#2
www.rt.com
November 30, 2015
Russia's efforts slowed down global warming for year - Putin

Russia is planning on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by substantial proportion in the coming years, President Vladimir Putin noted at the international conference on climate change in France.

As many as 150 world leaders have arrives at 21st session of World Climate Change Conference which opened on Monday in Paris. US President Barack Obama, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia's President Vladimir Putin were among those who have delivered their speeches today.

The Russian leader revealed his country's efforts in fighting with global warming that slowed down the process for at least a year.

"We have gone beyond the target fixed by the Kyoto Protocol for the period from 1991 to 2012. Russia not only prevented the growth of greenhouse gas emission, by also significantly reduced it," Putin said.

"Nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent weren't released into the atmosphere. As a comparison, the total emissions of all countries in 2012 reached 46 billion tons."

Russia is planning to keep progressing by bringing breakthrough technologies into practice, "including nanotechnology," Putin continued saying the country is also open to exchange and share the findings.

Apart from that, Putin has also promised Russia will reduce its polluting emissions by 70 percent by 2030 as compared to base level in 1990.

A new agreement must lay emphasis on the role of forests as major greenhouse gases absorber, Putin said. This would be especially important to Russia with its large forest lands. Preserving the lungs of our planet is a top priority, he added.

Russia is also going to provide financial and other support to developing countries willing to deal with climate change.

Addressing the conference, Putin reiterated the idea he voiced at the UN General Assembly in September - to hold a UN-sponsored scientific congress on natural resources exhaustion and deterioration of human settlements conditions.

The so-called Conference of the Parties has taken place annually since 1992 with participants trying to come up with most effective plan of handling climate change. The summit will last 12 days, from November 30 to December 11.

This year negotiators are to sign an agreement on practical ways of dealing with global warming. Drawing up a universal pact that would be agreed by and applicable to all countries is the main challenge for the negotiators.

Just ahead of the global summit, environmental activists all over the world have taken to streets and marched, demanding strong action from world leaders. Some of the protests have turned violent with around 200 people in Paris arrested.

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 #4
Kremlin.ru
November 30, 2015
Press statement and answers to journalists' questions

Vladimir Putin made a press statement and answered questions from Russian and foreign journalists following his visit to France to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good evening,

I will talk briefly about our impressions of the Paris conference. This is a huge, major international event. I want to congratulate our French friends on the organisation of this work: everything is very smart and easy, convenient, and most importantly, I hope, will yield the result.

I will repeat what I said in my speech - namely, that Russia has not only met the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol, but has done even more. We not only maintained the 1990 emission levels, we actually reduced them. At the same time, as I already said, we nearly doubled GDP during this period. In other words, it is possible to develop the economy while preserving the environment. And at the next stage, Russia will reduce emissions to 70% of 1990 levels - that will be our contribution, and a very serious one.

So I hope that the conference will end on the right note, with the signing of a corresponding agreement that will be in force after 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. Russia intends to make some serious commitments. We are confident that we will fulfil all these commitments - hoping, of course, that these commitments are legally binding and apply to all the world's nations, taking into account what we agreed upon, including in Bashkortostan at the BRICS summit, where we worked out common approaches to resolving various global challenges.

One of these problems is certainly that of limiting organic emissions and keeping global warming within an increase to two degrees Celsius. I think this is a realistic plan and we are prepared to work on this together with our partners.

During today's visit to Paris, I also had a series of meetings with colleagues, including the President of Peru, the President of the United States of America, the Chancellor of Germany, the President of the European Commission, the President of South Korea and the Prime Minister of Israel. We discussed bilateral issues, developing bilateral relations and, of course, the most pressing current problems, first and foremost the Syrian issue and options for its settlement.

Overall, I feel we are on the same wavelength and all assume that we can resolve the Syrian conflict exclusively through political means. We are currently seeking a platform to move forward. I hope that our foreign ministers will be able to find more common ground at the upcoming meeting in Vienna; I think we have the prerequisites for this.

Thank you for your attention.

Question (retranslated): Mr President, I want to ask why you did not arrive in time for the opening of the conference, why you did not participate in the moment of silence for the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks and did not participate in the group photo session.

Vladimir Putin: This is a purely technical issue.

You know how we feel about the terrorist attacks and what is happening as a result of those attacks. We were among the first to express our condolences to the French people following the attacks in Paris.

Russia has dealt with terrorist attacks many times and has had many victims, including in the latest attack - one of the biggest catastrophes of its kind - the destruction of our civilian aircraft over the Sinai Peninsula.

As you know, President Hollande recently visited Moscow and we discussed all this in detail; all this is the subject of our constant dialogue. The reason for my not being present for the photo session or any rituals is, I repeat again, purely technical and is due to my working schedule and the need to complete the discussions with my colleagues, to discuss in full detail everything we had to say here, at the session for which I came here, and during the bilateral meetings.

And I hope that our cooperation with French colleagues will go farther than with many others, that we will fight terrorism in Syria together on a practical level - I mean the agreements between our military agencies to coordinate their actions.

Question: Good evening, Mr President. What do you believe is the main obstacle to agreeing on a new climate protocol? For example, how can we settle the difference in quotas for developed and developing nations? What is your opinion on this?

Vladimir Putin: It's always about seeking compromise. What is the essence of the developing nations' position? The position is well-known to all, that nations with a developed economy have already covered a certain ground of development, achieved certain results and attained a certain production capacity and technological development, and if the heavy burden of emission restrictions is placed on developing economies, having to do with paying fines and so on, this will be one of the ways to hinder their development.

Of course, that is precisely why we all say we should provide assistance to developing economies through UN mechanisms, so they can reach a higher level of technological development and not have their hands and feet tied by emissions-related limitations. If we find that compromise - and we are close to it - then success is guaranteed.

Question: Good evening, Mr President. Many journalists want to know, did you have a meeting with President of Turkey Mr Erdogan today? And how often was the topic of the downed Russian plane brought up in your dialogues and contacts with other heads of state?

Vladimir Putin: I did not meet with the President of Turkey; we did not see one another and did not have a meeting.

As for the topic of the downed Russian plane, naturally, this topic came up during nearly all of my bilateral meetings; I provided the corresponding clarifications and talked about what happened. But it seems to me - in fact, I saw this - all my colleagues listened carefully and the overwhelming majority share the view that there was no need to strike an unprotected Russian bomber that did not threaten Turkey.

Question: I would like to ask a clarifying question that is probably of interest to colleagues as well. A week has passed since the attack on the Russian plane. Have you personally been able to understand why the President of Turkey took this step?

Vladimir Putin: We have heard from the Turkish side that it was not the President of Turkey who made the decision, that the decision was made by other officials. This does not have much significance to us. What is important is that this criminal action resulted in the death of two of our service members: the pilot in command and a marine corps member who was a part of the rescue unit. As for why they did it, you would need to ask them. It was a huge mistake.

Question (retranslated): Two questions, one related to diplomacy and the other concerning climate change.

First, what can you say about the planned blockade with regard to the formation of a broad anti-terrorist coalition? How do you assess the current situation in this area?

And second, as far as I understand, Mr President, you spoke about the importance of forests to preserve climate stability. According to statistics, in 2013, the area of forests in Russia decreased. How do you reconcile these two facts?

Vladimir Putin: As far as forests are concerned, they act to absorb emissions, soaking them up like a sponge, it is true that we have faced certain problems, particularly of a technological and environmental nature.

We are talking about climate change. When people talk about forest fires, particularly in northern Russia, it is, in part, the result of global climate change. This is the result of climate change when we witness other climactic or unusual phenomena in the form of hurricanes of a magnitude that mankind has never seen, et cetera. All this is a manifestation of the changes due, for example, to melting glaciers in the Arctic.

The preservation of these forests - and putting out forest fires when they occur - requires significant financial resources. These are the planet's "lungs," so we need corresponding treatment to keep them in good health. So indeed, we link the forests to the commitments to cut emissions. And overall, the overwhelming majority of our colleagues on the global arena agree.

Now, as far as creating a broad coalition to fight terrorism is concerned. You know, I spoke about this at the 70th anniversary session of the UN General Assembly: we have always supported this. But we cannot achieve this until somebody uses part of the terrorist organisations to achieve short-term political goals, until we fulfil the UN Security Council resolutions on stopping the sale of oil unlawfully extracted by terrorists, the illegal sale of the works of art, and so on.

We have just received additional information proving that unfortunately, large volumes of oil, industrial volumes coming from oil fields controlled by ISIS and other terrorist organisations, enter Turkey's territory. And we have every reason to believe that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to ensure the security of these oil supply routes to Turkey - to the ports where it is shipped out in tankers, - while protecting the Turkmen is merely a pretext.

And, of course, you know that our pilots write "For our people!" on their missiles; in other words, this is revenge for our citizens who died over Sinai. They also write "For Paris!" on the missiles, as a revenge for the terrorist attacks in Paris. And yet, this bomber is shot down by the Turkish air force. What can we discuss here? What broad coalition? But we will still strive toward creating a truly effective, broad coalition, so that regional, local and financial interests will fade into the background against the global threat of terrorism.

Question: Mr President, we know that you had a meeting with President Obama today. What did you discuss, and did you agree on anything?

Vladimir Putin: We talked first and foremost about Syria, as well as things that should be at the forefront of our attention in the near future, including the list of what we consider to be terrorist organisations and the list of organisations that represent the healthy part of the Syrian opposition. We also talked about our joint actions on this political track. And overall, I think we have an understanding of where we need to go. If we are talking about the need for a political settlement, then we need to work on a new constitution, new elections and monitoring of their results.

And part of the discussion focused on settling the situation in southeast Ukraine; we discussed the need for full compliance with the Minsk agreements by all sides.

Question: Mr President, overall, are you upset with the state of bilateral relations with Turkey? After all, the level of partnership was unprecedented, and had taken decades of work. Now what?

Vladimir Putin: I think we are all upset, and I am personally very upset, because I myself did a great deal to build those relations over the course of a long period of time.

But there are problems that occurred long ago and which we were trying to resolve through dialogue with our Turkish partners. For example, we have long asked them to pay attention to the fact that representatives of terrorist organisations that fought or try to fight us with weapons in hand in certain Russian regions, including in the North Caucasus, emerge on Turkey's territory.

We asked to stop this practice, but nevertheless have established that they are located on the territory of the Turkish Republic, residing in regions guarded by special services and the police, and later, using the visa-free regime, appear again on our territory, where we continue to fight them.

This has been happening for a long time, and we have repeatedly asked questions at the level of special services through so-called partner channels, as well as at the foreign ministry level and the highest political level. Unfortunately, we did not see any partner-oriented reaction to our concerns.

Thus, many questions that needed to be resolved one way or another have been brewing for some time. It is unfortunate that we must resolve them in such circumstances, but this is not our fault, this was not our choice.

Let's end here. Thank you, and have a good evening.

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 #5
Kremlin.ru
September 28, 2015
70th session of the UN General Assembly (excerpt re climate change)

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

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

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

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

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

 #6
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 30, 2015
Russia Direct Brief: 'Global Warming: Russia Comes in from the Cold'
[Text of report here http://www.russia-direct.org/archive/russia-direct-brief-global-warming-russia-comes-cold}

Russia Direct Brief: 'Global Warming: Russia Comes in from the Cold'This report examines the changes happening in Russia ever since the issue of global warming was introduced on the global agenda. Only today, after the planet has experienced a variety of catastrophic natural disasters, have world leaders and decision makers grown more aware of the urgency of the problem.

In Russia, where climate changes have been more significant than globally on average, the government has increased its objectives in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and put forward a number of initiatives and green policy measures to achieve more sustainability in the long term. Russia's target for greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 is set at 70-75 percent of the base level of 1990, according to the new action plan adopted by the Kremlin.

Other states also recognize the problem but their positions differ in the way the issue should be solved. India, China, the U.S. and Brazil, all of which are important players analyzed in the report, find it hard to reach common ground in reaching a globally binding agreement. Whether this will be done ultimately depends on the outcome of the Paris climate change conference.

The report also considers the state of the Russian climate change movement from the experience of WWF activities in Russia, provides an overview of the development of the Russian green energy sector with specific success stories and analyzes the prospects of renewable energy development in different regions of the country.

The authors of the report are George Safonov, Woodrow W. Clark II, Dimitri Elkin, and Ivan Kapitonov.

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 #7
RFE/RL
November 29, 2015
Explainer: Climate Change And The View From Moscow
by Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW -- Russia's size and broad range of environments, from the arid southern steppe to the frigid Arctic, expose the world's largest country to many aspects of climate change.
 
President Vladimir Putin is one of dozens of leaders expected to attend a UN conference on climate change that starts in Paris on November 30, a crucial step in the global push to keep temperatures from rising to increasingly dangerous levels.
 
Ahead of the Paris conference, RFE/RL takes a look at what climate change means for Russia, and what we can expect from Moscow at the meeting.

Is climate change affecting Russia?

Yes, in two main ways:
 
-- Gradual Impact:
 Long-term effects include the thawing of the permafrost, the northward retreat of the tundra and the advance of the taiga, the melting of Arctic ice, a rising sea level, and significant northern coastline erosion.
 
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a prominent Russian newspaper, this month cited German research predicting that temperatures in Russia will be 1.5 degrees Celsius higher in 2020-29 than they were in 1980-89. In western Siberia, the predicted increase is 2 degrees.
 
-- Extreme Weather:
Many scientists, activists, and officials have linked manifestations of extreme weather, such as heavy rain, heat waves, cold snaps, and violent storms, with climate change. Aleksei Kokorin, the head of the WWF Russia environmental group's climate and energy program, says climate change has led to more natural disasters.
 
In the last five years, there has been a series of natural disasters with serious implications for Russia and its economy. In 2010, a heat wave stoked deadly wildfires that blanketed cities with acrid smoke, and prompted Russia to impose an embargo on grain exports.
 
In 2012, flooding in the southern town of Krymsk killed 171 people, and a group of scientists this year ascribed that flooding to a freak downpour they said was made possible by rising temperatures on the Black Sea.
 
Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoy said this month that Russia experienced 569 "dangerous meteorological occurrences" in 2014, the most it has recorded in a single year.

Does this mean climate change is only bad news for Russia?

Not entirely. Russian officials and scientists believe climate change poses challenges for the country, but also presents opportunities.  Some argue that warmer temperatures in Russia's northern climate will make the Arctic easier to develop and less hostile to work in.
 
Possible pluses:
 
-- The thawing and gradual opening up of the Northern Sea Route, the piracy-free Arctic shipping lane under Russian control which connects the Atlantic and Pacific.
-- More access to energy resources that are currently difficult to extract because of hostile, freezing climes.
-- A shorter winter could mean less energy expended on central heating.
-- Better conditions for agriculture in the north.
 
Possible minuses:
 
-- Thawing permafrost damaging infrastructure built for colder climes. Around 60 percent of Russian territory is covered in permafrost.
-- Significant northern coastline erosion and river embankment erosion.
-- Rain and snow falling less often, but with higher intensity.
-- Increasing risk of wildfires, floods, and other disasters, according to some scientists.

Environmental activists argue that, for Russia, the minuses easily outweigh the pluses. In any case, Kokorin said that the potential benefits of climate change are difficult to harness.
 
"The heating season is getting shorter, so in theory we can economize on this. But, in order to do that, you need to have a flexible heating system, which is not that simple," he said.
 
"In the north and northwest regions of Russia, there could be slightly better conditions for agriculture. But you need to be able to manage agriculture correctly in order to make use of this," he added. "This again is not simple."

What does Putin think?

Putin has long been seen as a climate change skeptic. In 2003, he told an international conference that rising temperatures might mean Russians "would spend less on fur coats" and that "grain production will increase, and thank God for that."
 
Twelve years later, Russian officials broadly acknowledge that climate change is real, that it is happening because of human activity, and that it poses a threat, according to Angelina Davydova, a St. Petersburg journalist specializing in climate change.
 
"We've already gotten to the stage when no one jokes about this," said Kokorin. "The majority of people, including official people, see that there are substantial changes to the climate, that most of them are negative, and that there are considerably fewer positive effects, and finally that we have to take action."

What has Russia done?

In 2009, Russia approved a national Climate Doctrine, which laid out guidelines for implementing future climate change policy.
 
In 2013, Putin issued a decree setting the goal of cutting Russia's anthropogenic -- human-caused -- greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to 25 percent below their 1990 level.
 
In Russia's case, the suitability of using 1990 as a benchmark year is controversial. While many countries' carbon emissions have risen gradually over decades, this was not the case for Russia: 1990 is the year before the Soviet Union fell apart, dealing a massive blow to industry that had the side-effect of vastly reducing the country's carbon footprint. What's more, the Soviet Union was a notoriously bad polluter: By 2012, Russia had only reached 50 percent of 1990 emissions levels.

What can we expect from Russia in Paris?

In March, Russia said that by 2030 it intends to cut emissions to 20-25 percent below 1990 levels.
 
Environmental groups have criticized that pledge, calling it unambitious and insufficient.
 
For one thing, it is exactly the same level that Putin decreed as a target for 2020.
 
In addition, Moscow has indicated it will factor in the benign impact of its huge swath of boreal forestland when it comes to calculating its overall carbon emissions. Russia's forestland absorbs huge amounts of carbon, and, by factoring it in, Moscow effectively grants itself extra carbon emissions.
 
Finally, Russia's emissions targets for 2020 and 2030 targets are higher than the levels it reached in 2012.
 
Kokorin said that overall, the proposals that countries have submitted for the Paris conference are "entirely insufficient" for the summit to succeed in its aim of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.

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 #8
The Nation
www.thenation.com
November 30, 2015
Coalition or Cold War with Russia?
American policy-makers and presidential candidates must now make a fateful decision-join Moscow in an alliance against ISIS, or persist in treating the Kremlin as an enemy.
By Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel
STEPHEN F. COHEN Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL TWITTER Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation.
 
The 130 people murdered in Paris on November 13 and the 224 Russians aboard a jetliner on October 31 confront America's current and would-be policy-makers, Democratic and Republicans alike, with a fateful decision: whether to join Moscow in a military, political, diplomatic, and economic coalition against the Islamic State and other terrorist movements, especially in and around Syria, or to persist in treating "Putin's Russia" as an enemy and unworthy partner.

If the goal is defending US and international security, and human life, there is no alternative to such a coalition. The Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) and its only "moderately" less extremist fellow jihadists are the most dangerous and malignant threat in the world today, having slaughtered or enslaved an ever-growing number of innocents from the Middle East and Africa to Europe, Russia, and the United States (is Boston forgotten?) and now declared war on the entire West.

Today's international terrorists are no longer mere "nonstate actors." ISIS alone is an emerging state controlling large territories, formidable fighting forces, an ample budget, and with an organizing ideology, dedicated envoys of terror in more countries than are known, and a demonstrated capacity to recruit new citizens from others. Nor is the immediate threat limited to certain regions of the world. The refugee crisis in Europe, to take a looming example, is eroding the foundations of the European Union and thus of NATO, as is the fear generated by Paris since November 13.

This spreading threat cannot be contained, diminished, or, still less, eradicated without Russia. Its long experience as a significantly Muslim country, its advanced military capabilities, its special intelligence and political ties in the Middle East, and its general resources are essential. Having lost more lives to terrorism than any other Western nation in recent years, Russia demands-and it deserves-a leading role in the necessary coalition. If denied that role, Moscow, with its alliance with Iran and China and growing political support elsewhere in the world, will assert it, as demonstrated by Russia's mounting air war in Syria, whose advanced technology and efficacy against terrorist forces are being under-reported in the US media.

France and much of Europe quickly made their decision. Following the tragic events of November 13, French President François Hollande called for "a grand coalition," specifically including Russia, against the Islamic State. Still more, on November 17, his unprecedented appeal to the European Union-not US-led NATO-to activate its own "mutual assistance" provision was unanimously approved, implicitly endorsing his proposed alliance with Russia. Hollande, rising to lead Europe, then departed to meet with President Obama and Russian President Putin.

A few clear-sighted American political figures across the spectrum have echoed Hollande's call for a coalition with Russia, among them former secretary of defense Chuck Hagel, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and, most importantly, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. Overwhelmingly, however, the American political-media establishment-crucially, the Obama administration and Congress-has taken the recklessly myopic editorial position of The Washington Post: "An alliance with Russia would be a dangerous false step for the United States." Columnists and reporters of the policy establishment's other two leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, similarly, to quote Rohrabacher, "continue to denigrate Russians as if they were still the Soviet Union and Putin, not Islamic terrorists, our most vicious enemy."

Our policy elite's disregard for America's national security is a result of the new US-Russian Cold War under way at least since the Ukrainian crisis erupted two years ago. We have argued repeatedly that Washington policy-makers bear more than their reasonable share of responsibility for this exceedingly dangerous and unnecessary development. Now is not the time to recapitulate those arguments but instead to rethink political attitudes toward Putin's "pariah" Russia in order to join Moscow in Hollande's proposed coalition.

There are woefully few signs of such rethinking, even after Paris. Like most of the Republican would-be presidents, Hillary Clinton continues to speak derisively about Putin's leadership, insisting he "is actually making things somewhat worse." Inexplicably, unless she wants war with Russia, she also continues to call for an "imposed" no-fly zone over Syria, which would mean attacking Russian war planes flying there daily. Strobe Talbott and John Bolton, each reportedly an aspiring secretary of state in the next Democratic or Republican administration, respectively, agree (uncontested, as usual, in the Times) that Putin's Russia remains "part of the problem." Indeed, Paris scarcely diminished the Cold War demonizing of Russia's president; as Clinton did months ago, a Post editorial and a Journal columnist equated Putin with Hitler.

Obama has repeatedly treated Putin in ways unbefitting the White House-and detrimental to US national security.
In addition to persistent Putinphobia (and perhaps Russophobia), other ominous factors have been at work since November 13. On November 22, ultra-right Ukrainians destroyed Crimea's source of electricity, sharply re-escalating conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Two days later, NATO-member Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in still murky circumstances; jihadists waiting below machine-gunned the pilot as his parachute descended over Syria. Whether these two events were coincidence or provocations to prevent a Western rapprochement with Russia, both testify that the new Cold War, which has spread from Ukraine to Europe and now to Syria and Turkey, risks actual war between the two nuclear superpowers.

In such perilous circumstances, only the American president can provide decisive leadership. Over the years, Obama has repeatedly treated and spoken of Putin in ways unbefitting the White House-and detrimental to US national security. He did so again after Paris. Putin told Hollande, "We are ready to cooperate with the coalition which is led by the United States." Obama, however, who endorsed Turkey's inexplicable shoot-down of the Russian warplane, used his press conference with the French president to again demean Putin and Russia's contributions: "We've got a global coalition organized. Russia is the outlier," adding condescendingly that Moscow might be permitted to participate, but only on US terms.

Those terms call for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as soon as possible rather than abiding by the multinational plan for an evolutionary political transition in Damascus. Unlike Putin and many other observers, President Obama (and then-Secretary of State Clinton) have not learned the real lesson of Libya, which is not "Benghazi." It is the 2011 decision to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi and abet his assassination, which turned Libya into a terrorist-ridden failed state and now a major base for the Islamic State. Imposed "regime change" in Damascus may have the same consequences, while imploding the Syrian army, currently the main "boots on the ground" fighting the Islamic State. (As Putin candidly acknowledges, Russian warplanes seek to protect and bolster Assad's army, not Assad's questionably "moderate" enemies on the ground.)

In times of historic crisis, great leaders often have to transcend their own political biographies, as did FDR and Lyndon Johnson and, 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. It's time for President Obama-and every candidate who wants to succeed him-to do so.   

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 #9
Valdai Discussion Club/Nezavisimaya Gazeta
http://valdaiclub.com
December 1, 2015
FIGHTING TERRORISM: A COMMON DENOMINATOR FOR RUSSIA AND THE WEST
By Andrei Sushentsov
Andrei Sushentsov is Political analyst and international relations scholar at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University); Research Fellow, Valdai Club Foundation.

Judging by the tone of Putin's recent remarks, Russia has put up with its insurmountable differences with the United States and doesn't consider them an obstacle in protecting its national interests.

The agenda of international relations in Europe before the events in Paris and Sinai is now in the past

The heinous terrorist attacks in Paris have shaken the international community and forced many in the West to move away from comfortable clichés about "moderate Islamists" and start a serious fight against terrorism in Europe and the Middle East. Russia's international partners are changing their minds about Russia's activities against terrorists in Syria. In the eyes of many, Russia is now at the forefront of the fight against terrorism.
What caused the wide international response to Russia's actions in Syria? First, it was the fact that our country's resources were considered inadequate for active offensive operations. It could be said that Russia has been operating below its potential for the past 20 years. Regarding most issues on the international agenda, including the Iraqi and the Libyan crises, Russia has only made its position known, but never effectively promoted it.

In Syria, Russia has acted proactively for the first time. If you look at the situation in perspective, Russia's actions in Syria are fully within its resources. By design, the operation has had Russia acting of its own accord. Moscow is almost completely independent from the West. Russian military resources are sufficient to conduct this operation, the result of many years of military upgrades.

In his remarks over the past several months, Vladimir Putin has been proposing a new agenda in Russia's relations with the West. In New York and Moscow, during Valdai Club meeting in Sochi, Putin urged the international community to focus on two goals - creating a broad-based international coalition against ISIS (ISIS is banned in the Russian Federation) and restoring the statehoods in Libya, Iraq and Syria. However, the United States has been turning down Russia's offer of cooperation and insisting on its own vision of conflict settlement, the first step of which is the resignation of Bashar al-Assad. For the first time, Washington finds itself on unfamiliar ground, where it has lost the initiative and is forced to react to Moscow's actions.

Of late, President Putin has been less indignant when speaking about the arbitrary position of the West in international affairs. Russia has abandoned its attempts to cause an international response by issuing calls to offer resistance to revisionists and experimenters. Instead, it has begun to restore the status quo in the regions that are important to it.

Russia's "active measure" in Syria puts it in an advantageous position. It can act independently from the Western countries in its efforts to combat ISIS. Moscow has actually created an international coalition, which includes only those countries that are genuinely interested in winning. Unlike the Syrian opposition, which the United States is betting on, Moscow's allies - Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Kurdish militia - are actually fighting ISIS. For four years, they have been waging war without any outside assistance. With Russia's support, their chances of winning have significantly improved. Creating a joint anti-terrorism information center in Baghdad, which includes Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran, was a convincing first step in a new international coalition against ISIS.

Russia's main interest in Syria is to dismantle the Islamist infrastructure. Its goal is to disrupt the training system and to prevent future acts of terrorism.

Its second interest is to support a Syrian ally who has access to the Mediterranean Sea. Supporting the government in Damascus will make it a reliable partner in the future. Russia is showing that it will protect its security in this region and its potential ambitions. The third interest revolves around Russia sending a message about its comeback in the big league of international politics.

At the meeting between Putin and Obama at the United Nations in late September, the parties discussed Syria more than anything else. They agreed to "continue cooperation," which can mean anything. More importantly, the military departments of the two countries were instructed to discuss the details of this interaction. After this meeting with Obama, Putin noted with surprise: "We found a lot of common ground."

Even though such mutual understanding wasn't reached even after the terrorist attacks in Paris, it didn't stop Russia, because Moscow is relying on people who are actually, and quite successfully, fighting ISIS, whereas the US can't find partners in the region, with whom they can cooperate effectively. However, at this point, Russia and the West have an important subject to discuss.

The Russian-French situational alliance has become an important new factor in fighting terrorism. For the first time since the Normandie-Niemen regiment, the armed forces of Russia and France are fighting a common enemy together. France's actions are supported by the United States, because French geolocation and guidance instruments are based on the American GPS. A US refusal to provide these data to France, its ally, would have caused an uproar. So, in fact there is now a tripartite alliance of Russia, France and the United States, which is combating terrorism in the Middle East. The problem is that the three countries don't see eye-to-eye on the prospects of a political settlement in Syria.

The memorandum of understanding on aviation safety in the skies over Syria signed in mid-October was the intermediate result of Russian-US cooperation. It involves the establishment of operational communications between the military authorities of the two countries and mutual assistance in crisis situations.

However, this coordination does not imply full-scale cooperation and is strictly limited. It does not involve the exchange of intelligence data and does not include the US support of Russia's policy in Syria. The US' refusal to establish full cooperation with Russia in Syria is due to the United States' concern about upsetting its allies in the Persian Gulf and the reluctance to see Russia strengthen its positions in the region. In addition, Washington has problems with developing a comprehensive regional strategy, which is holding it back.

The second key point of Putin's recent remarks concerns the need to restore statehood in Libya, Syria and Iraq, which are now in the grips of chaos and anarchy. Moscow was the first to propose a radical solution to the Middle Eastern refugee problem. This proposal should get the attention of those European capitals, which are affected by the immigration crisis. However, the plan isn't easy to implement. It calls for restoring statehood in the regions where it has been destroyed (often with active foreign intervention).

Destroying ISIS is a major goal. Achieving it will create proper conditions for normalizing life in Sunni-populated regions of Syria and Iraq. Libya is a more difficult case, since no one really knows how to settle the civil conflict raging in that country. However, no one wants to perpetuate the situation and have Libya become a monument to a misguided intervention and the source of the immigration crisis.

Judging by the tone of Putin's recent remarks, Russia has put up with its insurmountable differences with the United States and doesn't consider them an obstacle in it protecting its national interests. Moscow is showing its ability to project power far beyond its borders as it relies solely on its own resources. Russia enjoys the full support of Damascus and Tehran. Russian missiles are flying across Iran before hitting enemy targets in Syria. Russia and Iran do not have a formal military alliance, but have established strong de facto trust-based cooperation.

Possibly, such a level of mutual trust will be established in Russian-French relations as well. Paris is interested in fighting ISIS effectively, and is therefore willing to cooperate with Moscow. In the long term, this could have significant consequences for European security and Russian-Western relations.

One thing is clear: The agenda of international relations in Europe before the events in Paris and Sinai is now in the past.

This article was originally published in Russian in Nezavisimaya Gazeta

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#10
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
November 24, 2015
Russian pundit sees chance of "reset" in Moscow's relations with West
Leonid Radzikhovskiy, Chance for reset. Russia and West could open new period in their relations

All the most authoritative of the world's media agree in noting two phenomena.

First. The West's attitude to Russia has changed dramatically following Paris terrorist attacks and the intensification of the Russian bombing raids on ISIL.

Second. Nonetheless, the EU countries do not intend to lift sanctions imposed on Russia. There are various possibilities here - in December they may extend these sanctions by a year, by six months or by four months, but hardly anyone doubts that there will be an extension.

Well, both these facts are clear and only to be expected. By intervening dramatically in the war in Syria, Russia largely changed the shape of the jigsaw puzzle. A demonstration of ultramodern weapons - not at a test site, but in action. A demonstration of political will. A demonstration that Russia, if it so wishes, can easily find allies in the Middle East - without a second glance at the United States and the EU countries.

This whole "Russo-Putin style" is very familiar to Western leaders, but it invariably makes an impression "as if for the first time". In geopolitical duels, even if Putin does not become the absolute winner, at the very least he shows that it is practically impossible and certainly beyond the powers of any other president (prime minister), either to ignore him or to beat him. In fact, there is nothing new about this. It is no accident that yet another world ranking (how many is that?), this time a Forbes ranking, has put him in first place as the most influential person in the world.

The new element is not just another retelling of facts that are known to everyone, but that this time Putin is not up against a "united West" and that a window for possible cooperation is now open.

This window was broken open by ISIL terrorists. First by blowing up a Russian aircraft and then, a few days later, by shooting Parisians, they made a "weighty, crude, tangible" [phrase quoted from a Mayakovskiy poem] appearance and, literally grabbing politicians by the scruff of the neck, dragged them to face one another - now you have someone to make friends against! Despite the total sum of accumulated reciprocal grievances between the West and Russia, all the same it is impossible to ignore such a blatant situation.

And the rapprochement (or rather, the desire for a rapprochement) has already manifested itself in 100 different details. The atmosphere at the G20 summit changed fundamentally compared with the same meeting a year ago - according to the Western media, this time Putin was at the centre of the forum. Hollande proposed the creation of a new "broad coalition", to include the USA, France and the Russian Federation. And he did not just "propose" it, he flew to see Obama and Putin. Even the US secretary of defence - "more than cautiously", admittedly - declared the "possibility of cooperation with Russia". The head of the European Commission wrote a letter to Moscow proposing the expansion of collaboration between the EU and the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union]. Finally, the most sensitive barometer - the Moscow Stock Exchange. Russian securities began to climb sharply; literally since the day of the G20 forum the RTS [Russian Trading System] index has risen by 8 per cent, even though the oil price is continuing to fall! This is how business (including foreign investors, incidentally) is reacting merely to the hope of a "new rapprochement".

So it can be said that the emotional background has changed. The main question is, will this be converted into real actions, into the "unblocking" of the political bottleneck? Will we see the lifting of the sanctions and the restoration of relations between Russia and the West to the "pre-Ukraine" level? Or will it go no further than smiles and a show of respect?

There are no irreconcilable differences (territorial disputes, military conflicts) between Russia and the West. Our political systems and ideological priorities are different, but all of that is the countries' purely internal affair. Russia is not trying to organize coups d'etat in Europe, nor are the USA or other EU countries trying to do so in Russia. Incidentally, both those things are simply impossible - the systems are perfectly stable in both places.

As for Ukraine, the EU and the Russian Federation signed the Minsk agreements and are insisting on their fulfilment. Obviously the Russian Federation is accusing Ukraine of being reluctant to fulfil them and Ukraine is accusing Russia and the mutual grievances could drag on endlessly, given the desire. But then - the USA and the EU have emphasized this many times - sanctions will not be lifted. Does Russia need that?

Yet if minimal confidence is restored between the Russian Federation and the West, and at the same time Russia shows that it is fulfilling its part of the agreements, then Russia and the EU have perfectly sufficient political forces to force Ukraine to fulfil its own commitments.

The "war will write off everything" option, that is, the idea that the war against ISIL will in any case mean "coercing the West into partnership despite the situation in Ukraine", also seems bizarre. Ultimately Syria and Ukraine are not connecting vessels and Western countries can say: "Yes, we want Russia's participation, we have an interest in it, but Russia also has an interest in a joint struggle against ISIL!" Still less should we get carried away by analogies - for an "anti-Hitler coalition" only one little thing is missing, namely the Third Reich. Repulsive as ISIL is, it obviously does not pose the same concrete lethal threat to the West and Russia as Hitler did. And everyone knows that although victory over ISIL is necessary, it - unlike the defeat of Germany - will only be tactical. Just as, after the weakening of Al-Qa'idah, ISIL sprang up, so too after ISIL the snake of terror will slither out of the same skull in a new skin...

But maybe "detente" with the West is not necessary anyway? There is a view that anti-Western sentiments are "useful" in any case - they rally the public around the authorities. Without discussing the moral aspect of this argument, one can only say that it is simply factually incorrect.

Putin's rating is not a rating based on anti-Western sentiments. For sure, the majority of the public supports anti-Western rhetoric. They are entertained by the spectacle of the "geopolitical show", which Russia always wins by a knockout in all the TV rings. The very feeling of "You are lying, you will not take it!" and "We will not give in!" is traditionally close to the people.

But Putin's rating is much more stable. It is not tied to confrontation with the West or to any specific policy at all. This rating, rather, characterizes society's self-evaluation and its attitude to the very idea of the state and its single leader - an idea that is fundamental to the Russian people's consciousness, giving shape to and legitimizing the social reality. It is simply that Putin, by virtue of his personal characteristics and because of the general situation, the memory of the recent disintegration of the state and the "time of troubles" and the instinct of "national self-preservation" fits perfectly into the "jigsaw puzzle of the ruler." He has begun to be perceived as a load-bearing structure of the state. Hence the rejection of all criticism of him (and the critics!), the belief in his being right, the "anxiety" for him. This is not a PR product, but a real, profound sentiment of the people, of those 90 per cent [who support Putin]. This kind of "cultural code" is indisputably a Russian national code, certainly not a Western one. But here the differences with the West are historical and genetic, this does not have much to do with the current situation. Despite these differences there can be both good and bad political relations with Western countries.

In general, the anti-Western defence consciousness is only a superficial (admittedly ostentatious and aggressive) layer below which lies the "concentratedly pro-state" archetype of the Russian social entity. It does not have much to do with any particular foreign policy. But even the "defence consciousness" itself does not need a constant ongoing conflict with the West; the "presumption of conflict", the cautious awareness that it could always break out, is perfectly sufficient.

So a possible change (softening) of the foreign policy rhetoric would in no way "undermine the foundations". On the contrary, in many ways it would be to society's liking - invigorating as the virtual "struggle against the West" may be, one still needs a break from it...

But the most important point is that you cannot live on the "struggle" forever. It is not only a question of living standards (although that too), but of the fact that people want to see a ray of light ahead, the hope of socioeconomic improvement and, in short, a national project. The prospect not of the endless "escalation of the geopolitical struggle", but of the peaceful development of the country. Not "to spite the arrogant neighbour" [phrase quoted from a Pushkin poem], but simply for their own sake. A reset in international relations is not an end in itself, but one of the conditions for the emergence of a "new equilibrium" in society, a reset of the socioeconomic plans of Russia itself.

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#11
'Russia's Future Not Connected with Ukraine or Syria,' Inozemtsev Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, December 1 - Russians have been so focused on events in Ukraine and now Syria that they have forgotten the most important thing: their future and that of their country is not connected with what is going on in those countries but what is taking place or not taking place in their own, according to Vladislav Inozemtsev.

In a Snob.ru commentary, the Moscow economist says that eventually Russia will leave Syria and Ukraine "with or without Crimea and the Donbas" will continue its path to Europe.  When that happens, he suggests, Russians will ask what they should have been focusing on in 2014 and 2015 (snob.ru/selected/entry/101468).

"The future of Russia is not connected either with Ukraine or even more with Syria," he argues. "having lost the status of a global power" because of the failure of the communist regime and having gained "a breathing space" because of high prices for oil, Russia could have used that time to figure out how it could develop when oil prices inevitably fell.

Had Russians done so, had they been "oriented toward real and not false goals, the discussion would have had a completely different tone and theme," Inozemtsev suggests.  Instead, the Russian government has focused on foreign affairs and acted as if everything is fine at home.

The Kremlin has even suggested that "everything is normal" despite the collapse of oil prices to 40 US dollars a barrel. But in doing so, the Moscow economist says, it has ignored that the price is likely to fall further, that the current cutbacks harm not only the current generation but future ones, and that its promised modernization program hasn't happened.

And addressing those problems, Inozemtsev argues, is far more important than "the fates of 'the Russian world' or the chances for Bashar Asad's survival."

The standard of living in Russia is falling, although many still remember that it rose in the first decade of the 2000s and believe that spending on arms will be a solution. "However, history teaches that the memory of the Russian people is exceptionally short."  Twenty-five years ago, Russians took down the statue of Dzherzhinsky; now, they want to put it back.

Thus, the successes of a decade ago will also be forgotten, especially if incomes continue to contract at the rate of 10 percent a year, and also will be forgotten the so-called "Putin consensus."  At the very least, it will not attract any new supporters from the population however the war on terror goes.

And ever more frequently Russians will have occasion to recall what has often been the case in their past: when economic difficulties during periods of real or imagined foreign dangers lead to catastrophic social cataclysms." That being the case, he says, Russians should not be so concerned about what is happening in Kyiv and Damascus. They should worry about what is happening at home.

And there are so many problems: Will Russians be able to fly from Vladivostok to Moscw if Transaero is driven into bankruptcy?  Will small businesses be able to survive and provide jobs if they are taxed excessively and oppressed by the government? Will pensioners put up with further cuts to their already miserable existences?

In addition, how will Russians move about if the roads aren't repaired? And "what prospects are opening (or more precisely closing) before the country's middle class as a result of all the new prohibitions on travel and what threatens the tourism branch and international air carriers?"

There are dozens of such questions, Inozemtsev says, and behind each of them "stand hundreds of enterprises and companies and touches the interests of hundreds of thousands of people." But today, the Kremlin is ignoring them and hoping that others will ignore them as well because of their focus on Ukraine and Syria.

Indeed, he argues, one can say that "the main goal of the authorities who have sparked foreign policy hysteria consists in distracting the attention of the people from the domestic agenda." After all, for the authorities, it is "simpler and more effective" to struggle for "'the Russian world'" in Ukraine than to build at home and "more convenient" to bomb Syria than to find the murderers hiding out in Chechnya.

Up to now, however, there is no indication that anything has changed or will change. Instead, the situation is deteriorating. There is less money for medical care, and "people are now dying from heart problems while in line at polyclinics," an inexcusable situation that appears likely to get worse given that the Kremlin cares not about the people but only about itself.

"The entire population (which it is difficult to call a people) is refleting not about its own pipelines and roads: it is interested only in how much oil the Islamic State is delivering to Turkey from whom we are refusing to buy fruit," Inozemtsev says.

Over the next several weeks, Vladimir Putin will be questioned about some of these things, albeit in a very police way, Inozemtsev says. But if he does nothing to change the situation and there seems little reason to expect that, then these questions will be posed in "a much less polite form."

That will happen, the Moscow analyst says, "when the people (and already not the population) understands what it should have been thinking about five or ten years ago."

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 #12
Russian experts say All-Russia People's Front no rival for ruling party
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. The All-Russia People's Front - a non-governmental organization President Vladimir Putin established in 2011 to bolster support for presidential programs plays a special role in Russia's social and political system. Its main function is to exercise public control of the activity of all branches of power at all levels. In fact, it is the president's watchful eye, experts say, adding, though, that the APRF is not the ruling party's rival.

"The way I see it, the People's Front has firmly established itself as an organization of authority," Putin said at a meeting with APRF activists last Friday. At the same time he believes that the movement should not convert itself into just another watchdog, but eventually evolve into a resource of government by the people.

"There is no task of launching another witch-hunt or shake loose the government machinery. The employees of our administrative bodies are decent people by and large," Putin said, adding that at the same time the administrative body often failed to sense the acuteness of the problem keenly enough, so they should rely on those people who are involved in such movements as the All-Russia People's Front.

Alongside monitoring progress in the implementation of the presidential decrees of May 2012 the APRF keeps working along several other lines: control of state procurement, struggle with corruption among civil servants and governors, reform of the education and health service, inter-ethnic problems, the protection of rights of regional journalists, etc. APRF activists from many regions of Russia briefed the president on the types of resistance from the authorities they had encountered while exposing corruption and lavish lifestyles.

"The APRF's prime task is to perform the unique function of genuine popular public control of all branches of power at all levels - federal, regional, and municipal," a member of the presidential council for human rights, head of the general political science department at the Higher School of Economics, Leonid Polyakov, told TASS. "This organization is incorporating the most active members of civil society, who have already earned credibility with fellow citizens. This is precisely why the APRF has such a high rating. As a matter of fact, it is the president's watchful eye. The state machinery remains clumsy and awkward. Very often fundamental decisions crucial to the well-being of the people get drowned in the bog of bureaucratic procedures. The APRF is conducting specific work to monitor action being taken on each of the presidential instructions on the daily basis. A detailed account is presented at each such meeting. The president has a unique feedback resource at his disposal."

It is nakedly clear that without the APRF the effectiveness of presidential socio-economic decrees of 2012 would've been immeasurably lower, Polyakov said. "I believe this is a long-term project and a very successful way of tapping society's creative energy."

Exact analogues of the APRF cannot be found anywhere else in the world, but movements with similar functions have been quite frequent in countries with still embryonic political parties, the chairman of the Centre for Political Technologies, Boris Makarenko, has told TASS. "The contact between the authorities and society in such countries was carried out through organizations called corporatist. Their main task is not to compete for power, but to directly bolster society's support for the authorities."

"The APRF also plays some supra-party functions. For instance, it formulates an agenda and controls its enforcement. Also, it formulates legislative proposals. At the same time it does not turn itself into a political party. There is no competition between it and the United Russia party. The APRF is not overburdened by bureaucracy. It unites active people enjoying authority with the public at large."

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 #13
Carnegie Moscow Center
December 1, 2015
Where Does the Truck Stop? Russia's New Social Protests
By Andrey Pertsev
Andrey Pertsev is a journalist with Kommersant newspaper

The strikes by Russian truckers are a new challenge for the Kremlin and represent a breach of the government's social contract with its citizens. But the regime has learned how to deal with these protests and how to stop them from becoming politicized.

Tires burning by the roadside, placed by Russia's angry long-haul truckers, have become a new symbol for the despondent Russian protest movement, which has been in retreat since Vladimir Putin's latest presidential term began in 2012.

But it looks as though the Russian government will manage to contain the truckers' strikes and prevent them and other social protests from taking on a political character.

Truckers began blocking highways across Russia in early November. They were angered by a new road tax to be received through a much-resented electronic collection system named Platon. The initial rate of four rubles per kilometer mounts up quickly over Russia's vast territory, and the stated reason for the new toll-that the money would be used for road repairs-failed to convince, as existing taxes were supposed to pay for that already.

The television news was silent, President Vladimir Putin seemed not to notice, and the protests increased. This is when Russia's non-systemic opposition, which led anti-government protests in 2011-2012, got involved. Its activists made repeated references to Putin's old friend and judo partner, billionaire businessman Arkady Rotenberg, whose son Igor heads the company that operates the Platon payment system.

Previously, truckers were supposed to be normal, apolitical citizens. One in four carried a flag supporting Russians in Ukraine in his cab, one in three displayed a portrait of Putin. The government provoked their ire by violating the social contract that underpins the Putin regime, by which the public is expected to stay out of politics in exchange for the government handing out social benefits-or at the very least, not picking the pockets of its citizens.

Along with the truckers, other social groups are also feeling the pain. Public-sector employees are not getting their salaries on time. Drivers are paying a new toll to travel on the Moscow-Zelenograd highway. Paid parking is being introduced in Moscow's suburban communities, which has already triggered demonstrations.

For years, the authorities have put off making unpleasant decisions. They have taken the paternalistic approach of reassuring people that Russia has a good social safety net that people can rely on in times of trouble. But then, when there is a budget crunch, the state changes its tune all of a sudden and says that one has to pay for everything.

Logic suggests that the social protests should escalate and become political, and that the truckers will carry their protests to the center of Moscow.
Yet this is unlikely to happen. There is no indication that this will become a full-blown political crisis.

It will probably be announced shortly that politicians close to the government have struck a deal that saves the drivers from exorbitant toll fees. In that case, everyone will start forgetting about Rotenberg, no matter how often the opposition mentions him in its video clips.

The truth is that the Russian state has learned how to deal with social protests, and sometimes even deliberately provokes them to let off steam in the society. On occasion, it looks as though they are testing the pain threshold of the public to see how much it can bear.

This kind of protest always begins with apolitical slogans like "Say No to Platon" or "Stop Paid Parking." There is no big strategy behind them. The government understands this well and doesn't try to break them up. Then, after negotiations, concessions are offered and the protests stop.

Most Russians expect the government to solve their problems. The majority of protesters always appeal to the president first, believing that the system is working, but failed to address one particular problem. Even in Moscow, where opposition sentiments are higher than in the rest of the country, one slogan at a rally protesting new parking fees was "Putin, Save Us From Paid Parking!"

The authorities also employ the tactic of isolating one protest group from another by telling the group's leaders that their particular question can indeed be solved, but only if they are "constructive," "stop rocking the boat," and "understand that all problems can't be solved, but theirs can be." Ultimately, most protesters agree to the government's concessions.

As a result of these divide-and-rule tactics, disparate social groups (motorists, senior citizens, or those dissatisfied with higher utility charges) rarely unite in protest. A brief protest movement in the Baltic Sea port of Kaliningrad in 2010 was a good lesson for the Kremlin. A rally called to protest a new transport tax attracted about 10,000 people. The authorities were slow to react and anger spread. But the regional assembly eventually repealed the tax hike and Kaliningrad's governor was forced to step down. The regime learned its lesson.

To appease the striking truckers, the government looks set to lower both the new toll rate and the punitive fines for non-payment of it. Already, in Novosibirsk, the truckers are ready to discuss a toll of one ruble per kilometer.

This kind of deal will satisfy almost everyone: the truckers, whose demands are being partly met, and the government, which keeps the Platon system in place. But, of course, the regime is the real winner. It gave people a chance to vent their pent-up frustration, while also proving that it listened to citizens' concerns regarding the issues they care about.

There is another important consideration for the men in the Kremlin. They are ready to compromise as long as the public sees the regime as strong. If people begin to perceive the regime as weak, any concessions it makes will be seen as another sign of weakness, and the protests will only escalate.

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 #14
Moscow Times
December 1, 2015
Russia's HIV Situation 'Epidemic' - Rospotrebnadzor

Russia's HIV infection rates have become epidemic, spreading to citizens beyond at risk groups, the head of Rospotrebnadzor's epidemiology supervision department in St. Petersburg, Irina Chkhindzheriya said, the Interfax news agency reported.

"We have to admit that the country's soaring HIV rates can be described as epidemic. About 1 percent of Russians are HIV-positive ... The epidemic has broken through traditional limits and is spreading to the general population," Chkhindzheriya said, Interfax reported Monday.

According to Rospotrebnadzor, about 50 percent of HIV-positive Russians contracted the disease by using needle-injected drugs, and 42 percent - through heterosexual contact.

About 1 percent of pregnant Russian women are infected with HIV, giving birth to more than 600 congenitally infected infants every year, the report said.

"Statistics show that approximately 50 people per 100,000 of the population are HIV-positive, and the situation becomes much worse in the regions," Chkhindzheriya said, Interfax reported.

At the start of the month, the total number of registered HIV-positive Russians numbered 986,657.

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 #15
Forbes.com
December 1, 2015
Russia Business Sentiment Stinks
By Kenneth Rapoza

Geopolitics and oil are still taking their toll on business sentiment in Russia.

The MNI Russia Business Sentiment Indicator fell 23.2% to 37.1 in November from 48.3 in October, the lowest since the survey began in March 2013, the Deutsche Borse Group's premier Russia survey said on Monday. The Market Vectors Russia (RSX) exchange traded fund settled 0.3% lower, underperforming the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.

Investors will have to wait a bit more for contraction to end in the Russian economy. While the economy is declining less in output terms, it is still negative. Russia hasn't escape its recession. And nothing in the survey indicates a rebound just yet.

Demand and output both collapsed last month with new orders for Russian goods falling to a survey series low. Production sentiment is down to its lowest level since February, in spite of the approaching holiday season.  Given that the fall in headline sentiment was significantly greater than the actual drop in output and orders signals that other factors are hurting sentiment this month. It's politics, as usual.

One reason for the increasingly negative assessment was the Oct. 31 downing of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt. Russia is fighting jihadis and anti-government forces in Syria and suffered blow back over Sinai as a result.

Of those surveyed, 30.8% of companies said that the business environment got worse last month, considerably above the 7% who said so in October. Some 64.1% said that the business environment had not changed, so investors can take that as status quo, meaning the base case on Russia may still hold.

Construction companies led the November downturn, while both manufacturing and service sector firms were also more dissatisfied with the current business environment, MNI Indicators said.

In the wake of the slowdown, companies depleted inventories at the fastest pace for more than a year, indicating that they do not anticipate any respite in the near-term. Firms also considered the size of their workforce to be surplus to their requirements, suggesting higher unemployment could be on the horizon.

MNI's chief economist, Philip Uglow, said that survey respondents were not complaining about higher costs because they are now electing to hike their own prices after being reluctant to do so given the fiercely competitive environment.

"The survey showed evidence that the downturn was finally being seen in the labor market, with the employment component hitting the lowest in two years," says Uglow. "Prior to the recent downing of a Russian jet by Turkey, relations with the west appeared to be thawing. E.U. sanctions were set to expire in January, although media reports have suggested diplomatic sources point to a six-month extension, a further blow for Russia."

Fund managers surveyed regularly by FORBES from Des Moines, New York, London, and Moscow believe sectoral sanctions will not be relaxed until July 2016, marking two years.

MNI Russia Business Sentiment is a monthly poll of Russian business executives at companies listed on the Moscow Exchange. Companies are a mix of manufacturing, service, construction and agricultural firms.

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 #16
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
December 1, 2015
Top 10 Russian foreign policy moves in November, ranked
The downing of the Russian warplane by Turkey and a terrorist attack against the civilian Russian airliner flying over Egypt were the most important events of the month for Russian foreign policy.
By Andrey Sushentsov, Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, and Gevorg Mirzayan
Andrey Sushentsov is the head of the analytical agency Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.ru), senior lecturer at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Dmitriy Ofitserov-Belskiy is an expert in Eastern Europe and a leading analyst at the agency Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.ru), associate professor of Higher School of Economics. Gevorg Mirzayan is an expert in Middle East and a leading analyst at the agency Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.ru).

The Paris terrorist attacks and the downing of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt have shaken the world. The attacks, both coming within the space of a month, also affected the international agenda, providing more opportunities for Russia and the West finally to build a broad anti-terrorist coalition.
While those two tragic events dominated headlines, there were other important Russian foreign policy developments in November, including new developments on the Ukrainian crisis.

Below, we've ranked the Top 10 Russian foreign policy moves in November.

#10: Fifth World Congress of Russian Compatriots in Moscow

On Nov. 5-6, Moscow hosted the Fifth World Congress of Russian Compatriots. The Russian Diaspora is one of the four largest in the world, numbering about 30 million people of various nationalities and faiths. The forum was attended by delegates from 97 countries.
In his speech at the congress, Russian President Vladimir Putin set the task of this organization as the protection of compatriots from discrimination and ensuring their legitimate rights. Russia is concerned that a number of countries, for political reasons, are destroying education in the Russian language, and complicating the work of Russian cultural centers, theaters, and libraries. In addition to supporting compatriots abroad, plans call for the development a program to assist voluntary resettlement of compatriots in Russia.

#9: Russia cuts off gas supplies to Ukraine

On Nov. 25, Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, pending the receipt of new payments. In response, Ukrainian consumers began removing natural gas from underground storage facilities of the country, which are already at insufficient levels. One cannot exclude the development of negative events, in which energy supply to the EU this winter will once again be threatened, due to unauthorized siphoning of gas transiting through Ukraine.
The talks recently held in Vienna demonstrated Russia's unwillingness to grant to Ukraine special prices and conditions that are different from those that apply to European countries. This position is justified, in particular, by the fact that starting on Jan. 1, 2016, the economic part of the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine comes into force.

#8: Ukraine rejects Russia's proposal to restructure its debt

Ukraine rejected Moscow's proposal for a phased repayment over three years of its $3 billion debt to Russia. Failure to pay its debt to Russia will make it impossible for Ukraine to obtain further financing from the IMF, although there has been undertaken an accelerated procedure to develop mechanisms to preserve the lending program to Kiev, despite a possible default, and bypassing the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) own rules.

In the meantime, thanks to foreign borrowings, Ukraine has enough reserves to repay its debt to Russia. Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has received $9.7 billion in loans, and by the end of the year, the country expects to receive an additional $4 billion.

#7: Energy blockade of Crimea

On Nov. 22, the participants in the Blockade of Crimea Movement decided to switch from a food blockade to an energy blockade. They blew up the final two towers in Kherson Oblast through which electric energy travels when passing from Ukraine to the peninsula (two other towers were damaged earlier).
Because of these problems with electricity supply, Crimea suffered from breaks in lighting, heating and water supply. In response, Russia and the Donetsk People's Republic stopped shipping coal to Ukraine (deliveries of coal were legally tied to the uninterrupted supply of electric energy to Crimea). The Donetsk embargo will last at least two weeks.

#6: The visits to Russia by leaders of the Arab countries of the Middle East

The Emir of Kuwait, Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, visited Russia on Nov. 10. He and President Putin discussed regional security issues and possible areas of cooperation. The leadership of Kuwait still has a positive view of Russia's role in the Syrian conflict, noting its stabilizing function. The role of the Kuwaiti Emir is particularly significant when it comes to the organization of support for Syrian refugees.

Economic issues were also discussed. An agreement on attracting Kuwaiti investments into Russian projects was signed. Common ground can be seen also on question of pricing policy and the fight against falling prices for hydrocarbons. During the talks, the two also discussed the possibility of Russian weapons being sold to Kuwait.

On Tuesday, Nov. 24, Vladimir Putin met with Jordan's King Abdullah II. The King of Jordan was the first foreign leader to express his condolences over the death of Russian pilot in the skies over Syria. It is important to note also that the Jordanian monarch referred to the importance of the Vienna Talks Format on Syria, and expressed hope for continued international cooperation in seeking resolution of this conflict.

#5: French President Francois Hollande's trip to Moscow

On Nov. 26, French President Francois Hollande visited Russia. The current resident of Elysee Palace came to discuss with Putin the creation of a broad coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS).

The parties agreed on deeper coordination in their military activities aimed against ISIS - the militaries of the two countries will coordinate their attacks and indicate areas that should not be bombed.

This visit strengthened the trend towards cooperation between Russia and France, which emerged after the terrorist attacks in Paris. However, the parties continue to disagree on the form of political settlement that should take place in Syria. Paris continues to insist on the resignation of Bashar al-Assad as a pre-condition for the development of cooperation. Russia considers that demand as "unrealistic."

#4: Russia's participation in the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Iran

This forum demonstrated the difficulty of finding consensus among the leading extractors and exporters of natural gas. The greatest contradictions are found in the positions of Iran, Qatar and Russia, being the three most influential players in the global natural gas market.

In addition to the economic agenda, political issues also made it onto center stage. During Vladimir Putin's meeting with the Iranian leadership, the parties reached agreement on their positions in the fight against ISIS, and cooperation within the International Syria Support Group.

In the energy sector, seven bilateral agreements were signed in various fields. This summit strengthened the trend of rapprochement between Russia and Iran, and the development of cooperation in the direction of a future strategic partnership.

#3: G20 Summit in Antalya

On Nov. 15-16, the G20 Summit was held in Antalya, Turkey. The main theme of this forum became the fight against international terrorism - terrorist attacks in Cairo, Beirut, Paris, and the explosion onboard the Russian airliner put this issue on center stage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated his call for the creation of an international coalition against ISIS, which he initially made in September at the UN General Assembly. However, no one listened to him - the U.S. and NATO are not yet ready to trust Moscow, nor abandon their practice of dividing terrorists into "good" and "bad" ones. Nevertheless, during brief talks held between Putin and Obama, they discussed practical measures for coordinating their attacks against ISIS.

#2: Downing of a Russian Airbus 321 over Egypt

The official investigation determined that the cause of the crash of the Russian Airbus 321 was a terrorist attack. Vladimir Putin has promised that all those involved in this explosion will be found and destroyed, while Russian security services have announced a reward of $50 million for information about the organizers.

On Nov. 8, President Putin signed a decree on special measures to ensure the national security of Russia, according to which Russian airlines are temporarily prohibited from carrying passengers from the territory of the Russian Federation to Egypt. Authorities of the UK have implemented similar measures.

The leaders of Egypt understand and sympathize with this termination of tourist flow. It is hoped that Russian tourists will start returning to Egypt after the security situation improves.

#1: The shoot-down of the Russian Su-24 in the skies over Syria

On Nov. 24, the Turkish Air Force, on the orders of Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, shot down a Russian Su-24 in the skies over Syria. Thus, Turkey has finally transformed its foreign policy of "zero problems with neighbors" to "zero neighbors with whom there are no problems."

This independent action by Ankara was not supported in either Washington or Brussels. In response to this attack, Moscow developed retaliatory measures, the implementation of which will put an end to all Russian-Turkish strategic relations.

Among these measures are an economic embargo, cancellation of infrastructure contracts, and refusal to cooperate in the tourism sphere. This unexpected blow from Turkey has led Russia to start considering this country as an unfriendly state. It is now possible that the local military conflict on the Syrian-Turkish border will escalate, with full participation of the Russian armed forces.

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 #17
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 30, 2015
Russian media on Turkey's downing of Su-24 and Crimean blackout
Russia Direct presents its weekly media roundup, with a focus on Turkey's downing of the Russian fighter jet, Hollande's visit to Moscow, and the Crimean blackout.
By Anastasia Borik

The main event of the last week was Turkey's shoot-down on Nov. 24 of a Russian Su-24 bomber, which was flying on a combat mission against terrorists operating near the Syrian border with Turkey. Two days later, on Nov. 26, French President Francois Hollande visited Moscow as part of a broader attempt to build an anti-terrorist coalition with Russia.

Turkey shoots down a Russian bomber on the Syrian-Turkish border

Turkish authorities are saying that the Russian warplane had violated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, and the country was defending itself. Moscow denies these accusations, claiming that the Sukhoi Su-24 posed no threat to the Turkish side, and was flying over the territory of Syria. As a result, the plane's captain was killed, while the navigator survived, being subsequently extracted during a joint Syrian-Russian rescue operation.

The situation has been aggravated by the fact that the pilot was killed while parachuting down by the Turkmen, one of the peoples of Syria with close ties to Ankara. Vladimir Putin has called this incident a "stab in the back," and accused Turkey of aiding terrorism.

Kirill Martynov, columnist at the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta considers that this incident jeopardized not only the relations between the Russian Federation and Turkey, but also Russia-NATO relations, and it was the most serious blow to bilateral cooperation since the end of the Cold War. The newspaper expressed hope that all parties will demonstrate sufficient patience and wisdom to de-escalate the situation, because otherwise, the already weakened Russia faces very difficult times in the future.

The independent media publication Slon believes that this political struggle between Turkey and Russia, and the exchange of threats, may end badly for the Kremlin. In Russia, according to writer Ekaterina Shulman, they are underestimating Turkey, and are thus knowingly putting themselves at a disadvantage. The Turkish regime is more stable than the Russian one, and we can expect Erdogan to respond harshly to any Russian challenge.

The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote about the massive response of Moscow: President Putin not only approved the placement of Russian S-400 anti-missile systems in Syria and intensified military operations, but also signed a decree on economic sanctions against Ankara.

Among the main measures of the sanctions are the following: suspension of the visa-free regime, and a ban on imports of food and the hiring of Turkish citizens. The newspaper also noted that the tourism sector of Turkey also came under attack - Rosturizm and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have "closed" this popular destination for Russian vacationers, advising people not to travel to that country.

The business newspaper Kommersant, citing military experts, pointed to the deliberate actions of the Turkish military. Even if the Russian plane had violated Turkey's airspace, shooting it down without first taking a number of preventive actions - was clearly an unfriendly act.

The newspaper reminds its readers that tensions between Moscow and Ankara had escalated after Russia started its anti-terrorist operations in Syria, which at the outset caused serious resentment among the leadership of Turkey.

However, the latest events have finally ruined bilateral relations, which are unlikely to recover in the short term. Rather, Kommersant emphasizes, lying ahead for relations between Russia and Turkey, and therefore between Russia and NATO, is a long period of confrontation.

The visit of Francois Hollande to Moscow

Immediately after the major terrorist attacks in Paris, the French president set off on a kind of "anti-terrorism tour" - before coming to Moscow, he visited Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, David Cameron, and Matteo Renzi.

In Russia, they were expecting a lot from Hollande's visit, hoping to build a broad coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS) in Syria. The impressions of Russian media, in general, converged - no broad coalition was created, and the visit itself could hardly be called successful.

Moskovsky Komsomolets believes that the visit did not work out as hoped, because the meeting between Obama and Hollande did not go as the French President had planned. The French leader, says the newspaper, was hoping to reconcile Russia and the United States on the issue of the fate of Bashar al-Assad, but in Washington, he was clearly given to understand that the anti-terrorist operation is secondary to the removal of Assad from power. This message, "brought" by Hollande, caused irritation in Moscow, and put an end to discussions about forming a broad coalition against ISIS.

The independent Slon, through its expert Tatiana Stanovaya, pointed out the "long path" that Hollande took to reach Moscow - as he was travelling from capital to capital, the hopes for creating a coalition kept fading, and the French leader arrived in Russia with an already completely different attitude.

Moreover, the downed Russian plane did nothing to add confidence to Russia-NATO relations, and endangered the very idea of coordination between participants, in their war against ISIS in Syria. In the final analysis, Hollande's visit did not live up to the expectations and did not reduce the level of uncertainty and mistrust between such important players as Russia and NATO member countries.

The pro-government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta did not agree with the opinion that this visit was futile. The newspaper, citing French experts that it interviewed, stressed the strategic nature of relations between Moscow and Paris. The results of this meeting, noted Rossiyskaya Gazeta, are not to be judged only in the plane of concrete agreements, but in the direction of the signals.

The main message of this meeting was that France considers Russia as an important partner in the fight against ISIS, and is ready to cooperate. This is what the agreements reached in Moscow were directed towards (the exchange of intelligence information, the prevention of situations like the downing of the Su-24, the attacks on oil facilities of the terrorists).

The continuing saga of the striking truckers

In various regions of Russia, the truckers' strike, which we wrote about last week, continues. Drivers are opposed to the introduction in mid-November of the Platon system, which greatly increases the cost of each journey for drivers.

Nov. 30 was set as the date for the "Truckers March on Moscow," where protesters intend to block traffic on one of the main arteries of the city - the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD). The authorities, as before, are refusing to cancel or suspend the Platon system.

The opposition TV channel Dozhd (Rain) wrote about the desire of the Russian authorities to split the protesters. According to the TV channel, the authorities have held an impressive meeting with one of the leaders of the movement, Alexander Kotov, trying to create a split in the ranks of protesters.

The editorial staff at the TV channel support the thesis and opinions of experts and political scientists, who are confident that in this case the Kremlin is operating using the logic of "divide and rule," while the truckers themselves are easy to influence, not having well-thought out common objectives or demands.

The business newspaper Vedomosti, in its editorial section, emphasized that this is the first time, in a long while, that the authorities have been faced with a really large-scale social protest. The government leaders do not know how to react to this challenge, and the confusion, slowness and incompetence in its ranks, are only leading to the expansion of this movement and the radicalization of the protesters, who are gradually turning into a political force.

Alexander Zelinchenko, blogger at the website of the Echo of Moscow radio station, has called naive not only the truckers, but also anyone who looks at any protest movement with hope. The author believes that the fate of this movement was sealed since its very beginning, it remains unclear just how these protesters will be dispersed - with soft or tough actions.

Pro-government media (Channel One, Rossiyskaya Gazeta) have decided to ignore this theme.

Crimea remains without electricity

The population of Crimea is still without constant electric power supply after transmission towers were blown up in Ukraine on Nov. 21. Russian media talked about how hard it was for the inhabitants of the peninsula to survive under these difficult conditions, and who was to blame for these problems.

The online publication Gazeta.ru noted the philosophical attitude of the locals. This is not the first time that the Crimeans have been faced with energy supply problems (in the 1990s, the peninsula was constantly suffering from such shortages), and people are trying to remain optimistic. Many are seriously preparing for a winter without power, taking into account possible provocations on the part of Ukraine.

The opposition TV channel Dozhd (Rain) emphasized that the moods on the peninsula are very different. "Wealthy" Sevastopol and Simferopol almost never suffer from energy shortages, and so the discontent in these areas is the least.

At the same time, there are cities that are fully deprived of energy, such as Kerch, where people are beginning to grumble. Residents of Kerch are outraged by the inaction of local authorities: The city has not only been without electricity for a week already, but also the criminal situation has significantly worsened, with the streets becoming dangerous.

The liberal publication Meduza also wrote about the difficult situation on the peninsula, despite the assurances of the authorities that they have the situation under control. Residents complain about the lack of electricity, the sharply rising prices for candles and generators, as well as the scarcity of a number of food products, including bread.

The newspaper also blamed the Crimean authorities for this situation. Since the beginning of 2015, they had known about a possible provocation coming from the Ukrainian side, but did nothing to ensure energy security of the region.

Quotes of the week

Putin on the Su-24 incident: "The loss we suffered today came from a stab in the back delivered by accomplices of the terrorists. I can't describe what has happened today in any other way."

Recep Erdogan on downing of the Russian jet: "I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us. Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties, which consisted of responding to... violations of the rules of engagement. I think this is the essence."

The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, on the shooting down of the Russian aircraft: "Today, Turkey has become a base for the recruitment and sending of terrorists to Syria. Passing through Turkey are gangsters from all around the world. Only a few are ever detained. Is Turkey  fighting against ISIS? The country conducts business with these people, buying oil, financing the enemies of Islam, who are killing thousands of Muslims."

The opposition leader Alexey Navalny on the downed Russian plane, "Of course, we must impose some serious sanctions - I repeat once more, Erdogan shot down our plane for public relations and promotional reasons, rather than military ones, or due to security measures. This cannot be ignored, but there also should be no military escalation. I think that our first step, instead of all this hypocritical nonsense with chicken or tourists, should be an official recognition of the Armenian Genocide."

Hollande on the results of his trip to Moscow: "We agreed on a very important issue: To strike the terrorists only, Daesh and the jihadi groups only, and not to strike the forces and the groups that are fighting against the terrorists."

Hollande on the fate of Bashar al-Assad during his visit to Moscow: "Of course, Assad cannot play any role in the future of this country."

Putin on the fate of al-Assad after talks with Hollande in Moscow: "The army of President Assad, and he himself, are natural allies in the struggle against terrorism."

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 #18
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 1, 2015
Combating ISIS from within
Officials look for ways to stop the influence of Islamic State along Russia's southern borders.
ALEXEY TIMOFEYCHEV, RBTH

On the eve of the Paris attacks, ISIS extremists published a video in Russian: "Soon, very soon," it said, "there will be a sea of blood." Experts believe ISIS is indeed a real threat for Russia. On Oct. 31, a Russian plane exploded, killing all 224 passengers on a flight from Egypt to St. Petersburg. On Nov. 20, six Russian citizens were killed in Mali during a terrorist attack.

And although ISIS has so far only hurt Russians abroad, Russia has a turbulent history with its own majority-Muslim regions in the south, and is itself not immune to large-scale terrorist attacks.

"Penetration into our territory is very possible," said Sergei Goncharov, president of the International Association of Veterans of the Alpha anti-terror subdivision. But even in light of recent events, the threat should not be blown out of proportion.

"We have sufficient experience in reacting to such challenges and threats," said Russian Minister of Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev.

Points of weakness

Russia's weakest security points are the Northern Caucasus and the southern borders of the former Soviet republics, where experts fear Muslims rebuffed from mainstream society will look to extremists for answers.

Of the country's 16.5 million Russian Muslims, ISIS may have up to half a million sympathizers, according to Alexey Malashenko, chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Religion, Society, and Security Program, in an essay published on the center's website. These Russian Muslims might be averse to terrorism, but they're seeking a Muslim-centric form of government, Malashenko wrote.

"It is an appealing idea, when contrasted with Russia's economic crisis, corruption and growing inequality," Malashenko wrote.

As of Sept. 18, some 2,400 Russians are fighting for ISIS, and almost 3,000 citizens of Central Asian countries are also participating, First Deputy Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Sergei Smirnov told Interfax.

Swearing allegiance to ISIS

The Northern Caucasus has long been a region of unrest, with roots of insurgency reaching back to the 18th century. The most recent conflicts flared after Chechnya declared independence from Russia in 1991, instigating the first Chechen War (1994-96). A short cease-fire lasted until 1999, when the Second Chechen War began.

By early 2000, Russia had almost completely destroyed the capital city of Grozny and regained direct control of the republic. In 2009, Russia officially ended its antiterrorist operation, although low-level insurgency has continued, most notably in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Terrorist attacks throughout Russia have been attributed to radical Islamists from the North Caucasus: the Russian apartment bombings in 1999; the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002; the Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004; the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings; and the Domodedovo International Airport bombing in 2011. The victim tally for these attacks alone reached 849.

Experts link these Northern Caucasus militants to ISIS. About a year ago, ISIS terrorists announced they intend to "liberate" Chechnya and the Caucasus, to create an Islamic Caliphate. Now, according to Goncharov, "even the leaders of small gangs in the Caucasus have sworn allegiance to ISIS."

Meanwhile, Russian security forces have created a system for countering terrorism in this region. In Dagestan, where not long ago there were monthly explosions and shootings, there have been no terrorist acts for practically the last two years, points out Ivan Konovalov, Director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Affairs.

In late November, Russian law-enforcement agencies eliminated a local gang affiliated with the Islamic State in the North Caucasus. The special operation Nov. 22 in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic by FSB officers neutralized the largest number of militants in recent months: 11 individuals killed.

The gang was allegedly assisting locals who wanted to fight alongside ISIS by helping them travel to Syria, as well as plotting terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus.

The special services in the Caucasus and the governments in each republic have the main objective to prevent terrorist acts, according to Konovalov.

"ISIS also understands that if they do something large-scale, the governments of the Northern Caucasus will immediately start crushing them from all sides," Konovalov said.

The southern borders

Security services and border control in countries such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan leave much to be desired, according to Goncharov.

However, Russia does not share a border with these countries, and its longest border - with Kazakhstan - is guarded and closely watched.

Also, before reaching the southern borders of Russia, the militants would have to cross parts of Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, according to Alexei Fenenko, collaborator at the Institute of International Security of the Russian Academy of Science. "This is not as easy as it seems," Fenenko said.

Shifting focus to recruitment

At the National Anti-terrorist Committee (NAC) meeting in mid-October 2015, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov said the special services have prevented 20 terrorist crimes in Russia this year.

"One of the last example is the detainment of 12 Russian citizens in Moscow on Oct. 11 who are members and accomplices of the international terrorist organization (Islamic State) and were preparing a terrorist act on public transportation," said Bortnikov, who is also head of the NAC.

Representatives of the investigation report: "The terrorist act was to take place with the aim of destabilizing the country's authorities, as well as to stop the Russian operation against the ISIS army in Syria."

Observers believe that from now on, the special services' efforts will be aimed at finding terrorist cells and recruitment centers, which are expanding outside of the predictable zones.

Varvara Karaulova, a student at one of Moscow's best universities who has been accused of trying to join ISIS, exemplifies the wide-ranging influence of extremists not only in the unstable Caucasus, but in well-off Moscow.

However, Karaulova was linked to Islamic recruiting structures that the special services should have been aware of, according to Mikhail Alexandrov from the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

Are the main threats outside Russia?

It is no an accident that ISIS chose to strike at Russia not at home, but abroad, by downing a plane in Egypt. Within greater Russia itself, the Islamists cannot count on any serious support, but they can be sure of one thing: that Russia will mobilize all its forces to counter any domestic attacks.

In the end, experts note, Russia is not a very convenient enemy for ISIS, and this threat - while real - should not be overestimated.

Meanwhile, Alexei Fenenko thinks that ISIS's main threats are tied to the possible destabilization of Turkey, which in turn would destabilize the entire Caucasus and strengthen ISIS in Afghanistan.

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 #19
Interfax
December 1, 2015
Putin regrets deterioration of relations with Turkey

Russian President Vladimir Putin has regretted the exacerbation of relations between Russia and Turkey and said that Moscow has repeatedly raised the question of terrorists coming from that country in its contacts with Turkey.

"I think all of us regret this, and I personally regret this because I personally have been doing a lot for building these relations for a long period of time," Putin said at a press conference in Paris.

"There are problems which occurred a long time ago and we have tried to resolve them in dialogue with our Turkish partners," he said. "For instance, we pointed out long ago that members of terrorist organizations who were fighting and tried to fight us in certain regions of Russia, including the North Caucasus, showed up in Turkey. We asked for stopping such practice," the Russian president said.

Nevertheless, "we are still observing such practice, they [terrorists] are staying in the territory of Turkey, in regions protected by security services and the police and then use the visa-free travel regime to reappear in our territory," he said.

"The problem was long overdue, and we raised that question many times at the level of security services using the so-called partner channels, and at the level of the foreign ministries, at the summit political level," Putin said.

"We did not see partners' reaction to every our concern. So a number of questions which needed a solution one way or another were long overdue," the Russian president said.

"It is a pity that we have to resolve them under such circumstances. Yet this is not our fault. This is not our choice," he said.

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#20
Reuters
December 1, 2015
Obama urges Turkey to reduce tensions with Russia
BY JEFF MASON

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Turkey on Tuesday to reduce tensions with Russia that are hampering efforts to fight Islamic State militants in Syria and stressed that U.S. support for its NATO ally's security remained steadfast.

Obama met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Paris, where they have been attending an international climate summit, a week after Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border.

"The United States supports Turkey's right to defend itself and its airspace and its territory," Obama said. "We discussed how Turkey and Russia can work together to de-escalate tensions and find a diplomatic path to resolve this issue."

Obama told Erdogan that the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIL, was the entity that all sides needed to pursue, echoing a message he delivered to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris on Monday.

"We all have a common enemy, and that is ISIL, and I want to make sure that we focus on that threat," Obama said.

Tensions between Russia and Turkey have complicated U.S. efforts to prod Moscow into steering its military might towards Islamic State rather than the moderate Syrian opposition. Putin supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Obama and Erdogan want him to go.

The downed plane incident has been further exacerbated by the strong personalities of the Russian and Turkish leaders. Obama's relationship with Putin is tense but direct. His relationship with Erdogan, whom he referred to by first name, is also not close, though the two men are in contact frequently.

COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called for the opening of communication channels between Turkey and Russia to prevent further incidents like the downing of the warplane.

Putin, who has signed a decree imposing economic sanctions on Turkey over the incident, has said Turkey shot down the jet because it wanted to protect supplies of oil from Islamic State militants. Erdogan says claims that Turkey buys oil from Islamic State are "slander".

While both Erdogan and Davutoglu have said they do not want an escalation in tensions with Russia, they have also indicated they have no intention of issuing an apology for the downing of the jet, as Moscow has demanded.

Both Putin and Erdogan are strong-willed leaders ill-disposed to being challenged and playing to domestic audiences who like their pugnacity. Neither wants to be seen to back down first.

"Putin and Erdogan are two peas in a pod. They're very similar characters," said one top European diplomat.

Erdogan said following the meeting with Obama that tension with Russia was harming both countries.

"The tensions in the region sadden us. It is causing harm to both sides," he said. "Our concern is to not come out badly from this, but on the contrary to turn this into peace and contribute to the peace in the region," Erdogan said.

Obama said the U.S. was eager to accelerate work on its military-to-military relationship with Turkey to ensure its NATO ally was safe and to help resolve the conflict in Syria.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said similar ties between Russia and Turkey had failed.

"Military channels existed and were meant to not allow such tragedies. These channels didn't work and not through the fault of the Russian side," he said.

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 #21
Sputnik
December 1, 2015
Putin: Obama and I Have Common Understanding of Next Steps in Syria

Meeting on the sidelines of the Paris climate talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama discussed Syria and the need for a new Syrian constitution and elections.

"We talked about Syria first of all," Putin told journalists following a meeting during the Paris climate talks. "We talked about how, in the near future, the focus of our attentions should be on a list of organizations we believe to be terroristic, and a list of organizations that represent the 'healthy' opposition.

"We talked about the tactics of our joint action on this political track, and overall, in my opinion, there is an understanding about where to go from here."

The Russian president also spoke of governmental changes needed for ending the fighting in Syria.

"If we are talking about the necessity of a political settlement, it is necessary to work on a new constitution, on the new election and on ensuring its results monitoring."

According to Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser to the White House, Obama has "stressed that the US, Russia, Turkey, our allies and partners in the Arab world, and Iran, must negotiate."

Speaking to reporters, Rhodes said "this is a direction in which we can work together."

During the summit, President Putin also stressed the impossibility of forming an effective anti-terror coalition so long as some parties use terrorist organizations to their own advantage.

"Now, as for the creation of a broad coalition against terrorism. You know that I spoke about this at the 70th anniversary session of the UN General Assembly. We are always in favor of this, but it is impossible while some use terrorist groups to reach short-term political goals."

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 #22
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar
November 30, 2015
Russia, Turkey moving to ease tensions
By M K Bhadrakumar    
M.K.Bhadrakumar served in the Indian Foreign Service for three decades and served as ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Apart from two postings in the former Soviet Union, his assignments abroad included South Korea, Sri Lanka, West Germany, Kuwait, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The President of Russia Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan are almost certain to bump into each other at some point during the Climate Change Conference in Paris later in the day. Will Erdogan manage a 'pull-aside' with Putin, or, will they simply peel off from the gathering to sit across a table and have a proper conversation?

Erdogan has sought a face-to-face meeting. The Kremlin fought shy of saying a definitive 'Nyet'. Which is a good sign under the circumstances. Moscow sought an apology from Erdogan for shooting down the jet last Tuesday. But then, as a thumb rule, Sultans do not apologize - at least, publicly. All the same, on Saturday, Erdogan edged as close as he could to meeting Putin's expectation:

"We feel really saddened about this incident. We would not like such a thing to happen, we would not want it but unfortunately it did. I wish such a thing will not happen again. What we tell Russia is 'Let's talk about this issue within its boundaries and let's settle it. Let's not make others happy by hurting our all-round relationship'. I think the U.N. Global Climate Change Summit to be held in Paris on Monday could be an opportunity to restore our relations."

Meanwhile, the dead body of the Russian pilot has been brought over to the military base in Ankara to be handed over to the Russian side. Again, on his part, Putin signed the presidential decree on 'sanctions' against Turkey on Friday, before leaving for Paris. This will assuage the domestic opinion in Russia, where feelings are running high, apart from creating just the right ambience when he encounters Erdogan.

However, on closer examination, these are sanctions that Turkey can learn to live with. The point is, Russia can also end up shooting at its feet by sanctioning Turkey. The trade balance is heavily in Russia's favor. Out of the $30 billion trade turnover, Turkey's exports account for less than $5 billion. Obviously, it is in the energy field that sanctions can prove to be 'biting' because of Turkey's heavy dependence on Russian gas. But then, income from gas exports is extremely important for the Russian economy, which is passing through recession. Moscow has carefully avoided its energy ties with Turkey from being affected.

Thus, to my mind, Putin intends to talk things over with Erdogan. A consistent streak in Putin's political personality is that he never shuns engagement, or lets personal antagonisms (or ego hassles) come in the way, which leaves him utterly free to focus on issues with an uncluttered mind. And, in reality, Russia-Turkey ties are far from adversarial yet. Both Putin and Erdogan have invested heavily in their personal friendship and neither would feel comfortable with the thought that what they tenaciously built up over the past decade lies in tatters.

Indeed, no third party is egging on either of them to hang tough. Just as NATO and the US took a standoffish attitude toward Turkey's nasty brawl with Russia, Tehran and Beijing too remain 'neutral' (while expressing disapproval of Turkey's act of shooting down the Russian jet.) A commentary on Monday in the Chinese Communist Party tabloid Global Times authored by a top think tanker counsels political and diplomatic engagement between Moscow and Ankara.

Equally, the advisor on foreign policy to Iran's Supreme Leader (and former foreign minister) Ali Akbar Velayati said on Sunday, "The generation of tensions between Turkey and Russia is by no means proper and is not favored by us and we hope that these tensions would be reduced and the two countries opt for good neighborliness". Interestingly, Velayati made this remark while in Damascus after a meeting with President Bashar Al-Assad. Velayati undertook the visit to Damascus as special envoy of the Supreme Leader, and was accompanied by the top Iranian diplomat on Arab affairs, Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Hossein Abdollahian.

Velayati's mission singularly aimed at making it clear to the US and its regional allies (specially Turkey) that Tehran backs Assad to the hilt and will leave no stone unturned to ensure that it will defeat the 'regime change' agenda in Syria (which is still being pedaled by Saudi Arabia.) Velayati reportedly told Assad,

"Thanks to you and the Syrian people's presence and courage, a glorious and matchless period has been recorded of Syria in history. You are a source of pride because you have stood up to the enemies of Islam, this global war, and extremist Takfiri movements."

Velayati said Ayatollah Khamenei has "always supported the Syrian government and people and pray for your victory. We are certain that victory will be the Syrian people's and resistance's". No Iranian political leader has ever framed things this sharply as has Velayati done, underscoring Khamenei's personal support for Assad. To be sure, Tehran is playing the long game and Velayati may have gently alerted Moscow to avoid carrying the eruption of tensions with Turkey to a point where it can't see the wood for the trees.

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#23
Forbes.com
December 1, 2015
Turkey Picked The Wrong Fight With Russia
By Kenneth Rapoza

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wishes his military didn't order the downing of a Russian Air Force jet this month. His country's economy will pay for it through sanctions that Barclays Capital analysts say will definitely hurt. Turkey's stock market is down over 29% year-to-date ending Nov. 30, 2015. (Photo by Francois Mori/AP)

Turkey's president Recep Erdogan's "sorries" won't be enough. Vladimir Putin is not a happy man. That's because Erdogan's military, as everybody knows, shot down a Russian fighter jet bound for Syria on Nov. 24 for violating its airspace for 17 seconds. Russia retaliated with sanctions. It'll be worse for Turkey not getting Russian goods than it will be for Russia not getting Turkey's goods, Barclays Capital analyst Daniel Hewitt said on Monday.

Russia sanctions include bans on specified Turkish imports, still unknown at this time but expected to be mostly agricultural. Russia has been banning certain food imports from Europe, which impacted inflation. This is perhaps the biggest shot to the Russian economy: an inflation booster.

Overall, it's worse for the Turks. There's been a suspension of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens to Russia starting January 1 and a ban on tourist firms from selling package holidays to Turkey. That ban includes charter flights between the two countries, but not commercial flights. Russia will also do what it does best at its ports, make the passing of people and goods more cumbersome and slow than it already is.

Turkey's Russia related trade income is around $16 billion, or 2% of its GDP. Exports to Russia, which hovered around 4-5% of the total exports between 2008 and 2014, recently declined to 2.7% ($4 bln) as of October 2015 on a 12-month basis.

Tourism would likely take the biggest hit as trade of goods between the two countries is unlikely to completely disappear and Turkey exporters could find alternative markets eventually. Tourism will be hit hardest because it is easier for Russians to switch destinations.

"Russians will be very reluctant to go to Turkey," says Hewitt. Russian tourists made up 12% of the total foreign visitors to Turkey in 2014, which equates to $4 billion in Russian tourist spend there.

Energy links between the two countries are significant and the recent political crisis puts Gazprom and Botas Petroleum's pipeline deal on a permanent hold. Despite that, Russia is unlikely to cut natural gas supplies to Turkey. Russia accounts for 55% of Turkey's total foreign natural gas supply. The discussed 10% price cut from Gazprom - on account of the Turkish Stream pipeline deal - is likely off the table.

Moreover, Russia makes up half of Turkey's informal shuttle trade revenues, according to estimates by the Central Bank of Turkey (CBT). Shuttle trade figures were seen at around $9 billion last year.

Shuttle trade revenues already posted a 34% annual decline between January to September 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, reflecting the economic challenges in Russia.

Last but not least, Turkish construction companies have large exposures to Russia. Around 20% of their foreign construction deals are being done in Russia. According to the Turkish Contractors Association (TMB), Turkish construction firms have completed over $60 billion worth of projects since 1988 in Russia. Turkish companies' revenue totaled $4 billion last year, and $2.3 billion year-to-date from projects in Russia according to TMB.

It is unclear if those companies will be sanctioned. Once could speculate that if Russian engineering and construction firms can do similar work, then the government may be inclined to sanctions the Turks and use their exit from the market as a means to promote local firms. On the other hand, a slowdown in construction in Russia could take place if Turkish construction firms in Russia are constrained.

Russia's construction materials imports from Turkey were $2.7 billion in 2014, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

For Russia, the largest impact will likely be on food inflation, perhaps reversing the deceleration in inflation that has been ongoing now for 8 months. Inflation is 15.6% annualized as of Dec. 1.

Stabilizing inflation, or even higher inflation on account of these sanctions, will have implications for monetary policy. With the increased financial market uncertainty due to various factors including lower global oil prices, the Bank of Russia (CBR) will likely remain on hold at its December rate setting meeting, according to Barclays.

Russia growth could be hindered by losses of sales in Turkish markets, including Gazprom's loss in the Turkish Stream deal and the possible cancellation of a nuclear power plant being built by state-controlled Rosatam.

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 #24
www.rt.com
December 1, 2015
Russia has 'more proof' ISIS oil routed through Turkey, Erdogan says he'll resign if it's true

Russia has received additional intelligence confirming that oil from deposits controlled by Islamic State is moved through Turkey on an industrial scale, said Vladimir Putin. President Recep Erdogan said he will resign if this is confirmed.

Moscow has grounds to suspect that Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 on November 24 to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey, Putin said on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris on Monday.

"At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale," he said.

"We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil's delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers," Putin said.

Speaking in Paris on Monday, President Recep Erdogan said that he will leave office if there is proof of Turkey's cooperation with IS.

 "We are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we'll consider [it]," he said, as quoted by TASS.

The countries from which Turkey buys oil are "well known," said Erdogan.

He called on Russia to comment on the US' recent black-listing of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the World Chess Federation President, accusing him of "materially assisting and acting for or on behalf of the Government of Syria." Erdogan alleged Ilyumzhinov had been dealing with Islamic State oil.

Terrorists have been abusing the visa-free regime between Russia and Turkey to move freely, the Russian leader said adding that Ankara failed to address the issue after Russia raised it.

"We have been asking [Ankara] for a long time to pay attention" to the threat posed by some terrorists active in separate regions of Russia, including the northern Caucuses, that have been "emerging on Turkish territory," Putin said.

Moscow has asked Ankara to "stop this practice," he added, but pointed out that "we have traced some located on the territory of the Turkish Republic and living in regions guarded by special security services and police that have used the visa-free regime to return to our territory, where we continue to fight them," he added.

Answering a question as to whether Moscow wants to form a broad based anti-terrorist coalition, Putin said Russia has always supported this initiative, "but this cannot be done while someone continues to use several terrorist organizations to reach their immediate goals."

Putin admitted that he was personally saddened by the deterioration of relations with Turkey. He explained that "problems do exist and they emerged a long time ago and we have been trying to resolve them in dialogue with our Turkish partners."

Putin said he has heard Ankara's claims that it was not Erdogan who made the decision to down the Russian jet. However, he stressed that for Russia "it doesn't really matter" which official made the decision.

"As a result of this criminal campaign our two soldiers died - a crew commander and a marine, who was part of the rescue team of the [Su-24] crew," he said, adding that Turkey's actions had been "a huge mistake."

Russo-Turkish relations have deteriorated in the wake of the downing of Russia's Su-24 by Turkish jets over Syria on November 24. Russia imposed a package of economic sanctions against Turkey last Thursday, which included banning several Turkish organizations and the import of certain goods, as well as cancelling the visa-free regime for Turkish citizens travelling to Russia starting next year.

Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, Erdogan said that Ankara will act "patiently, not emotionally" before imposing any counter-measures.

Meanwhile, ahead of the summit, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated that Ankara will not apologize "for doing our duty."

Putin and Erdogan were hoped to meet at the environmental summit taking place in Paris, but Putin said that no meeting was held on Monday.

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 #25
Middle East Eye
www.middleeasteye.net
November 30, 2015
The real reason for Turkey's shoot-down of the Russian jet
By Gareth Porter
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

The data supports Putin's assertion that the shoot-down was prepared in advance due to Russian bombing of Turkey-linked rebels in Syria.

The United States and its NATO allies offered a ritual of NATO unity after Turkish officials presented their case that the shoot-down of a Russian jet occurred after two planes had penetrated Turkish airspace.

The Turkish representative reportedly played a recording of a series warning the Turkish F16 pilots had issued to the Russian jets without a Russian response, and US and other NATO member states endorsed Turkey's right to defend its airspace.

US Defense Department spokesman Colonel Steve Warren supported the Turkish claim that 10 warnings had been issued over a period of five minutes. The Obama administration apparently expressed less concern about whether Russian planes had actually crossed into Turkish airspace. Col Warren admitted that US officials have still yet to establish where the Russian aircraft was located when a Turkish missile hit the plane.

Although the Obama administration is not about to admit it, the data already available supports the Russian assertion that the Turkish shoot-down was, as Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted, an "ambush" that had been carefully prepared in advance.

The central Turkish claim that its F-16 pilots had warned the two Russian aircraft 10 times during a period of five minutes actually is the primary clue that Turkey was not telling the truth about the shoot-down.

The Russian Su-24 "Fencer" jet fighter, which is comparable to the US F111, is capable of a speed of 960 miles per hour at high altitude, but at low altitude its cruising speed is around 870 mph, or about 13 miles per minute. The navigator of the second plane confirmed after his rescue that the Su-24s were flying at cruising speed during the flight.

Close analysis of both the Turkish and Russian images of the radar path of the Russian jets indicates that the earliest point at which either of the Russian planes was on a path that might have been interpreted as taking it into Turkish airspace was roughly 16 miles from the Turkish border - meaning that it was only a minute and 20 seconds away from the border.

Furthermore according to both versions of the flight path, five minutes before the shoot-down the Russian planes would have been flying eastward - away from the Turkish border.

If the Turkish pilots actually began warning the Russian jets five minutes before the shoot-down, therefore, they were doing so long before the planes were even headed in the general direction of the small projection of the Turkish border in Northern Latakia province.

In order to carry out the strike, in fact, the Turkish pilots would have had to be in the air already and prepared to strike as soon as they knew the Russian aircraft were airborne.

The evidence from the Turkish authorities themselves thus leaves little room for doubt that the decision to shoot down the Russian jet was made before the Russian jets even began their flight.

The motive for the strike was directly related to the Turkish role in supporting the anti-Assad forces in the vicinity of the border. In fact the Erdogan government made no effort to hide its aim in the days before the strike. In a meeting with the Russian ambassador on 20 November, the foreign minister accused the Russians of "intensive bombing" of "civilian Turkmen villages" and said there might be "serious consequences" unless the Russians ended their operations immediately.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was even more explicit, declaring that Turkish security forces "have been instructed to retaliate against any development that would threaten Turkey's border security". Davutoglu further said: "If there is an attack that would lead to an intense influx of refugees to Turkey, required measures would be taken both inside Syria and Turkey."

The Turkish threat to retaliate - not against Russian penetration of its airspace but in response to very broadly defined circumstances on the border - came amid the latest in a series of battles between the Syrian government and religious fighters. The area where the plane was shot down is populated by the Turkmen minority. They have been far less important than foreign fighters and other forces who have carried out a series of offensives in the area since mid-2013 aimed at threatening President Assad's main Alawite redoubt on the coast in Latakia province.

Charles Lister, the British specialist who was visiting Latakia province frequently in 2013, noted in an August 2013 interview, "Latakia, right up to the very northern tip [i.e. in the Turkmen Mountain area], has been a stronghold for foreign fighter-based groups for almost a year now." He also observed that, after Islamic State (IS) had emerged in the north, al-Nusra Front and its allies in the area had "reached out" to ISIL and that one of the groups fighting in Latakia had "become a front group" for ISIL.

In March 2014 the religious rebels launched a major offensive with heavy Turkish logistical support to capture the Armenian town of Kessab on the Mediterranean coast of Latakia very close to the Turkish border. An Istanbul newspaper, Bagcilar, quoted a member of the Turkish parliament's foreign affairs committee as reporting testimony from villagers living near the border that thousands of fighters had streamed across five different border points in cars with Syrian plates to participate in the offensive.

During that offensive, moreover, a Syrian jet responding to the offensive against Kessab was shot down by the Turkish air force in a remarkable parallel to the downing of the Russian jet. Turkey claimed that the jet had violated its airspace but made no pretence about having given any prior warning. The purpose of trying to deter Syria from using its airpower in defence of the town was obvious.

Now the battle in Latakia province has shifted to the Bayirbucak area, where the Syrian air force and ground forces have been trying to cut the supply lines between villages controlled by Nusra Front and its allies and the Turkish border for several months. The key village in the Nusra Front area of control is Salma, which has been in jihadist hands ever since 2012. The intervention of the Russian Air Force in the battle has given a new advantage to the Syrian army.

The Turkish shoot-down was thus in essence an effort to dissuade the Russians from continuing their operations in the area against al-Nusra Front and its allies, using not one but two distinct pretexts: on one hand a very dubious charge of a Russian border penetration for NATO allies, and on the other, a charge of bombing Turkmen civilians for the Turkish domestic audience.

The Obama administration's reluctance to address the specific issue of where the plane was shot down indicates that it is well aware of that fact. But the administration is far too committed to its policy of working with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to force regime change to reveal the truth about the incident.

Obama's response to the shoot-down blandly blamed the problem on the Russian military being in part of Syria. "They are operating very close to a Turkish border," he declared, and if the Russians would only focus solely on Daesh, "some of these conflicts or potentials for mistakes or escalation are less likely to occur."

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 #26
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
December 1, 2015
Putin Piles on the Pressure With Claim Turkey Shot Down Su-24 to Protect ISIS Oil Sales
Causing President Erdogan to talk of resignation and Obama to demand that Turkey close its border with Syria - did Russian diplomacy just turn the Su-24 incident to Moscow's strategic advantage?
By Alexander Mercouris

Putin drove home his criticism of Turkey at the Climate Change Summit in Paris by linking the shooting down of the Russian SU24 to Turkey's oil trade with the Islamic State.

Putin's reported comments were as follows:

"We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil's delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers."

Since Turkey's Prime Minister has taken personal responsibility for ordering the shooting down of the SU24, this comment in effect accuses the Turkish government of direct involvement in the oil smuggling.

Many in the international media have speculated that this has been going on for a long time.

Putin has now brought up the subject at the highest level - backing his claims with solid intelligence information. By doing so he has put Turkey's President Erdogan on the defensive.  

What is most extraordinary is that after Putin made this extremely grave charge none of Turkey's NATO allies are rushing to its defence.  

One might have expected the Western powers to rally round a NATO state caught up in a public row with the Russians. Instead the hours have passed since Putin spoke and there is silence.  

Instead of words of support reports are circulating that the US is also putting Turkey under pressure to close its border with Syria.

That President Erdogan is coming under increasing pressure is shown by his frantic efforts to meet Putin at the Paris summit - a request which Putin denied.

President Erdogan has also tried to restore confidence in his government by saying he will resign if Russia's claims of Turkish collusion with the Islamic State's oil sales turns out to be true.

It is impossible to avoid the impression that President Erdogan is becoming internationally isolated and is under pressure as never before.

This episode provides further evidence of the skill with which the Russians conduct diplomacy.

Where other countries might have reacted to the shooting down of the SU24 by retreating into self-doubt and self-recrimination, the Russians have instead used it to advance their objective in Syria by isolating Turkey in a way that puts Turkey under growing pressure to close its border with Syria.

As I have said on many occasions, the Russians do not do either war or diplomacy. They do both at the same time.

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 #27
Wall Street Journal
December 1, 2015
NATO Ministers Discuss Measures to Defend Turkish Airspace
Meeting of NATO foreign ministers follows last week's shooting down of Russian jet
By JULIAN E. BARNES

BRUSSELS-Western allies are debating stepped-up measures to help defend the Turkish border after the country shot down a Russian jet last week.

Foreign ministers from North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are gathering in Brussels Tuesday and Wednesday to talk on a range of topics, from Russian aggression to troop levels in Afghanistan to bolstering defenses on the alliance's southern flank.

Allies have been discussing how to help Turkey defend its airspace for years, but the talks have gained new urgency with the downing of the Russian plane, that NATO says briefly entered Turkish airspace last week.

Russia has demanded an apology from Turkey, put in place a travel ban for Russian nationals as well as economic sanctions. Turkey has refused to apologize. While NATO has backed Turkey's right to defend itself, it has urged dialogue between Ankara and Moscow to de-escalate tensions.

NATO's defense of Turkey has consisted of Patriot antimissile batteries, but allies are beginning to offer other, more flexible capabilities to Ankara.

Before the Russian jet was downed, the U.S. had said that it had deployed F-15 interceptor aircraft to Turkey and the U.K. will also base aircraft there. Germany and Denmark are contributing command ships to deploy to the eastern Mediterranean.

Alliance officials said allies are also considering deploying air defense systems, similar to the U.S.-made Patriot batteries, as well as additional naval assets to place under alliance command in the Mediterranean.

"All of this is relevant for Turkey; it is part of the assurance measures for Turkey," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.

Mr. Stoltenberg said allies will decide in the coming weeks about additional assets to deploy to the region.

Asked about the deployment of S-400 missile systems in Syria, Mr. Stoltenberg said the stepped-up Russian military deployments of advanced military capabilities in the eastern Mediterranean, around the Baltic Sea and in the Black Sea region were of concern.

"This is part of a pattern," he said. "Russia is developing what is called anti-access, area-denial capabilities. That is exactly one of the reason NATO is adapting. That is the reason we have increased the readiness and preparedness of our forces."

NATO officials have said they believe Russia is trying to keep the alliance off their borders. Russian officials have repeatedly scoffed at the NATO discussions of Russian anti-access strategies, arguing they are simply building up the defenses of their territory and forces, the same as NATO allies do.

NATO's adaptation, Mr. Stoltenberg said, must focus on new ways of deterring Russia.

Alliance members are also due to discuss a new strategy for countering so-called hybrid warfare, where Russia uses deception techniques to mask the movements of its military forces. Federica Mogherini, the European Union's foreign policy chief, is due to join ministers Tuesday to discuss the new approach.

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 #28
The National Interest
December 1, 2015
Russia's Downed Plane Distracts From Syria's Real Challenges
Russia and Turkey have irreconcilable differences in Syria, and the parties they back are determined to destroy one another.
By Rajan Menon
Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the Colin Powell School of the City College of New York / City University of New York and a Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace at Columbia University. His most recent book (coauthored with Eugene B. Rumer) is Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (the MIT Press, 2015); his next book, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2016.

The downing of a Russian Sukhoi-24 bomber over a two-mile-wide salient protruding into Syria from Turkey's Hatay province leaves many questions unanswered. There are conflicting versions of what happened, and the maps and radar plots released by Turkey and Russia to back their claims regarding the plane's flight path cannot be reconciled. Each country insists on the falsity of the other's story and the veracity of its own.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shifted from bluster and defiance to conceding that, in retrospect, the Sukhoi's incursion might have been handled in other ways-certainly true. He has offered to meet with President Vladimir Putin to calm the waters and has said that the downing of the Russian plane had "saddened" him. Moscow, by contrast, has turned up its rhetoric-and tightened the screws. Immediately after the plane was downed, it canceled foreign minister Sergei Lavrov's scheduled trip to Ankara. Then came a presidential decree that slapped various economic sanctions on Turkey.

The shoot-down of the Sukhoi grabbed the headlines, but the controversy it has created will soon fade. Turkey and Russia will surely seek to avoid another aerial incident over the Syrian border. On the ground in Syria, by contrast, neither will exercise appropriate restraint. Their objectives are incompatible, and the parties they back are determined to destroy one another.

Ankara wants Assad gone. Moscow remains determined to save his regime. Putin may eventually ditch Assad to facilitate a political settlement, providing it involves remnants of the Syrian state. He will not, however, abandon the Ba'athist regime itself.

What Does Moscow Want?

Russia's strategic ties to Syria date back to the 1954, the year of the first Soviet-Syrian arms deal. In the ensuing decades, the Soviet Union remained the principal source of economic aid and arms for successive Syrian regimes. In 1971, the Soviet navy won access to Tartus, which Russia's Black Sea fleet retains. In 1980, when Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, ruled Syria, Moscow and Damascus signed a friendship and security treaty.

Putin will not relinquish this strategic inheritance, particularly because he believes that the Ba'ath government's fall will enable the rise of a jihadist regime, whether led by ISIS or by the most powerful elements in the radical Islamist grouping Jaish al-Fath (Army of Conquest), notably Harakat Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda's Syrian branch. The Syrian state's collapse would, as I noted previously in the National Interest, be a major setback for Russia-and in more ways than one.

Indeed, it was the fear that the regime would fall to Jaish that prompted Russia, after close coordination with Iran and Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, to dispatch military aircraft, air-defense missiles, naval infantry, special forces, helicopters, tanks and armored personnel carriers to Syria, starting in September of this year. Since then, Russia's military presence has expanded. Putin ordered the mobile S-400 air-defense-missile system (it can engage as many as three-dozen targets simultaneously and has a 400-kilometer range) to Hemeimeen airbase, located north of Latakia, a mere fifty kilometers from the Turkish border. And Russian warplanes, supplemented by Syrian artillery, have stepped by their attacks on the area in which the Russian plane went down.

Russia will be more careful about the flight paths of its bombers, which, according to a Russian military spokesman, will now be escorted by fighter jets-like the S-400 deployment, another warning to Ankara. But Russian air attacks on Idlib province of Syria and its capital, Jisr al-Shughur, will continue. The province, over which Jaish had gained control by the end of May, overlooks Latakia from the north. Russia regards the group's ensconcement there as a mortal threat to coastal expanse that extends from the northern border of Latakia province (abutting Turkey) to the southern limits Tartus province (adjacent to Lebanon). This domain, the Alawite minority's historic homeland, remains a key stronghold of the regime, itself Alawite dominated.

As part of its defense of Assad's Ba'athist state, Moscow has also directed airstrikes at the Turkmen-populated Bayirbucak region of northwest Syria adjoining Turkey's border. This has infuriated Ankara. The Turkmen are the Turks' ethnic kin, and the Russia's bombardment has received considerable attention in the Turkish press and, with it, calls for tough action. Ethnic solidarity aside, the Turkmen territories are critical to Ankara's game plan in Syria, which is to protect a conduit for Turkey (and Saudi Arabia) to arm fighters opposing Assad, including Islamist fighters such as Jaish.

What Does Ankara Want?

Turkey's overriding preoccupation remains blocking a Kurdish state in northern Syria. Saudi Arabia seeks to topple Assad's regime as part of its larger effort to undercut Iran in the Middle East. Thus, albeit for different reasons, Ankara and Riyadh are prepared to accept an Islamist victory in Syria-an outcome Russia cannot abide.

Yet the Turks and the Saudis have no recourse if Putin keeps ratcheting up the attacks on Idlib province and the Turkmen territories while ensuring that his bombers don't enter Turkish airspace. Following the shoot-down of the Sukhoi the Russian president has done precisely that. Turkey's membership in NATO may have emboldened Erdogan to approve the downing of the Sukhoi. But the alliance will be of no help to him in countering Russian airstrikes against his Syrian proxies. And Russian firepower, supplemented by Hezbollah fighters and Iranian military advisers, has been crucial in enabling the Syrian government's battered troops to gain ground against the forces Ankara and Riyadh support.

In short, the aims and actions of Russia on the one hand and Turkey and Saudi Arabia on the other are incompatible. That will not change, even as the Sukhoi storm dissipates.

What Does Washington Want?

As for Washington, its main concern remains the ISIS "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq. So far, the United States has conducted over 90 percent the strike sorties against ISIS in Syria. Following the November 10 terrorist attacks ISIS masterminded in Paris, France has begun to step up its air campaign in Syria. But even a more intensive air campaign against ISIS will not solve the basic problem, namely, that airpower cannot by itself conquer territory. The area ISIS controls has shrunk, even if the extent of the shrinkage remains disputed, but its caliphate endures-and will do so absent robust opposition on the ground. American war planners understand this and have has trained and equipped proxies to fight ISIS: the Iraqi army and, in Syria, the People's Protection Units (YPG), the fighting arm of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Yet what enabled ISIS to emerge from the ashes of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was the alienation of Iraqi Sunnis who justifiably felt excluded from a Shi'a-dominated civilian and military order. American attempts to cajole Iraqi leaders to bring the Sunnis into the fold having largely failed, ISIS retains a recruitment pool.

Moreover, compared to the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, the Iraqi army's battlefield performance has been lackluster despite the billions of dollars Washington has spent to train it. And even if it gets better at fighting, Iraq's Sunnis will not welcome its advances into their domains, particularly given what they see as an alignment between Baghdad and Tehran.

Washington's reliance on the YPG to defeat ISIS will also produce problems. Syria's Kurds have proven formidable as fighters, as witness their retaking of Kobane, in January, and Tal Abyad, in June, from ISIS. But, like their brethren Iraq, Syria's Kurds have designs on the territories of Sunnis and various minorities.

The Syrian Kurds' goal remains a homeland-Rojava as they call it-constituted by a continuous land corridor (from Derika Hemko in the northeast to the border of Afrin canton in the southwest) that has greater strategic depth. YPG forces will therefore likely incorporate lands containing Turkmen and Arabs and other ethnic groups and encourage Kurds to move into them. There are already signs of strife between the YPG and Sunni Arabs living in areas that its fighters have wrested from ISIS.

By relying on the Kurdish YPG Washington risks alienating Syrian Sunnis and playing into the hands of Jaish and ISIS, both of which are Sunni Arab movements. Moreover, Washington's alignment with the Kurds sits uneasily with the America's partnership with Turkey, which already believes that the United States, even if unwittingly, is empowering the Syrian Kurds' bid for secession.

As Turkey sees it, a de facto Kurdish state, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has already arisen in northern Iraq. The Turks and the KRG have managed to create a cooperative relationship because the latter has, for now at least, renounced independence. But Turkey remains worried that a larger Kurdish state (whether fully independent or not) could emerge were Syria and Iraq to implode any further. That would be a nightmare for Ankara, not least because the PKK, which remains active in Turkey's southeastern Kurdish-majority areas, and the PYD have close ties, and in Turkish leaders' eyes are essentially the same. Not surprisingly, alongside its efforts to topple Assad, Turkey has been bombing PKK positions with greater vigor.

There can be no military victory for the contending parties, internal and external, in Syria. But a political settlement will remain elusive unless they rethink their current strategies, which they show no signs of doing. The Russians are sticking with Assad (or certainly the Ba'athist state). The Turks and Saudis are determined to back radical Islamists if that's required to oust him and to foil Iran. The United States continues to believe-against all evidence-that "moderates" can still prevail, but meanwhile, inexplicably though inadvertently, advances the Ankara-Riyadh agenda, which cannot possibly serve American interests.

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 #29
http://gordonhahn.com
December 30, 2015
Washington Post Urges More Jihadi Chaos
By Gordon M. Hahn

The editors at the Washington Post, the beltway's paper of record delusion, must have some serious investments in oil futures. That is the only way one can explain its recent editorial warning against any Western alliance with Moscow in Syria ("Editorial: Teaming up with Russia in Syria could be a dangerous false step for the U.S.," Washington Post, 19 November 2015). They warned that "a rightly skeptical Obama administration" would hurt the cause of defeating the Islamic State (IS) by joining in an alliance with "Mr. Putin."

In matter of fact, so far it has been Putin who has been correct not just about the Obama administration's feckless and confused Syria policy but about the excesses of the overall American/Western democracy-promotion, regime change policy in the Arab and larger Muslim world. From Algeria to Afghanistan, U.S. democracy promotion has led to nothing but new authoritarianisms. U.S. nation-building has brought little beyond chaos and destruction. Good intentions have been confounded by hubris in policymaking and assessments of American power, ignorance of the targeted states and peoples, naivete` about the human condition, and careerism and corruption at home.

According to the Post, Russian air strikes have not focused on IS and have targeted "rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad." In fact, more than 20 percent of Russian sorties have hit IS targets and almost all of the rest have hit other jihadi groups, not the Washington consensus's 'moderate rebels', who are largely an imagined rather than real military force. Most are radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood-been there, done that in Egypt.

Moreover, "Russia has little to offer the U.S.-led coalition in military terms" regardless if it did so, according to the Post. Similarly, "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." Not so says US Navy Commander Garrett I. Campbell, who knows just a little bit more about military matters than the latte-sipping editors at the Washington Post. Writing for the Brookings Institution, Campbell noted that Russian warplanes has been maintained a fierce bombing tempo, launching as many strikes on some single days as the US-led anti-ISIS coalition carries out against the jihadist group in a typical month. Campbell also noted that Russia had shown a "previously unknown capability" for its military by firing of cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea and hitting targets 900 miles away (www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/10/23-russian-military-capabilities-syria-campbell?rssid=LatestFromBrookings).

Russian air attacks ordered by Putin after Russian FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov reported to Putin that the Russian airliner that crashed on October 31st had been brought down by an explosion were unprecedented. Military journalist, David Axe, who, in contrast to the Washington Post, is interested in facts not their falsification, reviewed Russia's November 16 strikes this way: "The Russian air force just pulled off one of the biggest and most complex heavy bomber missions in modern history" (www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/17/russia-pounds-isis-with-biggest-bomber-raid-in-decades.html). The attacks hit mostly IS targets; one attack alone reportedly killed 600 IS mujahedin. Moreover, thanks to Russian air support Syrian government forces recently captured the city of Kweiris and its strategic airport under siege by IS for more than two years, but the Post is convinced that since the advent of Russian air support Syria's forces have "failed to recapture significant territory."[1]

Does 'journalism' get any worse than this?

Ironically, WP blames Moscow for the alleged fact that "Syrian and Iranian troops have lost scores of Russian-supplied tanks and armored vehicles to the rebels' U.S.-made TOW missiles." As I understand it, the Obama administration supplied those TOW missiles, making Washington at least half responsible for those losses-losses likely benefiting the jihadists as much as the imagined 'moderates.'

In the Post's telling, Russia's "doomed" campaign forced Putin to dispatch his foreign minister to Vienna. In fact, the Vienna conference was planned long ago and had no relation to matters on the ground in Syria unless you count the fact that the conference and other recent talks like it would never had occurred if not for Putin's military intervention in Syria, which overturned the house of cards put in place by the administration and the amateurs that occupy its offices.

Like the Obama administration, the Washington Post has an uncanny knack for getting it precisely wrong. It claims that Assad is "the magnet for the foreign fighters" joining the Islamic State, according to the Post. Now this IS a truly curious claim, because there are at least as many IS 'fighters'-that is, jihadists in Iraq. There are IS affiliates in some 40 countries, ranging from....Algeria to Afghanistan, from Nigeria to Norway. The magnet for foreign fighters is IS, other jihadi organizations and the apocalyptic adventures of combat glory, sex slaves, and soldierly comradery they offer to disaffected, unstable, and/or angry criminals, degenerates, opportunists, and true believers. If this were not true, then there would be more moderates than radicals arrayed against Assad.

Finally, the Post attempted an assault on the political solution supported by Moscow that would leave Mr. Assad in power for 18 months or longer, while a new constitution is drafted and elections are organized. It argues that "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," and seconded U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry's what else but "elegant" claim that should "the West 'cut a deal' such that 'Assad can be there for a while longer...the war won't stop'."

The Post's advice is eerily similar to the Obama administration's failed policy: "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."

To follow the Post/Obama line would mean handing power to a small, divided faction of the Syrian opposition no less threatened by the likes of IS, Al Qa`ida's ally, Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), and sundry other jihadi groups fighting the Assad regime. Any provisional government would unlikely be able to run the country, in particular the Alawite-majority areas which comprise the bulk of jihadi-free territory and which would remain a haven from which pro-Assad Alawite elements would continue to fight. Moreover, the prospective interim ruling 'moderate' forces are badly divided among themselves and bogged down by infighting. For example, some have attended talks in Moscow; others refused. Thus, the provisional government's will be unable any time soon to establish any kind of serious military force capable of fighting on the two fronts it faces-the Syrian army (later deposed Alawite forces) and the jihadists. A provisional army itself will be divided between Assad-loyalists and rebels-turned regular troops. Moreover, both the provisional government and any troops it might control inevitably will be infiltrated by jihadists who will facilitate infiltration by JN and IS operatives, who will carry out terrorist attacks in Damascus, Aleppo, and elsewhere. In short, building state capacity and effective governance from scratch is likely to be a bridge too far.

All this means that holding elections will not be possible for a year or much more, so allowing Assad to remain in place until jihadis are defeated is the least of two evils.

In the meantime, Western and Russian powers would do better to convince the Syrian army and the few moderate rebels to agree to a truce to remain in force at least until the all the jihadis have been decimated or at least scattered underground. At the same time, the great powers should set up safe zones for civilians, batten down the hatches, and bring hell down on the heads of IS, al-Nusrah and all their ilk.

But back to the WaPo's so-called journalism. It is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. mainstream media is involved in the outright falsification of the facts. Things have gone far beyond journalistic malpractice and entered the filthy realm of propaganda masked as objective reporting, regardless of the editorial nature of the piece reviewed herein. Editorial license does not include the right to falsify and manufacture facts. It is time the WaPo was boycotted and picketed, if it lacks the minimal level of shame and cannot bring itself to shut down or fire its editorial board.

[1] On Kweiris and a propaganda effort by another DC institution, see http://gordonhahn.com/2015/11/20/spinning-russias-syria-intervention-the-institute-for-the-study-of-war/.

Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; a Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California; a Contributor for Russia Direct, www.russia-direct.org; and an Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View - Russia Media Watch, http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com.

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 #30
The Independent (UK)
November 30, 2015
David Cameron, there aren't 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria - and whoever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov, anyway?
The Blairite Labour MPs are going to vote with Dave because they loathe Corbyn more than Isis
By Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is The Independent's multiple award-winning Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut

Not since Hitler ordered General Walther Wenck to send his non-existent 12th Army to rescue him from the Red Army in Berlin has a European leader believed in military fantasies as PR Dave Cameron did last week. Telling the House of Commons about the 70,000 "moderate" fighters deployed in Syria was not just lying in the sense that Tony Blair lied - because Blair persuaded himself to believe in his own dishonesty - but something approaching burlesque. It was whimsy - ridiculous, comic, grotesque, ludicrous. It came close to a unique form of tragic pantomime.

At one point last week, one of Cameron's satraps was even referring to this phantom army as "ground troops". I doubt if there are 700 active "moderate" foot soldiers in Syria - and I am being very generous, for the figure may be nearer 70 - let alone 70,000. And the Syrian Kurds are not going to conquer Isis for us; they're too busy trying to survive the assaults of our Turkish allies. Besides, aren't the "moderates" supposed to be the folk who don't carry weapons at all? Who's ever heard before of a "moderate" with a Kalashnikov?

The Syrian regime's army - who really are ground troops and who never worried about the "moderate" rebels because they always ran away - are the only regular force deployed in Syria. And thanks to Vladimir Putin rather than PR Dave, they're beginning to win back territory. Yet after losing at least 60,000 soldiers - killed largely by Isis and the al-Nusra Front - the Syrian army would be hard put to fight off an assault on Damascus by Dave Cameron's 70,000 "moderates". If this ghost army existed, it would already have captured Damascus and hurled Bashar al-Assad from power.

Yet in the Commons last week, we were supposed to believe this tomfoolery - all in the cause of launching two or three fighter bombers against Isis in Syria. It wouldn't make us more vulnerable, Dave told us. In fact we were already vulnerable because we were bombing Isis in Iraq. Yet Dave knows - and we all know, don't we? - that Isis will most assuredly try to commit an atrocity in Britain to revenge Dave's latest schoolboy adventure. Then - à la Blair after 7/7 - Dave will insist that Isis are killing us because they hate our "values". Then will come the inevitable video of a suicide killer saying he killed our innocents because Dave sent his miniature air force to bomb Isis.

The odd thing about all this is that most Brits I come across - and most Arabs I talk to in the Middle East - are well aware of the above. So is the Labour Party. But the Blairite MPs in the Labour Party are going to vote with Dave because while they loathe the evil cult of Isis, they hate the evil cult of Corbyn even more. Do they too believe - as we are all supposed to believe - that the so-called "Joint Intelligence Committee" is telling the truth about the mythical 70,000 "moderates"? Is this unspeakably valiant committee so stupid that it does not tell Dave about the role of the Saudi Wahabi death cult, which is the direct religious and sectarian inspiration for Isis? And if it did tell Dave, why didn't he talk about the Saudis in the Commons last week?

No, we are not "at war". Isis can massacre our innocents, but it is not invading us. Isis is not about to capture Paris or London - as we and the Americans captured Baghdad and Mosul in 2003. No. What Isis intends to do is to persuade us to destroy ourselves. Isis wants us to hate our Muslim minorities. It wants civil war in France between the elite and its disenfranchised Muslims, most of them of Algerian origin. It wants the Belgians to hate their Muslims. It wants us Brits to hate our Muslims. Isis must have been outraged by the thousands of fine Europeans who welcomed with love the million Muslim refugees who reached Germany. The Muslims should have been heading towards the new Caliphate - not running away from it. So now it wishes to turn us against the refugees.

To achieve this, it must implicate hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim refugees in its atrocities. It must force our EU nations to introduce States of Emergency, suspend civil liberties, raid the homes of Muslims. It wishes to destroy the European Union itself. It wishes to strike at the heart of the European ideal by liquidating the very foundation of the union: by persuading us to tear up the Schengen agreement and to close our frontiers. And we are doing exactly that. Are we, in some auto-panic, actually working for Isis? If that gruesome institution did not ban alcohol, their members would be toasting with champagne our political leaders for their vacuity, their sophistry, the abject fear with which they now regularly try to inject us under the dangerous old cry of "Unify the nation".

Vladimir Putin comprehends this. He knows that Turkey is helping Isis - this is why he is going to destroy the Isis oil smuggling route to Turkey - and, as a former serving KGB officer, he understands the cynicism of any crisis. If an American aircraft had strayed into Turkish airspace, he asked at his Kremlin press conference with François Hollande last week, does anyone believe that Turkey would have shot down the US pilots? We all know the answer to that. If Turkey wished to destroy Isis, why does it bombard Isis' Kurdish enemies? Why does it imprison two of Turkey's top journalists for reporting how the Turkish intelligence service smuggled weapons to Islamist fighters in Syria? And Putin is hardly going to object if the EU is bent on suicide-through-fear.

Amid all this, PR Dave raves on. And why not? Having Photoshopped a fake poppy on to his lapel to honour Britain's war dead, why shouldn't he get away with Photoshopping 70,000 fake "moderates" on to a map of Syria?

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#31
Salon.com
September 25, 2015
Putin has bested them all: How has the Russian leader gotten the better of Clinton, Bush and Obama?
Watching Trump beat his chest about how he'd force Putin to his will is a reminder that Putin's had his way with us
By PATRICK L. SMITH
Patrick Smith is Salon's foreign affairs columnist. A longtime correspondent abroad, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, he is also an essayist, critic and editor. His most recent books are "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale, 2013) and Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World (Pantheon, 2010).

Aug. 9, 1999, was an eventful day for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. In the morning President Boris Yeltsin appointed him deputy prime minister and named him acting prime minister a few hours later. In the afternoon, Yeltsin let it be known that he had selected the come-from-nowhere former intelligence agent to succeed him. By sundown Putin, then 47, announced that he would, indeed, stand for the presidency.

Putin has ever since rotated between the presidency and the premier's office. That makes 16 years at the pinnacle of power in the Russian Federation. It makes 16 years trying to clean up the tragic, god-awful mess the ever-inebriated Yeltsin had made of post-Soviet Russia. And it makes three American presidencies: Bill Clinton in his final years, George W. Bush and now President Obama have all tried to build a relationship with a man as resolute in his determination to retrieve Russia as Yeltsin was craven in his desire to please the Americans at any cost.

Two things stand out, both remarkable, as one reflects back on this span of years.

One, none of the above-named presidents has succeeded in working well with Putin. Each attempt to structure a relationship, which amounts to restructuring the inherited relationship, has ended more or less in tears. Clinton and Bush II left office crestfallen, to use an old word-disappointed that they could not thread the needle. Obama awaits his turn.

Two, Americans have traveled a long distance in their attitudes toward Putin. When he first took office the common expectation was that he was legitimately a democrat and would do the right thing. Now, 16 years on, we have made of him a Beelzebub who cannot, by definition, ever do the right thing. Putinophobia is prevalent. Roughly speaking, this transformation follows the attitudes of our chief executives and the policy cliques around them: If they come to dislike Putin, our media direct us to dislike Putin, and by and large we oblige.

We now have a considerable catalog of White House postures and assessments available to us. To peruse it briefly:

Bill Clinton, March 2000: "Putin has expressed a genuine commitment to economic reform."

Three months later Clinton refined the thought: "President Yeltsin led Russia to freedom. Under President Putin, Russia has a chance to build prosperity and strength while safeguarding the rule of law."

A year after this last remark, Bush II returned from his first state visit to the Kremlin and delivered his famously stupid account of his encounter: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy. I was able to get a sense of his soul."

GWB in the spring of 2002: "In 1968, America and the Soviet Union were bitter enemies. Today, America and Russia are friends." I am not sure why our George singled out 1968, but this remark followed the Sept. 11 attacks by eight months. Putin had been the first to telephone the Bush White House to offer any assistance Russia could provide as the U.S. responded.

Bush II five years later: "Do I trust him? Yes, I trust him. Do I like everything he says? No. And I suspect he doesn't like everything I say. But we're able to say it in a way that shows mutual respect."

On to our incumbent.

"I've said that we need to reset or reboot the relationship there," Obama said in March 2009. "Russia needs to understand our unflagging commitment to the independence and security of countries like Poland or the Czech Republic. On the other hand, we have areas of common concern."

"I don't have a bad relationship with Putin," Obama said a few months later, by which time things had gone south and the famous reboot already looked like a dud. "He's got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom. But the truth is that when we're in conversation together, oftentimes it's very productive."

September 2013: "This is not a Cold War," Obama asserts. This is not a contest between the United States and Russia.... I don't think that Mr. Putin has the same values that we do."

Five months after that last comment, Obama's State Department helped turn prolonged street demonstrations in Kiev into an armed coup against Ukraine's elected president.

And here we are. No less a political figure than Hillary Clinton has Putin down as Hitler. The Obama White House cannot do enough to undermine that "prosperity and strength" Bill Clinton encouraged 15 years ago.

Among the Republican presidential aspirants, it is a dog's dinner. Per usual, the running theme is who can talk the toughest talk.

"I wouldn't talk to [Putin] at all," Carly Fiorina declared during the second GOP debate, in September. Marco Rubio on the same occasion: "Putin is exploiting a vacuum that this administration has left in the Middle East."

Rand Paul countered with the only sensible comment of the evening: "We do need to be engaged with Russia, [and] to be engaged means to continue to talk," he said. "What if Reagan hadn't talked to the Soviet Union?"

Drawing a line under all this in the place he always prefers, Donald Trump arrived with: "I'd get along very well with Vladimir Putin."

To unpack a decade and a half of presidential commentary about Russia's leader is an education-providing, of course, one does this with at least a modest degree of detachment. It reveals certain things about Putin, for sure. But one learns as much, if not more, about America's leadership. What makes Putin so hot a potato to handle? Assigning percentages is never very exact in these kind of cases, but I would say offhandedly it is a third or so Putin's problem and the rest is ours.

Study the above digest of remarks, and you should come up with four fairly distinct periods, one for each president and one for those now vying to be next in the White House.

The theme during the Bill Clinton years was continuity, and to a point this was a natural expectation. Yeltsin had chosen Putin, and the latter was facing forward, not back. Recall this? Anyone who doesn't regret the end of the Soviet Union has no heart, Putin said around this time. Anyone who thinks you can re-create the Soviet Union has no brain.

During Bush II's two terms, the theme was drift-the theme of no theme. GWB simply was not up to a coherent policy; platitudes and faux-profundities were his limit. Were he and his people better read, they might have dressed up their inadequacy with some variant of Churchill's famous mot-Russia being "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." In fact, the New York Times hauled this chestnut out for Bush late in his second term, explaining that Russia, in Churchill's day as in ours, was "an inscrutable and menacing land that plays by its own rules, usually to the detriment of those who choose more open regulations."

Already one sees trouble on the way. The Times piece is an artifact now. The curious can read it here.

With their reset that did not reset anything, Obama and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, must be credited for trying to bring some seriousness back into the conversation with Russia. They simply failed to understand 1) the bull they proposed taking by the horns and 2) the utter unseriousness of the American project.

Reread the last of Bush II's quotations above. At least he had the virtue of recognizing that Russians were Russian and would stay that way. Obama and Hillary suffer the more egregious righteousness characteristic of the liberal interventionists, the Williams-Sonoma set: A reset in relations with Russia meant one more, especially earnest try at imposing the good-for-everybody neoliberal order.

They adhere to Francis Fukuyama's delusional thesis, to put the point another way: We are history's last and highest achievement. It is only natural, a matter of human destiny, that everyone ought to conform with enthusiasm. In my view, the true-believing aspect of this sophomoric conceit is why Obama's bitterness toward Putin is more acute than that of his predecessors in the White House-and why Hillary, if elected, can be relied upon to enact a Russia policy very possibly as pugilistic as Reagan's during the late-Cold War years.

In the fourth and final period and final period of our ever-changing idea of "Putin," who gets quotation marks at this point, is defined by our presidential aspirants. Apart from Hillary Clinton, we are back in Bush II-style incoherence. Nobody except Clinton actually has a policy, and Clinton's is retrograde.

To stay with the incumbent, it would be wrong to single out the Obama administration's mistakes, for one cannot neglect the two decades of history that preceded them. Stephen Cohen, the noted Russianist, lays this story out very plainly in "Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia," his 2001 book. In brief, the Americans so favored Yeltsin because he opened the door to a rapacious orgy of deregulation, privatization, asset-stripping and thievery. As is now generally accepted, several million Russians died (malnutrition, exposure, disease, alcohol poisoning) in the Soviet Union's transition to the Russian Federation. The Soviet middle class-yes, there was one and it was large-was all but destroyed, an oligarchy having commandeered seven decades of accumulated national wealth.

Yeltsin set the bar, in short. A Russian president Americans liked was one who let the nation's transformation into the neoliberal order proceed, under foreign direction, no matter the economic, social or altogether human costs. By 1994 Joseph Brodsky, the Russian-born poet exiled to New York, would complain in an open letter to Václav Havel that triumphant America expects all the Indians to commence imitation of the cowboys.

Crunching too much history into too few words, a Russian president Americans dislike is one who would blow out the candles and declare the party over. This is Putin-the president and his sin. His project is to rebuild Russian society after the debacle of the Yeltsin period, regenerate the decimated middle class and rein in the oligarchic crooks American leaders and media glorify as capitalist heroes.

As Putinophobes forever insert into any conversation, Putin's Russia has many problems and problematic policies. These are as real as they can get, let there be no doubt. Having said this severally in this space, I will say it once more and leave it: Russia's problems are the problems of Russians, just as America's belong to Americans. People must also own the process of resolving their problems, for there is much benefit to derive from getting it done.

"They imagined him to be something he was not or assumed they could manage a man who refuses to be managed."

That is how a think piece last year in the New York Times, which is here, described the core mistake our president and his two predecessors made in trying to do business with Vladimir Putin. The first half of the sentence presents no problem at all. American leaders are unable to see straight when looking toward the Kremlin. One of our many Cold War scars.

Look at the second part. Do I have to explain the very fundamental problem implicit in those last 11 words? "Assumed they could manage a man who refused to be managed?" "Presumed" is the word the reporter flubbed. One doubts he had any idea of how much he revealed as he wrote, which was surely in a state of pure unconsciousness.

This gets us straight to the essential question. Why are our presidents and all those who propose to be one unable to handle their Russian counterpart? What is it about this man that leaves American leaders and the policy cliques so often saying and doing foolish things and more or less all of the time tied up in knots?

One has to turn the relationship around, like a prism, to arrive at a fulsome answer. There is an American side, and then a Russian side.

Among the American presidents whose terms coincide with Putin's, they can speak no straighter than they can see, so far as one can make out. Can they say, "We betrayed our promise to Gorbachev. We intend to bring NATO up to your western flank because our ultimate aim is not less than 'regime change' in Moscow?" Or, "We admit you began plans to reclaim Crimea the very morning we helped topple the elected government in Kiev, so propping open the door to a NATO presence in the Black Sea?" Or, "We liked the free-for-all of the Yeltsin years and wait now for a leader more pliant than you?"

Of course not times three. American presidents are thus stuck in an artificial vocabulary that is shapeless because it has little relation to reality. It is acceptable to many Americans, as the extent of our Putinophobia illustrates, but it must make a plain conversation with a foreign leader difficult on the way to impossible. Our political language is too encrusted with mythologies as to our purpose, to put the point another way.

Dissembling is the word I am looking for. American presidents must dissemble in the face of their Russian counterpart. Fine in the case of Yeltsin, an accomplished dissembler abjectly eager to win Americans' approval. Not fine with a president who is "very smart," "brutally blunt" and who "keeps his word," as Bill Clinton described Putin on an assortment of occasions.

As Clinton's phrases suggest, Putin is not encumbered in the way of our presidents and presidential hopefuls. He has a grasp of the world as it is and the power relations in it and can speak of these plainly-bluntly if you like. He has a fulsome grasp of history and need not fear it-as American leaders must. Read his speeches: They are replete with historical reference, a great strength in any speech by anyone. I have never come across a euphemism in any of Putin's.

Above all, Putin has an intent, often stated. It is to retrieve Russia from the crippling mess he inherited. It is to do this by way of state-centered political and economic structures that reflect not our desires but Russian tradition, values and conditions. It is to make Russia an equal partner of the West. This last aspiration has nothing to do with the propaganda favorite that he is rebuilding the Soviet empire, I should probably add.

Neither does it have anything to do with bowing to Western designs. Yeltsin spoiled the West in this respect. And on this point I tend to place great emphasis. The story of our time is in large measure the story of the non-West addressing the West from a position of parity for the first time in half a millennium of history. No need any longer to take "modernization" and "Westernization" as synonyms. This is a very big reason Putin is a significant leader.

This following observation will surely bring the Putinophobes out in force, but the patently evident reality is that all this makes Putin far superior as a statesman than anyone Washington may throw up. A partial record looks like this: He saved Obama's bacon when Assad's chemical weapons stocks threatened to bring us to war and then played a key support role so that Secretary of State Kerry could get the Iran nuclear agreement done. Muttered thanks on both occasions.

He acted decisively in late September when the threat of terrorism in Syria grew acutely serious, leaving Obama, to borrow his phrase, slouching sullenly in his chair. He has since put the first plausible peace plan on the table in Vienna and, post-Paris, urged a united front against the Islamic State. American accounts of these policies are encrusted with negative innuendo, propaganda and phony objections. ("They are bombing the wrong Islamic extremists.") In my view the policies speak for themselves more clearly than any rendering of them in the American press.

I am stuck on Donald Trump's confident remark that he would do just fine with Putin. So often, the id of the GOP has a way of getting to the nub of things.

In my read Trump's remark is at bottom a boast. "I can do it," he seems to say, all but beating his chest. Putin's Kremlin, in other words, has become a proving ground for American leaders-except those, like Obama, who have given up. Certain things are implicit in this.

One is Putin's credibility as a statesman. Having a purpose-and whether one is for it or not, the Russian leader's is king-sized-he is formidable. And he is hence a standard of one or another kind, against which American leaders have measured themselves for the past 16 years. This seems an obvious, if unconscious, feature of our discourse.

It is common social psychology that contempt often masks envy. Beneath one's fears there is often a certain fascination. On the other side of strenuous refutation lies buried an admission that the thing or person refuted presents a temptation.

These things would be bitter to admit, but they deserve that activity too few of us seem capable of when the topic is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: They deserve thought.
 

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 #32
The Kremlin Stooge
https://marknesop.wordpress.com
November 25, 2015
Violence Once Removed: War Through the Languid Filter of Bored Academia
By Mark Chapman

Mark Galeotti is Professor of Global Affairs at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University.  Touted as a "Russia Expert", he is also a regular feature of Brian Whitmore's podcasts for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), as well as the author of many books on Transnational Crime and Russian Security affairs. He also maintains the blog, "In Moscow's Shadows", which is usually a very good reference for  new legislation and legislative amendments under consideration in the Russian Federation. He comes educationally well-credentialed - sufficiently so to put PHD after his name - and generally stands in welcome contrast to "Russia Experts" like Edward Lucas, who is actually an expert on licking all the Baltic States from one end to the other in delirious adoration, and who has a head like a roasted nut. For overall density and useful application, I mean; not for appearance.

However, since he began guesting as an expert on RFE/RL's podcasts, Mr. Galeotti has become...somewhat full of himself. Perhaps this owes its manifestations to the sycophantic gobbling of host Brian Whitmore, but whatever the reason, it is encouraging Mr. Galeotti to branch out into areas he formerly stayed mostly away from, and it would be difficult to reach any conclusion but that he now considers himself an authority on everything to do with Russia.

Consider, for example, the recent downing of a Russia Federation Air Force SU-24 fighter-bomber by F-16's of the Turkish Air Force, in the vicinity of Turkey's border with Syria. To the rhetorical question as to whether this is a big deal or not, his self response is - yawn - probably not. A certain amount of "sound and fury" can be expected - because we all know autocratic governments have to posture and show off on the world stage to convince their cowed subjects that they are doing something - but in the long run it is a fairly meaningless incident, and World War Three is not about to break out. In that last prediction, I am in complete agreement.

What I have a problem with is the Solomonesque assumption that Russia quite probably did violate Turkish airspace, or at least "it certainly wouldn't surprise him" . He appears to base this on "Moscow's willingness to cross into NATO airspace in the past".

I suspect we can blame that on the lurid wordsmithing of the popular press - especially in his native country, where you can apparently be a journalist with the least number of measurable vital signs in the Free World - which has become admirably expert at implying Russian aircraft have violated NATO airspace when they have instead "approached" it  or "passed close to it". Occasionally they resort to comedic lengths above and beyond the call of fantastic invention, like the report - personally cited by the NATO Secretary-General - that a Russian Ilyushin 20 aircraft passed within 300 meters of a Scandinavian Airlines aircraft taking off from Copenhagen airport. Checking reveals the actual position given is 50 miles southeast of Malmo, and more than 70 miles away from Copenhagen. But that's how nutty memes get started. Russia's international air safety record is considerably better than that of either the UK or USA, if measured by number of aircraft accidents.

Well, never mind - perhaps the stricken fighter-bomber blundered into Turkish airspace because it was "setting up an attack run on a rebel convoy or facility on the Turkish border." At 6000 meters, more than halfway to the limit of its service ceiling? Ha, ha.

"Moscow may well have been assuming the Turks would be as restrained as other NATO members, which was an undoubted mistake". Uh huh; other NATO members like the USA, whose Senators, Presidential hopefuls and all-purpose lunatics have been arguing for more than a month that somebody needs to be shooting down some Russian aircraft - the very model, if I may say so, of restraint. Apparently there is some kind of communication jamming barrier between Washington and New York that no media reports can pass.

"...[G]enerally the Kremlin has shown little signs of seeing in Ankara a serious ally, partner or player, even in the days when Putin and Erdogan were getting along." Mmm hmm; except for offering to make it the gas hub for European deliveries and give it a generous national discount, resulting in annual revenues topping $2 Billion from transit fees alone plus the profit realized from selling gas received at a discount. The EU seemed to think that was quite a significant - not to say serious - favour to bestow, when it was the EU's idea. Su-24-Russia

Mr. Galeotti suggests that some NATO powers are a little leery of Turkey's social-hand-grenade personality, and that Moscow will be unwilling to let this escalate - if Turkey offers even a pretense of remorse, this will be blared to the Russian press as success in forcing them to back down, and offered to the public as a sop in exchange for not escalating this situation further. This is a very sensible analysis, or would be under ordinary circumstances - but it fails to take into account the underlying reason for Russian grimness over this incident. The Turkmen on the Syrian side of the border, who enjoy Erdogan's protection and intervention, machine-gunned the Russian fighter's pilot and navigator while they were hanging in their parachutes, falling from the sky. Is that a war crime? You bet it is.

Article 42 of Additional Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions (1977), 'Occupants of aircraft', states the following:

1. No person parachuting from an aircraft in distress shall be made the object of attack during his descent.
2. Upon reaching the ground in territory controlled by an adverse Party, a person who has parachuted from an aircraft in distress shall be given an opportunity to surrender before being made the object of attack, unless it is apparent that he is engaging in a hostile act.
3. Airborne troops are not protected by this Article.

Now let's turn to the matter of warnings, which the Turks say they passed to the aircraft not less than 10 times in 5 minutes before engaging it with a Mk-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air To Air Missile). The Turks have since stipulated the aircraft was inside Turkish airspace for 17 seconds.

First, you do not pass warnings to an aircraft that is not doing anything wrong. Except - allegedly - for those 17 seconds, the Russian fighter was in Syrian airspace by invitation of the Syrian government. Second, Turkey has assumed for itself 5 additional miles of airspace, extending into Syria, and aircraft flying within 5 miles of the Turkish border are considered by Turkey to be in its airspace. This has been so since 2012, when Syria shot down a Turkish F-4 in its airspace; there is no legal precedent for it, no basis in law and Turkey has no legal right to enforce it.

Third: this is a typical aircraft warning. "Unknown aircraft in position xxx degrees range xx from xxx (you give the aircraft its range and bearing from a known navigational reference point here, because if you tell him his range and bearing from you, you have just greatly simplified his targeting); you are closing my position and your intentions are unclear. You are standing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures. Alter course immediately to XXX degrees". That, as it happens, is the warning passed by USS VINCENNES to the Iranian airliner it shot down in 1988, according to the transcript. This warning must be read in English, the international language of air traffic control, on a common international distress frequency which all aircraft monitor. I want you to try, right now, to say it 10 times in 17 seconds. Now, to make it fair, say it 10 times in 17 seconds in a language which is not your mother tongue, because the Turks speak Turkish. Now, the second time you say it, and every subsequent time that you can squeeze it into 17 seconds in a language which is not your own, say it with different numbers; aircraft move fast, and neither you or the plane you are warning are in the same position for more than a second or two - you will have to get the new readings from your instruments. You won't have to pretend you are flying a fighter at the same time plus gaining a weapon firing solution, because I can't think of any way you could simulate that.

How did you do? Guess what? Turkey is lying its swarthy face off. Naturally the parameters of what constitutes a short incursion into defended airspace change depending on what country is doing it, because a very angry Prime Minister Erdogan grated in 2012, on the occasion of one of his aircraft getting shot down for being in Syrian airspace, "A short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack."

Fourth; the AM-120 AMRAAM has a maximum range of 30 miles. By the time they fired at the Russian plane, the Turks were still claiming its identity was "unknown", and even as it went down they claimed not to know to whom it belonged. Does that sound like anyone you want for a military ally? Somebody who shoots at an aircraft he can't see or identify when it is not attacking him? How did they even know it was a military aircraft?

In spite of that, although all those things could have been known in about as much time as it would take to say them out loud, if anyone asked...the official response from Washington was that Turkey has a right to defend its territory and its air space, and President Obama blamed the incident on "an ongoing problem with Russian operations near the Turkish border." This knee-jerk defense of a lying shitbag like Erdogan is why Russians are grim and filled with resolve.

"I would expect some uptick in 'mischief' - perhaps some support for the Kurds or other violent extreme movements, for example - as well as a more assiduous campaign to push back and stymie Turkish regional ambitions.

To say nothing of the fact that you can't get too much more violent or extreme than a group which will shoot a helpless pilot in a parachute, I would expect quite a bit more than that. Every bombing mission will now be escorted by a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) of some of the best air-superiority fighters in the world. A Russian heavy cruiser with an extremely capable air-defense system is moving into station near the coast; this vessel can also function as a secondary air command center. And Russia has announced it will deploy the S-400 ground-based air defense missile system to the vicinity of Latakia. With a range of 250 miles and excellent multi-target capabilities, a pair of Turkish aircraft that pulled the stunt they just did could be smashed out of the sky while they were on final approach at Incirlik. The ante done been upped.

But the part that disappointed me most was the final paragraph.

"It's often said, with good reason, that Putin really wants a return to 19th century geopolitics, when might made right and realpolitik was all. Let's not forget that one of the defining 19th century conflicts was that between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, which were sometimes openly at war, sometimes ostensibly at peace, but never anything than enemies. Here we go again."

Got that? It's Putin who is destabilizing the world, who wants a return to might makes right. Not the NATO alliance, which backed the regional actor who openly supports ISIS. The guy who stoutly declares his right to come to the aid of fellow Turks in the neighbouring country, although when Putin mentioned defending fellow ethnic Russians in Ukraine from a government which referred to them as sub-humans and announced its intention to wipe them out, it brought a scream of rage from NATO. Mark Galeotti came down on the side of the United States, a country in which the last President who did not start a war was Gerald Ford. Who believes in might makes right? I'll tell you. The country that made famous the quote, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" The same speaker who also thought that a half-million dead Iraqi children as a result of American sanctions was "worth it". The greatest and bloodiest warmonger of our age.

I see that Mr. Galeotti - prolific writer that he is - has since come out with another post which walks back his condemnation of Russia somewhat, or at least is a little more suspicious of Turkey's impossible allegations, albeit he does stoop to the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel ease of using chronic simpleton Pavel Felgenhauer as a foil to make his point. All those considered, he does stipulate that Lavrov likely does have a valid argument, and the Turks were probably lying in ambush for a Russian plane.

Too late for me, though.

*As always, I am indebted to my readers and commenters for links and references which support this post.

 [return to Contents] 

 #33
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's interview with Russian and foreign media, Moscow, November 25, 2015
 
Sergey Lavrov: I've just spoken on the phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. He assumed office only yesterday, and today he has asked for an emergency telephone conversation. I agreed to do this, of course. We expected Turkey to provide explanations yesterday, possibly at a higher level, but better late than never.

Mr Cavusoglu began the conversation by expressing his sincere condolences, as he emphasised, over the death of Russian military personnel. He expressed regret over the incident but also justified the action of the Turkish Air Force by saying that the Russian plane violated Turkish airspace despite repeated warnings and ultimately spent 17 seconds in it. He also said that Turkish air controllers and pilots didn't know that it was a Russian plane because Syrian military aircraft also fly in the area - I can add that NATO aircraft do as well. But when you open fire at a plane that was in your airspace for 17 seconds, you risk hitting one of your own. Besides, a Russian-US document on ensuring the safety of combat aircraft flights in Syria, about which I reminded Mr Cavusoglu, includes the US commitment to ensure compliance with these rules by all members of the coalition. I asked my Turkish colleague if Turkey had coordinated its actions against Russian planes with the United States as the leading nation of the coalition. He had no answer. I reminded him about the hot line established between Russia's National Defence Control Centre and the Turkish Defence Ministry at the beginning of the Russian Aerospace Force's mission in Syria, and that this hot line had not been used yesterday or any day before. This invites some serious questions.

We strongly suspect that it was a premeditated action. It looks very much like a planned provocation, which stems from the reports made by you and your colleagues, which include prearranged footage, and other evidence. My colleague tried to convince me that this is not so, but I cited what President Putin had said at a meeting with King of Jordan Abdullah II yesterday and informed him of other evidence, which we are analysing. In particular, I said that according to latest reports, which President Putin mentioned yesterday, there may be hundreds if not thousands of Russian militants in the region where only Turkmen allegedly live, as our Turkish colleagues claim, and these militants directly threaten our security and the security of our people. Moreover, there is also terrorist infrastructure in that region, including weapons and ammunition depots and command and supply centres. I asked if Turkey's attention to that region, including several proposals on creating a buffer zone there, can be interpreted as an attempt to protect this infrastructure from destruction. He couldn't answer that question either.

I also said that the Turkish Air Force attack on the Russian plane yesterday has put a new face on the situation with illegal oil trade and the illegal oil industry, which ISIS has created in the occupied territory. Yesterday's tragedy happened after we started delivering highly effective precision air strikes at the ISIS oil trucks and oil fields.

I also reminded my colleague that Turkey again raised the issue of a buffer no-flight zone during our presidents' meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Antalya. I expressed hope that these actions that are concerned with inroads into Syria, into the territory of a sovereign state, would not be continued, and that the attack at our plane yesterday and the situation in general would not be used to push through the idea of a buffer no-flight zone, one way or the other. I pointed out the highly questionable statements that were made at the Brussels meeting of the NATO Council members' permanent representatives yesterday, which Turkey initiated, and that the speakers did not express sympathy or regret over the tragedy with the Russian plane, but rather made statements that were in effect intended to justify the Turkish Air Force's action. The reaction of the European Union was strange too.

The Turkish Foreign Minister assured me of their intention to maintain friendly relations with Russia and again said that Turkey has the right to deliver strikes at any planes that violate its air space. He reminded me about similar Turkish calls made on Russia in early October, when a Russian plane entered the Turkish air space for several seconds, an incident which we have explicitly explained. But he also said that Turkey had warned us that next time the Turkish Air Force would be unable to stand back.

Yes, there were warnings of this sort, but Russian satellite monitoring data, as you may know, clearly show that the aircraft was in Syrian airspace, where it was shot down, and crashed to the ground four kilometres away from the Turkish border. But even if we take on faith what our NATO colleagues say and what Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed to me earlier today, namely, that the aircraft had been in the Turkish airspace for the whole of 17 seconds, I immediately recall an incident that happened three years ago, in 2012, when the Syrian tragedy was just getting under way. At that time, Ankara charged that Damascus was to blame for letting the Syrian Air Force shoot down a Turkish aircraft that had allegedly intruded into Syrian airspace. Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, if my memory serves me, told parliament that a brief airspace and border intrusion could not be a pretext for using force. I reminded my Turkish counterpart of this statement, and he couldn't reply anything to this either; he simply repeated that they hadn't known whose plane it was.

Our conversation lasted for nearly an hour. In reply to his appeals to preserve good relations and start a dialogue, I reiterated what President Vladimir Putin said yesterday. First, a dialogue should be promoted before the moment when you use force in a situation that gives rise to a lot of questions. Second, I am certain, incidentally, that friendly relations between the Russian and Turkish people are not contingent on actions committed by this or that politician. But, as President Putin said, we will seriously revalue and rethink our current relations and the agreements we signed with the present Ankara government from the perspective of this attack against our aircraft. Let me end my opening remarks at this point. I'll be ready to answer any questions that you may have.

Future of Russian-Turkish relations

Question: Here is a question about reassessing our relations. Indeed, Turkey was a friendly country that did not support Western sanctions, and Russia appreciated this very much. And this friendly country has suddenly become unfriendly overnight. Currently, everyone wants to know how future relations will develop. Will we go to war with Turkey? Russia perceives Turkey primarily as a tourist destination. Add to this project Blue Stream and the planned Turkish Stream gas pipeline, Turkish builders and Turkish imports. And, finally, one should not forget that Russian ships sail between the Black and Mediterranean seas via Turkish straits. How can this affect our future relations? Won't we curtail our well-established partnership that has evolved over the years?

Sergey Lavrov: We are not planning to fight Turkey. Our attitude towards the people of Turkey has not changed. We are questioning the actions of incumbent Turkish leaders. I have listed a number of facts showing our goodwill and the fact that we have always strived to establish practical and pragmatic relations with our Turkish neighbours, including in the context of the Syrian crisis and especially when the Russian Aerospace Forces started operating in the Syrian Arab Republic at the request of the official powers in Damascus.

Yesterday, President Vladimir Putin emphasised that we have always strived to respect the regional interests of our neighbors, including the regional interests of Turkey. I'd like to say, all the more so now, as this is already common knowledge, that, of course, everyone has known for a long time about many facts now being mentioned by us (including the terrorists' use of Turkish territory for preparing their operations in Syria and terrorist attacks in various countries, and the efforts or failure of official Turkish authorities to fight this). It is not that we tried to overlook these facts, but that we have always strived to heed the legitimate interests of our Turkish neighbors, and we have tried to explain our viewpoint during trustful and frank dialogue with them in order to convince them that they should conduct a more well thought-out policy. One that would not only aim to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, at all costs, and one that stipulates allied relations with any extremist group, even the most outlying ones. We have never publicised this work at any level, we have never voiced any negative assessments of Turkish leaders' actions;on the contrary, we have always advocated a search for joint constructive actions in a  bilateral format and in the context of multilateral efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis and to fight terrorism. Unfortunately, Ankara did not reciprocate, and, as I see it, the leaders of the Republic of Turkey made some unbefitting official assessments of Russia's policy in the Syrian crisis long before our Aerospace Forces swung into action.

Regarding your questions on specific aspects of our cooperation that are the subject of current or draft intergovernmental agreements, the Russian Government has now received a directive, and it calls for the review of the entire range of relations. Of course, we don't want to create artificial problems for Turkish producers and exporters who, of course, are in no way responsible for the incident. Nor do we want to create any additional problems for our citizens and companies cooperating with the Turkish side. But we must respond to the incident, and not because we have no choice but to respond, this isn't the issue. In reality, too many factors presenting a direct terrorist threat to our citizens, and not them alone, have accumulated in Turkey. No one really controls this improvised bridgehead, although we are receiving information that secret services are monitoring these processes, to put it mildly. We are facing a multifunctional and multi-component situation which needs to be assessed by various agencies. This assessment will be quickly made, and proposals for reporting to the Russian President drafted. I hope that all this will be accomplished quickly. We will not make any proposals that would artificially alienate the peoples of our countries.

We have already advised Russian citizens not to visit Turkey. This measure does not amount to some kind of vengeance, and this is not some kind of a rushed emotional outburst. We have assessed the existence of terrorist threats in Turkey rather objectively. This recommendation is based on an objective and comprehensive assessment of the situation.

NATO's reaction

Question: How do you assess the NATO reaction to the incident? After all, it's the most serious incident in NATO-Russia relations since 1950.

Sergey Lavrov: I've just said that I listened to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's statement. It seemed to me that as a statement it was a little bit galvanic and, in a larger scheme of things, covering up for what had been done by Turkey. NATO has 28 members, after all, and how the discussion was proceeding in Brussels yesterday couldn't be kept under wraps: some information does trickle down to us. The discussion was heated, very heated. There were quite hard-hitting remarks addressed to Turkey for having attacked the Russian aircraft. But the notorious allied solidarity and the consensus principle prevailed after all.

We understand, of course, that Turkey would have never allowed any critical comments to be reflected in the joint position as set out by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. But we also know that the secretary-general's statement was not coordinated verbatim with all members. He as it were took upon himself this responsibility: possibly he looked at the leading NATO members, listened to them, and said what he said. I'd specially single out (and I said as much to Mr Mevlut Cavosoglu earlier today) a phrase of his to the effect that yesterday's occurrence emphasised once again the need for taking measures in the context of the danger presented when Russian military infrastructure moves closer to NATO borders. I hope that all people present here are competent enough and I don't need to explain to them how intrinsically hypocritical this statement is. The EU representatives said approximately the same in their ornate style.

Ms Federica Mogherini will be addressing the European parliament later today; she also asked for a telephone conversation. Possibly we'll have an opportunity after this meeting with you.

Fight against terrorism

Question: You planned to fly over to Turkey and to discuss Russia and Turkey's possible involvement in the fight against ISIS. Has this opportunity now been lost completely or is Russia ready to discuss this involvement in line with certain conditions, to say the least?

Sergey Lavrov: I wanted to go to Turkey for another reason. A well-established structure of bilateral interstate dialogue functioned quite well until yesterday. The Russian-Turkish High-Level Cooperation Council (Presidential Council) involving all the main ministers is at the top of this dialogue. The Russian-Turkish Joint Strategic Planning Group, headed by national foreign ministers, is an everyday coordinating agency. Istanbul was to have hosted its regular session (Turkey and Russia are taking turns hosting these sessions) today. Naturally, we cancelled the session after yesterday's attack on our plane. We still have no plans for visiting the Republic of Turkey or receiving our Turkish colleagues here.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu realises that this could not be avoided. He told me straightforwardly about cancelling today's meeting and expressed hope that we would be able to sit down and discuss everything calmly somewhere on the sidelines of international events. For example, he mentioned the upcoming meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers, scheduled for December 3-4, 2015 in Belgrade. I did not voice my consent because, first of all, it is necessary to comprehend all aspects and consequences of the incident, rather than discuss everything calmly. We are not shying away from contacts, as is evidenced by my telephone conversation with Minister Cavusoglu today.

You have asked a very good question about the anti-terrorist coalition. Technically speaking, Turkey is a member of the US-led coalition. A Russian-US memorandum on avoiding aerial incidents, signed by military representatives, stipulates various obligations and specific measures. The US side noted in this memorandum that it applies to all coalition members, including Turkey. But the Turkish side did not take any precautions, as stipulated by this Russian-US document. Apart from this document, the US-led coalition stipulates discipline for its members. Some coalition members, including those who have designated their warplanes for hitting Iraq and Syria, have told us off the record that, as their air forces operate US-made planes, the United States is demanding that these coalition members ask its consent prior to air strikes. As far as I understand, the Russian plane was downed by an F-16 fighter. It would be interesting to know whether this US demand that  US-made warplanes only be used by coalition members with Washington's consent applies to Turkey. If so, it would be interesting to know whether Turkey asked the United States for permission to launch its planes and to down an unidentified plane over Syria. All this raises a lot of questions.

President François Hollande of France, whom we expect in Moscow tomorrow, is now in Washington and held a joint news conference with President Barack Obama. The two leaders emphasised that ISIS targets alone should be attacked and that Russia would do "right" if it restricted its strikes to ISIS positions. First, all documents, including those of the Vienna Process, mention the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups. I understand how difficult it is for our Western partners to retreat from this narrow interpretation of these antiterrorist objectives, because as soon as we enter a sphere of definitions - who is a terrorist? - the Western coalition is immediately split by serious contradictions. There are Kurdish detachments. The US regards them as allies, arms them, and assists them, at least with advice. But Turkey views them as terrorists. It's hard to move on unless we introduce clarity in this matter. There are groups like Ahrar al-Sham, which have been repeatedly seen cooperating with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. There are other groups that have done absolutely gruesome things along with the terrorists. But they are being passed off as the "moderate opposition" and suggested as partners in any talks with the government of the Syrian Arab Republic.

The coalition's two Vienna meetings (I am referring to the coalition that focuses on the political process, but it will inevitably focus on the antiterrorist aspects as well) have ended in our coming to terms on the following. First, the political process should be pursued by the Syrians themselves. It is only the Syrians who can decide the fate of their country, including the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. Second, for the process to get under way, it is necessary to convene UN-sponsored talks between the opposition and the Syrian Government as soon as possible, and for that - to determine at last, who can represent the opposition in a combined joint delegation. Instructions related to this have been handed down to a UN representative who is generalising the proposals on what specific Syrian political groups (possibly even with the inclusion of representatives of the Syrian armed patriotic opposition) can sit down at the negotiating table with the Syrian Government. Third, we've come to terms on the need to develop a common vision with regard to terrorist organisations and to compile a general list of them. Jordan has been asked to coordinate this effort. This was discussed with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh in Sochi yesterday. They are engaged in preparatory work but this process will be a difficult one.

It is very difficult to go on with the Vienna Process as long as there is no single list of terrorist organisations to be exempt from ceasefire arrangements (at some stage a ceasefire will have to be negotiated) and a list of members of a joint opposition delegation. All implications to the effect that Russia has at last become active in the political process and that this process should continue are of the devil. Russia has never slowed its effort to promote the political process, starting with the approval of the Russian-sponsored Geneva Communique of June 30, 2012, which we immediately submitted to the UN Security Council for approval, while the US and the Europeans flatly refused to do this, declaring that they could only approve the Geneva Communique if it was amended with a clause saying that Bashar al-Assad should go. Eventually, the Security Council approved it, but only a year and half later, when a resolution on Syria's chemical demilitarisation was being approved. After this, we continued to display initiative as well, including the hosting of several meetings with the Syrian opposition and representatives from the Syrian government in Moscow, approved documents, and called on others to cooperate. But the others, including members of the US coalition, staked their hopes on a military solution and the deposition of the Assad regime. It was not before they saw that this wouldn't work that they finally modified their position.

We are true to our open and honest position. We don't have to camouflage our position with some kind of incomprehensible verbal zigzags, as is done by certain partners of ours, including the Europeans, and we hope that the others will act in the same vein. For all the importance of the Vienna Process, it is highly doubtful that the meetings will continue in this format until a decision from the November 14 meeting on reaching an agreement regarding the composition of the opposition delegations at the talks with the Syrian government and on drawing up a single list of terrorist organisations is implemented. At least, we don't expect any progress. I told this to our Western partners and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who called the other day and suggested that we meet as soon as possible. I replied that holding yet another meeting to engage in a senseless and hopeless tug-of-war over the fate of Bashar al-Assad was a waste of time. That it was necessary to come to terms on the terrorists and the delegation's composition. Otherwise, the process won't budge: the talks won't begin, and it won't be possible to discuss a ceasefire.

What should Turkey do?

Question: What can Turkey do to have the recommendations for Russian citizens to not go to that country cancelled? Will flights to Turkey be suspended?

Sergey Lavrov: These issues are being reviewed. I won't go over specific measures because our colleague asked questions about the specifics of our interaction. All of that is now being analysed in a comprehensive manner.

The question arises, what can Turkey do to normalise our relations? You know, perhaps, there must be the realisation that attacks like yesterday's are absolutely unacceptable.

Today, I heard words of regret and condolences from Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu, but everything else he said in our conversation was aimed at justifying the Turkish position. I referred to cases concerning violations of Syria's airspace by Turkish planes, and also reminded him that Turkish planes enter the airspace of Greece in the Aegean Sea an average of 1,500 times a year. Greece regularly protests this, but to no avail.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Foreign Minister of Greece Nikos Kodzias, who expressed solidarity with us in connection with this tragedy. He mentioned that the 1,500 violations of Greece's airspace each year by Turkey have become commonplace. He does not accept the explanation whereby even if there was, as NATO claims, a violation of airspace that lasted 17 seconds, this is not reason enough for a NATO plane to attack a Russian warplane.

We won't provide any prescriptions. Perhaps, the Turkish leaders ought to think about how they are going to live in their own country. Today, prior to opening a State Council presidium, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke about recent trends in Turkey's political life. This is a well-known fact. In any case, removing the causes and, of course, the consequences which have led to the fact that Turkish territory is being widely used (without mentioning by whom at this point) to train terrorist groups, provide supplies to militants and to finance their activities, is a serious factor in itself.

Returning to the news conference by President Francois Hollande of France and US President Barack Obama in Washington D.C., I noted the fact that the French president proposed taking actions towards closing the Turkish-Syrian border in order to stop the flow of militants and supplies. Importantly, the US president did not react to this. I think that this is a good proposal. I hope that tomorrow the French president will tell us more about it. We are willing to seriously consider any necessary steps. Many say that by closing the border, we will, in fact, remove the terrorist threat in Syria.

Turkey's motives

Question: What do you think Turkey's real goal behind attacking the Russian plane is? How did international bodies respond to the incident? Will Russia demand an international investigation into the incident?

Sergey Lavrov: I'm not going to speculate on their real goals. We have enough information to corroborate the fact that this was a deliberate and planned act. Some of our partners, who contacted us yesterday, said it was an obvious ambush. They were keeping an eye out waiting for their chance. It's hard for me to say why they did it. There may be internal political considerations, even though the elections in Turkey just ended; there may also be considerations based on relations with their foreign partners, allies, and their "big brothers". I'm not going to speculate on this either.

Assuming that NATO and the EU are such "international bodies", their response was wishy-washy. The Turks circulated a letter in the Security Council describing their version whereby they had their airspace repeatedly violated, and issued warnings in this particular case. The plane flew in their air space for 17 seconds, and they had no choice.

This didn't impress serious analysts and politicians. We haven't written any letters, but have instead officially circulated a verbatim transcript of yesterday's remarks by President Putin in the UN Security Council that he made prior to his talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II. It is now an official UN Security Council document. We do have other materials, which we are willing to present to our partners, including objective monitoring data regarding the plane's route, which the Russian Defence Ministry has already released.

Future of fight against Islamic State

Question: Will the situation surrounding the downed plane adversely affect Russia's efforts to establish a broad-based coalition to combat the Islamic State? What signals are coming from Washington and Paris? What are your expectations regarding tomorrow's meeting in Moscow between President Putin and President Hollande?

Sergey Lavrov: I have basically answered all of these questions. This situation cannot help but affect the efforts that we are making as part of the so-called Vienna process and the Syrian Support Group, which focuses, as I mentioned earlier, not just on the political aspects of preparations for the talks, but also on the critical issue of developing a common approach to terrorist organisations. Such an agreement has already been achieved. This list must be agreed upon. I think that now we're going to insist that, in addition to the list, the members of this group must also agree on a common understanding of the channels that terrorists are using to receive their supplies and support. Perhaps, we'll have to deal with specific countries and decide to stop such support. I think we can bring this issue up for discussion at the UN Security Council.

A series of resolutions prohibiting the purchase of petroleum and looted artefacts from the territory seized by these terrorists, as well as other types of trade, have been passed. According to certain reports, which we are now rechecking, in some areas of Turkey, where the terrorists feel at ease, there's trafficking in human organs taken from the Syrians who are brought from Syria by the Islamic State or other terrorist groups' members. The UN Security Council adopted several resolutions on this subject that focus on the need to cut short the smuggling of oil, and any financial or other relations with the terrorists.

It's been a year, but we haven't seen any progress so far, even though these resolutions instruct the states to provide information on what they are doing to meet the corresponding UN Security Council requirements. I think this topic should be revived in New York. We will try today to submit for UNSC approval  instructions to the Secretary-General to share with us everything (the Secretariat receives all the information) that is known about making supplies available to the Islamic State, its trading in oil and artefacts, as well as support to terrorist groups. Let them come up with a summary and present it to us. It doesn't have to be an official report, just something that we can use as a starting point.            

Su-24 pilots

Question: There's not much information in the media about the fate of the SU-24 pilots. According to some reports, one pilot survived and was taken prisoner. Will they try to bring him home? Will Turkey help with this?

Sergey Lavrov: He is already at the Hmeymim Russian airbase, which is part of our territory. Today, he was received by our Special Forces with the help of Syrian experts and troops. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced this two hours ago.

 [return to Contents] 

 
#34
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
November 29, 2015
Ukrainian volunteer battalions train for 'Russian takeover of Kyiv'

Hundreds of men from Ukraine's 'Desna' volunteer battalion are undergoing special forces training in case regular Russian troops will attempt a militarized takeover of Kyiv.

Their main task for today includes a reconnaissance mission, planting an explosive at a railway juncture, and lastly, getting out alive.

Over 240 men with no military background are undergoing the special forces training. Among them are managers, artists and engineers. But this rag-tag team of volunteers all share one common trait: they don't believe the Minsk ceasefire in east Ukraine will hold out for long. Many are waiting for the government to call a 7th wave of mobilization for service in the war with Russian-backed militants.

Nicolay Korbut, engineer: "Before all these events happened I didn't know basic things, what a roll mat was and how to make a fire. These exercises not only teach you how to handle a gun but also basic things needed in everyday life."

This unit called 'Ukrainian Legion' is tasked with defending their base and capturing Russian paratroopers.

Most of the military trainers have already fought against combined Russian-separatist forces in the east. They say the volunteer battalions here still have a long way to go if they plan on defending Kyiv.

According to the military experts here, for the Ukrainian army to stand a chance of defending Kyiv, over 15,000 troops have to be deployed to the region.

At the current time only around 400 men have received proper training. Many of the military instructors here hope that next year the Ukrainian army command will start forming a military unit capable of defending the Ukrainian capital.

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#35
AFP
December 1, 2015
With fighting easing, landmines still haunt east Ukraine

Shyrokyne (Ukraine) (AFP) - It has been 10 months since Igor last visited his home in the eastern no man's land of war-shattered Ukraine.

The seaside fishing town of Shyrokyne remains studded with landmines, a deadly legacy of the 19-month pro-Russian revolt in the EU's backyard.

Both Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels have refused to take on the task of fully clearing the war zone of one of the most unpredictable and devastating hazards to residents' lives.

"People want to return home to recover their belongings. My friend made it to his house but then hit a tripwire. His leg was blown off," said Igor, a 56-year-old blue collar worker.

"The Ukrainian forces refuse to let us back in. They say the town is all mined," he said, declining to give his last name because of security concerns.

The now-deserted town lies just 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of the flashpoint industrial port of Mariupol -- a government-held target of repeated insurgent attacks.

Ukraine's emergencies ministry said that by last month it had cleared the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the former Soviet republic's once-booming industrial heartland of more than 44,000 mines.

But the warring sides and foreign monitors are struggling to estimate how many unexploded devices remain.

'Five years' to clear

The UN children's agency UNICEF said at least 42 children had been killed and 109 injured by landmines and similar devices between the start of the war in April 2014 and March 31 this year.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said most of the nine civilians who died and 34 who were wounded in September alone had been victims of the indiscriminate weapon.

"The main risk threatening the lives of civilians (has) shifted from direct violence to explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices," it said in a report.

Most of the several dozen Ukrainian troops killed since a new wave of rocket and mortar exchanges erupted at the start of November also died after running into well-disguised tripwires.

Ukraine's deputy emergencies minister Andriy Danyk said last month the landmines will only be cleared "if there is a complete ceasefire".

But President Petro Poroshenko's envoy to periodic peace talks said rebel plans to stage "fake" local elections and the increasingly remote chance of the conflict ending by an agreed end-of-year deadline were making matters worse.

The envoy, former president Leonid Kuchma, said "experts think the de-mining process will take five years because we do not even have the maps" showing the location of the devices.

Unploughed fields

Shyrokyne once had a population of 1,000 but was cleared of even its most stubborn and war-hardened residents by the start of the year.

Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in July that about 80 percent of its homes had been "damaged, often beyond repair".

But the fear of marauders -- both among rebels and volunteer forces fighting alongside Ukrainian troops -- have pressed many to brave the mine-strewn fields to try to recover household items.

Others have moved to the town of Berdyanske just 500 metres (yards) to the west. The one-time resort is separated from Shyrokyne by an abandoned minefield that is now an indelible part of the devastated landscape.

"Here, we only travel by road," 64-year-old Kateryna Omelchuk said while spreading feed for chickens she knows will soon die of starvation because the rich surrounding earth has remained unploughed for nearly two years.

"We have not ventured into the fields in a long time. And this year, the tractor drivers refused to work my vegetable plot," she sighed.

"I will have to kill them all," Omelchuk said of her chickens. "Even the animals are suffering from the war."

Mutual recriminations

Shyrokyne technically lies within a 30-kilometre (20-mile) wide buffer zone that stretches for 500 kilometres and splits militia-run regions from the rest of Ukraine.

For many, a two-month lull in fighting is now a distant memory because of daily shelling by opposing forces on the edge of town.

"The (September 1) armistice is broken every day," local Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Kindsfater told AFP.

"Allowing residents into Shyrokyne now would only further endanger their lives. The tripwires are everywhere. And so are the (Donetsk) fighters."

Rebels say Ukraine's volunteer Azov battalion -- known for its ferocity and accused by some rights groups of committing war crimes -- is in real control of the tiny town.

Donetsk rebel military commander Eduard Basurin said Azov fighters were keeping residents out to prevent people witnessing what he said were truce violations.

Locals seem to care little about who is actually holding their town.

"People just want to get home and collect their things," said 58-year-old unemployed steelworker Mykola Podobedov.

"Both sides are stealing everything they can lay their hands on."
 

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 #36
Washington Post
December 1, 2015
On Ukraine's front lines, U.S.-supplied equipment is falling apart
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a staff writer and a former Marine infantryman.
 
The United States has delivered more than $260 million in non-lethal military equipment to help the government of Ukraine in its fight against a Russian-backed insurgency, but some of the U.S.-supplied gear meant to protect and transport Ukrainian military forces is little more than junk.

On the outskirts of the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, for example, one Ukrainian special forces unit is using U.S.-supplied Humvees dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s, based on serial numbers on the vehicles.

Three of the Humvees had plastic doors and windows - barely any protection at all. The tires on one of the trucks blew apart after driving only a few hundred kilometers, the result of sitting in a warehouse too long, said one mechanic.

Another infantry unit of approximately 120 men received from the Pentagon a single bulletproof vest - a type that U.S. troops stopped using in combat during the mid-2000s.

"If the Americans are going to send us equipment, don't send us secondhand stuff," said one Ukrainian special forces commander, who like other soldiers spoke on condition of anonymity to criticize the condition of his unit's gear.

The obsolete equipment was identified on a tour near the front lines in eastern Ukraine with help from mechanics serving in the Ukrainian army and through interviews with front-line troops. In some cases, serial numbers were used to trace the origins of certain vehicles.

The decaying state of U.S.-supplied equipment on Ukraine's front lines has bred distrust and lowered morale among Ukrainian troops, soldiers said. Experts said the low quality of the gear also calls into question the U.S. government's commitment to a war that is entering its second year, with well-equipped Russian-backed separatists still firmly entrenched in Ukraine's eastern region.

In recent weeks, attacks along Ukraine's front lines have spiked, with Ukrainian troops reporting casualties almost daily. Last month, five Ukrainian soldiers were killed in one day.

"Despite what people think, this is still a war," a different Ukrainian special forces soldier said.

The Humvees observed near the front of the fighting were part of a batch of about 100 sent to Ukraine earlier this year. The vehicles were shipped under a special executive power granted by Congress that allows the president to send equipment to foreign countries quickly.

Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col Joe Sowers wouldn't comment directly on the condition of the vehicles but said in an e-mail that the United States has continued to send equipment and provide training "to help Ukraine better monitor and secure its border, operate more safely and effectively, and preserve and enforce its territorial integrity."

U.S. officials attributed the presence of rundown U.S. defense equipment on Ukraine's front lines to the need to get equipment to Ukraine quickly at the start of the war.

According to a senior Defense Department official, the United States was wholly unprepared for Russia's involvement in Ukraine and had to source funds and respond to Ukraine's requests for aid from a "cold start."

"We wanted to get things there as fast as possible and we had no money appropriated for this crisis," said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive policy issues. "Does that means everything was perfect? Of course not."

It is unclear how much of the material sent to Ukraine is secondhand and antiquated. The U.S. government has also sent new equipment, such as night vision and first-aid kits. Troops there have also received advanced equipment such as counter artillery, counter mortar radars, and communications gear.

In addition to the dated vehicles already sent, another 100 Humvees of similar vintage have been authorized to be offered for shipment to Ukraine as part of the military's standard program for transferring extra equipment "as is" to foreign countries.

The program sends "the stuff that's sitting around somewhere that no service can use," said an official at the Pentagon who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about the equipment. "In some cases Humvees might be provided ... for spare parts. They're not good enough to drive, but you can tear them apart and cannibalize [them]."

In the case of the Humvees in Ukraine, Lt. Col. Andrei, the operations chief of the unit that received the vehicles, said they were supposed to be sent in working order - not stripped for parts. The cost to purchase a Humvee tire in Ukraine is roughly $1,000, so instead the unit bought a cheap used SUV for a little more than what it would take to replace two Humvee tires.

"Why would I pay to keep replacing tires when I could just buy a car?" asked Andrei, who allowed only his first name to be used to protect his family living in Russian-occupied territory.

The special presidential authority is just one of five Defense and State department programs tapped to supply Ukraine in the months since the start of the conflict.

The Pentagon has also devoted resources to the war by having Army units establish various training programs to boost the fledgling Ukrainian military and its abilities to maintain itself. To some however, the battered equipment on the war's front lines is emblematic of a U.S. policy that has done the minimum to bolster the Ukrainian government and deter a reinvigorated Russia.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said there is strong bipartisan support in Congress to help Ukraine. Thornberry pointed to the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act that included $300 million in support - including lethal aid - for the embattled eastern European country. The only issue, Thornberry added, is that "we can't make the president deliver it."

The administration's "overriding concern here is to avoid aggravating Putin," said Thornberry in a recent phone interview. "And it has a broader effect in limiting the Ukrainians' ability to defend their country."

When asked about the administration's goals, a spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to comment on the record. The current aid policy toward Ukraine is representative of the Obama administration's desire to "do enough militarily to ensure the Ukrainians can defend their territory," said Evelyn N. Farkas, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia. But she said that more could be done to deter future attacks.

"Right now, considering the stakes, our resources are out of whack," Farkas said.

She added that a diplomatic solution to the crisis can be reached through stronger engagement - namely in the form of sending weapons to Ukraine.

The White House, though, has resisted sending lethal aid with a belief that sending the weapons to Ukrainian troops would only escalate the conflict, said Farkas.

"This is about our values. This is about the right of Ukraine's citizens to elect their government and to be fully sovereign and not under Russia's thumb," she said. "We have to take a stand and we have to make sure Ukraine succeeds."

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 #37
www.thedailybeast.com
December 1, 2015
Ukraine's Ultra-Right Cuts the Lights on Crimea
Ukrainian activists, including the far right, are blowing up power lines in the Russian-occupied peninsula and risking an even greater confrontation between Kiev and Moscow.
By Anna Nemtsova

MOSCOW-On Sunday, Nov. 22, the lights went off for close to two million people in Crimea.

Since early September, Ukrainian activists - camouflage-wearing militia from the nationalist Right Sector and Tatar refugees from Crimea - had been threatening to cut off Crimea from all key resources, including electricity. This would be punishment for the Russian seizure and annexation of the strategic peninsula. And now the activists had carried out their threat. Two explosions had collapsed pylons supporting the Kakhovskaya-Titan and Melitopol-Dzhankoi power lines.  The result was an almost complete blackout. By Monday about 1.9 million people were left without power and light.

The timing was significant. This was the second anniversary of the uprising now known as the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, and suddenly Crimea was plunged into darkness. Crimean drivers complained of long lines outside every gas station. For most of the day time private apartments had no light.

And Russia and Ukraine, it seems, are plunged into a new wave of mutual abuses, threats of "mirror responses." Although the hot war in Donbas seemed to have abated this fall, with a noticeable spike in fighting in the past two weeks, Russia and Ukraine have promised mutual retaliation. "The tensions continue, the conflict on the border has not been frozen," the Fyodor Lukyanov, the chair of the pro-Kremlin Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. "But Russia's ambitions have dried out in Ukraine."

This was the same day that Moscow was dealing with another conflict, this one with Turkey, whose fighter jets shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber." "The more the world pays attention to Syria, the harder Ukrainian side works on staging radical recidivous attacks in order to attract attention," Lukyanov said. The expert also admitted that "the ceasefire in Donbas held better in September but now we see, that the situation is worsening, again."

Moscow was furious with Ukraine for the Crimea blackout, and is eager for revenge. Last week, Russian energy minister Alexander Novak suggested that Russia would stop supplying coal to Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich supported the idea. If implemented, the ban would stop about 200-300,000 tons of Russian coal from entering Ukraine - about a third of all the coal Ukraine needs annually.

Russian officials referred to the explosions on the Crimean border as to "terrorist acts" and complain that Kiev was not able to bring repair crews to the blown up towers. And Ukrainian authorities struggled to decide what to do next, how to use the blackout in the negotiation process with Russia.

The first reaction Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had on day one of the outage last week was to cut all trade with Crimea. That was exactly what Crimea blockade protesters have demanded since early September.

Right Sector's spokesman Aleksey Byk had declared, "It will be a complete blockade. We have managed to block all the road. Then we are discussing the cut of all electricity power lines or just turn them off, so the peninsular will turn into a real island." Byk also promised a food blockade.

Although going against any civil movements is highly unpopular, Kiev struggled to take control of the road to the peninsula. Last Friday, Ukrainian Interior Ministry commander Ilya Kiva was assigned to bring electricians and fix the blown-up towers in Chaplynka. His men were attacked on the road by camouflaged militiamen; some activists were in black balaclavas.

Later that evening, Khiva heard two explosions. By Monday, all of Crimea had been switched off, according to Viktor Plakida, head of Crimea's electricity company Krymenergo. Some shops and gas stations closed down and nobody knew for how long. Local leaders promised to restore power lines by mid-December. That would be within days of Moscow's promised embargo on Ukrainian goods, set for January 1.

The Kremlin has already had success imposing economic embargoes as retaliation against its neighbors. The impact of Russian sanctions damaged Georgia's economy by $600 million in 2006, a significant amount for a small developing country. Then, as a result of its summer war with Russia in 2008, Georgia lost 20 percent of its territory. Since then, Tbilisi's made an accommodation with having its land annexed at gunpoint by offering itself as a far more competent and preferable government under which to live than Moscow's. "The Russian military currently builds barbwire fences to cut us from our territories, but we are optimistic, as people on the other side of the fence prefer to travel to Georgia for medical treatment and education because our services are non-corrupt, unlike in Russia," Georgia's Minister of Reconciliation and Civil Equality Paata Zareishvili told The Daily Beast.

For its part, Kiev has yet to work out a strategy for dealing with an occupied Crimea, and an increasingly restive civil protest movements that wants to reclaim the peninsula by any means necessary. "Instead of 'What to do?' our society is still offered to think of 'Who is guilty?'," Ukraine's independent newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda reported earlier this week.

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 #38
State of emergency over Crimean power blackout to last until New Year - leader

SIMFEROPOL, December 1. /TASS/. The state of emergency introduced in Crimea amid the suspended power supply from Ukraine will last until the New Year, the head of the republic, Sergey Aksyonov, said on Tuesday.

"I think the state of emergency will be in force until the New Year, at least, until everything resumes its natural course," Aksyonov said in an interview with TASS.

The situation with electricity supplies to the peninsula should normalize after the launch of the first leg of the so-called energy bridge from southern Russia's Krasnodar Territory scheduled for December 20.

"We expect that the first leg will give at least 260 MW. We already understand how the distribution will happen: first, the residential areas will receive additional supply," Aksyonov said.

Aksyonov stressed that the launch of the first leg will not solve the problem entirely and will cover only half of the peninsula's needs as the boiler stations will start working.

"Besides, when we solve the issues of heating and electricity supplies to residential houses, we will need to launch industrial enterprises somehow," the head of the republic said, adding that the priority is still to ensure power supplies for all the residents.

Crimea declared a state of emergency on November 22 after explosions cut off electricity supply from Ukraine. This forced the peninsula to rely on generators. Authorities have introduced a schedule of rotating blackouts.

Work is in full swing to launch an energy bridge from mainland Russia to Crimea along the Kerch Strait seabed to have electric power - cut off when key supply pylons were damaged by Ukrainian radicals - restored by the New Year holidays.

Heating has already been returned to more than half the peninsula's multi-storey apartment houses, the republic's government reports on its website, specifying that as of Tuesday, this is 747 houses or 52% of all apartment blocks there. Work to launch the heating season in full is to be finished by December 7.

Russian Minister for Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov is personally controlling the work of mobile sources of electricity supply and monitoring socially important facilities. Special attention was paid to families with many children and elderly residents, he told TASS.

Crimea received electricity supply from Ukraine's Kherson region via four power transmission lines. On November 22, all four were damaged by Ukrainian radicals, cutting the peninsula's current.

This has forced Crimea to rely on generators. Authorities declared a state of emergency and introduced a schedule of rotating blackouts.

Crimean blockade

The blockade of Crimea that started on September 20 may end after Ukraine ousts its incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, Sergei Aksyonov said.

"It is impossible to build any political relations with this crazy government (of Ukraine - TASS). I am convinced we will improve our relations with Ukraine and the border will open as soon as the incumbent president of Ukraine is ousted from power," Aksyonov said in an interview with TASS.

On September 20, the deputies of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (parliament), Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, as well as Lenur Islyamov, Crimea's former vice-premier and the owner of the ATR TV channel, imposed a food blockade on the peninsula. Activists of the Mejilis of Crimean Tatars, which is not registered in Russia, and members of the Right Sector extremist movement, which is banned in Russia, are stopping trucks with Ukrainian food at the border with Crimea.

Crimea's Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov blames Kiev for the blockade.

"Who are these people on the border? It even looks funny! Two Crimean Tatars are blocking the soldiers of Ukrainian armed forces. They could have staged a more impressive show. But apparently they are trying to save the money," Aksyonov stressed.

On the whole, the Crimean authorities have no illusions. They do not think that Ukraine is going to lift the food or energy blockade of Crimea. "We have erased the period of our joint history with Ukraine forever. They are simply widening the gap, which used to be between us. But they are harming the citizens of Ukraine, in the first place," Aksyonov said.

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 #39
Reuters
December 1, 2015
Grim reality sets in for Ukraine wheat crop
BY KAREN BRAUN

Ukraine's 2016 wheat crop is now sailing into uncharted waters given both the significantly missed planting target and a record percentage of crops in poor condition.

Ukraine, the world's sixth-largest wheat exporter, has faced one of the most challenging winter planting campaigns this year than ever before in the wake of a historic drought that set in during late summer.

As a result, planting progress and plant emergence has been considerably behind normal pace all along, and crop health has suffered immensely.

The outlook was rather gloomy as of early November, but hope still remained that Ukrainian farmers could boost winter wheat area throughout the month with help from favorable weather, which would also presumably help improve overall plant conditions.

But despite the seemingly supportive weather during November, crop conditions worsened throughout the month. Planting progressed in the meantime, though not significantly, but now the planting window has more or less closed.

This all but confirms the significant area reduction for the 2016 wheat harvest. Even with optimistic spring wheat area forecasts, the 10 percent cut in planned winter wheat area will likely lead to the smallest wheat harvest since 2012 and a consequential slash in exports.

GOOD WEATHER, WORSE CONDITIONS

As of Monday, 91 percent of the intended winter wheat area had been planted, up from 87 percent at the beginning of November.

Typically, winter wheat planting should conclude in the vicinity of Nov. 15. Even during the dry planting campaigns of 2011 and 2014, planting was finished close to this date.

Ukraine is highly unlikely to make much more progress on winter plantings, if any, since planting this late is highly risky. Seeds would have very low chances of sprouting before winter sets in for good, so the current winter wheat sown area of just over 5.6 million hectares can probably be taken as a "soft" final number.

Even more worrisome than the failure of the winter wheat area to hit expectations is the deterioration of crop conditions to historic lows in the second half of November, despite supportive weather and fast emergence.

The amount of emerged winter crops jumped from 62 percent on Nov. 16 to 80 percent on Nov. 26, likely owing to the record warm weather and plentiful rainfall during this period. (tmsnrt.rs/1Njneq8)

This percentage usually hits the mid-90s by the end of November, and the only other anomaly in recent history was the similarly dry year of 2011, when only 78 percent of winter crops had sprouted by month's end. (tmsnrt.rs/21q1frV)

But despite good weather and large gains in emergence, a record-low 36 percent of emerged winter crops are in poor condition as of Nov. 26, up 5 percent from the beginning of the month.

Loss of area combined with the recent conditions has prompted Ukrainian agency UkrAgroConsult to lower its 2016/17 production forecast to 17.8 million tons, down nearly one-third from last year.

On Nov. 16, a representative from Ukraine's agriculture ministry suggested that 2016/17 wheat exports could fall to 3.5 million tons, which would represent a drastic decline of 13 million tons from the planned export volume for 2015/16. This would drop Ukraine from the sixth-largest wheat exporting nation to the eighth largest.

GLIMMER OF HOPE AHEAD?

Aside from the warm recent temperatures, Ukraine recorded measurable precipitation every day from Nov. 7 to Nov. 28. (tmsnrt.rs/1NjoBVE) As such, soil moisture has improved somewhat throughout November.

Looking ahead, the weather will likely continue to cooperate over the next couple of weeks with no deep freezes on the horizon. Rainfall frequency will be slightly less than recently, though accumulations should be at least near average.

Temperatures will be very favorable and well above-average through the first half of December. Low temperatures are expected to touch freezing levels only a couple of times, but otherwise, daytime highs should reach near 40 Fahrenheit (4.4 Celsius).

It is very likely that the warm, wet weather will continue to accelerate the emergence of winter crops, though there is no guarantee that this weather will actually help improve the conditions, as was demonstrated in November.

Another potentially positive factor for the 2016 Ukraine wheat harvest is the potential for increased spring wheat area, but the impact on total production might be marginal.

On Nov. 17, UkrAgroConsult estimated that 240,000 hectares of wheat will be planted in the spring, a 40 percent increase on the year. But the increase in spring wheat area will not offset the loss in winter wheat area, and spring wheat yields are considerably lower than those of winter wheat.

With the large cut to wheat area all but locked in for the 2016 harvest, wheat production will be heavily reliant on yield.

Combining a reasonable assumption for total harvested area with a simple trend yield, Ukraine would end up harvesting close to 21 million tons of wheat in 2016. But any weather issues in the spring might send that number below 20 million.

Either way, it is probably time to start preparing for sizable cut to Ukraine wheat exports in 2016/17.

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 #40
Ukrainian MP accuses Saakashvili of extortion, racketeering in Odessa

KIEV, December 1. /TASS/. Deputy of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Dmitry Golubev has accused the governor of the Odessa region, Mikhail Saakashvili, of racketeering and extortion.

"Saakashvili has started racketeering in Odessa. Large enterprises and businesspeople have been receiving letters from his adviser with a request, for example, to find a way to provide charitable contribution in the amount of 2.5 million hryvnia ($104,000) and thanks for the attention and understanding. And they pay the money," the lawmaker said on TV Channel 112 on Tuesday.

According to him, "almost all major Odessa businessmen pay Saakashvili."

"I have the materials that confirm my words. I will certainly publish them. And those who don't want to pay are visited by a Georgian prosecutor and a Georgian police officer. People have nobody to complain to... Saakashvili has created a vicious circle," Golubev said.

Previously, Saakashvili has repeatedly accused the government and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk of corruption.

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 #41
Kyiv Post
November 30, 2015
Yatsenyuk ally says he will resign from parliament amid corruption scandal
By Oleg Sukhov

Mykola Martynenko, an ally of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said on Nov. 30 that he had submitted his resignation as a member of the Verkhovna Rada.

The decision comes amid a high-profile corruption scandal around Martynenko.

Swiss and Czech prosecutors are investigating Martynenko on suspicion of accepting 30 million Swiss francs from Czech engineering firm Skoda for giving it a contract to supply equipment to state-owned nuclear power firm Energoatom.

Last week Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko's bloc, published documents from Swiss prosecutors that detail the corruption accusations and ask for help from Ukrainian prosecutors, assistance that evidently was not forthcoming.

Ukrainian authorities have shown no interest in investigating Martynenko, however.

"Given that attacks against me are also attacks against the Cabinet and the authorities in general, I submit my resignation as a lawmaker and voluntarily renounce my parliamentary immunity," Martynenko, a member of Yatsenyuk's People's Front faction and head of the Verkhovna Rada's fuel and energy committee, said on the Free Speech talk show on the ICTV television channel.

He urged parliament to vote on the issue next week, possibly on Dec. 10.

Martynenko also said he was ready to testify in Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine in his case.

"I'm going to protect myself as a private citizen without an MP's mandate," he said. "I will prove that I'm right through legal means."

He added that he would "necessarily find the organizers" of the alleged smear campaign against him.

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 #42
Atlantic Council
November 30, 2015
Ukraine Two Years After Euromaidan: What Has Been Accomplished?
BY Anders Åslund,  a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of "Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It."
   
Two years ago, popular protests erupted against Ukraine's former President Viktor Yanukovych on Kyiv's Maidan. Since then, Ukraine's economy has deteriorated sharply, with a contraction of 18 percent in two years, but the Poroshenko Bloc was the biggest party by far in the October 25 local elections. One might say that the Ukrainian nation has been forged in defense against Russian aggression, and many reforms have been carried out.

Yanukovych fell on February 21, 2014, and the May 25 presidential election of that year was the first step toward reforms. Yet only two important reform laws were adopted in 2014: the law on reform of higher education, which is being successfully implemented, and the law on lustration, which has largely been stalled.

A new parliament was needed for reform. Fortunately, it was successfully elected on October 26, 2014. Fifty-six percent of the parliamentarians were new, but the other 44 percent had been deputies before and were used to the old bad ways. Still, on December 2, a new reformist government was formed. One week later, it presented a sound radical reform program.

Hundreds of reform laws have been adopted, a few at a time. Alexander Motyl has made a useful overview of the accomplishments on general indicators, arriving at quite a positive view. This is my assessment of the key economic reforms.

1. A floating exchange rate was introduced in November 2013. The old pegged exchange rate was hopelessly overvalued, leading to a large current account deficit that Ukraine could not finance. The current exchange rate is only one-third of what it was two years ago, but the current account is in balance, even though Russian trade sanctions have eliminated three-quarters of Ukraine's exports to Russia.

2. The most important reform has been the increase in energy prices that occurred on April 1 and eliminated most privileged arbitrage in the energy sector. Energy subsidies have fallen by roughly 6 percent of GDP, gas imports have plummeted, and gas consumption has fallen by 25 percent in one year. Next, real markets for gas and electricity should be created. The law on the gas market has been adopted, but not yet implemented.

3. Ukraine has carried out a major fiscal adjustment, cutting public expenditures from 53 percent of GDP to 46 percent of GDP. The budget is more or less in balance on a cash basis. This has been accomplished largely by cutting energy subsidies. In addition, special pensions have been reduced and some pension costs have been inflated away.

4. In one-and-a-half years, sixty-three out of a total of 180 banks have been closed down, and banks' ultimate beneficiaries have been forced to reveal themselves. Presumably another fifty banks need to be shut, completely restructuring the Ukrainian banking system.

5. A great deal has been done to increase transparency, facilitated by the Internet. The government has established a number of databases listing the owners of banks and real estate. A public database has also been established for public expenditures.

6. Substantial deregulation has been carried out and inspections have been reduced

7. A major improvement in state procurement is underway through the electronic procurement system that is gradually being introduced.

8. In March, the government secured a large financing package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of $17.5 billion; the IMF has also restructured foreign debt of $18 billion.

Thanks to these reforms, the economy seems to have stabilized. GDP increased by 0.7 percent between the second and third quarter of this year, though it was still down 7 percent year-over-year. The government hopes to reach zero decline year-over-year in the fourth quarter. The exchange rate has stabilized since March at around 22-24 hryvnia per dollar. The country's international reserves have increased from $5 billion in March to $13 billion at present. Inflation peaked at 61 percent in April because of devaluation and energy price increases, but is falling fast.

The critical shortcoming of Ukraine's current reforms is the absence of reforms in the judiciary system. The prosecutor general's office needs to be cleaned up, and then the court should be reformed, which is a complex task.

Ukraine has 1,833 state corporations that are a persistent source of corruption. The government has failed to privatize one single enterprise because of deeply ingrained vested interests. It could sell off the 1,500 enterprises that are of little or no value at simple regional auctions, so that they no longer suck resources from the state and their assets can be used legally by private entrepreneurs.

Nor has any public administration reform been carried out. Salaries are kept purposefully low, forcing public officials to depend on other incomes. Ukraine's independent oil and gas production is falling sharply because of prohibitive conditions seemingly designed to force the current owners out of business, when Ukraine actually needs to boost domestic gas and oil production. Nothing has been done about improving the healthcare or public school systems, but these are complex issues that are typically carried out in a later wave of reforms.

Before the local elections on October 25, concerns were raised that people would turn against reform and vote for extreme populists, but that did not happen. Election results were mixed, offering no clear signal. The current danger is that the momentum for reform is running out.

The critical hurdle is the adoption of a new tax system and budget for 2016, for which the government has failed to mobilize sufficient parliamentary support. The IMF has now sent two missions to complete a second review of its program, but they have come back without any results. A third mission will presumably be sent out in December and it has to succeed, if Ukraine's finances are to stay afloat.

Ukraine's greatest asset is its strong civil society. Ukraine is far too transparent and open to stay so corrupt. Ukrainians are also far too educated to stay so poor. Something has to give. It is not likely to be the Ukrainian population.

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 #43
Politico.eu
November 27, 2015
'I'm gay in Ukraine and my country despises me'
Ukraine's crisis is not just military and political, it is social and cultural.
By MAXIM ERISTAVI
Maxim Eristavi is a co-founder of Hromadske International news network, based in Kiev.

KIEV - In my long struggle to both be true to myself and to my homeland I always lose. I still hope to see a ray of light. Sometimes I do.

Like during a groundbreaking - for Ukraine - queer art-show that opened in Kiev in October.

This is the first time that an LGBTI-themed installation occupies the most popular modern art space in the country. Thousands of people visit every week, the entrance guarded by heavy security. Created by American artist Carlos Motta, the exhibition features eleven prominent queer Ukrainians, including myself. Two of us decided to cover our faces. In a European country of 45 million being openly gay can not only destroy your life, it can cost you your life.

I spent some time standing near a huge plasma screen. It played a filmed interview in which I shared personal stories about my daily life as a gay man in Ukraine. After watching the interview, most visitors avoided making eye contact with me - not surprising in a country where more than 70 percent still consider homosexuality a disease. But there were many who smiled and nodded in support instead. A few people even brought their kids to the installation. That was a ray of light for me. But unfortunately the clouds are getting darker every day.

A few weeks later, the Ukrainian Parliament passed an amendment granting LGBTI Ukrainians protection from discrimination in the workplace, after only nine voting attempts and heated debates. It is a crucial clause on the path to securing a visa-free travel regime with the EU. Despite rampant homophobia among local political elites, Yuriy Lutsenko, the Parliament's majority leader and head of President Poroshenko's parliamentary group, tried to convince the media that the reason there was no consensus on the anti-discrimination clause was just because - well, no LGBTI discrimination exists in Ukraine.

"Some 'creative' Ukrainians come to Europe and say they are LGBTI and that in their homeland country their rights are not guaranteed, and, for example, in the Netherlands those guarantees exist," Lutsenko said. "They would automatically receive an asylum based on the claim. And, of course, the Netherlands would say to us: Well, change the law, do not let those opportunistic scammers accuse Ukraine of endangering rights of particular minorities."

In his opinion, "it is better to have gay parades in Kiev, rather than Russian tanks," he added.

"Ukraine will never have same-sex marriages. God help us, so it'll never happen," Volodymyr Groisman, the Parliament's speaker, said during the vote.

To be honest, I haven't felt like celebrating: It's like they've thrown that equality law in my face, spat on me too. The amendment they passed is temporary: It is an equality clause to a labor code effective since Soviet times. A new code is on its way to a second, final reading and doesn't include any mention of LGBTI rights. The technicality creates a temporary alley for Ukraine to fulfill visa-free demands, without granting any equality in the long run.

The only thing I could think of at the time was whether or not the EU would blink. Because, we, the Ukrainian LGBTI community, have been backstabbed by the EU before.

Last year the European Commission silently backed down before the homophobic Ukrainian government and ditched a crucial LGBTI anti-discrimination provision for the local labor code from bilateral talks.

While the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was in Kiev trying to lure the Ukrainian government into adopting legislation needed for a visa-free agreement, I couldn't stop thinking about what happened to me 10 years ago. I was 19 years old, and working as a reporter, when my boss outed me, in front of a room full of our newsroom's top managers, and threatened to out me to my parents too - all because I dared ask for the money she owed me.

It is still the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me. But these things - and worse - will keep happening in Ukraine because gay workers are granted no protection from discrimination. Equality is still a dirty word in Ukraine.

The rising violence against the queer community in Ukraine is largely ignored by both local and foreign media. While traveling abroad and telling the stories of LGBTI Ukrainians, I'm often asked if I could provide specific statistics of LGBTI-related murders and assaults. Well, it's next to impossible. How to compile numbers about a hate crime not recognized as such by Ukrainian law? In most cases local law-enforcement bodies classify the incidents as drunk violence or robbery. If you are naïve enough to file a police report after you are attacked, you won't be treated seriously.

A hate crime at an LGBTI-movie screening in Kiev that resulted in a movie theater burning to the ground last year was classified as "hooliganism." Similar attacks occurred in LGBTI community centers around the country last year. We don't have conclusive information about what happened to more than two dozen attackers of the Kiev Pride who were detained this year. But I can give an educated guess, given that no local LGBTI people I have met and who have been attacked have seen justice.

I can understand how hard it is to reinstate the rule of law after a dramatic revolution and in the middle of a foreign-backed insurgency. I get it. But what's unacceptable is the government's complete silence, and the absence of any official condemnation of the rise in LGBTI violence in the country.

This summer the southern city of Odessa, the fourth largest in the country, banned its local gay pride celebration. The ban on the city's first, and Ukraine's third, LGBTI pride event was a major setback for the fight for equal civil rights in Eastern Europe. It's a slap in the face for local LGBTI people who dared to hope for change after this year's semi-success, when Kiev Pride resumed.

So here we are. It is 2015 and Ukraine still does not have a single law that protects gay people from hate speech or hate crimes. But on the same day the ban on Odessa's pride parade was introduced, Pavlo Unguryan, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, can go on live TV in Odessa and call homosexuality "a treatable disease" and accuse gay people of pedophilia. And return to his job as an MP with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's party as if nothing happened. None of his 450 colleagues publicly shamed him. This same guy is a member of a parliamentary contact group with the United States. I can only imagine how hard it is for him to travel to the U.S. where gay people are mostly being treated, well, as people.

That said, the start of a change can be felt in Parliament: Two deputies showed up for this year's Kiev Pride. Sergii Leshchenko and Svitlana Zalishchuk. That's two out of 450. But they were the first ever MPs to march shoulder to shoulder with the city's gay population. Other so-called reformist politicians, like Kiev's major Vitali Klitschko, openly called for the march to be canceled.

I also salute those hundreds of policemen who showed up to protect the Ukrainian capital's pride parade. Some were injured in the ensuing violence. One policemen was hit with a homemade grenade packed with metal that the Neo-Nazis brought with them - with the intention to kill. The LGBTI community raised a sizeable sum of money for the officer's hospital treatment. This happened exactly a year after the same police force refused to protect the first post-revolutionary Kiev Pride and it was canceled.

Broad homophobia in Ukraine is mostly a result of lack of education. As an experiment in Central Ukraine shows, most people don't know anyone who is openly gay, or even what LGBTI stands for. In Kryvyi Rih, local activists interviewed people on the streets and asked a simple question: "What do you think about heterosexuals?" Most people answered with disgust that they condemn heterosexuals as something unnatural. If they had understood what they were saying, Kryvyi Rih would have to be Ukraine's most gay-friendly city.

When you grow up in Ukraine, you don't meet queer people. I was apparently the only gay kid in school, and a constant target for bullies. And it doesn't get better. Nobody is out, except for a handful of LGBTI activists. Being a proud gay person in Eastern Europe is very lonely.

Recently I met a personal hero of mine, one of the most powerful openly gay people in the region - Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkēvičs. While I was filming an interview with him for the Hromadske International news network (of which I am a co-founder), he stressed the importance of "gradual changes" when it comes to civil rights equality in the region.

"I don't want to wait 30 years to have my equality," I snapped at his comment, reflexively. In 2015 making "gradual changes" in developing societies doesn't work the way it used to. As I approach 30, I watch my friends in the States or in Europe getting married, having kids, creating families. And I feel like my life is passing me by. As though I'm being cruelly punished for being born in the wrong country, a country where you don't dare dream of having a normal family, but find yourself carefully weighing your security options before you kiss your long-time partner in public, no matter how happy you are to see him. You patiently wait to be in the privacy of your own home.

Many would say this toxic, self-destructive option is "something, at least." But I refuse to play at Stockholm syndrome in relationships with my own country, the country where I grew up, and that I support with my taxes and hard-earned money. I refuse to give up. I'll fight back. Because by fighting back you not only give your country a second chance; by fighting back you give yourself that same chance. It's just that there's a limited number of second chances on offer.

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 #44
Bloomberg
November 30, 2015
Banks Too Big to Sanction as War Wrecks Russia's Ukraine Ties
By Volodymyr Verbyany and Jake Rudnitsky

Your enemy's bank is your friend.

Or so Ukraine wants to believe after giving Russian banks a pass more than a year and a half into a separatist insurgency it blames on the Kremlin. Banks including state-run lenders sanctioned by the U.S. and the European Union have clung to their decade-long push into Ukraine, dodging the political acrimony that's devastated business ties from airlines to energy.

"We treat all of them like Ukrainian banks," National Bank of Ukraine Governor Valeriya Gontareva said in an interview. "There's absolutely equal treatment and a level playing field for all banks in Ukraine."

The links between banks in the two most populous ex-Soviet states have preserved what economic ties could be salvaged after Europe's bloodiest conflict since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Exiting the market would be costly for Russian lenders given the grim outlook for the economy and a lack of potential buyers. While the battlefields of eastern Ukraine have grown quieter since a truce negotiated in February, a rift with Russia still festers as the Kremlin considers a ban on Ukrainian food and threatens to push Ukraine into default.

Crisis Spillover

Following months of deposit outflows and a rout in the hryvnia, banking is essential if Ukraine's battered economy continues to recover after exiting six quarters of recession. The crisis in Ukraine, which deepened after President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea in March 2014, quickly engulfed the country's financial industry as the authorities imposed capital controls and the currency plummeted.

The share of overdue loans has more than doubled since the start of 2014 and was at 19.9 percent as of Oct. 1, central bank data show. Ukraine is liquidating 56 lenders, with eight declared insolvent. At least four, including Privatbank and AT Oschadbank, the country's two largest, were forced to restructure debt.

As their competitors failed or retreated, Russia's second-largest private lender, Alfa Bank OJSC, is looking to add to its Ukrainian assets by buying UniCredit SpA's local subsidiary. Sberbank PJSC, VTB Bank PJSC and others are recapitalizing their units by $2 billion to avoid running afoul of the Ukrainian central bank's requirements. Russian lenders have increased their share in Ukraine's banking assets since the beginning of the crisis to 15 percent from 11 percent.

Record Losses

UniCredit's planned sale shows why Russian lenders have little choice but to double down in Ukraine or write off a large portion of investments made since the mid-2000s. The Milan-based bank will probably have to record currency losses once the sale is completed, and it may have to inject capital and forgive loans to the Ukrainian unit before a possible deal, according to its first-half report published in August. VTB already had a 85.4 billion-ruble ($1.3 billion) loss on its Ukrainian operations last year.

"They have enough issues to address with the domestically owned banks without creating more headaches by going after the Russian banks," Timothy Ash, a credit strategist at Nomura International Plc. in London, said by e-mail. "The overall investment is small change for Russia Inc. relative to the geopolitical leverage that this gives."

Airlines, Energy

The economic relationship between Russia and Ukraine lies in ruins. Flights between the two countries were canceled on Oct. 25 following sanctions against Russian airlines imposed by Ukraine. Natural gas sales, a political lever the Kremlin has used against Ukraine in the past, were halted again in late November after a three-month disruption earlier this year. Russia is also threatening to stop coal deliveries to retaliate for the delay in restoring electricity supplies to Crimea.

Another dispute between the nations is a $15 billion debt restructuring Ukraine negotiated with private foreign creditors, which Russia has refused to join. Russian demands for repayments of a $3 billion bond coming due in December have been countered by a Ukrainian threat to default, with both sides saying they're ready to take the fight to court.

Selective Sanctions

Most Russian companies operating in Ukraine have been forced to take sides. In October, Russia's largest wireless carrier Mobile TeleSystems PJSC agreed to lease Vodafone Group Plc's brand in Ukraine to hide its link with its home country. Lukoil PJSC, Russia's second-largest oil producer, in April closed the sale of its retail and storage network in Ukraine, which included about 240 filling stations.

Russian banks also came under scrutiny not long after the separatist rebellion erupted, with Ukraine's state security service opening a criminal case in April 2014 against officials at an unidentified Russian lender for financing terrorist activities. While Ukraine has sanctioned 24 Russian banks, it isn't targeting lenders with significant holdings in Ukraine.

Untouched were Sberbank, Vnesheconombank, VTB and Alfa, whose units together make up 99 percent of Russian assets in the industry, according to Fitch Ratings analyst Olga Ignatieva.

Those banks "are quite important for the sector to be challenged," she said. "The banking system -- as well as Russian subs -- have yet to emerge from the severe stress they've been through from the start of 2014."

Hurting Yourself

If the biggest Russian banks appear immune to political posturing, that's because sanctions against them would hurt Ukraine's economy exponentially more than a ban on Russian flights transiting through Ukraine's airspace, according to Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarskyi. Without their cooperation, vital parts of the Ukrainian economy could stall, he said, citing Sberbank's efforts as one of the largest creditors to Ukrzaliznytsya to help restructure the rail monopoly's debt of more than 30 billion hryvnia ($1.3 billion).

Even without a clampdown by authorities, the banks have taken a beating as Ukrainians lashed out at Russian-owned business across the country. In hryvnia terms, VTB lost 42 percent of retail deposits since the start of 2014, Sberbank is down 29 percent and Vnesheconombank's Prominvestbank had a 6 percent drop. The country's 10 other top lenders saw a net increase over the period, according to central bank data. Russian banks' subsidiaries in Ukraine will require about $2 billion in recapitalization, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in October.

Stress Tests

Ukraine's central bank expects to complete stress tests of the country's 20 largest lenders by mid-December to determine how much additional capital each bank requires, according to the regulator's press office.

VTB, which has already spent 19.9 billion hryvnia to recapitalize its Ukrainian unit in 2014-2015, sees the momentum turning for Russian banks.

"At the start of the crisis, there was fear of Russian banks on the part of customers," Konstantin Vaysman, the head of VTB's Ukrainian unit, said in an interview. "Now they see us as we are: among the most solvent and reliable banks in Ukraine."

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 #45
Vice.com
December 1, 2015
Did the Islamic State Go Shopping For Weapons in Ukraine?
By Jack Losh

It began with a feverish report in November from a little-known media outlet in the Persian Gulf. "Security forces have busted and dismantled a multi-national cell for the so-called Islamic State," trumpeted the Kuwait News Agency. "The vigilance of security agencies," it said, had dealt "a major blow to terrorist elements" amid a "crackdown on extremists in the state."

Buried in the story was a claim that has tantalized journalists, and mystified weapons experts: The Islamic State has allegedly acquired missile launchers, the kind that can bring down a commercial airliner as it takes off and lands, on European soil. From Ukraine, no less - a country now awash with weapons and destabilized by political crises and 19 months of war against Russian-backed forces.

Kuwait's Interior Ministry claimed to have arrested six people in an extremist cell that was aiding the Islamic State (IS) by brokering arms deals, recruiting fighters, and raising money that was then sent to IS-related bank accounts in Turkey. The detained suspects included a Lebanese citizen, a Kuwaiti, an Egyptian and three Syrians. Two Syrians and two Australian-Lebanese dual nationals, officials said, remained at large.

According to the report, the arrested ringleader - a Lebanese man named as Osama Khayat - had admitted to closing weapons deals at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. These arms allegedly included Chinese-made anti-aircraft missiles, also known as "man-portable air-defence systems" or MANPADS - specifically, FN-6 models - as well as other unidentified weaponry and telecommunications equipment. These, the report claimed, were shipped to Turkey and smuggled to IS fighters in the jihadist group's power base in Syria. An accomplice, a Syrian national named as Abdulkarim Mohammed Selem, was even said to have owned a Ukraine-based arms company.

At first glance, the allegations seem as plausible as they are enticing. After all, the war in eastern Ukraine has ncreased the risk of a huge, illicit arms market burgeoning around the volatile conflict zone. The post-Soviet nation, rated by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt in the world, is home to entrenched multi-national crime networks and has a rich heritage of arms trafficking. Possible gateways to Turkey and the alleged smuggling route lie upon stretches of shoreline along the Azov Sea that are outside of government control, or in the famous port of Odessa, where bribery has been as constant as the tide.

Nor is Ukraine itself immune from the presence of IS. The country's security service, the SBU, is said to have arrested a total of six suspected members of the jihadist movement. "These men are usually in transit from other countries, typically former Soviet states such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan or areas of the North Caucasus," a senior official in the SBU, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told VICE News. "They're on Interpol lists and we find them occasionally hiding out here." Just last week, a suspected jihadist was detained near the capital Kiev, as was a suspected member of the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda.

However, if you look a little deeper, the claims of IS procuring weapons in Ukraine become increasingly implausible. Extensive interviews with experts have highlighted serious holes in Kuwait's version of events.

They question why shoulder-fired missiles made in China would be trafficked out of a country renowned for such a substantial, Soviet-era stockpile of its own. And they insist that any Ukrainian connection would be marginal at most, merely a cog in far bigger war machine. Others even speculate that the claims emerged as part of a possible campaign of misinformation, driven by an intriguing array of potential motives.

So where does IS typically get its gear? There are two sources, said Damian Spleeters, a field investigator with Conflict Armament Research and a specialist on the jihadists' weaponry. "One, their weapons are captured from regime security forces, either in Syria or Iraq," he said. "And two, they're captured from other rebel groups, mainly in Syria."

Iraq and Syria are flooded with MANPADS, including FN-6 models. Gulf states are alleged to have supplied many of these missile launchers to opposition groups via Sudan as part of a proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al Assad's forces. IS has commandeered a slice of this anti-aircraft firepower and used it to bring down regime helicopters.

"There are several other countries within the Middle East and North Africa region - significantly closer than Ukraine, and where IS has stronger ideological ties and logistic freedoms - where further systems could be acquired if necessary," said Nic R. Jenzen-Jones, a weapons expert and director of Armament Research Services, a technical intelligence consultancy. His firm has documented a variety of MANPADS  during Ukraine's ongoing conflict; those weapons originated in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine itself.

This is not the only link made between Islamic State and Ukraine. "While it's the first time such a claim has had widespread attention, the connection has come up before during confidential conversations with other analysts and certain security sources," Jenzen-Jones added.

But there is a huge question mark over the claim that FN-6s were bought in Ukraine, a country that has no documented history of manufacturing or purchasing such equipment. Ukraine's defense ministry was swift to refute Kuwait's allegations and said the country had never "provided the transport for [FN-6s'] shipment."

According to Mark Galeotti, a professor of global affairs at New York University who regularly writes on Eastern European crime, there was very little evidence of Chinese weaponry flowing through Ukraine. Missiles such as the FN-6 models would typically be sourced directly from China, Pakistan, or most likely, Sudan, he said, and it would be very odd for the route to their destination to wind through Ukraine.

It's not impossible: gangsters are often just "opportunists trading on what they've got," he said. But it is perplexing. "If you're a Ukrainian gangster, it's frankly not that difficult to get your hands on Soviet-era MANPADS. Why go to that extra hassle and risk of bringing in these weapons from elsewhere?"

All the experts interviewed said Ukraine's most obvious and easily-accessible shoulder-fired weapons were Soviet models, such as the Igla or SA-7, which has been used in conflicts around the world since the 1970s, from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and civil wars across Latin America.

"I've seen stranger things happen in the international black market of weapons but the claim of the FN-6 is problematic," said Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher at Small Arms Survey and an expert on shoulder-fired missiles. "We have no evidence of the Ukrainian government importing FN-6s so [they] probably wouldn't have been seized from them. And there's no reason why Russian-backed troops would have them, because the Russians produce their own MANPADS."

Schroeder also points to the lack of photographic evidence of FN-6s in Ukraine. "We've seen plenty of pictures of MANPADS in Ukraine - the rebels are hardly shy. But these are all Russian or Soviet-designed systems. So the claim is just very, very odd. It would be such a significant and unlikely development that really needs more proof."

Despite the explanations to the contrary, imagine for a minute that an extremist cell had indeed set a new precedent and brokered such a deal. Who would be the seller? A crooked official in the defense ministry? A rebel commander gone rogue? Perhaps one of Ukraine's ultranationalist paramilitary units?

Certainly not the latter, argues Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer in European Studies at King's College London. "Ukrainian militias have a strong ideology and they hate jihadists," he said. "It's just not their thing. And if these weapons had gone to Syria through the Ukrainian militia network and their Chechen connections, they would have gone to Jabhat al Nusra, which still has a political and social network of Chechens, or Jaish al-Fatah. [They] would not have gone to IS, which insists new recruits break links with their pre-existing ethnic and political milieu."

Given Russia's escalating military campaign against all elements of opposition to Assad, including IS, Ukraine's pro-Russian rebel units seem a highly unlikely merchant to Moscow's own terrorist enemy. "The rebels' ideology just doesn't give them an incentive to do this," Clarkson added.

Organized crime groups, motivated predominantly by profit over principle, may seem a possible candidate for the role of arms dealer. Gangs will cut deals with most people if the price is right. But, often, even they draw the line at terrorists, because that would be just bad for business.

"Terrorists by definition are untrustworthy," said Galeotti. "More to the point, such dealings get you into trouble of a totally new order of magnitude. You've wandered into the realms of national security and you're more likely to be caught - there are more serious agencies tracking these kind of activities. You're less likely to bribe your way out and punishment is more severe."

In recent decades, Ukraine's illicit arms market has flourished, aided and abetted by the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent rise of a gangster capitalism. The country became an important waypoint for international weapons shipments, centered historically on the Black Sea port of Odessa, a key transit point for armaments moving between Russia and the Moldovan breakaway statelet of Transnistria.

The Ukrainian conflict in the east, which erupted last year and has since claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people, has helped broadly carve the country's arms dealers into two camps: the patriots and the lone wolves.

"In 2014, a whole bunch of people in Ukraine had to make choices," said Clarkson. "Many people opted in to the rather complicated and fuzzy project of building the Ukrainian state. The more 'patriotic' among the arms dealers were partly co-opted and are now involved in bankrolling certain battalions and developing the Ukrainian arms industry."

In the other camp are those who rejected the opportunity to go legitimate and merge their activities and business connections with the Ukrainian state. "These arms dealers have now become even more divorced from day-to-day Ukrainian affairs than they were before," Clarkson added. "They're cut out of all business being done in the country when it comes to weapons and military-industrial complexes."

While there were fears that Ukraine's war would immediately spawn an uncontrolled black market for all manner of powerful weapons, the opposite seems to have occurred, at least in the short term. It's dubbed the sponge effect. During times of conflict, when demand is high, weapons become concentrated in a country. When conflict ends, weapons begin to flow out. As fighting in Ukraine's east is again erupting after a two-month lull, there is little evidence that this second phase has begun.

"We've seen limited numbers coming out into the Balkans and Eastern Europe," said Jenzen-Jones. "But we haven't seen any significant efforts to exploit the stockpiles of arms and munitions that fall outside state control at present, nor the wholesale looting that occurred in many of the North African conflicts. Presumably that's a result of the requirement for arms and munitions to fight the ongoing conflict or to hold them in strategic reserve."

Returning to the question of IS, any possible Ukrainian involvement is likely to be fringe: perhaps a middleman between the real players, but a highly unlikely source. Someone could have imported the FN-6s into Ukraine from China, perhaps by pretending to be a government agent or by using a fake end-user certificate. But there is no evidence for this.

The case does have a vague precedent. "The only diversion of Ukrainian weaponry that I've seen was a couple of years ago," said Spleeters, explaining that Ukraine sold 7.62mm ammunition for Kalashnikov assault rifles to Saudi Arabia in 2010, and the Saudis then had it delivered to Syrian rebel groups in Aleppo. "But you couldn't call it a case of Ukraine arming the Syrian opposition by any stretch," he said.

So let's assume the report of IS buying missile systems in Ukraine is bogus. What is the motive for releasing such misinformation? And what would this motive tell us about the people behind the lie? Bear in mind that Kuwait was under no obligation to release this information; security services don't routinely talk about secret weapon seizures.

For a start, no country wants to be accused of indirectly arming Islamic State - it's embarrassing, to say the least. "There's an understanding that certain Gulf States have supplied these weapons to Syrian opposition groups and these have since fallen into the hands of Islamic State," said one weapons expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the allegations. "There is a slim possibility that these claims emanating from Kuwait are part of an intentional attempt to cast some misinformation as a means of disrupting the link between FN-6 MANPADS in Syria and Gulf States. It defuses responsibility and raises the prospect of other supply lines."

This possible misinformation would also discredit Ukraine, which currently has a powerful enemy -- Russia, which has a long history of using the tactic to discredit foes.   

"There could be an element of Russian misinformation or it could be that Kuwait doesn't want its arms connections to China and Pakistan discussed," said Clarkson. "Russia Today and various pro-Kremlin outlets have since been claiming that somehow there's a link between IS and Ukraine. And if it's expedient, they'll mention the SBU, Mossad, the CIA, all sorts of crazy stuff like that. The possibility of disinformation is strongly worth bearing in mind."

It's an allegation given credence by Galeotti too. "We know that a lot of our 'glorious allies' in the Gulf have been involved in a variety of unsavory activities in Syria. The weapons have certainly gone to al Qaeda linked groups. If one of these states were supplying the weapons, you'd want to obscure as far as possible where they've come from. So you might think, 'Well, Ukraine will do' - it's involved in the arms trade in general so it sounds plausible."

Besides conspiracy theories, consider another option: human error. The report claims this "evidence" was released by Kuwait's interior ministry. But there is no mention of the arrests on the news section of the ministry's website and its officials ignored repeated requests from VICE News for comment. It's just possible that someone under pressure in Kuwait came up with the whole thing.

"I mean, who have they captured? We don't know," said Clarkson. "How far are these guys tied in with other intelligence or security services? We have no idea if they have an intelligence relationship with Russia. And we don't even know if the story is true. They may have well just picked Ukraine out of a hat. We always assume there's some deep system or deep planning... It could just be some stupid bureaucrat in an office saying, 'Ukraine's in the headlines, let's go for that'."

So what's the answer? Did IS get tooled up in Ukraine? Probably not. It's a good story that fits well with the current cycle of news, terror and war, but there are just too many holes for the claim to be taken seriously. And it is far better to accept the murk of ambiguity over the neatness of a bogus truth.

"This story just boils down to one guy saying something," said Spleeters, who has produced journalism uncovering major military scandals and illuminating the flow of international arms to some of the world's darkest corners. "There are no documents, there is no evidence. It's based purely on what this Kuwaiti news agency or the Kuwaiti authorities are saying. We can talk about it for years, but there are so many possibilities. It could be anything."

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 #46
Intersection
http://intersectionproject.eu
November 30, 2015
There will be no reconciliation
Why Kyiv and Moscow will be unable to forget about the war
By Pavel Kazarin
Journalist, publicist. Lived in Crimea, worked in Moscow and Kyiv. Cooperated with "Slon.ru", "Radio Svoboda", "Novaya Gazeta", "Ukrainskaya Pravda", Carnegie Center Moscow.

A politician can transform any human tragedy into a window of opportunity. At a time when a grieving Paris is trying to recover following the terrorist attacks - it is already being suggested that a new 'anti-Hitler' front is emerging. And that there will also be space for Russia in the allied trench - just as with World War 2, Russia will join a broader 'anti-evil coalition' (assume this includes ISIS) and Ukraine, like Finland, will be forgotten. (Finland's territorial losses during the Winter War - between the Soviet Union and Finland - were legalized after the end of the World War II).

The notion that the swinging pendulum of Ukrainian-Russian relations will sooner or later revert to its pre-war equilibrium is also starting to resound in private conversations. Kyiv's orbit will be the same while trade and joint projects will erase the memory of combat operations and territorial losses. In such cases they point to the Georgian example - "Remember Russia's five day war with Georgia?" they say. But the status quo has been restored - at least in terms of convenances. And the same will happen to Ukraine, they say.

But this will not transpire. And here's why:

The birth of the legend

The last year-and-a-half has been an era of establishment of a new national myth for Ukraine. It can be divided into several phases, the first of which was the Maidan revolution. A classic tale of the people taking to the streets to remove an authoritarian ruler, the culmination of which resulted in the deaths of dozens of unarmed people, the flight of the anti-hero and the victory of the protesters. Ukraine's 'Heavenly Hundred' has become the personification of the sacrifice that society must bear in order to victor over its own Leviathan.

And the annexation of Crimea, following the flight of Yanukovych, has only reinforced this notion. It has evolved into a story about "the stolen victory" when the need to fight against the 'internal man-eater' was eclipsed by the threat of the external aggressor.

Volunteer battalions, the volunteer movement - Donetsk airport, 'cyborgs', the unjustly jailed pilot Nadiya Savchenko - have become important pillars of the new Ukrainian self-awareness. They cannot be erased or even compromised, since the number of people involved is too great. And if one takes into account that all the events related to the Crimean annexation have also become a part of the current Russian national myth, then we are, in fact, speaking of the simultaneous co-existence of two antagonistic concepts. To speak of any reconciliation, one of these concepts must be erased.

Flags of your fathers

During the last year and a half, one has witnessed Ukraine's active symbolic drift away from Russia. For example, the idea of moving the 'Defender of the Fatherland Day' from February 23 to October 14 (the Intercession of the Holy Virgin Feast but also the Day of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)) would have prompted the most vehement of disputes throughout Ukrainian society in 2013. However, in 2014, it did not raise any concern or debate.

Prior to the events of the last two years, the slogan 'Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!' had been seen in the country through the prism of the nationalism - it was perceived as a mandatory attribute of the far-right ideology in public consciousness. Today, it has lost its 'niche' nature and is in general use. Russia accomplished that which Ukrainian nationalists failed to do over the course of 23 years. And if, a few years ago, jokes about 'greedy khokhols' (a pejorative term for Ukrainians) were considered the most common insult, these days, people are offended by talk of 'the fraternal peoples'.

Incidentally, Moscow's policy managed to create a new set of questions corresponding to the axiological identity of Ukraine. One's attitude towards Stepan Bandera or the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)-UPA does not matter anymore - answers to the following questions are much more important: 'Whose is Crimea?', 'Who is Ukraine fighting against?' or, 'What are acceptable conditions for peace in the country?' Eye-witnesses report that Ukrainian soldiers and officers largely communicate in the Russian language. And hence 'the linguistic' marker has ceased being the primary indicator in the 'friend or foe' signaling system.

Who belongs to the Russian world here?

That being said, changes are not limited to that which is symbolic. The fact of the matter is that Russia stripped pro-Soviet and pro-Russian Ukrainian parties of their electoral garden with its own hands. All the political projects that placed a stake on the rapprochement with the Kremlin sought to win votes primarily in Crimea and the Donbas - since pro-Soviet sentiment was particularly strong there. By removing these regions from the Ukrainian electoral process, the Kremlin significantly increased Ukraine's integrity. Pro-Soviet sentiment in other Ukrainian regions is undoubtedly insufficient to bring a new reincarnation of the Party of Regions to power.

By and large, elections in Ukraine are now conducted in the absence of old disputes about the number of languages or integrational vector. Obviously, this does not eliminate the problem of political populism - it manages to flourish quite well in the 'pro-European' political sector, too. But the agenda itself has changed dramatically.

Besides, over the past year and a half, Ukraine has experienced six waves of mobilization. If we include regular conscription, the large number of those who have been to the front spans the majority of age groups. Public rhetoric is generally meant to appeal to these people, and it is precisely they who will set the public agenda in the years to come.

But there is another important point to this story.

Having annexed Crimea, the Kremlin has obliged everyone who wants to engage in politics in Russia to publicly declare their attitudes towards the status of the region. And the Kremlin has created an identical - mirror-reflection - situation for the Ukrainian political elite. And here lies the watershed: the stumbling block which will prevent Moscow and Kyiv from coming to an agreement in principle emerged one-and-a-half-years ago. And it is not about individuals: Greece can choose an Alexis Tsipras from time to time, who will troll Berlin and Brussels fast and loose. Still, no Alexis Tsipras will dare to state that northern Cyprus is Turkish territory. And the fact that several dozen years have passed since the conflict changes nothing.

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 #47
The Economist
November 26, 2015
Russia and the West
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's widow on what went wrong

"THE moment he saw the flames in Kiev," says Natalia Solzhenitsyn, "he would have died on the spot." The widow of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is considered a vigorous defender and interpreter of the views of her late husband, the Russian novelist and critic of the Soviet Union who died in 2008. Ms Solzhenitsyn spoke with The Economist this summer for two hours in the Moscow flat where her husband was arrested in 1974 before going into exile for 20 years. Given the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West, and especially especially the complex standoff that has led both NATO allies and Russia into the fighting in the Middle East, Ms Solzhenitsyn's words are worth hearing.

"The flames in Kiev" refer, of course, to the violence in Ukraine's capital during the revolution there early last year. His widow imagines how the old man would have reacted to the rift between Ukraine and Russia. Three of his great-grandparents were Ukrainian. "He grew up amid the sounds of the Ukrainian language." He would surely have seen today's civil strife between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in the south-east of the country as a tragedy, especially for "families divided".

"We [Russians] didn't do enough to keep Ukraine friendly," she admits. But Russia and its government are by no means wholly to blame. "We accepted Ukraine as independent and friendly, but when they [Ukrainians] banned the Russian language, it was an act of madness," she adds, noting a law that was passed in the first flush of the new regime in Kiev, though soon rescinded. As for Crimea, "one can object to the method by which it was brought back," but clearly, she implies, it should be part of Russia. Her husband, whom President Vladimir Putin made much of embracing as a Russian patriot before his death in 2008, would surely have agreed.

The West is no less to blame, for supposedly stoking anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and for generally mishandling its relations with Russia. "What I see in the Western press is prejudiced and emotional. It's not just an anti-Putin point of view," she says. "It's an anti-Russian point of view. Watching our television, however biased it might be, one can see talk shows where truly opposite arguments are made, whereas following the Western media one gets no such impression. What is worse, the facts that don't fit the larger anti-Russia story are just ignored or toned down."

Reflecting on the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West, Mrs Solzhenitsyn cites NATO's bombing of Belgrade in 1999 as a crucial mistake. "It was a big turning point. It was such a shock." Russia's leaders had trusted the West, "but the West did not reciprocate," seeing Russia once again as "a trouble-maker". And in recent years, she says, "the West has not lifted a finger to make Ukraine more prosperous but has just used it to get at Russia, to contain Russia."

Mr Putin, she goes on, was right to reverse what Solzhenitsyn regarded as the wrong-headed trend, initiated under Boris Yeltsin, whereby the country "yielded to every Western demand". By contrast, the West, while not necessarily seeing Russia as an aggressor, wanted to "contain it and put it into quarantine." Furthermore, NATO sought to encourage the newly independent former component parts of the Soviet Union to adopt unfriendly attitudes to Russia and to "come into NATO's fold".

Nonetheless, the notion that Russia is reverting to its Soviet-era past is absurd, she adds. "It's a completely different country. The changes are irreversible-at least I hope so. Despite clear limitations, the press is freer than in Soviet days, and no different from the 1990s. If today the mainstream media toe the government line, in the 1990s they toed the line of their oligarch bosses. The media were not independent in either period. Elections are better than in Soviet days, if still not quite genuine. Russians can travel wherever they like. People can choose their profession, choose where they can live; it isn't all fixed as it was before, you don't have to register [where you live]. There's the internet. The young are different. You can't compare life with what it was under Soviet Union, which the West says we want to restore."

Yet "the atmosphere is very dangerous, unproductive, unpredictable. And Russia won't change under pressure [from outside]. Don't stir up countries on Russia's borders if you want Russia to reform. Don't expel Russian representatives from the Council of Europe: that's exactly the sort of petty, hostile act which hardly gets noticed in the West but gets big play in Russia. By doing that, the West would only aggravate things."

"The West didn't understand how difficult it would be for Russia to make the transition to economic and political freedom." Besides, "American elites do not understand historical and psychological trends very well-they're not good at reading historical patterns." There has been a vacuum since the fall of the Soviet Union. It takes time for a "new mindset" to be established. And, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said 20 years ago, "the West will eventually need Russia as an ally."

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