovites lay flowers before the French Embassy, and Russians embrace the global "we are Paris" meme, the depressing irony is that there is much truth in this: Moscow is certainly not immune to the kind of terrorist attacks which ripped at the heart of the French capital.

The city has its miserable tally of attacks: the Dubrovka theater in 2002, the metro in 2004 and 2010, Cherkizovsky market in 2006, Domodedovo Airport in 2011. Long-running concerns about terrorism vectored from the North Caucasus have been given a new urgency following the rise of the Islamic State.

Following the first Russian air strikes in Syria, the IS called on "Islamic youth everywhere, [to] ignite jihad against the Russians." The bomb on Kogalymavia flight 9268 was reportedly planted in Egypt, even if its losses were felt across Russia. With perhaps upward of 2,700 Russian citizens fighting in Iraq and Syria, the fear is that they will be coming home with the intention of bringing their jihad with them.

Beyond the risk of their engaging in individual acts of terror, they may not only galvanize the insurgent cells in the North Caucasus. Since 2014, more and more cells have been pledging their loyalty to IS, and this year it announced a new vilayat, or province, of the North Caucasus.

At the moment, this means little. The local cells are autonomous and their statements are really political gestures. They have no intention of taking orders from IS leader al-Baghdadi. However, as more IS loyalists return, they may force the local rebels to make good on their pledges. A scattered terrorist campaign could become a unified regional insurgency, and thus a much more serious challenge to Moscow.

So these are not empty fears. According to Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov last month, some 20 terror attacks had been foiled in the year so far. October also saw 15 men arrested in connection with a plan to bomb the Moscow metro, some of whom had apparently been trained in an IS camp in Syria.

Nonetheless, precisely because Moscow has had to cope with a series of serious attacks - and the Russian state calibrates the balance between public security and individual freedoms a little differently - the city is not in bad shape to handle the challenge.

The security agencies have extensive powers of search and surveillance, not least over Internet and telecommunication traffic. Many security measures are built into the city's fabric, from cameras on the streets to detectors in the metro. Those portable metal detectors manhandled to control access to public events may be irksome, but they are elements of an extensive system intended not just to catch but also deter would-be terrorists.

Furthermore, while Russia is hardly the hyper-policed state sometimes claimed, the authorities can and do call on numerous other agencies, from the army and the Interior Ministry troops to private security guards and volunteer police auxiliaries.

All that said, no security can be perfect, especially against terrorists willing to die for their cause. Whether by bomb or "swarming" multi-gunman attacks, if jihadists are determined to launch a "spectacular" attack in Moscow, they may be able to do it.

Yet put this into context. On average, 48 people die on Moscow's roads every week. That the death toll of the Paris attacks amounts to less than three weeks' accidents in no way takes away from their horror. But it emphasizes that terrorism is primarily a cultural and political threat - with unpredictable results. It can unite a country, or traumatize it. A particular risk is that Russia's overwhelmingly loyal Muslim population, 12 percent of the whole, could be demonized and thus driven into the hands of the jihadists.

Overall, Moscow is ready in practical terms to prevent and contain terrorist attacks. Whether Muscovites will prove resilient in the face of the new threats from resurgent and murderous jihadism remains to be seen.

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 #24
The New Yorker
November 18, 2015
Putin's Ambitions for the War Against ISIS
BY JOSHUA YAFFA

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin admitted what had been known to Western intelligence services (and, surely, Russian ones, too) for some time: a bomb, likely planted by terrorists with connections to ISIS, brought down a passenger plane flying from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 31st, killing all two hundred and twenty-four people on board. At a meeting of security officials at the Kremlin-the sort of event that is more a show for the Russian state media than a substantive policy session-Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service (F.S.B.), told Putin that an improvised explosive device equivalent to a kilogram of T.N.T. was to blame. Putin, who appeared genuinely moved by the attack and its implications, called for a moment of silence, and then said of those responsible, "We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them." Russian military operations, he added, will prove that "vengeance is inevitable."

In the days after the tragedy, the Kremlin downplayed talk of terrorism. The minister of transport said that claims by an ISIS affiliate in Egypt to have bombed the plane "can't be considered accurate." Earlier this month, when British officials said they had evidence that an explosive had been planted on board and cancelled direct flights from Sharm el-Sheikh, Konstantin Kosachyov, a Russian parliamentarian, claimed that Britain's real intention was to put "psychological pressure" on Russia. "There are plenty in the world who would prefer to knowingly and without the necessary grounds write off this catastrophe as jihadists' response to Russia," he said. That argument showed some strain two weeks ago, when Russia, too, decided to suspend all flights from Egypt. Still, Putin's spokesman insisted that the cancellation of Egypt flights did "not mean that a terrorist attack is the main suspected cause of the catastrophe."

Why the lag in announcing what seemed increasingly certain? Most likely, Putin and his advisers simply didn't know how to react-and when Putin doesn't like his options he tends to stall for time. (That is one advantage of an authoritarian system: there is no legislature or opposition party, and little pressure from the media, to force a decision.)

Had the Kremlin acknowledged that the plane was blown up by ISIS, as an affiliate of the group claimed in the days after the disaster, it would have demonstrated exactly the sort of cause-and-effect it has been trying to avoid in its Syria war. State television has serialized the Russian bombing campaign in the high American style, with splashy news footage provided by military satellites and cameras mounted on warheads, speaking to Russians' buried yearnings for geopolitical greatness: public support for Russia's intervention grew from thirty-nine percent in September to fifty-five percent in October, according to the Levada Center, an independent polling agency.

Yet Putin and his advisers seem to have considered this mood potentially fragile, the euphoria of a media-friendly bombing campaign that appeared to cost little and risk nothing. The grim news of two hundred and twenty-four dead countrymen could make a distant war seem awfully close-not only leading to questions about the virtue of Russian policy but also requiring Putin do something in response.

Then came Paris, where terrorists with connections to ISIS killed a hundred and twenty-nine people last Friday. The scenes of carnage changed thinking in world capitals, not least Moscow. Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Putin adviser turned critic, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station that the Kremlin has known for some time the true cause of the crash but chose to stay silent. A terrorist act "would certainly have been perceived by public opinion as a punishment for the invasion of Syria. And that would be a painful thing to deal with," he said. But then, he went on, "The terrible events in Paris solved this problem." After Paris, the notion of an ISIS bomb on a Russian plane no longer served as an unwelcome reminder of a faraway war's potential costs at home. Rather, it proved that Russia and the West faced a single enemy, and that there could be no doubt that the world's powers would need to unite against an evil so horrible.

Putin's argument to the rest of the world is similar to the one he is making to his own people. In his telling, Russia tried to cooperate with the United States and others in fighting ISIS-an offer the West rejected. (He neglects to mention that Russia has prioritized targets other than ISIS in Syria, choosing instead to hit other groups that threaten the Assad regime.) "It seems to me that that now, finally, the realization is coming to everyone that only all of us together can fight effectively," Putin said at the G-20 Summit, in Antalya. He is a adherent of Yalta-era geopolitics, in which states achieve victory together and then sit down to carve up the world. And he wants today's global powers to form an alliance similar to the one that defeated Nazism.

The Paris attacks, and the prospect that this was not ISIS's last attack in Europe, seem to be nudging Western powers in this direction. Putin badly wants them to reconsider his pariah status and forgive his meddling in Ukraine. What he may get, if anything, is a tactical alliance to fight ISIS without the lifting of sanctions or the end of Russia's broader diplomatic isolation. Yet it will be hard for the West to maintain that sort of discipline. If last year's G-20 summit, held in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea, represented the apex in the public shunning of Putin-so much so that he went home early-then this year's summit marked his return, for now, to the club of respectable statesmen. President Obama and Putin had a one-on-one meeting that lasted nearly an hour, thus continuing the thaw of the diplomatic deep freeze in which the Obama Administration had once wanted to plunge him. British Prime Minister David Cameron also met with Putin in private. But no public statement was stronger than that of French President François Hollande, who, staying back in Paris, declared that a "single coalition"-including Russia-was needed to fight ISIS.

Questions about the utility of such an alliance come down to what Putin really wants to achieve in Syria, and how much Russian policy overlaps with the interests of the current U.S.-led coalition. Until now, Russia's bombing campaign has focused not on ISIS targets but on the other rebel groups fighting Bashar al-Assad, serving as the air force to a combined Syrian-Iranian push to recapture territory lost to the rebels. On Wednesday, a military source told reporters at Vedomosti that Russian artillery was providing "covering fire" to Syrian troops in the Homs region. The campaign recalls Russia's insertion of its soldiers into Ukraine at key moments in the war there: a jolt of military force to give its proxy a battlefield advantage before a likely round of diplomatic negotiations. A Russian draft proposal, obtained by Reuters last week, calls for a constitutional reform lasting up to eighteen months and then early presidential elections.

Assad himself has never been a sacred figure for Russia. The Kremlin would like him to stay-and, particularly after watching the catastrophic overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, in Libya, certainly prefers that outcome to anything that resembles externally imposed regime change-but he could just as easily be sacrificed. But Putin's Syria policy was always only partially about Syria. It was also about Ukraine, where Putin is loath to give up his ability to dial tensions down or up at will to get what he wants from Kiev and its Western backers. He presumably would like to keep that instrument without having to pay for it. Five Ukrainian soldiers were killed on November 14th, the highest toll in two months, and the deaths will continue as long as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko does not implement his part of a political deal with rebel-held areas to Putin's liking.

Above all, in Syria, Putin seeks to extend Russia's influence, both in the Middle East and globally, with his country granted the kind of superpower status that he sees as its birthright. The sight, on Tuesday, of dozens of cruise missiles launched from Russia's strategic bomber fleet of propeller-driven Tu-95s and gargantuan Tu-160s-the first use of such aircraft in combat since the Soviet war in Afghanistan-was meant to make the point in unsubtle terms. Stalin and Churchill may have been rivals, but they were equals of a sort, leaders of storied nations with their own undeniable national interests and prerogatives, joined together in an alliance of necessity. This is what Putin means when he told a Russian naval commander, on Tuesday, to work with French ships "as allies." It may sound like wishful thinking, for now, on Putin's part-but no one else has come up with anything better.

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 #25
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 17, 2015
Why the Kremlin should have Georgia on its mind
Two recent controversies in Georgia - an ownership dispute over a TV channel and leaks revealing a coup attempt - might have foreign policy implications for the Kremlin.  
By Pietro Shakarian and Steven Luber
Pietro Shakarian is an MA graduate student at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Steven Luber is a student of Intelligence Studies and Russian Studies at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Georgia's fragile political balance has once again been put to the test. Two political shockwaves, coming in close succession, brought international attention back to this Caucasus country.

The first controversy involved a judicial ruling on an ownership dispute involving a popular Georgian TV station, Rustavi 2. This was followed by leaks in the media revealing plans for a coup attempt by Georgia's ex-President, Mikheil Saakashvili. All of this culminated in a major political showdown for Georgia, with implications for Russian policy in the region.

What is Rustavi 2?

Rustavi 2 is one of the most successful private broadcasting companies in Georgia. Now based in Tbilisi, the service was founded in 1994 in the town of Rustavi, near the border with Azerbaijan, which serves as its namesake.

The company has a long history of political involvement. Known for its pro-Western perspective, it was in strong opposition to President Eduard Shevardnadze's government in the 1990s. Later, it became the main outlet for opposition leaders during the Rose Revolution of 2003, which brought the United National Movement (UNM), led by Saakashvili, to power.

On Nov. 3, the Tbilisi City Court ruled in favor of Kibar Khalvashi, a former owner of Rustavi 2 TV, who sought to reclaim his shares in the broadcasting service through a lawsuit filed in early August. This resulted in 60 percent of Rustavi 2 shares being handed back to a businessman, who some suspected of manipulating the legal process. The move sparked widespread criticism from pro-Western political forces in Georgia concerned about a possible change in the station's content.

The West also strongly condemned the move, warning of implications for media pluralism in the country. The United States has been following the case closely and American media outlets have also weighed in. On Oct. 26, The Washington Post published an op-ed from its editorial board slamming what it claimed was a "seizure of a popular TV station."

The Georgian political context

The Rustavi 2 dispute comes amid an ongoing political rivalry in Georgia, between pro-Georgian pragmatists and pro-Western hardliners. Led by Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and financially supported by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the incumbent Georgian Dream (GD) coalition is the leading pragmatist force in Georgia.

It advocates a more balanced relationship with the West, renewed ties with Russia, increased cooperation with China, and a peaceful settlement to the Abkhaz and South Ossetian disputes. Though originally a hodgepodge of parties with different ideologies, the GD has evolved into a social democratic political force.  An observer of the Party of European Socialists, the GD has been declared by Prime Minister Garibashvili to be a "socially-oriented" party.

The pro-Western parties in Georgia are comprised of three major political forces: the former ruling party UNM, Irakli Alasania's Free Democrats, and Davit Usupashvili's Republicans. The first two groups are in political opposition to the GD.

By contrast, Usupashvili's party is officially part of the GD, despite being increasingly at odds with it. These pro-Western parties generally oppose dialogue with Russia, which they view as "appeasement," and see membership in the EU and NATO as a top priority for Georgia.  Domestically, they are center-right and liberal in their politics.

The GD has unsurprisingly faced vocal criticism from the UNM on the Rustavi 2 dispute. For his part, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, who has tried to play the role of the "mediator" between the pragmatist and pro-Western factions, called on the government to refrain from non-diplomatic statements.
"Current events damage the country's democratic image and international reputation," he maintained.

Perhaps in this vein, the court-appointed temporary managers of Rustavi 2 have offered the current owners the opportunity to name "any person to whom interim managers would grant power of attorney with full authority to perform all the executive functions required for smooth day-to-day operation of the TV station."

One of the court-appointed temporary managers said during an interview with Imedi TV that the offer was made in order to "calm" tensions and "remove questions marks over the process that followed court's decision on replacement of the Rustavi 2 TV management." This offer was rejected by Rustavi 2's owners on Nov. 8. On Nov. 12, the court temporarily reinstated Rustavi 2's top management.

Saakashvili's attempted coup?

Not only did the Rustavi 2 ownership dispute fuel political tension in Georgia, but also revealed information about an alleged coup attempt by Saakashvili, who now serves as the governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine, and who, on the top of that, is a wanted man in his own country.

Regardless, Saakashvili has always had Georgia on his mind. Indeed, wrote analyst Nicolai Petro, Saakashvili's "ambitions in Odessa are best understood in the context of Georgian rather than Ukrainian politics." Therefore, it was not a surprise that he might throw his hat into the Rustavi 2 case.

On Oct. 29, a wiretapped audio recording of Saakashvili speaking to former Georgian National Security Secretary Giga Bokeria was leaked by a Ukrainian website. The conversation included a discussion about creating a "revolutionary scenario" in Georgia in response to the Rustavi 2 case.

According to the leaked audio recording, this would involve "physical confrontation" and that "faces should be smashed." This hit a sour note in Georgia, where memories of the 1990s civil war are still fresh, and sparked widespread public outrage.

"The Georgian population believes that [Saakashvili's] place is not in Georgian politics anymore," said Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. "If you ask me, Mikheil Saakashvili's place is in prison." Official Tbilisi has launched an investigation into the recordings, which it views as part of a coup plot against the Georgian government.

This was not the first time that Saakashvili expressed a desire to regain power in Georgia through revolutionary means if necessary. In April 2014, the Georgian Interior Ministry claimed that Saakashvili and his associates were plotting a Maidan-style revolution in Tbilisi.

The Interior Ministry repeated this in September 2014, prompting Bidzina Ivanishvili to remark that Saakashvili and the UNM "want Georgia to burn in flames, because they are no longer in power."

Then, in January 2015, Saakashvili vowed "I will be back" and said that he was "certain" he would return to Georgia "even before" the 2016 Georgian parliamentary election.

In addition to the Saakashvili-Bokeria leak, an audiotape of an alleged phone conversation between Saakashvili and singer Sofia Nizharadze was also released.

In this tape, the planned coup was reportedly discussed again. Georgian counterintelligence services seem to be taking the claims seriously, with investigations ongoing.

Moscow's view of the Georgian situation

What are the implications of the events - the ownership dispute and rumors about Saakashvili's plans - on Russian foreign policy in the region?

In contrast to the reaction from the United States and the West, which responded with outrage to the change in Rustavi 2 ownership, Russia has been noticeably more cautious. Moscow views the Rustavi 2 case as an internal Georgian matter.  At the same time, it is watching developments closely.

Seeking stability in the Caucasus, Moscow ultimately wants to find a language of common dialogue with Tbilisi.  Both countries share common interests, including combating Islamic extremism and ISIS recruitment efforts, especially in the Pankisi Gorge and the North Caucasus.

Therefore, it would be concerned about any attempt - especially led by Saakashvili - to destabilize a government that has made dialogue with Moscow a key priority. In Moscow's view, this would only serve to undermine the stability of the broader Caucasus region.

In addition, differences between Moscow and Tbilisi remain over Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgian hardliners and several Western commentators contend that Russia is pursuing a "creeping occupation" of Georgian territory.

For its part, Moscow denies this, though it has recently concluded security agreements with the de facto governments of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in response to Georgia's continued NATO ambitions. A high-level meeting between the Georgian and Russian leaderships and the full re-establishment of bilateral relations would help to ease tensions and prevent regional instability.

Georgia's pragmatists support such a move. By contrast, the pro-Western parties in Tbilisi oppose it and instead favor a greater NATO presence in Georgia. This, in turn, has created fears among the Abkhaz and South Ossetians, who look to Moscow for protection.

As for Georgia, its international course is much less certain than it once seemed. While many people in the country are still waiting for a signal from the West, many more increasingly support diversifying Georgia's options, especially with regard to relations with Russia and China. Broader global events, such as the Eurozone crisis, the situation in Greece, the conflict in Ukraine, and the nearby wars in the Middle East, have influenced this view.

In September, while speaking about Georgia's foreign policy direction, Georgian Foreign Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili remarked that in addition to the West, there are "lots of other interesting developments taking place in the world, including of course in respect to relations with the east, new processes on the Eurasian continent."

More recently, Georgian Energy Minister (and former football superstar) Kakha Kaladze met with Gazprom's Aleksei Miller in Milan to discuss "diversifying" Georgia's energy options.

How these developments will ultimately play out over the long run remains to be seen, but the region will continue to be a place to watch. Given the proximity of the Caucasus and Georgia to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the area will be of great importance for years to come.

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 #26
Is Islamic State's threat to Central Asian countries real?
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries are getting ready to give a firm rebuff to hypothetical attacks by the Islamic State and its followers. Although the IS does not pose an immediate military threat yet, its creeping influence in the region tends to spread far and wide, analysts warn.

At the news of the Paris massacre the Kyrgyzstan's leaders issued orders to reinforce security at all strategic facilities, in the first place, roads and supply links. Similar measures are being taken in other Central Asian states. A former head of Kyrgyzstan's National Security Committee, Artur Medetbekov, is quoted by the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta as saying that more than $70 million has been dispatched to the region already for staging terrorist attacks and massive unrest.

The overall number of Central Asian "volunteers" is unknown, but according to tentative estimates it has already exceeded 3,000.

"The Islamic State has been making attempts to gain a foothold in Afghanistan, but the situation there is very volatile and patchy. There are too many different groups, including the Taliban, which are reluctant to let the Islamic State rule the roost," the leading research fellow at the Central Asia Research Centre at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Oriental Studies Institute, Stanislav Pritchin, told TASS. "No immediate threat to Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan comes from neighbouring Afghanistan at this point. But there is a menace of a different sort. The social and economic situation there is appalling. Many people easily succumb to the radicals' influence and agree to join the Islamic State in exchange for promises they will be making money for the sake of a 'noble idea.' This is a long-term threat to the Central Asian countries."

"If the Islamic State gains the upper hand over its main rival, the Taliban, and puts northern Afghanistan under its control, and if the bombardments of Syria cause a massive exodus of terrorists to Afghanistan, the risk of their infiltrations into the Central Asian republics will be large enough," the leading research fellow of the RAS Oriental Studies Institute, Vladimir Sotnikov, told TASS. "Tajikistan is the weakest link."

"Many experts believe that the Islamic State and the groups related with it may show up in the region any moment to stage armed clashes," an expert on Central Asian affairs, Grigory Mikhailov, has told TASS. "For this there are certain prerequisites: feeble law enforcement and low effectiveness of the government machinery in the region's countries, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, in particular. In some cases, the local military does not have to be fought against. It can be bribed. The socio-cultural situation there is rather grave. Poor and unlettered people are many and official Muslim clerics are often ineffective."

Recruiters in the region are very effective, Mikhailov warns. "Kyrgyzstan saw far more mosques than schools built in recent years. The money for the mosques was pouring in from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And the priests for them were taught abroad. Besides, too many civilians carry firearms."

Some argue, though, that the combat strength of the Islamic State and its allies is not big enough to go and fight wars in neighbouring countries, Mikhailov said. "Besides, the region's defense potential is growing. Russia is providing military hardware and reinforcing its contingent at the base in Tajikistan and air base in Kyrgyzstan and improving coordination with the armed forces. Judging by the hardware that is being supplied there Russia is preparing the local armed forces for a major confrontation with large enemy forces on the ground."

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 #27
New York Review of Books
December 3, 2015
Stalin: 'He Couldn't Have Done It Without Them'
By Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes is Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard. He is the author of several books, including The Russian Revolution, Uvarov: A Life, and, most recently, Alexander Yakovlev: The Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism. (December 2015)

On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics
by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Princeton University Press, 364 pp., $35.00

There seems to be an insatiable appetite for biographies of Stalin. The catalog of Harvard University's library lists 690, 203 of them published since the year 2000. Although Stalin plays a central part in Sheila Fitzpatrick's latest book, this is not a biography but something more unusual: a story of the circle or "team" of which he was the leader but on which he was also dependent. She calls Stalin "the lynchpin" and stresses that the team members helped him run the country of which, after 1928, he was the undisputed leader. Yet he relied on them not only politically but also emotionally, especially in his later years. To reveal this mutual dependence is a major contribution of this innovative book.

Sheila Fitzpatrick is a native of Australia and the child of Brian Fitzpatrick, a radical writer of the "fellow traveler" school whose portrait she provided in My Father's Daughter (2010). Although she obviously absorbed some of his radicalism, in time she distanced herself from him and his world outlook. She left her native land to attend Oxford University, where in 1969 she received a doctorate from St. Antony's College. Ultimately, she ended up in the United States, where she taught Soviet history at the University of Chicago. She returned to Australia after a fifty-year absence. She is the author of numerous books, virtually all of them dealing with the Soviet Union.

Fitzpatrick belongs to the school of historians of the USSR known as "revisionists." This school tends to emphasize the complexity of the Soviet regime, rejecting as simplistic the concept of "totalitarianism." It stresses social history at the expense of politics. The totalitarian concept was first formulated in Fascist Italy in the early 1920s: Mussolini defined it as "everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Neither Mussolini nor Hitler established truly totalitarian regimes because both retained private property, which limited the power of the state. The founder of the first totalitarian state was Stalin, who nationalized all of the country's economic resources, be they land or industry. Revisionists have made some valuable contributions to the understanding of Soviet history, but they have tended to underestimate its horrors.

Alexander Yakovlev, Gorbachev's closest adviser and a member of the Politburo with access to all the documents of Lenin's and Stalin's regimes, estimated the victims of the two dictators' reign at 20 million. Some revisionists minimize the evils of terror on the grounds that it not only caused deaths and incarceration but also increased social mobility by allowing others to take over the victims' jobs. This kind of reasoning, if applied to the Holocaust, would see its benefits in the "Aryans" taking over the positions and possessions of the slain Jews.

The head of the "team" in this book's title was, of course, Stalin. Fitzpatrick rightly insists that he was not the kind of nonentity that Trotsky and many others had depicted. In her words, he was "a whole lot cleverer and better-read" than commonly believed. At the same time she characterizes him as "a great evildoer," a man with "sadistic instincts."

The leading member of the "team" until the eve of Stalin's death was Vyacheslav Molotov. A bureaucrat with a stony face, he was far from a striking personality: Fitzpatrick says that he could have been "a clerk in a government office" while Trotsky dismissed him as "mediocrity personified." Molotov joined the Bolshevik faction early and eventually became editor of its organ, Pravda. When in 1922 Stalin was appointed the Party's general secretary, he became his de facto deputy.

From then on, he was Stalin's shadow, the Bolshevik in whom Stalin placed the greatest trust, and who reciprocated this confidence by supporting all of Stalin's actions, including the murderous purges of the 1930s. Stalin's reliance on Molotov became apparent in 1939 when he entrusted him with the signing of the treaty with Nazi Germany. This loyalty remained steadfast even after 1948, when Stalin ordered the arrest of Molotov's Jewish wife for "treason."

Another prominent member of the group was Anastas Mikoyan, an Armenian who joined the Bolshevik Party in 1915 and from the early years of the Soviet regime attached himself to Stalin. He was active both before and during World War II in developing the Soviet food industry. At various times, besides Molotov and Mikoyan, the group included Nikolai Bukharin, Nikolai Bulganin, Lavrenty Beria, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Georgii Malenkov, and Nikita Khrushchev.

Fitzpatrick makes it clear that membership in Stalin's team did not ensure security:

    "Stalin was a suspicious man. He was suspicious even of his own team.... He kept tabs on them, encouraged informing, liked to keep them off balance, and sometimes set traps for them.... Nobody on the team could consider himself safe."

Khrushchev in his memoirs graphically described how precarious was the position and even the life of every member of Stalin's intimate circle. Toward the end of his life, for no known reason, Stalin became suspicious of both Molotov and Mikoyan, his oldest associates. In 1952, he called them "hirelings of American imperialism" and accused them of being English or American spies, which suggested that their days were probably numbered. Publicly, Stalin

    "attacked Molotov with particular viciousness.... He brought up the old charges of currying favor with Western journalists...; he also raised the question of why Molotov wanted "to give Crimea to the Jews" and why he had told his wife about secret Politburo decisions. As for Mikoyan, Stalin said he had probably been plotting...to sell out Soviet interests to the Americans."

In March 1949, Stalin removed Molotov from the post of minister of foreign affairs and Mikoyan from the post of minister of foreign trade. The lives of the two were likely saved by Stalin's sudden death three years later.

When the Germans attacked the USSR in June 1941, Stalin was so shocked that for a week he withdrew from public life and fell into some kind of coma. As Fitzpatrick points out, he had expected his alliance with the Nazis to last several years during which he could bring his military establishment into "full operational and fighting trim." For this reason, he ignored repeated warnings from the West and his own agents that Hitler was preparing an imminent invasion. This had disastrous consequences leading to the destruction of much of the Soviet military in the early months of the war. During World War II, when Stalin oversaw grand strategy and the appointments of top commanders, much of the day-to-day management of the country fell into the hands of his associates organized as the State Defense Committee (GKO). As Fitzpatrick writes, citing Mikoyan:

    "When the GKO's core Group of Five (Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, and Mikoyan) met, as they usually did late in the evening without a precirculated agenda or minutes taken, "each of us had full possibility to speak and defend his opinion or suggestion," and Stalin's attitude was "reasonable and patient," even if he didn't like what someone said. It quite often happened that Stalin, "convinced by our arguments," changed the opinion he had had at the beginning."

Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the architect of Soviet victory in World War II, was not a member of the team but of Stalin's informal military "brain trust," yet he did not fear contradicting Stalin. During the war, Stalin was in charge of military affairs while his associates ran the economy. The partnership worked well and brought the Soviet Union victory.

Matters did not change after the war. Indeed, the responsibilities of the team increased as Stalin spent ever more time in the south, away from the Kremlin. As he grew old, Stalin looked to his team not only for assistance in running the country but also for succor in his loneliness:

    "Stalin had been lonely since the breakup of his prewar social circle, first through his wife's death and then through the arrest of various relatives during the Great Purges, and he grew lonelier after the war, with a total estrangement from the old network of in-laws and no new friends or partner to fill the gaps. This threw him back on the team for companionship. A wartime habit of team meetings late in the day, ending in a shared supper, was continued in less spartan form. Since Stalin hated to be alone, the team was drafted with increasing frequency for dinners at Stalin's dacha that started late, often after a film showing at the Kremlin; [they] were marked by heavy (compulsory) drinking, as well as a certain amount of work discussion; and went on until the not-very-early hours of the morning (4:00 or 5:00 AM)."

Milovan Djilas, a prominent Yugoslav Communist who visited the USSR during the war, found these dinners to be rather congenial occasions: "It all rather resembled a patriarchal family with a crotchety head whose foibles always made his kinsfolk rather apprehensive."

As his energy declined, Stalin handed ever more business to members of his team: he let them make decisions that he simply approved. The government now was run by Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin. The last policy Stalin initiated was a drive against Soviet Jews, a policy that the team did not approve. (When Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1939 and 1940 complained that there were too many Jews in the Soviet government, Stalin promised him and the Führer that as soon as he had enough Russians to run things, he would eliminate Jewish officials.)

In January 1953, he charged a number of Jewish physicians working in the Kremlin with having caused the death of some prominent Soviet personalities. The "Doctor's Plot" led to the arrest of some Jewish physicians. More ominously, preparations were made for the deportation of several million Soviet Jews to Siberia and Central Asia. According to Fitzpatrick, by this time Stalin's paranoia knew "no bounds."

When Stalin died, the team quietly took over. It was designated as "collective leadership" consisting of Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov. The transition was smoother than one might have expected after a quarter-century of Stalin's dictatorship. The team promptly released the arrested Jewish doctors, declared an amnesty that led to the release of more than a million prisoners, and talked of a "détente" in the cold war. Beria, the hated and feared head of the secret police, was executed. It was generally expected that either Molotov or Malenkov would succeed Stalin but since neither showed an inclination to challenge the collective leadership, they remained in place for the next five years, until 1958 when Nikita Khrushchev took over.

As Fitzpatrick points out, some of her interpretations have been anticipated. In particular, the Russian scholar Oleg Khlevniuk did pioneering work with his Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle, originally published in the 1990s, in which he stressed the influence of Stalin's staff. Similar contributions were made by Stephen Wheatcroft and Arch Getty.

On Stalin's Team is an important book because it modifies the prevalent view of Joseph Stalin as a lone dictator and his staff as flunkies who merely carried out his orders. It shows that, in fact, Stalin's dictatorship was something of a collegiate arrangement in which the dictator had the ultimate power to appoint his staff and take or reject its advice. Yet, Fitzpatrick writes, "they couldn't have done it without him. But the corollary is also true: he couldn't have done it without them." In her conclusion, Fitzpatrick refers to the totalitarian model:

    "Based on observation of similarities between mid-twentieth-century fascist regimes and the Soviet regime under Stalin, the totalitarian model posited a regime headed by a charismatic leader, ruling through a mobilizing party aspiration and a secret police force, and aspiring to total control over society. Much ink has been spilled, including by me, on the applicability of this model to Soviet history. As far as the present study is concerned, however, the model's relevance is quite limited, as it never focused on Stalin's relationship with his closest advisors or attached particular importance to it."

This kind of "revisionism" is persuasive. In my opinion it does not invalidate the totalitarian concept nor does it, as the Princeton University Press blurb claims, paint "an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu." But it does add a new dimension to the totalitarian model. As such, Sheila Fitzpatrick's book is to be warmly welcomed.

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#28
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
November 18, 2015
Zrada! All Your ISIS Are Belong to Us
By Anatoly Karlin
[Text with graphics and links here http://www.unz.com/akarlin/isis-belong-to-us/]

Soon after calling for ISIS to murder Russian aviators and their families, the Paris Attacks sent them into a confused tizzy, and now the Maidanists are going from proposing an alliance with ISIS to condemning them as pawns of Khuylo, Тhe Darkest One, and The God of Svidomy Ukrainians... who is otherwise known to normal people as Vladimir Putin.

Essentially, Putin cockblocked the ISIS-Maidan alliance!

Yury Sergeyev ("Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations. All tweets reflect my personal vision"): In the Paris tragedy, you should "cherchez la femme" - and her name is - Russia. We await Russia's invitation to join the struggle against terrorism.

Though for some reason he doesn't seem to like his "personal vision" getting RTed:

So far as conspiracy theories go, the idea that the Russian intelligence services organized the Paris Attacks down to the snackbaring suicide bombers is one of the most incredible ones out there. But if you were to think this is a fringe theory limited to a rogue diplomat or two you would be wrong.

rferl-russia-behind-paris-attacks Here are some other Ukrainian politicians, journalists, academics, and major bloggers who have advanced this "theory":

    Radio Svoboda/RFERL - Ukrainian arm of the US foreign media organ, screenshot right (if you recall, also the department responsible for getting Russian anti-Putin journalist Andrey Babitsky fired from RFERL for being unwilling to cover up Ukrainian far right militia war crimes). Article has since been removed, probably when the more intelligent and less ideologically crazy American bosses saw what their Galician underlings were up to.
    Andrey Teteruk - Former far right militia commander and now Rada Deputy, recently made famous for hitting a female parliamentatian on the head with a glass bottle and causing her a brain concussion: "In my opinion, behind these terrorist acts stand the cold calculations of the Kremlin creatures, who wanted to take revenge on France for the Mistral on Friday the 13th, a symbolic date for Americans."
    Anton Geraschenko - Ministry of the Interior advisor, who compiled a literal hit list (available online) of anti-regime figures such as the murdered journalist Oles Buzina, and who has also started adding the names of Russian aviators for the express purpose of helping ISIS take care of them "by the canons of sharia" (sic): "Not long ago I obtained reliable evidence from good sources that it is RF President Vladimir Putin who is responsible to the flood of migrants to Europe... I recommend the French intelligence services carefully track the entire chain from the perpetrators to the sponsors of these evil acts. Who knows, maybe the Russian intelligence services stand behind it all?"
    yury-sergeyev-russia-behind-parisYury Sergeyev - See above.
    Mychailo Wynnyckyj - Canadian-Ukrainian "academic" writing for Euromaidan Press, this author is also a well known budding (if inadvertent) scifi writer famous for having predicted a few dozen of the past zero Russian invasions of Ukraine and nuclear wars with NATO.
    Vitaly Gaidukevich - Prominent Ukrainian TV journalist
    Liza Bogutskaya - Prominent Ukrainian journalist.

These are far from the only examples. To the contary, the idea that Putin is behind the Paris Attacks is close to conventional wisdom on Maidanist echo chambers across the Internet - even as Russia steps up attacks on the Islamic state to an unprecedented degree.

Recall that these are the same people who were calling for an alliance with ISIS against Ukraine just a few days beforehand.

What explains such pathological schizophrenia?

Ultimately it is to do with the fact that the Maidanist ideology reduced to its roots consists of nothing but cargo cult like adoration and mechanical imitation of the Western master, coupled with a primitive village hatred of Russia, which is forever oppressin' and keeping it down. Based as it is on faith in the final peremoga (victory) as opposed to any genuinely attractive cultural or intellectual narrative, the Maidanist project inevitably keeps on failing, time and time again. But since Maidanism is revealed religious truth, this could never happen on account of its own internal failings; some external actor MUST be responsible, and that is where the inevitable zrada (betrayal) comes in.

In this latest iteration, the zrada in question is that of the Islamic State, which, far from coming to their rescue, has turned out to be nothing but another pawn of the Dark Lord Voldemort Putler, who as God of Svidomy Ukrainians stands behind every single act of terrorism, anywhere. And through his mastery of the Dark Arts, it increasingly seems that Putler will be able to hoodwink the Western world - barring a few unusually clearsighted but (it n0w seems) tragically ignored neocons - into ignoring the manifold strands of evidence for a Raqqa-Moscow Axis.

The irony in this theory of a world conspiracy to destroy Ukraine, as promoted by the Maidanists themselves, the Ukraine itself is not an independent agent but a passive and powerless object of zrada after zrada, and the dark designs of Russia. But the paradox largely resolves itself when you start thinking of Ukraine less as a country and more as an ideological project.


 

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 #29
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.be
November 17, 2015
Ukrainian nationalist leader: "ISIS is our ally in the struggle against Russia"

Antifashist
http://antifashist.com/item/korchinskij-zovet-terroristov-igil-ukryvatsya-v-kieve.html
Translated by Kristina Rus

Kristina Rus: It is only logical that Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who took the side of Chechen terrorists and fought against Russia during the Chechen wars would sympathize with ISIS, for which many of their former brother-in-arms are fighting.

A Ukrainian nationalist, leader of the "Brotherhood," Dmitry Korchinsky proposed to offer asylum to ISIS terrorists in Kiev, the former head of UNA-UNSO [Ukrainian National Assembly - Ukrainian People's Self-defense] wrote on his social network page. According to Korchinsky, SBU must see ISIS as "allies in the struggle with Russia."

"At the G20 summit leaders of Western countries were talking to the Moscow terrorist, like he's a human, asking him to bomb ISIS positions. That is, their attitude towards the terrorists is pragmatic.

Ukrainian security services also have to be pragmatic, and therefore, effective. It is not our business to arrest the enemies of Moscow - Islamists. We should only ask them to shoot accurately at Moscow's terrorists in the Caucasus and in Syria.

Unfortunately, security service sometimes arrests or deports recruiters-Caucasians who come from Syria to Moscovia [Russia] for their association with ISIS. It is not wise.

Why should Ukraine quarrel with Islam?

Mrs. Gitlyanskaya, the press secretary of the SBU regularly reports about the progress of the SBU in the fight against "terrorist organization Al-Nusra Front", instead of targeting Moscow agents.

Why should Ukraine worry about the revolution of the poor in the Islamic World? Why should we pick a side of the barricades? At the moment, the oppressed peoples of the former Soviet Empire, and the proletarian peoples of the Near and Middle East are our only viable allies in the war against Moscow imperialism. We must act in accordance with our own interests.

"Anyone who fights for the liberation of his people from the imperialist yoke of Moscow should have the right to asylum in Kiev," - said Korchinskiy.

KR: Korchinsky took an active part in Maidan violence, suspected in provocation against law enforcement. He joined the scandalous volunteer battalion Shahktersk (implicated in crimes against civilian population) during Kiev's military operation in Donbass. "Brotherhood" organization is classified as extremist and banned in Russia. Korchinsky is wanted in Russia for his role in the Chechen war and hate propaganda. (Wiki)

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 #30
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
October 11, 2015
Ukrainians Eager to Help Out ISIS
By Anatoly Karlin
[Text with graphics here http://www.unz.com/akarlin/ukrainians-eager-to-help-out-isis/]

In recent days, the Ukrainian "Peacekeeper" (Mirotvorets) website has started posting the personal data of Russian fighter pilots fighting terrorists in Syria.

For those not in the know, "Peacekeeper" is a website that collects profiles on the enemies of the Ukrainian junta. Ranging from "terrorists" to dastardly "supporters of federalization," this includes people from Putin to opposition journalists such as Oles Buzina, who was coincidentally assassinated shortly after his appearance there.

They started doing this - also surely coincidentally - immediately after a senior Maidan politician Anton Gerashchenko, and a top advisor to the Interior Ministry, published a Facebook post in which he recounted how a friend suggested to him to "help ISIS take revenge on Russia by the canons of sharia," and Gerashchenko decided it would be a great idea.

"I invite everyone who has information about Russian citizens taking part in Russia's undeclared war against the Syrian people to report them to the Peacekeeper website, where a separate section on Putin's crimes in Syria and the Middle East will soon be created."

This is not in the least surprising from a regime that welcomes Islamic radicals to come in and fight against those Ukrainians seeking to escape the Banderite madhouse, as even the NYT has been forced to acknowledge.

That Facebook post is still up, incidentally. It's not as if a prominent pro-Western politician calling for helping ISIS is equivalent to Germans complaining about mass immigration, even if he did miss Washington's memo to start calling them "moderate rebels."

Gerashchenko is presumably still as free as ever to travel to the EU, as he and other Ukrainian Nazis do regularly, while artists who as much as voice support for the Donbass resistance find themselves either sanctioned (if they're foreigners like Kobzon) or get their concerts cancelled (like Val Lisitsa).

It also demonstrates the sort of bottom feeders who have been appointed to rule Maidanist Ukraine - a cargo cult that in its essence begins with primitive village-like hatred of neighboring peoples, and will surely end like this:

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#31
www.thedailybeast.com
September 4, 2015
Chechen Jihadis Leave Syria, Join the Fight in Ukraine
A battalion of fighters from the Caucasus is deployed on Kiev's side in the Ukraine war. But their presence may do more harm than good.
By Anna Nemtsova

MARIUPOL, Ukraine - Just an hour's drive from this city under siege, at an old resort on the Azov Sea that's now a military base, militants from Chechnya-veterans of the jihad in their own lands and, more recently, in Syria-now serve in what's called the Sheikh Mansur Battalion. Some of them say they have trained, at least, in the Middle East with fighters for the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS.

Among the irregular forces who've enlisted in the fight against the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, few are more controversial or more dangerous to the credibility of the cause they say they want to serve. Russian President Vladimir Putin would love to portray the fighters he supports as crusaders against wild-eyed jihadists rather than the government in Ukraine that wants to integrate the country more closely with Western Europe.

Yet many Ukrainian patriots, desperate to gain an edge in the fight against the Russian-backed forces, are willing to accept the Chechen militants on their side.

Over the past year, dozens of Chechen fighters have come across Ukraine's border, some legally, some illegally, and connected in Donbas with the Right Sector, a far-right-wing militia. The two groups, with two battalions, have little in common, but they share an enemy and they share this base.

The Daily Beast spoke with the Chechen militants about their possible support for the Islamic State and its affiliate in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia, which is now called the Islamic State Caucasus Emirate and is labeled a terrorist organization by both Russia and the United States.

The Chechen fighters said they were motivated by a chance to fight in Ukraine against the Russians, whom they called "occupiers of our country, Ichkeriya," another term for Chechnya.

Indeed, they were upset that Ukrainian authorities did not allow more Chechen militants to move to Ukraine from the Middle East and the mountains of the Caucasus. The Sheikh Mansur Battalion, founded in Ukraine in October 2014, "needs re-enforcement," they said.

The man the Chechens defer to as their "emir," or leader, is called "Muslim," a common forename in the Caucasus. He talked about how he personally crossed the Ukrainian border last year: "It took me two days to walk across Ukraine's border, and the Ukrainian border control shot at me," he said. He lives on this military base here openly enough but is frustrated that more of his recruits can't get through. "Three of our guys came here from Syria, 15 more are waiting in Turkey," he told The Daily Beast. "They want to take my path, join our battalion here right now, but the Ukrainian border patrol is not letting them in."

Muslim pulled out a piece of paper with a name of another Chechen heading to join the battalion. The handwritten note said that Amayev Khavadzhi was detained on September 4, 2014, in Greece and now could be deported to Russia. (Khayadzhi's lawyer in Greece told The Daily Beast on the phone that there was a chance that his defendant would be transferred to his family in France instead.)

"Two more of our friends have been detained, and are threatened with deportation to Russia, where they get locked up for life or Kadyrov kills them," Muslim told The Daily Beast, referring to the pro-Putin strongman of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The commander pointed at a young bearded militant next to him: "Mansur came here from Syria," Muslim said. "He used ISIS as a training base to improve his fighting skills." Mansur stretched out his right hand, which was disfigured, he said, by a bullet wound. Two more bullets were still stuck in his back, he said.

"No photographs," Mansur shook his head when a journalist tried to take his picture. Not even of his hand, not even from the back: "My religion does not allow that."

In fact, to demonstrate they were tough, armed, and that their numbers were growing these Chechens posted their photographs on the Russian social network Vkontakte, which actually is controlled by the Russian government. But several had their faces blanked out, presumably to avoid prosecution, whether in Russia or the West.

"Kadyrovtsy [Kadyrov] knows my face and my hand too well," Mansur explained to The Daily Beast.

Mansur said he did not have to run across the border under a hail of of bullets like Muslim. "We managed to reach an agreement with the Ukrainians," he said.

The arrival of pro-Ukrainian Chechen fighters from abroad helped relieve some of the immigration problems of Chechens already living in Ukraine, the militants explained.

Kadyrov had sent some of his Chechens to fight on the Russian side of the conflict last year, said Muslim, and as a result "there was a temporary danger that Chechen families might be deported from Ukraine... But as soon as we started coming here last August, no Chechen in Ukraine had reasons to complain."

Were former fighters coming to Ukraine from Syria because they were disappointed (or appalled) by the ideology of ISIS?

"We have been fighting against Russia for over 400 years; today they [the Russians] blow up and burn our brothers alive, together with children, so here in Ukraine we continue to fight our war," the commander said. Many in Ukraine remembered the Chechen war of the mid-1990s as a war for independence, which briefly was given, then taken away.

Since then the war in the Caucasus has morphed into terrorism, killing about 1,000 civilians, many of them children, in a series of terror attacks. And whatever the common enemy, that poses a serious problem for Kiev if it embraces such fighters.

"The Ukrainian government should be aware that Islamic radicals fight against democracy," says Varvara Pakhomenko, an expert at the International Crisis Group. "Today they unite with Ukrainian nationalists against Russians, tomorrow they will be fighting against liberals."

Pakhomenko says something similar happened in Georgia in 2012 when the government there found itself accused of cooperation with Islamic radicals from Europe, Chechnya, and the Pankisi Gorge, an ethnic Chechen region of Georgia.

For international observers covering terrorism in Russia and Caucasus in the past 15 years, the presence of Islamic radicals in Ukraine sounds "disastrous," monitors from the International Crisis Group told The Daily Beast.

But many ordinary Ukrainians and officials in Mariupol support the idea of retaining more Chechen militia fighters. "They are fearless fighters, ready to die for us, we love them, anybody who would protect us from death," said Galina Odnorog, a volunteer supplying equipment, water, food, and other items to battalions told The Daily Beast. The previous night Ukrainian forces reported six dead Ukrainian soldiers and over a dozen wounded.

"ISIS, terrorists-anybody is better than our lame leaders," says local legislative council deputy Alexander Yaroshenko. "I feel more comfortable around Muslim and his guys than with our mayor or governor."

The Right Sector battalion that cooperates with the Chechen militants is a law unto itself, often out of control, and tending to incorporate anyone it wants into its ranks. In July two people were killed and eight wounded in a gun and grenade battle between police and Right Sector militia in western Ukraine. On Monday, Right Sector militants triggered street battles in the center of Kiev that left three policemen dead and over 130 wounded.

Yet the government in Kiev has been considering the transfer of the Right Sector into a special unit of the SBU, Ukraine's security service, which has made many people wonder whether the Chechen militia will be joining the government units as well. So far, neither the Right Sector battalion nor the Chechen battalion have been registered with official forces.

In Ukraine, which is losing dozens of soldiers and civilians every week, many things could spin out of control but "it would be unimaginable to allow former or current ISIS fighters to join any government-controlled or -sponsored military unit," says Paul Quinn-Judge, senior adviser for International Crisis Group in Russia and Ukraine. "It would be politically disastrous for the Poroshenko administration: No Western government in its right mind would accept this, and it would be an enormous propaganda gift for the Kremlin. The Ukrainian government would be better served by publicizing their decisions to turn ISIS vets back at the border."

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#32
Moscow says growing number of provocations and skirmishes in Donbas is worrisome

MOSCOW, November 19 /TASS/. The completion of withdrawal of tanks, mortar launchers and weapons with a caliber under 100 mm from the contact line in southeastern Ukraine is a vital step towards de-escalation of tensions but the growing number of provocations and skirmishes is worrisome, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

"On November 12, the representatives of Kiev and Donbas notified the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine in writing that they had fulfilled their commitments regarding the pullout of tanks and artillery guns with a caliber under 100mm and mortar launchers with a caliber under 120 mm (from the disengagement line). Now, the places of permanent deployment of the withdrawn weapons should be inspected by OSCE monitors," Zakharova said.

"The pullout's completion is a vital step towards de-escalation of tensions in southeastern Ukraine," the Russian diplomat went on to say.

"At the same time, the fact that provocations and skirmishes between the parties, which use the forbidden types of heavy and light weapons, have recently become more frequent on the disengagement line cannot but arouse our concern," she stressed.
 

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 #33
Interfax-Ukraine
November 19, 2015
Involvement of Russian snipers in shooting of Maidan activists still unconfirmed - PGO
 
Investigators have not received confirmation of the involvement of Russian snipers in the shooting of protesters on Maidan in February 2014, however their possible involvement cannot be ruled out, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) has said.

"There is no data about the operation of Russian snipers as alleged by the former chief of the Security Service of Ukraine [Valentyn Nalyvaichenko]...Concerning the snipers - information hasn't been confirmed yet, still, [their involvement] hasn't been dismissed," head of the Special Investigations Unit of the Main Investigation Department of the PGO Serhiy Horbatiuk said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday

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 #34
Interfax-Ukraine
November 19, 2015
Previous Ukrainian govt provoked confrontation outside Rada on Feb 18, 2014 to justify anti-terror operation planned since Jan - PGO
 
The previous Ukrainian authorities intentionally provoked a confrontation between protesters and law enforcement agencies outside Verkhovna Rada on February 18, 2014, to justify the launch of an anti-terrorist operation against protestors which had been planned since January in the same year, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) of Ukraine has said.

"There was a plan on February 18 by force, with the use of firearms, to disperse the rally at the Verkhovna Rada to provoke a degree of confrontation between the law enforces and protesters to give justification for an anti-terrorist operation, which according to the investigators, was planned from beginning of January," head of the Special Investigations Unit of the Main Investigation Department of the PGO Serhiy Horbatiuk said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

He said that law enforcers used weapons loaded with hunting bullets, which are not used by law enforcement agencies and were received secretly, on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) before February 20, 2014.

"On February 20, regular firearms was used by enforces, namely Kalashnikov guns," he said.

He said that 49 people were killed and 157 were injured, including 68 with gun shot wounds, on Instytutska Street on February 20.

Moreover, the PGO said that as a result of the clashes outside Verkhovna Rada from 10:00 until 14:00 on February 18, 2014, ten persons were killed, 509 received injuries. Three persons were killed with gun shots, and 34 were wounded by gun shots.

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 #35
Reuters
November 18, 2015
Ukraine mounts soccer show of unity, but east "blind" to success
BY IGOR NITSAK

Gunfire still rings out across the battlefields of eastern Ukraine where soldiers face off with pro-Russian rebels; but on the soccer pitch, players of east and west Ukraine have mounted a clear display of national unity.

They have driven the country into the European soccer championships for the first time through the qualifying rounds.

Defender Artem Fedetskiy, in blue-yellow national kit, lunged into the crowd after clinching the place in Paris next year with a draw in Slovenia. Fist-punching the air, he led compatriots in raucous chants of "Glory to Ukraine!" "Glory to the heroes!" "Death to the Enemies" and "Ukraine Above All".

Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March last year and a pro-Russian rebellion broke out in the east, Ukraine's soccer stadiums have been a focus of wounded national feeling, as well as anti-Russian anger. Obscene chants deriding Russian President Vladimir Putin are a particular favorite.

The rebel Donetsk People's Republic, where Russian rather than Ukrainian TV dominates, would have been part "blind" to the success. Some officials there expressed indifference, even disapproval of the celebrations. While there is war, what price soccer?

"I'm far away from this," Vladimir Averin, president of the Karate Federation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic told Reuters. "I know Russia lost to Croatia, but I don't know if Ukraine won or not.

"Whoever knows here, found out on the internet."

But striker Evhen Seleznyov, one of the Ukrainian players born in the rebel eastern Donbass region, epicenter of a rebellion that has claimed over 8,000 lives, saw the game as evidence reconciliation was possible.

"We were a real team in the very best sense of the word," he said after the match. "No one uttered a single bad word to anyone else during the game."

"EXILE"

Although it has lost a chunk of its eastern regions, Ukraine is represented in its entirety within the national team. Eastern territories provided a half of the national squad's players.

Eastern clubs Shakhtar Donetsk and Zorya Luhansk have been playing in a domestic exile since outbreak of the conflict, which fueled one of the worst East-West crises since the Cold War. Shakhtar are now based in Kiev but play in Lviv.

As a result, many players have had to move their families from Donetsk and Luhansk as the largely Russian-speaking cities became strongholds of the pro-Russian separatists.

The conflict in the east has made its mark on the country at all levels, stirring Russian-Ukrainian ethnic rifts between colleagues at work, friends and even family members. Refugees abandon eastern areas, deaths fire further enmity.

All these raw sensitivities can find their mark in the ritual and tribalism of Ukrainian soccer.

Shakhtar center-back Yaroslav Rakytskiy is hoping to return home one day. His arm bears a tattoo with roses.

"This is the symbol of the Donetsk and Donbass region. I also got a compass tattoo. It would guide me home one day", Rakitskiy posted a photo with the comment on Instagram.

But sport and politics are always uneasy bedfellows.

Rakytskiy is often criticized by fans for not singing the national anthem of Ukraine while lined up before the kickoff.

"I just do not sing the anthem and that is it. Of course, I remember the words. Just taking that time to get tuned for the game, listening to other people singing," Rakytskiy said on national television a year ago.

WATCHING THE SKY

Andriy Pavelko, the president of the Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU) spoke of "45 million hearts beating in unison" during the match.

That unity may yet be beyond Kiev's grasp.

The guns have been mostly silent since a ceasefire agreement in early September, but there has been an increase in violations over the past few weeks, with both sides blaming the other for the escalating violence. Conflict is far from over.

Sergei Pozhidayev, a racing driver who lives in the rebel-held town of Makiyivka, saw things in somber terms.

"In Donetsk people feel bad about what's going on around them. When there's a war, when you're being shelled, when houses are destroyed - can you think about football?

"People... are listening out for noises from the sky. When there is peace, then we can talk about football."

The conflict in the east became a battle over the future of Ukraine as a whole. Russia has denied accusations it fueled rebellion with arms and troops, but at the height of fighting fears abounded of an outright annexation of the industrial Donbass region, even a rebel push beyond its boundaries.

"War is pain and grief for everyone," 36-year-old midfielder Anatoliy Tymoshchuk told Hromadske.tv. "The hope is that we're strong enough and united enough as a country to find a way out of the situation and get back to a peaceful life."

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 #36
Interfax-Ukraine
November 18, 2015
EU must prolong Russia sanctions - presidential administration
 
Deputy Chief of Staff of Ukrainian Presidential Administration Kostiantyn Yeliseyev has said that the European Union must prolong its sanctions against Russia to make the country adhere to the Minsk agreements.

"The Kremlin is remaining deliberately deaf to legal and reasoned calls, instead hoping that the current challenges, namely terrorist ones, that humanity faces, will draw attention away from the breaches of international law by Russia," Yeliseyev said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, Russia can't "hope for pardon via tragedy through solidarity with the victims of another tragedy caused by ISIS."

"That's why I believe that the EU decision to at least prolong the sanctions is rather logical and fair. By the way, the sanctions of the international community regarding Donbas aren't an end on their own. There are a way to force the Kremlin to sit down to talks with due diligence to fulfill the reached agreements on a peaceful settlement [to the Donbas conflict]," he said.

Yeliseyev said that the leaders of the EU member states will decide on whether to extend the Russian sanctions at a European Council meeting next month.

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 #37
Wall Street Journal
November 19, 2015
Europe On Course to Renew Russia Sanctions Over Ukraine
Despite new cooperation in wake of Paris attacks, EU said to want to keep pressure on Moscow
By LAURENCE NORMAN in Brussels and LAURA MILLS in Kiev, Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin is riding high amid Western efforts to improve ties in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. That has raised alarms in Kiev, where officials fear any rapprochement will come at their expense.

European Union officials say, however, that there is little appetite in key capitals, including Berlin, London and Paris, to win Russian help in Syria by abandoning Ukraine. One concrete sign is that the bloc is still heading toward extending economic sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crisis last year, EU officials and diplomats say.

The apparent willingness to renew the sanctions, which expire in late January, suggests that while France is pushing to deepen cooperation with Russia in fighting the Islamic State extremist group, clear limits remain.

Still, Ukrainian officials are worried that Europe will take a softer line with the Kremlin, just as fighting has flared up again with Russian-backed separatists. Over the weekend, six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in fighting with separatists in the eastern Donbas region, but the violence was overshadowed by the spectacular terror attacks in France.

Mr. Putin has emerged this week as a leading figure in talk of a combined global effort against Islamic State in its base in Syria and elsewhere. Ukrainian officials fear Moscow may exploit that cooperation to undermine U.S. and European support for their country.

"The Russian strategy is to create the perception that the West doesn't care about Ukraine anymore," said Dmytro Kuleba, ambassador-at-large for Ukraine. It is a clear narrative they are using: 'Let's put Ukraine aside, let's fight terrorism.' "

The EU imposed economic sanctions on Russia in two stages in the summer of 2014 in response to Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia has denied Western charges that it supplied and directed the rebels.

The sanctions, which were renewed for another six months this summer, include restrictions on defense and energy business ties and prevent state-owned banks, energy and defense companies from raising money in European financial markets. Washington has adopted similar measures.

A person close to the Ukrainian government argued that "any shift in the current U.S. and European position on Ukraine would be extremely detrimental not only for Ukraine but for Europe."

EU leaders are expected to discuss the sanctions at their mid-December summit unless the issue is resolved before then, as happened in June. Any decision must be backed by all 28 member states.

Officials say three options are being floated: extending the sanctions again by another six months, a one-year rollover or a shorter three-to-four month extension to signal to Moscow the bloc's recognition of some concessions over Ukraine.

Russia this week made a surprise proposal to restructure Ukraine's debt coming due next month, offering a potential solution to a standoff that has threatened to complicate an international bailout of Ukraine.

Moscow lent Ukraine $3 billion under the country's previous, pro-Moscow president in 2013. The proposal to the International Monetary Fund was that Kiev repay $1 billion each year from 2016 to 2018. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Wednesday that Moscow wants the European Union, the U.S. or a major international bank to serve as a guarantor.

However, Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said Wednesday that Kiev still hasn't received any official proposal, Interfax news agency reported.

People familiar with the discussions in Brussels said there is broad agreement that economic pressure should be kept on Russia until the peace plan brokered in Minsk, Belarus, in February is fully implemented.

Along with the renewed violence, the movement of international observers in eastern Ukraine remains restricted. Few expect Kiev to regain control of the border with Russia in separatist regions by the Dec. 31 deadline.

In Kiev, the party backing the president has occasionally struggled to muster the necessary votes to pass required legislation, such as amendments to the constitution that would devolve greater powers to local governments.

European Council President Donald Tusk, a high-ranking EU official, said this month that despite "some progress over the past weeks, it is clear that the Minsk agreements are not yet fully implemented.

"This will need to be reflected in the upcoming review of our sanctions," he said.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said in a telephone interview Wednesday there was no discussion at Monday's EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels about re-examining the sanctions to encourage Moscow to cooperate on Syria.

A senior EU official said there was no sign that the consensus behind extending the sanctions was starting to crack. "There is a general feeling right now that the sanctions should be rolled over," he said.

U.S. resolve has also stayed firm, officials say. On Sunday, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Turkey, President Barack Obama discussed sanctions in a meeting with the French, German, Italian and British leaders.

The White House said leaders "reiterated that sanctions against Russia must remain in place until full implementation of the Minsk agreements is achieved."

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said in Berlin on Tuesday that sanctions against Moscow should be rolled over and pledged ongoing support for Kiev should it "continue to live up to its promises to its own people and maintain the trust of the international community."

Vice President Joe Biden will make his fifth visit to Ukraine in December, and the U.S. recently announced a $1 billion loan guarantee pending certain reforms.

But diplomats have also voiced concerns over ongoing corruption in Ukraine, particularly in law-enforcement agencies that have failed to bring any high-profile corruption cases to court.

The increasingly fractious parliament also has threatened to undo measures that are key to its $40 billion bailout package from the IMF.

"Syria will create more pressure on Kiev's narrative of punishing Russia for Crimea and Donbas, and will put more focus on inactions at home," said Balazs Jarabik, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment.

"The support is not going to fade away and the sanctions on Russia are not going to be withdrawn anytime soon," said Mr. Jarabik. "But the moment there is a bigger focus on Ukraine instead of Russia, that is the moment the West is going to start getting disillusioned."

-Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow contributed to this article.

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 #38
www.rt.com
November 19, 2015
Russia bans food imports from Ukraine

Moscow will impose a food embargo on Ukraine starting from 1 January 2016, when the economic part of Kiev's European Association Agreement comes into force, according to Russia's Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev.

"Since Ukraine joined economic and financial sanctions against the Russian Federation, we have decided to introduce protective measures by imposing a food embargo," said the minister.

The measure is expected to protect the Russian market from the illegal supply of embargoed European goods that will become available in Ukraine under the Association Agreement with the EU.

"There's a high probability we will have to unilaterally protect our market from uncontrolled imports of goods from third parties through the customs territory of Ukraine, primarily from the European Union," said Ulyukaev.

Moscow introduced a one-year ban on agricultural produce, food and raw materials from countries that joined sanctions against Russia. This includes many EU countries.

Ulyukaev added the Kremlin plans to introduce customs tariffs on import of other goods from Ukraine. The tariffs will be introduced because Ukraine will no longer be part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) free trade zone and should not, therefore, enjoy membership benefits.

Ukraine will lose $600 million in exports in 2016 because of the Russian embargo, said Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk. He stressed that Moscow's actions are illegal and are "another manifestation of the economic aggression" towards Kiev.

Russia and Ukraine are currently trading in accordance with the free trade agreement between the CIS countries. Moscow said this fall that Kiev could lose both the tariff-free preference and food exports to Russia.

Ulyukaev has said that Russia has no plans for further sanctions against the EU if the situation doesn't deteriorate.

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 #39
www.opendemocracy.net
November 17, 2015
#DontFuckWithUs: labour reforms and the progressive agenda in Ukraine
By Denys Gorbach
Denys Gorbach is a Ukrainian journalist and economic analyst writing on economy, energy, political and social issues. He is a member of the Autonomous Workers' Union.

Last Thursday, Ukraine witnessed a historic event: under the defiant hashtag #DontFuckWithUs, the concepts of 'gender identity' and 'sexual orientation' made their first appearance in the country's legislation, and anti-discrimination provisions were written into Ukraine's labour laws.

The exact process of how this happened, though, makes for a far more interesting story.

A long story

The introduction of an anti-discrimination amendment to existing Ukraine's labour laws is just one of the demands made by the European Union in negotiations over visa-free travel within Europe, and is referred to in the European Commission's fifth report on Ukraine's visa liberalisation progress to the European Parliament and Council.

The amendment is, of course, a necessary step, but it won't solve everything. We also need solid interpretation and implementation of anti-discrimination provisions in accordance with European standards, allocation of resources in the fight against discrimination, development of a government strategy, training courses for public officials, judges and prosecutors, organisation of public campaigns and dialogue with representatives of national minorities.

These discussions might sound strange to residents of the EU, but similar demands have been made to other countries in the process of visa liberalisation (Moldova) and potential membership (Serbia).

Indeed, the 'anti-discrimination' laws go back to the time of Viktor Yanukovych: Mykola Azarov's government worked on them in 2013. But these attempts to amend the labour laws were unsuccessful. The conservative wing of the Party of Regions, Yanukovych's allies, rebelled: they refused to vote for the 'sodomite laws' and, in the process, stirred up homophobia in Ukrainian society.

Social conservatism went on to combine with concerns over the country's 'geopolitical' direction, and society became more polarised as a result. This process culminated in the pro-European protests of November 2013, which later led to the departure of Yanukovych several months later in February 2014.

Maidan and its aftermath were supposed to lead to these 'pro-European' laws becoming reality, but this didn't happen. With conflict raging in the east, the new government was afraid of introducing an additional source of irritation into the public sphere-especially one that would play into the hands of conservative Russian propaganda. The government made these concerns clear to the EU, and Ukraine's European partners reacted with understanding.

The request for anti-discrimination legislation didn't disappear, though, and the deadline for passing these laws continued to make its silent approach.

'God forbid that happen, we won't ever support that'

Meanwhile, as the government noisily conducted its 'pro-European reforms', a new draft Labour Code made its way into Ukraine's parliament. This bill, introduced by four deputies from pro-presidential and opposition factions (including parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Groisman), was, in fact, a failed Yanukovych-era project designed to restrict the rights of trade unions.

On 5 November, these labour laws were passed on the first reading. For the parliamentary deputies who supported it, this new Labour Code symbolises 'necessary reforms', a departure from Ukraine's Soviet legacy (the current laws date back to the 1970s) and European integration. However, the only thing that was truly connected to the project of European integration-the ban on discrimination of workers on LGBT grounds-was actually absent from this document.

Instead, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, gathered to vote on the anti-discrimination amendment to the current labour legislation, but the very mention of 'sexual orientation' caused commotion from the deputies. Only 117 deputies (out of a required 226) voted for the amendment.

These results enraged the pro-European intelligentsia, and representatives of the Kyiv middle class picketed the Rada on 10 November-the final day for voting on the 10 'visa-free' laws ahead of European Union negotiations. This time, however, only a few of the required laws were passed. (For example, a law to expedite judicial examination of deportation cases.) The anti-discrimination amendment was not supported. It took six rounds of voting to include it on the Rada's agenda, and in the end it only received 207 votes.

The pro-reform agenda was not to be halted, however, and the deadline for passing the amendment was extended. Then, on 11 November, Petro Poroshenko announced that, though he loves his wife and children and supports traditional values, the Rada should protect people from sexual and gender discrimination. Ukraine's social media had much to discuss, though, as Egor Sobolyev, a deputy from the 'progressive' Samopomich party, voted against the amendment, and was run out of his home by his wife as a result.

The next day, 12 November, liberal voters gathered once again outside the parliament to demand the Rada voted for the anti-discrimination amendment. The pressure outside coincided with pressure from pro-Poroshenko forces inside as Volodymyr Groisman, the speaker, continuously called on the room to vote.

After the seventh attempt, Groisman took the floor himself: 'You and I support family values. I've heard some rumours that some kind of same-sex marriage might be introduced in Ukraine. God forbid that happen, we won't ever support that.' Groisman then promised the deputies that a special 'family issues' ombudsman could be appointed to the government.

Then, following a ninth round of voting, the anti-discrimination amendment was passed with 234 votes.

Bitter victory

The amendment itself, reprinted so many times now on the Rada's photocopiers, is a purely declarative norm. It doesn't guarantee any real protection of labour rights for LGBTQ+ people.

An employer who wants to sack an employee can find any number of credible pretexts to do so. It's simply impossible to prove in court that the reason for firing (or not hiring) an individual is discrimination. And both the supporters and opponents of this legislation understand that. By voting for a purely technical norm, they merely declared their position on questions of 'world view'.

Many deputies did so sincerely: politicians are also people, and they're no strangers to conservative prejudice. One typical example is Volodymyr Ariyev, a supposedly 'young, pro-European, and progressive' member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, who made the following confession on his Facebook page on 5 November: 'I have knowingly burdened my soul with sin and voted for the amendment banning the discrimination of sexual minorities upon hiring. You may wipe your boots on me, but that was a condition for introducing the visa-free regime with the EU.'

What happened in the Rada is, by and large, the consequence of the populists' battle for popular support, which has only become more heated during and after the local elections in October.

Nothing new

Playing on conservative voters' traditionalism isn't a new phenomenon in Ukrainian politics. It did reach a new level prior to Maidan, though, when society was gripped by moral panic over the approach of 'EuroSodom'. But this doesn't mean that, in contrast to the 'pro-Russian' voters, 'pro-European' politicians and voters actually shared the values of secularism and social progress.

This can be seen in the rise of the Samopomich party, headed by Andriy Sadovyi, mayor of L'viv. Declaring his commitment to 'pro-European liberal reforms', Sadovyi has become one of the most popular politicians in the country if you believe the opinion surveys, and, for many liberals, Sadovyi personifies the hope for a new generation of enlightened politicians.

At the same time, Samopomich is a socially conservative and religious political party. Sadovyi himself recently forced the resignation of a public official in L'viv who publicly criticised the role of church organisations in schools. Indeed, it was Samopomich that scuppered the anti-discrimination amendment: it could be voted on successfully only after the parliamentary fraction unwillingly changed its position. The anti-discrimination vote, it should be said, took place just before the second round of mayoral elections in L'viv, where Sadovyi faced off a candidate from the far-right party Svoboda, and so Sadovyi was tasked with winning over sympathies in his hometown.

The position of the protesters outside the Rada, however, was rather more ironic: many of them were forced to protest against the political party they'd so enthusiastically supported 12 months ago during Ukraine's parliamentary elections.

In effect, this was a repeat of the rise and fall of Svoboda, which owed its success in the 2012 parliamentary elections to that same demographic-the liberal urban intelligentsia-who initially saw that party as a symbol of their own ideals, only to spectacularly lose faith later. These people also supported Right Sector, the right-wing paramilitary group that rose to the fore during Maidan, and now, of course, Samopomich. This cycle of adoration and disillusion is likely to continue until office workers in Ukraine's big cities learn how to read party programmes instead of just following them on television.

Moreover, these protesters weren't as concerned with human rights as they made out to be. The liberal slogans shouted outside the Rada merely screened a desire for the coveted visa-free regime. The organisers of these demonstrations, aimed, in principle, to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, weren't so pleased to see the targets of their protection actually arrive at the protests. A heated discussion ensued, and the organisers requested that people leave their rainbow flags at home and in no way hint at their identity.

This conflict revealed that certain 'liberals' and 'rights defenders' are interested in human rights only to the extent that it helps them achieve private, utilitarian interests. The outrage at the actions of the parliamentarians was caused largely by their failure to observe EU demands, rather than discriminatory practices.

'To say that after that I didn't felt any happiness after they adopted the law - is to say nothing,' says Olena Shevchenko, an activist for LGBT organisation Insight. 'In fact, I felt miserable and frustrated. I just realized that now, thousands of people in front of TVs strengthened their negative attitude towards the LGBT community. They just said - it is not normal and will never become the norm, we will do everything possible for that! And yes, need to be honest; this law was not adopted because of our pressure. It was adopted because of international pressure.'

Meanwhile, two power blocs continue to form in Ukrainian politics: the right-liberals on the side of the president, who promote a moderate line on domestic politics and European Union cooperation, and religious nationalists, relying on their ability to mobilise the conservative and radical electorate. Thus, the news that UKROP, a political party connected to Igor Kolomoisky and Right Sector, supported Samopomich candidates in big towns in the south like Krivyi Rih and Mykolaiv, and, in turn, received support in Dnipropetrovsk, is hardly surprising.

For left wing voters oriented towards parliamentary politics, it now makes sense to ally with the liberals, who have been searching for a force to realise their programme for several years, each time falling into disillusion. A social democratic reform party, with left-liberal and patriotic leanings, would respond to these desires far more than Svoboda or Samopomich.

Excessive socialism

Last but not least: the story of Ukraine's new Labour Code. Now, after the anti-discrimination amendment has been added to the current labour laws, it is highly likely that the draft of the new Labour Code will be buried amidst a raft of more pressing laws.

Voices in support of the new Labour Code among interested parties and organisations are hardly audible. Two of the biggest trade union federations signed a letter against the bill's second reading, and threatened to launch their mechanisms of social dialogue to prevent it. The joint organ of representation for employers, the Federation of Employers of Ukraine (FEU), has also traditionally abstained from lobbying the new Labour Code.

For the past six years, the FEU has criticised the draft law for its excessive 'socialist' content and irrelevance, threatening to introduce its own draft instead. They have yet to present one, however, and the position of employers, in practical terms, comes down to burying the current draft of the new Labour Code.

It's now clear that the strategies successfully employed by left groups to block the Labour Code in the past are no longer viable in post-Maidan Ukraine. Before, they relied on the media: left-wing activists impressed their opinion of the new Labour Code as a harmful initiative of an unpopular government on journalists who didn't have their own take on the topic of labour legislation. A certain civic consensus on the Labour Code emerged, and its lobbyists had to contend with it.

Protests also helped: activists tried to prevent the Labour Code from even being examined, and they often succeeded. Frustrated parliamentary deputies would just walk out, claiming that they'd never planned to look at any Labour Code in the first place (regardless of its presence in preliminary documents). When this new legislation was bereft of influential lobbyists, this was enough to tip the balance in favour of not passing the Code, even with the passive position of the trade unions.

Today, the legislative process in the Rada has become rougher and more unpredictable: as we can see, the president can push through laws by less than salubrious means. With the conflict in the east, the media has more 'pressing' topics to deal with than labour legislation; and the former critical attitude to any government initiative has also gone.

Instead, there is a certain demand for 'reforms' in society, and now any law can be served up as reformist. Finally, the very act of street demonstration requires far more responsibility than before: society is more tolerant of violence, and you have to weigh up the risks stemming from political opponents and the police, who react nervously to any 'unsanctioned' activity after the incidents with the grenades outside the Rada.

In effect, if influential political forces are interested in passing the Labour Code, then they'll have a better chance of getting it through parliament than previously. But the question is, are they interested?

Broadly speaking, employers in Ukraine don't require legislative change-partly because they can rely on different instruments to guarantee their interests, partly because they wish to preserve their corporativist scheme of relations with employees, and partly because the proposed changes aren't radical enough for them.

Over the years of struggle against the new Labour Code, it has been significantly improved thanks to the pressure of activists. Today, the main points of contention include permission to sack single mothers, monitor employees by video and ignore the opinion of trade union organization when an employee is fired. However, in practice, CCTV monitoring already exists in the workplace, and trade unions-even in places where they exist-practically don't use the wide powers they have under current legislation.

Thus, the current laws is important mostly as a symbol of how the state, at least in theory, recognises the primacy of workers' rights, rather than an instrument to protect those rights in practice. Truly progressive demands should concentrate on building a grassroots labour movement that would want and be able to protect itself regardless of what the laws say, rather than protecting the old law (which, it must be said, is important in terms of its symbolism).

Examples of this kind of movement growing might include informal protests and 'wildcat strikes', which have not been organised in accordance with the law or union leadership whatsoever, but that have achieved practical results in eastern Ukraine.

Reforming desire

There is one group that could seriously attempt to push through the new Labour Code, though: the same 'leaders of opinion' who previously called on Ukrainian society to vote for Svoboda, and then Samopomich. The liberal patriotic intelligentsia could easily take up the new Labour Code as a 'liberal European reform' and a 'move away from Soviet norms'.

Ukrainian society has a powerful desire for 'reforms', which were promised more than a year ago. But no one has ever spoken about the content of these reforms. (Best case scenario: the reforms should 'completely break with the Soviet past and bring the country closer to "European" standards.') So far, the only successful reform according to public perception has involved the police.

Passing a law that will affect little in real life, but act as an inspiring symbol of renewal and reform, would meet the requirements of the authorities. And so, if the new Labour Code is passed, it won't be the result of an attack on workers' interests, but the result of a mediated and simplified perception of Ukraine's civic and political life.

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 #40
Zik (Ukraine)
http://zik.ua
November 19, 2015
If government fails to change Ukraine, people will do it - Saakashvili

"Ukraine needs redical changes in the wake of the 2014 revolution. Either the government makes them or the people of Ukraine will take care of this. There is no third option, no matter how those who have shared the spheres of influence hope," Odesa Governor and ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili said in Kyiv in the course of the international conference on Ukraine government track record in fighting corruption over the past 2 years Nov. 18.

Its participants, Forbes observes, preferred to focus on global issues to be resolved in Ukraine, leaving aside the government's two-year record. Not Mikheil Saakashvili. He used scathing remarks describing the 'successes' of Ukraine reformers.

Forbes gives the main outlines of Saakashvili's address:

New staff is needed. One cannot add fresh cucumbers to a barrel of salted ones, expecting them all to become fresh.

We have very good ministers, but we do not have the government. There is a government but it is totally corrupt.

If there was the government that does not steal, and premier's buddies did not become billionaires in the first year of Premier's tenure, everything would be easy: the premier would say "I do not steal and will not let you steal" - it is as simple as that.

Given the totally corrupt court system, the government can do little to introduce reforms without a viable prosecution.

Odesa authorities are implementing a project to build a hub airport. However, Tycoon Ihor Kolomojsky has control over Kyiv's Boryspil airport, and he doesn't want a hub airport in Odesa, a bigger one than Boryspil.

The prosecutors are pressing for the closure of construction. To close the only big project going on in Odesa!

The Kyiv apparat tries to block our attempts to cleanse the Odesa customs by re-routing customs operations from Odesa to Kyiv! It's a disgrace.

Then Kyiv starts to say that Odesa customs revenues have become lower, putting the blame on us.

It would be wrong to assume that the steam has been let off in the last local elections. But Ukrainians are angered as they see that nothing has changed, Mikheil Saakashvili said.

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 #41
Kyiv Post
November 18, 2015
Poroshenko, Saakashvili disagree on state of progress in stamping out corruption
By Johannes Wamberg Andersen

As the second anniversary of the EuroMaidan Revolution approaches on Nov. 21, President Petro Poroshenko delivered a confident speech at an anti-corruption conference in Kyiv, stating that the nation was on the right path to overcoming graft.

"We are now completing the first, institutional and juridical phase of the fight against corruption," Poroshenko said on Nov. 16 at the event, which was arranged by the president's own National Reform Council.

But others in attendance weren't so upbeat. The reason being, they perceive a lack of will to actually use the new instruments the government has to combat corruption.

Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili said the limited reforms achieved were bound to fail if the entire system didn't change as well. Isolated reforms would be nullified by a pervasive and overwhelming culture of power abuse, he said.

That was what befell the drive to reform Georgian courts before he became president, Saakashvili said. Although highly praised by the World Bank, the new judges had quit within six months because there was no political will to have a proper court system operating. Instead, corrupt, backroom deals flourished, having been brokered at the police and prosecution level before cases even got to the courts.

"The same fate awaits your patrol police, diesel fuel purchases (at competitive prices for the railways) and deregulation (efforts)," Saakashvili said at the conference, addressing the limited progress reported by Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky and Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius.

And while the president proudly listed "a transparent and competitive hiring processes for the heads" of new anti-graft bodies, 4,000 prosecutors being laid off, and 700 being hired instead, Saakashvili said Poroshenko's list of achievements falls well short of the total overhaul that is needed.

Vitaliy Shabunin, chairman of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, also criticized Poroshenko for failing to mention that a presidential appointee - the prosecutor general - had attempted to retain political influence over appointments to a board selecting a new chief anti-corruption prosecutor. If the old guard stayed in place, nothing would be achieved, Shabunin told the Kyiv Post.

He rejected the president's argument that because only two of the 11 members of the board were prosecutors, the new chief anti-corruption prosecutor would be "truly independent." "The president (still) controls the majority of that board," Shabunin said.

Moreover, Saakashvili claimed that one of the front-runners to become the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Roman Hovda, a former head of the Odesa Oblast prosecution service, was known for sabotaging local businesses.

Hovda's office blocked the setting up of a ferry connection across the Danube River that would have bypassed the road between to Romania through Moldova, which in turn would have given an economic boost to the region.

"Now he is getting promoted and might become the chief anti-corruption prosecutor," Saakashvili said, shaking his head.

Hovda couldn't be reached for comment. He earlier dismissed the allegations.

Pyvovarsky and Abromavicius also said that they didn't have enough money to pay their staff proper salaries. As a result, key personnel needed to turn government agencies around and make them serve the public are quitting, they said.

Saakashvili went on to describe how his reforms in Odesa had been subverted one by one. He said his zero-tolerance for corruption in Odesa's customs had been circumvented by regional custom offices elsewhere in the country.

Saakashvili cited the Odesa Airport, which he said was about to be upgraded with a rebuilt runway and terminal, making it a potential competitor to Kyiv's airport.

"So what do you think happened?" he asked. "The prosecutors today opened a lawsuit to stop the work. That was our only remaining (major) project still moving ahead - they've blocked all the others!"

Saakashvili concluded that "there is no political will (for reform) in the government," but then corrected himself. Pointing to Pyvovarsky and Abromavicius sitting next to him, he said "some ministers have the will and do make an effort. But we have no government will; We don't have a government. We're being fooled by people who want to retain their profitable schemes."

Instead, he said, "there is a willingness to be corrupt, and that is extremely effective and influential."

"The problem is systemic," he said pointing at Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Saakashvili warned that public administration could simply fall apart if nothing was done. "And what would (Mykola) Martynenko do then?" he said, referring to an influential lawmaker from Yatsenyuk's People's Front party, who is being investigated by Swiss authorities on suspicion of bribery and, according to Ukrainian journalistic investigations, is suspected siphoning funds from state-owned enterprises.

Martynenko has publicly repeatedly rejected the allegations.

Dmytro Kotliar, a resident adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Anti-Corruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and a former deputy minister of justice, agreed with Saakashvili that not much had changed.

"The worst thing is the impunity at all levels" when it comes to corruption, Kotliar told the Kyiv Post.

However, he dismissed criticism that there are too many new anti-corruption bodies. It is crucial that each body focuses on its own specific task, he said. Moreover, it was important to have the right agencies in place so they can spring into action when the political will emerges, he added.

Kotliar said he hoped that the new law on transparent party financing would be instrumental in breaking the vicious circle of vested interests buying influence and capturing the government.

He also criticized the alleged practice of supplementing key top officials' low salaries with unofficial payments. "Even if such money is provided in good faith, it still amounts to yet another form of state capture," Kotliar said.

One attendee at the conference, Canadian-Ukrainian consultant and long-term resident of Ukraine Lubomyr Markevych, struck the gloomiest note at the event, saying that after 20 years, he didn't put much faith in Kotliar's hopes of gradual change.

"It might be over for Ukraine. This conference should have been held a year ago," Markevych said.

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 #42
New Statesman (UK)
November 19, 2015
Is Ukraine finally getting to grips with its corruption problem?
Two years of war, illness and economic pain has followed Ukraine's revolution, and reforms are still slow to arrive.
BY OLIVER BULLOUGH
 
If you want to know why Ukraine had a revolution, consider this: it has one of the world's fastest-growing HIV epidemics, and yet officials deliberately overcharged their own health ministry for anti-retrovirals to make money for themselves. In 2013, about a quarter of the money intended for HIV medicines was embezzled, while more than half the Ukrainians who died of Aids-related conditions lacked access to drugs.

And that was not an isolated example: children lacked vaccines, haemophiliacs lacked clotting factor, diabetics lacked insulin. Patients had to bribe doctors to obtain the drugs the state was supposed to provide for free, while officials and intermediaries secretly got rich via Cyprus-registered shell companies.

Ukraine has finally moved to break the pharmaceutical mafia. Under three deals signed this month, the health ministry has outsourced drugs procurement to two UN agencies and to Britain's Crown Agents. The drugs available should be better and cheaper - by between 10 and 25 per cent - so more can be bought for people who need them, and those that are bought will be more effective. Meanwhile, the criminals will lose out: it's a win/win/win.

"We are drastically changing the rules of the game, we are changing a system that has been around for years and years, and which has proven to be inefficient, corrupted, non-transparent," Deputy Health Minister Ihor Perehinets told me.

Ukraine's revolution happened almost two years ago. Those have been years of war and economic collapse and the healthcare situation has deteriorated still further. This summer, polio paralysed two Ukrainian children after vaccination rates dropped to just 14 per cent. The only other countries in the world with polio outbreaks are Pakistan, Afghanistan, Madagascar and Guinea. Ukraine's revolutionaries wanted to move closer to Europe, but instead got a disease found in the poorest parts of the developing world.

Anti-corruption activists have been highly critical of the health ministry for taking so long to act, but Alexandra Ustinova of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre was delighted it had finally done so.

"Of all the years of healthcare in independent Ukraine, this is the first real reform," she said. "We have taken 2.3 billion hryvnias ($100m) from the oligarchs and given them to international organisations. It is massive."

It is of course heartening that officials in Kiev have finally taken a step to fight the endemic corruption that has plagued Ukraine since independence, but it is depressing too. The post-revolutionary government should have been passing much more significant milestones than this long ago. This reform affects just one-third of one part of one ministry's procurement budget. Other ministries and agencies - among them: the judiciary, the prosecutor's office, the customs service - are not only unreformed, but are still staffed by officials appointed under the old regime. These people are not just delaying reforms, but actively opposing them.

"Corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General's office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform," said US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in an unusually outspoken assault in September. "These bad actors regularly hinder efforts to investigate and prosecute corrupt officials within the prosecutor general's office.  They intimidate and obstruct the efforts of those working honestly on reform initiatives within that same office."

As the second anniversary of the revolution approaches, Ukrainians are increasingly wondering if these saboteurs are winning. Prosecutors have failed to bring any of the corrupt officials of the previous regime to trial, or to persuade foreign states to repatriate their stolen money. And they have the connivance of others. Earlier this month, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko accused parliament of deliberately neutering a new law intended to help bring stolen money home.

During the revolution, Sergei Leshchenko was a journalist who specialised in revealing Ukraine's rulers' corruption. While the president was amassing a fortune, parliamentarians cut side deals in what Ukrainians referred to as "the biggest business club in Europe". Leshchenko decided to run for parliament and to try to improve the system from the inside, and won a seat in October last year.

"The direction of travel is correct, but it is too slow. This is a parliamentary republic, and you need consensus," he says. We were eating lunch in parliament's canteen, and he indicated his fellow deputies with a sweep of his head. "There are a lot of politicians here who are not motivated. Being optimistic, maybe 25 per cent of us want proper reform. In reality, it's probably less."

Although many Ukrainians still back President Petro Poroshenko, at least partly thanks to his response to the Russian destabilisation of Ukraine's east, support for Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk has collapsed so completely that his Popular Front party did not even stand in local elections last month. Both president and premier insist they are committed to transforming Ukraine into a European country but, when speaking privately, officials often despair of the muddle they have created. There is still no truly independent judiciary, the tax system is a mess, officials remain under-paid, and there has been no purge of the old regime's corrupt officials.

"I am angry all the time, I feel ready to make a public statement and quit. About 90 percent of the time I think it's all a disaster," said one senior official, who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak his mind. "Every day I get approached through friends, through relatives, with offers of money. Any ordinary man would take it, and I'm beginning to think I'm acting like a Greek philosopher, like Diogenes in his barrel or someone. My wife thinks I'm an idiot."

He was angry as well that European countries haven't done more to return the money stolen from Ukraine and stashed in Western bank accounts. "They seem to prefer to have people in London buying property, or in Monaco, Austria or Slovenia or wherever, than to help us," he said. "But then, if nothing is being done in Ukraine, it's stupid to expect other countries to do it for us."

Is he worried that the people will take to the streets once more?

"I would love to see that. I would join them in a second," he said.

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 #43
Reuters
Russia says ready to ease some Ukraine debt terms, reiterates debt not commercial
By Darya Korsunskaya

MOSCOW, Nov 18 Russia signalled on Wednesday it was ready to make some concessions in its new offer on restructuring Ukraine's debt, but reiterated it would never agree to having it treated in the same way as debt belonging to private creditors.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia had discussed the proposal, which envisages Ukraine repaying the $3 billion in Eurobonds held by Moscow in $1 billion tranches over the next three years, with the International Monetary Fund's key shareholders.

President Vladimir Putin, who unexpectedly announced the proposal on the sidelines of a Group of 20 (G20) summit in Turkey on Monday, said the terms Russia was offering Ukraine were better than what the IMF had been suggesting.

Siluanov said the ministry was ready to meet its Ukrainian partners to discuss the offer, provided it was supported by the IMF, its shareholders and Ukraine by Dec. 8. He did not elaborate.

"(Then) we are prepared to consult more broadly with the Ukrainian side, with the International Monetary Fund, with other participants and discuss the specific details of our offer, so that they are acceptable for the Russian side, colleagues from the IMF, as well as colleagues from Ukraine," Siluanov said.

An IMF spokesman said Russian authorities had outlined their proposal at a meeting between Putin and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. "As we have said, we expect the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to conduct direct discussions on this matter," he said in an emailed statement.

Russia bought the Eurobonds in December 2013, three months before the overthrow of Ukraine's then-president, Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich, amid street protests against his rule.

Moscow and Kiev have been at loggerheads over the issue since then, in the context of a wider deterioration in relations caused by Russia's annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine has included the Eurobond among the sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed bonds to be restructured in a deal with a group of its largest creditors in order to plug a $15 billion funding gap under an IMF-led $40 billion bailout programme.

SOVEREIGN DEBT

But Russia insists the debt, originally due next month, cannot be considered commercial and that its proposal could be implemented within the framework of the current IMF programme to Ukraine.

"We will never agree to include Ukraine's debt to the Russian Federation in a list of debts to commercial creditors," Siluanov said. "We are talking here exclusively of sovereign debt."

Although the terms of the offer are still largely unknown, Siluanov signalled that Russia was ready to renegotiate coupon payments on the bonds and that Ukraine would only have to pay $75 million in interest in 2015.

Putin said the offer should be accompanied by guarantees from the United States, the European Union or an established international financial institute.

However, a source told Reuters on Tuesday Ukraine's private creditors were unlikely to allow Kiev to accept Moscow's proposal.

Some analysts have also been sceptical about the scale of Russia's concessions.

"I think Russia's offer isn't very generous at all," said Gabriel Sterne, head of global macro research at Oxford Economics.

"In particular, I think asking for guarantees puts the status of the debt way senior to the private sector. Getting an IMF guarantee and a decent rate of interest from Ukraine is a great investment, almost better than being paid up now."

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 #44
Russia will restructure Ukraine's debt but Kiev should recognize its sovereign nature - PM

MANILA, November 19. /TASS/. Russia is ready to restructure Ukraine's debt but it's time for Kiev "to stop showing off" in respect of the sovereign nature of the loan, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday after the APEC summit.

"It's time to stop 'showing off' in respect of recognizing the sovereign nature of this debt," the Russian prime minister said.

According to the official, Russia is not setting forth lifting anti-Russian sanctions as a condition for restructuring of Ukrainian debt.

"For us sanctions are an issue which is not related to the loan. Let them see for themselves how to act. We don't voice such conditions with regard to this matter," he said summing up the results of APEC summit.

Medvedev reiterated that Moscow is not asking and will not ask Western countries to lift the sanctions they imposed against Russia.

"I have nothing to say. It is not we who imposed these sanctions but a number of Western countries. What will they do, I do not know. We don't ask them for anything and won't ask. This makes no sense," the Russian official said.

He stressed that Ukraine is close country for Russia.

"The people who live there are close to us. We always had very intensive relations with Ukraine. That is why we are trying to negotiate on the loan, which, in fact, Ukraine wanted badly to receive," Medvedev said.

Russia made a proposal to restructure the debt of Ukraine at $ 3 billion: it is proposed to pay the debt in three years in equal installments of $1 billion per year, starting from 2016. In 2015, Ukraine will be obliged to pay only coupon of $75 million.

The IMF is currently revising the rules of lending to countries with sovereign debt. In particular it may change a rule obliging a country, which receives aid under the IMF program, to pay debt to its official creditors.

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 #45
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
November 18, 2015
Putin Shows up IMF's Christine Lagarde
Putin makes an offer the West has to refuse, exposing Western dishonesty about Ukraine's future
By Alexander Mercouris

Putin's supposed "offer" at the G20 to restructure the $3 billion debt Ukraine owes Russia has been universally misunderstood.

It was not a real offer at all.

Firstly, it was not made to Ukraine - which is the country that owes the money - but to the IMF's Christine Lagarde.

Secondly the "offer" is conditional on the IMF - or the US or EU - guaranteeing to pay Russia the money if Ukraine defaults.

On that basis Putin said Russia would accept payment in installments, each of $1 billion, payable over 3 years. Ukraine would however continue to pay interest.

If the offer were accepted Russia would get all its money - either directly from Ukraine or from the IMF or US or EU - plus interest on top, only over 3 years instead of in December.

Putin cheekily pointed out that if Lagarde is so sure Ukraine is about to become solvent, giving Russia a guarantee should present no problems.

In reality - as Putin well knows - there is no chance the IMF or the US or the EU will ever give Russia such a guarantee.  

In the case of the IMF it is questionable whether it is legally able to.

In the case of the US and EU doing so would be politically impossible.

Beyond that - as Putin knows - neither Lagarde nor anyone else seriously believes Ukraine will be solvent in a year's time or indeed any time soon.

That rules out anyone giving any guarantees for Ukraine's debt.

Putin's "offer" was intended to show that, whilst also showing Lagarde up.

Lagarde asked Putin to postpone payment of the debt for a year, telling him something she doesn't really believe, which is that Ukraine in a year will be solvent and able to pay the debt.

Putin fired back that in that case Lagarde should have no trouble guaranteeing it.

There are no reports of how Lagarde reacted. Probably she was embarrassed and quietly furious.

The episode in fact shows Putin at his most quick-witted and mischievous.  

It is also another example of why the pompous and self-important - and in this case dishonest - grandees of the West, of whom Lagarde is one, find dealing with Putin so infuriating.

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