Johnson's Russia List
2015-#223
2 December 2015
[email protected]
A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs*
www.ieres.org
JRL homepage: www.russialist.org
Constant Contact JRL archive:
 http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs053/1102820649387/archive/1102911694293.html
JRL on Facebook: www.facebook.com/russialist
JRL on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi
Support JRL: http://russialist.org/funding.php
Your source for news and analysis since 1996n0
*Support for JRL is provided in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations to the George Washington University and by voluntary contributions from readers. The contents do not necessarily represent the views of IERES or the George Washington University.

"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

You see what you expect to see 

In this issue
 
  #1
Putin preparing for state of the nation address to Federal Assembly

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing the state of the nation address to the Federal Assembly (parliament) that he will make on December 3.

"He (the president) will continue getting ready to deliver the address. I cannot say about any public events scheduled for Wednesday. The president is working on the text of his address; its main ideas and key messages," Kremlin skopesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

He said the document was unlikely to say anything about the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline. "Naturally, it is not a subject for the presidential address to the Federal Assembly if one particular project is in question," Peskov told journalists when asked if Putin would touch upon the Turkish Stream in his annual address to the parliament.

Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergey Ivanov told reporters earlier that Putin would make the state of the nation address in December after a thorough personal scrutiny of the draft and amendments to it. "It's up to the president to decide on how to place accents when he completes reading the blueprint of the address and introduces his corrections and amendments - and he most typically does it with his own hands in the most literal sense," Ivanov said.

Vladimir Putin said at the beginning of November he had begun to familiarize himself with the address. This is a mandatory annual address a president reads out to members of both houses of parliament to fill them in on his own views as regards the guidelines for the nation's development. "The address is a collective brainchild because it can't be done at a high professional level without contributions from the government or the Central Bank of Russia," Putin said.

The previous state of the nation address was presented to the Federal Assembly in the St George's Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace on December 4, 2014. Putin started reading it out at 12:06 Moscow Standard Time, and the whole address lasted more than an hour. He began it with thanking the Russians for the support and solidarity at crucial moments of history when the future of the country was in the making.


 
 #2
Interfax
December 2, 2015
Three-quarters of Russians stand for normalizing relations with West

Most Russians (75 percent) think that Russia should normalize relations with the United States and other Western nations, and 16 percent argue the opposite, Levada Center has told Interfax.

Ten percent of 1,600 respondents interviewed in 137 populated localities in 48 regions on November 20-23 were undecided.

In the opinion of 51 percent of the respondents, Western members of NATO have no reason to fear Russia (39 percent believe such reasons exist), while 54 percent think Russia has a reason to fear NATO countries (36 percent claim the opposite).

Seventy percent of the respondents are positive that Russia should normalize relations with Ukraine. Twenty percent think this is not necessary, and 10 percent are undecided.

In the opinion of 54 percent of the respondents, Russia has found itself in international isolation. Thirty-nine percent disagree, and 8 percent are unable to answer the question.

According to the sociologists, two-thirds of Russians (65 percent) think that Russia should carry on its policy irrespective of the Western sanctions, and 26 percent suggest that a compromise be sought and concessions be made for ridding of the sanctions. The indices stood at 72 percent and 21 percent, respectively, in March.

The Western sanctions have not caused serious problems for 71 percent of Russians, and 23 percent claimed the opposite.

The respondents were also asked about their attitude to certain countries.

Some 70 percent of the respondents said they had a bad attitude to the United States (a good attitude was declared by 21 percent), 60 percent feel bad about the EU (29 percent feel good), 63 percent do not like Ukraine (27 percent like it), and 83 percent have a good attitude to Belarus (8 percent have a bad attitude).
 
 #3
www.rt.com
December 2, 2015
Russians' attitude to Western nations continues to deteriorate - poll

An overwhelming majority of Russians profess increasingly negative feelings about the USA, the EU and other Western nations, a poll shows. At the same time, 65 percent of respondents think Russia should stay its independent course regardless of sanctions.

The research conducted by the independent polling center Levada in late November shows the proportion of Russians with a negative attitude to the United States increased from 68 percent to 70 percent over the past two months. Negative attitudes to the European Union remained at 70 percent, while negativity towards Ukraine increased from 56 percent to 63 percent.

The results are still lower than the data from January this year when negative attitudes to Western nations reached all-time high. However, researchers register the change in tendency about two months back - now the number of people with negative sentiments about the West is growing again.

Some 54 percent of respondents said Russia was right when it expected aggressive actions on the part of the NATO bloc, while 36 percent said such approach was wrong. At the same time, 51 percent of Russians said NATO shouldn't fear their country and 39 percent said such fear would be justified.

Levada researcher Karina Pipiya told Izvestia daily that the increasing negative attitude towards Western countries was caused primarily by the latest political actions of their leaders. She also noted that more Russians think that the relations with the West must be repaired. She said that this must be due to the fact that the poll took place after the downing of the Russian jet liner in Egypt and terrorist attacks in Paris - people understand better that Russia and the West have a common enemy.

Now 75 percent of Russians said that their country should do more to improve the relations with the West and 70 percent favor additional efforts to improve relations with Ukraine.

At the same time, most Russians (65 percent) said their country should continue implementing independent policies. Those who said Russia needs to find a compromise that would lead to the lifting of mutual sanctions comprised just 26 percent. Some 58 percent of those polled answered that they didn't expect any improvement in Russia-West relations anytime soon, noting that their country should learn to live in new economic conditions.

The latest research results released by the other major Russian polling agency - government-owned VTSIOM - are similar to those mentioned by Levada. In late August, VTSIOM said the perception of the US in Russia had drastically deteriorated and 59 percent of respondents think the current Washington administration is extremely hostile toward Russia and its people. In February VTSIOM stated that about 68 percent of Russian citizens thought the likelihood of foreign military aggression towards their country has increased. At the same time, 49 percent considered the state of Russian military 'good'.
 
 #4
Moscow Times
December 2, 2015
Got a Diplomatic Dilemma? Send in the Clowns
By Justin Lifflander

While some potential visitors have crossed Russia off their list, a group of humanitarian clowns still regards the country as an ideal destination.

The 22nd annual clown tour of Russia, which ended last week, brought more than 40 garishly dressed volunteers from 12 countries, including those with problematic relations with Russia - Ukraine, the United States, Japan and Holland.

They all donned red noses and joined clown-doctor Patch Adams for two weeks of clowning at orphanages, homeless shelters, veterans' homes and hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

"This is a great country to bring first-time clowns," Patch said. "Russians are so responsive. I'm here for everybody, but I prefer to clown for adults, because their suffering is deeper and at the same time their sense of humor is so much bigger. I especially enjoy the babushkas who squeal with joy," he added.

The group included first-timers and seasoned veterans who have joined Patch on other tours in some of the 81 countries where he has clowned. Petunia, a clown-debutant from Louisiana whose husband is a U.S. military veteran, observed that clowning is the antithesis of going to war. "Soldiers go to a hostile place, cause pain and death and feel bad about it; we are doing exactly the opposite," she said.

Building Relations One Smile at a Time

But the current state of relations between Russia and the West has created obstacles, even for an experienced clown. Pluck, a clown from Holland on her 6th Russia tour, said that when she was back home seeking sponsors for her annual charity clowning activities she had to downplay the role of the Moscow tour. "And I won't be bringing back any Russian souvenirs this year," she added.

Kathleen, a first-time clown from Connecticut, said that many of her American friends were baffled by or even vehemently opposed to her plan to come to Russia. "They heard that Americans were being mistreated here," she said, "but the opposite is true."

The foreign clowns were joined by Russian volunteers from Maria's Children, the local charity run by Maria Eliseeva, which works with orphanages and helps to socialize orphans entering the adult world. Young adults who had lived in orphanages were also on the clown bus, and local supporters of Maria's organization had their children join the group in order to learn the joy of giving.

Neither Raucous Ralph nor his partner Jilly-Bean had ever clowned before, but they came to Russia from Florida with open minds and a desire to spread joy. "We need to seek commonalities: emotions like joy and sorrow are the most obvious ones. Our fundamental values are the same," he said. By the end of the first week, Ralph had clearly figured out the essentials of clown communication. "For clowns, there is no language barrier: a touch, a smile, eye contact... all make us multilingual. And a clown-nose squeak or whoopee-cushion fart are the same in any language," he added.

The foreign clowns were joined by Russian volunteers from Maria's Children, the local charity run by Maria Eliseeva, which works with orphanages and helps to socialize orphans entering the adult world.

One of the highlights of the clown trip is street clowning. In the past, Patch and his cohorts have been arrested for their antics on Red Square. Now the Old Arbat is the primary location for public clowning. This year's foray saw the pedestrian mall devoid of any police, but elicited plenty of smiles from local street performers and

Friday night caf� patrons, surprised and amused by the honking, pranking gaggle of clowns passing through. Sergei, a young Muscovite businessman, was instantly converted when he spotted last year's clown invasion of the Arbat. Seduced by their magic, he called his office to announce he was taking a vacation and joined the troop for the rest of the tour. This year he planned in advance and was on-board for the whole clown adventure. He was especially moved by visits to hospitals and homes for the elderly.

"I realized I was seeing people every day for whom it could be their last day on earth. How am I to act? I decided if it was my last day, I'd put on the red nose and clown," Sergei said.

Veteran Clowns Help Form the Tribe

Cees, an experienced Dutch clown whose hallmark is a rubber chicken named Shut-Up, was also on his 6th Russian clown tour. His most moving moment was when he was recognized by a resident of a homeless shelter, who remembered him from last year. "He had purchased a doughnut in anticipation of our meeting again, and insisted on sitting me down and splitting it with me," Cees said.

The presence of veterans like Cees is another reason Patch recommends first timers to join the Russia tour. "If you are a new clown, you land in a family of people who welcome you and make you feel good," Patch said. In his philosophy the "tribal" spirit is essential to the clown experience, like the wandering circuses and minstrel troops of old. "Thank God for the traffic jams," Patch said. "They allow the group members to spend a lot of time getting to know each other. The repeaters help by creating the atmosphere of love, with the people they already know. The tighter we are, the more fun we have."

The cauldron of emotion the clowns experience while helping others who are suffering and alone also builds team spirit and often changes the participants forever. "This is a trip that can show how you can live and how you feel about yourself, where there is no loneliness," Patch said. "If your life is part hell, and you come here and are loved for two weeks, with a huge amount of affection, it's addicting. And it's a vision for how things could be...between people."

Beyond personal growth, the clowns left with a sense of optimism about Russia's interaction with the West - at least people-to-people relations. "Things can't be all that bad," said Raucous Ralph, "look at the St. George's ribbon tied to the door-handle of the Mercedes."
 
 
#5
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
December 1, 2015
Understanding Russia's approach to climate change and global warming
According to experts, climate change is occurring in Russia much faster than globally on average. This might potentially have a significant impact on the country's energy sector. What is the Kremlin doing to address the issue? Find out in the new RD report.
By Ksenia Zubacheva

Nov. 30 saw the opening of the 21st session of the World Climate Change Conference in Paris, France. With 150 world leaders participating, the summit is expected to result in the signing of a new globally binding agreement aimed at significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and coming up with a new global framework for solutions to climate change that will keep the warming of the planet's average surface temperature at less than 2 degrees Celsius, which is the benchmark above which global warming will cause disastrous consequences.

Russia is one of the key players in negotiating the deal. On Nov. 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke during the opening of the conference in Paris and revealed the Kremlin's efforts in fighting global warming. "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 (GHG) emissions, but also significantly reduced it," Putin said. Promising to reduce emissions by 70 percent by 2030, the Russian leader also said that Russia is planning to progress by bringing breakthrough technologies into practice.

To what extent do these plans have real potential to be realized? Will Russia be successful in tackling the climate change issue within its own borders?
Experts answer these questions in the new Russia Direct report, "Global Warming: Russia Comes in from the Cold." By examining Moscow's environmental policies and comparing them with those of other states, authors offer their take on the prospects and challenges in tackling climate change in Russia.

First, George Safonov, director of the Center for Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, discusses how the climate has changed in Russia over the years and what the Kremlin's current policies are. He also takes a look at different scenarios depending on what course of action the authorities take to address the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Following from his analysis, he concludes that Russia has a lot of potential in moving towards more "climate friendly" development.

The expectations and challenges facing the Paris Climate Change Conference are discussed further in the report by Woodrow W. Clark II and Dimitri Elkin, who are well-known analysts in the field of climate policies and renewable energy practices. Reviewing what has changed in the positions on climate change among the major global economies, including the U.S., EU, China, Japan, India and Russia, they suggest how the leadership in Kremlin could make the best of its political environment and promote more "green" policies domestically.

"Russia, unlike the U.S., can move ahead with new, safe, and environmentally friendly technologies that can be created and proven in its academic institutions and then commercialized in the nearby science parks," the experts point out.

The report also features a comment on the issue of global warming from Grigory Zasypkin, official representative of the Russian Embassy to the U.S. He explains why Russia is quite positive about the way the global climate change campaign is going and points out the extent to which Russia is ready to contribute to the process.

What is more, the report contains an interview with head of WWF Russia's climate and energy program, Alexey Kokorin, who shares his take on the state of the climate change movement in Russia and explains his optimism with regard to the growing public perception of the problem. With the inevitability of new natural disasters, the people will grow more aware of the problem. "An incentive to recognize this problem in the U.S. was the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and flooding in New Orleans. In Russia it was the terrible heat wave of 2010 in Moscow and Central Russia," he argues.

Addressing the problem of global warming requires increasing the share of renewable energy resources on the world energy market. In Russia, there is still much potential to be discovered in this field, argues Ivan Kapitonov, senior fellow at the Energy Policy Sector of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. There are already successful examples of using renewables in remote regions of the country (such as the Far East, Altai and Crimea), but challenges concerned with using these practices still exist.

What are the prospects of greenhouse gas emissions reduction in Russia? Which countries are the largest polluters on the planet? What regions in Russia have the most potential to generate "green power"? Download the report and find out:
http://www.russia-direct.org/archive/russia-direct-brief-global-warming-russia-comes-cold

 
#6
www.opendemocracy.net
November 30, 2015
COP21: a diary from Paris
oDR correspondent Angelina Davydova is in Paris attending the UN climate conference COP21, where she's keeping her eye on the Russian side of things...

30 November: Putin speaks

Today was the first day of the UN climate conference in Paris (#COP21) and it began with 130 heads of state and government addressing the conference. This year marks the first time in UN climate history that the conference has opened with the Leaders Summit - normally, the heads of state only arrive at the end of the second week once the intense climate negotiations have already been conducted by country delegates.

But this time around the COP opened with the lofty speeches of Obama, Cameron and co. in which they reconfirmed their commitment to fighting climate change and announced their domestic climate plans and policies. Next they will move on to the technical negotiations on the text of the new post-Kyoto climate agreement which should - all things gone well - result in the new Paris agreement being adopted by 11 December.

Joining other world leaders at the Summit today was Russia's Vladimir Putin, who was among the first to speak. He used his time on stage to acknowledge the harm that climate change is already inflicting on Russia and the world: 'Hurricanes, floods, droughts and other extreme weather phenomena caused by global warming are causing ever-greater economic losses and destroying our familiar and traditional environment. The quality of life of everyone on this planet, the global economic growth and sustainable social development of entire regions depend on our ability to resolve this climate problem.' In his speech he also summarised Russia's efforts in fighting climate change and noted Russia's sinking levels of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the 90s and 2000s; the role of the boreal forests in reducing global emissions; and the energy efficiency measures adopted by Russia so far.

Most of the Russian experts I have been speaking to here in Paris are reacting quite positively to Putin's speech as it seemed to reflect the marked change that has taken place over the past few years in Russia's attitude towards climate change. 'Ten years ago climate change was something that people joked about in Russia. Five years ago is was an issue that still raised a lot of doubts among Russia's politicians and within its scientific communities. But today it is clear that Russia understands that it is in the same boat as everyone else; it acknowledges that climate change exists and that it is a serious threat to Russia and the world,' Alexey Kokorin (head of the energy and climate programme with WWF-Russia).

But for others, Putin's words today were just that - words. 'The wording [of Putin's speech]  was good for sure, and we are glad to hear it but the measures that have been suggested for curbing climate change in Russia - the world's fifth largest emitter after China, US, India and EU - are far from enough,' said Vladimir Chuprov, head of the energy programme with Greenpeace Russia. In his opinion, Russia should spend less time boasting about emissions reductions (reductions that occured primarily due to the economic collapse of the Eastern bloc) at conferences such as this one and more time investing in greater energy efficiency, renewable energy, boreal forest protection and waste management to provide for a sound climate policy at home.

And measures such as these are desperately needed in Russia where just last week Sergey Donskoy, the Russian minister for natural resources, estimated that in the year 2013 alone climate change cost the Russian economy 200 billion rubles ($3 billion) and caused more than 190 deaths.

Day one over.

 
 #7
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
December 2, 2015
Putin Has a Massive Corruption-Fighting Record You've Never Heard Of
Mr. Putin is tackling corruption, whereas his predecessor embodied it. But you wouldn't know it from the Western press
By Jacob Dreizin
The author is a native Russian speaker and Washington, DC metro area resident with experience in the U.S. military, civil service, Congress, and the lobbying and contracting sectors.  He holds an MBA and a Masters in International Relations and has lived for at least one year in six different countries.
[Text with links here http://russia-insider.com/en/vladimir-putin-corruption-fighter/ri11586]

I love Russia, but let's not sugarcoat things.

After the widespread sociopathy of the 1990s-when people had to break all rules just to feed their families, and it was not unknown even for priests to steal from their flocks-a too-high proportion of the Russian population remains in a state of going through each day with little thought other than how to cheat and defraud its fellow man. Yet it is also a fact that you cannot lock up everyone (Всех не посадишь, as the Russians say) or you would have no country left.

The Kremlin's solution has been to make conspicuous examples of some, while creating parallel structures to work around corrupt or incompetent state bodies and officials.

Probably the most prominent example of such a structure is the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, commonly known by its Russian initials, SK or SK RF, or less commonly by the acronym, Sledkom.

The SK traces its history to 2007-when authority to make criminal charges was taken away from Russia's Prosecutor General-and has existed in its current form since early 2011.

Today, the Office of the Prosecutor General is responsible for prosecutions only.  It is the SK that investigates crimes and decides whom to bring to trial and on what charges.

Since it was brought out from under the Prosecutor General and made into an independent body reporting only to the President, the SK has been at the very center of the Kremlin's anticorruption drive.

But why was the authority to indict-representing the most fundamental procedure in the exercise of any state's power-taken away from the Prosecutor General?  What's the use in a prosecutor who can't bring charges?

To illustrate the answers, we borrow from the renowned Russian opposition figure, Aleksei Naval'nyi (commonly spelled Navalny in the U.S.), and his Foundation for the Fight Against Corruption.

For those who recoil from Naval'nyi as some kind of "fifth column" taking orders from the U.S., keep in mind that despite efforts to clip his outsized ego and ambitions, the Russian state has allowed his organization considerable freedom to go about its investigations and to secure funding for its salaries, research/travel, website/multimedia, etc.

Moreover, it is indicative that few of Naval'nyi's targets have been willing or able to go all the way in terms of suing him for slander (a typical method of silencing critics in many countries.)

To me, this suggests that Naval'nyi is recognized as having some value to society or even to the state.  However, as I have indicated, the state is unable to follow up on every corruption allegation-then there would be no state at all.

And so, on December 1st, 2015, the Foundation released a 44-minute documentary film titled Chaika: A Criminal Drama in Five Parts.

The name Chaika refers to Yurii Chaika, current Prosecutor General of Russia.

The allegations are serious.

As often happens in Russia, they fall not so much on the official title holder, as on his family and connections as well as those of his underlings.

It turns out that Olga Lopatina, ex-wife of Deputy Prosecutor General Gennadii Lopatin (they divorced in 2011), co-owned-perhaps still co-owns-what seems to be a sugar mill or distributor with the wives of two leaders of the infamous Tsapok gang.

The Tsapok gang lorded over much of Krasnodar province from the late 1990s until its aforementioned leaders were jailed for their role in the 2010 Kushchevskaya massacre, in which twelve people including a baby were knifed to death in an act of delayed revenge for the husband and father of some of the victims having stood up to the gang after they harassed his sister some years prior.

The Lopatina-Tsapok connection may help explain why the gang was able to get away with so much for so long.  Incidentally, the Kushchevskaya massacre was one of the first ultra-high-profile cases to be investigated by the SK in more or less its present form.

According to Naval'ny's film, Ms. Lopatina also owns a splendid villa in Greece, which is located not far from a luxury hotel allegedly owned by Prosecutor General Chaika's older son, Artem, who is said to have remodeled it recently at a cost of between 25 and 29 million Euro.

Reports of Artem Chaika's business empire and alleged corrupt dealings are not new, having been made in Russian media on many previous occasions.  It has been alleged that Artem's holdings bring in $200 million per year in revenues.  However, the claims of hotel ownership-as well as Lopatina's sugar business-seem to be new.

There are still more allegations in Naval'ny's film, but you get the gist.

The practice of politicians and government officials using their pull and connections to enrich themselves or their families is not unique to Russia.  And it may be hard to say what is legal and what is illegal in any given case.

But what is certain is that Prosecutor General Chaika was not the man to lead the Kremlin's anticorruption drive.  And it's not just him, but his entire agency.

The Kremlin needed something non-entrenched and squeaky-clean, so it built up the SK, handing it over 20,000 employees, many if not most of them transferred from the Office of the Prosecutor General.

And in its roughly five years of existence in its current form, I am not aware of the SK having been caught up in any sort of dirt.  It is doing its job, with few if any "conflicts of interest", so to speak.  It is also shockingly transparent, with its spokesman being a fixture in the Russian media.

Another structure built up by the Kremlin is Russia's "Social Chamber" (although there are other possible translations of its name.)

Founded in 2005, this is a sort of top-down civil society organization that, among other things, monitors state corruption, malfeasance, and incompetence in Russia's regions.  It is, in effect, a semi-official activist group with patronage from Moscow.

The intent is for Russia's small-time government bosses to understand that, as the eye of the Kremlin cannot survey everything at once, someone else (besides weak and underfunded local media) is watching them.

Judging by the fact that its activists have been harassed by Russian provincial and local authorities, the Social Chamber has had some success.  However, the jury is still out as to whether it can make a big difference overall.

Of course, Americans would say that corruption should be fought from the bottom-up, by way of a well-funded independent media, a strong civil society, direct elections of all local and provincial chiefs, and more decision-making and fiscal power devolved to local authorities, who are simply closer to their own constituents and more responsive to their needs.

However, Russia's experience with decentralization in the 1990s was catastrophic, and Mr. Putin has staked his entire political career on not repeating it.

One could also say that until Russia has built up a truly solid middle class, efforts to devolve power to local authorities will simply be co-opted by the oligarchs, leading to direct oligarchic rule as was the case in the 1990s, and is the case in Ukraine today.  (Witness President Poroshenko and Governor Kolomoisky, for starters.)

Thus, while I am not saying that Mr. Putin is 100-percent right, we need to understand where he is coming from.

Despite all the limitations of his position and of the Russian state as a whole, he is truly a corruption-fighter, and in this regard, is a head-and-shoulders improvement over his predecessor, who simply drank himself under the table while outsourcing authority to the oligarchs with their bought-and-paid-for ministers and media outlets-a practice which the Western press referred to as "democracy."


 #8
Gazeta.ru/Interfax
December 1, 2015
Influential ex-finance chief may soon join Putin's administration - sources

Head of the Civil Initiatives Committee and former Russian Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin may soon join the presidential administration, the Gazeta.ru website reported on the night of 1 December, quoting several sources in Kudrin's entourage.

In recent months Kudrin has visited Russian President Vladimir Putin on numerous occasions and might have succeeded in getting across his idea that the economic situation requires urgent steps, Gazeta.ru said.

The website's sources say that "Kudrin is going to undertake reforms", but none of them was able to go into detail on his possible role.

Gazeta.ru's sources believe that the appointment may take place either before the presidential address to the Federal Assembly scheduled for 3 December or soon after it.

A spokesperson for Kudrin refused to comment on the story.

Meanwhile, the Civil Initiatives Committee's press service also refrained from comment, privately-owned Interfax news agency reported on 1 December. In addition, an Interfax source in Kudrin's entourage was unable to confirm the reports of his pending change of work, saying that "such rumours emerge routinely but find no confirmation".

Gazeta.ru lists four scenarios of Kudrin's possible appointment:

According to the first scenario, he may be appointed first deputy head of the presidential administration, along with Aleksey Gromov and Vyacheslav Volodin. But, according to Gazeta.ru's sources, both Gromov and Volodin were doing everything in their power not to let this happen.

According to the second scenario, Kudrin may become Putin's advisor, getting caught in the crossfire from two sides - from acting advisor Sergey Glazyev and Putin's aide Andrey Belousov, who is also in charge of the economy. Sources close to Kudrin doubted that he would go for this as he would have his hands tied.

The third scenario involves the creation of a centre of reforms under the president. However, a similar organization, called the Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, already exists. Besides, the Higher School of Economics, whose supervisory committee is led by the same Volodin, is also close to Putin's administration.

A source in the government agencies said that "Kudrin would not settle for less than head of the presidential administration", calling this scenario "unrealistic".

Meanwhile, several Gazeta.ru sources agreed that Kudrin's appointment was only a matter of time, pending a decision as to his new position and powers. They also noted that Kudrin had already distanced himself from all political aspects of the Civil Initiatives Committee's activities, having given notice that he would stop heading the committee and co-chairing the Civil Initiatives Forum, and that he would become an ordinary member.

Experts polled by the website were quite positive about Kudrin's possible return to power, with Yevgeniy Yasin, an academic supervisor of the Higher School of Economics, calling it "a blessing". Economic analyst Vladimir Tikhomirov said that Kudrin had an understanding of what reforms Russia needs, some of which are "unpopular", such as raising the retirement age and cutbacks in budget spending. Tikhomirov, however, wondered whether Putin would agree to radically change his policy, adding that it would be difficult to implement major reforms amidst the current geopolitical situation.

If Kudrin returns to the Russian power structure, that would mean that Putin did not want to intensify Russia's confrontation with the West, Tikhomirov said, recalling that the former minister had noted on numerous occasions that the EU and US sanctions had caused great damage to the Russian economy.

Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said that "there is demand for Kudrin amongst the authorities" as he is known to be "one the most adequate economists", as well as a personal and loyal friend of Putin.
 #9
Izvestia
November 23, 2015
Mooted NGO lobbying body seen as ex-minister's political comeback bid
Konstantin Dorofeyev, Kudrin's foundation to create lobbying organization for NGOs - Experts think that the aim of those advocating the creation of the new organization is not to solve society's social problems, but to create an opportunity to be involved in political life.

Participants in the All-Russia Civil Forum (OGF) organized by the Civil Initiatives Committee (which was founded by former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin) have come up with the idea of creating a new organization - the Russian Third Sector Union (RSTS), which will represent the interests of noncommercial organizations in dealings with government agencies. The plan is to set up the organization before the end of the year, and for it to have a presence in 45 of the country's regions. Experts believe that the RSTS will be Aleksey Kudrin's "return ticket" to politics, and that those advocating the creation of the new organization are motivated not by a drive to solve society's social problems, but by the possibility of involvement in politics, all the more so as the idea has emerged in the run-up to the State Duma elections. Political commentators also predict that the planned union will be ineffective, as the NGO sector already has a number of organizations fighting for its interests.

The founders of the RSTS envision that for NGOs the organization will become the equivalent of the organizations representing businesses - the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and Business Russia. The idea of creating the new organization was announced as part of the All-Russia Civil Forum. One of the RSTS founders, Civil Initiatives Committee expert Grigoriy Melkonyants, says that the new organization will aim to create a permanently favourable climate for all NGOs.

"It is not that the Public Chamber, forums like the OGF, and other organizations, are working badly, but they were created at the initiative of those at the top. We want to create an organization that will become a real conduit for communication between the authorities and NGOs," Grigoriy Melkonyants told Izvestiya.

He said that the RSTS will open offices in 45 regions of the country. Every NGO that joins will have to pay a certain membership fee, which will be decided by the organizing committee. If an NGO is unable to pay the membership fee, it will be able to ask the union's board to waive part or all of the fee. Melkonyants pointed out that the organization wants to operate independently and this is why it needs to collect contributions from its members.

"This should be a certain plus point for the authorities, we will not be asking for public funding. We will create a new conduit between the state and civil society. This is an important means of communication, which will help to alleviate a certain social discontent in society," Grigoriy Melkonyants said.

Izvestiya has learned that Civil Initiatives Committee head Aleksey Kudrin approved the idea of creating a new lobbying body, however, he stressed that the details of the organization had to be clearly set out and developed.

At the time of publication [Presidential] Council for Human Rights head Mikhail Fedotov was on an official trip to Kazan. For the same reason he was not present on the first day of the All-Russia Civil Forum, and neither was [Russian human rights ombudsman] Ella Pamfilova, who was also invited. The only representative of the Council for Human Rights taking part in the discussion panels was Yelena Topoleva-Soldunova.

In effect, the Civil Initiatives Committee wants to set up a structure that duplicates already existing organizations, including the Council for Human Rights and the Public Chamber. There is, however, a difference in ideology. For example, the Civil Initiatives Committee wants to influence national policy, while the chamber is fighting for social justice. As has repeatedly been declared at Public Chamber forums, an NGO is not a means for earning money, not a political structure, but provides real help to those sectors of society that need it.

During the second day of the forum participants were invited to vote in the "OGF referendum". The ballot paper handed out featured the questions: "Do you think you are capable of influencing events in the country?"; "Do you think the country needs democratic reform?"; and "Do you think that the country needs a new organization to represent the interests of all NGOs?"

Experts did not see the creation of the new lobbying organization as anything other than an attempt by Aleksey Kudrin to get back into politics.

Leonid Polyakov, head of the Higher School of Economics general political studies department, does not think that the RSTS has a future.

"The Civil Initiatives Committee wants to mobilize civil society under the idea of a 'union of all NGOs', however this mobilization will serve their own purposes rather than those of civil society. Moreover, the 'third sector' itself is hardly likely to support this initiative as many NGOs actively and successfully work with the All-Russia People's Front," Leonid Polyakov said.

He pointed out that many of the ideas announced by the Civil Initiatives Committee focus solely on political activities, which indicates Kudrin's intention to make a comeback.

"The idea of creating an organization that unites all NGOs is far from new, the All-Russia People's Front has for a long time effectively played this role at both a regional and federal level. Tellingly, however, the Civil Initiatives Committee mentions nothing about the Front's activities," the expert explained.

Leonid Polyakov also pointed out that "NGOs are not the opposition", therefore the "third sector" is unlikely to support Aleksey Kudrin's initiative.

"Kudrin is lacking a lot of the qualities needed to become a political leader, despite the fact he is really a very gifted economist," the political scientist summed up.

Speaking to Izvestiya, Sergey Markov, a member of the Public Chamber and director of the Institute for Political Studies, expressed a similar opinion. He noted that there were several aims behind the founding of the RSTS.

"First, Kudrin wants to create an organization to compete with the Public Chamber, which in his hands will become a bargaining chip. And in return for the loyalty of this new organization, he wants the post of prime minister - this is the second aim behind the creation of the RSTS," the political scientist believes.

Sergey Markov is certain, however, that the main source of funding for the new organization will be various foreign funds, which will give money with one aim - "initiating a Maydan in Russia". He thinks that the RSTS will become the centre around which all moderate opposition forces will unite. This will mean that the RSTS will start actively competing with the Public Chamber for the right to represent the interests of NGOs in dealings with the authorities.
 
 #10
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
November 30, 2015
A LACK OF SELF-CONFIDENCE (with comments)
By Paul Robinson
University of Ottawa

We have become decadent, politically correct, and weak, some people say. Our demise is all but inevitable. And yet, our societies are actually much stronger than the doomsayers imagine. Economically, we continue to prosper; politically, we are stable; morally, we are probably doing better than ever before - we treat each other better and we harm each other less than possibly at any other time in history. Far from being weak and decadent, we are strong and healthy. If only we could accept that, we would avoid many terrible mistakes.

The same is true of Russia. Many Western observers describe the current Russian state as fragile. Sooner or later, they say, political or economic discontent will bring the 'regime' tumbling down. Sadly, it seems that the Russian state shares this point of view. As a result, rather than permitting and encouraging the maximum amount of political discourse and opposition, it has sought to place limits upon it. In particular, it has moved to restrict the influence of outside forces in Russian civil society, for fear that they might incite a 'colour revolution'. The latest manifestation of this is the announcement on Monday that, 'The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has recognized as undesirable several foreign non-profit organizations, such as the Open Society Foundation and the Assistance Foundation in Russia.' According to Interfax:

"This decision was taken, following an address by the Federation Council of the Russian Federal Assembly to the Russian general prosecutor, foreign minister and justice minister to inspect the organizations, which were put on the so-called 'patriotic stop-list',' spokesperson of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office Marina Gridneva told Interfax on Nov. 30. She recalled that the 'stop-list' was approved by the Federation Council resolution as of July 8 this year, in which the activity of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) is paid attention to. 'It was found out that the activity of the Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation poses a threat to the foundations of the Russian constitutional system and security of the state,' she said."

The Soros Foundation is a particular bugbear of critics of American 'imperialism'. Soros' support for self-styled liberal democratic opposition movements has been seen as playing an important part in events such as the Georgian Rose Revolution of 2003 and the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004. Many believe that Soros would like to encourage something similar in Russia. But even if this is true, it does not mean that banning the Open Society Institute is justified, let alone a good idea. Liberal democratic societies tolerate all sorts of organizations which don't like liberal democracy or the prevailing social norms. That is part of what liberty entails. Moreover, the fact that an institution would in principle like to change the political system doesn't mean that it actually can. Perhaps if the Russian state really is as fragile as some people think, then its worries might be justified. But I don't believe that it is.

There is certainly some discontent in Russia with the political system, but looking at the data of the Levada Centre, we see that a majority of Russians approve not only of President Vladimir Putin, but also of the government more generally, and that they think that their country is moving in the right direction. Despite predictions that the current economic recession would ruin the state's finances and cause massive social discontent, the Russian economy has proven to be surprisingly resilient and is due to return to growth next year. There have been a few protests against economic hardship (e.g. from truck drivers), but not many. Russia is not a country on the verge of revolution. Neither Soros nor anybody else is going to bring about 'regime change' in Russia.

But designating non-governmental organizations as 'foreign entities' and placing them on 'patriotic stop-lists' is harmful. Martin Malia pointed out in his book Russia Under Western Eyes that Western perceptions of the 'Russian threat' are largely about how Western elites view internal Russian politics. When they see Russian rulers as relatively 'enlightened', the West doesn't fear Russia; but when they see them as becoming more 'autocratic', then the West believes that Russia is dangerous and has to be resisted. Banning NGOs falls into the 'autocratic' framework. It makes Russia look bad, and strengthens anti-Russian feeling.

In other words, just as Western states over-react to the terrorist 'threat' out of fear of seeming weak, the Russian state is over-reacting to the danger of colour revolutions, and in the process is shooting itself in the foot. It would be better if everybody could just have a bit more self-confidence.
---

THOUGHTS ON "A LACK OF SELF-CONFIDENCE"
Tim Owen

My counter argument would be, in a word, Ukraine.

Let me try this out on you. I take it as axiomatic that:

- Ukraine's ascension to EU membership was never practical / affordable or in the country's interest given the magnitude of its trade ties with Russia, it's multi-ethnic makeup and the state of EU financially speaking (it's not '89 anymore to say the least.)

If you accept the above analysis then what to make of the fact that Nuland crowed about the billions spent on "helping" Ukraine achieve its "European aspirations"? I suggest the first takeaway is that this foreigner does not have the country's best interests at heart. (Cough.) The evidence is plain: the Crimea is lost, the economy is in ruins, a suspended civil war drags on.

Is there a test for having a country's "best interests at heart"? Not as such but I'd suggest that having to declare who's actually paying for your "heartfelt" advocacy is close enough.

You do know that there are similar laws in the U.S. right? From what I've read the Russian laws were actually modelled on these though I can't cite a source at the moment. That irony alone puts pay to your argument to my mind.
--

marknesop (Mark Chapman)

Is that what you really think, Paul? All right, then; let's take a look at it.

You say - or, more accurately, you support Martin Malia when he says - that when western leaders perceive the Russian leader of the day as "enlightened", they do not fear Russia. Presumably this implies that when they do not fear Russia, they treat it better, and there is less disagreement. This happy state is more likely to occur when Russia permits western NGO's more or less free rein; do I have it right?

The most reform-minded and western-friendly Russian President in recent history - perhaps ever - was Dmitry Medvedev. Did the west treat Russia as a friend and associate during his tenure? Better than they have under Putin, certainly. But Medvedev was praised only for so long as he went along with the western agenda, and as soon as he crossed the west, the same platoon of critics showed up. Of Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - which put a crimp in NATO's plans to absorb Georgia - quoth Merkel; "...the decree contradicts the principle of territorial integrity, a principle based on the international law of nations and for this reason it is unacceptable." Ban Ki-Moon offered his usual sycophantic condemnation, probably reading straight from the script the State Department provided him. The USA, EU, Baltic states and Poland chimed in to kick Medvedev for spoiling a great show, and we even got a preview of what an assrocket Yatsenyuk was going to be.

http://www.dw.com/en/west-criticizes-russian-recognition-of-breakaway-regions/a-3595173

I think Tony Cartalucci put it very well; the Russian government under Putin "placed immense restrictions on foreign-funded lobby groups and NGOs, demanding that they exhibit the same level of transparency and honesty that they themselves demand of the government. "

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ca/2012/12/russia-ousts-meddling-us-ngos-fake.html

As he also pointed out, when the western-funded NGO's were ordered to register as foreign agents if they (a) received funding from another country, and (not or) (b) their activities were political in nature...the nuisance protests dwindled to a whisper. It is important to note that NGO's who could demonstrate that they received foreign funding but that their activities were not political in nature were left alone. Those who made false declarations, naturally, were kicked out. Some who felt the label "foreign agent" would hamper their...ahem...good works chose to leave of their own volition.

Of course I am a sucker for a well-substantiated argument, and am always willing to have my mind changed. If I could be persuaded that the west ceased its inveigling against Russia during Medvedev's presidency because they were not afraid of Russia, and that Russia enjoyed the favour of its western partners during that time, or if I could be shown some of the concrete benefits NGO's like George Soros' Open Society brought to Russia during its residence, I could perhaps be more supportive of the view you have expressed here.
--

Jen (Jennifer Hor)

I think you should be aware that in January this year, State Duma representative Ilya Ponomarev was in Washington DC giving a PowerPoint presentation to various representatives of right-wing think-tanks and other interested people working in Capitol Hill on the political situation in Russia at the time and the potential for ousting the government there. Ponomarev all but gave a bullet-point guide on how this would be achieved. The bullet points included:

1/ Organized street protest (versus spontaneous one)
2/ Appealing vision of the future presented to the majority of Russians
3/ Leader, acceptable for all protesters and the elites
4/ Access to some financial resources
5/ Part of the elites should support the revolution
6/ Trigger event

Ponomarev admits that changing the government through the ballot box is unlikely and that the tactic most likely to effect change was a revolution (either non-violent or violent).

The presentation can be viewed on Youtube at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIJEXaXuxeE

The Kremlin would be well aware of Ponomarev's presentation and the blueprint he gave for fomenting a colour revolution in Moscow. The Soros Foundation would have a role to play in encouraging revolution (see point 4 above). Is it any wonder that the Kremlin would seek to nip Ponomarev's plan in the bud before it starts to put down roots? If the Kremlin did nothing and allowed the Soros Foundation to continue its funding activities, all the while being aware of where the funding could be going, wouldn't a sane and rational observer conclude that the Kremlin had its collective ostrich head in the sand and was lacking the confidence to stop such activity at the risk of making itself look like an autocratic back-to-the-USSR fool? Ponomarev's presentation in Washington, the ideas he advocated and the make-up of his audience suggest that regime change through a staged revolution in Russia is not just a topic flirted with among the country's political opposition, it is already in the making.
 
 #11
www.opendemocracy.net
December 2, 2015
We're right here
Building a society inclusive of autism in Russia involves battling with myths, superstition and the Soviet legacy. But civil society is forging ahead.
By Natalia Antonova
Natalia Antonova was born in Kyiv and grew up in North Carolina. She works as a journalist and playwright.
 
All over the world, autism is a condition that attracts scrutiny and controversy-it is both highly variable and often poorly understood.

In Russia, a society still struggling with inherited Soviet disdain of anything physically or neurologically 'irregular', attitudes about the condition are slowly beginning to change. In 2012, Russian media widely cited an estimate that up to 200,000 Russian citizens of varying ages live with autism.

Throughout Soviet history, everything from neurological disorders to visible physical disability was taboo. Mass institutionalisation of children with disabilities was common under the Soviets, for example. Even today many parents of special needs children report pressure from doctors to turn these children over to the state. Soviet ideology required that such children and adults be separated from the community. The consequences of such treatment are still being felt to this day.

'If it can happen to a supermodel's sister...'

In August this year, Oksana Vodyanova ordered lunch at a caf� in Nizhny Novgorod, only to be told by the owner she should leave and 'get cured' for scaring other customers. When Oksana's carer asked that they be allowed to wait, the owner threatened to call 'an ambulance and lock [Oksana] in the cellar'.

What happened to Oksana would have gone unremarked upon-just another indignity, possibly in a list of many such indignities-if wasn't for the fact that Oksana's sister is supermodel Natalia Vodyanova.

Natalya Vodyanova is famous for trading on her stunning looks and charisma to escape a hard-luck background, but is equally famous for never forgetting her roots. In Russia and abroad, Vodianova is known as a tireless philanthropist, working for the rights of underprivileged children and children with disabilities.

By widely publicising the nasty treatment that her sister received, Vodyanova forced Russian society to reckon with how little protection children and adults with special needs are afforded. 'If it can happen to a supermodel's sister, imagine what it's like to be a regular Russian person with autism,' the refrain went.

Of course, one doesn't have to imagine. Before Oksana ever walked into that caf�, Russian filmmaker Lyubov Arkus had already won accolades for the 2012 documentary Aton's right here, a portrayal of her personal relationship with a boy with autism who required an outright rescue from an uncaring medical system.

Other popular personalities, including filmmaker Dunya Smirnova, have also championed the rights of people with autism.

Earlier this year, Smirnova, who heads the Vykhod Fund for autistic people, told the Kommersant newspaper that 'there is no roadmap' for Russians with autism. 'A person is diagnosed, then he lives the kind of life that his parents can provide,' Smirnova said. According to Smirnova, the Russian government 'is not ready to see [autistic people] as members of society.'

Yet Smirnova and her people are working to change that by actively engaging the government-campaigning for early diagnosis (currently, Russian children are diagnosed at five or seven years of age, if at all, she says), greater awareness of symptoms, a government-sponsored program that would create a systemic approach to aiding autistic children and their families, as well as more support of adults with autism, who frequently end their days in abysmal state care facilities where their condition is wrongly treated like a psychiatric disorder. Indeed, in February 2015, the Russian Ministry of Labour and Social Protection issued a report that stated that 27 Russian regions (nearly a third of the country) provide no statistics on autism diagnoses, which could mean that autism is severely under-diagnosed in the country.

Smirnova thinks that real systemic change will probably take at least 30 years-maybe less in the age of the internet, where information is more readily available.

Myths and superstitions

For many Russians, such change cannot come fast enough. I originally met Nadezhda, in her 30s and a native of Russia's Krasnodar Krai, at a charity market. Her young son has highly-functioning autism.

Nadezhda's husband could not cope with the idea of parenting a special needs child and left shortly after the diagnosis was confirmed, though he still supports the family financially. Nadezhda says she isn't angry with him, not anymore. '[Russian] society is remarkably lenient towards men in these kinds of situations,' she says with a smile. 'A mother is expected to be selfless, but a father is practically expected to split.'

Myths, superstitions, and overlapping prejudices dog the relatives of people with autism as well. And although the internet, in that sense, can be a tool for greater understanding, it is equally handy for the spread of disinformation.

According to Nadezhda, her former mother-in-law read on an online forum that ethnically diverse people have higher rates of autism, then claimed that Nadezhda's own diverse ethnic background had 'caused' the condition in her son.

After her divorce, Nadezhda moved with her son to Moscow, where she says there is more understanding and less small-mindedness. As far as Russian parents of autistic children go, she considers herself extremely privileged. 'I have a good job, my ex-husband still helps take care of us, my parents are also very supportive,' she says. 'This is not how the majority lives.'

Nadezhda appears to be right. Although it is very hard to obtain statistics on autism rates in Russia, the RIA Novosti and Fontanka media outlets have claimed that up 80% of Russian families supporting an autistic child are financially underprivileged.

The reason for that is said to be exactly what happened to Nadezhda: a partner walking out (but, unlike Nadezhda's ex, not providing child support) coupled with a parent's inability to spend too much time away from the child and make a decent living.

Lack of early diagnosis, which can greatly aid a child's development, and government support programs means that such parents are effectively on their own. Add social stigma and you have the perfect cocktail of isolation and despair.

Closing the gap

In the absence of systemic, government-backed programs for people living with autism and their relatives, civil society has moved to close the gap.

Alongside Smirnova's Vykhod Fund, there are a number of local centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Pskov, Voronezh, Tyumen and others urban areas that help special needs children and adults with everything from different forms of therapy to overcoming challenges with adaptation in society. National organisations such as Doroga v Mir and Yablochko meanwhile aim to establish networks of help across the country.

Due to Russia's immense size, and unevenly distributed medical and social infrastructure, one of the biggest challenges is getting help out to the people in smaller towns and villages, as well as preventing the spread of misinformation and proliferation of fake 'cures' for autism. 'Several doctors in Krasnodar [region] offered to "cure" my son's autism when he was small,' Nadezhda told me. 'All for vast sums of money, of course.'

Nadezhda thinks that the lingering stigma surrounding autism frequently pushes desperate parents to try expensive fake treatments, while forcing poorer parents to sometimes abandon their children altogether. 'I don't judge anyone. There are cases when children with severe disorders cannot be taken care of at home, especially as they get bigger,' Nadezhda says. 'But there are also a lot of families that, with adequate help, wouldn't have to send a child away. I learned that after we moved to Moscow.'

Due to activist efforts, stigma is beginning to give way a little, especially in the big cities. Prominent journalist Arina Borodina, for example, went on a social media crusade this September on behalf of Muscovite Platon, a boy who was denied gym membership for being on the autism spectrum.

Borodina, a deft social critic with a fiery personality, raised such a stink that the gym was forced to publicly apologise. Young Platon, shielded from the drama by his parents, now has his membership back and continues to swim at the gym's pool, which he loves. Of course, most experts acknowledge that people like Platon and Oxana are the tip of the iceberg.

Staying silent

'Some parents are still compelled to stay silent, especially if they bought into fairy tales and decided to blame themselves for their child's condition,' Yelena, a mother of two who volunteers with special needs children in Moscow, told me.

Much like Nadezhda, Yelena doesn't want me to publish her last name, although her reasons are different. Nadezhda wants privacy for her son, while Yelena says she doesn't want to draw attention to her volunteering. 'I don't want someone to read this and think I'm trying to be a hero,' she says simply. This is her condition for opening up about painful family history.

Yelena became drawn to volunteering after the death of her niece. Together with her sister, Yelena comes from a tough background. Just like Natalia Vodianova, she was raised by a poor single mother, and, also like Vodianova, Yelena escaped and went on to an altogether different destiny, albeit one as a successful businesswoman.

Yet while Yelena was putting herself through college, her sister 'drifted': there was a string of abusive relationships and substance abuse. Yelena's niece was born 'a very sick child', and didn't live past infancy. The death haunted Yelena.

'After I had my own children, I kept thinking about the child that was lost,' Yelena tells me. 'So I had to find a way to start doing something for other people.'

Yelena sees parallels between treatment of autism and treatment of poverty in Russia. 'People often have this fear, they think [being poor or having autism] is contagious,' she says.

But like many people involved in bridging the gap between people with autism and neurotypicals, Yelena sees slow positive change encroaching upon Russia. 'A few years ago it was possible to get a weird look from a colleague if they find out that you work with autistic children,' she says. 'Now most of my colleagues have Facebook, so they are more aware of the issues, and, actually, they want to help... Of course many don't realise that helping can't be a one-off, that it's about commitment, but it's all about tiny steps in the right direction'"

It is still common to see 'autism' used as an insult in Russia. Have an insufferable colleague or an uncommunicative neighbor? Why, they're an autist (the Russian shorthand for a person with autism)!

On an official level, there is broad agreement that Russia's most vulnerable members, and people with autism certainly qualify here, need better integration and more opportunities. It would benefit everyone by doing everything from alleviating the costs of running ineffective state care facilities to helping parents of special needs children to remain in the workface.

As Smirnova rightly points out, there is no government roadmap to follow. This is part of the reason why philanthropy has become a driving force for greater acceptance of non-neurotypical people. Russian civil society has surged ahead of the government on this issue, and now officials are working to catch up.

With people like Smirnova and Vodianova on the case, there is hope the catching up process will not take forever.
 
 #12
www.rt.com
December 2, 2015
Russia continues record oil production - energy ministry

Russia's oil output has continued hovering at post-Soviet record levels in November despite the plunging crude price and the global glut.

Production of crude and gas condensate stood at 10.779 million barrels a day (mbd) during the month, according to the Russian Energy Ministry. Output was slightly beneath the record October level of 10.782 mbd.

Russian oil and gas output rose by 6.62 million tons from January to November, compared with the same period last year.

Crude exports reached 5.32 million bpd last month, which is an 11 percent higher from the previous year but 2.4 percent lower than October.

Experts say that the low oil price has no impact on Russia's output. Russian oil companies have increased profits and output since the weaker domestic currency has protected their business. The depreciating ruble cut costs and taxes for the companies that generate earnings in US dollars but pay most of their expenses in rubles.

Other global energy players continued to struggle with plunging crude prices, as their profits fell. Oil majors BP and Shell announced large job and spending cuts, following a serious drop in second-quarter profits.

Global oil prices have more than halved to $45 per barrel over the past 18 months, not helped by OPEC's decision not to cut crude production despite the glut in the global oil market. The cartel will meet later this week for output policy negotiations which analysts say is likely to remain unchanged.


 
 #13
Progressive tax regime a double-edged sword for Russia
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/.  The time is ripe in Russia to use taxes as an instrument to narrow the gap between the incomes of the super-rich and the low-income categories of citizens but a progressive tax regime should avoid destroying the middle class, experts polled by TASS said on Wednesday.

The A Just Russia party has submitted a bill to the State Duma on introducing a progressive income tax. Currently, Russia has a flat tax regime, under which both oil magnates and cleaners pay the same 13% tax on their incomes.

The A Just Russia party has proposed keeping the tax unchanged at 13% for citizens with their annual incomes of under 5 million rubles ($74,545) and raising it to 18% for earners of 5 million rubles to 50 million rubles ($745,450) and 23% for persons getting from 50 million rubles to 500 million rubles ($7,454,500). The party has also proposed that citizens earning even more should pay an income tax of 28%

Statistics show that the top 10% of Russia's well-to-do people were 17 times richer than the bottom 10% in 2014. The top 10% of Russia's richest people account for 30% of money incomes of the entire Russian population while the poorest citizens account for just 1.9%

The bill's authors estimate that a progressive tax regime would help add 470 billion rubles ($7 billion) in tax revenues to the federal budget, which is quite a substantial sum, considering a budget deficit of 2.18 trillion rubles ($32.5 billion) projected for next year.

The flat tax system in Russia was introduced in the early 2000s, Director of the Strategic Analysis and Developments Department at Vnesheconombank Vladimir Andrianov said.

"The Russian government introduced a flat 13% income tax system for all citizens back in the early 2000s to improve the investment climate, stimulate business and raise tax collection. As a result, the period until 2007 was the best time for the Russian economy," Andrianov told TASS.

Now the flat income tax system does not meet the requirements of social justice, the financier said.

"Some 10-15 years ago, Russia did not see such a sharp stratification of society by income. There was a small group of oligarchs from the Forbes list incomparable with hundreds of today's top managers of state corporations and businessmen with billion-ruble incomes. The introduction of a progressive tax regime for this small stratum in society would boost budget revenues and make the state more socially-oriented," the expert said.

But a progressive tax scale also has the reverse side of the coin, he added. "Business may hide in the shadows from taxes. The problem of tax collection will resurface as wages will be paid in envelopes. The most serious threat will be posed to the middle class as the economic growth driver and also to the investment climate."

"I would cancel the income tax on low-income citizens all together, leave the flat 13% tax regime for the middle class and introduce a progressive tax of up to 40% for the highest earners as is the case in most countries," the expert said.

"Another thing is that rich people in France, Sweden and Denmark know that their tax payments are spent on social allowances and infrastructure as everything is transparent there. However, it is difficult to control this process in Russia with its weakly-developed civil society," he added.

Co-author of the bill on progressive taxation, State Duma deputy from the A Just Russia party Oleg Nilov believes that the opponents of this initiative are defending the "golden one percent of the population," the "masters of life" who possess all the country's riches.

"The bill is not aimed against the middle class. It has been developed to protect those 20 million Russian citizens who are living beyond the poverty line of 10,000 rubles ($149) and conscientiously pay the 13% tax on their meager incomes," Nilov told TASS.

According to the lawmaker, the federal budget should be replenished at the expense of wealthy people rather than the poorest layers of society or the middle class.

'The government has now imposed a levy on heavy-duty trucks for using federal highways. This measure will help replenish the budget by 40 billion rubles ($597 million). Meanwhile, the progressive tax regime proposed by the A Just Russia party will bring hundreds of billions of rubles for the budget," the lawmaker said.

"Officials say that the rich will hide from the progressive tax scale and won't be caught. But why does the country have dozens of supervisory, tax and law-enforcement bodies then? It is their task to bring tax evaders out of the shadow," the parliamentarian said.
 
 #14
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 2, 2015
Debt repayment falters as ruble stays unsteady
Amid continuously falling incomes, debt help groups thrive as Russians turn to different solutions to repay loans.
ANNA KUCHMA, RBTH

In the past year, arrears on loans have reached record levels. Borrowers are finding it more difficult to repay their loans due to the steep devaluation of the ruble and corresponding drop in real income at their disposal. Experts also believe banks are giving people less credit due to these circumstances.

While some Russians have adopted a more responsible attitude toward their expenses and started saving money, the most desperate credit addicts are turning to "debtor anonymous" groups.

In 2015, the share of arrears on consumer loans reached a record high of 11 percent, according to the Gaidar Institute, one of the country's leading economic scientific research institutes. Previously, the highest indicator was 9.1 percent. Moreover, delayed payments have increased from 10 to 20 percent, said Mikhail Khromov, director of the laboratory of financial studies at the Gaidar Institute.

According to the National Bureau of Credit Histories (NBCH), the largest database of credit histories in the country, Russians currently owe more than 10 trillion rubles ($154 billion) in retail debt, while arrears on loans stand at 1 trillion rubles ($15 billion).

Why are Russians not paying?

The main reason driving the accumulation of debt is the sudden drop in the population's income, experts say.

"This leads to poor servicing of the borrowers' credit obligations," says Alexei Volkov from NBCH.

Data from the Sekvoya Credit Consolidation collecting agency confirms the problem. In a survey in the second quarter of 2015, the company asked 3,000 debtors why they missed their loan payments. Forty-three percent of respondents attributed the problem to their worsening financial position.

"As a result of the deteriorating macroeconomic situation, the population's real disposable income decreased by 1 percent in 2014 and in 2015 it is expected to decrease by 8 percent. Consequently, more resources are used paying for primary goods and less are left to pay back the loans," says Sekvoya Credit Consolidation president Elena Dokucheva.

As a result, banks have been giving out less credit. The volume of consumer credit in the January-October 2015 period declined by 35 percent to $51.8 billion in comparison with the same period last year.

In Alexei Volkov's opinion, a subjective factor plays a major role: debtors' inaccurate assessment of their prospects.

"In order for this not to happen, it is necessary to check your credit history, assess your potential and ask for credit only when it is really unavoidable," Volkov says.

Overspending as a compulsion

Another group particularly vulnerable to the debt crisis are those lacking knowledge about loan repayment or suffering from impulse control. Uncontrollable spending is comparable to an alcoholic's addiction, says the director of the Psychoanalysis and Business Consulting Department at the Higher School of Economics, professor Andrei Rossokhin.

"These people have the inner 'I' of a child who cannot wait and doesn't understand that taking out a loan entails responsibility," Rossokhin says.

Some have found solace in the Society of Anonymous Debtors, founded in 2011 and modeled on American Debtors Anonymous, which was established in the 1970s.

"We've discovered that loans are a sickness that with time doesn't disappear but on the contrary, progresses," reads the society's website. "It is impossible to cure the disease but it can be stopped."

This was true for Victoria from Moscow, who several years ago invested in the FOREX MMCIS Group investment company by taking out a bank loan and borrowing from her friends for a total of about 3.7 million rubles ($57,000). In 2014, Victoria received a letter from MMCIS saying that the company was initiating bankruptcy procedures. As a result, together with interest, Victoria still owed five million rubles ($77,000).

Victoria credits the Society of Anonymous Debtors with her recent increase in income and the fact that every month she can make bank payments and return her friends' money.

"I have already stopped considering myself a victim, and my life has become less impulsive than before," Victoria told the RBC Daily newspaper.

Another participant of the society, Maria, calls herself a spendthrift.

"Earlier, I would always borrow money and almost 70-80 percent of my income went towards paying off my debt. The remaining 20-30 percent was not enough to live on and therefore I had to keep borrowing," Maria says.

Attending the society helped Maria pay off her debt and even save up for a vacation, she says. "However, after my vacation I again started borrowing," she says. "And I had to return to the group."
 
 #15
Moscow Times
December 2, 2015
Russians Turn to Bartering in Economic Recession
By Anna Dolgov

An economic recession and soaring grocery prices have prompted Russians to go online to trade household items for food, with scores of websites facilitating a barter system cropping up around the country.

Russia's main social network, VKontakte, has an array of online groups, targeting various cities, where local inhabitants place ads to trade clothes, furniture, tableware or even kittens for "yummies."

The idea has gained traction in the Siberian city of Omsk, where one group had garnered more that 58,000 followers by Wednesday. The relatively prosperous Moscow also has a few, although the Moscow groups lag far behind in popularity, despite the capital's much larger population.

Some of the ads are phrased in general terms, describing the item that is being offered and inviting possible trades. Others are highly specific, offering a hair straightener in exchange for a chicken, a handbag for a kilogram of sugar, or a clothing iron for three cans of sardines.

The Siberian branch of the state-run Rossia television network described the barter system in Omsk as residents' "way of surviving the crisis."

"At a time of an economic decline, various sanctions and growing food prices, the people of Omsk don't abandon each other in trouble, but use such guileless methods to share extra goods they have accumulated," the network's reporter said in a Tuesday newscast.

Russia has few thrift shops or charities where local inhabitants can donate clothes or furniture, and some social network users praised the online groups as a way to "freecycle" unneeded possessions.

A young woman from Omsk, Natalya Rovenskaya, who recently traded two cans of green peas for a coffee set, told Sibera's Rossia television she often exchanged books and tableware, while children's clothes were also popular items to trade among social network users.

"Some people used to throw away what was no longer needed, but now there is an opportunity to trade," she said. "I trade a lot, and I give away very many things, and thanks to this I have made a lot of friends."

Russia banned food imports from the West in response to sanctions against Moscow, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered government agents to destroy any food smuggled into the country.

Russia will introduce additional screening of food imports on the border with Belarus starting on Dec. 7, to prevent banned produce and groceries from being smuggled through the neighboring country under fake papers, the head of agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor, Sergei Dankvert, said Tuesday, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia's economy is in a deep recession, having shrunk in recent years by about 40 percent in U.S. dollar terms, due in part to a drop in the price of oil and to Western sanctions imposed for Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine. The ban on food imports has contributed to further price hikes in Russian grocery stores.

Moscow recently added Turkey to the list of countries from which food imports are prohibited, after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border on Nov. 24.
 
 #16
AP
December 2, 2015
Chechnya Holds Classes to Counter IS Propaganda

GROZNY, Russia - Authorities in Russia's predominantly Muslim republic of Chechnya have organized classes to stave off Islamic State recruitment.

Thousands of Russian Muslim have joined IS in Syria, and some have taken senior positions.

Islamic militancy has engulfed Russia's North Caucasus, Dagestan in particular, following two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya. While nearly 1,000 people are believed to have left Dagestan from Syria, the number of Chechen recruits is far lower.

Chechnya's authoritarian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, said last month that less than 500 Chechens are believed to have joined IS and that about 200 of them have already been killed. Kadyrov has recently gone as far as offering to send thousands of Chechen fighters as ground troops to fight IS.

Local students say many of their peers are tempted to go to Syria because they believe in a true Islamic state there.

"Even those girls who study well are trying to go there (to Syria)," said Grozny student Albina Maltsagova.

To counter IS propaganda, Islamic clerics and government officials are holding meetings with high school and university students on how to avoid IS recruitment, explaining that the group distorts the true meaning of the Quran.

Djamalulail Said-Khamzat, deputy head of Chechen parliament's international relations committee, said young people from poorer families are more susceptible to IS recruitment and get lured by its propaganda videos posted online.
 
 #17
Wall Street Journal
December 2, 2015
Russia Agrees to 'Road Map' for Doping Testing
Russian authorities say they would take action on the plan and work to re-establish the country's credentials with international partners
By PAUL SONNE

MOSCOW-Russia has agreed on a "road map" with the World Anti-Doping Agency to reform and reaccredit its domestic test lab and anti-doping organization, which lost their licenses after a WADA investigation found evidence of widespread doping in Russian track and field, according to the Russian sports minister.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said Tuesday that Russian authorities would take action on the plan and work to re-establish the country's credentials with international partners, according to the Interfax news agency. "A road map has been agreed, what we have to do is all clear," he said.

In the face of the doping allegations, Russia has alternated between pledges to remedy the situation alongside international partners and accusations that the scrutiny is politically-motivated.

Mutko struck the same balance on Tuesday, pledging reform but saying Russia isn't the world's most problematic country when it comes to doping.

"Yesterday, I was analyzing the situation with doping and other questions," Mutko said, according to Interfax. "Of course, we are living right now under the conditions of a complicated political environment. There's a lot of ganging up on all of Russian sport."

At the same time, Mutko met Russia's weightlifting team and called on its members to be extra-vigilant. "We will be extra transparent," he said. "We have to watch what we drink and eat. You and your coaches need to be very careful."

Mutko's declaration that a road map for Russia's full re-entry into world sport has been developed comes amid continuing questions and demands from international athletes about whether their Russian competitors may have been involved in the doping scandal even if they didn't compete in track and field. Several prominent athletes, including Olympic swimmer Kirsty Coventry and former Nordic champion Becky Scott, have called for a full investigation of Russian sport to determine whether the country's corrupt doping system hid the use of performance enhancing drugs across all sports.

The athletes' council of skiing's international federation is planning to meet in the coming weeks to discuss whether to make a formal demand for an investigation. So far WADA has limited the scope of its Russia inquiry to track and field even though a recent report stated other spots may have been involved.

Tim Burke, the U.S. biathlete, said Tuesday he and other competitors on the World Cup tour want WADA to take a closer look at their sport, which was specifically mentioned in the investigation as having potentially been corrupted by what investigators have called Russia's state-sponsored doping system. "It seems like they are trying to let this blow over, but this is too big for that," Burke said.

Russia will figure out by the end of the year where Russian competitors will be subjected to doping tests, Mutko said, explaining that for now it was up to the relevant international sports associations to decide who would test Russian competitors. He said Russia was coming up with a new approach to testing in the meantime.

"There is a contingent of Russian competitors. WADA is worried about how we will test them," Mutko said, according to Interfax. "They proposed that we come up with an approach and decide which national association and laboratory is going to check our tests. But that is not so simple to do. I think that we will lay the groundwork this year. We have to find the resources and establish the judicial basis for spending these resources. It isn't all that simple."

He said the Russian anti-doping agency is handing over disputed cases of alleged doping to the sports arbitration court in Lausanne. Six Russian athletes who were served doping suspensions before the publication of the WADA commission investigation are expected to face appeals hearings this week, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
 
 #18
NATO invites Montenegro to join alliance, defying Russia
By Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold

BRUSSELS, Dec 2 NATO invited tiny Montenegro on Wednesday to join the military alliance in its first expansion since 2009, defying Russian warnings that enlargement of the U.S.-led bloc further into the Balkans is "irresponsible" action that undermines trust.

In a scripted session at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Montenegro's Foreign Minister Igor Luksic strode into the imposing conference hall to loud applause from his peers as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg declared: "This is the beginning of a very beautiful alliance."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the decision to invite Montenegro was not directed at Russia. "NATO is not a threat to anyone ... it is a defensive alliance, it is simply meant to provide security," Kerry told a news conference. "It is not focused on Russia or anyone else."

NATO diplomats said the decision sends a message to Moscow that it does not have a veto on the alliance's eastwards expansion, even if Georgia's membership bid has been complicated by its 2008 war with Russia.

Moscow opposes any NATO extension to former communist areas of eastern and southeastern Europe, part of an east-west struggle for influence over former Soviet satellites that is at the centre of the crisis in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in September that any expansion of NATO was "a mistake, even a provocation". In comments to Russian media then, he said NATO's so-called open door policy was "an irresponsible policy that undermines the determination to build a system of equal and shared security in Europe."

RIA news agency cited a Russian senator as saying on Wednesday that Russia will end joint projects with Montenegro if the ex-Communist country joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Adriatic state of 650,000 people is expected to become a member formally next year.

Viktor Ozerov, head of the Russian Federation Council's defence and safety committee, said the projects which could be axed included those in military areas, RIA reported.

NATO foreign ministers broke off practical cooperation with Russia in April last year after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and sparked the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 8,000 people. They can still talk to Russia through political and military channels, however.

Still, NATO allies are divided over what message to send to Georgia over its long-delayed membership bid, with some European capitals arguing the alliance would be unable to defend the ex-Soviet state in the event of a conflict with Russia.

'BLATANT' CONTRADICTION

Those difficulties were underlined by a foreign ministers' joint statement that provided little momentum in Georgia's membership talks.

Ministers repeated their long-held position that Tbilisi must continue to prepare for membership one day, calling for Russia's military to withdraw from Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia's continued presence there and agreements signed between Russia and the two regions "blatantly contradict the principles of international law," the statement said.

NATO's founding treaty deems an attack against one ally an attack against all, giving any member a guarantee of protection. But Georgia, which is a partner but not an ally, does not qualify for any such protection.

NATO membership is also dependent on a country settling any outstanding territorial disputes - another big hurdle for Georgia.

After Albania and Croatia joined NATO in 2009, only Serbia, Russia's closest ally in the Balkans, is the only Balkan country not actively pursuing membership of the alliance. Foreign ministers signalled support for Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but neither are expected to join soon.

Even though Montenegro has now been invited, it could take months for it formally to join. But Stoltenberg said he expected accession talks to go quickly, suggesting that the small Balkan state might become a member at the next summit of NATO leaders in July in Warsaw.
 
 #19
Forbes.com
November 29, 2015
Another Russian 'Friend' Readies For NATO, But Corporate Scandals May Prove Costly
By Kenneth Rapoza

Are these the guys the North Atlantic Treaty Organization really wants on their side of the law?

Montenegro is inching towards European integration. Joining NATO is seen as another piece to becoming a full fledged member of the European Union. Yet, bashing Russian business at a time when hating Vladimir Putin is fashionable may be a smokescreen for Milo Dukanovic. The Montenegrin Prime Minister has a laundry list of bad business and corruption tied to his name that might make NATO membership difficult, if not downright embarrassing for the organization. This isn't the first time NATO has met with unsavory member states in the former Yugoslavia.

The biggest and most recent case business battle involves FORBES billionaire Oleg Deripaska. He's the majority shareholder behind the Cyprus-based Central European Aluminum Company (CEAC), which in 2005 took over Montenegro's outdated aluminum producer Kombinat Aluminijuma Podgorica, better known as KAP It's been bad blood all around. The company was expropriated in 2013. Its former CFO, Dmitry Potrubach, was paraded around in hand cuffs like an animal act on national television, accused of stealing electric power.  CEAC managed KAP, but was in an equal partnership with the government. It's a long, complicated story. All of the Russians involved have been run out of town. But CEAC is the headliner that makes it harder for Montenegro to go West.

The arrest of Dmitry Potrubach, the Russian CFO of Montenegrin metals company KAP, ultimately led to the expropriation of assets majority owned by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripraska. (Photo by Vesko Belojevic/Vijesti)

"Is Montenegro ready for the big time?" Dmitry Potrubach repeats my question out loud while driving through Serbia. "No, it is not. You can be accused that you stole the sun and they can see the sun in the sky and then they'll tell you they have to double check. There is no normal way there. It's unbelievable. I cannot describe it. I guess it's like the Middle Ages."

Requests for comment by the Montenegrin Embassy in Washington were not returned.

Here's what the government  has to defend against in its quest for integration, according to 2015 Project Report released on Nov. 10.

Corruption and the rule of law are the two biggest sticking points, according to the report. In everything else, Montenegro is actually looking "moderately" prepared to be a part of Europe's expansion team in the Balkans.

On corruption, Montenegro's track record on effective investigation, prosecution and final convictions, in particular regarding high-level corruption, gives the Europeans in charge of this process something to chew on.

In the fight against organized crime, the country has a modicum level of preparation but further efforts are needed to investigate wider criminal networks and counter official money laundering. There is a credibility problem in Montenegro. And, oddly, some international businesses are taking it on the chin. Kicking CEAC out of KAP is a little bit like the government saying, 'hey, we are going after the bad guys because, well, we are the good guys.'

Russian businesses are not the only ones that have faced mistreatment. A Dutch company locally called Montenegro Specialty Steels N.V. acquired a local metallurgical plant, Zhelezara, in 2008 and in 2011. After investing around 100 million euros in the plants modernization, MNSS was removed from management by the government through an insolvency procedure. The plant was later sold to a Turkish company.

In 2012 MNSS filed a claim with the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. No ruling has be made at this time, but one could be made as early as next month.

Then there's the Italians at A2A. Italy's largest utility player acquired a controlling stake in a local utility for over $500 million in 2009 from the government owned EPCG, only to lose control in three years. That fiasco has since turned the corner and as of Oct. 15, at least, A2A got its management contract extended for another five years.

Simply put, it's not easy doing business in Montenegro and cronyism, lack of transparency, and corruption are the reasons for it.

The former Socialist stronghold has become littered with widespread white collar crime. It is a roadblock to Dukanovic's hopes of joining NATO and, ultimately, the European Union.

Stories of funny business are easy to find.

In December, Dukanovic announced that the country would bail out First Bank, one of the country's largest financial institutions and a major backer in the Montenegrin boom; a boom that was mainly led by Russian investors. First Bank is majority owned by Dukanovic, his two siblings, and a buddy of his. In short, he bailed out himself.

Members of local watchdog groups, opposition parties, and journalists say this is just another example of the government's interests aligning with the financial interests of the first family. They say their small country - fewer than 700,000 people in less space than the state of Connecticut - is a private corporation run by and for the prime minister and his friends.

Recent protests against him have been blamed on the Russians. The argument is the one investors have heard coming from Ukraine: they are stirring up unrest in order to keep it out of NATO.

There were protests as recent as Oct. 25 and Nov. 15, with people holding signs reading Milo is a Thief! According to Dukanovic, opposition groups are being supported somehow by the Kremlin. Radio Free Europe, which is funded in part by the U.S. government, agrees.

Dukanovic has enough on his plate as Montenegro moves further along the process of integration. Russian boogey men should be the least of his worries.

In 2011, Dukanovic was part of the well known Magyar Telecom bribery scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged the largest telecommunications provider in Hungary, Magyar, and three of its former top executives with bribing government and politicians in Montenegro in 2005-2006 to win business and shut out competition in the telecommunications industry. According to the SEC, the Hungarian company paid about $9 million through bogus contracts to bribe "at least two government officials", as well as his sister, a capital city attorney named Ana Kolarevic.

In late 2011 Magyar and Deutsche Telekom agreed to pay $95 million to resolve a U.S. criminal investigation into the charges. Even though the charges were dropped against some executives, Magyar still acknowledged it had paid bribes to Dukanovic's government.

The Prime Minister was also investigated by the Italian anti-mafia police over allegations that he was involved in a billion-dollar tobacco smuggling ring between 1996 and 2002. Those charges were dropped in 2009 on the grounds of diplomatic immunity.

Montenegro's economy is doing well. But its politics are at the risk of becoming a laughing stock. Total legal claims against it are now in excess of 1 billion euros. That's nearly 30% of the nation's GDP.

Unlike any other European country, Dukanovic has run his for the past 25 years. His connections to unsavory business deals could turn him into the latest Ivo Sanader and not the next Lithuania, which become member of the euro family last January and is a very proud member of the NATO family.

Sanader's shoes are not worth filling. He was the Prime Minister of Croatia before it joined NATO in 2009 and the E.U. in 2013 . He was the second former Yugoslavian state to join the club (Slovenia beat him to it), and wound up in a Croatian prison a little over 8 years later in 2014 for rigging privatization bids. Corruption caught up with him. He's still in jail. He's trying to get out.

NATO accession negotiations have been underway with Montenegro since 2012, the organization says. Slovenia and Croatia are the only ex-Yugoslavia nations that are now NATO members. Montenegro would be the third.

Last month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Dukanovic to encourage him to move forward with reforms and tackle the E.U.'s complaints about official corruption.

Stoltenberg said that joining the Euro-Atlantic family "is a win-win" for Montenegro and for NATO, which would have full control of southeastern Europe once membership is sealed. "Countries which joined the Alliance have been able to strengthen their democracy, boost their security and make their citizens safer," Stoltenberg said.

If Sanader is the best rear view in all this, then the shady business deals of Dukanovic will haunt him more than it will hurt Montenegro. Meanwhile, Russian businesses will have to cope with an official anti-Russia sentiment brewing in Dukanovic's kitchen.

"Russia will have mixed feelings about having another Eastern European state joining NATO," says Nikolas Gvosdev, a well-known Russian-American international relations scholar from the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI.

On the one hand, Moscow opposes on principle any further expansion of the alliance. On the other hand, Montenegro in NATO does not pose any threat to Russian interests or businesses, says Gvosdev. Russia accounts for over 30% of Montenegrin foreign direct investment.

"The hope is that concentration on the Balkans will also lessen enthusiasm for NATO expansion further east, especially to encompass Ukraine and Georgia. Russia may also hope to use its relationship with Montenegro to influence NATO, since the alliance continues to work on the basis of consensus. Hungary and Slovakia both show how a country can be part of NATO and still close partners to the Russians in commercial matters and also advocates for Russian interests in European councils."

Both Hungary and Slovakia are also members of the E.U.

Dukanovic may start using anti-Russia sentiment in the west to cast doubts that the recent civil unrest is really about him. Montenegro will integrate with Europe one of these days. It won't be at the expense of the Russians. But whether Dukanovic witnesses that integration as a free man remains to be seen.


 
#20
New York Times
December 2, 2015
U.S. Plans to Counter Arms Breach by Russia
By Michael Gordon

WASHINGTON - Frustrated by Russia's refusal to address the Obama administration's concerns that it has violated a landmark arms control accord, the Pentagon is moving ahead with plans to strengthen defenses in Europe against Moscow's military programs, including the threat posed by cruise missiles, a senior Defense Department official told Congress on Tuesday.

But the Pentagon's assurance did not satisfy Republican lawmakers, who said that the administration had made no headway in persuading the Russians to rectify the violation.

At issue is the 1987 treaty banning intermediate-range missiles based on land, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then the Soviet leader, and has long been viewed as one of the agreements that sealed the end of the Cold War.

The Obama administration charged in July 2014 that the Russians had violated the treaty, popularly known as the INF accord, by developing and testing a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Sunday aboard a ship in Severomorsk, Russia.U.S. Says Russia Tested Cruise Missile, Violating TreatyJULY 28, 2014
Repeated attempts to persuade the Kremlin to resolve the issue have failed. Rose Gottemoeller, the senior State Department official for arms control, told a joint meeting of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees that Russian officials had never acknowledged developing the prohibited system and instead had focused on leveling "counteraccusations," which she dismissed as spurious.

The Obama administration has said that the missile has yet to be deployed, but Brian P. McKeon, a senior policy official at the Defense Department who appeared with Ms. Gottemoeller, described the violation as a serious one.

"We are talking about a real system and not a potential capability," Mr. McKeon said, adding that a classified assessment by the Pentagon's Joint Staff had concluded that the deployment of the system would increase the risk to allies in Europe and Asia and also "pose an indirect threat to the United States."

When he spoke to Congress a year ago, Mr. McKeon said that the Pentagon had developed a range of military options to pressure Russia to correct its violation. Ms. Gottemoeller also said at the time that the Obama administration was considering "economic measures" to put pressure on Russia to fix the violation, though she did not say what they were.

But on Tuesday, Mr. McKeon said that the administration was now taking a somewhat different approach that would incorporate some options into a more "comprehensive" response to Russia's more aggressive military posture in Europe.

"Our core objective remains the same: to ensure that Russia does not obtain a significant military advantage from its INF violation," Mr. McKeon said. "As we consider the changed strategic environment in Europe, we are factoring Russia's increased cruise missile capabilities, including its INF violation, into our planning."

The comprehensive response Mr. McKeon pointed to, however, contains only a few specifics and appeared to include increased spending that was already underway for some military programs in Europe as well as programs that the Pentagon would like to include in future budget proposals.

It remains unclear what specific new capabilities the Pentagon planned to field and when, and which programs it might cancel if the Russians eventually came into compliance with the accord.

A senior official, who declined to be identified because he was talking about the administration's discussions, said the full scope of the plan would become clear once internal budget deliberations were completed.

Representative Mike D. Rogers, the Alabama Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, complained that the administration had not announced any specific actions in response to the alleged Russia violation.

"This is a longstanding violation," Mr. Rogers said. "It should not be blended in."

The dominant sentiment among the lawmakers appeared to be expressed by Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican, who was frustrated that no headway had been made in drawing the Russians into a serious discussion about the violation.

"It seems like it is 'Groundhog Day,' " he said.
 
 
 #21
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 30, 2015
Some you win, some you lose: Russia's foreign policy in 2015
To understand the results of Russia's foreign policy this year, Russia Direct sat down with Mark Galeotti, professor of global affairs at New York University and a specialist on Russian security affairs.
By Pavel Koshkin

Russia's foreign policy in 2015 has been a big surprise for foreign experts and politicians, who discussed this topic rigorously during the recent ASEEES (the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) Slavic convention in Philadelphia. While some argue that Russia engaged in a great deal of dangerous improvisation this year, others argue that the Kremlin has a big foreign policy strategy, with its core goal to reinvigorate its geopolitical positions and regain its lost influence in the global arena. The recent Syrian campaign is a good example of this.

However, relying on improvisation alone may only bring short-term benefits such as boosting the government's popularity within the country, rather than long-term ones. Moreover, such an approach makes it difficult for the Kremlin to find common ground with the West.

In order to understand the results of Russia's foreign policy improvisation in 2015 and its implications, Russia Direct sat down at the ASEEES convention with Mark Galeotti, professor of global affairs at New York University and a specialist on Russian security affairs.

Russia Direct: What were the major drivers of Russia's foreign policy in 2015, from your point of view?

Mark Galeotti: In many ways, 2015 is actually the extension of 2014. It demonstrates that Moscow is not constrained by international rule: If it feels it needs to take Crimea it will; if it feels it needs to intervene in [Eastern] Ukraine it will. This year has seen Russia have to cope with the consequences of such policy: the sanctions and the isolation [from the West]. So, the Donbas adventure has not worked.

And therefore we've seen several attempts to respond. Firstly, [Russia] tried to isolate Kiev through political means - this hasn't worked. Secondly, it tried to persuade the West that it was better in general terms to deal with Moscow and that also hasn't worked.

And then came the Syrian adventure to force the West to realize that it needs to deal with Russia and give Moscow the opportunity to extricate itself from the Donbas. In other words, this is a kind of a deal: We will be nice to you in the Middle East, you have to be nice to us to a certain extent in Kiev and allow us to pull ourselves from that mistake.

RD: Do you think such an approach will work?

M.G.: Actually, I think it will. In Europe, there is an appetite for the de-escalation of the conflict. Secondly, there is a philosophical belief that peace is what is important, that peace for Ukraine is the precondition for everything else. And then you can help Ukraine build itself as a proper sovereign state. After all, we are not taking about granting Russia sovereignty and suzerainty over Ukraine, we are really talking about allowing Moscow to withdraw with a degree of pride and tact.

Although Washington is less comfortable with that, I think in this respect the European view will prevail. We are not there yet, but I think that's the direction we are heading for.

RD: What are the achievements and failures of Russia's foreign policy in 2015?

M.G.: There are tactical and strategic achievements. The tactical ones include the Syrian move: Although there are still many, many risks, associated with it, it was brilliant by the way it was executed.

But more generally, the strategic virtue is two-fold: One is actually managing to mitigate some of the worst impacts of the post-Ukrainian adventure, isolation and so forth. And secondly, Russia seems to have proved that to a certain extent it is a regional and global player: not a strong one, not by any means like the United States or China.

Because Putin has demonstrated a capacity to play his weak hand very well, because Putin has demonstrated a capacity to be a spoiler, he has, at least, made a case that you cannot ignore Moscow. And this is a key priority of this year.

But the failures are also in essence extensions of the failures of 2014. Attempts to induce Kiev to accept Moscow's hegemony have proven unsuccessful - if the attempt to build a new, democratic and West-looking Ukrainian state comes to nothing again, it will as usual be because of the Ukrainians.

Attempts to persuade the West to lift its sanctions regime have failed. Attempts to turn economic relations with China into some broader alliance that would allow Moscow to minimize the impact of Western isolation have failed.

There is a chance that thanks to Syria and, ironically, ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria], Moscow may be able to make some progress on this, but for all the talk of Putin as a master strategist, actually Russian foreign policy so far this year has not accomplished any of its main goals.

RD: This year Russian and American presidents met on the sidelines of the G20 summit and discussed Syria, which brought about optimism among some experts that Russia and the U.S. can find common ground regardless of their differences and forget about Ukraine, at least, for a certain period of time.

M.G.: I don't think there are any questions about forgetting Ukraine. Nations are always able to be allies. Nations are always able to say: "We see common interest here, we see divergence there." So, I think there is clearly going to be some kind of purely tactical battlefield alliance in Syria.

Of course, for lasting success against ISIS, you actually need to have some kind of political shift in Syria, because you need soldiers on the ground: The Syrian army itself is not enough for this, even with its Iranian proxies and militias. One of the things that Moscow can bring to the table after all is precisely to negotiate [Syrian President Bashar] Assad out of office.

Perversely, although everyone thought that Russia went to Syria to save Assad, what they are actually doing is going there so that Assad can be negotiated out rather than just losing power or facing a coup or whatever. So, in this respect, there are actually all kind of good reasons for America, Europe and Russia to cooperate against Islamic State, but this is not going to mean some re-reset, this is not going to mean they forget the very real conflicts that exist.

RD: Some pundits in the United States believe that Putin is a great strategist, especially in his foreign policy. Do you think so?

M.G.: No, I don't think that he is a good strategist at all. In any case, we have to realize that foreign policy is very, very rarely driven by strategy, even if you think he is a strategist. There are so many variables and so many different actors involved.

What I think Putin has are actually two things: One is a general vision of what he wants and this vision is really driven primarily by his notion of Russian sovereignty and Russia's place in the world. He feels Russia deserves to have a voice, to be listened to, he feels Russia deserves to be able basically to veto the impact of international norms and organizations inside its own borders. His sense of Russian sovereignty is that the Kremlin should be able to control everything that happens within Russia's frontiers and have influence over what happens beyond it.

But that's the vision, not the strategy. The other thing, though, is that he is much more an opportunist: He responds to situations that arise and sometimes takes advantage of them. And in many ways it is sometimes far more effective, yet it carries risks because you might, as we saw in the Donbas, take a gamble and it fails.

RD: To what extent will Putin be able to find common ground with the West or, at least, to minimize the differences in 2016?

M.G.: He basically burned his bridges in terms of friendship [with the West]: No one is going to be a friend of Russia in the West under the current regime.
They will find all kind of reasons to cooperate, because it is pragmatically useful, because conflict can be a problem, but I don't think anyone is going to forget Crimea, no one is going to forget MH17 [the Malaysian Airlines passenger jet shot down over Eastern Ukraine in July 2014 - editor's note], no one is going to forget the fact that this regime [in Russia] is committed to essentially undermining many of the institutions through which Western values are communicated and expressed. The best you can hope for is a functioning, grudging modus vivendi with the West. That's all.

M.G.: What the West needs to do is to identify what he [Putin] wants and I think this is the problem. There is a constant uncertainty within the West: There are some who say that we cannot deal with Putin, with Putin's Kremlin. If that's the case, I would say that is a dangerous view. But many hold it, especially, in Washington, when actually you are making the case for regime change (I don't mean hard regime change like Libya, but precisely sponsoring civil society movements that, the Kremlin thinks, will undermine the regime).

Others in a way are much more relaxed and say: "History is ultimately on our side." This is just a phase that Russia has to get through and they are concerned about containing and constraining the worst impact of it.

The other key thing the West has to decide is what it actually wants from the situation: Does it simply want to stop Russia being a problem or does it have some grand notion of reshaping Russia? Hopefully, it will focus just simply on a much more narrowly constrained vision of what to do and allow Russians themselves to build their future.

RD: One of the arguments in the Kremlin's hand is the negligence of the West, which is reluctant to see Russia as an equal partner. Following this logic, how is it possible to see eye-to-eye in this case, if there is no equal partnership?

M.G.: There are two points here. First of all, if we think about equality in the way Putin looks at it, this is clearly not a moral calculation. Putin does not, for example, feel that he should have the same rights as Ukraine has. He clearly feels that Russia has substantially more. He is much more motivated by the 19th-century view of politics.

On the other hand, actually, Russia is no way equal to the West. Yes, it has a thermonuclear arsenal, fair enough. But its economy is somewhere between Italy's and Brazil's. It is not a great power in a meaningful sense, except it is willing to present itself as such. So, when Putin talks about equality, in some ways he is actually harkening back to the position that the Soviet Union had, when it was one of two great superpowers.

RD: Why do you think Moscow regards the NATO expansion as a threat?

M.G.: There is a genuinely held but wrong belief that somehow NATO does harbor hostile intent, especially, within the Russian security and intelligence community, which is after all where Putin gets most of the information from these days now he has shrunk his circle of advisors. And, again, they genuinely believe that they are in effect in a war - a cultural war, rather than a military one - but a war with NATO, because of Putin's professional background and mindset.

But also, let's be honest, we have American generals speaking to Congress and the press and calling Russia an existential threat, the greatest individual threat to the United States! I think this is incredibly irresponsible. And the trouble is because when soldiers talk about a threat, they mean a real possibility, intent.

Britain has an independent nuclear deterrent and in theory could launch a nuclear strike on America. But no one calls Britain an existential threat to America. It's all about intent. So what happens is that we have this vicious circle that the Russians talk about NATO as a threat and believe it to be so. And meanwhile, American generals talk about Russia as a threat and presumably mean it. And it is actually very difficult to break out of that, particularly, when it comes down to the people to whom Putin is listening these days. All come from the same very, very narrow intellectual world.

RD: What do Obama and Putin get wrong about each other?

M.G.: Neither of them understands each other at all. They come from such radically different worlds. Both of them have demonstrated a failure of imagination: The problem is that Obama has continued to try to understand Russia by imagining that Putin is like him, so that there is an Obama in the Kremlin.

And likewise, Putin is assuming there is a Putin in the White House. This is such a tragic problem, because it means both sides get each other wrong so consistently. This is a problem of perception and intellectual empathy.

RD: What are the implications of the downing of the Russian jet by Turkey for Russia-NATO relations and what response should we expect from the Kremlin?

M.G.: I don't think that the shoot-down of the Russian bomber will have a long-term effect on Russia-NATO relations - but Russia-Turkey relations are likely to be another story. It is striking that Ankara's Western allies, while making the necessary pro forma statements in support of its actions, have shown little real enthusiasm.

Likewise, while Moscow has expressed its anger at the Turkish action (and, after all, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was probably right to characterize it as an ambush), it does not seem to be trying to expand the issue.

There is still scope for NATO-Russia cooperation, but I think relations between Ankara and Moscow (and presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin) will remain antagonistic for some time to come.


 
 #22
Reuters
November 24, 2015
Russian jet hit inside Syria after incursion into Turkey: U.S. official

WASHINGTON-The United States believes that the Russian jet shot down by Turkey on Tuesday was hit inside Syrian airspace after a brief incursion into Turkish airspace, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said that assessment was based on detection of the heat signature of the jet.
 
 #23
Los Angeles Times
December 1, 2015
Downing of Russian warplane shines a light on Turkey's shadowy links to extremists
By Nabih Bulos
Bulos is a special correspondent.
 
When Turkish F-16 fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane at the Turkish-Syrian border, it swung the spotlight back on the strategic region, long a focal point of conflict in the Syrian crisis.

It also focused attention on Turkey's relationship with the Syrian rebel factions fighting to wrest control of the country from President Bashar Assad.

The Russian Su-24 bomber was shot down last week. Turkey said it had entered its airspace while on a mission to target Syria's Turkmens, an ethnic minority with deep ancestral and linguistic ties to Turkey. The Kremlin insisted that the plane was over Syria, not Turkey.

Based in the region straddling Turkey's Hatay province and Syria's Latakia province, Turkmen rebel brigades have been among the groups seeking to overthrow Assad, a close Moscow ally. They have received training and arms from Turkish military bases near the border.

That support reflects a wider Turkish policy. Ankara has sponsored some of the Syrian opposition's most prominent factions - including, according to critics, Al Qaeda-linked groups such as Al Nusra Front and Islamic State, although Turkey insists it backs only moderate insurgents.�

"No country has been more important for the rebels than Turkey," said regional expert Mouin Rabbani, speaking by phone from the Jordanian capital, Amman.

He contrasted the situation along Syria's northern border with Turkey to that along the southern border with Jordan.

"The Jordanians were much more selective, while the Turks just opened the spigot on the assumption that the more open the border, the more support goes in, the faster Assad goes," he said.

Before the civil war, relations between Syria and Turkey had been on the rise.

But in November 2011, as Syrian authorities violently put down largely peaceful antigovernment protests, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan aligned himself with what he called the "glorious resistance" and said it was time for Assad to step down.

Since then, fighters and arms have regularly flowed between the two countries and Ankara has given weapons to the opposition and organized logistical support.

It was Turkey's national intelligence agency, known as MIT, that first organized Syrian military defectors into Western-backed groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

Free Syrian Army factions still convene on Turkish soil in the Joint Operations Center, a CIA-led intelligence hub that gives vetted rebels training as well as U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles used to destroy Syrian army tanks and armored units.

Islamist groups, however, have benefited from Turkey's pro-opposition policy as well.

In May, the Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published video from 2014 showing customs agents impounding a truck owned by the MIT.

The truck's manifest said it was carrying humanitarian assistance for Syrians. Instead it was bearing a cache of ammunition and shells the newspaper said were destined for Islamist rebels.

The video's release caused a furor. Erdogan vowed to prosecute Cumhuriyet, a threat he carried out Friday when authorities arrested two of the paper's journalists on charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization.

Turkish assistance has been instrumental in empowering the Army of Conquest, a loose coalition of hard-line Islamist factions including Al Nusra Front, which seized control of Idlib province in March in an offensive backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Economic ties also have been forged between Turkey and rebel factions.

According to a 2015 United Nations study, two border crossings controlled by a faction of the Army of Conquest handle more than 300 trucks a day, a figure that exceeds prewar levels. The traffic yields an estimated $660,000 a day in revenue for the rebel group.

But it is Turkey's shadowy connection with the militant group Islamic State that has caused the most concern.

The rise in 2012 of extremist factions such as Al Nusra Front and later Islamic State did nothing to change Ankara's security stance.

Until last year, when Turkey yielded to international pressure and tightened controls on who could enter the country, bearded men sporting military-style backpacks and clothing were a common sight at the airports in Istanbul, Antakya and Gaziantep. From there, they would be whisked off to Islamic State safe houses near the border and then into Syria.

Questions have been raised about Erdogan's hands-off strategy during Islamic State's assault on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani last year.

The town was saved after an eleventh-hour bombing campaign by the U.S.-led coalition, but many saw the Turkish government's recalcitrance as an effort to block the possibility of a Kurdish state being established in Syrian territories. Turkey has long fought a Kurdish insurgency within its borders and is adamantly opposed to the establishment of an adjacent Kurdish state.

Although Turkish warplanes did fly some sorties against Islamic State targets, they focused mostly on positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Turkey has been fighting the separatist group for almost 40 years.

Russia's entry into the fray in September dealt a further blow to Turkey's hope of ousting Assad.

In recent weeks, Russian jets had pounded Turkmen areas in Syria as pro-Assad forces engaged in land operations to regain control of the mountains in northern Latakia, an area long held by the rebels.

Days before the warplane was shot down, Ankara had sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council condemning the "intense aerial bombardment which reportedly included use of cluster bombs by the Russian air forces," according to the Turkish state news agency Anadolu.

Rabbani said he suspects the downing was a Turkish attempt to stop attacks on rebel groups it considered its own. Russia, he said, wants to weaken Syrian rebel groups supported by Turkey, seal the Turkey-Syria border and quiet calls for Assad's departure.

"I think it's fair to conclude that it was these objectives that were in Turkey's crosshairs," he said.
 
#24
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 2, 2015
'Change of regime' needed for Moscow and Ankara to start talking
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed to meet at the UN climate summit in Paris, but made a number of harsh statements, which, Russian commentators say, have left the two leaders with no chance of reconciliation.
YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA, RBTH

The UN climate conference in Paris, which opened on Nov. 30, proved rich in political statements not related to the agenda of the summit.

One of the main intrigues was the question of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan would discuss the incident involving the Russian bomber shot down near the Syrian-Turkish border with each other.

Despite Putin taking part in a number of bilateral meetings (he had time to hold talks with the heads of state of the U.S., China, Germany, and South Korea, and the prime minister of Israel), no meeting with Erdogan took place.

"We have not met," confirmed Putin, and then said that Russia has received additional data about the incident with the Russian Su-24, which he claimed proved that the protection of the Syrian Turkmens is just an excuse for Turkey.

"We have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect oil supply lines to Turkish territory," Putin said at a news conference after the summit.

According to him, Ankara also failed to respond to Moscow's concerns about the free movement of terrorists as a result of the visa-free regime of the Russian Federation and Turkey (Russia has now abolished visa-free travel for Turkish citizens - RBTH).

"We have long asked to pay attention to the fact that representatives of terrorist organizations that have fought and are trying to fight us with weapons in their hands in some regions of Russia <...> 'surface' on Turkish soil."

Erdogan did not hesitate to answer and made a promise on the same evening to resign if Putin's allegations that Turkey is buying oil from the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist organization are confirmed.

Only a change of government will alter the status quo

It will be very difficult to restore the level of cooperation that Turkey had with Russia before the incident with the Su-24, as it was built through "considerable efforts" since the beginning of the 2000s, Leonid Isayev, an Arabist and a specialist in conflict monitoring, told RBTH in an interview.

"Putin's harsh statement, which provoked rather harsh remarks from the Turks, is capable of burning bridges with each other for years," said Isayev, who believes Russian-Turkish relations will now wither.

Of course, such a confrontation is ultimately not favorable for either Russia or Turkey or NATO, of which Turkey is a member, but in order to forget the rhetoric on the sidelines of the climate summit "at the very least a change of regime" is required - such statements are being taken too personally in both countries.

Vladimir Avatkov, a Turkologist and the director of the Center of Oriental Studies, International Relations and Public Diplomacy, agrees that a change of regime in Turkey is the only realistic way out of the crisis, though he warns that the Turkish regime should not be equated with the Turkish people.

"Yes, the Turkish regime sided with terrorism when it shot down our plane, but we must think about the future," he said, adding that Turkey is still unlikely to be forgotten as a promising partner.

The fight against ISIS

Will the estrangement between Russia and Turkey affect cooperation between the various players in Syria? This question was well answered in Paris by Vladimir Putin himself, according to Viktor Nadein-Rayevsky, a senior researcher of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences: "What kind of broad coalition is it when they stab you in the back?"

Nevertheless, Russia is still interested in the fight against ISIS and is cooperating with the French, so a deterioration in the fight against terrorism in Syria should not be anticipated. In fact, claims Nadein-Rayevsky, the situation has only improved.

Moscow's supply of S-400 air defense systems to Syria has radically changed the balance; the range of the radar systems covers almost all sectors of the front; the Turkish aircraft prefer not to intrude into the range of the radars and are now reluctant to bomb areas where Syrian Kurd units are located.

"The Turks used to bomb them almost every day, but these units are actually very effective in fighting the Islamists on their territory," said Nadein-Rayevsky.

Moreover, in his opinion, if the actions of Turkey strongly interfere with the partner countries' joint struggle against ISIS in Syria, NATO might try to push Ankara away from this process.

"The situation in Syria is tense as it is - if the conflict between Russia and Turkey escalates there as well, it will only work in the favor of ISIS," said Isayev.

"The alliance will take the side of the Turks, as was the case with the bomber, but they will do everything possible to prevent the parties from getting into a sharp confrontation."
 
 
 #25
Russia Beyond the Headlines/Vzglyad
www.rbth.ru
December 1, 2015
'It is possible that Turkey will leave NATO altogether'
According to Alexander Vasilyev, a Russian expert on Turkey, while there is no current danger of a full-blown military conflict breaking out between Ankara and Moscow, Turkey is keen to develop a truly independent foreign policy and has ambitions to become a modern nuclear power in order to make this a reality.
YURY ZAINASHEV, VZGLYAD

Turkey has been consistently building up its military presence near the border with Syria for a long time now, bringing in heavy weapons and artillery into the area.

It is clear that a war between Russia and Turkey is so far out of the question, but incidents and clashes in Syria (the country that Ankara sees as its sphere of interest) with the participation of the military of both countries are now quite possible.

How does this threaten Russia? What is the condition of the Turkish army now? How does it see the future of Turkey? Alexander Vasilyev, a researcher of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian State Humanitarian University's Russian-Turkish Educational and Scientific Center, spoke about this in an interview.

Q: Is the Turkish army any different from the other allied NATO armies, in principle?

Alexander Vasilyev: Maybe it is not such a hi-tech army as the U.S. army, but it is very numerous, and well-armed. Two things set it apart from the armies of the Europeans and Americans - the willingness to bear the great cost in human lives and the willingness to fight in extremely uncomfortable, harsh conditions.

The most psychologically motivated are the commandos and officers. The army is recruited by conscription, and is made up mostly of conscripts. But intensive propaganda work is carried out at the barracks.

If you look at the biographies of the last chiefs of staff, you will see that they speak two or even three Western languages, and studied for many years not only in Turkey but also in Western Europe, in NATO structures worldwide.

They have great political, administrative and sometimes diplomatic experience. The army command consists of educated and yet decisive people. The main ideology is, of course, nationalism, but it often grows into ultra-right views.

Q: But how high is Erdogan's credibility among the generals now? It is common knowledge that at the beginning of his rule, he was faced with constant unvoiced resistance from the military.

A.V.: The attitude toward him has been changing. Some of the General Staff were going to intervene in politics, but the moment turned out to be inopportune.

Erdogan used the criteria for entry put forward by the European Union to break the military, to subordinate them to his will.

In the end, a civilian specialist has been appointed as the defense minister, while economic matters have been withdrawn from the competence of the General Staff and transferred to the Defense Ministry.

However, the annual meeting of the Supreme Military Council of Turkey was held in late August of this year, shortly before some of those arrested on charges of plotting a coup were unexpectedly released from prison.

Many "hawks" have been rehabilitated and returned to their seats. Moreover, some of them have even been promoted in rank. All this was indicative of the fact that Erdogan agreed, on the whole, with the military.

Q: Were the generals pleased by the downing of the Russian aircraft?

A.V.: The generals have long proposed pursuing a more active foreign policy. It is possible that they would like not to limit themselves to the destruction of one Russian plane, but to prepare for an open annexation of the Turkmen regions of Syria.

Recently, the Turkish authorities have been very actively developing the idea in the media that the borders at the end of World War I, specifically the border with Syria, were drawn unfairly and divided the Turkish people.

It is worrying that troops on the border with these Turkmen areas are continuing to build up. Tanks and howitzer artillery are being brought in into the area. Against the backdrop of Erdogan's unpredictability, we may expect a ground operation in Syria.

Q: But such a step as the accession of a part of Syria will invite outright rejection from the allies, won't it? Countries with disputed borders cannot be NATO members.

A.V.: After a recent visit to Turkey, I got the impression that many of the military had grown disappointed with international security structures. Their agenda now is to search for technologies that could provide Ankara with missiles and nuclear weapons.

In the future, once this goal is achieved, it is possible that Turkey will leave NATO altogether. I have seen points in the reports of Turkish military experts that only the possession of nuclear weapons will help Turkey to fully pursue an independent foreign policy.

Of course, the nuclear program is still at an early stage there. In addition to the construction of our Akkuyu nuclear power plant in the south, the construction of a Japanese nuclear power plant in Sinop, on the Black Sea, has already begun.

As far as I know, until recently, personnel for the Turkish nuclear energy industry had been widely and actively trained at our MEPhI [the National Research Nuclear University - Vzglyad].

Moreover, Turkey has recently made progress in creating missile weapons - primarily with the help of technologies that were passed by the Europeans and Americans, as well as by purchasing ready-made missiles in China.

In particular, Turkey already has operational-tactical missiles, a clone of the Chinese system with a range of about 300 kilometers. The last IDEF-2015 defense exhibition in Istanbul showed fairly big successes by the Turks in rocket building.

First published in Russian in Vzglyad
 
 #26
Reuters
December 2, 2015
Russia says it has proof Turkey involved in Islamic State oil trade
BY MARIA TSVETKOVA AND LIDIA KELLY

Russia's defense ministry said on Wednesday it had proof that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq.

Moscow and Ankara have been locked in a war of words since last week when a Turkish air force jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish border, the most serious incident between Russia and a NATO state in half a century.

Erdogan responded by saying no one had the right to "slander" Turkey by accusing it of buying oil from Islamic State, and that he would stand down if such allegations were proven to be true. But speaking during a visit to Qatar, he also said he did not want relations with Moscow to worsen further.

At a briefing in Moscow, defense ministry officials displayed satellite images which they said showed columns of tanker trucks loading with oil at installations controlled by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and then crossing the border into neighboring Turkey.

The officials did not specify what direct evidence they had of the involvement of Erdogan and his family, an allegation that the Turkish president has vehemently denied.

"Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq. According to information we've received, the senior political leadership of the country - President Erdogan and his family - are involved in this criminal business," said Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov.

"Maybe I'm being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one's closest associates."

"In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president's son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister. What a marvelous family business!"

"The cynicism of the Turkish leadership knows no limits. Look what they're doing. They went into someone else's country, they are robbing it without compunction," Antonov said.

Erdogan last week denied that Turkey procures oil from anything other than legitimate sources.

He has said Ankara is taking active steps to prevent fuel smuggling, and he challenged anyone who accused his government of collaborating with Islamic State to prove their allegations.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said Turkey had made progress in sealing its border with Syria, but Islamic State was still exploiting gaps to bring in foreign fighters and sell oil.

WEAPONS FLOW

The Russian defense ministry also alleged that the same criminal networks which were smuggling oil into Turkey were also supplying weapons, equipment and training to Islamic State and other Islamist groups.

"According to our reliable intelligence data, Turkey has been carrying out such operations for a long period and on a regular basis. And most importantly, it does not plan to stop them," Sergei Rudskoy, deputy head of the Russian military's General Staff, told reporters.

The defense ministry said its surveillance revealed that hundreds of tanker trucks were gathering in plain sight at Islamic State-controlled sites in Iraq and Syria to load up with oil, and it questioned why the U.S.-led coalition was not launching more air strikes on them.

"It's hard not to notice them," Rudskoy said of the lines of trucks shown on satellite images.

Officials said that the Russian air force's bombing campaign had made a significant dent in Islamic State's ability to produce, refine and sell oil.

SMUGGLING ROUTES

Ministry officials described three main routes by which they said oil and oil products were smuggled from Islamic State territory into Turkey.

It said the Western route took oil produced at fields near the Syrian city of Raqqa to the settlement of Azaz on the border with Turkey.

From there the columns of tanker trucks pass through the Turkish town of Reyhanli, the ministry said, citing what it said were satellite pictures of hundreds of such trucks moving through the border crossing without obstruction.

"There is no inspection of the vehicles carried out ... on the Turkish side," said Rudskoy.

Some of the smuggled cargoes go to the Turkish domestic market, while some is exported via the Turkish Mediterranean ports of Iskenderun and Dortyol, the ministry said.

Another main route for smuggled oil, according to the ministry, runs from Deir Ez-zour in Syria to the Syrian border crossing at Al-Qamishli. It said the trucks then took the crude for refining at the Turkish city of Batman.

A third route took oil from eastern Syria and western Iraq into the south-eastern corner of Turkey, the ministry said.

It said its satellite surveillance had captured hundreds of trucks crossing the border in that area back in the summer, and that since then there had been no reduction in the flow.

The defense ministry officials said the information they released on Wednesday was only part of the evidence they have in their possession, and that they would be releasing further intelligence in the next days and weeks.
 
 #27
www.rt.com
December 1, 2015
By 'covering' Turkey politically, NATO took responsibility for downing of Russian Su-24 - envoy

By refusing to render an opinion on Turkey's "intentional" downing of Russia's bomber over Syria, and instead providing Ankara with political backing, NATO's leadership has taken responsibility for the incident, Russia's NATO envoy, Aleksandr Grushko, said.

Grushko gave his comments to reporters on Monday after it emerged that he had met with NATO's Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow to discuss the November 24 incident when a Russian Su-24 bomber was shot down by a Turkish F-16 while striking terrorist positions in Syria.

"Yes, indeed I had talks with Deputy Secretary-General A. Vershbow over the Su-24 incident.... I laid out the Russian assessment of the incident and cited a series of military and political factors which indicate of the intentional nature of the attack on the Russian plane in the Syrian airspace," Grushko, Russia's Permanent Representative at NATO, said.

However, Vershbow would not give any assessment of Turkey's aggressive action, according to the Russian diplomat, and only called for restraint and direct contact between Moscow and Ankara concerning the issue.

"NATO prefers not to go into detail on what the reason was for Turkey's decision to launch a missile to down a plane which was flying in Syrian airspace and which posed no threat to Turkey," Grushko pointed out.

The Russian envoy to NATO stressed that Turkey's decision to down a non-hostile plane in the border region goes against the alliance's rules of engagement.

"In the case of the November 24 incident, even if we take for granted the absolutely ungrounded version of violation of Turkey's airspace, these NATO's practices were not observed, since, according to Ankara, the pilots did not even know the identity of the violator plane," he stressed.

In light of this, the absence of any criticism and the fact that Turkey was quick to receive NATO support following the attack means that the block is equally responsible, the diplomat said.

"NATO, which gave no principled assessment of this illegal act and, as a matter of fact, politically covered for Ankara as the member of the alliance, thus shares responsibility for the incident. Once again, we see that political considerations are getting the upper hand over objectivity and mere common sense," Grushko said.

Ankara maintains that the Russian Su-24 bomber violated Turkish airspace for "17 seconds" and was repeatedly warned before an air-to-air missile was fired. However, the surviving Russian pilot, Konstantin Murakhtin, said the crew of two received no radio or visual warning from the F-16, despite it having superior speed and maneuverability than that of the Russian bomber. According to Murakhtin, they had never violated Turkish airspace and the rocket struck out of the blue, leaving them hardly any time to react. Both ejected from the aircraft.

The Russian jet's commander, later identified as Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov, was killed by machine gunfire from a Turkmen rebel group while parachuting to the ground. It has emerged that the militant group is led by a Turkish ultranationalist called Alparslan �elik, a son of a former mayor of the Keban municipality in Turkey's Elazig province.

Peshkov's remains were repatriated via Ankara on Monday and were received with military honors at a military airfield outside Moscow.

The Turkish attack led to another Russian casualty during a 12-hour rescue operation for the pilots, as a marine, Aleksandr Pozynich, was killed after leaving a malfunctioning helicopter that had come under heavy rebel fire. Pozynich's fellow 11 Marines survived the mission despite their helicopter being blown up. They managed to leave the area with the cover of Syrian troops.
 
 #28
Washington Post
December 2, 2015
Bush saw Putin's 'soul.' Obama wants to appeal to his brain.
By Steven Mufson
Steven Mufson covers the White House. Since joining The Post, he has covered economics, China, foreign policy and energy.

In 2001, President George W. Bush famously looked Russian President Vladi�mir Putin in the eye and peered into his soul. Now, it seems, President Obama is trying to get inside Putin's head.

Neither Bush nor Obama has figured out the Russian leader.

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," Bush said in remarks he later regretted. "...I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Obama isn't the least bit worried about Putin's soul, but like the more religious Bush he may be projecting onto Putin a set of attributes he aspires to himself. The current American president is nothing if not rational, constantly weighing interests and calculating odds, deeply mindful of past experience. Often, he expects others to behave in a similar fashion.

But when a foreign policy based on such expectations runs up against leaders driven by tribal feuds, Cold War fears, age-old strategic loyalties and ambitions for greater influence, the result is trouble.

So far, it looks as though the strategy based on logic and rational calculation might fail once again.

Obama is still trying to appeal to Putin on that basis, methodically touching every base. First, he cites recent history. "I think Mr. Putin understands that, with Afghanistan fresh in the memory, for him to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict [in Syria] is not the outcome that he's looking for," Obama said at a Paris news conference Tuesday capping two days of climate negotiations.

He also appeals to Russia's self-interest by citing potential terrorism. "I do think that as a consequence of ISIL claiming responsibility for bringing down their plane, there is an increasing awareness on the part of President Putin that ISIL poses a greater threat to them than anything else in the region," Obama said last month. "The question at this point is whether they can make the strategic adjustment that allows them to be effective partners with us and the other 65 countries" in the campaign against the Islamic State, also called ISIL.

And then Obama summons clear-eyed pragmatism, saying that calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a practical, not an idealistic, posture. "Regardless of how you feel about Mr. Assad - and I consider somebody who kills hundreds of thousands of his own people illegitimate - but regardless of the moral equation, as a practical matter, it is impossible for Mr. Assad to bring that country together and to bring all the parties into an inclusive government," Obama said Tuesday.

Obama used, in vain, a similar tack in trying to persuade Putin to pull back from eastern Ukraine. Why disrupt Ukraine when doing so would mean Western sanctions? Why be alarmed by Ukrainian association with the European Union when, after the Cold War, the E.U. was eager to draw closer to Russia, too?

Obama's sense of U.S. self-interest is shaped in large part by Bush's misadventures in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. Obama campaigned in 2008 promising to end both wars, and the difficulty of pulling out has reinforced his extreme caution about getting sucked into a new potential quagmire, especially in Syria, where there are no appealing allies. Putin doesn't seem to feel that way, and that frustrates Obama.

"I don't expect that you're going to see a 180-turn on their strategy over the next several weeks," Obama said Tuesday, referring to the Russians. "They have invested for years now in keeping Assad in power. Their presence there is predicated on propping him up. And so that's going to take some time for them to change how they think about the issue."

Is Putin being irrational? The Middle East has long been a graveyard of foreign policy and peace plans based on rational interests and calculation, much less ideals.

And maybe Putin is making his own rational calculations - just not ones that match Obama's. He has invested relatively little in supporting Assad and immediately regained a place at the table of Obama and other world leaders who had spurned him over Ukraine. Perhaps he will try to leverage cooperation on Syria to ease sanctions imposed over Ukraine, even as he hangs onto Crimea and eastern regions of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the E.U., which Ukraine so fervently wanted to affiliate with, has been tarnished, riven by refugees and rattled by terrorism.

And what of Obama? When elected, he was seen as a person of high ideals and soaring rhetoric, appealing to our better selves. In his Nobel Peace Prize speech, he said: "Within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists - a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values around the world. I reject these choices."

But his foreign policy has been more rooted in U.S. interests, narrowly defined.

Many critics of Obama say he has fumbled relations with Putin; some call him arrogant in their dealings, while others say he's naive. One diplomat said that when Obama declared he would not fight a proxy war against Putin, he gave the Russian leader a "blank check" to strike at U.S.-backed allies in Syria.

But maybe it's neither arrogance nor naivete. Maybe it's a cultural difference and a personal one. The two presidents exude dislike for each other. They have little in common. Putin does judo, Obama plays golf. But they are both shooting into the same sand trap.
 
 #29
The Guardian
December 1, 2015
Russia is right: fighting Isis is the priority for us all
Moscow foresaw the threat posed by Isis and knows that only a united front can defeat it. Turkey's motives are murkier, however
By Giora Eiland
Giora Eiland is a former head of Israel's National Security Council

The recent tension between Russia and Turkey reminds me of two meetings I held many years ago - one with a Russian and the other with a Turk - that could help to shed some light on the current behaviour of both countries.

About a dozen years ago, the head of a Russian thinktank visited Israel. As head of the National Security Council, I met him, along with several other senior defence officials, and we heard him say that the greatest threat to world peace was Islamic State. True, the name "Isis" wasn't mentioned then, but the phenomenon that it represents was predicted with astounding accuracy. The Russian official warned about the formation of an Islamic caliphate in Iraq, which was in the process of disintegrating; he warned that this caliphate would try to take control of the Middle East and, from there, would send its long arms northward, via the Islamic former Soviet republics. At the same time, it would try to take advantage of the weakness of the west and would turn its attention to Europe. His conclusion was that Russia, the western powers and Israel shared a common enemy and it was in their utmost interests to join forces to defeat it. I heard similar messages when I met other Russian officials over the years. They also criticised the US's war in Iraq - which they described as "imbecilic" - and which they said would only accelerate the arrival of a caliphate.

About a year before that meeting with the Russian, I met a senior Turkish official. That was at a time when relations between Jerusalem and Ankara were excellent. At that meeting, the Turkish official spoke openly about his country's world view. "We know that we cannot get back the lands that were under the control of the Ottoman empire before 1917," he said, "but do not make the mistake of thinking that the borders that were dictated to us at the end of the first world war by the victorious countries - mainly the UK and France - are acceptable to us. Turkey will find a way to return to its natural borders in the south - the line between Mosul in Iraq and Homs in Syria. That is our natural aspiration and it is justified because of the large Turkmen presence in that region."

There are three conclusions that we can draw when we examine the current situation in the light of those meetings. First, that Russia predicted long ago the rise of Isis and that Moscow sees the organisation as a major strategic threat. Second, that the Russians are right to expect the west to prioritise the battle against Isis, and leave disagreements over other matters until later. Third, although Turkey is a member of Nato, it is not acting in a way that promotes Nato's interests. Rather, it is dragging the organisation into a skirmish in order to protect Turkish interests - including attacks on the Kurds, who are the only ones actually fighting Isis on the ground, as well as unnecessarily provoking the Russians. According to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Turkey is even providing Isis with financial assistance.

The conclusion should be obvious: the threat that Isis poses is similar to the threat that Nazi Germany posed. Coordination between Russia and the west will not guarantee that the battle against Isis is won, but without it that battle will surely be lost. The French president, Fran�ois Hollande, seems to have accepted this, and we can only hope that he manages to persuade the other Nato countries both to restrain Turkey and to join forces with Russia.

Israel may have something of a conflict of interests on this issue, but we should always bear in mind what would happen if Isis were to gain in strength and take control of Syria, Jordan and the Sinai. For Israel, too, the conclusion is clear: victory over Isis must come first.
 
 #30
New York Times
December 2, 2015
Putin's Syrian Misadventure
By Thomas L Friedman

When President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced he was setting up an air base in the middle of Syria to take on the Islamic State and bolster President Bashar al-Assad, more than a few analysts and politicians praised his forceful, game-changing, strategic brilliance, suggesting that Putin was crazy like a fox. Some of us thought he was just crazy.

Well, two months later, let's do the math: So far, Putin's Syrian adventure has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian marines sent to rescue him. Many of the anti-Assad rebels in that area are ethnic Turkmens, with strong cultural ties to Turkey; Turkey was not amused by Putin bombing Turkmen villages inside Syria, because it weakens Turkey's ability to shape Syria's future.

Meanwhile, in Crimea, Ukraine, which Putin annexed, pro-Turkish Tatars apparently cut the power lines, plunging Crimea into a near total blackout. And in October dozens of Saudi clerics called for a "holy war" against the governments of Syria, Iran and Russia.

In sum, Putin's "crafty" Syrian chess move has left him with a lot more dead Russians; newly at odds with Turkey and Iran; weakened in Ukraine; acting as the defense lawyer for Assad - a mass murderer of Sunni Muslims, the same Sunni Muslims as Putin has in Russia; and with no real advances against ISIS.

Other than that, it's been a great success.

Truth be told, I wish Putin had succeeded. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble, because ISIS is not the "J.V. team" President Obama once called it. It's actually the Jihadist All-Star team. It combines the military efficiency of Iraqi ex-Baathist army officers with the religious zealotry and prison-forged depravity of its "Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi," the Web-savvy of Arab millennials and a thrill-ride appeal to humiliated young Muslim males, who've never held power, a decent job or a girl's hand.

And the ISIS threat is becoming strategic. The massive outflow of refugees from Syria and Iraq that ISIS has provoked is leading the European Union to start to close internal borders and limit the free flow of people and probably some goods as well - just the opposite of what the bloc was created to do. That will only slow the E.U.'s economic growth and fuel greater nationalism that could ultimately threaten its unity. The E.U. is America's most important partner in managing the global system. If it is weakened, we are weakened.

But to sustainably destroy ISIS, you need to understand three things: 1) It is the product of two civil wars; one was between moderate and extremist Sunnis and the other was between Sunnis and Shiites. And they feed each other. 2) The only way to defeat ISIS is to minimize the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites and strengthen the fighting capacity of moderate Sunnis against extremist ones. And 3) the fight has to be led by Arabs and Muslims but strongly backed by America, the E.U. and, yes, Russia.

Whereas Putin's goals are uncertain, and perhaps limited to protecting a truncated Assad regime, Obama really does want to defeat ISIS. Just as important, he wants to do it without being either Putin or George W. Bush, who just dove into the middle.

But it isn't clear that a middle approach exists, let alone the fantasy options of many Obama critics, as in Donald Trump's just "bomb the [blank] out of them." (Gosh, no one thought of that!) Everyone wants to defeat ISIS with the "Immaculate Intervention": more bombs from the air or somebody else's troops, boots, risks or political transformation.

Sorry, but to sustainably defeat ISIS you need a mutually reinforcing coalition. You need Saudi Arabia and the leading Sunni religious powers to aggressively delegitimize ISIS's Islamist narrative. You need Arab, Kurdish and Turkish ground troops - backed by U.S. and NATO air power and special forces, with Russia's constructive support - to uproot ISIS door to door.

You need Iran to encourage the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to create a semiautonomous "Sunnistan" in the areas held by ISIS, giving moderate Iraqi Sunnis the same devolved powers as Kurds in Kurdistan so they have a political alternative to ISIS. And you need Iran to agree to a political transition in Syria that would eventually replace Assad.

In short, you need either a power-sharing political solution that all the key players accept and will enforce, or an armed force to just crush ISIS and then sit on the region indefinitely, so ISIS doesn't come back. Obama can't secure the former, and doesn't want to do the latter. Nor do the American people - nor Obama's critics, despite what some of them might suggest.

You can say that when it comes to ISIS and Syria, Obama has done an impossible job badly, and someone else might have done it better. But it is still an impossible job as long as all the key players in that region define their interests as rule or die and as long as most of the real democrats in that region are living abroad.
 
 #31
www.rt.com
December 1, 2015
Poking the Russian Bear - How terror collaborators are hiding behind media slander
By Catherine Shakdam
Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others.Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia's Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam

As President Recep Erdogan is looking for some political ground to land his feet on, media reports have spun some rather distasteful anti-Russian rhetoric, hoping to salvage Turkey's political solvency by sullying Moscow's efforts against terror.

We live in a time where deception and misinformation have become so widely institutionalized and standardized that the very concept of propaganda has been reduced down to a simple matter of optics - how issues and crises should be best presented, and facts manipulated for the powers that be to benefit.

For the longest of time truths have been sold as lies and realities have been bent to fit specific narratives, stripping away our ability to critically analyze those arguments politicians have thrown at us, as they rationalize and legitimize their policies.

And while it would be foolish to expect any less from politicians - manipulation remains indeed the name of the game, there will always be certain instances where facts are so clear cut and choices so profoundly simple that not even the most astute spin-doctor will be capable of conjuring a lie - not without running the risk of unraveling those very deceptions powers architected.

Turkey's downing of a Russian jet over Syria this November was one of those times.

When President Recep Erdogan willingly and meaningfully earmarked one of Russia's jets for destruction - an act of war under international law - just so he could protect those interests he vested in ISIL terror network, those truths, those shadowy games certain powers have engaged in, were exposed right in the open.

As Russia watched its plane tumble to the ground, it is the world which awoke to the reality behind Turkey's fallacious political stance against radicalism. There it was ... Ankara's real agenda, Erdogan's dirty dealings with ISIL in the name of financial advancement.

In a report written for the New Eastern Outlook, Petr Lvov, a PhD in political science stated that Erdogan close circles of relations generated a "staggering 5 billion dollars a year" from their dealings with ISIL black oil, of which "2 billion going back to ISIL command structures for them to pay "salaries" to militants and purchase arms."

But Turkey's crimes are not just Turkey's crimes, not when Turkey stands a member of the NATO, the very military alliance which has proclaimed itself the ultimate terror crusader, the rising tide against the cancer of ISIL.

Whether or not Western powers condone President Erdogan's crimes, whether or not Western powers knew of his criminal friendships are beside the point now - politically the NATO has been damaged, its name, its values, its reputation, its political currency are all but spent.

And so something had to be done - optics had to be handled, and a new narrative had to be built so that political face could be salvaged, and pretenses protected under a new layer of moral veneer. Only certain truths are too powerful to remain hidden, only this time the implications of those truths which were unveiled, might lead to more than just a clever game of public deception.

Erdogan today stands alone in the crisis he manufactured. For all his Western friendships, and all his geopolitical clout, the despot mastered but a few whispers of support from those he calls allies. Reneged on and abandoned Turkey has had to rely on other alliances and other tricks to doctor its political legitimacy back to life.

And so the wheels of propaganda were spun against the one party, which through this entire crisis has risen above the petty and the ugly, to carve a path where reason and accountability remain powerful political matrixes - Russia.

Russia, which remains the unwarranted victim of an attack against its military, and thus its sovereignty has been dragged in the mud by unscrupulous journalists - or I should say propagandists; so that the bully could claim hardship his own, and the victim, Russia, could be left to hang in a court of public opinion.

Right there in the lead stands the Middle East Monitor, a UK-based media organization which has made a career out of its criticism of Israel. If MEMO has indeed no qualms in calling out Israel on its war crimes and fascist tendencies vis-a-vis Palestinians, it remains oblivious to Turkey's own, preferring instead to vilify Russia for daring allege that Turkey is indeed in league with ISIL radicals.

Imagine that! Well actually Russia's claims are more than just allegations, they are factually correct. Unlike most, Russian officials don't plant stories, they stick to documented facts.

It has been argued that President Vladimir Putin risks igniting World War III for demanding that those powers in league with ISIL be held accountable ... Again imagine THAT! What a horrible policy indeed to call on the world to stand united against such treacherous individuals.

Seriously now, what's next? Are we going to demand that justice be upheld against even the rich and the powerful?

Jamal Khashogji, a Saudi writer whose article for Al Hayat was translated and published in MEMO reads: "The Russian jet incident may well be repeated. We are nearly in a state of war with the Russians despite all the visits, meetings and smiles. Sooner or later Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey will appear in Putin's eyes to overlap with the Syrian opposition. Once he fails to defeat this opposition he will start looking for someone to blame, and he will find no one but us."

I find the "us" most interesting here. What is the "us" referring to? Us as in ISIL and Co ... what does this "us" stand for really?

Also very telling are those powers Khashogkji mashed up into one alliance against Russia, when all Russia has ever done and ever demonstrated in the Middle East has been its desire to lay waste ISIL.

Or is that the problem? Is that really what the allusions to Russian war crimes and Russia's alleged imperial folie des grandeurs are all about?

Let me tell you what I think.

I think Turkey and its allies, whoever they may be are desperately trying to shift the narrative by selling the public a repackaged Cold War rhetoric.

I think that Turkey is so very afraid of the storm it unleashed that it wants now to ignite old angers and old political fault lines to manipulate its way out of the fire pit.

But never mind what Turkey is trying to do - rather observe what it is that Russia has done and you might learn a lesson in political restraint.

Where most powers would have answered one fire with another: the United States did it, Israel did it, France did it ... the list goes on; Russia answered the downing of its plane with political and economic sanctions.

Rather than seek cold hard revenge for the death of its pilot and risk throwing the entire region out of balance, President Putin choose legal channels to exact justice.

THIS is exactly how we will get ourselves out of the dangerous dynamics we find ourselves stuck in in the Middle East.

THIS is how responsible powers behave themselves - by abiding to the law.

Ankara I hope you're taking notes.
 
 #32
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
December 2, 2015
Why SU-24 Shoot-down News Reports Went from Fact to Fiction
A look at day one in the life of the SU-24 story
By William Dunkerley

Turkey shot down a Russian SU-24 military jet on November 24. The Turks allege the plane made a 17 second incursion into their airspace. That's less time than most people spend brushing their teeth.

Turkey may very well have had a legal right to target the plane if its allegation is true. But what was its need to exercise that right? The SU-24 was clearly on a trajectory toward a quick exit. Many media reports were quite clear about that.

But this is the point at which fact turned into fiction in the news. Fact: the right to shoot an intruder. Fiction: the imperative to exercise that right. This is an issue that was under-explored by the media.

What perceived danger could Turkey possibly have felt? That common sense point apparently didn't occur to president Obama. He was quick to come to Turkey's defense. CNN ran a story, "Obama: Turkey has the right to defend itself and its airspace." "Obama says Turkey has right to defend territory," reported the Washington Post. But again, where was the imperative to exercise that right?

Personally, I have a "so what" reaction to Obama's contention here. No one's claimed that the plane was menacing Turkey. So why exercise the shoot-to-kill option?

Why was there such a loud defense of Turkey's technical right, when a larger question loomed over why Turkey chose such a provocative response to Russia? It led to one Russian pilot's being shot and killed by apparent Turkish-speaking militants on the ground as he attempted to parachute to safety. And then a Russian soldier lost his life when Syrian rebels destroyed the rescue helicopter that was sent to pick up the surviving aviator. On top of all that is the enormous escalation of world tension that resulted.

I took a look at the headlines that appeared in US media on the day of the shoot-down. What I saw is that some outlets stuck to a reportorial approach that day. Others pitched in to ramp up the steady stream of anti-Putin provocateurism.

The New York Times played it straight with these headlines:

-Turkey Shoots Down Russian Jet It Says Violated Its Airspace (AP)
-The Latest: Russia Pilot Killed by Groundfire in Syria

The three major broadcast networks did similarly. CBS News additionally carried the caution, "NATO urges calm after Turkey shoots down Russian plane." It also examined a ramification of the incident with, "Markets roiled by downing of Russian jet by Turkey.

On the other hand, the Washington Post played the fear angle:

"Will this Russia-Turkey business get out of control?"

But it was the Wall Street Journal and Fox News that clearly crossed the line that separates journalism from propaganda. Interestingly, they are both part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

WSJ spun it this way:

- Putin's Strategy for Mideast Takes a Hit

But Fox News took the cake with these headlines:

-Is World War Approaching? The Rapidly-Spreading States of Emergency

-Obama points finger at Russia over jet shoot-down by Turkey

-Russia wants to manipulate Western nations: Will Obama take the bait?

What fear mongering! And this was just day one of the story. It's nonsense like those reports that played strongly in why the basic facts got twisted around into fiction.

There are a number of theories floating about as to why the media and the Obama administration were motivated to distort the picture. Indeed, why did the incident happen at all? Explanations range from alleging the incident was a set-up to provoke Putin into an irrational response, to claiming that Turkey just taking revenge for Russia's military activity against Syrian rebels who are Turkish speakers.

I also heard an interesting psychological angle: The SU-24 was downed by an American-made fighter jet. Likewise the weapon that blew up a Russian rescue helicopter allegedly came from the US. That means that US weaponry was used for taking deadly action in both situations. In that sense, the US enabled these moves. So here's the theory: Did American guilt over its weapon-providing role lead to psychologically displacing the blame away from itself and onto Russia?

I don't know, what do you think? Considering all these factors, what do you think the reason is that the SU-24 story went from fact to fiction?

Regardless of the reason, however, the SU-24 story really stimulated audience interest in the Syrian imbroglio. Just before the November 24 shoot-down, interest in "Syria" was waning, according to Google Trends.

It had reached a peak around November 16, when France commenced air strikes in Syria. Just four days earlier, Google registered a level of interest that had been 85 percent below that peak. The French strikes really caught people's attention.

Afterwards, however, interest was steadily declining. But the shoot-out gave things an almost 20 percent boost. It didn't last long, though. By November 27, interest hand fallen back to the pre-SU-24 level and continued to decline.


 
 #33
Brookings.edu
December 1, 2015
The danger of Russian and Turkish competitive machismo in Syria
By Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro
Samuel Charap is senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia, International Institute for Strategic Studies. Jeremy Shapiro is a fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings.

The downing of a Russian jet by Turkish fighters has brought the dangers posed by Moscow's intervention in Syria into sharp relief. While the Russian and Turkish Presidents trade insults and display their competitive machismo, the world faces the prospect of a military crisis between Russia and NATO. Although we do not yet know what Russia's response will be, we can safely assume that it will not increase the prospects of peace and stability in Syria.

Cooler heads should put a stop to this escalatory spiral now. The United States should take immediate efforts not only to stop further conflict between Ankara and Moscow, but also to forge significantly greater cooperation between Russia and the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition. In so doing, Washington can both prevent incidents such as this one from recurring, and more effectively address the Syrian civil war and the fight against extremists there.

The proxy war that dare not speak its name

Notwithstanding the joint diplomatic efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, this incident actually fits into a pattern: The United States and its allies on the one hand, and Russia and its allies on the other have for months been engaged in a tit-for-tat proxy war in Syria. Despite the handshakes in Vienna, on the battlefield the United States and its allies, including Turkey, seem to consider Russia an adversary, with several steps taken to counter Russia's intervention directly, including a major increase in the provision of anti-tank missiles to rebel groups. One such missile reportedly hit a Russian helicopter involved in the mission to rescue the downed pilots on Tuesday and killed a Russian marine.

Moscow has clearly been eager-almost to the point of desperation-for more cooperation with Washington and its coalition partners. Ever since the Russian bombing began, the Kremlin has been twisting itself in knots to engage the United States on Syria: Everything from a proposal to send a Prime Minister Medvedev-led inter-agency delegation to Washington for talks; a bid for enhanced military negotiations; and various ideas for deeper intelligence sharing. President Vladimir Putin, not someone known for a supplicant's pose, has repeated his openness to enhanced cooperation with the United States over Syria like a mantra for almost two months-and he continues to do so, despite being consistently spurned by the Obama administration.

That spurning is certainly morally and politically justified. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea are brazenly illegal acts. Its intervention in support of a Syrian regime that is slaughtering its own people on a nearly daily basis lacks any conceivable moral justification. But in Syria, there is perhaps a higher moral and strategic calling-stopping further ISIS attacks, ending the war and the killing, reducing the flow of refugees, and avoiding a dangerous escalation toward a great power war. Those goals will require cooperation with Russia.

Current U.S. policy-escalating a proxy war by countering Russia's moves on the ground, and conditioning cooperation on counter-ISIS strategy with progress in Vienna-rests on an assumption that Russia will eventually abandon its long-held positions on Syria and adopt U.S. ones, either due to setbacks on the battlefield or out of its desire to join up with the Western anti-ISIS alliance.

Similar efforts to change Russia's calculus have been ongoing for over three years now. There has been precious little to show for them. Far from responding to pressure on the battlefield by compromising, Russia has doubled down in its support and escalated the struggle at every juncture.

A new approach to Syria

A new approach is necessary. This approach would have two simultaneous elements.

First, the United States and Russia would agree to set aside the issue of Assad in their bilateral relations and at the Vienna talks, declaring themselves neutral on the issue of his role in the political transition. Such a step would actually represent a return to the letter of the June 2012 Geneva Communiqu�; since then, both countries' positions have in fact departed from that compromise. Returning to it would mean that the future leadership of the country will be determined by a process of negotiation among the various Syrian parties, with outside powers playing only a mediating role. U.S. and Russian neutrality on this issue in the Vienna talks might not immediately produce an agreement-Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the various Syrian groups would continue to struggle over this and other contentious issues-but without it an agreement would be impossible.

Second, putting this issue aside in the Vienna talks should allow Moscow and Washington to focus on what they do agree on in Syria, namely the anti-ISIS struggle. The United States and Russia are not in a position to join each other's anti-ISIS coalition, particularly since Russia's contains the Assad regime. But they could serve as inter-coalition liaisons, attempting to find common ground between the coalitions on issues of targeting, military strategy, de-confliction and broader counter-ISIS and counter-extremism efforts in Syria and beyond. At best, such an effort might allow for a much more effective anti-ISIS effort; at worst, it would offer a more counterterrorism-focused channel for the United States to make the case to the Russian military to modify its approach to the conflict and for all relevant militaries to maintain the kind of regular communication that can prevent incidents like Tuesday's clash.

Deepening engagement, however distasteful, with Russia on Syria must be seen as a necessary-even if not sufficient-step in bringing the nightmare there to an end; in preventing further terrorist attacks like those in Paris, Sinai, and Beirut; and in avoiding inadvertent escalation. It will not eliminate differences with Moscow, particularly on issues like Ukraine. But the other options available to the United States-countering Russia on the battlefield or doing nothing while hoping that President Erdoğan and President Putin can remain calm-will almost certainly make the situation in Syria worse, and could well lead to a much bigger calamity.
 
 
  #34
Consortiumnews.com
December 1, 2015
The US-Russia Proxy War in Syria
By Ray McGovern
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. From 1981 to 1985, he prepared the President's Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan's five most senior national security advisers.

Exclusive: The risk of Syria becoming a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia became real last week when Turkey and Syrian jihadists used U.S.-supplied weaponry to shoot down a Russian warplane and rescue helicopter, killing two Russians, a danger that ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explores.

Belatedly, at a sidebar meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Paris climate summit on Monday, President Barack Obama reportedly expressed regret for last week's killing of a Russian pilot who was shot down by a Turkish air-to-air missile fired by a U.S.-supplied F-16 and the subsequent death of a Russian marine on a search-and-rescue mission, apparently killed by a U.S.-made TOW missile.

But Obama administration officials continued to take the side of Turkey, a NATO "ally" which claims implausibly that it was simply defending its air space and that the Russian pilot of the SU-24 warplane had ignored repeated warnings. According to accounts based on Turkish data, the SU-24 may have strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for 17 seconds. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Facts Back Russia on Turkish Attack."]

Immediately after the incident on Nov. 24, Obama offered a knee-jerk justification of Turkey's provocative action which appears to have been a deliberate attack on a Russian warplane to deter continued bombing of Syrian jihadists, including the Islamic State and Al Qaeda's Nusra Front. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist, has supported various jihadists as his tip of the spear in his goal to overthrow the secular regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In his first public comments about the Turkish attack, Obama gracelessly asserted Turkey's right to defend its territory and air space although there was never any indication that the SU-24 - even if it had strayed momentarily into Turkish air space - had any hostile intentions against Turkey. Indeed, Turkey and the United States were well aware that the Russian planes were targeting the Islamic State, Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and other jihadist rebels.

Putin even complained, "We told our U.S. partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The U.S.-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don't control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our U.S. partners."

Putin also suggested that the Turkish attack was in retaliation for Russia's bombing of a truck convoy caring Islamic State oil to Turkey. On Monday, on the sidelines of the Paris summit, Putin said Russia has "received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale."

Turkey's Erdogan - also in Paris - denied buying oil from terrorists and vowed to resign "if it is proven that we have, in fact, done so."

Was Obama Angry?

In private, Obama may have been outraged by Erdogan's reckless actions - as some reports suggest - but, if so, Obama seems publicly more afraid of offending the neocons who dominate Official Washington's opinion circles and who hold key positions in his own administration, than of provoking a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia.

On Nov. 24, even as Russian emotions were running high - reacting to the killing of one Russian pilot and the death of a second Russian marine killed after his helicopter was shot down apparently by a U.S.-supplied TOW missile fired by Syrian jihadists - Obama chose to act "tough" against Putin, both during a White House press conference with French President Francois Holland and later with pro-Turkish remarks from U.S. officials.

During the press conference after the Turkish shoot-down and the deliberate fire from Turkish-backed Syrian jihadists aiming at two Russian airmen as they parachuted to the ground, Obama chose to make disparaging remarks about the Russian president.

Obama boasted about the 65 nations in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State compared to Putin's small coalition of Russia and Iran (although Putin's tiny coalition appears to be much more serious and effective than Obama's bloated one, which includes countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been implicated in supporting jihadist elements, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State).

By delivering these anti-Russian insults at such a delicate time, Obama apparently was trusting that Putin would keep his cool and tamp down public emotions at home, even as Obama lacked the integrity and courage to stand up to neocon criticism from The Washington Post's editorial page or from some of his hawkish subordinates.

The administration's neocons who keep demanding an escalation of tensions with Russia include Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland. Then, there are the officials most identified with arms procurement, sales and use, such as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford recently volunteered to Congress that U.S. forces "can impose a no-fly zone" for Syria (a dangerous play advocated by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain). Dunford is the same hawk who identified Russia as the "existential threat" to the U.S. and said it would be "reasonable" to send heavy weapons to Ukraine on Russia's border.

Meanwhile, NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove keeps up his fly-by-the-pants information warfare campaign citing Russian "aggression," "invasions" and plans to do still more evil things. One is tempted to dismiss him as a buffoon; but he is the NATO commander.

Lack of Control

It does not appear as though Obama has the same degree of control over foreign and defense policy that Putin enjoys in Moscow - or at least one hopes Putin can retain such control since some hard-line Russian nationalists are fuming that Putin has been too accommodating of his Western "partners."

Perhaps the greatest danger from Obama's acquiescence to the neocons' new Cold War with Russia is that the neocon hopes for "regime change in Moscow" will be realized except that Putin will be replaced by some ultra-nationalist who would rather risk nuclear war than accept further humiliation of Mother Russia.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the U.S. establishment is such that the generals, the arms manufacturers and weapons merchants, the Defense Department, and most of Congress have a very strong say in U.S. foreign policy - and Obama seems powerless to change it.

The model of governing in Washington is a far cry from Russia's guiding principle of edinonachaliye - by which one supreme authority is in clear control of decision-making on defense and foreign policy.

Even when Obama promises, he often fails to deliver. Think back to what Obama told then-President Dmitry Medvedev when they met in Seoul in March 2012, about addressing Russian concerns over European missile defense. In remarks picked up by camera crews, Obama asked for some "space" until after the U.S. election. Obama can be heard saying, "This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility."

Yet, even after winning reelection, Obama has remained cowed by the influential neocons - even as he has bucked some of their more aggressive demands, such as a massive U.S. bombing campaign against Assad's military in summer 2013 and bomb-bomb-bombing Iran; instead, in 2014-15, Obama pushed for a negotiated agreement to constrain Iran's nuclear program.

Ideally, Obama should be able to show some flexibility on Syria during his last year in office, but no one should hold their breath. Obama appears to have deep fears about crossing the neocons or Israel regarding what they want for the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Besides the neocons' close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the neocons are intimately connected to the interests of the Military-Industrial Complex, which provides substantial funding for the major think tanks where many neocons hang their hats and churn out new arguments for more world conflict and thus more military spending.

Unlike Obama, Pope Francis addressed this fact-of-life head-on in his Sept. 24 address to members of the U.S. Congress - many if not most of whom also are lavished with proceeds from the arms trade and then appropriate still more funding for arms production and sales.

"Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering," Francis asked them face-to-face. "Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood."

An Old Epithet

From my days as a CIA analyst covering the Soviet Union, I'm reminded of the epithet favored by the Soviet party daily Pravda a few decades ago -"vallstreetskiye krovopitsiy" - or Wall St. bloodsuckers. Propaganda-ish as that term seemed, it turns out that Soviet media were not far off on that subject.

Indeed, the banks and corporations involved in arms manufacture and sales enjoy immense power - arguably, more than a president; unarguably more than Obama. The moneyed interests - including Congress - are calling the shots.

The old adage "money makes the world go round" is also apparent in Washington's velvet-gloves treatment of the Saudis and is nowhere better illustrated than in the continued suppression of 28 pages of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11. Those pages deal with the Saudi role in financing and supporting some of the 9/11 hijackers, but both the Bush and Obama administrations have kept those pages hidden for 13 years.

One reason is that the Saudis are the primary recipients of the U.S. trade in weapons, for which they pay cash. American manufacturers are selling the Saudis arms worth $100 billion under the current five-year agreement. Oddly, acts of terrorism sweeten the pot. Three days after the attacks in Paris, Washington and Riyadh announced a deal for $1.3 billion more.

And yet, neither Obama, nor any of the candidates trying to replace him, nor Congress is willing to jeopardize the arms trade by insisting that Riyadh call an abrupt halt to its support for the jihadists fighting in Syria for fear this might incur the wrath of the deep-pocket Saudis.

Not even Germany - already inundated, so far this year, by a flood of 950,000 refugees, mostly from Syria - is willing to risk Saudi displeasure. Berlin prefers to pay off the Turks with billions of euros to stanch the flow of those seeking refuge in Europe.

And so, an unholy alliance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states continues to fuel the war in Syria while Obama pretends that his giant coalition is really doing the job of taking on many of those same jihadists. But Obama's coalition has been woefully incompetent and indeed compromised, bumbling along and letting the Islamic State seize more territory along with Al Qaeda and its affiliates and allies.

Russia's entry into the war in September changed the equation because - unlike Obama's grand coalition - Putin's puny coalition with Iran actually was serious about beating back the jihadists and stabilizing Assad's regime. Turkey's shoot-down of the Russian warplane on Nov. 24 was a crude message from Erdogan that success in defeating the jihadists would not be tolerated.

As for the United States and Europe, myopia prevails. None seems concerned that the terrorists whom they support today will come back to bite them tomorrow. American officials, despite their rhetoric and despite 9/11, seem to consider the terrorist threat remote from U.S. shores - and, in any case, dwarfed in importance by the lucrative arm sales.

As for the Vienna talks on Syria, the speed with which they were arranged (with Iran taking part) raised expectations now dampened. Last week, for example, Secretary of State John Kerry bragged about how a meeting of "moderate" rebels is to convene "in the next few weeks" to come up with principles for negotiating with Syrian President Assad's government. The convener? Saudi Arabia!

Obama knows what has to happen for this terrorist threat to be truly addressed. The Saudis and Turks have to be told, in no uncertain terms, to stop supporting the jihadists. But that would require extraordinary courage and huge political - perhaps even physical - risk. There is no sign that President Obama dares bite that bullet.



 
#35
AP
December 2, 2015
UN: Polio Outbreak in Ukraine Is a State of Emergency

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The World Health Organization is urging Ukraine's health ministry to declare a state of emergency due to a polio outbreak, a move meant to prompt more action from the government in Kiev.

In September, Ukraine announced two polio cases - the first in Europe since 2010.

The U.N. health agency recommended that Ukraine declare a state of emergency and "respond to the polio outbreak as quickly and effectively as possible," Dorit Nitzan, head of the WHO's office in Ukraine, told journalists.

Half of Ukraine's children have not been vaccinated against polio.

Polio is a highly infectious, paralyzing disease on the brink of elimination. Aside from Ukraine, cases have only been reported in six other countries this year, with the majority in Pakistan and Afghanistan
 
 #36
Euromaidan Press
http://euromaidanpress.com
December 1, 2015
Ukrainian society presents demands to President, Prime Minister, and Co

On the second anniversary of the "March of Millions," the first nation-wide mass Euromaidan protests, a group of Ukrainian civic activists and "young politicians" have released a statement that reiterates the demands of the protest movement dubbed the "Revolution of Dignity." In it, they demand to start a genuine battle against corruption, to implement real reforms, and to ensure the transparency of the government so to not lead people to another revolution, hinting that Ukrainian society is losing patience with demands of Euromaidan being unfulfilled.

In addition, they are requested to finally bring those responsible of violence and killings during Euromaidan to justice. Two years later, not a single perpetrator of the beating of the students that sparked nation-wide outrage and brought millions to the streets has been arrested. The families of protesters shot by snipers during February 2014 are also awaiting justice.

The statement has been made public by civic activists and "young politicians," including MPs from Petro Poroshenko Bloc Mustafa Nayem, Serhiy Leshchenko and is being avidly shared in social media. One week before, these parliamentarians together with 13 colleagues initiated the creation of an anti-corruption platform inside the Bloc.

Mustafa Nayem, the journalist whose fb post laid the beginning of the Euromaidan revolution, wrote: "This appeal has many authors. But I am sure that the majority, if not all, of Ukrainian citizens will sign it. Because this is not for Europe, and not for some loud pretentious words and slogans. It's for our future," in the preamble of the appeal and invited everyone that agrees to share it from their name.

"Two years ago Ukraine made a historical choice. People came to the streets to demand justice and protection of their rights," say the authors of the appeal and point out that during this time the citizens have achieved a lot, but Ukrainian people "have paid and continue to pay a great price.".

They admit that they could have hardly imagine that after having revolutionary victims "authorities and businessmen who are close to power will continue to plunder the country, but now hiding it behind vyshyvankas [national traditional embriodered blouses], Euromaidan or the Anti-Terrorist Operation"; that those who were involved in building a dictatorship will continue working in their positions, that "not society, but again a narrow circle of the same oligarchs who exhausted the country under the previous regime will be the main partner of the government."

Activists and politicians have a number of demands to the President, Prime Minister, ministers and MPs.

"We do not want a new revolution, which you are unknowingly pushing us towards. We are ready to take responsibility for the future of our country. Thus, we do not ask, we demand:

1. To start a real fight against corruption. To focus on echelones of power and to break the mutual cover-up by appointing an effective General Prosecutor; to complete lustration, and to reform the civil service according to European standards.

2. To restore justice. Bring the people who looted the country and led to violence and murder on the Maidan to justice.

3. To achieve the rule of law. To intensively and decisively carry out the judicial reform, in which important steps were made, but in which society does not feel confidence in success.

4. To ensure transparency in government. To make appointments to public positions openly, to stop the practice of backstage agreements and assigning positions according to political quotas in favor of gray cardinals.

5. To articulate a clear plan. How can we we overcome the economic and humanitarian crisis together, how we are going to to return Crimea and the occupied territories,"the statement says.

"You still have a choice of how to make history: with real reformers who sacrificed personal interests for the future of the country, or with those who led the country to collapse because of corruption and poor management," it notes.

The authors emphasize that people see and understand everything and it is misleading to think that there is still plenty of time.

"The requests of society that were proclaimed during the Revolution of Dignity will not disappear. Today, these requirements unite the absolute majority of Ukrainian people. And every day of delay kills your chances to return the people's support," the statement says.
 
 #37
Bloomberg
December 2, 2015
Old Guard Clinches Mayoral Race on Edge of Ukraine's Eastern War
By Daryna Krasnolutska

An opposition candidate backed by allies of Ukraine's ousted pro-Russian leader won the mayoral election in Mariupol, a port city on the fringe of the nation's 21-month war.

Vadym Boychenko, an independent supported by the Opposition Bloc, a group dominated by members of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych's now-defunct Party of Regions, got more than 50 percent of votes, Tetyana Nedavnyaya, head of the local election committee, said Wednesday by phone. The Opposition Bloc took 45 of 54 seats on Mariupol's council, while President Petro Poroshenko's party didn't get any, she said.

The elections highlight the task facing Ukraine's new government as it tries to vanquish the remnants of the old regime and realign the former Soviet republic with the European Union and the U.S., at the expense of historic ties to Russia. Mariupol, an industrial hub of half a million people that was briefly controlled by pro-Russian separatists, is located on the edge of the conflict zone and less than 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Russian border.

The Mariupol result was "very much predictable," said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Kiev-based Penta research institute. "The Kiev authorities aren't backed by many in Ukraine's easternmost regions, plus many pro-Ukrainian people left the city."

Boychenko works at a local metals plant owned by Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov, a former Yanukovych ally. The fact that many Mariupol residents also work for Akhmetov's companies may have aided his victory, Fesenko said.

The Mariupol vote, delayed from October because of issues with printing ballots, marks the end of Ukraine's local elections. While Poroshenko's party scored victories further west, with ex-world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko retaining his post as Kiev mayor, it lost out in eastern cities including Kharkiv, Odessa and Slovyansk.
 
 #38
Interfax-Ukraine
December 1, 2015
Most Ukrainians against granting "special status" to Donbass - poll

The majority of Ukraine's population does not support granting Donbass the "special status" stipulated in the constitutional amendments concerning the decentralization of power, the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported at 1027 gmt on 1 December, quoting the director of the sociological service of the Razumkov Centre think-tank, Andriy Bychenko.

At the presentation of the results of an opinion poll, Bychenko noted that when asked about Ukraine's further actions regarding settlement of the Donbass crisis, 34.4 per cent of respondents supported the idea of continuing the security operation in the country until Ukraine regained full control over the territories occupied by the separatists, 22.7 per cent advocated the provision of special status to these territories as part of Ukraine, while 20.1 per cent said that the rebel-held Donbass should be separated from Ukraine.

Bychenko said that the data suggest that "a relative majority of citizens are against granting special status to Donbass".

"The constitutional changes regarding special status for Donbass that are being pushed through parliament right now are at odds with the opinion shared by the majority of Ukraine's population," Bychenko said.

Some 22.8 per cent of the respondents found it difficult to answer the question concerning a settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The survey showed that those respondents favouring the separation of the rebel-held territories from Ukraine explained that their residents should not be able to influence politics in Ukraine or receive money from the Ukrainian budget (62.4 per cent), while 27.2 per cent said that Donbass people had the right to self-determination.

The pollster also found that 28 per cent of Ukrainian citizens believe that there is a war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation in the country's east, while 31.5 per cent called it a separatist rebellion supported by Russia, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency said at 1108 gmt on 1 December.

At the same time, 16.3 per cent said that Ukraine's east was caught up in a civil war, 8.4 per cent said that it was a war between Russia and the United States, while 7.4 per cent spoke of the "struggle for independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics".

The pollster also found that 24 per cent of Ukrainians are ready to defend their country with arms, 27.5 per cent would participate in the army-support volunteer movement and 30.4 per cent are not prepared to defend their country, Interfax-Ukraine reported at 1045 gmt on the same day.

The pollster also found that 46.7 believe the Russian-Ukrainian conflict was caused mainly due to Ukraine's attempting to get out from under the influence of the Russian Federation and 38.4 per cent that it was due to Russia's nonacceptance of Ukraine's European integration aspirations (38.4 per cent), Interfax-Ukraine reported at 1033 gmt on 1 December.

The pollster also found that 32.5 per cent of Ukrainians negatively assess the current results of the Minsk peace agreements on the settlement of the Donbass crisis. Some 16.1 per cent of the respondents positively assessed the agreements, 28 per cent had a neutral view on the deal, 9 per cent knew nothing about the Minsk process, while 14.4 per cent found it difficult to reply.

The Razumkov Centre polled 2,008 people in the period 6-23 November 2015 in all Ukrainian regions except the rebel-held areas of Donbass and Crimea.

The margin of error is below 2.3 per cent with a probability of 95 per cent.
 
 #39
Facebook
December 1, 2015
Poll re Donbass
By Ivan Katchanovski
University of Ottawa

A New Razumkov Center poll: 32% of Ukrainians believe that the war in Donbas is a separatist rebellion supported by Russia, 28% that this is a war between Russia and Ukraine, 16% that this is a civil war, 8% that this is a war between Russia and the US, and 7% that this is a fight for independence of DNR and LNR. This poll indicates that now a minority of Ukrainians share the Ukrainian government and media propagated view that the war in Donbas is a war between Ukraine and Russia, while the majority view the war in Donbas as an intrastate conflict, mostly with Russian involvement. The difference would be much more significant if the separatist-controlled part of Donbas and annexed Crimea were included in the poll.

Почти треть украинцев считают, что на востоке страны происходит война между Украиной и Россией -...
В Украине 28% граждан считают, что на...
INTERFAX.COM.UA

 
 #40
http://eu.eot.su
November 30, 2014
"Right Sector" Neo-Nazis forced three Odessa judges to resign during court session
[Video here http://off-guardian.org/2015/12/01/ukraine-odessa-judges-forced-to-resign-on-may-2-case/]

"Right Sector", "Azov" and other Neo-Nazi militants have blocked the exists from the court building in Odessa after judges ruled out that five "AntiMaidan" activists may be released on bail. A number of Odessa "AntiMaidan" activists were detained after Euromaidan participants attacked them and burned 48 people alive on May 2, 2014. "AntiMaidan" activists are being accused of attacking themselves.

The blockade of the court continued for 8 hours. Neo-Nazis forced three judges to resign. After that the decision to allow the possibility of "AntiMaidan" activists to be released on bail was cancelled. Journalists were not allowed to be present in the hallway of the court where and when this decision was made public. "Odessa Maidan Self-Defense", "Right Sector" and "Azov" militants, however, were allowed to be present.

According to UN, all evidence on the massacre of May 2, 2014, has been destroyed, the crime has never been properly investigated.


 
 
#41
DPR intelligence exposes Ukraine's military equipment movements near contact line - Basurin

DONETSK. Dec 2 (Interfax) - Artillery, armored vehicles and cars carrying Ukrainian forces appeared at the line of contacts, senior official of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Defense Ministry Eduard Basurin said.

"Seven tanks, five 152-mm howitzers 'Msta-B' and six D-30 guns were seen near Zaitseve," the Donetsk News Agency cited Basurin as saying.

Eight BM-21 'Grad' launch vehicles were seen near Mykolaivka, while a tank battalion was discovered at Prohres; 5 self-propelled artillery systems and 6 cars carrying the 'Right Sector' personnel were spotted at Vesele, he said. Also, 3 'Grad' launchers and 4 self-propelled artillery systems were seen outside Krasnohorivka and 5 tanks and 5 infantry fighting vehicles outside Novomyhailivka, he said.

 
#42
Christian Science Monitor
December 1, 2015
Ukrainian refugees in Russia: Did Moscow fumble a valuable resource?
Russians have warmly welcomed more than a million pro-Moscow Ukrainian refugees in the past 18 months. But the state bureaucracy hasn't followed suit.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW - Alexander Pyatkov fled his native Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine last year, just ahead of the advancing Ukrainian Army.

When the shelling of their city began, he took his wife and two daughters, one just four months old at the time, and drove across the Russian border, where they were briefly housed in a refugee encampment before being sent on to deeper Russian regions.

A skilled welder, Mr. Pyatkov has finally navigated Russia's labyrinthine bureaucracy and recently found a good job in Moscow. He is bringing his family from the Volga area where they'd previously settled, and insists he has no plans to ever return to Ukraine.

"Ukraine is war-torn and impoverished, I don't want my family to grow up there," he says. "Things have been hard here, but they're gradually getting better. People have been pretty good to us, and many say kind things when they hear where we've come from. We're applying for Russian citizenship, and we're starting a new life, in a new country, basically from zero."

Over the past 18 months, Russia has taken in more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees like the Pyatkov family who have fled the destructive civil war between a West-oriented government in Kiev and Russian-backed rebels. The deluge is comparable to the wave of Syrians and others pouring into Europe - but it's happened with very little publicity and even fewer apparent social strains.

A key reason for that is that most of the Ukrainians who've been streaming into Russia are Orthodox, Slavic Russian-speakers who tend toward a pro-Kremlin political viewpoint and who are welcomed, in theory at least, by President Vladimir Putin's government.

But the Pyatkov family is still among the lucky few who've managed to obtain proper documents to live and work here. Others remain trapped in a corrupt, glacial immigration process that seems designed to keep migrants from central Asia in low wage jobs but without permanent status. While ordinary Russians have welcomed them warmly, many Ukrainian refugees say, they find it impossible to find legal work for which they are qualified.

Wanted: compatible refugees

Yet the Kremlin has consistently made the mass immigration of compatible Russian-speaking people from former Soviet republics a major part of its strategy for overcoming Russia's looming demographic crisis. With peace possibly breaking out now in Ukraine, there are tentative signs of a reverse exodus, and experts say the window of opportunity to properly welcome and integrate this wave of ideal newcomers may be rapidly closing.

"It may have been what our authorities always said they wanted, but the sudden influx of over a million people was a huge headache for them, and they were in no way prepared for it," says Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Mercator Group, a Moscow-based think tank. "They're not ready for it now, especially since Russia is in the midst of an economic crisis, so it seems that they are trying to discourage Ukrainian immigrants in practice, pressure them to go home, regardless of what official policy proclaims."  

According to Russia's Federal Migration Service (FMS), 2.6 million Ukrainians live in Russia, more than half of them long-term "guest workers," but about a million more who've arrived in the past 18 months fleeing next-door Ukraine.

Few Ukrainian refugees say they have received much help from the FMS, which processes and documents migrants. Many say they endure long waits for simple residency permits, a few hint that bribes have been demanded, and some have simply given up and ignored the need to obtain proper documentation.

As of September, according to the FMS, about 400,000 Ukrainians had applied for refugee status and almost 300,000 more have asked for temporary residence status. A further 600,000 are considered to be in breach of the rules entirely.

Making sense of Russian policy

"At first everything was sweetness and light, Ukrainian refugees were met with good camps and widespread public sympathy," says Svetlana Gannushkina, head of Civil Assistance, a nongovernmental group that aids refugees. "But soon the camps started to get closed down - there are presently only about 20,000 Ukrainian refugees living in state institutions - and authorities blocked them from moving to areas like Moscow or St. Petersburg, which have the best living standards and most available jobs.

"Even those who may have had relatives, friends, or opportunities in central cities got sent away to far-off areas," even to Siberia and the Pacific coast, she says.

While the Russian government still makes an exception for some half-million Ukrainians who fled the active war zone of Donbass, it offers little sympathy to many who left Ukraine for political reasons or to evade the draft. Last month, the FMS ruled that all Ukrainians in Russia, excepting former residents of Donbass, must renew all their documents or face deportation.

"If a Ukrainian wants to come to Russia to work, the process of documentation is fairly straightforward. But if you left Ukraine because you opposed that [Kiev] government, there is no hope of attaining the status of 'political asylum' in Russia. I just can't understand that," says Larisa Shesler, a former member of the regional council in Nikolayev, a southeastern Ukrainian region, who lives in a temporary shelter near Moscow.

Many say it just doesn't make sense that Russian policy hobbles the very Ukrainians who support the Russian point of view.

Demographic crisis

One possible reason is that Russia has never had a full public debate about immigration in general. Over the relatively prosperous Putin years, a corruption-ridden system allowed millions of Central Asian migrant workers to pour in to do work in construction and service industries that most Russians didn't want, but left their rights ambiguous at best.

Some experts say Russian authorities are missing a critical opportunity to address the country's dire demographic crisis by effectively discouraging Ukrainian immigration.

A report issued by the Civil Initiatives Committee, a think tank headed by former Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin, says that in addition to being Russian-speaking and Russian-oriented, Ukrainian refugees also tend to be well-educated, often skilled workers, who could fill many looming gaps in Russia's economy.

But highly-qualified Ukrainians coming into Russia find it hard to get proper work documents, the report says. As a consequence, "experienced engineers and technical specialists find themselves working low paying jobs [often illegally] as cargo handlers or construction workers just to support their families and pay for temporary accommodation."

Reverse exodus

With the cease-fire in eastern Ukraine holding well, and growing hopes that the Minsk peace process might at least freeze the conflict, there are reports that some refugees are heading home to take stock.

"These people represent valuable human capital, that Russia desperately needs," says Vyatcheslav Postavnin, an expert with the group.

Despite being warned, Mr. Postavnin says, the government was not prepared for the wave of refugees.

"Our government spokespeople talk as if our system worked smoothly, and suggest that we could even teach Europe a thing or two about how to handle these problems," he says. "But, in fact, we have failed them and ourselves badly."
 
 #43
Wall Street Journal
December 2, 2015
Talks With Russia on EU-Ukraine Trade Deal Fail to Reach Compromise
Moscow makes new demands over bilateral accord set for Jan. 1
By LAURENCE NORMAN in Brussels and LAURA MILLS in Kiev, Ukraine

Russia laid out a long list of demands for amending a sweeping trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union a month before the pact is due to be fully implemented.

The new demands came at a fresh round of discussions among the three sides aimed at mitigating Russian concerns about the deal. But with no breakthrough on Tuesday after 17 months of talks, hopes are fading that a compromise can be found.

Brussels set up the three-way talks in July 2014 as a bid to ease tensions between Kiev and Moscow after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The EU hopes an agreement on steps to tackle the concerns will prevent Moscow retaliating against Ukraine when Brussels and Kiev fully implement the accord on Jan. 1.

The EU has said that the discussions don't give Russia any veto over its bilateral pact with Ukraine. Still, European officials say that if the three sides can find practical solutions to prevent Russian firms losing out, they should do so.

Despite 18 rounds of talks, though, EU and Ukrainian officials charge that Moscow has never raised specific concerns about the pact that the two sides could realistically address. Russia continues to warn it will broaden trade penalties against Kiev if the full deal goes ahead next month.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstr�m cited some progress in Tuesday's talks, in particular that Russia for the first time accepted using an EU draft of possible solutions to its concerns as the basis for talks. "They still have some political problems" with the agreement, she said. "But I think they are starting to move to discuss the more concrete issues."

However, she said Russia unexpectedly came to the meeting with a "very, very long" list of proposed amendments, some that were unacceptable, but some that could allow for technical solutions. It wasn't immediately clear what was on the list.

"I think we can find common language on most of them," she told reporters after the meeting.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said the Russian side presented a mix of new and old demands. "Some proposals are for us clearly unacceptable," he said.

"We agreed to continue working at the expert level and at the ministerial level, but because there is not much time left, some kind of extraordinary measures will be necessary to reach an agreement," Russian Economics Minister Alexey Ulyukaev said in comments published by Interfax news agency.

Russia has raised a broad range of concerns about the pact. It contends that the agreement could create nontariff barriers to Ukraine-Russia trade, undercut Russian food-standard rules and sever links between critical defense and other industries in Russia and east Ukraine.

The EU and Ukraine have both said they wouldn't amend the signed pact directly, a step that would force all EU member states and Ukraine to ratify the agreement anew. However, they have said they can use the flexibility in the agreement, for example giving Ukraine longer to adjust to higher EU regulatory standards for products, which would also give Russian firms more time to adjust.

The EU has already slashed tariffs for Ukrainian goods but in September 2014, it gave Kiev until Jan. 1 to cut its own tariffs for EU goods and fully implement its side of the deal. Ukrainian and EU officials reiterated on Tuesday that deadline will be met.

As talks have continued and the conflict has dragged on in eastern Ukraine between the Kiev government and pro-Russian rebels, bilateral trade has plummeted.

The Ukrainian government says that trade with Russia fell 58% in dollar terms in the first half of 2015 compared with a year earlier.

Russia has banned certain produce from Ukraine including vegetables and cheese made at specific factories. Moscow said last month it planned to expand the ban to all Ukrainian produce by January 2016.

Ms. Malmstr�m said there could be fresh technical talks next week and pledged that Brussels was open to further discussions after Jan. 1 if Russia's concerns persisted. But she warned that would happen only if Moscow refrained from new trade penalties on its neighbor.
 
 #44
Problem of power supply to Crimea will be fundamentally solved in nearest future - PM

MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. The problem of power supply to Crimea will be fundamentally solved in the nearest future, Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday.

"We will solve the electricity problem existing in Crimea as soon as possible. It will be solved in such way so that not to return to it any more. It will be settled fundamentally", the prime minister said.

Crimean residents are now living in challenging conditions, Medvedev added. He thanked them for decent behavior in conditions of complications "forced upon us."

Crimea is suffering from electricity shortage after Ukraine stopped delivering electric power on November 22 because of explosions on its power transmission lines.

Crimea is currently provided with power by 60%, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said earlier on Monday. "We managed to increase the amount of supplied energy from 380 to 600 MW a day this week on account of alternative sources other than through Ukraine. This amounts to approximately 60% of total electric power consumption in Crimea," Kozak said.
 
#45
Sputnik
November 30, 2015
Ukrainian Nationalists Vow to Continue Crimea Blockade

KIEV (Sputnik) - Pylons carrying power lines from Ukraine to Crimea were blown up more than a week ago, plunging the region with a population of some 2 million into darkness.

Ukraine's Energy and Coal Mining Industry Minister Volodymyr Demchishin said earlier that power supplies to Crimea would not be restored without authorization from what Kiev refers to as activists supporting the Crimea blockade.

Crimean state-run energy company Krymenergo said on Sunday it was on standby to connect the Black Sea peninsula to Russia's power grid in the southernmost Krasnodar Territory through an "energy bridge."

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak warned last week that Moscow could consider cutting off coal deliveries to Ukraine's electrical facilities in response to Crimea energy blockade.
 
 #46
Deutsche Welle
December 1, 2015
Dark days on Crimea: Russia and Ukraine rattle sabers
Electricity cables cut, no trade between Ukraine proper and the Crimean Peninsula, no gas supply: Once again Ukraine and Russia seem headed for confrontation. The US and Europe fear for the future of the Minsk Protocol.

Crimea has recently experienced its darkest hours in memory - literally. The peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, was left in a state of emergency, deprived since November 22 of electricity from the Ukrainian mainland after persons unknown blew up a number of electricity pylons in southern Ukraine.

Several failed attempts had already been made in previous weeks. Russia is building an energy bridge to Crimea from its own mainland and laying electricity cables under the Black Sea. However, according to experts in the Russian media, these will only cover part of Crimea's energy needs.

For the first time in the 21 months since Crimea was annexed, the region's 2.3 million people are finding out just how dependent their peninsula is on mainland Ukraine. The experience is a painful one. Electricity supply is probably the only leverage Ukraine has, but it is very powerful leverage, and until now Kyiv had refrained from using it. However, for over a year no fresh water has flowed from Ukraine's Dnipro river to Crimea, which has a dry climate, and there are no trains or buses traveling between the mainland and the peninsula.

A week ago, the Ukrainian government also cut trade links with Crimea, making official something activists had been seeking to enforce for months. The "blockade" began in September, with activists stopping trucks delivering Ukrainian goods to the peninsula.

Crimean Tatars are seen as the driving force behind the blockade. This is a pro-Ukrainian minority of around 250,000 people who live in annexed Crimea. The Crimean Tatars complain of persecution by Russian authorities: They say their countrymen have been arrested, abducted and murdered. Their leaders living in the Ukraine are not allowed to travel to Russian-controlled Crimea. Last Thursday, a group of Tatars obstructed repair work for the damaged electricity pylons and called for the release of their fellow activists in Crimea.

The blockade is controversial in Ukraine. Some say the government should have imposed one much earlier. They criticize President Petro Poroshenko for failing to present a concrete plan for returning Crimea to Ukraine. Supporters of the blockade write on social media that activists must now wage a kind of "partisan war." Critics, however, warn that this is more likely to turn Crimeans against Ukraine.

No gas, air traffic

Russia responded to the emergency in Crimea with marked restraint. The problems would be resolved, Russian president Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. He merely accused the Ukrainian leadership of tolerating the escalation of the situation and not speaking out. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak threatened to stop supplying coal to Ukraine in response to the energy blockade of Crimea. Ukraine's government has been buying coal from Russia ever since large areas of the country's eastern mining region, Donbass, fell under the control of separatists, who some believe are aided by the Kremlin.

As November draws to a close, Crimea's lack of electricity is not the only example of fresh tension between Kyiv and Moscow . Russia turned off its gas supplies to Ukraine last week, for example. The reason: no prepayment from Kyiv. Ukrainian officials, however, say the country doesn't need Russian gas at the moment.

Airspace is another field of conflict. Since last Thursday, Russian planes have been banned from crossing Ukraine. The reason given by the government in Kyiv was an "intensification of the military and political situation." Ukraine had already banned Russian airlines e a month ago, and Russia responded in kind, meaning that there is no air traffic whatsoever between the two countries.

Minsk Protocol in danger?

The latest aggravation to already tense relations follows a renewed escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine. The ceasefire agreed in September between separatists and Ukraine's army was violated on an almost daily basis in November, with each side blaming the other. Observers warn that this is threatening to scupper the Minsk Protocol.

Given the electricity crisis in Crimea and the stoppage of gas deliveries, Gernot Erler, the German government's special coordinator for Russian policy, blames Ukraine. "We are very worried about this escalation, which was obviously brought about by Kyiv," the Social Democrat politician told the Neue Osnabr�cker Zeitung, warning that it could have a negative effect on the implementation of the Minsk agreement.

Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, expressed astonishment at these remarks. Germany should respond so actively to "daily human rights abuses in Crimea and in the east of Ukraine," Melnyk told DW. "For many activists and representatives of the Crimean Tatars, it has become clear that the Crimean question is gradually disappearing from the world policy agenda," he said. The diplomat rejected the accusations leveled against Ukraine. According to Melnyk, it is this "sense of hopelessness" that is behind the latest events.
 
 #47
New York Times
December 2, 2015
Months After Russian Annexation, Hopes Start to Dim in Crimea
By IVAN NECHEPURENKO

SHCHYOLKINO, Crimea - When residents in this typical Soviet factory town voted enthusiastically to secede from Ukraine and to become Russians, they thought the chaos and corruption that made daily life a struggle were a thing of the past.

Now that many of them are being forced to cook and boil drinking water on open fires, however, they are beginning to reconsider.

There has been no steady electricity supply in this hard-hit town since Nov. 22, when protesters in Ukraine blew up the lines still feeding Crimea with most of its electric power. The bigger towns and cities are only marginally better off.

Yet, people here are not sure whom to blame more for their predicament: the Crimean Tatar activists and Ukrainian nationalists who cut off Crimea's link to the Ukrainian power grid or the local government officials who claimed to have enough power generators stored away to handle such an emergency.

"The circus is gone, but the clowns stayed," said Leonid Zakharov, 45, leaning on a wooden cane. Moscow may have purged Ukrainian authority, he said, but many of the same corrupt and incompetent officials remained in office and life was only slightly less chaotic than before.

Twenty months after the Kremlin annexed the Black Sea peninsula amid an outpouring of patriotic fervor by the ethnic Russian population, President Vladimir V. Putin's promise in April 2014 to turn it into a showcase of his rule now seems as faded as Crimea's aging, Soviet-era resorts.

Crimea, many here are now realizing, could face years in limbo, no longer part of Ukraine but not yet fully absorbed by Russia. Crimeans' dreams of becoming the next Sochi, the $50 billion showcase site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, have crashed right along with the oil prices that have delayed such megaprojects in Russia.

Shchyolkino, a collection of a few dozen squat apartment blocks with no natural gas connection, is particularly hard hit by the power failure, having a maximum of four hours of electricity a day and two of those in the middle of the night. But life is not particularly wonderful anywhere in Crimea right now.

Many restaurants and shops are running on portable generators, displaying them at their front doors to demonstrate to customers that it is business as usual. Their steady growl has become the urban backbeat. After sundown the darkened streets quickly empty. Restaurants close at 8 p.m. and alcohol sales stop at 5 p.m. to encourage people to stay home at night.

Some stores get by without cash registers, and long lines snake out in front of any operational A.T.M.s. Without traffic lights, major city intersections are jammed. Highways are dark, too, so only in broad daylight can travelers see posters of Mr. Putin with the inscription: "Crimea. Russia. Forever." Gasoline is in scarce supply, producing long lines of angry drivers in front of the few stations that have it.

Kerch, a city of ornate streetlights that stand dark, receives at most 15 percent of the electricity it needs. A diesel generator powers the local hospital, a rusty old Soviet building. Alexei Prosolkov, the deputy head for security, said the hospital was functioning normally except for canceling some energy-intensive procedures like X-rays.

Schools have been shut for the past week, though a few are now reopening. A poster in front of one closed school in Kerch said that Crimeans "became victims of a sudden terrorist act, unprecedented in Russian history."

Children in Shchyolkino laughed about their unplanned vacation. At night they play board games by candlelight, they said.

The electricity crisis has its roots in the strained relations between the Crimean authorities and the Tatars, who are demanding an end to discrimination and the release of jailed activists.

The 277,000 Tatar residents of Crimea, a Muslim minority, say they have suffered systemic discrimination under Russian rule, with their independent news media shuttered along with their assembly.

Mr. Putin promised Tatars complete equality and ordered the government to recognize their forced deportation from Crimea under Soviet rule. Nariman Dzhelalov, one of the few remaining Tatar leaders in Crimea, said that the promises proved empty.

"In February, I spoke with very senior government representatives who told me that either we must become subordinate to them or they will make us leave," said Mr. Dzhelalov, 35, sitting in a cafe in central Simferopol. "They said, 'Russia is not very liked in the world already, so if they will dislike us a little more, so what?' "

Feelings have hardened on the other side as well. "The Tatars have not accepted Russian authority here in earnest, for instance they are very glad that Turkey downed a Russian bomber in Syria," said Aleksander A. Formanchuk, a former Soviet public servant and now a local official. "Regardless of what the Russian authorities did, there would still be discontent among the Tatars. This energy blockade was inevitable, but as a result they have lost Crimea forever."

As he spoke, Mr. Formanchuk fielded a steady stream of phone calls from people complaining about the lack of electricity. There was not enough power to make everybody happy, Mr. Formanchuk said, although he agreed that the government could do more to improve the lives of ordinary people.

But that will be hard so long as the main electricity lines are lying in a muddy field in Ukraine. Crimea can generate only one-third of the electricity it needs, and a so-called energy bridge to Russia, a power line scheduled to become partly operational this month, will not close the gap.

Today, the main lifeline to Russia is a ferry to a remote corner of the Krasnodar region that is operating without hindrance during the blackout, but which the Tatar activists have also threatened to halt. In 2014, the Kremlin pledged to spend 658 billion rubles (about $10 billion) to improve the peninsula's infrastructure, including a $3.4 billion bridge to mainland Russia. But little has been forthcoming.

No one is quite sure how long the blackout might last. The Ukrainian government has said the lines should be fixed but made no move to remove the protesters blocking repair crews. Although the Kremlin has voiced concern, it has not tried to force a solution. Russia's Black Sea fleet headquartered in Sevastopol said its operations were unaffected.

For now, new rituals are taking hold. Every day at noon, Shchyolkino's mayor speaks to residents on the city's main Crimean Spring Square, which was renamed during the annexation. Boiled water and warm food are distributed in front of an old movie theater. People can charge their cellphones and watch the latest Russian news on a TV screen, though some said they enjoyed life without television.

As often happens in Russia, some blame Washington rather than Moscow or Kiev.

"If it wasn't for the Americans none of it could have happened. The Tatars, who are supported by the United States, would not do a thing," said Tatyana Bragina, 57, an energetic woman who also once worked construction at a nearby, unfinished nuclear plant.

"Please write that we are not desperate. On the contrary, we are full of joy," Ms. Bragina said, standing near a black iron kettle boiling away in the courtyard of her apartment block.