#2
Government.ru
December 9, 2015
In Conversation with Dmitry Medvedev: Interview with five television channels. (transcript continued)

Prime Minister answered questions from TV anchors Irada Zeinalova (Channel One), Sergei Brilyov (Rossiya), Kirill Pozdnyakov (NTV), Yelizaveta Osetinskaya (RBC TV) and Mikhail Fishman (TV Rain).

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Mr Medvedev, the people of Crimea are paying something of a high price for being citizens of Russia. The latest events have shown that Crimea is still isolated, and that its social support system, in effect, exists separately from the rest of Russia. When will this situation be dealt with and how? And most importantly, how much will it cost and who will foot the bill?

Dmitry Medvedev: Ms Osetinskaya, I think if we ask the residents of Crimea if they are paying too high a price to be part of Russia, the absolute majority of them will say that they are ready to pay an even higher price as long as they don't have to return to the madhouse they were in not so long ago.

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: I think this depends on how you poll them.

Dmitry Medvedev: You know, no matter how you ask, the first reaction will be the same. I'm not talking about manipulation. I mean the average person being asked a simple question. I've put these questions to ordinary people, people you meet in the street.

About Crimea's integration - in fact, it is already integrated in the Russian legal and economic realm. This is exactly why we closed the Ministry of Crimea, because we moved on to a different form of government. Crimea is an integral part of the Russian Federation, both in the legal and economic sense. Local residents timely receive their pensions and benefits. The Crimea is now integrated in the Russian legal framework, which, in my opinion, is much more effective than what they had before.

Yet, Crimea remains really vulnerable for two reasons. One is the huge underinvestment of the past, maybe, 20 years, maybe even from the post-war period. Crimea, which was a gem even 100 years ago, failed to develop the way we all wanted it to during the Soviet period. This neglect grew even worse over the last 20 years. Therefore, there are problems, which only worsened due to the well-known position of the Ukrainian leadership. However, no matter what the Ukrainian rulers say, the recent blackout was nothing less than genocide. That was a cruel - even beyond any reason, as people say - thing to do. I mean cutting off public institutions and households from power supplies, - those same people whom the Ukrainian authorities even refer to as "their people" ("Our people live there, so Crimea should be returned to us," they say). What else can we say? A disgusting and cruel thing to do. But, honestly, we were ready for it. We stocked diesel engines and backup power supply systems, so we prevented a collapse from happening and provided power to the critical institutions such as healthcare centres and social services even during the most difficult period. The first power supply line went back online recently. Soon we will connect the second leg of the first stage, and two more in May. The resulting capacity will be 800 MW. This should solve Crimea's problems.

But of course, we will not stop here. The plans include building two new power plants by 2018, in Sevastopol and Simferopol. When this happens, the Crimea will stop being an energy deficient region, but will have an energy surplus. So I'd say the overall situation is normal there.

Finally, last but not least: not all of this is about the money. I return to where I began. It is a completely different story, and you are well aware of the enthusiasm with which the Russian people embraced this integration. .

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: My question was more about the economic aspect. How much does all this cost?

Dmitry Medvedev: As for the financial aspect - it was not cheap. Of course it wasn't.

I visited Crimea in the previous years, at invitations from Crimean and Ukrainian leaders, so I can say in all sincerity: I wanted out of there as soon as possible. The beautiful land was a mess, and their attitude toward it was no different. It seemed that the Ukrainian leadership never actually treated it as their land, never bothered to invest in it.

What did they do? They bought land there to build fancy houses for themselves but little else. The roads, the power grid and the service sector were not developed properly. It's not perfect everywhere in our country either, but let's be honest, services on the Black Sea coast in the Caucasus are much better than in Crimea. So Crimea is really underfunded. We have a big programme for this, and we will certainly do our best to implement it. This programme will cost approximately 700 billion roubles. This is a lot of money for the country, but we will accomplish everything, because Crimea is indeed a part of Russia. Crimea is a favourite resort destination for many of our people. Everything will be funded, and all of the planned projects will be carried out.

Irada Zeinalova: Mr Medvedev, tell us about Ukraine's $3 billion debt. We need to get this money back. I'm back on money again.

Dmitry Medvedev: Ask me about something positive, why always money?

Irada Zeinalova: Ukraine owes us $3 billion, and as a result we'll probably have to sue to get this money back. We offered to accept instalments together with commercial lenders, despite the International Monetary Fund's admitting that this is sovereign debt. Plus, recently the IMF changed the rules. What are the implications of these changes? Will they ever give our money back and what is this new process?

Dmitry Medvedev: Irada, people say, hope dies last.

Irada Zeinalova: Along with $3 billion?

Dmitry Medvedev: Yes, hope still dies last. But if you want my opinion, like a lot of people, I have a feeling that they won't give us the money back because they are crooks. They refuse to return our money and our Western partners not only refuse to help, but they also make it difficult for us.

Let's be clear, what is this debt? This was a legal loan. Ukrainian officials (the President and the Government) asked Russia to take part in the acquisition of bonds, to provide a bonded loan to solve the economic problems in Ukraine.

It was a request from the Ukrainian Government to the Russian Government. If two governments reach an agreement this is obviously a sovereign loan. This has never been called into question in the IMF's entire history, in the entire history of international economic relations. And then, all of a sudden... All right, Ukraine's new leadership, which is trying to evade its previous obligations and follow its own line - may God be their judge − I can at least find an explanation for this. Surprisingly, however, international financial organisations started saying that this is not exactly a sovereign loan. This is utter bull. Evidently, it's just an absolutely brazen, cynical lie.

It's a sovereign loan. And if it is a sovereign loan and if this loan is not repaid, that is, if a loan agreement is not fulfilled, what happens then? Payment is overdue or, as they say, is in default, which always has direct and unpleasant consequences for the borrower. What happened? The IMF - even though it is supposed to reflect the position of the absolute majority of states, not only borrowing states but also creditor states - for the first time in its entire history made a decision for purely political reasons that is designed to support the economy of a borrowing country in defiance of the actual circumstances and all existing legal agreements. This seriously erodes trust in IMF decisions. I believe that now there will be a lot of pleas from different borrower states to the IMF to grant them the same terms as Ukraine. How will the IMF possibly refuse them?

All of this stems from the fact that the international financial system is unjustly structured.. We have said this time and again. I personally spoke about this at the G-20 and G-8 summits. The Bretton-Woods Agreement, which played its role many years ago, is not working today. Quotas are not being redistributed and major economies like China do not have what they are entitled to from the IMF. In other words, unless we reform this system in the near future it will lose its credibility.

Now regarding that 3 billion. Of course, we'll not tolerate this. We'll go to court. We'll push for default on the loan and we'll push for default on all Ukrainian debts. There's no escaping this.

Irada Zeinalova: Mr Medvedev, it seems there's too much fuss around figures. They have to pay on the 20th and we'll go to court, but today Ukrainian Minister of Finance Natalie Jaresko stated that the Ukrainian government was coming under the unprecedented emotional pressure from the Ukrainian people not to repay the debt. What could be our response? After all, there are figures and official ocuments. What's going on?

Dmitry Medvedev: I don't know what the Ukrainian finance minister said. The most important thing is that the Ukrainian finance minister should also understand what the Ukrainian people said because, as is known, she has been out of touch with the Ukrainian people, living in quite a different place. I don't think the Ukrainian people today care about the repayment of this 3 billion. The Ukrainian people are now concerned about getting through this winter. Nobody knows how it will end for Ukraine as a whole. They are obligated to repay the loan. This is our firm position. If the IMF and, incidentally, our partners do not support us here... The president has addressed this issue. I have signed letters. We have urged the EU and the Americans to help ensure the payment of the Ukrainian debt. We are ready to grant them a deferral as long as they pay. What did they tell us? We will not help you in any way and we will not ensure anything, which only means this: They do not believe Ukraine is solvent. They did not provide guarantees for Ukraine, nor allowed first-rate banks to do so; they could have done this for Ukraine, accepting a rescheduling scheme to repay the loan to us within three years. In other words, they washed their hands and said: Let Ukraine swim on its own.

This is a very bad situation. It is compounded by the fact that in addition to this 3 billion, Ukraine is on the verge of becoming an associated member of the EU. They have chosen this path themselves so let them follow it. This is the responsibility of those who made the decisions. These decisions are shared - at least in part - by the Ukrainian people. OK, no problem. However, they should understand that on 1 January the term we set for fine-tuning our economies to harmonise the CIS free trade zone rules with the EU regulations will end. We reached a special three-way agreement - the Europeans, Ukraine and Russia - to complete this adaptation in a year. What has been done? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! This year they kept telling us it was necessary to meet, talk, synchronise positions and discuss wording. No specific issues were addressed: neither sanitation and epidemiological control, nor customs duties, nor legal harmonisation or technical regulations - nothing.

They should understand us. If they have chosen a free trade zone, a different free economic zone, they should understand that the preferences involved in the free trade zone with Russia, that is, zero tariffs, will end, also for understandable reasons. They are purely pragmatic. They are absolutely unrelated to politics.

We don't know what goods will end up in Ukraine. They can be European goods or goods from third countries, and they would flood into Russia, in line with zero import duties. We would simply swamp our market, and therefore we told them that we would complete this process. We would complete everything on 1 January if we don't reach an agreement.

What will this mean for Ukraine? It would receive most-favoured nation treatment and would become a country conducting foreign trade operations in line with the most-favoured nation principles. Everything is good here, except the absence of zero duties. These duties would increase by 3−9 percent, depending on specific categories of goods, or by an average of 6 percent. This is serious business, and they should understand this.

As I see it, chances of our reaching an agreement are almost zero. But we'll persevere in our efforts to try and reach an agreement until late December. We'll go all the way to the end in order to show that, if we're in negotiations with someone, well carry on to the end. . If this doesn't happen, we would stipulate a new trade regime with Ukraine, and we would introduce special sanctions with regard to Ukrainian foods, as we have promised in retaliation for their sanctions. We have not done this yet because we wanted to help them cope with their economic problems and not aggravate the problems they are already facing. But we would be forced to do this if they don't agree on a free trade zone with us. Therefore Ukraine would face these two circumstances. I believe this issue is very serious and substantial.

Sergei Brilyov: Mr Medvedev, my next question is rather comprehensive. News reports are filled with previously unseen footage of cruise missiles being launched from warships, submarines and Tupolev Tu-160 bombers. The latter have never been used in battle before. I would like to know, how much does all this cost?

Dmitry Medvedev: This is a secret.I can tell you that the use of the Russian armed forces fits completely into the parameters of the Defence Ministry's budget. They have not requested any increase in defence spending.

Sergei Brilyov: Not even once, this entire time?

Dmitry Medvedev: As it pertains to the situation described by you, no they did not address this issue.

Sergei Brilyov: This is an excellent answer. Please.

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Mr Medvedev, it is a fact that counter-sanctions have resulted in higher prices. This year's inflation was caused, to a certain degree, by these counter-sanctions. Now Russia is about to impose additional restrictions on Turkish imports. The chances are that this initiative will also push prices up, even though this has yet to be seen. Is the Government thinking about a set of measures that would offset these trends or do we simply have to get used to living in a new reality with higher prices, while incomes remain unchanged? This means we are now in very tough spot.

Dmitry Medvedev: Regarding our revenues, there are a number of factors that influence them, such as the situation on foreign markets, including, of course, on the oil market, and our own capability to change. Let's be honest and admit that oil accounts for 44 percent of budget revenues. Is this a lot? It is. Were these figures higher before? Yes, much higher. Oil used to account for 50, 60 and even 70 percent of the budget revenue. This goes to say that our budget revenue structure is changing for the better. Our aim is to consolidate these trends.

As for the situation with Turkey and its impact on prices, you are right, and I'm not going to contest the fact that counter-sanctions affect prices to a certain extent. But this impact is not fatal... We have started to forget that food price inflation in early 2008 was 13 percent, you can look it up. And in early 2015 it remained at a similar level. This means we have already been there. Back then, there were no sanctions. What I want to say is that...

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: You mean that this is attributable to crisis developments?

Dmitry Medvedev: Crisis developments... The causes of surging food prices and inflation in general do not boil down to sanctions because we have seen similar developments in 2008 without any bans or embargoes.

Nevertheless, I'm not contesting the obvious fact that sanctions had an impact. However, we responded by fine-tuning the retail sector, finding new suppliers and launching import-substitution mechanisms. In terms of agriculture import substitution is real and yielding results. We heard a lot about empty shelves, but these predictions failed to materialise. The shelves are full; no problems on this front. It is true that prices have gone up, too, albeit to a varying degree: Moscow saw bigger price hikes compared to the regions. All in all, this is an established fact.

As for the Turkish market and imports from that country, you know, these supplies were not very big, to tell you the truth. We tried to predict how it will play out. Experts believe that it will add 0.2 or 0.2-0.5 percentage points to the inflation rate, which is not too much. Moreover, these fluctuations are due to other processes on the food market. For this reason, we don't expect this to result in surging prices. But the Government must look into what food suppliers are doing, as they are always looking for reasons to jack up prices. We haven't closed any company so far.

By the way, let me highlight that Russia's sanctions against Turkey, the tomato ban, as it is now called, has yet to come into force. In fact, these measures will be effective as of 1 January. If there are price increases, they are caused by price-fixing, and the authorities and law enforcement bodies should crack down on such practices. We will monitor these developments and the Anti-Monopoly Service will pay special attention to this issue.

For this reason I don't expect these initiatives regarding Turkey to result in dramatic shifts.

Kirill Pozdnyakov: I'd like to continue the topic of imports and exports. Which branches failed to meet import substitution expectations, and which produced a pleasant surprise? As for exports, a similar turn may take place regarding Turkey. We are selling raw materials, oil and grain, but someone else is making money on them. And what about our processing industries? What's the problem?

Dmitry Medvedev: Kirill, you know, I think that even if we did not have such problems, we should have invented them for the sake of changing our economy. These problems are objective, but we became so used to living off of our exports that having a motive for economic reforms was most important. So what branches demonstrated good flexibility and an ability to substitute imports?

First of all, agriculture, no doubt. This is not the result of the past year. To be honest, this is the result of the implementation of a national project followed by the relevant state programme. We managed to replace many food products, and quite often they are of better quality - fresher...

Kirill Pozdnyakov: But not always at affordable prices ...

Dmitry Medvedev: At different prices. In some places these products are more expensive, whereas in others they are cheaper.  This should not be viewed in black or white. As for the situation in industry, it is of course more complicated. Yet, I'd like to draw your attention to what is taking place in several markets. Take chemical production, for one. Not all indicators are falling here. Our chemical industry grew by 6.5 percent this year, due to the launch of new facilities and the work on the Russian market. We no longer import many chemicals from abroad but produce them in the Russian Federation, and this is why our industry has grown.

Or take the pharmaceutical cluster. It increased by 13 percent this year because Russia put into operation about 10 new pharmaceutical production lines, if I'm correct. Naturally, this is also import substitution, and it is also very important because medicines are a very sensitive issue. We should develop production of all major medicines in order to avoid dependence on foreign supplies. Very often people say that imported medicines are better. This depends on how they feel, but the main thing is that they are more expensive and are purchased for hard currency. This is why prices on important medicines soar in parallel with fluctuations on the currency market. Prices on our medicines do not rise so fast. That is why our task is to produce them, by all means.

We managed to rejuvenate many other industries that stagnated or were idle for a very long time. I'm referring to shipbuilding and propulsion engineering. We have launched a new production line for engines for our new aircraft. Now we have acquired new aircraft. We all know about this. They are new technology, the equipment of the 21st century. So import substitution is taking place. True, it is not happening as quickly as we'd like it to, but no one had any illusions. It is impossible to build an industry on the German or Japanese scale on the basis of the post-Soviet industry in two years. It is probably impossible to do this in two years, but in 10 years we can do it and join the club of the exporters of sophisticated equipment - those that produce machines and mechanisms or what Soviet political economists described as the "production of the means of production for the manufacture of capital goods".

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Mr Medvedev, some other realities of this year. Chartered flights to Turkey have been cancelled and the air link with Egypt has been cut. Earlier, these routes were perceived as leading to just more remote summer destinations. The government says it is going to promote domestic tourism. But will the Krasnodar Territory and Crimea be able to receive all holiday-makers? Will there be enough water and electricity for them? Will they have enough? It's import substitution, after all.

Dmitry Medvedev: Oh, yes. There is nothing good in that Egyptian and Turkish resorts are now off-limits. It's neither the Government's intrigues, nor ill will on the part of the authorities. It's the security of our citizens. In choosing between security and rest and recreation, the Russian authorities must choose security. It's clear what happened. It was a terrorist attack. Moreover, judging by the scale of this year's terrorist attacks, their recurrence on air routes, regrettably, is highly possible. I am referring to a concrete destination, primarily the Middle East. This is why we have approved a decision, an unpleasant one, incidentally, for our friends and partners, and unpleasant for our people, who spent their holidays there. But I believe these two values - life and holiday-making - are simply incommensurate.

As for Turkey, you and I also understand what happened. By the way, we are not applying sanctions in the direct sense of the word. What we do is, in effect, our state's protective reaction. After our aircraft was destroyed... How did states normally behave in a situation like this in the 20th century? A war started. Because this amounts to a direct attack on a foreign state. Naturally, in our present life, under current circumstances, a war is the worst option. It is for this reason that the decision has been taken not to respond symmetrically to what has been done by the Turks. Of course, they have violated all norms of international law and committed, in effect, an act of aggression against our country. To use an international legal idiom, they have provided a casus belli, to wit, the grounds for the start of military hostilities.  The Russian leadership and the president have decided against this. But we had to show to them that they would be brought to account. It is for this reason that these decisions were taken in the interests of our citizens' security.

Are these decisions of indefinite duration? I hope not. Although no timeframes are indicated in the documents, it's clear that renouncing this course will largely depend on the Turkish authorities' position and their ability to ensure security in their territory.

As far as Russian resorts are concerned, they are not as well-adapted to proper rest and recreation as Turkish and even Egyptian resorts. We know this. The domestic tourist industry is in bad shape. It was underdeveloped in the Soviet era. True, certain populated areas and tourist locations have received a powerful impetus for their development in recent years. I am referring to Sochi, Anapa, and Gelendjik. But the scale of tourist services still cannot match what exists in other countries. OK, this is not a tragedy. We can do it and we'll do it both on the Caucasian Black Sea coast and in Crimea. The situation is even worse in Crimea because (as we've just said) even all of their hotel stars are fakes. OK, we'll introduce modern tourist standards and make investments. We'll try to substitute.

And lastly: It's not necessary to go to Crimea or the Caucasus. It's a huge country. There is a lot to see in other places.

Sergei Brilyov: Mr Medvedev, so we touched on the aviation industry after all. Let me look at it in a slightly different light. Charter flights to Egypt and Turkey have been completely cancelled. Of course, cutting down on flights will be a hard hit for the industry. And that's not the only problem. Well, OK, when the Polet airline from Voronezh dropped out of the market, it was less noticeable than when Transaero, one of the major airlines, shut down. We are all frequent flyers here for professional reasons.

Dmitry Medvedev: And me as well.

Sergei Brilyov: We pay for tickets.

Dmitry Medvedev: This is a good question.

Sergei Brilyov: I mean of course, our employers cover the costs. Ticket prices are rising. What is the aviation industry supposed to do in these circumstances?

Dmitry Medvedev: This is of course a challenge for the industry. Airlines dropping out is not a good trend. Unfortunately, Transaero's case is quite common: 300 billion roubles of debt. They just shouldn't have run up such debt. It is a forecasting error that cost the company too much. Different government agencies now have to deal with this error so that it never happens again. At the same time, we will use the resources of Aeroflot and other airlines to service the flights previously operated by Transaero. All the operations run smoothly, like clockwork. People don't even see the difference.

What you said about the fares is true though. Of course, whenever an airline leaves the market, it has an impact on competition. It is not our goal to make Aeroflot the only airline for domestic flights. Of course not. We obviously feel sorry for Transaero because it was an airline with years of experience that had flown so many flights. Let me remind you of the sad fate of some major airlines. For example, in the United States...

Sergei Brilyov: Yes, for example, Pan Am.

Dmitry Medvedev: Absolutely. They seemed so big, but now they are gone. All because they made forecasting errors or other mistakes. Therefore, the task is to maintain and stimulate the competition. We decided to reduce the VAT on air transport from 18% to 10%. This concession will remain in place to keep ticket fares reasonable. However, it is necessary to improve the competition in the industry. Why? Because the country is too big. If our country were small, we could have done without these support measures. Flying between Vladivostok and Moscow costs a lot of money, given the distance alone. We can't make it shorter. There are also fuel costs. So, it is necessary to develop alternative routes, low-cost transport and discount systems for various destinations, which we have been doing in the past years. We will certainly continue working towards these goals.

Mikhail Fishman: If possible, I'd like to bring us back down to earth. You must know that truck drivers have been protesting for several weeks against the new Platon road tax system for using federal roads. At first glance, the issue is not worth bothering with; that is, the planned revenues from this new road tax are not worth the strikes, demonstrations and truck blockade. It is believed that a mistake has been made somewhere. The question is at which point? Was it made during the planning stage because the idea was essentially wrong, or in the implementation stage because we haven't found the right words to explain this idea or have not implemented it properly? Or is it that our people, or more precisely truck drivers, are not ready to accept unpopular measures?

Dmitry Medvedev: Mikhail, to begin with, not all truck drivers are on strike, and 700,000 truck drivers have registered with the new tax system. They make up an overwhelming majority of long-haul truck drivers. But some drivers have not registered for different reasons. When we discussed this idea - these discussions began in 2011, by the way - it was clear that some deliveries are made by unregistered delivery companies and it's no clear what they deliver.

Of course, nobody likes new payments. But as I said, the overwhelming majority of delivery companies, the large, respected companies that account for 85 to 90 percent of deliveries in the country, have registered with the new system. As a result, we can transfer between 40 and 50 billion roubles to road funds. This is a lot.

Second, we spend about 1 trillion roubles on roads every year, as Russia is a large country. But we need much more money. Where does this money come from? It mostly comes from car owners, while those whose vehicles have the most impact on roads, truck drivers, drivers of heavy-lift transport, pay very little. In all industrialised countries, truck drivers contribute to this spending, which is an absolutely normal and sound practice. I believe it should be brought to its logical conclusion in Russia.

As for the decisions we've made, they should have been scrutinised from a technical and economic view. Technologically, it's impossible to launch a system before it starts working. All of those tests and pilot projects cannot be pronounced effective until we start collecting money. In other words, we probably made some mistakes and should have corrected them before launching the system. But these were not fatal mistakes; they have been corrected, and the system is functioning now. This is why 700,000 truck drivers have registered with it.

The other part of the issue concerns mentality. Truck drivers should get used to paying for driving on these roads, which is a normal thing as delivery charges are added to the price of commodities, and so delivery companies don't suffer in the long run. Moreover, the new fee has been calculated based on this precept, but we've decided to cut it for the current period amid the problems its introduction has created. Overall, it is a negligible payment for the absolute majority of cargo delivered by trucks.

And the last thing we should have considered more carefully is fines, which were too high indeed. Acting upon the proposal of the Government, the State Duma and the Federation Council have reduced them. Therefore, I believe that the system has been adjusted and will bring the budget and all of us additional funds for the road sector. Only the lazy haven't criticised our roads, but where can we find the money to repair them? It's obvious that trucks have the biggest impact on roads, and so truck drivers should contribute to improving them. Everyone must learn to pay for these services. Unpopular measures are seldom welcome, but they eventually produce a beneficial economic effect.

Kirill Pozdnyakov:  I have one more trivial question. The housing and utility fees will be raised by 4 percent next year. This shouldn't be too much for consumers.

Dmitry Medvedev: No, it's not much.

Kirill Pozdnyakov: That's all right. On the other hand, according to experts, the quality of services in the industry will not improve and investments will not enter the sector. This means that ...

Dmitry Medvedev: We need to increase it even more?

Kirill Pozdnyakov: I don't know, this is my question to you. That way, it turns out that consumers will pay more for nothing? Add to this payments for major house repairs, and so on.

Dmitry Medvedev: The utility bills will be lower than in 2015, as the rates will be reduced. The rates are tied to inflation and salary adjustments, including pension adjustments. Since we have made such adjustments part of our plan, we will increase the rate by only 4 percent. This did stir a variety of responses in the Government, but in the end we decided to increase the rate by only 4 percent. But this applies to private customers. Speaking about other entities that use housing and communal services, they, of course, pay more, and their rate is entirely different. I believe this is the best we can do. We can't ask private consumers to pay more now.

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Mr Medvedev, I'm not sure if you are familiar with the high-profile investigation conducted by the Foundation for Fighting Corruption and Novaya Gazeta concerning the business conducted by Yury Chaika's family members. I'd like to know what you think about it. However, I have something different in mind. Similar investigations show that the current system of income disclosure does not address the questions that society may have regarding officials' income. Since you initiated the disclosure procedure, I want to ask you if this system should be expanded. Perhaps, adult children should be included in the income disclosure system, or something should be done to improve transparency?

Dmitry Medvedev: Indeed, I was involved in introducing the disclosure and civil servant accountability system. I believe it was the right thing to do back then, and this policy was continued in the following period. There are more individuals now who file disclosures and more information that they have to provide. We have introduced the conflict of interest construct and introduced bans on owning a number of property assets, including foreign accounts, foreign securities and foreign currency instruments. I believe it is absolutely normal, and this work must continue both in terms of improving legislation and accounting for what is going on. In this sense, we still have much to do.

We have ratified a series of international conventions, no matter what people may say. My opinion (in this case, not even as an official, but as a lawyer) is that we now have quite modern anti-corruption legislation. We didn't have it as little as 10 years ago. This doesn't mean that the situation with corruption has significantly changed however. This is really one of the greatest evils and a most significant problem of our society that involves government officials and others who are involved in corruption schemes, and the state must fight this...

With regard to investigations, they will always take place, but most importantly they must be based on objective data.

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Perhaps, the state should come up with an initiative and be proactive in this sphere?

Dmitry Medvedev: I believe we recently did a lot to implement such initiatives

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: I'm talking about this particular story.

Dmitry Medvedev: With regard to this particular story, all specific cases must be addressed by those who are in charge of them. These are people who monitor the income of civil servants, as well as law enforcement agencies.

You said, let's go ahead and have officials include their adult children in their income disclosure filings. We can discuss this, but I'm not sure that this is consistent with modern approaches, because situations may differ. There might be situations where people stay in touch, but sometimes they don't. We discussed this before - don't think that it has just showed up on our radar. I remember five years ago we discussed where we should draw a line in the sand. Should we include minor children, as we do now, or should it apply to adult offspring as well? Seriously speaking, we shouldn't be seeing a corrupt official in every high-ranking government employee. Parents and their children may not even talk to each other. Do we still have to shake things up to see what adult children of civil servants are up to, even if they don't talk to each other and live in different countries? This may be difficult to accomplish technically, but we can look into this issue as well.

With regard to our overall work to improve anti-corruption legislation, it will continue undoubtedly. This is what the Government has repeatedly said in its resolutions, and this is what the President said in his address to the Federal Assembly.

Sergei Brilyov: Mr Medvedev, I meant to ask you then about the overall effort regarding the business climate, a point that the president brought up in his address, and simply consider the two issues together. Why does the president have to revisit it? After all, a lot has been said about lowering administrative barriers and reducing supervisory functions. There were reports to the effect that some supervisory agencies would be merged but they were not merged... Finally, there was the need to fine-tune the capital amnesty law again. In short, to sum everything up, why, even though the supreme ruling authority revisits the issue of the business climate again and again, from year to year, nothing much seems to be changing?

Dmitry Medvedev: Because our business climate is such that the authorities, the top authorities, have to revisit it. Because it is not changing the way that we would like it to, unfortunately. That's why.

In fact, it is an extremely challenging issue. For various reasons - due to economic patterns and, let's face it, due to the habits of a huge number of our people. This is not only the problem of officials, civil servants. After all, the business climate is created by everyone, including by business itself, and only recently business behaved in an absolutely, fundamentally different manner. Today everyone understands that it is important to improve the business climate. Why does the president speak about this? Why are we in the Government constantly talking about this? This is because we are moving forward. It would probably not be fair not to see this, because only recently, we were, say, in the 150th position in various rankings, which is sad, because by and large Russia is a developed country but our business climate was seen as very poor. Now we have made progress on an array of procedures. This is even somewhat surprising to me...

Sergei Brilyov: Are you referring to the Doing Business breakthrough, moving several dozen positions ahead?

Dmitry Medvedev: For example, we are among the top 10 countries in corporate registration terms. Listen, this is indeed a breakthrough. In overall rankings, we are somewhere on the 50th position. As a matter of fact - please note - we are ahead of all BRICS countries in these ratings (ratings are relative but still, they do reflect something). They are significantly larger and more steadily developing economies than we are. Even so, we have surpassed them, which means that our procedures are better in some respects. So when we talk about the need to improve the business climate we mean that we simply must be among the most advanced states. I am sure that we'll make it. To this end, it is necessary to improve the legal framework, procedures and online verification systems.

I recently recalled (with my colleagues) the beginning of my legal practice. What did lawyers do in the 1990s? They registered companies. Each registration was an event. A company statute and a set of corporate documents had to be prepared; you had to haunt the doorsteps of many agencies, which cost a pretty penny, and lawyers, naturally, were eager to make money. Today the procedure is automatic. It's an online, one-stop shop system. Isn't this progress? I believe it's very good progress. So we'll continue this work without fail.

Mikhail Fishman: Mr Medvedev, I'd like, if I may, to revisit Lisa's question, as I believe it's important. Regarding the investigation into the Prosecutor General, members of his family and high-ranking officials at the Prosecutor General's Office... You sort of brushed this aside, saying that the investigation should be objective. However, I'd like to understand how we are supposed to know that the investigation is objective. There should be some [official] response. What we see so far is that the authorities - in the broad sense of the word - are silent even though the reputation of the ruling authority is at stake. This does not even concern corruption. This is... In particular, high-ranking officials at the Prosecutor General's Office have been accused of direct involvement in organised crime. The authorities should react. There should have been some transparent, open investigation. The Prosecutor General should have been suspended from office due to a conflict of interests. Otherwise, how are we supposed to understand whether or not this is true?

Dmitry Medvedev: Mikhail, you have just used a phrase - probably not consciously - that you shouldn't be using now: you said that a government official has been charged with something. But if we are going to use these terms, we might go too far. As was the case in the 1930s. In our country, a person can only be prosecuted by the law enforcement system and only in the manner prescribed by law.

As for all kinds of media stories, you certainly know where they come from. You would agree that they are not always the result of an objective investigation, and do not always objectively reflect a person's actions. These are often planted articles. I will not put any labels on any publications, because that would only give them publicity, which is exactly what they are trying to achieve. Moreover, such things are always politically motivated. But, of course, if you have information, law enforcement and supervisory authorities are obliged to analyse it and are required to take decisions, but only within the framework of existing procedures, not on the basis of emotion: "Wow, look who's in the papers! Come on, let's put them all in concrete!" Investigations should be based on specific materials and a legal assessment of the case. Only this way can we establish the rule of law, unlike the system we, unfortunately, used for almost 80 years, when the presumption of innocence was thrown in the trash. I would ask you to keep this in mind when making such judgments.

Mikhail Fishman: I totally agree. There is public outcry, but zero response from the government ...

Dmitry Medvedev: Public responses are normal. But all this public attention should be followed by a legally verified reaction from the authorities - not an emotional, but a legally verified response. Not emotional. Legally verified. That's all there is to it.

Irada Zeynalova: But will that reaction come at all?

Dmitry Medvedev: Even if no one is saying anything, it does not mean there is no reaction. The response does not have to be instantaneous. With any case, the authorities - I mean the law enforcement agencies - are required to analyse a set of facts. I will not give any evaluations here precisely because I consider it unacceptable for the Prime Minister or any other top-ranking official to evaluate any law enforcement reasons or the circumstances of the case. By the way, I have always refrained from such judgements in any position I held. However, certain evaluations are always made, this is understandable.

Kirill Pozdnyakov: I have a certain philosophical question.

Dmitry Medvedev: I hope it's not about money again?

Kirill Pozdnyakov: I'll try and make it clear. They are declaring sanctions against Russia. We are saying: "Excellent, this will help us."

Dmitry Medvedev: We are growing stronger.

Kirill Pozdnyakov: Yes. Down with the "bourgeois» goods, we'll buy Russian-made goods instead. If they are telling us that travelling to the Turkish or Egyptian coasts is some kind of stereotype that has been imposed on us, this, too, is normal, and we'll spend our vacations at home. Our country is big and wide. Are we really overestimating our values, or is this some unconscious striving for self-isolation?

Dmitry Medvedev: Yes, this is a very serious question. First, you and we have been buying "bourgeois" goods for a long time as Russia has a market-oriented economy based on private capital. We buy almost no goods from socialist countries, except those from North Korea.

Kirill Pozdnyakov: By saying, "bourgeois", I mean imported goods.

Dmitry Medvedev: Imported goods are another story.Speaking of a striving for self-isolation and our desire to limit our consumption in some way, I believe that this is absolutely not true. No matter where we all work, we are all modern people. Let's imagine that the Soviet Union survived to this day. It would be impossible to imagine, even for a minute, that it would remain outside current worldwide trends, globalisation trends and an open information agenda.

Even in Soviet times, our country was not a completely enclosed society - not to mention contemporary life. Therefore, any statement regarding Russia's self-isolation is beyond the point. We are not facing such a prospect, and we are not gloating over the decisions that we made. Certainly, the people of Russia have no inner desire to completely fence themselves off, to preserve a patriarchal way of life and to say, "When in Russia, do as Russians," that we will sort out things here by ourselves, and that we don't need Western and other foreign goods.

Peter the Great established a window to Europe, and this window has not closed to this day. But this doesn't mean that we should obtain all sorts of trash from there. Naturally, we should be guided by our own interests, national interests and by our own pragmatic stance. But we certainly do not face the prospect of isolation and a refusal to deal with foreign countries, and no one wants this to happen.

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Mr Medvedev, to continue this topic, I'd like to ask you...

Dmitry Medvedev: A philosophical topic?

Yelizaveta Osetinskaya: Not quite. We talked at length about our turn to the East, but judging from available information, this turn did not materialise in anything specific. Many framework agreements with China have been signed but it is not fully clear what they are all about.

Dmitry Medvedev: I can answer this question at length but we don't have the time. Why is it unclear what they are all about? As for China, Power of Siberia is a contract on our gas supplies for dozens of billions of dollars. Our oil supplies to China are also worth dozens of billions of dollars, which we are receiving under current projects. These are already investments. Or take the Tianwan Nuclear Power Station. We've already built the first stage and are now working on the second. And these are just our major projects. Everything is OK there. I will go there next week to discuss investment with my Chinese colleagues.

Sergei Brilyov: Before announcing next steps in the activities of the Prime Minister, let me say that our time is indeed coming to an end.

Irada Zeinalova: Closing the circle I'd like to return to the start of our conversation. The year seemed fairly difficult. Sometimes it seemed as though we were encircled and it was difficult. It would be very good to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe you could say something optimistic for next year since the outgoing year has already done its bit unless you have other comments.

Dmitry Medvedev: Irada, shall I give you a brief answer? Everything will be fine! I'd like to convey to you and all our television viewers my heartfelt greetings on the New Year, which is approaching. I wish everyone a wonderful mood and peaceful skies. I hope all of you celebrate its advent well. Our New Year holidays are long and everyone should make good use of them.

As for difficulties... Some will remain but there is no doubt that we will eventually overcome them. I wish you good programmes on the air and good publications in the press.

Irada Zeinalova: And we wish you good budgets.

Dmitry Medvedev:It is, of course, important for us to receive budget funds as it will make it easier to resolve our tasks, but have no doubt - we'll do everything.

As for the outgoing year, it had many events - both sad and inspiring. There were some very positive moments, such as the celebrations of the 70th Victory anniversary. This is our common holiday and we had a real feast.

There were very grave events, too. Terrorism has again raised its head throughout the world. We will fight against it. I think that on the whole we passed this year well. The New Year will bring new events. Thank you for your regular programmes with my participation.

Sergei Brilyov: Mr Medvedev, thank you very much.

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 #3
CNN.com
December 10, 2015
Russia's middle class: We don't blame Putin
By Jill Dougherty
Jill Dougherty is currently a CNN Contributor. She is a former CNN foreign affairs correspondent and Moscow bureau chief with expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union. She is currently at the International Centre for Defence and Security, researching the influence of Russian media. The views expressed are her own.

(CNN)Russia's middle class has had a tough time recently, but they aren't blaming President Vladimir Putin for it.

No more winter charter flights to sunny Turkey; Putin's government banned them after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in Syria in late November.

No more Turkish fruits, vegetables, or meats either. They're also banned.

And forget about Brie,Camembert and other imported European cheeses. They too disappeared from shelves, after the Kremlin banned them in retaliation for European sanctions over Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Then there's the sinking Russian currency. The ruble has lost more than half its value since last year.

Some of Putin's critics predict it's just a matter of time before frustrated Russians rise up and punish him for their economic woes.

But it's not happening. In fact, Putin's poll ratings are in the stratosphere, hovering between 85% and 90%, according to the Levada Center, an independent Russian polling company.

"To think that living standards go down and people, what, revolt? It's too simplistic," says Maria Lipman, a Moscow-based political analyst associated with George Washington University. "That would follow the logic of 'it's the economy, stupid.' But it's not just the economy, stupid."

Russians may not be able to buy Turkish tomatoes, but there are other tomatoes to buy -- and when many people open their refrigerators, they're not empty.

"One of reasons the Soviet Union collapsed so quickly was that the Soviet economic model could not properly feed people," explains Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of the Russia in Global Affairs journal.

"There was a real problem with scarce goods. Today, the assortment, the amount of cheese, is shrinking, but it's not a question of starvation or hunger or even a big problem to get some food. And it will not happen because today's Russia can produce food."

When Russians look for someone to blame for their economic problems, many point to the countries that imposed sanctions in the first place -- the U.S. and Europe. Fed by a steady diet of government-controlled anti-western media, they feel their country is under attack economically, politically, and militarily.

"There is a siege mentality," says Maria Lipman. "There are enemies all around, but we stand proud, and we will not bend, we will not surrender to oppression. We are invincible."

This mood is captured in a new poll by the Levada Center. Seventy percent of respondents said they had a negative view of the United States. Sixty percent were negative about the European Union.

And there's another factor at work: Russians feel a growing pride in being Russian. Many of them have come to see the decade after the Soviet Union collapsed as an aberration, a period when they were a weak, humiliated, and toothless former super-power.

The annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, reviled in the West, was overwhelmingly popular in Russia, says the Levada Center's Denis Volkov.

Writing in the Vedomosti newspaper, he says Crimea was a turning point: "As a result, many people felt the rebirth of Russia's greatness that was lost after the fall of the USSR."

In focus groups conducted by the Levada Center, Russians put it this way: "We bared our teeth"; "We forced them to respect us"; "If they don't love us then at least they fear us."

Putin's government "intentionally exploited post-imperial complexes" that Russians still felt, Volkov says, "obviously calculating that reuniting Crimea to Russia would strengthen support for the regime." But the strength of that effect -- and how long it has lasted -- have surprised even the Kremlin.

Russia's current military action in Syria has only intensified those emotions. State media air video of sophisticated new Russian weapons being deployed in Syria, of terrorist headquarters destroyed by massive bombing raids -- and it's having an effect: A December Levada Center poll shows that 85% of Russians are proud of their armed forces; 68% are proud of their country's political influence in the world; and almost 60% think Russia is better than the majority of other countries.

It's not a black and white picture, however. Asked about Russia's economic achievements, only 27% said they were "very proud" or "somewhat proud."

Nevertheless, this growing patriotism and support for their president -- combined with assurances by Putin that the current economic crisis is "complicated but not critical" -- "makes it easier for people to put up with economic hardships and for Putin to preserve his high legitimacy and high approval rating," according to Maria Lipman.

Even if Russia's middle class turned sour on their president it would not mean a profound change in his approval rating, says Fyodor Lukyanov.

Russia's middle class, according to the Russian business journal Kommersant, has remained stable for the past 15 years at approximately 20% of the population. Citing government statistics, the journal predicts that the current economic crisis will reduce the percentage of Russia's middle class to 15%.

"The impact of the middle class on Russian public opinion," Lukyanov says, "is visible and quite important, but limited."

Western-oriented economists often describe the middle class as a product of a market economy which, in turn, leads to demands for democracy. But Lukyanov says that's only part of Russia's middle class.

There's been a "renaissance" of engineers and personnel working for Russia's defense industry, he says, an elite class in the Soviet Union that fell apart in the chaos of the early post-Soviet period. Now they're back, and the Kremlin is paying attention. The group has almost nothing to do with the market economy, Lukyanov says, and they support Putin.

Among these Russians, the Kremlin media apparatus has been quite successful in transforming Western sanctions into a plus. Lukyanov explains: "Putin was very skillful to create the idea that we are experiencing trouble but the rest of the world is treating us as real competitors, a real force, not like before. And for middle class it's important to feel that you are a citizen of a very important country."

Neither Lukyanov nor Lipman can predict how long Russian consumers will soldier through these economic difficulties without blaming Putin. But the overall mood in Russia seems clear.

The Kremlin, through state media, "has created an atmosphere in society which makes all losses and suffering in society less painful," says Lukyanov. "The feeling of being surrounded by hostile powers creates another feeling: that security is more important than prosperity."

Russia's economic crisis may not have dented Putin's popularity, but mounting financial problems and an inability to compensate for devalued pensions and wages will inevitably have an effect on popular support for Putin and the system as a whole, says the Levada Center's Denis Volkov.

"So far, however, the time to blame Putin has not come."

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 #4
Interfax
December 10, 2015
Russia prepared to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 70% by 2030

Russia is prepared to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by another 5 percentage points, or to 70 percent of the 1990 level by 2030, the Russian Natural Resources and Environment Ministry reported Minister Sergei Donskoi as saying at the UN climate conference (COP21) in Paris.

Donskoi sai that combating climate change is a national priority for Russia and, in line with a special decree issued by the Russian president, the country has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to no more than 75 percent of the 1990 level by 2020.

However, if the absorbing capacity of boreal forests is taken into account, Russia is prepared to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by another 5 percentage points by 2030, which is a very ambitious goal considering the growth of the Russian economy, the minister said.

"We hope that the new agreement will provide for mechanisms similar to the economic mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. In the first period that it was in effect, Russia managed to carry out more than 100 projects that ensured the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," Donskoi said.

"As a result, Russia ranked second in the world in the use of the investment mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. This made it possible to use the proceeds from the sale of quotas to implement social and environmental projects," Donskoi said.

He said that in order to transition to a low-carbon economy, Russia is setting ambitious goals to reduce the per-unit energy intensity of GDP by 25 percent by 2025 and electricity intensity by 12 percent, as well as increase industrial energy conservation to about 200 million tonnes of oil equivalent annually by 2035.

The energy efficiency of the Russian economy has increased by 9 percent since 2007, the minister said. Overall investment in energy efficiency is expected to total $240 billion in the period to 2035.

Donskoi also said that Russia needs to create instruments for switching to renewable energy, replacing the use of fossil fuels.

"Already today, about half of all new energy facilities in Russia are hydropower plants, nuclear power plants and plants running on renewable sources of energy," Donskoi said.

Experts estimate that the combined potential of alternative sources is about 3 billion tonnes of oil equivalent per year. Russia plans to attract about $53 billion of investment into the renewable energy sector by 2035.

The minister said that more than 1.5 GW of solar power generation will be launched in Russia in the near future. Russia also has huge reserves of geothermal energy, which are ten times greater than the country's fossil fuel reserves. Five geothermal power plants with combined capacity of 80 MW are now operating in Kamchatka.

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#5
Moscow Times
December 10, 2015
How to Ignore a Corruption Scandal, Kremlin Style
By Peter Hobson

Alexei Navalny has spent years publishing revelations of the ill-gotten luxuries of Russia's elite and seeing them ignored by authorities. But when the blogger and opposition politician's anti-corruption fund unveiled an investigation linking colleagues of Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to the bloodiest bandits of recent years, Navalny thought they would be forced to act.

Published on Dec. 1, the investigation linked Chaika's deputy, Gennady Lopatin, and another prosecutor, Alexei Staroverov, to the leaders of the Tsapok gang, who terrorized the town of Kushchevskaya in southern Russia through systematic rape and theft for more than a decade before their slaughtering of 12 people, including four children, forced authorities to intervene in 2010.

It also linked Chaika's son, Artyom, to the expropriation of a shipping company in the Far East whose director was allegedly strangled, and documented the apparent rigging of auctions for lucrative state contracts by Artyom's brother, Igor. The investigation showed how both Chaika's sons, who have amassed businesses and real estate worth millions of dollars, enjoyed the protection of prosecutors.

It took the public by storm. Three million people watched a Russian-language film version of the investigation on YouTube in less than a week. But there were no mass firings or public investigation opened. Yury Chaika branded it an attempt to discredit him, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was not interested in the dealings of Chaika's "grown-up" sons, whose affairs he said had nothing to do with the Prosecutor General.

Two days after the investigation was published, President Vladimir Putin made his traditional denouncement of corruption during his annual state of the nation address. Chaika watched calmly from the front of the audience as Putin asked the Prosecutor's Office to be vigilant.

The reaction is a familiar one in Russia, where almost every member of elite that emerged from the 1990s had dealings with organized crime. News that officials are corrupt surprised few - particularly in the Kremlin.

Moreover, Putin has made it a point never to react to outside pressure or cut loose members of his cabal. "Putin's mind is set: if he reacts [and fires Chaika] that makes him vulnerable - not in front of society, but in front of his siloviki," a source close to the security services told The Moscow Times, using a word that refers to "strongmen" officials with roots in law enforcement.

But the investigation did ruffle feathers in the Kremlin, according to two sources close to the security services. Even in Russia, associating with gangsters like the Tsapoks is a step too far, one source said. Also damaging are the connections amassed by Artyom Chaika in Switzerland, where Navalny's investigation revealed he bought several houses and a residence permit. Putin and his inner circle would see this as treason -  particularly dangerous if it exposes insiders with sensitive information to foreign pressure at a time when the Kremlin's relations with the West have soured over Ukraine, the sources said.

By Russian standards, the reaction to the investigation was big. The Kremlin, which ignores Navalny to the extent that it refuses to utter his name, felt forced to comment. Navalny's targets rarely respond to his findings, yet Chaika defended himself. Soon after the investigation came out, independent television channel Dozhd, which had helped Navalny gather evidence, was raided by prosecutors in what one source called a "knee-jerk" reaction to the scandal.

Navalny told The Moscow Times he was surprised that so few people argued with or tried to smear his conclusions, and by the small number of people who publicly defended Chaika.

But that does not mean that things will change. State-run television is not giving airtime to the case, and headlines fade. "We're realistic people," Navalny said, and we know they won't fire anyone - "it would contradict the very basis of the regime."

In a blog post following the publication, Navalny said the burden was now on the public to spread the word and journalists to "obtain a reasonable reaction and reasonable answers."

This will prove difficult. "Unlike American media, Russian media aren't used to catching their prey," Navalny told The Moscow Times.

But Putin may do the job for them. Chaika could suffer the fate of his predecessor in the Prosecutor General's Office, Vladimir Ustinov, who was abruptly fired at Putin's request in 2006. No explanation for the sacking was ever given.
 

#6
Rossiya 1 TV
December 9, 2015
Russian premier grilled on Chayka scandal, refuses to be drawn in

It is unacceptable for a prime minister or any other official to comment on allegations of officials' wrongdoing but the authorities will make their reaction public, Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has said. He was speaking in his annual "Conversation with Dmitriy Medvedev", broadcast live on Russian state official television channel Rossiya 1 and news channel Rossiya 24, as well as Russian internet and satellite broadcaster Dozhd TV on 9 December.

The prime minister's statement concerned a report prepared by Russian opposition activist Aleksey Navalnyy's Foundation for Fighting Corruption (FBK) carrying allegations of corruption and other criminal activity against family members and staff of Prosecutor-General Yuriy Chayka. There has yet been no reaction to the allegations, Mikhail Fishman from the Russian internet and satellite broadcaster Dozhd TV said, expressing the concern of many in Russia.

"It is not even corruption, we are talking about the reputation of the authorities here," Fishman said. Medvedev said it was important not to go back to the 1930s, the years of repressions. "It is the law-enforcement system alone that can press charges in this country," he stressed. "As for publications of any kind, you yourself know how they appear and in what way. Far from always this is a result of an objective probe," he said adding: "Very often it is a contract thing".

Medvedev side-stepped the specific question related to Chayka, explaining that anything he said could be used in the "political struggle" the report was aimed at. Any comment should not be emotional, it should be based on the "legal assessment of the contents of the files", he said. Russia has lived through the times when a "presumption of innocence could have been thrown into a waste-paper basket", he added. However, Fishman argued there is such a thing as a "public outcry". Yelizaveta Osetinskaya, chief editor of the corporate-owned business channel RBK TV, asked Medvedev if a reaction would follow. "If nobody is saying anything at present, it does not mean that there is no reaction," the prime minister said, adding the "authorities should analyze the whole body of evidence" relating to any case. Medvedev refused to comment on the above-mentioned allegations, saying it was not his place to do so, but promised that a reaction would follow.

Earlier Osetinskaya asked Medvedev whether he thought the existing system of declaring income should be made more transparent.

"Our anti-corruption legislation is quite modern," Medvedev said and added: "However, this does not mean that the situation around corruption has changed considerably. This is a most essential evil, a most pressing problem we have in our society."

As for the allegations and possible probes, he went on to say, "they should be based on objective materials".

Asked to comment on the specific allegations related to Chayka, Medvedev reiterated: "All specific stories should be dealt with by those who are responsible for this, namely, people who control officials' incomes as well as law-enforcing agencies." Speaking of the initiative put forward by Osetinskaya that senior officials should declare the incomes of their adult children, Medvedev said: "I am not sure this corresponds to modern approaches." Parents and this adult children may not be on speaking terms or the children may be living in other countries which makes the initiative difficult to implement, the prime minister said. "In general, the work to improve the anti-corruption legislation will go on," Medvedev assured the journalists.
 

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 #7
Rossiya 1 TV
December 9, 2015
Russian premier downplays truckers' protests, says tolls to help repair roads

Although some long-haul drivers are on strike over the new electronic toll collection system Platon, it should still remain in place in order to bring funds necessary for federal roads, Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has said. He was speaking in his annual "Conversation with Dmitriy Medvedev", broadcast live on Russian state official television channel Rossiya 1 and news channel Rossiya 24, as well as Russian internet and satellite broadcaster Dozhd TV on 9 December.

"The situation is such that not all long-haul drivers are on strike. 700,000 of long-haul drivers have registered in the toll-collecting system. It is an absolute majority of those who operate international [corrects himself ] intercity freight transportation. Some did not register for various reasons. When we discussed this measure, and by the way it has been discussed since 2011, it was clear that a part of the freight transportation was being operated in the grey zone by unregistered transportation carriers. And it is unknown what are they transporting," Medvedev said commenting on the truckers' protests which have been taking part across Russian regions for almost a month.

"Those who really impact the roads, drivers of huge trucks, of heavy-lift transport, do not virtually pay anything. In all modern states they participate in these expenses, it is absolutely normal. It is a good idea and I believe that it should be brought to its logical completion," Medvedev said.

He, however, went on to say that the Platon system should have been verified prior to its launch, especially in terms of technology. "Probably there were some mistakes that should have been corrected but they are not fatal, they have been corrected, everything is working now. That is exactly why 700,000 have registered," Medvedev said.

In addition, he said, it was necessary to "get used to the idea to pay for such transportation". "It is absolutely normal. All this is included in the price of goods and after all the transportation carriers themselves do not suffer from it," Medvedev said adding that at first the penalties, on the other hand, "might have been somewhat excessive".

"Now, at the government's suggestion, the State Duma and the Federation Council have corrected and lowered them. Which is why I believe that the system has been adjusted. But it will eventually bring to the budget and to all of us additional investments for the roads. Everyone likes to criticize Russian roads. Where are we to take the money for them?" Medvedev said.

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 #8
Moscow Times
December 10, 2015
Russia's Economy Slows Amid Investment Woes
By Sergei Alexashenko
Sergey Aleksashenko is nonresident senior fellow in Global Economy and Development at Brookings. Former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia and former chairman of Merrill Lynch Russia, he focuses on transition process in CIS and Eastern Europe, monetary policy and international financial infrastructure.

Russia's economy is faring poorly as the New Year approaches. Gross domestic product has swung back to a level last seen in the first of 2008 and the economy has essentially stagnated over the last seven years.

The reason for the problem that officials most frequently cite, and that President Vladimir Putin mentioned in his most recent address to the Federal Assembly, is a combination of adverse external factors such as the global economic crisis, the drop in oil prices, Western financial sanctions and the economic slowdown in China. However, economic growth began slowing significantly as early as 2013. At that time, GDP was growing by only 1.3 percent annually, while oil prices consistently surpassed $100 per barrel. Even a rise in oil prices would not solve the economic problems that Russia is currently facing.

The year-end picture does not inspire much optimism. It is well known that only the upsurge in military production is keeping Russian industry afloat, even while it wastes precious resources needed for moving the economy forward. There is some relief in the fact that the ruble is not behaving as erratically as it did this time last year, but it is clear that the currency has become even more dependent on the oil price and that its 50 percent devaluation has led to a 10 percent drop in the general level of consumption.

The most discouraging outcome of 2015 is the continued decline in investment. The latest sequestration in the federal budget has led to a new round of investment cutbacks in non-military sectors. The volume of investment in both industrial and residential construction has fallen. In 2016, budget expenditures will drop by at least 3 percent to 5 percent in real terms. Two-thirds of all profits are earned by raw materials export companies, whose owners - according to the Finance Minister - prefer paying dividends to investing in development because they "lack confidence that investing profits in Russia would ultimately produce revenues."

Russia's annexation of Crimea made the Russian economy far less interesting for foreign investors, depriving domestic businesses of vital technologies and human capital. Short of war, direct foreign investment will not simply dry up, and most Western firms now working in Russia will continue investing for the sake of development. However, the flow of new foreign investment will slow to a trickle and a number of existing projects, such as those in the automobile industry, may be shelved due to market considerations.

Many small improvements have made it easier to do business in Russia. It is no coincidence that Russia has steadily risen in the Doing Business index issued by the World Bank, ranking 62 out of 189 countries this year, up from 120 in 2010. And it is encouraging to learn that Russia now stands in fifth place for "contract compliance" and in eighth place for "registering property" - especially knowing that the United States occupies 21st and 34th places respectively. But careful analysis reveals that the rating is "formal" in nature emphasizing a number of bureaucratic procedures, their duration and the official cost of state services. World Bank experts do not attempt to answer whether a state provides protections for property as such.

The situation in Russia is not just bad, but downright ugly. The main reason for the poor state of the Russian economy is the lack of an effective system for protecting property rights. The gradual dismantling of state institutions led first to a decline in investments, then to a sharp drop beginning in 2013, and finally to massive capital flight, with economic growth slowing to a halt by mid-2014.

As Putin himself pointed out in his recent speech, of the 200,000 businesspeople against whom the authorities brought criminal charges in 2014, 83 percent lost their businesses. More proof of how dire the threat to property rights has become in Russia is the country competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum: of the 140 countries listed, Russia ranks 120th for property rights protection, 116th for minority shareholder protection and 108th for judicial independence.

Addressing these challenges is key to reviving investment activity and putting the economy on track toward sustainable growth. However, restoring the system for protecting property rights and improving the business climate in Russia requires the political willpower to implement major political reforms, starting with the establishment of an independent judiciary and finishing with allowing the media to operate independently and launching a full-scale fight against corruption.

If the Russian authorities make real moves in that direction, the economy will snap back. If they don't, capital flight will persist and the economy will continue to stagnate.

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 #9
West unfoundedly accuses Russia of INF breach to deflect similar accusations against itself - Naryshkin

MOSCOW. Dec 10 (Interfax) - The West, including the United States, is breaching the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and is accusing Russia of doing so in order to deflect accusations against itself, State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin has said.

"Political speculations aimed at deflecting lawful accusations and at misleading the global public on the subject of Russia have become more frequent in the West, primarily in the United States. A recent illustrative example is the unfounded claim of Russia's deviation from the INF Treaty which is actually being violated by the deployment of the so-called missile defense network in Europe, the American missile defense network," Naryshkin said at a meeting of the Council of Legislators Presidium.

The speaker urged Russian legislators to assess the fulfillment of international treaties in the trade, economic and security fields.

He said the assessment should be made as part of the annual Russian lawmaking report presented on the Day of Parliamentarianism on April 27.

"I would like to call your attention to the part of the report analyzing international agreements, both trade and economic [documents] and security treaties. Assessment of their implementation is extremely important now," Naryshkin said.

The State Duma speaker said he was expecting new outbreaks of tension between Russia and its opponents provoked by foreign forces and called for the dismissal of any accusations against Russia with legal instruments.

"I think we will witness more outbreaks of tensions artificially created by our opponents. We have seen the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, the Magnitsky Act, the internal Ukrainian crisis and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in the recent years - Washington will use anything to justify new illegal sanctions, please bear in mind that they are not extending the existent restrictions but are adding new ones," Naryshkin said.

"So, you and I have the task of demonstrating the invalidity of the foreign course towards confrontation in the light of law, on the basis of legal arguments," Naryshkin said.

He said that was why he attributed large significance to the section of the annual Russian lawmaking report dedicated to these issues.

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 #10
Christian Science Monitor
December 9, 2015
Kremlin's beef with Turkey hits Russians at home - and on holiday
The acrimony between Moscow and Ankara over the downing of a Russian bomber in Syria has cut Russians off from Turkish produce, and reduced their vacation options to boot.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent     

MOSCOW - Barely a month ago, most Russians saw in Turkey a friendly country, a welcoming tourist destination, and an alternative for high-quality consumer goods amid a sanctions-related embargo on EU imports.

At the Antalya Group of 20 summit, Vladimir Putin went out of his way to praise Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an "open and straightforward" person. He insisted that relations were booming and there were even signs of "rapprochement" between them over Syria, where they back rival warring parties.

But that all changed with Turkey's downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber late last month, resulting in the deaths of two Russian servicemen.

Recommended: How well do you understand the conflict in Syria? Take our quiz.
Moscow abruptly broke with Ankara, which accused the bomber of violating Turkish airspace. Mr. Putin turned to white-hot rhetoric, using his annual state-of-the-nation address to accuse Turkey's leaders of being terrorist collaborators, back-stabbers, and hypocrites who had probably lost their minds.

And now, some Russians are feeling political whiplash and deepening uncertainty over the sudden, acrimonious split with an erstwhile friendly nation.

"It's hard to believe, but everything that was painstakingly built up over 25 years, all the political understandings and economic ties, have been pretty much wrecked in just the past three weeks," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy journal. "It now looks like it was all just smoke."

Economic fallout

Putin pledged that the consequences for Turkey would transcend merely economic sanctions. But Russia did levy sweeping sanctions on imports of Turkish fruits, vegetables and clothing were slashed. Turkish businesspeople working in Russia, especially in the lucrative construction industry, were targeted by officials and in some cases expelled from the country. The cost to Turkey in lost exports and inbound tourist receipts may exceed $9 billion next year, a Turkish official said.

A year ago, Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom announced a grand plan to build a pipeline under the Black Sea to Turkey as a transit route to southern Europe. That project is now now on hold; news reports say that Gazprom would be forced to abandon steel pipes worth almost $2 billion if it isn't revived.

Experts say the growing antagonisms are being fed by the personalities of Putin and Mr. Erdogan, who both pose as strong, righteous leaders who do not back down from a fight.

"Political motivations are overwhelmingly winning over economic logic," says Mr. Lukyanov. "The costs won't matter, they will carry this through to the end."

Still, Russians have already given up their favorite European products, and the new ban on Turkish foods may result in at least temporary shortages of many common fruits and vegetables, Russia's Ministry of Economic Development has warned.

"It's going to be difficult to get around these new bans," says Irina Koziy, director of Russia's online FruitNews agency. "Fifty percent of all tomatoes sold in Russia are from Turkey, and about a third of citrus fruits."

"There have already been disruptions due to the counter-sanctions against Europe, and we were relying on Turkey to fill the gap. Price increases will be the inevitable consequence of all this."

Holidays interrupted

Almost 4 million Russians visit Turkey annually, mostly on cheap package tours to its sunny Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. But in the wake of the Su-24 incident, Russia has banned charter flights to Turkey, and as of this week virtually all Russian group tours have stopped. That will hit not only Turkish hoteliers and tour operators hard, but also the multitude of shopkeepers who profit from free-spending Russian visitors.

But, with the New Year holiday looming, it also leaves most middle-income Russians short of winter sunshine escapes. Flights to Egypt, another popular budget destination, were suspended in October following the terrorist bombing of a Russian airliner over Sinai.

"There are alternatives, such as Thailand and Vietnam, but they are much more expensive," says Elena Pechalova, a travel expert in the Moscow office of TMI Consultancy. About 40 percent of Russian package tourists had opted for Egypt in winter and Turkey in summer. Russian alternatives, such as Crimea and Sochi, are much more expensive and offer nothing close to the levels of service.

"I think this New Year people will probably prefer to stay home and save money," she says. "In the longer run, people will probably have to spend more money, and go further" to get that beach holiday.

The head of Russia's state tourism agency, Oleg Safonov, tried to make lemonade out of those bitter prospects by suggesting it would be patriotic to just stay home. "This stereotype, the need for the beach and the sea, was in large part imposed [upon Russia] in recent years," he said. "Our ancestors, even the most affluent, did not travel en masse to foreign seashores."

Mr. Safonov's remarks were somewhat blunted when anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny published the official's 2014 income declaration - which listed two villas on the tropical Seychelles Islands among his properties.

Beyond the shortage of oranges and lack of holiday options, Russia's split with Turkey means that another country has joined the ranks of Russia's antagonists abroad.

"The impact of this new quarrel with Turkey is going to be bad," says Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center. "The language of hostility is spreading, encompassing first the US and Europe and now Turkey. Peoples' minds are gradually being poisoned against the world, as we all crowd into 'fortress Russia' and embrace our isolation."

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 #11
Sputnik
December 10, 2015
In Syria the West Embraces Sectarianism
By Alexander Mercouris

One of the most troubling developments in the Syrian crisis is the West's embrace of religious sectarianism.

The argument goes as follows: in order to defeat the Islamic State the West has to overthrow Syria's President Assad because as an Alawite he is unacceptable to Syria's Sunni majority who supposedly prefer the Sunni Islamic State to him.

This argument has recently been taken further by John Bolton - the US's former ambassador to the UN - who is actually calling for the partition of Syria and Iraq on sectarian lines, with a "Sunni-stan" replacing the Islamic State/Daesh.

Bolton at least has the honesty to admit that this is in part a geopolitical play.  However is the premise behind the argument as couched by its more moderate advocates even true?

The one opinion poll carried out in Iraq and Syria suggests not.  

It found little difference in political attitudes between Sunnis and Shias.  It found that both Sunnis and Shias overwhelmingly want their countries to remain united.  

It shows strong support in Syria for President Assad and very slight support for the Islamic State - many of whose fighters come from abroad - in both Iraq and Syria.  

In Iraq only 5% of the population has a positive view of the Islamic State/Daesh.  

In Syria that rises to 21%, a figure that almost certainly overstates its support.  A better reflection of its actual support is its core support, which is just 7%.

This whole idea that the best way to fight the Sunni sectarianism of the Islamic State is by embracing Sunni sectarianism is very alarming. One wonders whether those who call for it really understand what they are calling for?

It is a repudiation of Western values. The West claims to stand for freedom, democracy and secularism. It mistakenly embraced the Arab Spring on that basis. Now it seems the West is prepared to embrace the opposite.

It tries to solve the problem of the Islamic State by creating something - a sectarian Sunni state - that looks almost as dangerous.

It grossly misrepresents the nature of the Syrian government, treating it as if it were a sectarian entity when it is in fact a secular one.

This constant harping on the fact that President Assad comes from an Alawite family ignores the fact the government he leads is not sectarian but Arab nationalist and secular.

President Assad is married to a Sunni, most of his ministers are Sunni, as are most officials and diplomats who serve his government.
 
So are most of the army's officers and most of its soldiers.  Claims that most of the Sunni officers and soldiers defected when the war began and that the army is now largely Alawite are unverified and almost certainly untrue.

It is not President Assad who is the violent religious sectarian. It is his opponents.

It is impossible to avoid the feeling that this latest argument - that President Assad has to be overthrown to persuade Syria's Sunni to fight the Islamic State - is not really an argument at all but a rationalisation to justify the Western obsession with overthrowing him.

Overthrowing the man who leads the government whose army is actually fighting the Islamic State hardly seems the best way to fight it.

Embracing Sunni sectarianism to defeat the Islamic State looks not only unworkable - it assumes Sunni sectarians are prepared to ally themselves with the West so the West can defeat other Sunni sectarians - but seems calculated to do the opposite of what the West says it wants by entrenching Sunni sectarianism and jihadism in Syria.

To such follies does the obsession with regime change lead.

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 #12
Harpers.com
December 4, 2015
Mountain Ambush
"Looking at the detailed Russian timeline of what happened," says defense analyst Pierre Sprey, "I'd say the evidence looks pretty strong that the Turks were setting up an ambush."
By Andrew Cockburn

On November 24, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber near the border of Turkey and Syria. In the immediate aftermath, officials from the two countries offered contradictory versions of what transpired: Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed that the plane was flying over Syrian territory when it was downed; Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan countered that it was inside Turkey's border and had been warned ten times to alter its course. Hours later, President Obama threw his support behind Erdogan. "Turkey," he said, "has a right to defend its territory and its airspace."

I asked Pierre Sprey, a longtime defense analyst and member of the team that developed the F-16, to examine what we know about the downing and determine what actually occurred that morning.

Q: The Russians have claimed the November 24 downing of their bomber was a deliberate pre-planned ambush by the Turks. Is there any merit in that argument?

Looking at the detailed Russian timeline of what happened-as well as the much less detailed Turkish radar maps-I'd say the evidence looks pretty strong that the Turks were setting up an ambush. They certainly weren't doing anything that would point to a routine air patrol along the border. Their actions in no way represented a routine, all day long type of patrol.

Q: How can we tell that?

Well, let's set up the situation and it'll be a little easier to understand. The Russian pilots were assigned a target very close to the Turkish border, about ten miles in from the Mediterranean coast and about five miles south of an important border crossing at a little place called Yayladagi. That's a border crossing that the Turks have used to slip jihadists into Syria, or to allow them to slip in. It's also a place where there's quite a bit of truck traffic, a fair amount of it probably oil tankers. It's the only crossing for many, many miles around. This is a pretty sparsely populated, well forested and hilly area occupied by Turkmen-Turkish speaking Syrian tribesmen who are sympathetic to al-Nusra and the Islamic State, who harbor Chechen terrorists and who we know have been supported by the Turks.

The target area the Russians were interested in was about five miles south, along the road leading to this crossing. That was the target area that they assigned to these two Su-24s on the day of the shoot-down. The crews were assigned the mission at about 9:15 in the morning, Moscow time. They took off about a half hour later, headed for an area about thirty miles inland from the Mediterranean coast-in other words well east of this target area-to loiter until they got further instructions on hitting a target in the target area. At this point they're just cruising and loitering at eighteen thousand, nineteen thousand feet, trying to conserve gas while they're waiting to be assigned a specific target.

The flight to their holding area was very short, because they were flying out of a Russian base south of Latakia. It was like a ten-minute flight. They were only about thirty miles away or so. After they reached their loiter area-at roughly a quarter to ten-they were well in view of Turkish radar coverage because they were up high and not far from the border, roughly sixteen miles south.

They got assigned their target, which was the road south of this important border crossing, and executed a first strike, each of them attacking separate targets at about a quarter after ten. They then made a U-turn, so to speak, to follow a racetrack pattern back toward where they had been loitering to get ready for a second attack. They in fact executed the second attack about seven or eight minutes later. One of the two Su-24s hit its target right at about ten twenty-four and was almost immediately shot down as he was pulling off the target.

Q: What about the Turkish air force, what were they doing meanwhile?

The Turks had launched two F-16s quite a bit earlier than the time we're talking about, from Diyarbakir, a major base for the Turkish Air Force about two hundred and fifty miles away, to loiter just in from the Mediterranean over a mountainous area that was about twenty-five miles north of this border crossing. Interestingly, they arrived in that area to loiter just about the time that the Russian pilots were being assigned their targets, and the F-16s loitered over that mountainous area for about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Here's the crucial thing. They were not loitering up at high altitude-say twenty to thirty thousand feet-to conserve fuel, which is where you would normally be loitering if you were simply doing a routine border patrol. They were loitering quite low, at about seven thousand five hundred to eight thousand feet, which, first of all, is below the coverage of the Syrian and Russian radars that were down around Latakia, and which is a very fuel-inefficient altitude to loiter. You suck up a lot of gas down at those low altitudes.

That tells you right away, if they hung out there for seventy-five minutes, they must've been tanked on the way in to that mission, because they were quite far from their home base-two hundred and fifty miles-so they must've topped up on fuel to have enough to even last for an hour and a quarter at this inefficient low altitude. The Turkish Air Force does have a number of American tankers that they own, so they certainly could've and almost beyond a shadow of a doubt did tank these F-16s before this whole engagement.

They're hanging out at low altitude over this mountainous area north of the border, and it's now about 10:15. The Russian fighters, the Su-24s, are just finishing their racetrack pattern after their first strike and are about to re-attack from this holding position well east of the target. At that point, the two F-16s break out of their loiter patterns to fly in a straight line south, quite certainly under Turkish ground control because they clearly are not hunting for the Su-24s and following a curved path, they're heading straight for an intercept point that apparently ground control has  provided them-a point that's very close to the target that the Su-24s have just bombed. That's clearly the point they're coming back to bomb again.

The F-16s arrive quite nicely and precisely timed to a missile-shooting position very near the border and three to four miles from the second Su-24-who has just finished bombing his second target-at about 10:24. One of the F-16s  locks onto him, launches a missile-an infrared missile according to the  Russians-and  immediately dives down to get back under the Syrian radar coverage.  The F-16 makes a hard diving right turn and is back down under eight thousand feet in no time at all and heading north away from the scene of the engagement. In that turn he actually is penetrating Syrian airspace before he heads north to go home to Diyarbakir, probably at that point out of fuel and hooking up with a tanker again in order to make it home.

Q: Would he have been in Syrian airspace when they fired the missile?

Not necessarily. It's hard to tell at this point. All this action is pretty close to the border, and there's no reason to believe either the Turks or the Russians about distances of half a mile or a mile north or south of the border, but there's no question that the Turkish F-16 penetrated Syrian airspace in executing his diving turn to get out of the area. He was heading due south to attack the east-west track of the Su-24 that had just finished bombing the target. That Su-24 augured in almost immediately, about a mile and a half south of the border.

The bone of contention here is not the target area. The target area is roughly four or five miles south of that famous border crossing we were just talking about. The bone of contention is a narrow finger of Turkish land about five miles long, sticking straight down into Syria, about a mile and a half at its widest at the northern end and tapering down to a half mile at the southern tip. That finger is a good six miles east of the target area. So when heading west on their way to attack their targets, the Su-24s necessarily had to pass very close to the southern tip of the finger. In other words, the whole controversy about whether this shoot-down was legitimate or not is whether the Su-24s on the way to the target happened to cross that finger for a few seconds.

Remember again the setup. You've got a target that's like ten miles in from the Mediterranean to the east. Another six miles or so east of there is this finger of land. It's well east of the target area. The loiter area that the Su-24s were coming from is another sixteen miles to the east of that. They're flying from their loiter area, which is well south of the border. They're flying past the finger, maybe they crossed it, maybe they were just below it, and heading for the target.

Q: But if the Russians were in Turkish airspace, as the Turks claim, wouldn't it be reasonable for the Turks to intercept them?

There's a little detail that's very telling. The alleged border-crossing took place on the first bombing run from the loiter area to the target, and according to the Turks the Russians were roughly half a mile north of the tip of the finger and so they were in Turkish airspace for about seventeen seconds-a tiny, short, brief time-on their way to hitting the first target. The Russians, of course, say they were south of the finger by about a mile. God knows who's right. I'm sure if we had access to the radar records we could tell very promptly who's lying and who's not, but nobody is going to give us access to the exact radar plot.

Here's the very interesting thing. This border-violating incursion was on the first run to the target at around 10:15. On the second run to the target the Russian planes were clearly further to the south. This is according to the plots and maps released in the Russian briefing, which are very, very detailed with exact time marks every minute. The seventeen-second crossing of the border alleged by the Turks happened at about 10:15, but the Turks waited. They didn't come in and attack the airplane that had crossed the border at that point. They simply sat and waited until the plane flew a long re-attack pattern and came back on a second run seven or eight minutes later, and that's when they attacked and shot him down.

Between the fuel-guzzling low altitude of the holding pattern of the F-16s, which miraculously coincided with the flight times of the Russian airplanes, and the fact that they didn't even chase the airplane immediately upon its alleged border incursion, all that smells very much like a pretty pre-planned operation. The Turks allowed the Russian plane to hit a target and make a long seven or eight minute re-attack pass and then came in from their hidden low altitude position. They came up a little higher to gain a good firing altitude, came whistling south, hit the Su-24, dove under the radar coverage at the same time that they entered Syrian airspace and headed north out of radar coverage to head back to Diyarbakir.

Such an ambush wouldn't have been hard to pull off, because the Russians, in their detailed account of this, state very clearly that they had coordinated with NATO, with the Americans, announcing this attack well in advance, and had followed the protocol of listening on the NATO-agreed frequency for any warnings or alerts from NATO or from the Turks. There was plenty of time for the Americans to inform the Turks that this mission was taking place. They might've even been informed by the Russians the day before it was going to take place. All the prerequisites for a setup were there.

Q: The Turks made a big deal about the ten warnings they said they issued to the Russian planes. What do we make of that?

Again, that's one of those things where it's hard to tell and hard to know which side to believe. The Russians in their briefing, in their detailed briefing, are very clear and very adamant that the F-16s themselves, the attacking F-16s never transmitted any warning. Nor are the Turks or the Americans claiming that the F-16s warned the Russian fighters. But of course the international protocols for defending against incursions of your airspace require the attacking fighters themselves to inform the target-visually or by radio-whether it's an airliner or a fighter or whatever, that they are now violating airspace and need to turn away.

The Turks do say they transmitted their warnings from a ground-control station. They also claim they transmitted those radio calls on both the civilian international emergency "guard" UHF-band frequency and on the military VHF-band frequency previously agreed to by NATO and the Russians. The Americans were quick to confirm that their monitoring equipment picked up the Turkish ground-station radio warning calls, but they've been careful not to say what frequency they heard. Now it so happens that Su-24s have no radios onboard for receiving UHF-frequency signals, a fact which is well known to American, NATO, and Turkish intelligence.

There's a lot of outs to this that could be the fault of either side. It's quite likely true that the Turks radioed warnings, but those warnings may have been deliberately transmitted only on the international civilian frequency so that the Su-24s would never hear them. Or it may be that the Su-24's military frequency radios were on the fritz, which is easy to believe given the well-known unreliability of Russian electronics.

I do believe that the F-16s never issued any warnings, because it would be astonishing if they did. Here they went to all the trouble of tanking up and flying at a very low altitude, stretching their fuel endurance just to stay out of radar coverage of the Russians and the Syrians, and then why would they suddenly announce that they were there by warning the fighters when they had so obviously set up a situation where they were hiding? The ground-control station in Turkey probably did issue warnings, but they may have been warnings that were intended not to be received.

Q: Would the United States have had radar coverage from its Airborne Warning and Control System or from their facilities at Incirlik? Would they be able to watch what was going on?

It's very likely that they had a good track on that area, probably just as good as the Turks had. The Turks of course have a fairly extensive border network of radars, and the Russians and the Syrians have well mapped those radars and know exactly where the coverage is, which is why the Russians can be so precise as to say that the Su-24s entered Turkish radar coverage at 9:52, because they know pretty exactly where that radar coverage is.

The Americans could very possibly have access to those radar results. I have no idea whether they had an AWACS in the air at the time, but if they did it would've been easy to cover that area, too. For sure the Americans had complete radio monitoring coverage of the area, certainly heard all the radio transmission involved.

Q: Now the Russians say that they activated air defense missiles, the famous S-400 I guess, to make sure this doesn't happen again. Does that indeed preclude the Turks interfering with the Russians carrying out strikes in that area?

The answer is no, but it's a hell of a threat. The longest range version of the S-400 is good for two hundred and fifty miles. The Russians are installing it at their base just south of Latakia, within fifty miles of the border. So conceivably they could shoot two hundred miles into Turkey. They may or may not be able to prevent a hidden Turkish fighter from firing at another Russian attack in the border area, but they certainly have the possibility of catching him or his friends on the way home.  This is a real sword poised over the heads of the Turks now that the Russians have the capability to shoot deep into Turkey and can do so any time they want.

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 #13
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
December 9, 2015
Playing the Kurdish card against Turkey
The long history of Russian ties with the Kurdish community in Syria, Iraq and Turkey might give Moscow leverage in its currently troubled relationship with Ankara. Will the Kremlin use it?
By Pietro Shakarian
Pietro Shakarian is an MA graduate student at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He earned his BA in History from John Carroll University in 2012 and his MLIS from Kent State University in 2013. He also serves as a member of the editorial board for the Gomidas Institute and is the author of the online publication Reconsidering Russia. In addition to Russia Direct, he has also written analyses on Russia and the former U.S.S.R. for The Nation and Hetq Online.

The downing of a Russian Sukhoi-24 plane by Turkey led to considerable tension in Russian-Turkish relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin called Ankara's actions a "stab in the back" by the "accomplices of terrorists." Russian protestors pelted the Turkish embassy in Moscow with eggs, tomatoes and stones. Moscow has since restricted tourism and visa-free travel to Turkey and has imposed economic sanctions on Ankara. The Russians also produced proof of Turkish involvement in the illicit oil trade with ISIS.  

For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shot back, accusing Moscow of slander and demanding an apology. In light of these recent developments, there has been speculation that Moscow might increase its support for the Kurds in Syria and Iraq and might even lend support to the Kurds in Turkey. To what extent is such a scenario possible and what might the implications be?

A brief history of the Russians and the Kurds

Any understanding of the Kurds is incomplete without an understanding of their diversity. Although united by common aspirations for basic civil rights and self-determination, the Kurds do not form a single monolithic bloc. 28 million strong, they straddle the mountainous frontier territories of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. They comprise various tribes and speak an array of different dialects and languages, including Kurmanji, Sorani, Pehlewani, Zazaki, and Gorani, although Kurmanji is the most widely spoken. There are also Muslim Kurds (both Sunni and Shia) as well as Yazidi Kurds.

The Russians and the Kurds have a long relationship that dates back centuries. In the 19th century, Kurdish tribes in the Ottoman Empire were used by the government against Russian troops in Russian-Turkish conflicts. They were also used by the Ottomans to persecute Christian minorities, especially the Armenians and Assyrians. Today, the Kurds, especially the Kurds in Turkey, have come to terms with this tragic past, and have been at the forefront of reconciliation efforts with Armenians and Assyrians.

"Those shaped by the Kurdish movement in Turkey have acknowledged the role of their ancestors in the genocide of Armenians and Assyrians," said Ara Sarafian, the director of the London-based Gomidas Institute, which promotes Armenian-Kurdish dialogue. "They have apologized for it with no qualifications and have done much to rehabilitate the name of Armenians and Assyrians, and to some extent what remains of their communities. In Diyarbakir, they have supported the renovation of the Sourp Giragos church and have compensated the church for the loss of its former properties with land outside of the city."

The Russian Empire had better relations with the Kurds within its own borders. These Kurds were primarily concentrated in Russian Transcaucasia and were both of the Muslim and Yazidi faith. A distinct religious community, the Yazidis were (and unfortunately still are) often wrongly accused of being "devil-worshippers," a label found to be totally erroneous by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

After the Sovietization of Transcaucasia, the Kurds of the region were accorded significant cultural and political rights as part of the Soviet korenizatsiya (indigenization) policy for nationalities. During the era of the Leninist New Economic Policy (NEP), Kurdish language, literature, and publishing were promoted, especially in Soviet Armenia and Georgia. This provided a marked contrast to the treatment of Kurds in neighboring countries, especially Turkey. The famed Soviet Armenian filmmaker, Amo Bek-Nazaryan, even directed a film about the Yazidi Kurds, Zare (1927), now regarded as a classic of early Caucasus cinema.

An autonomous Kurdistan District ("Red Kurdistan") was also created in Soviet Azerbaijan, in an area sandwiched between Soviet Armenia and the now-disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Unfortunately, with the rise of Stalin, this autonomous Red Kurdistan was abolished. Kurdish newspapers were abolished and many Soviet Kurds were deported from Transcaucasia to Soviet Central Asia in 1937 and 1944.

Stalin cynically manipulated the Kurdish issue for his own geopolitical purposes. During World War II, the Soviets and the British invaded Iran and deposed Reza Shah in order to secure Allied supply lines. The two Great Powers were concerned about the Shah's pro-Axis sympathies. For the duration of the war, the Soviets occupied the northern portion of the country and the British occupied the southern portion. After the war, the Soviets remained in occupation of Northern Iran. A pro-Soviet Kurdish Republic was established at Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan. Qazi Mohammad served as its President. Its commander was Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of the President of Iraqi Kurdistan Masoud Barzani, who had fled Iraq.

However, the experience of the nascent Mahabad Republic would prove short-lived. After securing important oil concessions, the Soviets withdrew support. Tehran swiftly moved to regain control of the region and executed the republic's leaders. For their part, Barzani and his associates fled north, across the Araks River, into the Soviet Union where they were granted asylum and hosted until their departure in 1958. After the death of Stalin, Barzani met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev who was reportedly impressed with the Kurdish leader. In turn, the Barzanis were grateful for Soviet assistance.

During the era of the Khrushchev Thaw, Soviet Kurds saw a significant, albeit limited, cultural revival. The Soviet Kurdish newspaper Riya Taze [New Path] reappeared and Kurdish cultural institutions were revived in Yerevan as well as in Tbilisi, Moscow, and Leningrad. Most importantly, Soviet Kurdish-language radio broadcasts began in Yerevan. These broadcasts could be picked up in Kurdish communities in neighboring countries such as Turkey where the Kurdish language was heavily repressed. Many Turkish Kurds believed that broadcasting in Kurdish was impossible until they heard the Soviet broadcasts. As such, these radio transmissions had a major impact on the ethnic self-awareness of the Kurds in the broader region.

The Soviet Kurdish broadcasts also had an impact on Kurdish ideological self-awareness. Messages of "Leninist internationalism" and "equality of peoples" found great appeal among the Kurdish communities, particularly in Turkey. "Socialism, or anti-imperialism," noted Sarafian, "was a ready ideology that addressed the class-based concerns of ordinary Kurds against conservative Kurdish aghas, or landowners, as well as against the Turkish state, a member of NATO, supported by Western powers."

Russia and the Kurds today

Today, Russia cooperates with the Kurds in its operations against ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups in Syria. ISIS is the main enemy of the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds. The Syrian Kurds have also both clashed and cooperated with the so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels and maintain an ambiguous relationship with the Assad government.

The Syrian Kurds have praised Russia's airstrikes in Syria. In turn, Russia, in particular President Putin, acknowledged the crucial role of the Kurds in the fight against ISIS. "The YPG [Syrian Kurdish forces] initially welcomed the Russian airstrikes," said Alexander Titov, lecturer in Modern European History at the Queen's University in Belfast. "They can hope for more support from the Russians if the current breakdown in Russia's relations with Turkey continues."

However, Titov noted, the Syrian Kurds' ambiguous relationship with Assad and their close cooperation with Washington "puts limits on possible cooperation with Russia and the YPG." At the same time, the Kurds could also potentially play a role in bringing Russia and the U.S. together in a common front against ISIS.

"The Kurds are acceptable allies against ISIS to both U.S. and Russia and this certainly gives them an advantage," said Titov. "The Turkish attitude is the complicating factor here; but, as far as U.S. and Russia are concerned, boosting the capacity of the Kurds to fight ISIS is certainly one of the few things Russia and U.S. can agree upon in Syria.

In light of the tension in Russian-Turkish relations, there have also been calls from some politicians and commentators in Russia to support the Turkish Kurds. For instance, Sergey Markov, a political analyst close to the Kremlin, expressed such a position in an interview with the radio station Echo of Moscow. However, actual support from the Kremlin to the Turkish Kurds is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

"There have been calls in Russia to actively use the Kurdish question as a pressure point and even revenge against Turkey," said Titov. "However, this would lead to a considerable escalation of the conflict with Turkey without any apparent gain. It will likely fan anti-Russian feelings instead of promoting a rapprochement, which Moscow and Ankara will ultimately want in the long term."

Additionally, there is also concern that Russian support for the Turkish Kurds may lead to Turkish support for the Crimean Tatars and the various Muslim nationalities of Russia's politically volatile North Caucasus. "We remember that the militants who operated in the North Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s found refuge and received moral and material assistance in Turkey," said Putin in his Address to the Federal Assembly. "We still find them there."

"Given these factors," said Titov. "I think it's reasonable to assume that the Kremlin won't play the Kurdish card unless there is a complete breakdown in relations with Turkey, from which we are very far and hopefully will never reach."

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 #14
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 10, 2015
2015: A mixed bag for Russia's Asian 'Pivot'
Ties with ASEAN and China grow, but relationship with Japan remains frosty.
AJAY KAMALAKARAN, RBTH

Russia's strategic and economic push towards Asia achieved mixed results in 2015, with Moscow strengthening ties with ASEAN countries and China, while its ties with Japan and Australia remained frosty.

"When it comes to Asia, the biggest strategic economic gains came to Russia from the ASEAN region," says Agosh Suharpanto, a foreign affairs analyst and former Indonesian diplomat based in Jakarta. "There was a free trade pact signed between the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Vietnam, and talks are on for a similar agreement with Thailand and Singapore as well."

Suharpanto adds that Russia may be looking at a wider free trade pact between the EAEU and ASEAN but that may not come to fruition as many ASEAN countries are joining the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership  (TPP).

Russia has also made a concerted effort to reach out to ASEAN countries politically. In November, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev became the first senior Russian leader to visit Cambodia in almost 30 years. The countries signed a host of agreements, including a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In April 2015, Medvedev visited Thailand and Vietnam to as part of a wider Asian outreach.

Although Russia's relationship with Malaysia was constrained over the former's refusal to allow a United Nations Security Council probe into the July 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17, Moscow and Putrajaya set up a set up a Joint Commission for Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation. "It's understood that Russia-Malaysia ties will continue to develop despite there not being common ground on MH-17," Shuarpanto says.

Wider Asian partnership

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a wider economic partnership between the EAEU, ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

"Together, our states make up nearly a third of the global economy in terms of purchasing power parity, Putin said during his annual state of the nation address on December 3. "Such a partnership could initially focus on protecting investments, streamlining procedures for the cross-border movement of goods, joint development of technical standards for next-generation technology products, and the mutual provision of access to markets for both services and capital."

Analysts say there is potential for such a partnership but there would be too many competing interests. "The elephant in the room is the United States," says Doris Tung, a political analyst based in Hong Kong. "Any partnership between these 3 groupings would be seen as an economic threat to the U.S., as well as Washington's own Asian initiatives."

Tung adds that many ASEAN countries, which have maritime territorial disputes with China and are afraid of Chinese economic domination, would be cautious about such a partnership.

Sino-Russian ties continue to grow

Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met four times in 2015, a year that witnessed a furry of political and defense engagement between the countries.

"China appreciates the fact that Russia has largely stayed neutral in the South China Sea maritime disputes," Tung says. "The focus of the China-Russia relationship has been on common strategies at multilateral forums such as BRICS, APEC and G20."

Moscow and Beijing are both eager to push for an alternate economic world order. The New Development Bank, which was started by the BRICS member, commenced operations this year, along with the

China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), where Russia is third largest shareholder.

Russia and China agreed to expand the SCO to include India and Pakistan as full members, a move where both countries had to compromise given Moscow's close ties with Delhi, and Beijing's strategic relationship with Islamabad.

Although bilateral trade between Russia and China fell by a third this year, it was more a reflection of the economic slowdown in both countries.

The countries continued stepped up defense ties in 2015.  In November, China agreed to buy 24 Sukhoi Su-35 aircraft from Russia for $2 billion. Beijing became the first foreign buyer of these multipurpose fighter jets.

Ties with Tokyo, Canberra remain frosty

Russia's ties with Japan and Australia, two of the biggest U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region continued to remain strained.  Both countries have extended sanctions against Russia for its alleged support to separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Toeing Washington's line, Canberra continues to blame Moscow for the shooting down of MH-17, although the anti-Russian public statements have reduced since Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister of Australia.

The biggest bone of contention between Russia and Japan remains the Southern Kuril Island territorial dispute, over which the countries still technically remain in a state of fighting World War 2.  Vladimir Putin's visit to Japan this year was indefinitely postponed over the lack of progress in settling the territorial dispute.

"The problem is that Japan and Russia have different interpretations of compromise on the dispute," says Yu Tanaka, a historian based in Sapporo, Japan. "No government in Japan would be able to survive the backlash if it accepted just two of the four islands that are claimed by Tokyo."

Tanaka adds that both countries are keen to develop economic ties despite the dispute. "Japan also sees Russia as a key to solving the North Korean problem," he adds. "Russia and China are countries that can bring the North Koreans back to the negotiating table and start the six party talks."

South Korea, whose economic ties are growing with Russia, has also requested Moscow's help in reviving the nuclear talks. South Korean President Park Geun-hye met Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris.

"I am asking for Russia's active role in making North Korea face reality and have a rethink on its nuclear problem in order to resume meaningful talks on (North Korea's) denuclearization," Park told Putin.

Analysts see Russia pushing ahead with its Asian 'Pivot' in 2016. "There is a realization from the Russian leadership that the center of economic power is shifting to Asia, and the process to move closer to the continent is irreversible," Suharpanto says. Tanaka adds that initiatives like the Vladivostok free port and specially designated 'Territories of Accelerated Development' in the Russian Far East will help Russia integrate its economy with emerging Asian powers.

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 #15
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
December 10, 2015
CHINA LOOMS LARGE ABOVE RUSSIAN-ASEAN PARTNERSHIP
China is a powerful factor constraining possible partnership between Russia and ASEAN.
Alexei Fenenko, Moscow State University School of World Politics

In last week's address to the Russian parliament, President Putin suggested that Russia, jointly with other members of the Eurasian Economic Union, should hold consultations with the member-states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and ASEAN with a view of potentially forming an economic partnership. "Such a partnership could initially focus on protecting investments, streamlining procedures for the cross-border movement of goods, joint development of technical standards for next-generation technology products, and the mutual provision of access to markets for both services and capital," Putin said.

Valdai club expert Alexei Fenenko, associate professor at the Moscow State University School of World Politics, believes that this proposal might signal the beginning of a course on diversification of Russia's ties with the East Asian states. "The president wanted to demonstrate that now, as the Trans-Pacific Partnership is taking shape, Russia has other options [in Asia] apart from China," he told Valdaiclub.com in an interview.

However, such a partnership would be hard to establish, Fenenko pointed out.

"ASEAN is a difficult partner, because all their decisions are taken by consensus. All the member-states work out a single decision and uphold it at the international level," Fenenko said. Moreover, ASEAN is very cautious in its dealings with Russia. "The bloc has cooled Russia's ardour twice. First, in 2005, when Russia was denied membership in the East Asian summit, and next, in 2011, when Russia was invited to become an EAS member together with the United States. Thus ASEAN demonstrated that no privileged partnership was envisaged for Moscow."

This is no accident, Fenenko said, as so far Russia and ASEAN have no real technical capabilities for large-scale partnership, primarily because Russia has no developed sea trade logistics infrastructure on its Pacific coast. "Russia is too remote from the ASEAN states and we have no large seaports except for Vladivostok and Nakhodka. Other ports, like Vanino, are yet to be developed," the scholar said.

At the same time, Russia needs alternative markets for buying goods after it imposed sanctions on imports from the EU and Turkey and in this sense partnership with ASEAN makes sense. Still, the fact that Russia has no powerful Pacific merchant fleet means that China will remain its principal trade partner in Asia in the near future, Fenenko added.

China is a powerful factor constraining possible partnership between Russia and ASEAN, Fenenko said. The 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship stipulates that Moscow and Beijing shall not enter "any alliance or be a party to any bloc nor shall they embark on any such action, including the conclusion of such treaty with a third country which compromises the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other contracting party". Due to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Beijing's relation with the ASEAN states are rather strained, Fenenko reminded.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Russia sees as a potential threat to its economic interests, provides an important context to President Putin's proposal, Fenenko said. "Russia is apprehensive about the TPP primarily because it has conflict potential vis-à-vis China. If the TPP causes confrontation between China and other East Asian states, Beijing can demand Russia to choose between China and ASEAN. Of course, Russia will prefer China, thus severing all cooperation opportunities with ASEAN."

In this context, Vietnam can become a bone of contention, Fenenko said. The US is working hard to widen the rift between China and Vietnam, which in the long term can be dangerous for Russia, which maintains close economic and political ties with both states, he explained.

Russia has actively developed economic and political ties with ASEAN over the past two decades. Although the share of the ASEAN states in Russia's overall foreign trade is not so prominent (2 to 3 per cent), the turnover grew in 2014 despite worsening economic conditions to constitute $21.5 bn against $19.9 in 2013. While mineral products (predominantly carbohydrates) dominate Russia's exports to the ASEAN countries, its imports from these states are centered on equipment and vehicles as well as food and agricultural stuff. At the same time, Russia views the ASEAN states as an important market for its power plant engineering, aerospace industry, oil and gas extraction industry. A number of high-profile deals on the sale of Russia's hi-tech production to these states have been struck in the recent years.

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 #16
Deutsche Welle
December 9, 2015
Activists or Kremlin agents - who protects Russian-speakers in the Baltics?
Moscow has been financing Russian-language NGOs in the Baltic states for years. Security authorities there are suspicious of the organizations, but the NGOs deny there is any cause for concern.

Gennadi Toprak is hoping to get some help from the Latvian Human Rights Committee so he can stay in his three-room apartment in the center of Riga. The 68-year-old said the apartment's owners want him to move out so they can sell the flat.

"I pay 100 to 120 euros a month ($108-$130). I don't have more than that," Gennadi said. His rent, however, is actually 800 euros a month.

Having amassed some 38,000 euros in debt, he said he hopes the right committee, a non-government organization, will be able to help him stay in the apartment that was denationalized in the 1990s and given back to relatives of those who owned it before the war.

Founded in 1992, the Latvian Human Rights Committee is one of more than 40 Russian-financed NGOs in the Baltic states. Between 2012 and 2014, the committee received more than 200,000 euro from the "fund for the support and protection of rights of compatriots living abroad," which was created by the Russian Foreign Ministry in 2012. According to figures from the Baltic investigative journalism group Re:Baltica, the fund has provided at least 1.5 million euros to NGOs in the Baltic states over the last three years.

Russian speaking people seeking help

The Latvian Human Rights Committee maintains a small office in downtown Riga. The doorbell is constantly buzzing.

"Russian pensioners come, but also tenants in houses that have been denationalized. Most are Russian speaking," said Natalia Jolinka, the NGO's chairperson. Every day, four lawyers and several translators help people prepare lawsuits, some destined for the European Court of Human Rights.

In Estonia, the Legal Information Center for Human Rights in Tallinn deals with the problems of Russian-speaking citizens. This NGO is also financed by Russia. Currently they are trying to fight a new rule that would require taxi drivers to prove Estonian language proficiency before they could receive a license.

"That would be difficult for a taxi driver in the Estonian city of Narva, where more than 95 percent of inhabitants are Russian speaking," said the center's director, Alexei Semjonov.

NGOs: Human rights are being abused

The NGOs make a point of focusing their conferences and publications on the discrimination of people who speak Russian. In Estonia and Latvia, non-citizen status exists. Following independence in both countries, such status was given to persons from the former Soviet Union who settled in either country after 1940, as well as their descendants. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote or work as public servants. The Russian speaking NGOs see an abuse of human rights in this status.

"Elections without the non-citizens are simply opinion polls," said Vladimirs Buzajevs of the Latvian Human Rights Committee.

Authorities have long had these NGOs in their sights. In its annual report, Latvian police stated that the Russia-backed organizations are tasked with the distribution of "biased and distorted information" on domestic procedures in Latvia. According to Estonian and Latvian authorities, the violation of the rights of Russian residents could serve as a justification for Russian aggression. In Lithuania, non-citizen status does not exist. Russian speaking NGOs there, concentrate on "fighting fascism."

National Socialism in the Baltics?

Baltic authorities said a revival of National Socialism is a myth cultivated by the NGOs, which accuse authorities of supporting fascism. A bone of contention is a march that takes place each year in Riga, honoring the memory of Latvian legionaries who served in the German Waffen-SS. The Latvian portion of the population sees the legionaries as freedom fighters against the Communist regime, Russian speaking residents see them as Nazi collaborators.

"I'm an anti-fascist - that is the position of all European counties," said Tatjana Zdanoka, founder of the Latvian Human Rights Committee.

The NGOs deny that their work is in any way controlled by Moscow, though several NGO activists appear regularly on Russian television. One of them is Alexander Gaponenko, from the Latvian Non-Citizens' Congress. Currently, proceedings are underway against him for incitement to ethnic hatred. On his Facebook page, he claimed that US tanks stationed in the country for joint military maneuvers were there to keep the Russian population in Latvia under control and to protect Nazi marches.

Experts: NGOs' limited influence

Gatis Pelnens, a Latvian expert on Russian foreign policy, called it ridiculous to talk of the revival of National Socialism in the Baltic states.

"There are neither ideological excesses nor a spread of National Socialist notions," Pelnens said, adding that Russians who regularly watch Russian TV often get the impression that their compatriots in the Baltics are being persecuted. "But in everyday life there are no such conflicts."

However, he added that state policies regarding Russian-speaking residents contribute to negative views of society. He also said he believes that it is a good that the NGOs provide Russian-speaking residents with legal assistance.

Experts also agreed that the influence of Russian-backed NGOs is limited, and that they pose no substantial threat.

"Today these organizations have to fight for their own survival," said Riina Kaljurand from the International Center for Defense and Security in Tallinn. "Therefore they tend to overdramatize events."

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 #17
The Daily Beast
December 9, 2015
Is Putin Thinking About Changing His Ways?
Those who want to curtail the pervasive corruption among the Kremlin's cronies have little faith in the opposition, and are hoping a few 'liberal' insiders can help.
By Anna Nemtsova

MOSCOW - In Ukraine, Joe Biden was flaming on. "I don't think the Russian people understand fully what Putin is doing," the U.S. vice president said on Tuesday. "That's why he spends so much time hiding at home the presence of troops here in your country."

Actually, more Russians than Biden might think understand only too well what their President Vladimir Putin is up to, but Ukraine is not the top of their list of concerns at the moment. Before Ukraine, during Ukraine, and most likely after Ukraine their biggest concern will be corruption inside Russia and, related to that, the fight for reforms.

The majority of Russians agree that Putin should take responsibility for the pervasive financial exploitation in the highest echelons of power. The basic message of last month's polls by the Levada Center: Putin wants to control everything, so he's responsible for the bad and the ugly as well as the good. Some 37 percent said he was liable for "the full extent" of the corruption problem, 43 percent blamed him to "a large extent," and only 3 percent thought Putin could not take responsibility.

Among other highlights of the polls by the Levada Center, an independent non-governmental social research organization: 75 percent of the Russians polled believe that it is time for Moscow to improve relations with Washington.

Now, Putin is no fool, and he's not deaf to public opinion, but he seems to think he can manipulate it while making few real changes. So there are no signs that the Kremlin is ready to prosecute or even fire top officials involved in high-level corruption. Indeed, standard operating procedure is still to accuse the accuser.

On Monday, prosecutors came to search the studio of Russia's only independent television channel, Rain TV. "They are looking for some extremist materials," one of Rain's reporters told The Daily Beast privately. More likely, they are looking for evidence used against the Kremlin.

Earlier this month independent film makers together with opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) showed an investigative documentary film on line exposing Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, his inner circle, and the involvement of his two sons Igor and Artem in dirty business schemes and dealings with murderous organized crime groups.

Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the film was not of much interest to the Kremlin. It's clear nobody in power seems inclined to follow up on the investigation. And as always there is the fear that the carapace of power, once broken, will let all the guts inside spill out.

"Today, Putin is the most un-free person in Russia," says pro-Kremlin political analyst Yuri Krupnov, explaining the prosecutor's actions and the search at the Rain TV studio. "Even if Putin wanted to fire Chaika, he could not because the entire system would fall to pieces. At this time of low oil prices, the Kremlin could not afford that. But in strategic terms, Putin would like to balance tough foreign policy with softer domestic politics."

OK. But who might change politics in Russia? The liberal opposition is out of the question. Even the most liberal Russians don't think the opposition has a prayer of winning the next elections. (Such was the opinion of 75 percent of the listeners of Radio Echo of Moscow.)

So any changes, if they're to come, would be from Russia's president and his circle.

Last week Putin addressed the country's key officials, the Federal Assembly, with his annual strategic speech.

Even the most liberal Russians don't think the opposition has a prayer of winning the next elections.
After a year that saw Russia at war on two fronts, in Urkaine and Syria, and the isolation of Russia at the UN, by the European Union, and the U.S., with economic sanctions, one could expect from Putin thunder and lightning targeting the West, but the Kremlin's boss surprised everybody, again.

In his speech, Putin shot a few furious words at Turkey, which shot down one of his warplanes on the Turkish-Syrian frontier: "If people think that after carrying out a cynical war crime, killing our people, they'll get away with a tomato ban [by Moscow against Turkish produce] or some limits in the construction sector, they're very wrong," he said.

Putin added that he knows who in Turkey was "letting terrorists prosper from selling oil." But other than that, on the domestic front, his tone was unusually soft-and unusually reformist.

Putin was calling to release business from state pressure, he promised to pay social benefits, and he even hinted at a reform of the law enforcement system.

"The most significant news is that Putin did not mention the West, even once," says Maria Lipman at George Washington University. Neither did he say a word about "the fifth-column, national traitors, not even Ukraine."

One of the very few Putin advisers from the so-called "liberal wing" around the Kremlin, Aleksei Kudrin, sounded pleased with what he called the "balanced" strategy for reform.

A few years ago, Kudrin quit the post of vice prime minister because of disagreements with the Kremlin, but he never stopped advising Putin. Indeed, if liberal reforms ever happen under this president, Russian history would give Kudrin credit.

Last summer Kudrin was the first senior voice from Putin's closest circle to announce: "The Russian economy is doomed."

The talk of the town in Moscow is that Kudrin might return to the Kremlin to lead a center of reforms, but so far those are just the rumors.

Under Vladimir Putin's rule, the Kremlin has been torn by disagreements between conservative politicians, who were often acting together with "Siloviki," former military or secret service officers, and more liberal officials, who sometimes saw their chance to step in and once again mention to Putin that things need to change.

As the time for Putin's address grew closer, the Russian liberal wing, including Kudrin; Elvira Nabiullina, a Tatar-born head of Russia's Central Bank; Herman Gref, the CEO of the largest Russian bank, Sberbank; and Mikhail Abyzov, Minister of Open Government Affairs, pulled all the strings they could to push the president for reforms.

They were called, inevitably, "The Gang of Four." They pushed hard to persuade Putin to curtail the power of the Siloviki and to clean up Russian law-enforcement, for starters.

After the speech, Kudrin complimented Putin for "admitting the importance of entrepreneurial freedom the and overpopulation of Siloviki."

"That was the first such significant effort," says Mikhail Zygar, editor in chief of Rain TV and author of the recently published book, All the Kremlin's Men.

Meanwhile, truck drivers angry with high-level corruption drove hundreds of miles to Moscow to protest kickbacks to Putin's cronies from an increase in tolls.

So, is Putin ready for real changes?

If the prosecutors showing up at Rain TV is any indication, no. Putin chose to ignore the evidence of corruption among the prosecutor general's office and the Investigations Committee who, the Rain film's authors claimed, were corrupt through and through. A few bureaucrats were arrested, but none at the highest levels.

Lipman is skeptical about the Kremlin's intentions. There are miles between Putin's words and his actions for reform, she said.

"Putin believes that things muddle through and do not tumble down," Lipman said. Putin likes to say the "situation is difficult but not critical."

The bottom line, Lipman told The Daily Beast: "No reforms are possible today, as they cause destabilization."

Even if the ideas of Putin's liberal crew penetrated his thinking, in reality Russia lives with an almost nonexistent electoral system, failing competitiveness, centralized political control, and a personalized regime constantly pushing the elite for total support.

That's what the Russian people know, but what they don't know at the end of the day is how to change it.

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 #18
Putin's 86 Percent Approval Rating is True but Doesn't Mean What Either His Supporters or Opponents Think, Volkov Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, December 9 - Many people now say that they do not believe the findings of pollsters that 86 percent of Russians approve of Vladimir Putin, Denis Volkov says; but in fact, the figure is correct - it has been replicated many times - although it does not mean what either the Kremlin leader's backers or his opponents think it means.

In an article in today's "Vedomosti," the Levada Center sociologist says that most people who hear this number do not put it in the context of the answers Russians give to a multitude of other questions about the authorities and thus "they make mistaken conclusions that Russians support any decisions of the authorities and are its enthusiastic supporters."

Moreover, "instead of examining the details and trying to make sense of the entire mass of contradictory data," they tend to dismiss the number as such and call into question "the honesty of sociologists, the adequacy of sociological methods in Russian conditions or the openness of respondents" (vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2015/12/09/620191-86-putina).

At the same time, Volkov continues, such people tend to assume that the 10 percent of the population "which doesn't support Putin and speaks against the annexation of Crimea are "automatically part of 'the democratic minority." That conclusion, the sociologist suggests, is equally ill-advised.

He begins his discussion of the issue by suggesting that while one cannot know in every case why Russians answer the way they do, there is compelling evidence that the level of those willing to respond has remained unchanged over the last 20 years and that most Russians do not focus enough on politics to make the kind of calculations that are routinely ascribed to them.

It is true that some people tell pollsters what they think those in power want to hear, but "such behavior is characteristic in the first instance for a narrow stratum of elites, for those who are well informed about what is going on and use primarily quality information from independent sources." Under Russian conditions, "this is not more than 10 percent" of the total.

"According to our research," Volkov says, "only a few percent of the population takes not of the persecution of the opposition and pressure on NGOs. Only five percent can say of themselves that they are well informed. The majority isn't interested in what is going on, doesn't focus on politics and does not have clear political preferences."

Those attitudes explain why popular support for Putin is so high. "Yes, a significant segment of Russians considers that open criticism of the authorities may create definite problems."  But it must be remembered that "on many questions, the majority simply does not have its own opinion."

The regime's control of media matters, of course, because most Russians get their news from three or four TV channels, but at least as important is that most Russians are conditioned to the idea that there is only one candidate for any job and that the opposition is not especially attractive.

And that in turn means, Volkov continues, that "approval [in Russia] is not an evaluation by the population of specific political decisions but a general acceptance of the course which the authorities are following." And that tends to hold even among those who live in major cities and have access to alternative sources of information.

Two years ago, Putin's rating was lower because of all the problems the country faced, but "the annexation of Crimea became a turning point which allowed the Kremlin to win the sympathy of even its most consistent critics and win the support of the majority" because many felt that this marked "the rebirth of the greatness of Russia lost after the disintegration of the USSR."

"Consciously exploiting the existing post-imperial complexes, the authorities obviously calculated that the annexation of Crimea would strengthen support for the regime. But the strength and prolongation of this effect most probably has turned out to be unexpected even for them," Volkov says.

The Levada Center has been surveying Russians about Putin every month since August 1999, and it asks each time more than just about the public's general attitude toward him.  As result, "we know that a little less than 60 percent of the population trusts him as a politician and that only about 55 percent are prepared to vote for him in presidential elections."

Russians are divided about many things and even about Crimea, but despite that, "almost 90 percent assert that it isn't necessary to return" the peninsula to Ukraine: 'what's done is done,' say people in focus groups."

"It is interesting," Volkov says, "that the 10 percent of those who oppose Putin and the annexation of Crimea are hardly 'the democratic minority,' but in fact are a quite varied company consisting in part of the audience of independent media, a small fraction of Muscovites and a significant segment of Russians form the least well off portions of the population."

Few of them are supporters of liberal parties whose total backing now is "no more than one or two percent."

Putin's approval ratings have varied over the last 15 years. At four points, it achieved a level of 84 to 89 percent: in 1999, 2003, 2007-2008, and 2014-2015. Each of these was at a time of military action and opposition to the United States. Thus, although Volkov does not put it this way, his high ratings at those times reflect a kind of "rallying around the flag."

Twice, Volkov points out, Putin's rating fell to 60 percent - in 2005 and 2011-2012, largely as a result of economic difficulties.  In each case, the fall was accompanied by "massive all-Russian protests, given that at those times "more than a third of the population" was dissatisfied with the authorities.

In a situation like this, "any incident can lead to a chain reaction and provoke an open expression of dissatisfaction," Volkov says. "However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the opposition in the eyes of the population doesn't look attractive. Today, the authorities appeal to the simple citizen" and present Putin as his or her best option.

The current economic crisis has not led to the decline in approval many expected, at least in part, Volkov suggests, because Putin was able to prevent panic by suggesting that the crisis would last no more than two years and that Russians need to be patient. Whether he will be able to maintain that if the crisis continues longer is very much an open question.

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#19
The New Yorker
December 9, 2015
Boris Yeltsin Quietly Challenges Putin
BY MASHA GESSEN

Russians have long been obsessed with privilege, and with motor vehicles as its symbol. So it stands to reason that the first three major exhibits in the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Centre, which opened in Yekaterinburg, in late November, are two passenger cars and an electric bus.

The first car, intended to entice visitors to the museum, which shares a newly constructed building with some shops and galleries, is a grand black Zil, the extraordinarily boxy Soviet superlimousine that Yeltsin used when he served as First Party Secretary-the equivalent of a mayor-here in Yekaterinburg (then called Sverdlovsk) in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. The second car, positioned at the entrance to the museum, is an even grander, bulletproof, custom-made, hand-assembled Zil that Yeltsin used when he was President, from 1991 to 1999.

Then, inside the museum is one of the buses that Yeltsin famously rode when serving as First Secretary in Moscow, between his terms as mayor and President. In a biographical video shown on a large screen at the front of the bus, Yeltsin's widow, Naina, says, "Boris Nikolaevich often rode the electric bus to work to get a feel for how laborer get to work." Except that laborers did not ride the bus that went down the city's-and the country's-most central, majestic avenue, from a building populated by Central Committee members to the mayor's office. In the highly fragmented society of the Soviet Union, the nomenklatura lived, worked, consumed, and vacationed at a great spiritual and physical distance from the laborers, who often lived in dormitories on the outskirts of town and worked in the city's so-called "industrial zones." Even their buses smelled different. The official term for this segregation was "labor-based distribution." In the nearly quarter century since the Soviet Union collapsed, the inequalities in Russian society have shifted but have not shrunk, so the obsession with privilege-and with cars-is understandable. In fact, it stands to reason that these motor-vehicle exhibits are among the very few possibly tone-deaf devices in a remarkable new museum.

The core exhibit's organizational principle is called "The Seven Days That Changed Russia," and it takes the visitor through a series of rooms that recall the earth-shattering events of the Russian nineteen-nineties. The reference to the Seven Days of Creation may be in questionable taste but it reflects one way in which Yeltsin, who died in 2007, is still perceived in Russia: he was larger than life and he presided over what seemed like a fundamental transformation of the country. Since he left office, on December 31, 1999, Russia has reverted to many of its old ways, making the transformation seem illusory at times. This museum, organized by Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana, and her husband, Valentin Yumashev, both of whom worked as Yeltsin's aides, is an attempt not only to salvage his legacy but to assert that the changes he wrought were permanent.

This does not appear to be a popular view in Russia today. In the current telling of the story, the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of our time," as Putin has put it. The nineteen-nineties were a nightmare of lawlessness and poverty, and only Putin was able, first, to restore order, and second, to begin returning Russia to its military and imperial glory. In the Yeltsin narrative, which the museum puts forward, Russia broke free from the Communist yoke in 1991, instituted much-needed economic and legal reforms, braved hardship and survived tragedies, and emerged both freer and stronger before the nineties were over. Yes, that would be before Putin: a giant three-dimensional graph placed toward the end of the core exhibit shows that, by 2000, the country's economy had recovered. Russia had also acquired a new constitution, which guaranteed unprecedented freedom. The next room features a lineup of ten men who were considered potential successors to Yeltsin. The curator is kind to his subject here: he does not blame Yeltsin for choosing Putin. But he makes the point that Putin was not inevitable.

The current President attended the museum's opening, on November 25th, and if he toured the core exhibit, he probably was not offended. The museum makes its points firmly but softly, and the really sharp corners are cut. In what is surely the most bizarre part of the museum, a history cartoon shown on a giant concave screen before the "Seven Days" commence doesn't mention Kievan Rus. Until a year ago, all Russians knew that before there was modern Russia, there was Kievan Rus, with the seat of the empire in Kiev, which lasted until the thirteenth century. But the war with Ukraine has altered history. The cartoon refers to Ancient Rus rather than Kievan Rus, and makes no mention of the Kiev princes. It walks the viewer through the history of Russia, building its narrative on czars who considered or even attempted reforms, and does not hit its next thorny issue until the nineteen-thirties. In Putin's historiography, Joseph Stalin was a great leader who may have overreached a few times. In the Yeltsin film, the period of Stalin's rule is an unremitting nightmare of violence and repression, but there is no Stalin. The cartoon shows Lenin and Khrushchev but not Stalin. His crimes are thus depersonalized. The subtext of the film, though, is that Putin gets to keep his lineage of strong Russian rulers, which goes directly from Peter the Great to Stalin to Putin, but Yeltsin is positioned in line with the reformers, who include Alexander the Second and Khrushchev, among others. Yeltsin's lineage is clearly longer and, the between-the-lines message is that it is the one that will persist.

The museum treats the collapse of the Soviet Union as the moment of Russia's glorious emergence rather than a catastrophe, but it stays away from vilifying the Evil Empire itself. It is also particularly inventive with the 1994-1997 war in Chechnya, which it completely segregates from the story. The gallery devoted to this war, which has been all but obliterated from Russian memory, is masterly: its creators succeed in presenting the views from both sides-literally, by providing photographs to be glimpsed through bullet holes. But it is installed in a long room that runs parallel to the corresponding part of the main exhibit. The visitor can choose to pass through the war or to pretend that it never happened.

The exhibit ends with a giant empty room. "This is our Liberty Hall," a guide told me. "You always feel liberated here." You might also feel lost or overwhelmed, which may be appropriate. The hall has five mirrored columns, each of which symbolizes one of the five new freedoms guaranteed by the Yeltsin constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. The mirrors make the place feel a bit like a deserted dance studio. Is this a space that Russia has failed to fill, or one that can still be inhabited?

The museum's very existence, and its scale-the place is the size of a city block, a Soviet one at that, and one that overlooks much of Yekaterinburg-suggest that it plans to be around for a long time. When Putinism ends, the empty room at the end of a story of Russia as seen by Yeltsin will still be there. It is a problematic story, but as a place to start, it would not be half bad.

 

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 #20
Heritage Foundation
www.heritage.org
December 9, 2015
U.S. Comprehensive Strategy Toward Russia
By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., Ted R. Bromund, Ph.D., Dean Cheng, Luke Coffey, Lisa Curtis, Helle C. Dale, Michaela Dodge, David Inserra, Bruce Klingner, Daniel Kochis, Ryan Olson, James Phillips, Ana Quintana, Bryan Riley, Brian Slattery and William T. Wilson, Ph.D.
[Full report here http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/12/us-comprehensive-strategy-toward-russia]

Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has not had a coherent, comprehensive strategy toward Russia. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrates, the U.S. has paid a price for this failure and, of course, many of Russia's neighbors have paid far higher prices. At the core of the U.S. failure has been an unwillingness to assess the nature of the Russian regime realistically and to base its policy on that assessment. Too often, the U.S. has relied on wishful thinking.

Comprehensive strategy is commonly held to be a serious and ongoing effort to relate the means and ends of national policy and-within the limits of the U.S. system-to mobilize all national assets to achieve those ends. Yet it also requires something more fundamental: a sense of where you are.

U.S. comprehensive strategy toward Russia must be part of an even larger strategy and cannot be an end in itself because-unlike during the Cold War-Russia is not the U.S.'s primary opponent, even though Russia has defined itself as a geopolitical adversary to the U.S. But precisely because part of Russia's strategy relies on returning to the Soviet approach of playing the spoiler, Russia is irresponsibly involved in many of the world's problems, hot spots, and crises.

Within the overarching need for a U.S. comprehensive strategy, Russia poses four distinct, but related problems for U.S. policy:

First, Putin's Russia is a regime that combines a lack of respect for political, civil, and economic rights with a dysfunctional economy.

Second and most dangerous for the United States, Russia poses a series of worldwide strategic and diplomatic challenges, including buildup of its nuclear arsenal and military.

Third, Russia poses threats to discrete U.S. friends, allies, and interests around the world.
Fourth, Russia's cooperation with bad actors and its increasing tendency to play a spoiler role pose another set of threats.

This report addresses all four problems in turn after setting out the comprehensive strategy on which the U.S. should base its response....

Conclusion

Vladimir Putin has managed a remarkable feat. He has successfully fooled two successive Presidents of the United States-who could not have had more different personalities and political beliefs-into believing that he was, or could become, a reliable, and possibly even a democratic, partner with the United States. In both cases, the U.S. ultimately became disillusioned, but reality did not dawn until well into each President's second term.

The United States cannot afford to be fooled a third time. Nor can it afford to approach Russia, and the problems it is creating, as though they are separate and unrelated. Naturally, no solution can address every problem. But at the heart of all these problems is a single one: the nature of the Russian regime. Clarity in U.S. comprehensive strategy toward Russia begins with understanding that Russia is not on a rocky road to democracy. It is an autocracy that justifies and sustains its hold on political power by force, fraud, and a thorough and strongly ideological assault on the West in general, and the U.S. in particular. The U.S. needs to approach Russia as Russia actually is, not as the U.S. wishes Russia might be.

In 1943, Winston Churchill, frustrated by years of Soviet complaints, perverted accusations of bad faith, and maltreatment, decided he had enough. As he put it, "Experience has taught me that it is not worth while arguing with Soviet people. One simply has to confront them with the new fact and await their reactions."[56]

That is the correct course for the U.S. to follow toward Russia today. The U.S. has nothing to gain from seeking to argue its case with Russia. It should speak the truth, calmly show the Putin regime that the U.S. does not regard it as a fit international partner, and make clear that Russian aggression and hostility will henceforward carry predictable rhetorical and actual costs for Russia. It should then await the Russian reaction, and respond accordingly.

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 #21
Russia Insider/Famiglia Christiana
www.russia-insider.com
December 9, 2015
It's a Good Thing Russia Always Lies
Luckily we know with an absolute certainty that Russians are always liars. If we didn't, we might have think about some really uncomfortable things
Fulvio Scaglione(Famiglia Cristiana)
http://www.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/per-fortuna-c-e-l-impero-del-male.aspx

Notably, this pro-Russian story recently appeared in Famiglia Christiana, a traditional Italian Catholic newspaper. This paper goes back to the 1930s!  No need to wonder whose side Pope Francis is on!
 
Translated from Italian by Svetlana Kyrzhaly and Rhod Mackenzie

Imagine how worried we would be if we thought the US really had helped Turkey help ISIS.  Luckily, we know the Russians always lie. And therefore, any information coming from Russia is a lie.

If this were not the case, we'd have to believe that Turkey, to which Ms. Mogherini (the Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and "Security" Policy) is allocating €3 billion to help it control borders and prevent the flow of Syrian refugees to Europe, is using its border with Syria to do business with the jihadists whose attacks are creating the Syrian refugees! With this wonderful system, Turkey milks one tragedy four ways: buying oil and antiquities from ISIS; selling it weapons and other equipment, allowing foreign mercenaries to cross the border, and finally, forcing Europe to pay millions to prevent the refugees from coming to us!

The Empire of Evil has provided photographs and testimonies. And people visiting Iraqi Kurdistan have seen hundreds of trucks going to Turkey every day, filled with "illicit" oil that Kurdistan could have sold via the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad, but chose to sell it on its own. (Hisham al-Brifkani, chairman of the Iraqi Energy Committee in Nineveh, stated that ISIS was smuggling as much as 10 thousand barrels per day into Turkey, while other experts refer to a potential of 250 thousand barrels per day.)

Fortunately, none of this matters because since it's being reported by the Empire of Evil, and thus can only be a lie. But how reassured should we be that Turkey and ISIS are friends? When Turkey shoots down a Russian plane, as if it had been attacked, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama says "Turkey has the right to protect its borders," yet when Russia shows pictures of the traffic at the border, Obama says "Turkey doesn't have anything to do with this."

If we didn't know that the Empire of Evil always lies, we might think Obama is lying. And that he supports the friends of terrorists. That Obama, who pretends to be fighting ISIS, in fact allows them to receive all kinds of military supplies, mainly from Turkey, but also from the Persian Gulf monarchies that continue to supply arms and money to the jihadists.

We might even think the Pentagon's satellites are defective. If a Russian plane explodes over Sinai, in a couple of hours they can tell you exactly what happened. But if very long columns of trucks cross the desert (as when armored vehicles and trucks with fighters criss crossed the desert towards Palmyra for hours), they don't see anything: a miracle of technology!

It's really lucky that we know the Empire of Evil always lies. And what a relief to know that NATO is there to keep it in check. A military alliance that says nothing about Turkey's machinations, the transit of weapons and foreign fighters into Syria, but can down planes to provoke military action by Ukraine or inviting Montenegro to join NATO....

If we didn't know that the Empire of Evil always lies, imagine how worried we'd have to be!

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 #22
AP
December 10, 2015
Russians Read Tolstoy's War and Peace in 60-Hour TV Marathon

MOSCOW - More than 1,300 Russians are reading Leo Tolstoy's notoriously lengthy novel "War and Peace" aloud in a 60-hour marathon on national television.

The public readings, pre-recorded at locations all over Russia, from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to remote Arctic islands, have been coordinated by Tolstoy's great-great-granddaughter and feature Russians from all walks of life, from gas workers to cosmonauts.

By Thursday morning, the readers had made it through two of the four volumes of the novel. The event runs over four days and finishes Friday.

The organizers invited French actress Fanny Ardant to read the numerous French-language passages in the novel, which describes both the Napoleonic wars and French-speaking high society in imperial St. Petersburg.

The readings are being webcast live and broadcast on national TV and radio, with nighttime intermissions.

On Thursday morning, three-minute passages from the novel were read aloud by a pop singer in Moscow, a jeweler in Nepal, an airline company owner in eastern Siberia, an actor in Chechnya and a baker in the Far East.

Among the upcoming highlights are the readings by Tolstoy's descendants at the family estate south of Moscow and a recorded message from cosmonaut Sergei Volkov who is currently at the International Space Station.

Tolstoy took six years to complete "War and Peace," which was rewritten 26 times. One of Tolstoy's most translated works, the novel is part of the Russian high school curriculum.

Online: http://voinaimir.com/#broadcast

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 #23
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 9, 2015
How much do we know about contemporary Russian writers?
As December 2015 sees another week of Russian literary events in New York City, RBTH asks Anglophone readers and publishers about their favorites and bestsellers among 21st-century Russian fiction.
PHOEBE TAPLIN, SPECIAL TO RBTH

When English-speaking readers talk about Russian novels, they generally mean Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Bulgakov and Pasternak. How many of us read works by 21st-century Russian writers? And, if not, what kinds of books are we missing? There is no shortage of serious literary fiction coming out of Russia, but the best-selling contemporary authors write, as they do in many languages, horror stories, fantasy and whodunits.

Supernatural thrillers and apocalyptic sci-fi

In Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series, supernatural beings do battle on Moscow's streets. Andrew Bromfield translated the first book into English in 2006 and it sold millions worldwide, winning an international following. A sixth book, already extensively pre-ordered, is due out next summer. Bromfield also translated Boris Akunin's successful cascade of effortlessly elegant whodunits, featuring diplomat-turned-detective Erast Fandorin. Part I, set in 19th-century Moscow, London and Petersburg, was published in English as The Winter Queen in 2003. Agnes Kindrachuk from Montreal recommends Akunin for "fun reading".

Dmitry Glukhovsky found an international audience with his Metro 2033, a post-apocalyptic underground adventure set in the disused tunnels of the Moscow metro. Published in English in 2011, it became a European cult bestseller, shifting nearly two million copies of the printed edition worldwide, with equally large numbers downloading the Russian digital edition. Ksenia Papazova of Glagoslav, a publishing house specializing in translated Russian books, told RBTH that their Dutch translations of Glukhovsky's fantasy and its sequel Metro 2034 were consistently among their top bestsellers: "He is very famous in Russia, and Dutch science-fiction fans find it very interesting as well." Metro 2035 came out this year in Russian and will be translated soon.

Poetic epics and literary dystopias

Glagoslav's current bestseller is far more surprising: Maria Rybakova's Gnedich (2015) is a novel-in-verse about a 19th-century poet, Nikolai Gnedich, who translated Homer's Iliad. Papazova believes that interest in contemporary Russian authors is generated by "the reputation of Russian classics", but knows there is little chance of attracting "the same number of readers as J.K. Rowling did." Numbers of readers globally are shrinking, she explains, and most Russian fiction is "serious ... not meant to entertain but to make the reader think and question themselves, and search for answers." Papazova sees an important role for publishers in helping this discerning readership discover contemporary masterpieces: "Tolstoy and Dostoevsky do not need any marketing," she says, "but new authors do!"

Allesandro Gallenzi of Alma Books also sees a contrast between the easy sales of famous names from the past and the challenge of introducing the unknown modern authors. He told RBTH: "Our Russian classics program is by far the most successful strand in our list. I believe there is a great appetite for Russian culture and literature among English readers - but the trouble, in my view, is that a lot of Russian contemporary novels are too self-referential and Russo-centric. This makes them difficult to export into other languages."

"We have published, successfully, many Russian titles, mostly from the 19th but also from the 20th century (Bulgakov, Bunin, Dovlatov)," Gallenzi explains. The only contemporary Russian books Alma has published so far are Dmitry Bykov's Living Souls and Alexander Terekhov's The Rat Catcher. "They both sold reasonably well," Gallenzi says, but sales were still a fraction of those generated by earlier classics. Terekhov's gruesome tale of two Muscovite rat catchers exterminating a provincial plague sold better than Bykov's grimly comic cycle of imaginary Russian civil wars. Gallenzi surmises: "I think The Rat Catcher was more accessible, and its sharp satire more appealing than Bykov's dystopian novel, which required a certain knowledge of Russian history and culture."

Vladimir Sorokin and Victor Pelevin have also written violent, literary dystopias with some appeal for international readers. Day of the Oprichnik (FSG, 2012) was well reviewed, but Amazon reviews suggest general readers sometimes struggled; Seamus Sweeney from Dublin found "the excess of this dystopian vision rapidly becomes repetitive," while J. Kevin White, a US-based Pelevin fan, describes it Sorokin's novella as a book with "almost no redeeming features". Pelevin's fiction, especially his late-20th-century classic Omon Ra, is more perennially popular.

Émigré writers and expanding markets

Some of the best-loved "Russian" authors actually write in other languages, like Francophone Andreï Makine, whose novels are often set in his native Russia. British reader Henrietta Challinor comments: "For me, Makine writes with the melancholic soul ... of the best Russian writers, but his language is rich with a lightness of touch more akin to the great French writers."

Gary Shteyngart, Keith Gessen and Boris Fishman, all writing in English, join a celebrated tradition of Russian-American fiction dating back at least to Vladimir Nabokov. Their texts are peppered with Russian literary allusions, like Fishman's antihero in A Replacement Life, Slava Gelman, whose nickname "Gogol" reinforces the novel's echoes of Dead Souls. Andrey Kurkov had an international hit with his novel Death and the Penguin when it appeared in George Bird's 2001 translation. Kurkov, who has published prolifically ever since, is a Ukranian author writing in Russian.

The dynamic, expanding Pushkin Press, which - despite the name - only started publishing Russian books relatively recently, has had successes with a couple of Soviet classics. Contemporary writers are represented so far by one adult novel and one children's book (Mikhail Elizarov's The Librarian and Anna Starobinets' Catlantis respectively), but there are plans for more. Gesche Ipsen of Pushkin Press told RBTH, "Try us again in a couple of years; hopefully we'll have more on board then."

Papazova sees a chance today to redress Russia's Soviet-era isolation by promoting authors abroad: "Nowadays we have an opportunity at last to fulfill this mission and to translate the books into English. Thus, the global readership has a chance to re-discover contemporary Russian literature."

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#24
Ukrainians disillusioned with national elite, hope for phantom lifeline from US
By Lyudmila Alexandrova

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. US manual control of Ukraine, of which US Vice-President Joe Biden's visit to Kiev was the latest confirmation, has drawn no protests either from the anti-Russian elite in Kiev or from the popular masses, analysts say. The people just do not believe their leaders will be able to do anything, so they keep hoping for assistance from outside.

Biden visited Kiev earlier this week - for a fifth time since he took office in 2009 and for a fourth time since the February 2014 government coup.

Ukraine remains within the range of the US leadership's close attention, Biden told a news conference following a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. "I have been in your country four times over the past two years, but we have probably spent over a thousand hours in telephone conversations, and I communicate more with the President than my wife does with me," Biden said.

His speech in the Ukrainian parliament was the focal event of the Kiev visit. Alongside customary verbal attacks against Russia and direct instructions as to what the Ukrainians should to in terms of amnesty, decentralization of power and the implementation of the Minsk Accords Biden paid much attention to the need for carrying out reform and the struggle against corruption, which he likened to cancer. "We saw oligarchs ousted from power only for them to return," Biden said.

The governor of the Odessa Region, Mikheil Saakashvili, made a sensational statement. He claimed that Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's entourage was defrauding the country of $5 billion a year.

In fact, nothing has changed. The old system is thriving, while the people these days live far worse lives than under the ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych. These and many other similar ideas were sounded in Kiev's center on Tuesday, where a crowd of several thousand gathered for a protest demonstration timed for Biden's visit. Among them were members of the party Freedom and organization calling itself Common Cause, employees of the National Academy of Sciences and trade union activists. They carried posters urging the United States to curb Ukrainian corruption and oust the Arseny Yatsenyuk government.

"The Ukrainian elite doesn't find US external administration annoying just a little bit," the deputy dean of the world economy and world politics department at the Higher School of Economics, Andrey Suzdaltsev, told TASS. "This is their geopolitical choice. It is highly welcome, because that's where the money comes from. One should also remember that the ideology of the current Ukrainian state since February 2014 is a harsh anti-Russian ideology. A return to normal relations with Russia is ruled out. They have no other choice. The whole Ukrainian elite is pro-Western, pro-American and pro-NATO. Nobody asks the ordinary people for their opinion. The political space has been configured to accommodate only those parties which share the core values of that state and its anti-Russian ideology. This explains why half of the electorate does not vote. They have nobody to vote for. The others may still have some illusions."

"None of the reforms the money was given for has been accomplished. Corruption is appalling," Suzdaltsev said. "Yatsenyuk's future is uncertain, because it is hard to do business with a prime minister whose rating is equal to naught. It is not accidental that Poroshenko's crony, Saakashvili, has cracked down on him with corruption charges."

The Americans have apparently decided to leave Yatsenyuk in place for the time being, says the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin. "He does not satisfy them by many parameters, but they like his fundamental quality - he is controllable," Zharikhin told TASS. "There is hardly any other Ukrainian politician who would agree to ruin one's own popularity rating and the rating of the political force he leads with such enthusiasm just for the sake of acting on US advice. He has set a record: over the past eighteen months the rating of Yatsenyuk's party has been down from 33% to 0.5%!"

"The Ukrainian people are so certain their own political elite is unable to pull the country out of the crisis that they are prepared to pin their hopes on the Americans or any witch doctor who may come their way," Zharikhin said. "It is not accidental Saakashvili's rating in Ukraine is one of the highest. It is not so much a sign of trust in Saakashvili, as a manifestation of distrust towards their own politicians. This explains why there is no sign of massive opposition to US external administration. The Americans are their last hope."

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