#2
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 21, 2015
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - the view from Russia
RBTH selects excerpts from Russian media reviews of the eagerly-awaited new Star Wars episode, which has already been called "the biggest film of the year."
OLEG KRASNOV, RBTH

Oleg Zintsov, Vedomosti

The successor to Darth Vader, even though he wears the same black armor and mask-helmet, acts like an adolescent. After receiving unsettling news he becomes hysterical and destroys the innocent accessory with his light saber- and again nothing happens. And when this hapless villain removes his helmet, exposing the beaky physiognomy and black curls of actor Adam Driver, you want to ask: But is anyone laughing? Is this lanky clown the new threat to galactic democracy?

Today's Star Wars has come out together with other successful space operas of recent years: Star Trek and Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, this is still a great brand. And thanks to Abrams it looks very dignified next to its competitors. It will do an excellent job of brightening up your weekend. But don't expect anything incredible.

Yelena Kravtsun, Kommersant

The fight between the forces of dark and light reminds me of a symphonic fresco - it is so epic and multi-layered. Also, have your handkerchiefs at the ready: You'll be crying more than once during the film. It has become more difficult with the simpleminded pathos inherent to the franchise's films. The protagonists are not that one-dimensional; some of them even have doubts and reflections.

Denis Ruzayev, Lenta.ru

In its glorious pedigree The Force Awakens finds an inspiration for an emotion that its predecessors lacked. It is the touching awareness and acceptance of its no longer youthful age, which inevitably creates the gray hairs in Han Solo (Harrison Ford), the rust covering the Millennium Falcon and Princess Leia's teary eyes. Try not to get sentimental and you probably won't be able to.

Nikolai Kornatsky, Izvestiya

The monstrous burden of responsibility before millions of fans has done its thing and shackled the imagination - there won't be anything unexpected. This is simply a copy of the saga's first episode A New Hope. The incredibly beautiful, large-scale but very conservative The Force Awakens follows the original trilogy step by step. At first this is enchanting, but it eventually becomes boring.

Anton Dolin, Afisha

Abrams is obviously a postmodern director. It's not clear if he's able to create his own world, but he can resurrect and reinterpret someone else's world like no other Hollywood author.

He's already done this with Star Trek and successfully interbred E.T. with Alien in his Super 8 (by the way, The Force Awakens also contains a powerful episode with Lovecraftian toothed monsters).

He works easily and elegantly with the aged actors, not attempting to have Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher act. And with Mark Hamill and Max von Sydow he's even cleverer (we won't say how, in order to avoid spoilers). Abrams uses them as wonderful ready-mades, similar to Chewbacca's hairy costume or S-3PO's shinny outfit.

But through their teary eyes sentimental fans will not notice the acting failures anyway. Oh, yes, fans will definitely cry. And this is not just some nostalgic effect - it is the merit of the director.

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#3
Washington Post
December 20, 2015
Editorial
For Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, a bond of power-hungriness, vulgarity and cynicism
 
FOR DONALD Trump, nothing merits respect more than high poll numbers, including his own, which the Republican presidential hopeful equates with strength, intelligence and success. In Mr. Trump's worldview, that simplistic formulation is reason alone to accord deference and esteem to Vladimir Putin - never mind that the Russian president is an autocrat whose popularity at home rests in no small measure on having silenced critics whose views, were they allowed a public airing, might put a crimp in his approval rating.

For his part, Mr. Putin, whose cynicism and snarling vulgarity are mirrored in Mr. Trump's own political oratory, sees in the U.S. mogul a man after his own heart. For the Russian president, who once recommended that a journalist get circumcised, Mr. Trump's suggestion that Fox News's Megyn Kelly was menstruating when she challenged him must have seemed a bon mot, if a little too subtle for the Russian's taste. Ditto Mr. Trump's indulgence and outright approval of his supporters' use of violence.

Their mutual admiration society got a public airing this week when the Russian leader confessed his admiration for Mr. Trump ("a very bright and talented man" and an "absolute leader in the presidential race") and Mr. Trump immediately returned the favor, saying he was "greatly honored" by Mr. Putin's praise.
 
So what if Mr. Putin has ordered the killing of journalists and the invasion of Crimea, Mr. Trump said Friday, in response to a question from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, on "Morning Joe." "He's running his country, and at least he's a leader," said Mr. Trump. "Unlike what we have in this country."

What the two men share, and recognize in each other, goes beyond strong polling numbers, an affinity for incendiary language and a contempt for those (with President Obama leading the list) they regard as weak. What really attracts them is a common worldview in which money talks and democratic norms are for suckers.

Much as Mr. Putin has muzzled free expression in the media, marginalized political opponents and scrapped contested elections, Mr. Trump has blithely endorsed shutting down parts of the Internet, praised President Franklin D. Roosevelt for interning Japanese Americans during World War II and openly contemplated registering Muslims in America.

Where Mr. Putin sees corruption as the norm, Mr. Trump similarly regards public service as a marketplace in which anyone and everyone can be bought. "I give to everybody," Mr. Trump told a New Hampshire audience in the summer. "They do whatever I want. It's true."

Granted, Mr. Trump, his rhetoric notwithstanding, is hardly in Mr. Putin's league as a vicious tyrant. Mr. Trump's critics are subjected only to the venom of his insults; Mr. Putin's have a way of ending up in prison, or shot to death in the street.

But believe the American tycoon when he says that Mr. Putin is a man with whom he would "get along," and who, "in terms of leadership, he's getting an 'A.'" The feeling is mutual, and revealing.

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 #4
Subject: Putin on Trump
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015
From: Steven Shabad <steve.shabad@verizon.net>

David, For the information of your non-Russian-speaking subscribers:

Western news outlets, including The New York Times and CNN, unfortunately mistranslated a word in Vladimir Putin's comments about Donald Trump. They erroneously quoted Putin as describing Trump as "bright," implying in English "smart" or "intelligent."

In fact, the Russian word Mr. Putin used, "yarky," means "bright" only when applied to colors and objects, not to human beings. When describing people, the word, according to a Russian dictionary, is defined as "Outstanding in some respect. // Making a strong impression in some way."

While difficult to translate precisely, the closest English equivalents to "yarky" in the context used by Mr. Putin would be "outstanding" or "impressive." It refers to a personality in general or some personal qualities, not to a person's intelligence.

Certainly Putin's comments were favorable any way you slice them, and I'll leave it to others to analyze his motives. (I happen to believe that, at least in part, Putin was pleased with Trump's characteristically glib assurance that he would get along with the Russian president.) But I thought it was important to correct this detail, especially for those interested in Russia.

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 #5
www.russia-insider.com
December 18, 2015
Spambot Western Media Has It Backward -- Putin Thinks Americans Want Trump
By Lisa Marie White
[Text with links here http://russia-insider.com/en/spambot-western-media-has-it-backward-putin-thinks-americans-want-trump/ri11902]

Unlike most commenters screeching about Putin's supposed endorsement of Donald Trump, I actually sat through VVP's entire three-hour press conference. I watched the whole thing, including Putin chatting about the grain harvest and parking fees in Moscow. You know, KGB gunslinger stuff.

Unable to keep their eyes open while Putin droned on about pensions and advocated English proficiency, central command in English-speaking media went to work finding something they could roll up into a sound-bite and throw at their low-information readers to see if it stuck. Fast forwarding and...Eureka! Putin just endorsed Donald Trump! Hurray, we have a winner!

Vladimir Vladimirovich, according to various translations, said Trump was "flamboyant" or "colorful" and "bright" or "talented." According to Western liberals, Republicans love Putin, everything he stands for, and vice versa. In their myopic little brains, Putin the invader and Trump the xenophobe are natural allies.

Americans on the right and left of the political spectrum lost their minds recently when Donald Trump said we shouldn't allow Muslims into the country. As reprehensible as that sentiment may be, the average American gives exactly zero craps that Obama has been carpet bombing regions where a lot of Muslims happen to live. But Donald Trump is the bad guy, and since VVP "endorsed" him, that just proves they're both vile monsters.

Putin also said in the same piece of the press conference that he would support whomever the Americans chose, but why focus on normalizing relations when you can throw a tantrum?

The press went to work smearing Putin's press conference. Remember when the New York Times didn't use the word "bromance" in its headlines?

So what really is the problem here? Besides the fact that there isn't one,  Putin said Trump is an absolute leader in the race. Is this somehow not true? Let's not gloss over the fact that the only reason Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican race is because American voters put him in that position.

Putin's comments are typical Putin. About an hour and thirty in (while the NYT interns were getting their chai lattes reupped at Starbucks), Putin was pointedly asked about the presidential race and he stated that he supported bettering relations with America, and he would engage with whichever candidate we chose. At this juncture, with Trump still leading the Republican race, perhaps Putin did the math and calculated that it wasn't unrealistic that Trump could actually become president. The statisticians at the Five Thirty-Eight blog question the predictive value of Trump's numbers, but even they admit to not having enough data points.

When questioned about Syria, VVP stated in the presser that it was immoral and against international law for an outside party to interfere in a country's internal affairs. Putin is not a fan of foreign entities interfering in Russian politics, so it would be hypocritical of Putin to pan our Republican frontrunner. N'est-ce pas?

Has Trump made a single politically incorrect comment that significantly lowered his polling numbers? No, no he has not. Putin's logical conclusion is that Trump's popularity reflects the will of the American people. Naturally, because Putin actually has some class, he complimented him. Big deal. Does Putin get to vote? Perhaps he's figured out that this isn't kindergarten and insulting a potential international partner isn't terribly conducive to said partnership.

Let's also address the fact that maybe Putin said something flattering about Trump because Trump is the only presidential candidate (and this includes Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) who hasn't been threatening his country. Trump, along with maybe Rand Paul, doesn't support worsening relations with Russia.

It's pretty apparent from the Republican debates that pretty much all the candidates from the clown car that is the GOP have completely jumped the rails. Same goes for the Dems. Hillary Clinton is a warmonger and Bernie Sanders has nothing new to offer on the foreign policy front. When it comes to our relations with Russia, Trump may be our only sane option.

What does the Western media want Putin to say, really? If he had condemned of Trump's comments about Muslims, it would have jumped all over him about "human rights." Putin has been on the West's fecal roster for years. There is literally nothing he could have said in answer to the questions he was asked that the Western press wouldn't have found fault with.  

Donald Trump is not Putin's responsibility. Americans brought him to the forefront of the race. If there is a segment of the population that doesn't want him in office, that's not Russia's problem. But if Americans are serious about Trump, the Russians are prepared to take him seriously, and let the chips fall where they may.

 #6
www.rt.com
December 21, 2015
'Putin killed reporters? Prove it!' - Trump to ABC show host

Donald Trump has fiercely defended Vladimir Putin when an ABC host cited "allegations" accusing the Russian president of killing reporters. Try to prove it, the Republican presidential hopeful said, reminding the media of the presumption of innocence.
The heated discussion took place on ABC's "This Week" show on Sunday when host George Stephanopoulos started asking the mogul about President Putin's policy.

Question after question - on Russia's alleged desire for world domination, relations with Iran, Ukraine - and finally, Stephanopoulos decided to play the Politkovskaya murder card.

"There are many allegations he was behind the killing of Anna Politkovskaya," Stephanopoulos said. Politkovskaya, a prominent investigative journalist and human rights activist, was killed on October 7, 2006.

He even quoted a tweet from Obama's Republican rival in 2012, Mitt Romney, who wrote: "Important distinction: thug Putin kills journalists and opponents; our presidents kill terrorists and enemy combatants."

"But, in all fairness to Putin, you're saying he killed people, I haven't seen that. I don't know that he has. Have you been able to prove that?" Trump said, sharply.

The US presidential candidate admitted that it would have been "despicable" if Putin were really implicated, but he hasn't seen "any evidence that he's killed anybody in terms of reporters."

"It's never been proven that he's killed anybody. So, you know, you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, at least in our country," Trump added.

The ABC host referred to numerous "allegations."

"I'm saying when you say a man has killed reporters, I'd like you to prove it," Trump argued. "And I'm saying it would be a terrible thing if it were true. But I have never seen any information or any proof that he killed reporters."

In fact, "our country does plenty of killing," Trump added, referring to the United States. When he was asked to clarify his phrase, he lashed out at another presidential candidate - Hilary Clinton.

"I think Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, made some horrible, horrible decisions, and thousands and thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Take a look at what we're doing in the Middle East. We went into Iraq, we shouldn't have."

Trump has never concealed that he approves Putin's policy, including Russian military operation in Syria. In October, he said that he likes that "Putin is bombing the hell out of ISIS."

Earlier in December, Putin praised Trump during his traditional end-of-year Q&A session with journalists for wanting deeper ties with Russia. Putin also described Trump as the "absolute frontrunner in the presidential race."

"He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that... He is the absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it," Putin said.

Trump quickly responded to Putin's comment, stating that it was a "great honor" to receive praise from a "highly respected" leader such as Putin.

"It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond," Trump said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

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 #7
Christian Science Monitor
December 17, 2015
In annual TV marathon, Putin offers Russians a fleeting moment of intimacy
President Vladimir Putin gave little away during Thursday's event, but his mastery of the virtual town-hall meeting was evident.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin sailed through his 11th annual marathon telethon Thursday, offering the usual panoramic view of his thinking and a few tidbits of real news, all within a relatively brief three hours and 10 minutes.

Featuring an audience of more than a thousand journalists and with questions sent via social media from around Russia, the event plays to Mr. Putin's personal strengths. It enables him to seemingly drop the barriers between himself and his far-flung public, and display his lucid command of the full spectrum of issues facing Russia. The effect is to reassure the public that he is in control and push back at critics who claim he lives in a Kremlin bubble.

"Putin's performance is impressive," says Nikolai Svanidze, a leading Russian TV personality. "We have this saying in Russia that there is a constant battle between the refrigerator and the TV," meaning the tension between actual living standards and the propaganda that viewers are fed. "Putin manages to keep TV winning that game."

Pulling that off this year was more critical than ever. Russia is in the second year of a deep economic slump; embroiled in Syria's civil war; engaged a nasty spat with its former partner Turkey; and threatened by terrorism for the first time in several years. Moreover, it continues to face a wall of Western sanctions over its intervention in Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea.

In an optimistic vein, Putin insisted today that Russia had passed the zenith of the economic crisis and returned to modest economic growth. As for the ongoing standoff with the West, he suggested that Russia and the US are moving toward agreement about the way forward in Syria, and that Russian military forces will pull out once a political solution has been found.

One key feature of these Putin telethons is that he does allow the hard questions to be posed, though his responses can be evasive. This year he was asked directly about specific recent reports of corruption in upper levels of the state (he'll look into it, went the reply), and the whereabouts of his two grown daughters (they live in Russia, he's very proud of them, but he protects their privacy).

Another question was on the involvement of Russian forces in Ukraine's civil war (some Russian personnel took part "in the military sphere," but no regular troops, he said.) Perhaps the most eye-catching for a US audience was Putin's comment on Donald Trump: he called him a "very talented" politician and the "absolute leader" in the US presidential race.

Asked about the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov earlier this year, Putin said the crime would definitely be solved and the killers punished. On striking truck drivers, whose protests over a new tax have paralyzed traffic in some Russian cities, Putin said that they have a point and the government will ease the amounts they have to pay.

And despite allegations to the contrary, he insisted that Russia fairly won the right to hold the 2018 soccer World Cup. He also defended the disgraced former head of the sport's governing body, Sepp Blatter, saying he deserves "a Nobel Prize" for all he did to promote the game.

All in all, experts say, Putin managed pretty well this year, despite being more squarely on the defensive than in past telethons.

"I don't think he was in his best form," says Gleb Pavlovsky, who was Putin's chief image-maker during his first two terms in the Kremlin, and is now one of his toughest critics. "He wasn't as focused as he used to be. Often he got away with saying 'we'll look into this, or think about that.' His answers were too predictable."

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 #8
www.rt.com
December 18, 2015
Putin wraps up 2015: Three hours of questions, 1,400 journalists & one star of the show
By Bryan MacDonald
Bryan MacDonald is a journalist. He began his career in journalism aged 15 in his home town of Carlow, Ireland, with the Nationalist & Leinster Times, while still a schoolboy. Later he studied journalism in Dublin and worked for the Weekender in Navan before joining the Irish Independent. Following a period in London, he joined Ireland On Sunday, later re-named the Irish Mail on Sunday. He was theater critic of the Daily Mail for a period and also worked in news, features and was a regular op-ed writer.

The 2015 installment of Vladimir Putin's now-traditional end-of-year Q&A lacked some of the sparkle of previous years. However, the Russian President captivated his audience for over three hours and addressed a host of serious issues.

Throughout human history, leaders have devised countless methods of communicating with those they lead. The ancient Romans boasted the Forum, a rectangular plaza which hosted elections and political speeches. Later, Popes used the Papal Bull to send orders to faraway places. Meanwhile, Victorian British administrators, with literacy rising sharply, used newspapers to interact with the public.

In Russia, distance has always made Moscow seem remote to residents of regional cities. While British or French politicians can move from town to town with relative ease, it's far harder for Russians. Moscow to Vladivostok is a 9,157 kilometer drive for anyone crazy enough to attempt it. By contrast, London to Inverness is a mere 914 kilometer spin and Paris-Nice a manageable 932 kilometers.

Thus, for hundreds of years, Russia's rulers were more concerned with keeping order in the vast country than engaging with the general public. The idea of Josef Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev or Tsar Nicholas II explaining their actions in Town Hall meetings or later utilizing live TV is completely laughable. Even in the 90's, advisors to Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first democratic President, never countenanced anything like it. The potential fall-out from Yeltsin, a bottle of vodka and millions of TV viewers is too appalling to countenance.

Hence, while West European countries are used to intense debates where leaders are grilled mercilessly, Russians are not. In fact, in the UK, via broadcasters like Jeremy Paxman and John Snow, political interviews have turned into a sort of blood sport. So, in Russia, the fact that Putin is willing to face more than three hours of annual questioning from various journalists is a major novelty.

The Putin show

Western media often likes to criticize Putin's Q&A as a "stage-managed publicity stunt." If it were so tightly controlled as they allege, why would questions be allowed about his family and alleged corruption among relatives of the Moscow elite? Also, does anybody seriously believe that Barack Obama, to name one Western leader, would survive three hours of unscripted questions without a teleprompter? Whatever you might think of him, there is no doubt that Putin's grasp of his brief is quite remarkable.

Putin's Q&A has elements of a carnival and pure showbiz. Over 1,400 media professionals from all over Russia and the world straining to get the President's attention. Some flatter him, like the regional reporter who complimented Putin on his physique. "The thing is, as a woman I can't help but compliment our president on the fact you are in such good sporty condition," she raved. "Thank you so much for this, because our young men take your example, it's true! And so many more young people now play sports," she added.

Others took a decidedly aggressive tone. Ekaterina Vinokurova from the Znak news website asked about allegations of corruption involving the sons of Chief Prosecutor Yuri Chaika. Another interrogated Putin on American media reports concerning his daughters. "I also read that my daughters were studying abroad. I'm proud of them. And they never left Russia. They got their education here. They are neither into business nor politics," he shot back.

His answer completely contradicted Western reports that his children had lived in and studied in Holland or Germany.

As usual, Putin seemed to revel in foreign policy questions, apparently trolling the West at times. When questioned about relations with Turkey following Ankara's shooting down of a Russian jet, he countered that perhaps the Turks "wanted to lick the Americans in one place." He then seemed to dare Turkey to try it again, now that Russia has sophisticated air defense systems in place. "Turkey used to violate Syrian airspace all the time," Putin said. "Let them try and fly there now," he implored, noting that Russia's S-400 can hit any target in Syria.

In a post-conference huddle, he praised Donald Trump, the US businessman turned Presidential candidate, "There is no doubt that he is a very bright and talented man," he claimed. "It is not our business to assess his merits; that is up to the US voters. But he is an absolute leader of the presidential race." Oddly, Trump is a kind of ideological bedfellow of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the clown prince of Russia's opposition.

Earlier, Putin suggested that embattled FIFA chief Sepp Blatter should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Foreign policy & domestic challenges

Since his lightening 2007 Munich speech, when he outlined diplomatic parameters he has steadfastly followed since, Putin has frequently used press events to harangue American aggression globally. This time he didn't. Instead, Putin praised John Kerry's efforts to bring peace to Syria. He also left the possibility of an alliance between Western powers and the Russian-led alternative coalition.

It was also notable that Ukraine was barely mentioned. That said, in response to a Ukrainian reporter's poser about Russian influence in the country, he did concede that: "We never said there were no people there solving certain questions, including in the military sphere."

When Mikhail Saakashvili, a long time Putin bête noire who led Georgia into a disastrous 2008 war with Russia, was mentioned, Putin couldn't resist poring scorn. Referring to the bizarre re-emergence of Saakashvili in Ukraine - he's a wanted criminal in his homeland - Putin said bluntly: "The US didn't give Saakashvili a working visa, so they sent him to Ukraine. It's a spit in the face of the Ukrainian people." Putin then suggested that Moscow may remove visa restrictions for Georgian nationals.

With low oil prices, and Western sanctions, causing difficulties in the Russian economy, Putin's main focus was to reassure Russians that his government was fully in control of the situation. He told Russians that living standards were not in danger and that the economy was now bouncing back. He also referred to successes, such as the dramatic increase in life expectancy, now averaging 71, compared to 65 when Yeltsin stepped down.

Putin also revealed that Russia's Syria campaign wasn't a drain on public finances. He pointed out that expenses were being met from the military training budget. Indeed, a frequent complaint in Moscow is that, compared to NATO forces that have been battle-hardened by, often illegal, wars in recent decades, the Russian army lacks "match practice.""It's hard to imagine a better training drill," Putin related.

For years, the annual Putin Q&A has been a pre-New Year highlight, filled with drama. For instance, two years ago he pardoned the notorious criminal Mikhail Khodorkovsky at the gathering. However, this year was a damp squib by comparison. The reason is quite simple. Because of Syria, ISIS and the dramatic events of recent months, we've had Putin overkill. The Russian President will be hoping that 2016 is calmer.

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 #9
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
December 21, 2015
Putin's Press Conference Reveals Him as an Authoritarian Democratic Socialist
Is the West missing the forest of effective government by obsessing about the tree of democracy?
By Deena Stryker
 
The author is an independent political analyst whose work in French 'Une autre Europe un autre Monde' foresaw the reunification of Europe and the possibility of the Soviet Union''s dissolution. Her blogs since 2006 are at www.otherjonesii.blogspot.com, where her other books are listed, and she is a senior editor at Opednews.com.

She wrote this article specially for RI.

Obama's inability to outline a credible policy vis a vis ISIS, combined with a growing fear among thoughtful Americans that we could end up with a Barnum and Bailey Hitler as president illustrate the limits of democracy in the 21st century.

One man one vote has become a sham as governments answer to the hand-picked representatives of their most powerful backers. Though excoriated in the 'civilized world', authoritarian leaders who are informed, intelligent and caring of their people, can be more effective than those who must do the bidding of the 1% or pay the ultimate price.

In a world so complex that leaders almost have to be polymaths to understand the problems they face, Vladimir Putin is able to provide detailed responses to a broad range of questions, while Obama, knowing decisions are taken elsewhere, speaks in general terms.

The American press was only interested in the fact that the Russian President's end of the year press conference this week lasted three and a half hours. Unreported, here is how the leader we accuse of responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine described the implementation of the Minsk Agreement by that country's government:

"Has the Rada passed this law? Yes, it has. Under the Minsk Agreements, it should be "implemented within 30 days by having the Rada adopt a resolution to this effect". Have they adopted the resolution? Yes. But how? They added an article, I think number 10, which stipulates that it can only be implemented after elections, which means more delays. I told them, "Listen, it says here that the law must be implemented." "No, it does not. It says: the Rada must pass a resolution. We have done it. That's it."

Most Americans ignore foreign affairs until troops are being dispatched, but they are very much aware of their government's reluctance to play a meaningful role in their survival, let alone their well-being, as its peculiar version of national security trumps all other concerns.  

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was led to embrace American-style capitalism, however Vladimir Putin did not throw the socialist baby out with the communist bathwater. While a strong leader is invariably labelled 'authoritarian', the Russian President calls his government a 'managed democracy'. I would call it 'managed social democracy', since the Russian government clearly considers it has a responsibility for its citizens' well-being. Try imagining Barack Obama saying things like this:

"The Russian population is growing, and 6.5 million Russian families have received maternity capital since the program was introduced. Life expectancy at the end of this year will exceed 71 years, and in most regions 97% of children have access to preschool. In 2914 we adjusted pensions to inflation with an 11.4% increase. plus  10.3 percent this year."
In response to a regional survey about pensioners being forced to choose between rent and food:

"Your question is a priority for millions. The Government adjusted retirement pensions for inflation last year." While utility rates were increased, families who pay more than 22 percent of income for utilities can get subsidies. "There is no doubt that this issue deserves the most careful attention. It will be a priority for the Government and the regional authorities."

There were no health care questions, as the President had addressed these during his end of the year address to the nation. Here is an excerpt that Americans will find particularly relevant:

" Insurance companies must uphold patients' rights, and not refuse free medical care without a reason. If an insurance company does not do this, it should be banned from the compulsory medical insurance system. I ask the Government to ensure stringent oversight in this regard."

Noting that for the first time in Russia's history, many high tech surgeries are carried out without a waiting list, but that financing is often a problem in public hospitals, he called for a special federal contribution through legislation to be adopted during the spring session, adding:

"But people must not suffer while we make these decisions. We must ensure direct support from the federal budget until this decision is taken."

Imagine how different life would be in the US, if our President could utter such words!

The reader will object: But this is not democracy!  It is not early twentieth century representative democracy, but we no longer live in that world.  Today, only local government is small enough to be responsive to citizen input, whether direct or through representation.

When it comes to saving the planet from a climate meltdown, or from World War III, decisions must be hammered out at the highest level between national leaders who not only care about their citizens daily lives, but are able to knock the heads of big energy and big weapons together when they get home.

Although shamefully under-reported, Vladimir Putin's governing style has impressed many Americans.  The danger is that they could end up with a Barnum and Bailey Hitler.

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 #10
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
December 18, 2015
Putin's press conference: A modest rapprochement with the West?
During his year-end press conference, Russian Presdient Vladimir Putin appeared to soften the Russian rhetoric about Syria and Ukraine, and even suggested that some sort of reconciliation might be possible with the people of Turkey, Georgia and Ukraine.
By Dmitry Polikanov
Dmitry Polikanov is Vice President of The PIR-Center and Chairman of Trialogue International Club. Author of more than 100 publications on conflict management, peacekeeping, arms control, international relations and foreign policy. Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the International Sociological Association, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center Research Council.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's year-end press conference is always one of the most anticipated events of the year. This time it was a good chance to elaborate more on the topics mentioned in his recent presidential address to the Federal Assembly and to explain once again Russia's position on the key international issues in a much less formal way. Putin did not make any surprises, but conveyed in a clear manner some fundamental foreign policy issues for Moscow.

There are a few things to note about the event. First of all, Putin made a clear distinction between countries and their leaders. It seemed that he was deliberately avoiding any impersonalization of relations. Obviously, Russia has been known for putting great emphasis on good ties between the heads of states as a foreign policy tool - this has been a marked feature of Putin's presidency. Now the message was different - we are ready for cooperation with the people of Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, even though they unfortunately have unfriendly governments.

There may be several reasons for that. One of the explanations would be the disillusion about the role of leaders and their decision-making capacity in countries outside Russia - they come and go and have limited ability for domestic and, hence, foreign policy maneuvering. Unlike the establishment or the institutions, the politicians are much more restrained. Another factor would be the disappointment and spoiled relations with former partners, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Finally, it seems to be a positive sign for public diplomacy - Putin tried to emphasize that business or humanitarian ties can and should develop, despite the lack of political will of the regimes. There is no need to exert pressure on Turkish companies and students in Russia.

There is a possibility of resuming tourist flows to Egypt if the country agrees to cooperate more on security. There is a chance of lifting the visa regime with Georgia. And even Ukraine as "brother nation"  will get the status of most favored nation in mutual trade, and commerce will not be blocked.

Another important result of the conference is the proof that Russia is out of isolation. The number of foreign media present, as well as their genuine interest in the views of the Russian president, indicate that Moscow in the last few months has succeeded in overcoming the Western policy of marginalizing it. The fact that a significant part of the three-hour interview was devoted to global matters is also indicative.

The rhetoric of Putin demonstrates that Moscow would like to position itself as an open country, ready for reasonable partnerships and compromises on most of the issues. The arguments with respect to the EU trade association with Ukraine, or the situation in Syria were rational, not emotional.

Moreover, they emphasize the consistency of the Russian position - from permanent denial of forced change of regimes to normal economic reasoning with respect to relations with Ukraine. Another trait of discourse is Russia's appeal to justice - Moscow allegedly does not claim any privileges, but rather focuses on equal terms and fair interpretations of the accords, e.g. the Minsk agreements.

Finally, the tone with respect to the United States has become more moderate. There were no accusations, Washington was not condemned for supporting "improper" forces in the Middle East, there was no conspiracy thinking pertaining to the behavior of Turkey or oil smuggling from Syria and Iraq. Besides, the Russian President even stressed that Moscow is willing to work with anyone who will be in power in the U.S. after the elections.

It seems that the two parties are actively seeking political compromise on conflict resolution in Syria and have progressed in this area. At least, Putin openly expressed his support to the U.S. draft of the UN resolution and noted the key steps to a settlement -  a constitution, internationally recognized monitoring of elections and then power change, if necessary. Russia is allegedly even ready for not stationing a permanent base in Latakia and will limit it support to the period of the offensive of the Syrian army and its allies from the moderate opposition.

Thus, Putin's press conference highlighted key foreign policy issues for Russia for 2016 and marked the trend for modest rapprochement on tactical issues between Moscow and the West.

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#11
The New Yorker
December 20, 2015
Putin's Shaky Tsardom
BY MASHA LIPMAN

Almost fourteen hundred reporters gathered in the Kremlin on Wednesday for Vladimir Putin's annual press conference. The most anxious ones held signs with the name of their region, their outlet, or the topic of their question. Each time a lucky one was picked, the signs went down, only to rise again, as soon as the President finished his answer. During the three-hour event, about four dozen journalists had a chance to speak. A few were more daring than usual this year, but Putin's answers, as on previous occasions, demonstrated his trademark confidence in unaccountability.

Putin mentioned the widely acknowledged economic problems: the dramatic drop in the price of oil, the 3.7 per cent fall of the gross domestic product, the 12.3 per cent inflation, the decrease in incomes. Then he drowned the audience in economic statistics that have little bearing on people's lives, but sounded upbeat, unlike the grim economic forecasts that one hears these days from Cabinet members as well as independent analysts, Russian and foreign. They predict a prolonged crisis ahead, but Putin announced that "the peak of the crisis is past us." He mentioned that the Russian budget is based on the projected price of fifty dollars per barrel of oil, while the real price had dropped below forty. "We will probably have to correct something," he said, without specifying what that "something" might be. Last month, the Russian finance minister said that tax increases are inevitable, and cuts to social expenditures have already begun.

Putin dismissed the cost of the Russian military campaign in Syria, which "does not involve any serious strain on the budget," he said, adding that the funds "earmarked for military training and exercises" were "retargeted" to the operation in Syria. "Something needs to be thrown in," he said, again without bothering to explain what that "something" would be. With stunning cynicism, he described the Russian airstrikes in Syria as a perfect substitute for military exercises. "It is difficult to think of a better training exercise," he said. "We can keep training for quite a long time there without unduly denting our budget." The human cost in Syria (and among Russians taking part in the military operation) was not even raised. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that up to nine Russian military contractors were killed in Syria in October.

The intrepid anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny recently released a film that makes serious allegations against Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. The film shows a newly built five-star hotel in Greece, which is co-owned by Chaika's son and Chaika's deputy's ex-wife. The same woman is alleged to have close business connections with wives of convicted criminals (members of a violent gang that for years engaged in murder and rape), while Chaika's son is said to be involved in the predatory takeover of a large business venture in Siberia. The film, which is based on legal documents, was posted online earlier this month and has been watched by more than 3.8 million people. When asked about Navalny's allegations, Putin referred to them as "problems of secondary importance" that "can happen anywhere." "We have to understand: Did the Prosecutor General's children commit an offense or not? Does anything point to a conflict of interest in the Prosecutor General's work?" he asked. "All the information should be carefully reviewed." (Chaika said the allegations are completely unfounded and claimed that the film was commissioned by William Browder, the founder of Hermitage Capital and a Putin critic, and "the security services behind him." Browder said he had nothing to do with the film. Putin's spokesman has said that the allegations "did not provoke our interest" because they were related to Chaika's sons, not Chaika himself. )

Putin gave a fuzzy answer about a Russian governor's alleged involvement in the severe beating of the journalist Oleg Kashin. He gave another shockingly cynical response to a question about the investigation of the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent political figure who was shot, in February, near the Kremlin. Before making the routine but at least morally appropriate remark "this is a crime that has to be investigated, and the culprits punished," Putin said, "I never spoiled relations with him, but he chose this path of political fighting-personal attacks and the like. That said, I'm used to this. He wasn't alone." Incredibly, Putin added, "This doesn't mean at all that the man should be killed."

Putin sounded bellicose with regard to Turkey, which last month downed a Russian jet. He repeated the comment he made at the time, that the action was a "stab in the back," and emphasized that he knew nothing about "the so-called Turkomans," Syrian Turks who live in the region where the jet was downed. He said the Turks should have "picked up the phone" and asked the Russian military "not to hit certain areas."

In fact, in late November, the Turkish foreign ministry summoned Russia's ambassador to protest the "intensive" bombing of Turkmen villages in northern Syria by Russian warplanes. "It was stressed that the Russian side's actions were not a fight against terror, but they bombed civilian Turkmen villages and this could lead to serious consequences," a statement from the Turkish foreign ministry said at the time.

Putin did not seem to care about this or other inconsistencies. They may be discussed in the independent media or online, but the ever-loyal television channels would never report on them before Putin's popular majority.

Still, one is struck not just by the inconsistencies in Putin's speech but by what look like increasing irregularities in his management. Nemtsov was killed and nobody even understood the purpose of the crime, and internecine feuds among the elites have increasingly come into public view. The feared Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov reportedly is in conflict with the Federal Security Service; the "Chechen leadership and its security bodies" are said to have sabotaged the investigation of Nemtsov's killing. Several governors have been arrested in the past few months, and political analysts expect more arrests of regional leaders. A police general who was prosecuted after falling out with state security officials jumped (or was thrown) out of a jail window. All of this is occurring alongside a dangerous deterioration of the economy.

Putin has been repeatedly referred to as Russia's "tsar." (A new biography by Steven Lee Myers is titled "The New Tsar.") His power is unchallenged and unchecked. Everyone recognizes his superior authority, and everyone pledges allegiance. But whether he's preoccupied with wars and geopolitics or just bored or distracted, the political environment in Russia is growing more chaotic. Putin may be the Russian tsar, but it is less clear to what extent he is in control.

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 #12
Interfax
December 20, 2015
Russian calls not to impose values on others ignored by West - Putin

Moscow, 20 December: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he has always warned Western partners against "automatically, mechanically" spreading their ideas about democracy to other countries and nations.

"I have spoken to many leaders, both European and American, over many years. And when it came to various operations, in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or later in Libya, my position always was that they should tread carefully and should not apply their own schemes and notions of good and evil, in this case about good, about democracy, automatically, simply mechanically, to other countries and nations with a different culture, religion and traditions," the president said in an interview on the TV channel Rossiya 1 (VGTRK) documentary "World Order".

Nobody, however, heeded these appeals, Putin said.

"Why? Because, apparently, they consider themselves to be infallible, to be great, yet there is zero responsibility," Putin said.

The head of state recalled the Yalta Conference, which fixed the balance of forces in 1945. Back then, the victor nations, Putin recalled, built a system "consistent with the alignment of political forces".

"Since then, much has changed, there are now nuclear weapons, which is a significant factor in world affairs, it has spread to several other countries, global giants have grown up, such as India, China, and the Soviet Union left the political stage. And so the bipolar system went pop," Putin said.

"That is, our partners ought to have thought about how to take advantage of this situation and become moral leaders in the world affairs the way they are shaping up. But they continued to act and think the old way, and the Cold War cliches remained in their heads," Putin added.

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 #13
Recurrent Western attempts to 'educate' the East a kind of mania - Naryshkin

MOSCOW. Dec 21 (Interfax) - World history shows that ideological wars have become a constant of Western policies, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said in his article published by Russian newspaper 'Izvestia' on Monday.

"The fact is that from time to time the West attempts to 'educate' the East. But having no authority to do this, it gets rebuffed, making its [Western] inferiority complex even worse. Lessons of history do not make Western leaders any wiser, but rather aggravate them, making their preparations for another doomed attack increasingly devious. And this is more like a mania, if you like," Naryshkin said.

He also said that "contemporary propaganda methods can turn everything upside-down but history, regardless of which way it is portrayed, is ultimately a depositary of facts."

"And the notion that facts are truly 'stubborn things' also becomes relevant when you look at how the West constantly drives itself into a corner. Centuries spent in its attempts 'to adjust' the cultural code of Russia by military means were followed by economic pressure and blackmail but 'cold' ideological wars have become even more frequent, evolving into a constant of Western policies," Naryshkin said.

"But despite this 'temporary freeze' tactics bears no fruit, our restless partners, having barely recovered their losses, are once again setting their focus on the Middle East, on Eurasia, only to make their favorite mistake there one more time," he went on.

By saying 'the West', Naryshkin means "a part of Europe and its old colonist child, the U.S.", adding that "the New World's addiction to the Old World is still there," he said.

"But the 'overgrown child' has never acquired the cultural heritage of its ancestors. As for the experience of European democracy, the child perceived it as a challenge and altered it in its own way. Are the [child's] outright claims to be a special one merely a consequence of a painful conflict between 'fathers and sons'? Is this the reason for such a close attention shown by the U.S. to everything that is going on in the common European house?" Naryshkin said.

"The direct interference by America in the affairs of Middle-Eastern countries is another echo of the imperial past of its European great-grandparents," Naryshkin said.

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 #14
http://readrussia.com
December 21, 2015
Who Cares How Putin Walks?
By Mark Adomanis

The internet, as it is wont to do, got pretty riled up the other day with a new "study" that purports to examine Vladimir Putin and his supposedly "unique gait."

The British Medical Journal (which somewhat confusingly sub-headlined the piece with the tag "political science"*) published an investigation by a group of two Portuguese, one Italian, and one Dutch researcher, who apparently got together to watch a bunch of YouTube videos "depicting the gait of highly ranked Russian officials."

Now all of these researchers, at least based on their titles would seem to have some pretty important things to do with their time. One is a practicing doctor doing his residency in neurology, which, you know, sounds pretty difficult. The other three are "only" professors of neurology or neurological disorders but still, you know, that's a pretty serious job. Maybe I'm old fashioned but can't you imagine better things for a professor of neurology to do than watching YouTube videos of Vladimir Putin walking into and out of meetings? Maybe research actual neurological disorders, or, if that sounds like too much, at least teach else someone how to?

I've done some boring research in my day, but I'm not sure I've ever had to watch several hours of high-ranking Russian bureaucrats walking into and out of official ceremonies. Studying poetry sounds less excruciating than that.

Anyway, after watching all of these videos the researchers were evidently amazed at the near-total lack of right-arm swing that was being manifested by Putin, Medvedev, Shoigu, and others. That might sound trivial but a lack of right-arm movement is apparently a very real and very serious symptom, one which is often considered an early indicator of Parkinson's disease.

Understandably skeptical that there was a pandemic of (relatively rare) neurological degenerative diseases raging throughout the upper echelons of the Kremlin, the researchers set out to proffer some kind of alternate explanation. Because I mean, otherwise the 5 most powerful people in Russia are all simultaneously developing early-stage Parkinson's disease, and that would be pretty bad.**

They settled on "Gunslinger's gait," which, based on my reading, seems like a rather technical and dry description for what basically amounts to "walking like an arrogant jerk." They describe this gait as "a behavioral adaptation" which was "possibly triggered by KGB or other forms of weapons training" in trainees "are taught to keep their right hand close to the chest while walking, allowing them to quickly draw a gun when faced with a foe." The authors of the study further suggest that this new knowledge about KGB training methods should be added to differential diagnoses of unilaterally reduced arm swing. Basically, that doctors need to take this into account when treating patients.

I imagine that, armed with this new knowledge, a future interaction between a neurologist and a patient would go something like the following:

"Mr. Ivanov, I noticed you're having some trouble with your right arm when you walk. Do you have any family history of neurological disease?"

"No, none whatsoever."

"Were you in the KGB?"

"Yes, yes I was."

"Oh, well that explains that then. Carry on and have a nice day!

It is likely, of course, that the whole thing was a bit of a gag. I made a point of looking at what other research is currently featured on the BMJ's homepage and saw the following which all but screams that the editors of the BMJ are having a really large laugh at our expense.

I always thought of medical journalists as pretty buttoned down, no-nonsense institutions, but the internet is famous for changing behavior patterns so this is basically the medical equivalent of "28 corgis who are excited for Christmas"

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#15
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 18, 2015
What awaits Russia's economy in 2016 - collapse or recovery?
Analysts have reacted to the latest collapse of oil prices with varying forecasts. Some believe oil prices are on their way down to the critical level of $35, which would keep the Russian economy in recession. Others, however, including Western analysts, are of the opinion that 2016 may see the first shoots of recovery.
ANNA KUCHMA, RBTH

The collapse of oil prices in December has divided officials and analysts into pessimists and optimists, with Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov predicting on Dec. 12 that the price of oil in 2016 will fall below $30 per barrel in some periods, according to the TASS news agency.

According to Siluanov, demand and the price of oil will continue to decline over the next year and Russia needs to start preparing for the worst.

"We need to draw up backup plans now - on what would happen if the prices will fall further," said Siluanov, recalling that the 2016 budget is based on a price of $50 per barrel, while the macroeconomic situation is currently showing no signs of changing for the better.

Russian GDP forecasts for 2016
Fitch +0.5%
S&P +0.3%
MED +0.7%
OPEC +0.3%
CB -2-3%
IMF -0.6%
WB -0.6%

An oil price of below $40 is considered a risk scenario in the government's macroeconomic development plan for 2016. In this case, the economy will lose another 2-3 percent, the investment slowdown will continue, and inflation will fall to 7 percent by the end of 2016. According to Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina, "the relevance of this scenario has recently increased."

Russia, for which 50 percent of its budget revenues are dependent on oil and gas returns. In the next year, the budget deficit should not exceed 3 percent.

However, according to a review by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, if oil prices were to fall to $35 a barrel, however, then in order for Russia to fulfil its 2016 budget with a maximum deficit of 3 percent, the dollar would have to cost about 94 rubles (in relation to the ruble-dollar exchange rate in mid-December, this means the ruble would drop by another 34 percent - RBTH).

Even at $50 per barrel in 2016, the economy will continue to decline by another 0.5-1 percent, according to Central Bank forecasts. In this scenario, the regulator expects the recovery of real income and consumption no earlier than in 2018. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have made similar forecasts - a continued economic downturn at the price of $50-53 per barrel.

Cautious optimism

However, the assessment by the Russian Ministry of Economic Development is more optimistic. According to the ministry's head Alexei Ulyukayev, the period of volatility in oil prices is about two-three quarters.

"Somewhere in the middle of 2016, a new balance is highly likely to be found, a balance between supply and demand on the oil market," he said.

The Ministry of Economic Development, meanwhile, is still expecting an oil price of $50 a barrel in 2016. Accordingly, the ministry predicts a "recovery" in GDP growth, based on figures for the last quarter of 2015: In September-November, GDP showed a tiny return to growth, rising by 0.1-0.2 percent.

Western analysts also express cautious optimism that Russia may return to growth in 2016. Bloomberg consensus estimates for 2016 are $55.5 per barrel, with only five out of 27 analysts expecting the average annual price below $50.

Meanwhile, international rating agencies also do not see the risk of a new collapse of the Russian economy: Fitch and S&P anticipate a GDP growth in the range of 0.5 to 0.3 percent.

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 #16
Privatization of state corporations could solve number of problems in Russian economy
By Tamara Zamyantina

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. Privatization of large state corporations under certain conditions could help making their activity more efficient and make up for the budget deficit in 2016 to save the money from the Russian Reserve Fund, according to the experts polled by TASS.

During the Thursday press conference, the Russian President Vladimir Putin did not rule out that in 2016 the government would start privatization of large state-owned companies - Rosneft and Aeroflot. "I do not rule out, that in order not to burn the reserves, to provide income and some changes in the structure of these large companies, the government would consider decisions on privatization," Putin said.

The colume of the Reserve Fund in November 2015 decreased by 7% to 3.93 trillion rubles ($55.25 bln). According to the Russian Finance Ministry, the decrease in the volume of funds was primarily due to the using 350 bln rubles ($4.9 bln) to finance the budget deficit.

The Russian Finance Ministry believes that next year the privatization of a 19.5% stake in Rosneft could bring 500-550 bln rubles ($7.03 bln - 7.73 bln), Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said. According to him, for the company itself "it will be only a positive thing," and foreign companies will be able to participate in the deal, including Chinese.

According to the Academic Supervisor of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) and ex-Minister of Economy Evgeny Yasin, Rosneft and Aeroflot are powerful corporations, where the predominant proportion of the shares will always be in the hands of the state. "Aeroflot is the best airline company in Eastern Europe with good reputation. Rosneft is the largest state-owned corporation in the country, the foundation for the Russia's oil exports. These are the companies with shares that will see an unconditional demand," Yasin told TASS.

"It is possible that the privatization of Rosneft will interest Chinese partners, who so far have not been involved in joint projects in the oil market in Russia. Times have changed. Moscow and Beijing are developing a new economic agenda," the expert said.

At the same time, the expert considers it important to develop a mechanism for possible privatization of state-owned corporations. "In order to increase the efficiency, state-owned companies need to develop appropriate costly projects, hire managers with high performance. And if Rosneft, handing 19.5% of its shares to a potential investor, fully retains its managerial prerogatives, it would be a signal that nothing will change - the same people will be in charge," Yasin said.

Mikhail Delyagin, Doctor of Economics, Director of the Institute of Problems of Globalization, believes that the privatization of state corporations includes introduction of one or two new leaders to the Board of Directors, who will significantly affect the company's economic policy.

"Rosneft and Aeroflot are the most successful state-owned companies in the country, which have the greatest commercial potential. So maybe it makes sense to start privatization with them, even though the economic environment is not the most suitable," Delyagin told TASS.

"The fact that privatization of Rosneft could involve Chinese investors is a significant event that changes the strategic character of relations between Russia and the West in the field of energy security," the expert said.

Chief Economist of the Eurasian Development Bank Yaroslav Lissovolik also believes that financing the budget deficit in 2016 cannot rely only on the Reserve Fund. Otherwise, the rapid exhaustion of its resources cannot be avoided. "It is necessary to use other financial instruments, including privatization," he told TASS.

"In order to ensure transparency of the privatization process, it is important to improve corporate governance, which would provide a gradual increase in the role of shareholders and their impact on the economic parameters of companies' activity," Lissovolik said.

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 #17
http://readrussia.com
December 17, 2015
"Reform" Does Not Equal Growth
By Mark Adomanis

I recently completed a lengthy research paper on the perhaps not-terribly-exciting-sounding topic of capital markets reform in emerging economies. We looked at a number of different cases but most of my time was, understandably, spent focusing on Russia.

In the course of writing and researching the paper I got a chance to speak to a number of people who had decades' worth of experience in Russian finance, including some people who were instrumental in setting up Russia's post-Soviet capital markets in the first place. It was a fascinating experience, and one that, I think, offers some needed perspective on where Russia is and where it is headed.

First, for those of you with minimal exposure to finance jargon, the "capital markets" are the markets for "capital," or, in simpler terms, financing. Capital is basically a fancy for "other people's money." It's what allows a company to build a factory, buy inventory, and pay its workers, and generally finance its ongoing operations. There are two basic forms of capital markets, those for equity (stocks, think the Down Jones or the S&P 500) and debt (corporate bonds).

Just to get a few more bits of jargon out of the way, developed economies like the US and the UK tend to have extremely "deep" capital markets in that companies can access financing in a number of different ways on very competitive terms (deepness requires a huge amount of money, which is provided by small-time investors but, more significantly by large institutions like pension funds). These markets are also quite "liquid," in that (in normal conditions!) it is generally easy to buy or sell a particular security and "transparent" in that (again, in normal conditions!) it is relatively easy to tell who is participating in a particular transaction.

If you take academic finance even halfway seriously, the capital markets in developed countries are thought to be "efficient," in that they do a good job of getting money from people who have it (investors) to people who need it (companies). This promotes investment and makes the economy grow.

Emerging markets, traditionally, have had capital markets that are pretty much the inverse of the conditions I've just described. The markets are "thin" in that there isn't much institutional money at play, a condition which then makes the markets extremely volatile and unstable. They also tend to be extremely illiquid (once you buy something, it can be quite difficult to sell it again) and opaque (you sometimes have no idea with whom you are transacting). Because of all these problems the markets are not efficient and don't do a good job of channeling savings into productive investment. Growth is thus a lot slower than it would be in an environment where the capital markets were performing well.

It's hardly a secret that Russia's markets have a few, ahem, imperfections.  Even non-specialists will have heard that valuations on the Moscow exchange are, on a relatively basis, some of the lowest in the entire world, a "Russia discount" that is partially due to politics but also to a perception among investors that the Russian market itself is just not very well structured.

Given Russia's current environment of "stagnation" and the extent to which the authorities seem to almost be consciously moving away from any kind of economic reform, my initial expectations were pretty low. I frankly expected to hear a broadly similar narrative to the one you get in most media reports: there was a lot of reform early in Putin's reign but, ever since, thins have come screeching to a halt. Problems galore with nary a solution in sight.

But when I took the time to speak with the professionals, the people who worked with this stuff on a daily basis, I frankly heard a rather different narrative, one in which the Russian authorities were actually making some reasonably-swift progress in addressing long-acknowledged problems.

Some of the reforms, it is true, were highly technical and specific. None were the kind which you would expect to see on the front page of the New York Times ("Russian bonds are now Euro-clearable!"). But even though they might bore a layperson to death, among experts these changes were considered pretty important. Russia hadn't, of course, suddenly become a country with America-style capital markets, but the authorities were moving to address real problems not simply sitting on their hands to preserve the status quo.  

Indeed, after conducting a number of interviews and reviewing a lot of data, I came to a surprising, and rather pessimistic conclusion: sometimes countries reform and nothing much happens. From the standpoint of your average finance textbook, Russia instituted several reforms that should have made its markets significantly more attractive to foreign investors. It did "the right" thing, or at least what a lot of experts think is the right thing. But the positive results are pretty hard to see.

Does this mean that reform is bad or undesirable? Absolutely not. Let me be as clear as possible: I continue to believe that, both from a philosophical and practical perspective, liberalizing economic reforms are substantially better than any of the alternatives. But better than the alternatives does not mean "perfect."

Proponents of liberalism have been far too optimistic in describing the likely impact of their preferred policies, massively exaggerating what a Russia with better policies would look like. There are, of course, additional reforms that are necessary, and perhaps a few that would have a more significant impact on the economy's overall performance.

But when you start to dig into the economic and financial weeds, it simply isn't true that Russia is frozen in some kind of crude Brezhnev-style stasis in which "stability" is the only goal. Beneath the surface there has actually been a fairly significant quantity of change. That should be kept in mind the next time someone promises a quick, easy solution to one of the economy's many ailments.

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 #18
Bloomberg
December 20, 2015
Siberian Surprise: The Numbers Behind Russia's Oil Resilience
By Dina Khrennikova
[Charts here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-20/siberian-surprise-the-numbers-behind-russia-s-oil-resilience]

OPEC has been putting a squeeze on rival oil producers by refusing to cut production to curb a global oversupply. Russia has no intention of succumbing to the pressure.

"I will tell you when Russian companies are for sure going to decrease production -- when oil costs $0," Deputy Energy Minister Kirill Molodtsov said at an industry event in Moscow this month.
 
Here are some reasons why:

Size Matters

Russia has pumped at near-record levels this year to counter its first recession since 2009, vying for the title of world's largest crude producer with Saudi Arabia. The nation's government gets about half of its revenue from oil and gas, so with no end in sight to the slump, it plans to maintain production next year.

"Russia will maintain its current oil production levels within the bandwidth of 525 million to 533 million tons next year, as the federal government's budget is set on such production levels," Lauren Goodrich, senior Eurasia analyst at Austin, Texas-based intelligence and advisory firm Stratfor, said by e-mail.

Exports Rising

Russia has made its refineries more efficient as investments that started in 2011 are now nearing completion. These improvements have reduced domestic demand for crude oil and freed up additional volumes for exports, which earn bigger profits for companies than domestic sales.

The base-case scenario from Russia's Energy Ministry envisions oil exports growing to 237 million tons, or an average of 4.76 million barrels a day, this year and stabilizing at that level in 2016. Under a more optimistic scenario, the exports may grow by 2 million to 3 million tons between 2015 and 2017.

Weaker Ruble, Lower Taxes

International oil companies have seen Brent crude, the global benchmark, fall more than 30 percent this year to below $40 a barrel. For their Russian counterparts, the decrease has been closer to 20 percent - all thanks to the ruble devaluation. Russian oil taxes, which go down when the crude price falls, have further softened the blow.

"If the oil price falls to $40 per barrel from $50 per barrel, the average production margin falls around $1 a barrel" for Russian oil producers, Maxim Nechaev, consulting director for IHS Russia, said by e-mail.

Shrinking Costs

The bulk of Russia's crude is produced from fields in West Siberia discovered back in Soviet times, where the basic cost of pumping the oil from the ground is below the average for the biggest international oil companies.

The ruble devaluation pushed them down even further, prompting Igor Sechin, president of Russia's largest oil producer Rosneft OAO, to boast that his expenses are "the lowest in the world."

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 #19
Valdai Discussion Club
http://valdaiclub.com
December 21, 2015
OIL PRICE SLUMP IS A LOSE-LOSE SITUATION
The current oil price slump is different from that in the 1980s due to depletion of resources. The amount of cheap oil is reducing.

Last week oil prices slumped to a near seven-year low with Brent trading below $40 per barrel. Lower oil prices jeopardize energy exporting countries, but do not seem to help the consumer states either, experts interviewed by Valdaiclub.com believe.

Danila Bochkarev, a Brussels-based fellow of the EastWest Institute, believes the current oil prices are a consequence of the price war between traditional and new producers coupled with Iran's return to the international oil market.

"The origin of the current fall in oil prices is the war which certain oil producers, like Saudi Arabia, are waging on newcomers. Over the past 7-8 years most investment went into unconventional oil, like shale oil in the US and Canada or in the deep offshore", Bochkarev said.

According to Leonid Grigoryev, Adviser to Director General of the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation, oil was overpriced in the recent years. "Oil prices should have been at the level of $70-90 per barrel," he said adding that the extra $20 was a political premium over Fukushima and Libya. "Had the world oil market functioned according to an economics textbook, the equilibrium price of oil would have been about $70 per barrel," Grigoryev added.

The reason why oil production does not decline is the exporting countries' urge to keep their contracts, Grigoryev went on to say. "Production cannot be lowered," he added. "The growth of production and consumption will continue".

He was echoed by Bochkarev who said countries like Saudi Arabia realize they have no alternative to oil, therefore it is vital for them to keep the existing contracts. "They are ready for budgetary losses and for oil at $20-30 per barrel," the expert said.

According to Bochkarev, Saudi Arabia is different from other Gulf countries like Qatar and Kuwait, which are immune to low oil prices, as their population is much smaller and their per capita oil production is quite high. "While Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest oil producer and exporter, they have already registered a 20% budget deficit, so in four or five years all their foreign currency reserves will run out. At this oil price they cannot keep their high living standards for more than three years," he pointed out.

The current fall in oil prices ushers in an era of economic hardship for the exporting counties with a high population, Grigoryev said. "Russia faces serious problems, but countries like Indonesia, Nigeria, or Venezuela will be hit harder," he added.

Last week, socialists lost a midterm parliamentary election in Venezuela, a development which can herald the end of their 16-year rule. After years of oil bonanza, Venezuela faced widespread poverty and turned out to be unable to maintain its generous social programmes.

Azerbaijan, which relies on energy for 70% of its income and 95% of its exports, could be the next country to face economic and social difficulties, Bochkarev said. It remains to be seen whether this will result in political unrest, as in Azerbaijan the government has a much stronger foothold compared to Venezuela, he added.

The importing countries might seem to be on the winning side, but this is only true for the energy-intensive industries, like transport and chemicals, while oil companies are losing revenues, Grigoryev said.

In Russia, oil companies are losing their revenues not as dramatically as the national budget, Bochkarev said. "There, the oil export duty is pegged to the oil price. For instance, in December 2015 the oil export duty was lowered to $88.4 per tonne or around $12.5 per barrel. At below $27 per barrel the duty is not charged at all," he explained.

According to Bochkarev, the low oil prices create a "lose-lose situation". "Saudi Arabia is trying to keep its market share, but its income has gone terribly down," he said. "The US is in an ambiguous situation: while the consumers enjoy cheap gasoline, the producers are suffering. There are a lot of negative implications for the renewables: with oil at $30-40 there are very few incentives to invest in them."

The current oil price slump is different from that in the 1980s, Bochkarev said, due to depletion of resources. "At that time, we had a lot of oil in the Soviet Union and the Gulf, which was cheap to produce. Now the amount of cheap oil is reducing. If in theory this situation lasts for 3-5 years, we will see a dramatic drop in oil production," he said.

Therefore, the need to develop alternative energy sources remains relevant in the long term. "Although experts worldwide say we can for some time forget about investment in unconventional oil, as well as deep offshore, the Arctic etc., oil will eventually be replaced, in a matter of 50-80 years," Bochkarev concluded.

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 #20
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 21, 2015
How much are Western sanctions hurting Russia's economy?
The difficult economic conditions have forced Russian businesses to reassess, which could be a good thing in the long run.
By Ben Aris

Sanctions imposed by Western nations on Russia over its involvement in the Ukraine crisis and absorption of Crimea have hurt the country's economy, but not mortally wounded it. The collapse of oil prices and the subsequent devaluation of the ruble have done far more damage. But faced with this double whammy, the Kremlin is in crisis mode and trying to stitch together a rescue package. In the long run, the current squeeze may end up being a boon for Russian companies, as firms used to easy profits have been forced to cut costs and improve really bad management practices.

The sanctions imposed last year were largely symbolic, with the notable exceptions of the ban on offering Russian companies anything more than 30 days' credits, and the list barring Western firms from doing business with some of the largest corporate and financial institutions in the country. As a result, the banking sector is bearing most of the brunt of the move.

"In the old days, our business was easy," said one senior banker who didn't want to named. "We borrowed long, cheap money from the international markets and lent it short and expensive on the domestic market."

That business has been brought to an abrupt end. As Russia has failed to establish its own institutional investors, including things like pension and insurance funds, there is no alternative source of long-term credit except the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). Although at the moment the Central Bank is sitting on $370 billion - enough to keep the sector liquid - the bank has problems with its exposure. Central bank funds currently make up some 15 percent of all banking liabilities, up five-fold from the 3 percent they made up during the worst of the 2008 crisis.

Happily the peak seems to have passed and the CBR is now unwinding its position to the banking sector, but it is still not out of the woods. Following an emergency hike in interest rates in December 2014, the cost of capital is impossibly high. Despite five rate cuts this year, interest rates are currently 11 percent and need to get into single figures before companies can afford to borrow again to make investments. That is not likely to happen until the middle of next year. In the meantime, banks are unable to make profits and most are simply subsisting.

"The problem is that we won't lend to the companies that want to borrow from us," Herbert Moos, deputy C.E.O. of VTB Bank said. "And the ones we want to lend to don't want to borrow at these prices."

The lack of lending is weighing heavily on the economy, which contracted by 4.1 percent in the third quarter and is expected to end the year at -3 percent.

Tricky accounting

The collapse of oil prices and the subsequent devaluation of the ruble were real disasters for Russia. As some two-thirds of both the federal budget and export revenue come from oil exports, the size of Russia's economy has been more than cut in half in dollar terms. However, a quirk of accounting has meant that the federal budget has automatically corrected to make the pain bearable.

The budget assumes a dollar oil price to estimate its revenues, but the spending is fixed in unadjusted rubles. If the price of oil changes, the government is one of the biggest winners from the devaluation: Its oil tax revenue dollars can buy twice as many rubles to cover unadjusted ruble expenditures. Nevertheless, the fall in oil has badly hurt growth, which reduces tax revenue. This year the government is expected to run a deficit of 3 percent of GDP.

Winners and losers

The change in the value of the ruble has virtually wiped out any business that depends on imports. For example, although five of the world's biggest car manufacturers have production facilities in Russia, they still import up to 60 percent of their parts, which are now twice as expensive for local buyers. Car production was down by a quarter over the first 10 months of this year to just over 1 million units, and way off the approximately 4 million cars Russia was on track to produce in 2008, which would have made it the biggest car market in Europe.

The cost of foreign holidays has also doubled, while real incomes fell just over 9 percent in the first nine months of this year. That means the once booming tourism business has been hit by a slate of bankruptcies, which will only get worse after Russians cancelled holidays to Egypt and Turkey - the two top destinations for Russian vacationers - due to terrorism fears.

However, the crisis has been a boon for other sectors. Supermarket chains are expanding at top speed, almost entirely unaffected by the crisis. With all imported foods cleared from shelves due to a combination of Russia's own sanctions on foreign food products and the price increase due to the ruble devaluation, shoppers have retreated to the leading chains to buy Russian-produced goods. Local manufacturers have popped up to replace the missing products, and Russia's cheese production was up 40 percent in the first half of this year.

Likewise, Russian exports are having a bonanza, as their domestic ruble costs have been cut in half while revenues from the international markets in dollars have remained the same. Raw material extractors and related business have seen profits boom. Leading steel mill Magnitogorsk reported record profits in the third quarter, and agricultural giant Rosagro reported record-breaking revenues.

This is not to say that times are good for Russian business. High inflation, the high cost of capital and the falling real income of the population has curbed growth and investment for most companies. But analysts speculate that this could be healthy, as it forces companies to become more efficient.

The OSCE found that Russia had the lowest productive of any country in Europe in a study two months ago and was half the European average. But now Russian productivity is rising twice as fast as the EU average and is currently at an all-time high. Maybe a year or two of austerity is just what Russian companies need to get rid of the excess fat they gained during the heyday of the boom years in the mid-2000s.

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 #21
Washington Post
December 21, 2015
E.U. extends sanctions against Russia amid growing splits over their future
By Michael Birnbaum
Michael Birnbaum is The Post's Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.

BRUSSELS - The European Union on Monday extended sanctions against Russia for six months, achieving unity among 28 member nations despite rising divisions over how long to press a major trading partner on its annexation of Crimea and fueling of a separatist war in Ukraine.

The decision, given preliminary approval by E.U. leaders last week and due to go into effect on Tuesday, lengthens until next year a laundry list of economic measures against Russia. In tandem with U.S. sanctions, the effort has contributed to a painful economic slowdown in Russia that will continue next year.

But amid growing grumbling from some European countries about the sanctions, their future beyond this renewal remains unclear.

The decision to extend the sanctions comes at the end of a difficult year for the European Union, which has faced triple crises with multiple terrorist attacks in Paris, the near-exit of Greece from the euro zone in July, and the refugee influx that is forcing nations to make difficult choices about their values. None of the problems seems likely to abate next year, leaving open the question whether European nations will continue to be able to hold together on the sanctions.

The sanctions were imposed after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014. They were strengthened after separatists in eastern Ukraine, backed by Russian firepower, downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014 as it was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, killing all 298 people onboard. The United States and European Union have linked any rollback of the sanctions to the implementation of a peace plan reached in Minsk, Belarus, that would hand full control of Ukraine's border with Russia back to Kiev, a step that has not been taken.

"Since the Minsk agreements will not be fully implemented by 31 December 2015, the duration of the sanctions has been prolonged whilst the Council continues its assessment of progress in implementation," the European Council announced in a statement on Monday.

The sanctions will now extend until the end of July 2016.

But there has been growing fatigue for the sanctions among countries including Italy and France, which have long-standing trade ties to Russia in the energy sector. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last week delayed the extension of the sanctions until he could confront German Chancellor Angela Merkel about what he sees as a double standard within Europe. Germany and Russia this year announced plans to build a new natural gas pipeline between them through the Baltic Sea, bypassing Eastern Europe.

Renzi has complained that Merkel has forced other nations to agree to the sanctions while engaging in its own projects that contravene the spirit of the effort if not the letter of law. Italy in particular is bitter that the new German-Russian project, known as Nord Stream-2, comes after the cancellation of a different pipeline project, South Stream, that would have been constructed in partnership with Italy's Eni energy company. Bulgaria, another country that was poised to gain from the South Stream project, has also complained about the sanctions.

"I have some different ideas with Angela about a lot of dossiers. First about Nord Stream. Because I think it's incredible to stop South Stream just one year ago, and then accept the Nord Stream," Renzi said after meeting with E.U. leaders at the end of last week. He said that "for the first time," Germany was not in a majority on the issue in the closed-door meetings.

Merkel has tried to downplay the differences, as well as the political implications of the German-Russian energy project.

"This is first and foremost a business proposition," Merkel said of Nord Stream-2, speaking to reporters after the E.U. meetings. "Italy would have loved to participate in South Stream, which is very clear. Bulgaria also raised its voice today."

Battered by an influx of refugees from the burning conflict in Syria, European leaders have sought to take Russia as a partner in the effort to stop the war there after it began bombing rebel and Islamic State positions in September. Some leaders have sought to link progress in Syria with a rollback of the sanctions over Ukraine, diplomats say, an effort strenuously opposed by the United States.

The sanctions have drawn complaints from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who on Sunday said that Europe was simply acting as an extra arm of the United States.

Europe "does not pursue an independent foreign policy at all. It has essentially abandoned it," Putin said in a documentary broadcast Sunday on Russia's state-run Rossiya-1 channel.

Russia's economy has been flagging, hit by the combined wallop of sagging oil prices and sanctions. Inflation has soared, hitting the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens, inspiring rising complaints about the direction of the country. Putin's own popularity remains high, with 85 percent of Russians holding a favorable opinion of him, according to the latest figures from the independent Levada Center.

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 #22
Moscow Times
December 21, 2015
Orthodox Church Receives Majority of Russian Government Grants

The Orthodox Church has been the biggest beneficiary of presidential grants given to non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, in Russia over the past several years, a study published Monday revealed.

According to the report prepared by the Center for Economic and Political Reforms, the organizations controlled by the Moscow Patriarchate or close to the Russian Orthodox Church, received at least 63 presidential grants worth 256 million rubles ($3.6 million) between 2013 and 2015.

Among other large recipients of government grants are are pro-Kremlin youth organizations, which received more than 100 million rubles over the same period, the study found out.

Another big beneficiary of presidential grants are NGOs promoting an Eurasianism ideology that supports anti-Western sentiment and the idea of a multipolar world.

In the three years between 2013 and 2015, such organizations received dozens of grants worth more than 90 million rubles ($1.2 million), according to the study.

The study also reveals that since 2012, the total amount of grants awarded to non-commercial organizations has been constantly growing.

In 2013, 2.5 billion rubles ($35 million) were granted to NGOs, 2.5 times more than in 2012. In 2014, the amount of grants increased to 3.6 billion rubles ($50.7 million), followed by 4.2 billion rubles($59 million) allocated in 2015.

The authors of the study attribute the sharp increase of the spending on NGOs to the tense climate in Russia's domestic and foreign policy.

The government was forced to spend more money on NGOs because of the tightening of control over foreign funding of non-commercial organizations because of the so-called foreign agents law, the report said.

In 2012, Russia passed a legislation requiring all NGOs that receive foreign funding and are engaged in political activity, to register as "foreign agents", a Soviet term for spy. A number of prominent NGOs have decided to shut down rather than accept the label of "foreign agent."

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 #23
www.opendemocracy.net
December 18, 2015
The Russian government 'embraces' transparency
Russia is finally embracing transparency-so long as it poses no threat to political stability.
By Andrei Jvirblis
Andrei Jvirblis is a Moscow-based journalist and head of Transparency International Russia's Public Activism group.

As the response of Russia's Prosecutor General to accusations of graft this week shows, nothing gets Russian public officials angrier than journalists rooting through sensitive financial information. In a letter published by Kommersant, Yury Chaika called the video by Aleksey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) not only 'baseless' and 'highly false', but the product of 'orders from above'. Indeed, Chaika went on to accuse Bill Browder, the billionaire-turned-human rights activist, of funding the 45-minute video as part of a conspiracy against Russia.

FBK's latest investigation into top public officials and their circles is precisely the kind of work targeted by a new bill drafted by the FSB. This controversial initiative threatens the work of anti-corruption activists by limiting Russian citizens' access to the Unified State Register of Property Rights and Transactions, Russia's land registry.

The authorities are sending a message: transparency and access to state information exists only so far as it poses no threat to political stability. The idea of limiting citizens' access to information is back on the table in Russia.

Open government à la Russe

The 200 year old idea of Russia's 'special path', a guiding principle for many, has also, in 2015, found fresh meaning in the development of open governance and the state's discovery of 'big data'.

In 2013, after membership of just over a year, Russia retracted its signature from the Declaration of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Signatory countries recognise that the state should strive for openness: increasing access to information on the activities of state institutions for their citizens, stimulating public engagement in government and implementing policies of transparency and accountability-and all through state of the art technological means.

There was no official rejection of the partnership's aims from Russian officials-there was just talk of reviewing the scale and form of Russia's participation in the partnership, as well as developing its own ideas on this issue. That said, at the time of signing the declaration, and particularly after its withdrawal, various nationalist and pro-Kremlin media and blogsites were actively spreading the idea that the OGP was a channel of American influence and a limit on Russian sovereignty. Homegrown experts, unsurprisingly, welcomed the official change of heart.

As a result, Russia didn't join the OGP, but the country's own 'Open Government' organisation continues to operate. This structure was created at the time that Russia was planning to join the OGP, at the height of Dmitry Medvedev's reign as president. Indeed, it was in the 'Medvedev era' that public discussion on state transparency and digital government emerged and Russia conducted its first experiments in the area, such as online public discussion of a draft bill on policing.

The head of the Open Government project, businessman Mikhail Abyzov, who, according to Forbes, is worth some $700m, is now Minister of Federal Government. And the Ministry of Open Government is no longer to be found on the list of state institutions; there is only a 'Commission on Coordinating the Activities of Open Government'.

Three years after its creation, Open Government continues to operate, but it's hard for the uninitiated to find out exactly what it is. The Open Government website states that it is a 'system of mechanisms and principles that guarantee effective cooperation between state and society, as well as the quality and balance of decisions taken.' Among the results of its work are 'standards of openness for state institutions', a transparency rating system and a road map on developing open data, as well as a range of projects designed to open access to information about allocation of public funds and the activities of state companies (of which Russia has many).

Open Government is a rival of Russia's Civic Chamber, which was set up in 2005 with the aim of improving cooperation between state and civil society. With 126 members, the Civic Chamber hosts something of an all-star cast of Russian civil society. Today, these two structures compete for the renewal and control of the system of public councils attached to government bodies. (These councils were also created under Medvedev, but the majority of them turned out to be a complete farce-most of the time they didn't even hold meetings, let alone carry out any substantial work).

How is it working?

Both the Civic Chamber and the Open Government initiative are trying to create an effective model of cooperation between the public and the state, using open data and digital democracy. From the outside, both organisations seem to have a broad mandate for this project and significant resources. But how successful are they?

The first open online discussion of state initiatives was piloted on the draft police bill in 2010. A special site with the draft text was set up, and all you had to do was register. This approach and the visibility of the subject to be discussed-the trigger for police reform was the shooting of three people by a senior police officer in a Moscow supermarket in 2009-drew a lot of people in.

But many of them were unhappy with what came next: media discussions were censored, and the dialogue with experts wasn't properly organised. The government evidently didn't like the results either: the user polls following the discussion soon led with rather radical proposals, which had to be written into law-for instance, a mandatory badge to be worn by police officers when in public.

This kind of discussion continued for other legislative initiatives until the idea tailed off when Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012. But Russian law does not permit the authorities to refuse a public discussion, and its relocation to the internet -well, that's just progress.

The result has been the development of a number of specific legal instruments to resolve different issues. For example, the government's portal for the publishing and discussion of regulatory documents contains drafts of serious documents being compiled by different regulatory bodies. But the portal can't boast about the hits it receives: even the most popular subjects only score a hundred or so views and a couple of comments. The reasons are clear: the complexity of the subjects is exacerbated by the authorisation system, which requires people to enter their National Insurance numbers and sign up to an Electronic State Services account.

There is a similarly complex identification system for accessing the 'Russian Public Initiative' portal, which publishes details of citizen initiatives and drafts of legislation proposed by users. The advantage of this site is the simplicity of its content (proposals are often reminiscent of those on the petition platform Change.org), but for a federal level draft bill to pass this initial stage it needs to collect 100,000 signatures in the space of a year, which is a serious challenge. So far only one proposal has got that far: opposition politician Aleksey Navalny's bill on the ratification by Russia of 20 UN anti-corruption ('unlawful enrichment') articles. The second stage of the process involves an 'expert commission' of the Open Government Partnership, but in this case it voted against the initiative.

A capital initiative

Open Government is, however, forging ahead in Moscow. Muscovites proposed the creation of a democratic instrument of their own: the Active Citizen project, a website and mobile phone app where people could discuss the future development of the capital. In practice, this means users taking decisions on small questions (the colour of floral borders, for instance) or approving decisions taken by the city authorities (such as speed limits in the city centre).

Active Citizen, however, suffers from the same flaw as previous popular platforms: its inability to verify users' identity. On the other hand, this very flaw allows it to create the illusion of mass involvement and claim to engage the public in debate about government decision making. The site has more than a million registered users, and the city authorities have already begun to use it to create public discussion of planning decisions. This is a small opportunity for Muscovites to influence the development of their city's infrastructure, but it is the only one available and at this stage it does give dissatisfied groups of residents the maximum chance to challenge arbitrary official decisions.

'Active Citizen' is only one element of the city electronic management system introduced by Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin and his team, who have been running the capital since 2012. The system is an increasingly effective response to the dissatisfaction many Muscovites have with the city and federal authorities - it was Moscow that saw the largest protest rallies in the winter of 2011-2. Many Muscovites are also clued into global issues and the capital has the resources to put systems like this into place.

The city authorities are also copying many public initiatives, scaling them up as they go. The popular service for lodging complaints about communal and government services, for example, draws on the experience of an existing mapping service, both in terms of discovering problem areas in a given district and in emergency situations.

An important element of an electronic state is open access to information, which takes place in Moscow through a special portal with datasets. Nevertheless, despite its huge database, the information it provides falls short in many areas of social significance. For example, neither it nor other information resources carry essential information about the work of the law enforcement agencies or crime rates.

Transparency on a leash

The Russian government has successfully assimilated the basic elements of electronic democracy and public engagement in government and rolled it out across the country, but it uses it only when it can ensure it has control over the processes it has initiated. The situation is much the same with big data: it remains accessible only so long as it doesn't discredit the state machine, or uncover the corruption and incompetence of the individuals who run it.

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 #24
AP
December 19, 2015
Russia Opens New Stalin Museums, Grapples With His Legacy

KHOROSHEVO, Russia - A bust of Josef Stalin stands on the front lawn of a house-turned-museum in this small village, where the Soviet leader is said to have stayed the night on his only visit to the front during World War II.

Inside, the museum director, a sturdy woman armed with a wooden pointer, takes a group of preteen students around the two-room house where Stalin strategized with his generals in August 1943 as the Red Army battled to drive out the Nazi troops.

Scholars estimate that under Stalin more than 1 million people were executed in political purges. Millions more died of harsh labor and cruel treatment in the vast gulag prison camp system, mass starvation in Ukraine and southern Russia and deportations of ethnic minorities.

But as Russia faces isolation abroad and deepening economic troubles at home, retelling an abridged account of triumphs past has become increasingly fashionable. President Vladimir Putin frequently cites the Soviet victory in World War II - Stalin's most touted achievement - in vowing to stand up to the West and defend Russia's interests.

"Of course, we have started to look at Stalin in a more favorable light," said Sergei Zaborovsky, a tour operator with the Military Historical Society. "Why now? Maybe it's because the situation in the world isn't the best. We need strength. We need something to unite us."

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Stalin's legacy was kept alive by the Communist Party, whose members carried his portrait to rallies, extolled his modernization policies and faithfully celebrated his birthday on Dec. 21. His real birth date is now believed to be Dec. 18, but the Communists will still wait until Monday to place flowers at his grave on Red Square. After Stalin's death in 1953, his body was placed in the Lenin Mausoleum, but in 1961 it was moved to a graveyard behind it after his successor denounced Stalin's cult of personality.

While the aging Communists are photogenic but largely ignored, their airbrushed version of Stalin has gone from fringe to increasingly mainstream. The number of Russians who say they have a negative view of Stalin has steadily declined, from 43 percent in 2001 to 20 percent today; a growing majority reports that they cannot properly judge the leader's time in office.

Museums and busts honoring Stalin have been sprouting up around Russia with an increasing regularity, especially this year as the nation commemorates the 70th anniversary of victory in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

The museum in Khoroshevo, about a three-hour drive from Moscow, is among those opened this year in the Tver region by the Military Historical Society, which is under the direction of Russia's culture minister. It is part of a "Path to Victory" tour, which also includes war monuments and a burned-out building destroyed during the war.

The museum focuses on Stalin's military and economic triumphs. It does not mention any military shortcomings or any other negative aspect of the war or Stalin's three decades in power.

The director of the Khoroshevo museum, Lydia Kozlova, responds curtly to the idea that the museum gives a one-sided impression to visitors. She is equally terse when discussing "Western" historical interpretations that write off Stalin as a dictator. "This is not a Stalin Museum," she repeats throughout trip arrangements and throughout the tour.

"Stalin wasn't an angel - far from it - but he looked after the safety of his citizens," said Kozlova, surrounded by placards with the leader's picture and glowing reviews of his military prowess. "The point of this museum is to guard our history, to protect the facts."

Recasting Stalin as a great leader who made Machiavellian calculations is worrying at best, says Memorial, a Russian human rights organization that has gathered historical records about Soviet political repressions and works to perpetuate the memory of the victims.

Memorial has called for Stalin's image to be banned. "Of course we don't like that this museum was opened," said Yelena Zhemkova, a historian with the organization.

While the Kremlin has shied away from either categorically condemning or condoning Stalin, there has been a crescendo in efforts to muzzle individuals, museums and non-government organizations that do not "properly" interpret history and to bring the historical narrative under government control.

Memorial this year was declared a "foreign agent," a label that brings stigma and slows the group's work. The respected Perm-36 gulag museum was also labeled a foreign agent earlier this year and was forced to close under pressure from local authorities who claimed the museum did not adequately show the flourishing cultural life in the labor camps. A new museum later reopened under the same Perm-36 name and with exhibits described as more "historically accurate."

A large, state-run gulag museum opened in the center of Moscow on the eve of the Oct. 30 day of remembrance of the victims of political repressions. While Memorial takes this as a positive sign, "it is still government owned," cautions Zhemkova. The museum exhibits avoid a critique of the Soviet system, but provide an accurate depiction of the gulag system.

A far-reaching de-Stalinization campaign is unlikely to take place anytime soon, says Lev Gudkov, the director of the independent Levada Center, who has conducted extensive polling on public perception of Stalin. Acknowledging that the Soviet system was criminal and that the entire Soviet system was criminal would lead to a "complete collapse of identity" for many Russians, Gudkov said. "They don't deny what Stalin did, but they prefer to look at him as the majestic sovereign, rather than the controversial ruler."

Leonid Kavtza, a history teacher at Gymnasium 1543 in Moscow, says Russians still harbor ideas of imperial greatness.

"They're harkening back on something great that can never be recreated. Even when I was a young child under (Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev, I remember hearing 'If only Stalin was here.' If the director of the shop sold spoiled produce 'If only Stalin was here,' If there was a line at the clinic, 'If only Stalin was here,'" Kavtza said. "But there was no such person who did this. They're thinking of a mythical Stalin."

And thus far, the federal history curriculum has done nothing to counter these assumptions of Stalin's greatness. In the wake of the Kremlin's hands-off approach toward Stalin and exaltation of World War II, a growing group of people have filled the silence with measured praise.

"It's important not to forget those who helped create the peaceful environment we live in today," Irina Mikhailova, who teaches at a school in Khoroshevo. "The Stalin museum is very important to us. We're proud to have it here."

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 #25
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
December 21, 2015
The IMF Changes Its Rules to Isolate China and Russia
By Michael Hudson
Michael Hudson is author of Killing the Host, Professor of Economics at Peking University and also Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
[Text with footnotes here http://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-imf-changes-its-rules-to-isolate-china-and-russia/]

A nightmare scenario of U.S. geopolitical strategists is coming true: foreign independence from U.S.-centered financial and diplomatic control. China and Russia are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian integration on the basis of financing in their own currencies and favoring their own exports. They also have created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO.[1] And the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank tandem in which the United States holds unique veto power.

More than just a disparity of voting rights in the IMF and World Bank is at stake. At issue is a philosophy of development. U.S. and other foreign investment in infrastructure (or buyouts and takeovers on credit) adds interest rates and other financial charges to the cost structure, while charging prices as high as the market can bear (think of Carlos Slim's telephone monopoly in Mexico, or the high costs of America's health care system), and making their profits and monopoly rents tax-exempt by paying them out as interest.

By contrast, government-owned infrastructure provides basic services at low cost, on a subsidized basis, or freely. That is what has made the United States, Germany and other industrial lead nations so competitive over the past few centuries. But this positive role of government is no longer possible under World Bank/IMF policy. The U.S. promotion of neoliberalism and austerity is a major reason propelling China, Russia and other nations out of the U.S. diplomatic and banking orbit.

On December 3, 2015, Prime Minister Putin proposed that Russia "and other Eurasian Economic Union countries should kick-off consultations with members of the SCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on a possible economic partnership."[2] Russia also is seeking to build pipelines to Europe through friendly secular countries instead of Sunni jihadist U.S.-backed countries locked into America's increasingly confrontational orbit.

Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov points out that when Russia's 2013 loan to Ukraine was made, at the request of Ukraine's elected government, Ukraine's "international reserves were barely enough to cover three months' imports, and no other creditor was prepared to lend on terms acceptable to Kiev. Yet Russia provided $3 billion of much-needed funding at a 5 per cent interest rate, when Ukraine's bonds were yielding nearly 12 per cent."[3]

What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia's National Wealth Fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding credit from countries in default of foreign official debts, or at least not bargaining in good faith to pay. To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London's creditor-oriented rules and courts.

Most worrisome to U.S. strategists is that China and Russia are denominating their trade and investment in their own currencies instead of dollars. After U.S. officials threatened to derange Russia's banking linkages by cutting it off from the SWIFT interbank clearing system, China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), and its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies from the threats made by U.S. unilateralists.

Russia and China are simply doing what the United States has long done: using trade and credit linkages to cement their diplomacy. This tectonic geopolitical shift is a Copernican threat to New Cold War ideology: Instead of the world economy revolving around the United States (the Ptolemaic idea of America as "the indispensible nation"), it may revolve around Eurasia. As long as global financial control remains grounded in Washington at the offices of the IMF and World Bank, such a shift in the center of gravity will be fought with all the power of an American Century (and would-be American Millennium) inquisition.

Any inquisition needs a court system and enforcement vehicles. So does resistance to such a system. That is what today's global financial, legal and trade maneuvering is all about. And that is why today's world system is in the process of breaking apart. Differences in economic philosophy call for different institutions.

To U.S. neocons the specter of AIIB government-to-government investment creates fear of nations minting their own money and holding each other's debt in their international reserves instead of borrowing dollars, paying interest in dollars and subordinating their financial planning to the U.S. Treasury and IMF. Foreign governments would have less need to finance their budget deficits by selling off key infrastructure. And instead of dismantling public spending, a broad Eurasian economic union would do what the United States itself practices, and seek self-sufficiency in banking and monetary policy.

Imagine the following scenario five years from now. China will have spent half a decade building high-speed railroads, ports, power systems and other construction for Asian and African countries, enabling them to grow and export more. These exports will be coming online to repay the infrastructure loans. Also, suppose that Russia has been supplying the oil and gas energy for these projects on credit.

To avert this prospect, suppose an American diplomat makes the following proposal to the leaders of countries in debt to China, Russia and the AIIB: "Now that you've got your increased production in place, why repay? We'll make you rich if you stiff our adversaries and turn back to the West. We and our European allies will support your assigning your nations' public infrastructure to yourselves and your supporters at insider prices, and then give these assets market value by selling shares in New York and London. Then, you can keep the money and spend it in the West."

How can China or Russia collect in such a situation? They can sue. But what court in the West will accept their jurisdiction?

That is the kind of scenario U.S. State Department and Treasury officials have been discussing for more than a year. Implementing it became more pressing in light of Ukraine's $3 billion debt to Russia falling due by December 20, 2015. Ukraine's U.S.-backed regime has announced its intention to default. To support their position, the IMF has just changed its rules to remove a critical lever on which Russia and other governments have long relied to ensure payment of their loans.

The IMF's role as enforcer of inter-government debts

When it comes to enforcing nations to pay inter-government debts, the IMF is able to withhold not only its own credit but also that of governments and global bank consortia participating when debtor countries need "stabilization" loans (the neoliberal euphemism for imposing austerity and destabilizing debtor economies, as in Greece this year). Countries that do not privatize their infrastructure and sell it to Western buyers are threatened with sanctions, backed by U.S.-sponsored "regime change" and "democracy promotion" Maidan-style. The Fund's creditor leverage has been that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan - and hence, for packages involving other governments. That is how the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. But until now, the beneficiaries have U.S. and NATO lenders, not been China or Russia.

The focus on a mixed public/private economy sets the AIIB at odds with the Trans-Pacific Partnership's aim of relinquishing government planning power to the financial and corporate sector, and the neoliberal aim of blocking governments from creating their own money and implementing their own financial, economic and environmental regulation. Chief Nomura economist Richard Koo, explained the logic of viewing the AIIB as a threat to the U.S.-controlled IMF: "If the IMF's rival is heavily under China's influence, countries receiving its support will rebuild their economies under what is effectively Chinese guidance, increasing the likelihood they will fall directly or indirectly under that country's influence."[4]

This was the setting on December 8, when Chief IMF Spokesman Gerry Rice announced: "The IMF's Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors." Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov accused the IMF decision of being "hasty and biased."[5] But it had been discussed all year long, calculating a range of scenarios for a sea change in international law. Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the NATO-oriented Atlantic Council, points out:

"The IMF staff started contemplating a rule change in the spring of 2013 because nontraditional creditors, such as China, had started providing developing countries with large loans. One issue was that these loans were issued on conditions out of line with IMF practice. China wasn't a member of the Paris Club, where loan restructuring is usually discussed, so it was time to update the rules.

"The IMF intended to adopt a new policy in the spring of 2016, but the dispute over Russia's $3 billion loan to Ukraine has accelerated an otherwise slow decision-making process."[6]

The target was not only Russia and its ability to collect on its sovereign loan to Ukraine, but China even more, in its prospective role as creditor to African countries and prospective AIIB borrowers, planning for a New Silk Road to integrate a Eurasian economy independent of U.S. financial and trade control. The Wall Street Journal concurred that the main motive for changing the rules was the threat that China would provide an alternative to IMF lending and its demands for crushing austerity. "IMF-watchers said the fund was originally thinking of ensuring China wouldn't be able to foil IMF lending to member countries seeking bailouts as Beijing ramped up loans to developing economies around the world."[7] So U.S. officials walked into the IMF headquarters in Washington with the legal equivalent of suicide vests. Their aim was a last-ditch attempt to block trade and financial agreements organized outside of U.S. control and that of the IMF and World Bank.

The plan is simple enough. Trade follows finance, and the creditor usually calls the tune. That is how the United States has used the Dollar Standard to steer Third World trade and investment since World War II along lines benefiting the U.S. economy. The cement of trade credit and bank lending is the ability of creditors to collect on the international debts being negotiated. That is why the United States and other creditor nations have used the IMF as an intermediary to act as "honest broker" for loan consortia. ("Honest broker" means being subject to U.S. veto power.) To enforce its financial leverage, the IMF has long followed the rule that it will not sponsor any loan agreement or refinancing for governments that are in default of debts owed to other governments. However, as the afore-mentioned Aslund explains, the IMF could easily

"change its practice of not lending into [countries in official] arrears ... because it is not incorporated into the IMF Articles of Agreement, that is, the IMF statutes. The IMF Executive Board can decide to change this policy with a simple board majority. The IMF has lent to Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iraq in the midst of war, and Russia has no veto right, holding only 2.39 percent of the votes in the IMF. When the IMF has lent to Georgia and Ukraine, the other members of its Executive Board have overruled Russia."[8]

After the rules change, Aslund later noted, "the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20.[9]

The IMF rule that no country can borrow if it is in default to a foreign government was created in the post-1945 world. Since then, the U.S. Government, Treasury and/or U.S. bank consortia have been party to nearly every major loan agreement. But inasmuch as Ukraine's official debt to Russia's National Wealth Fund was not to the U.S. Government, the IMF announced its rules change simply as a "clarification." What its rule really meant was that it would not provide credit to countries in arrears to the U.S. government, not that of Russia or China.

It remains up to the IMF board - and in the end, its managing director - whether or not to deem a country creditworthy. The U.S. representative can block any foreign leaders not beholden to the United States. Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems, explained the double standard at work: "The Fund will give Kiev a new loan tranche on one condition: that Ukraine should not pay Russia a dollar under its $3 billion debt. ... they will oblige Ukraine to pay only to western creditors for political reasons."[10]

The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a case in point. The IMF staff saw that Greece could not possibly pay the sums needed to bail out French, German and other foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed, and have gone public with their whistle blowing. Their protests didn't matter. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the hard line US- European Central Bank position. So did Christine Lagarde in 2015, overriding staff protests.[11]

Regarding Ukraine, IMF executive board member Otaviano Canuto, representing Brazil, noted that the logic that "conditions on IMF lending to a country that fell behind on payments [was to] make sure it kept negotiating in good faith to reach agreement with creditors."[12] Dropping this condition, he said, would open the door for other countries to insist on a similar waiver and avoid making serious and sincere efforts to reach payment agreement with creditor governments.

A more binding IMF rule is Article I of its 1944-45 founding charter, prohibiting the Fund from lending to a member state engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes in general. But when IMF head Lagarde made the last loan to Ukraine, in spring 2015, she merely expressed a vapid token hope there might be peace. Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force peace and adherence to the Minsk agreements, but U.S. diplomatic pressure led that opportunity to be rejected. President Porochenko immediately announced that he would step up the civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the eastern Donbass region.

The most important IMF condition being violated is that continued warfare with the East prevents a realistic prospect of Ukraine paying back new loans. The Donbass is where most Ukrainian exports were made, mainly to Russia. That market is being lost by the junta's belligerence toward Russia. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving IMF aid. Aslund himself points to the internal contradiction at work: Ukraine has achieved budget balance because the inflation and steep currency depreciation has drastically eroded its pension costs. But the resulting decline in the purchasing power of pension benefits has led to growing opposition to Ukraine's post-Maidan junta. So how can the IMF's austerity budget be followed without a political backlash? "Leading representatives from President Petro Poroshenko's Bloc are insisting on massive tax cuts, but no more expenditure cuts; that would cause a vast budget deficit that the IMF assesses at 9-10 percent of GDP, that could not possibly be financed."[13]

By welcoming and financing Ukraine instead of treating as an outcast, the IMF thus is breaking four of its rules: (1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan. This breaks the "No More Argentinas" rule, adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan. (2) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors. This goes against the IMF's role as enforcer for the global creditor cartel. (3) Not to lend to a borrower at war - and indeed, to one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally, (4) not to lend to a country that is not likely to carry out the IMF's austerity "conditionalities," at least without crushing democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner.

The upshot - and new basic guideline for IMF lending - is to split the world into pro-U.S. economies going neoliberal, and economies maintaining public investment in infrastructure and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. Russia and China may lend as much as they want to other governments, but there is no global vehicle to help secure their ability to be paid back under international law. Having refused to roll back its own (and ECB) claims on Greece, the IMF is willing to see countries not on the list approved by U.S. neocons repudiate their official debts to Russia or China. Changing its rules to clear the path for making loans to Ukraine is rightly seen as an escalation of America's New Cold War against Russia and China.

Timing is everything in such ploys. Georgetown University Law professor and Treasury consultant Anna Gelpern warned that before the "IMF staff and executive board [had] enough time to change the policy on arrears to official creditors," Russia might use "its notorious debt/GDP clause to accelerate the bonds at any time before December, or simply gum up the process of reforming the IMF's arrears policy."[14] According to this clause, if Ukraine's foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP, Russia's government would have the right to demand immediate payment. But President Putin, no doubt anticipating the bitter fight to come over its attempts to collect on its loan, refrained from exercising this option. He is playing the long game, bending over backward to behave in a way that cannot be criticized as "odious."

A more immediate reason deterring the United States from pressing earlier to change IMF rules was the need to use the old set of rules against Greece before changing them for Ukraine. A waiver for Ukraine would have provided a precedent for Greece to ask for a similar waiver on paying the "troika" - the European Central Bank (ECB), EU commission and the IMF itself - for the post-2010 loans that have pushed it into a worse depression than the 1930s. Only after Greece capitulated to eurozone austerity was the path clear for U.S. officials to change the IMF rules to isolate Russia. But their victory has come at the cost of changing the IMF's rules and those of the global financial system irreversibly. Other countries henceforth may reject conditionalities, as Ukraine has done, as well as asking for write-downs on foreign official debts.

That was the great fear of neoliberal U.S. and Eurozone strategists last summer, after all. The reason for smashing Greece's economy was to deter Podemos in Spain and similar movements in Italy and Portugal from pursuing national prosperity instead of eurozone austerity. "Imagine the Greek government had insisted that EU institutions accept the same haircut as the country's private creditors," Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov asked. "The reaction in European capitals would have been frosty. Yet this is the position now taken by Kiev with respect to Ukraine's $3 billion eurobond held by Russia."[15]

The consequences of America's tactics to make a financial hit on Russia while its balance of payments is down (as a result of collapsing oil and gas prices) go far beyond just the IMF. These tactics are driving other countries to defend their own economies in the legal and political spheres, in ways that are breaking apart the post-1945 global order.

Countering Russia's ability to collect in Britain's law courts

Over the past year the U.S. Treasury and State Departments have discussed ploys to block Russia from collecting by suing in the London Court of International Arbitration, under whose rules Russia's bonds issued to Ukraine are registered. Reviewing the excuses Ukraine might use to avoid paying Russia, Prof. Gelpern noted that it might declare the debt "odious," made under duress or corruptly. In a paper for the Peterson Institute of International Economics (the banking lobby in Washington) she suggested that Britain should deny Russia the use of its courts as a means of reinforcing the financial, energy and trade sanctions passed after Crimea voted to join Russia as protection against the ethnic cleansing from the Right Sector, Azov Battalion and other paramilitary groups descending on the region.[16]

A kindred ploy might be for Ukraine to countersue Russia for reparations for "invading" it and taking Crimea. Such a claim would seem to have little chance of success (without showing the court to be an arm of NATO politics), but it might delay Russia' ability to collect by tying the loan up in a long nuisance lawsuit. But the British court would lose credibility if it permits frivolous legal claims (called barratry in English) such as President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk have threatened.

To claim that Ukraine's debt to Russia was "odious" or otherwise illegitimate, "President Petro Poroshenko said the money was intended to ensure Yanukovych's loyalty to Moscow, and called the payment a 'bribe,'according to an interview with Bloomberg in June this year."[17] The legal and moral problem with such arguments is that they would apply equally to IMF and U.S. loans. They would open the floodgates for other countries to repudiate debts taken on by dictatorships supported by IMF and U.S. lenders.

As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted, the IMF's change of rules, "designed to suit Ukraine only, could plant a time bomb under all other IMF programs." The new rules showed the extent to which the IMF is subordinate to U.S. aggressive New Cold Warriors: "since Ukraine is politically important - and it is only important because it is opposed to Russia - the IMF is ready to do for Ukraine everything it has not done for anyone else."[18]

In a similar vein, Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the Committee for International Affairs at the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia's parliament) accused the United States of playing "the role of the main violin in the IMF while the role of the second violin is played by the European Union, [the] two basic sponsors of the Maidan - the ... coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014."[19]

Putin's counter-strategy and the blowback on U.S.-European relations

Having anticipated that Ukraine would seek excuses to not pay Russia, President Putin refrained from exercising Russia's right to demand immediate payment when Ukraine's foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP. In November he even offered to defer any payment at all this year, stretching payments out to "$1 billion next year, $1 billion in 2017, and $1 billion in 2018," if "the United States government, the European Union, or one of the big international financial institutions" guaranteed payment.[20] Based on their assurances "that Ukraine's solvency will grow," he added, they should be willing to put their money where their mouth was. If they did not provide guarantees, Putin pointed out, "this means that they do not believe in the Ukrainian economy's future."

Implicit was that if the West continued encouraging Ukraine to fight against the East, its government would not be in a position to pay. The Minsk agreement was expiring and Ukraine was receiving new arms support from the United States, Canada and other NATO members to intensify hostilities against Donbass and Crimea.

But the IMF, European Union and United States refused to back up the Fund's optimistic forecast of Ukraine's ability to pay in the face of its continued civil war against the East. Foreign Minister Lavrov concluded that, "By having refused to guarantee Ukraine's debt as part of Russia's proposal to restructure it, the United States effectively admitted the absence of prospects of restoring its solvency."[21]

In an exasperated tone, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Russian television: "I have a feeling that they won't give us the money back because they are crooks ... and our Western partners not only refuse to help, but they also make it difficult for us." Accusing that "the international financial system is unjustly structured," he nonetheless promised to "go to court. We'll push for default on the loan and we'll push for default on all Ukrainian debts," based on the fact that the loan

"was a request from the Ukrainian Government to the Russian Government. If two governments reach an agreement this is obviously a sovereign loan.... 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. ... 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?"[22]

And there the matter stands. On December 16, 2015, the IMF's Executive Board ruled that "the bond should be treated as official debt, rather than a commercial bond."[23] Forbes quipped: "Russia apparently is not always blowing smoke. Sometimes they're actually telling it like it is."[24]

Reflecting the degree of hatred fanned by U.S. diplomacy, U.S.-backed Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie A. Jaresko expressed an arrogant confidence that the IMF would back the Ukrainian cabinet's announcement on Friday, December 18, of its intention to default on the debt to Russia falling due two days later. "If we were to repay this bond in full, it would mean we failed to meet the terms of the I.M.F. and the obligations we made under our restructuring."[25]

Adding his own bluster, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced his intention to tie up Russia's claim for payment by filing a multibillion-dollar counter claim "over Russia's occupation of Crimea and intervention in east Ukraine." To cap matters, he added that "several hundred million dollars of debt owed by two state enterprises to Russian banks would also not be paid."[26] This makes trade between Ukraine and Russia impossible to continue. Evidently Ukraine's authorities had received assurance from IMF and U.S. officials that no real "good faith" bargaining would be required to gain ongoing support. Ukraine's Parliament did not even find it necessary to enact the new tax code and budget conditionalities that the IMF loan had demanded.

The world is now at war financially, and all that seems to matter is whether, as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put matters, "you are for us or against us." As President Putin remarked at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly regarding America's support of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and other allegedly "moderate" ISIS allies in Syria: "I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: Do you realize now what you have done? ... I am afraid the question will hang in the air, because policies based on self-confidence and belief in one's exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned."[27]

The blowback

America's unilateralist geopolitics are tearing up the world's economic linkages that were put in place in the heady days after World War II, when Europe and other countries were so disillusioned that they believed the United States was acting out of idealism rather than national self-interest. Today the question is how long Western Europe will be willing to forego its trade and investment interests by accepting U.S.-sponsored sanctions against Russia, Iran and other economies. Germany, Italy and France already are feeling the strains.

The oil and pipeline war designed to bypass Russian energy exports is flooding Europe with refugees, as well as spreading terrorism. Although the leading issue in America's Republican presidential debate on December 15, 2015, was safety from Islamic jihadists no candidate thought to explain the source of this terrorism in America's alliance with Wahabist Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and hence with Al Qaeda and ISIS/Daish as a means of destabilizing secular regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and earlier in Afghanistan. Going back to the original sin of CIA hubris - overthrowing the secular Iranian Prime Minister leader Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 - U.S. foreign policy has been based on the assumption that secular regimes tend to be nationalist and resist privatization and neoliberal austerity.

Based on this assumption, U.S. Cold Warriors have aligned themselves against democratic regimes seeking to promote their own prosperity and resist neoliberalism in favor of maintaining their own traditional mixed public/private economies. That is the back-story of the U.S. fight to control the rest of the world. Tearing apart the IMF's rules is only the most recent chapter. Arena by arena, the core values of what used to be American and European social democratic ideology are being uprooted by the tactics being used to hurt Russia, China and their prospective Eurasian allies.

The Enlightenment's ideals of secular democracy and the rule of international law applied equally to all nations, classical free market theory (of markets free from unearned income and rent extraction by special interests), and public investment in infrastructure to hold down the cost of living and doing business, are all to be sacrificed to a militant U.S. unilateralism. Putting their "indispensible nation" above the rule of law and parity of national interests (the 1648 Westphalia treaty, not to mention the Geneva Convention and Nuremburg laws), U.S. neocons proclaim that America's destiny is to prevent foreign secular democracy from acting in ways other than submission to U.S. diplomacy, and behind it, the special U.S. financial and corporate interests that control American foreign policy.

This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to turn out. Industrial capitalism a century ago was expected to evolve into an economy of abundance worldwide. Instead, we have American Pentagon capitalism, financial bubbles deteriorating into a polarized rentier economy, and a resurgence of old-fashioned imperialism. If and when a break comes, it will not be marginal but a seismic geopolitical shift.

The Dollar Bloc's Financial Curtain

By treating Ukraine's repudiation of its official debt to Russia's National Wealth Fund as the new norm, the IMF has blessed its default. President Putin and foreign minister Lavrov have said that they will sue in British courts. The open question is whether any court exisst in the West not under the thumb of U.S. veto?

America's New Cold War maneuvering has shown that the two Bretton Woods institutions are unreformable. It is easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB an Shanghai Cooperation Organization than to retrofit the IMF and World Bank, NATO and behind it, the dollar standard, all burdened with the legacy of their vested interests.

U.S. geostrategists evidently thought that excluding Russia, China and other Eurasian countries from the U.S.-based financial and trade system would isolate them in a similar economic box to Cuba, Iran and other sanctioned adversaries. The idea was to force countries to choose between being impoverished by such exclusion, or acquiescing in U.S. neoliberal drives to financialize their economies under U.S. control.

What is lacking here is the idea of critical mass. The United States may arm-twist Europe to impose trade and financial sanctions on Russia, and may use the IMF and World Bank to exclude countries not under U.S. hegemony from participating in dollarized global trade and finance. But this diplomatic action is producing an equal and opposite reaction. That is the Newtonian law of geopolitics. It is propelling other countries to survive by avoiding demands to impose austerity on their government budgets and labor, by creating their own international financial organization as an alternative to the IMF, and by juxtaposing their own "aid" lending to that of the U.S.-centered World Bank.

This blowback requires an international court to handle disputes free from the U.S. arm-twisting. The Eurasian Economic Union accordingly has created its own court to adjudicate disputes. This may provide an alternative to Judge Griesa's New York federal kangaroo court ruling in favor of vulture funds derailing Argentina's debt settlements and excluding that country from world financial markets.

The more nakedly self-serving U.S. policy is - from backing radical fundamentalist outgrowths of Al Qaeda throughout the Near East to right-wing nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltics - the greater the pressure will grow for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, AIIB and related institutions to break free of the post-1945 Bretton Woods system run by the U.S. State, Defense and Treasury Departments and their NATO superstructure of coercive military bases. As Paul Craig Roberts recently summarized the dynamic, we are back with George Orwell's 1984 global fracture between Oceanea (the United States, Britain and its northern European NATO allies as the sea and air power) vs. Eurasia as the consolidated land power.

 [return to Contents] 

 Sputnik
December 20, 2015
Détente 2.0? US No Longer Sees Russia as Top Security Concern

It seems that Americans are gradually warming towards Russia, as a possible confrontation between Moscow and Washington is no longer seen as a top security concern for US policymakers in 2016, according to the eighth annual Council on Foreign Relations' (CFR) Preventive Priorities Survey.

The survey aims to evaluate global conflicts based on their likelihood of occurring or/and escalating, as well as their possible impact on US national interests. This year report said that the top priority for Washington should be a further intensification of the Syrian conflict.

"By prioritizing conflicts based on their overall risk to the United States, the survey helps to focus their attention and resources for specific conflict prevention efforts in the year ahead," said Paul Stares, the director of CFR's Center for Preventive Action (CPA).

Americans clearly see the Middle East as the hotspot of global politics. Out of 11 global conflicts, which the CFR survey classified as high priority, eight are related to ongoing events in the Middle East with the escalation of the Syrian civil war rated as the top US security concern.

Besides the Syrian conflict, the other top five US conflict prevention priorities in 2016 include a mass terror attack in the United States, a cyberattack on critical US infrastructure, a confrontation with North Korea and surprisingly a political instability in the European Union as a result of the influx of refugees.

A possible confrontation with Russia, which was seen as one of US top security concerns amid the Ukrainian crisis last year, isn't in the high priority list this time around. According to Stares, a reason why Russia didn't make the 2016 list is due to the ongoing ceasefire in Donbass.

Although not a top US security concern anymore, Russia is still seen as a mid-level threat. The CFR survey revealed that Washington is still worried about a possible confrontation between Moscow and one of its NATO allies.

 [return to Contents] 

 
#27
www.christiantoday.com
December 21, 2015
U.S.-Russia tensions dissipate in space where Russians and Americans depend on each other for survival
By Andre Mitchell
We often hear of news nowadays about how the relationship between the United States and Russia continues to deteriorate after ties between the two nations were revived following the Cold War. The crisis in the Ukraine and the Syrian civil war are just two of the major issues where the American and Russian governments continue to be at loggerheads.

In space, however, all of these tensions between the two countries seem to dissipate. In fact, American and Russian space scientists rely on each other to jointly operate the International Space Station in the Earth's low orbit.

In an interview with CNN, American astronaut Scott Kelly of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said he really has to collaborate with his Russian colleagues to survive in space.

"Not only are we great friends, but we are completely reliant on each other if there's an emergency up here, that we have to take care of one another," Kelly said in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

"We have to rely on each other literally for our lives," he added.

Kelly further said that they monitor the news in space, and are aware of the contentious issues confronting the U.S. and Russia.

"It's not something we generally discuss between each other, although sometimes we do," he said.

The NASA astronaut explained that he and his Russian colleagues have learned to set aside their differences and work together for the common good.

"We understand that there can be conflict at times between nations. And I think one of the great things about the space station is we have demonstrated that two cultures that are somewhat different and sometimes can be at odds with one another over certain things have demonstrated that they can work together in a very cooperative way at something very, very difficult for a long period of time," he said.

Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, for his part, said politicians from the U.S. and Russia can draw an example from what they do in the space station.

"Our work here and our cooperation on board the [International Space Station] is a great example for all politicians. If they spent at least one month on board together, it would have probably resolved most of their problems and discussions on the ground," Kornienko told CNN.

 [return to Contents] 

 #28
Moscow Times
December 19, 2015
Russia Will Not Object Assad Ouster After Syrian War Ends

Russia has no objections to Syrian President Bashar Assad's ouster after the peace process starts in the country, Western diplomats say, the Reuters news agency reported Friday.

Russia had been repeatedly voicing its support to the Syrian president, but since Western powers, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have agreed that Assad can stay in power during the transition period, Kremlin has changed its mind, a western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"And the Russians have got to the point privately where they accept that Assad will have gone by the end of this transition, they're just not prepared to say that publicly," diplomat said.

Russia has changed its position on the eve of the third round of ministerial talks on the Syrian crisis. The meeting will tale place in New York on Friday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, along with the ministers from 16 other countries will participate.

 [return to Contents] 

 #29
www.rt.com
December 20, 2015
'US not after regime change in Syria, but Assad must go' - Kerry to Russian TV

The US is not seeking regime change in Syria, US Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian media on a Moscow trip. However, calling the Syrian president "a magnet for terrorists," Kerry said Bashar Assad cannot stay in the country's "long-term future."

Kerry was interviewed by Rossiya 24 channel during his trip to the Russian capital on Saturday between meetings with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Russian President, Vladimir Putin.   
 
"I am here to talk with President Putin about Syria and our need to join together to stabilize Syria; try to make peace in a way that keeps it as a whole country, and also - most importantly - also destroy Daesh (Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Daesh is a terrorist organization, a threat to all of us. We have a common interest and we need to work together," he stressed.

According to the Secretary of State, it was very important for the Russian people to understand the American approach to the Syrian crisis.
 
"We are not trying to do a regime change. We are not engaged in a color revolution.  We're not engaged in trying to interfere in another country ... We're trying to make peace," he explained.
 
However, Kerry reiterated Washington's stance that Assad must leave his position for peace in Syria to be achieved.

"Russia can't stop the war with Assad there because Assad attracts the foreign fighters. Assad is a magnet for terrorists, because they're coming to fight Assad," he said.

"So if you want to stop the war in Syria, and we do, if you want to fight Daesh and stop the growth of terrorism, you have to deal with the problem of Assad. Now, that doesn't mean we want to change every aspect of the government; we don't," the diplomat added.

The US Secretary of State also said he did not rule out the possibility of Syrian government forces loyal to Assad being viewed by Washington as a viable part of the operation against IS terrorists.

"Absolutely," he said when addressed on the issue, "providing there is a legitimate transitional process, which the Geneva communique calls for, with a government of transition, where the opposition is part of the government and the issue of Assad will be resolved through that process and people have confidence in that."

"Under those circumstances, it is possible to envision the army of Syria, together with the opposition, turning against Daesh, providing Assad is not the long-term future of Syria," Kerry added.

'Not assuring political transition in Libya was a mistake'

As for the ongoing chaos in Libya since the NATO air campaign helped the rebels oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Kerry insisted that removing the dictator was a right thing to do.
 
However, he added that he agreed with President Obama that "not doing enough afterwards to make sure that the transition and the building of a legitimate government took place - that was a mistake" by the US and its allies.

According to the Secretary of State, the Libyan majority on both sides is currently "coming together to form their own government, and we are going to support that government in hopes of calming down Libya and empowering all of us to go after the terrorists."

'No details of Russian Su-24 downing by Turkey'

Kerry declined to answer a question on whether Washington informed Ankara about the movements of Russian aviation in Syria before the downing of a Su-24 warplane by Turkish Air Force on November 24.

"Russia and the US have de-conflicted, and we have de-conflicted with respect to Syrian airspace and flights we make into the eastern part of Syria to fight Daesh. Turkish airspace is controlled by Turkey," he said.

While Ankara insists the bomber violated Turkish airspace, albeit for a mere 17 seconds, Moscow, Damascus and the surviving Russian pilot have been staunchly denying that the jet overshot into Turkey at any moment of the mission.

According to Kerry, the American side does not know the details of what occurred between the Russian and Turkish planes.

"We have some indications of it from our radar, we have some sense of what happened, but I think there's a formal process going on and exchange of information, and I don't want to comment on the conclusions of that without the information myself," he stressed.

'Washington to keep pushing Kiev to fulfill Minsk peace deal'

Kerry said that the US and Russia need to "fix the problem of Ukraine," adding that Washington is "not looking for a confrontation" over the issues.
 
"When I was with President Putin in New York with President Obama, President Obama looked at President Putin and said directly - he said: 'Vladimir, let's finish this. Let's stop this conflict that's going on about Ukraine. Help us get this settled by implementing Minsk," he remembered.

The American officials have been "working very closely with [Ukrainian] President [Petro] Poroshenko, with the [Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna] Rada, with various members of civil society in an effort to push the government in Kiev to make sure it deals with the problems of Donbass," the Secretary of State said.
 
"We will continue to push the government in Kiev for certain, and they have obligations and they need to live up to their obligations," he added.

Kerry urged Moscow to "to exert its considerable influence over the separatists and make sure that they are living up to the agreements of Minsk."    
 
"So what's important now is to try to quickly find a meeting of the minds on precisely what steps can be taken in order to end this issue," he stressed.

The Minsk peace deal was signed between Ukrainian officials and rebel leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics after a year of fighting that took over 7,000 lives.
 
The agreement, which envisaged a ceasefire, prisoner exchanges and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry, led to a drastic decrease in violence in the area, but has not been fully implemented by either side.

'US wants to see strong Russia involved in resolving global conflicts'

Kerry was also asked to comment on President Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he referred to Russia, Islamic State and the Ebola virus as the main US security threats.
 
"Well, the President wasn't lumping them together in that way. He was talking about different challenges that we face, and at the time, the question of Ukraine was a major challenge. But we've traveled considerable distance since then," he said.

According to the Secretary of State, his second visit to Russia in just a year is "a reflection of the fact that despite differences, Russia and the US have been able to and want to work very effectively together."  
 
He called the Iranian nuclear deal, the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria and the fresh agreement on tackling climate change as examples of successful cooperation between Washington and Moscow.

"We would like to see a normal relationship with Russia and see a strong and powerful Russia contributing to the resolution of disputes on a global basis, because we have enough challenges." Kerry said.

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 #30
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
December 21, 2015
UN Syrian peace plan deal: What was agreed upon in New York?
On Dec. 18 in New York, members of the International Syria Support Group agreed on the principles of reaching a political settlement to the crisis in Syria. Later, after five hours of discussions, the group's decisions on Syria were unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council. But what questions are still hindering progress?
ALEXEY TIMOFEYCHEV, RBTH

What was discussed in New York?

A draft UN Security Council resolution on Syria. The document was initiated by the United States. The resolution was intended to confirm the decisions adopted earlier at the meetings in Vienna, where the sides had agreed a roadmap for resolving the Syrian crisis. The draft resolution was discussed during U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to Moscow on Dec. 15. In the Russian capital, Kerry made the unexpected statement that the U.S. and its partners were no longer openly seeking to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, a condition on which the U.S. had previously insisted upon. However, White House press secretary Josh Earnest soon clarified that Washington's policy remains unchanged: Assad must go.

What was agreed?

At their meeting in New York, members of the so-called International Syria Support Group confirmed an earlier adopted decision that the authorities and the opposition in Syria should - in the course of six months - agree on forming a national unity government. In no later than 18 months' time, Syria should hold elections under a new constitution that will have been adopted by then. Talks between the Syrian authorities and the opposition should start under the auspices of the UN in January 2016. As soon as an agreement on forming a coalition government is formed, the sides should stop hostilities.

What questions remain unresolved?

The sides have still not agreed on a definitive list of terrorist groups currently present in Syria. Jordan, as was decided at the meeting in Vienna on Nov. 14, has compiled a list of such groups, which according to media reports, comprises some 160 organizations. However, not all parties have agreed with this list. So far, the members of the International Syria Support Group unanimously agree only on two names on the draft list: Islamic State (ISIS) and the Al-Nusra Front. Also, there is still no clarity as to who will represent the Syrian opposition at the talks. This list has not yet been finalized either. Participants in the New York meeting also failed to reach an agreement on the thorniest issue of all, that of Bashar al-Assad's political future. According to John Kerry, "obstacles and sharp differences remain within the international community, especially about the future of President Assad." At the same time, the adopted resolution says that "the Syrian people will decide the future" of their country. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, "this is a clear answer to attempts to impose on Syrians solutions to any questions, including the question on the future of their president."

What is Russia's position?

At his annual news conference on Dec. 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow "generally agreed with" the draft resolution prepared by the U.S. "I think Syrian officials, having studied the draft, will agree with it, too, although there may be something that somebody does not like. In an attempt to resolve a conflict that lasts many years, a bloody conflict, there is always room for compromise, but concessions should be made on both sides," said Putin. For Russia, in addition to the political settlement as such, another aspect of the Syrian crisis is also important, that of uniting efforts in the fight against terrorism. Commenting on the adopted resolution, Lavrov said that the voting at the UN "should pave the way to forming a broad anti-terror front on the basis of the UN Charter and relying on all those who are fighting terror on the ground, including the Syrian army, Kurdish militias, and armed groups of the patriotic Syrian opposition." He said the Russian military operation in Syria was a contribution to that fight.

Who took part in the meeting in New York?

The talks were attended by representatives of Russia, the U.S., the UN, France, the UK, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran, as well as the EU, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

When will the next meeting of the Syria Support Group be held?

According to Lavrov, members of the group are planning to convene for the next round in January. By then, it is expected, the list of opposition representatives to attend the intra-Syrian talks will have been compiled.

 [return to Contents] 

 #31
www.russia-insider.com
December 21, 2015
Russia Plays a Winning Syria Game at the United Nations
Russian diplomacy achieved a trio of Security Council Resolutions over the last month which give Russia a decisive advantage
By Alexander Mercouris

At the  beginning of Russia's intervention in Syria - in an interview for Radio Sputnik - I predicted the Russians would seek legal cover for their actions in the form of a Security Council mandate.  

In the event, months of intense diplomatic activity have resulted in three separate but complimentary Security Council Resolutions, all passed in just a few weeks.

Taken together with reports of continued advances by the Syrian army, these Resolutions give Russia what is starting to look like a winning hand.

To understand this however requires looking at each of these Resolutions in detail, and then seeing how they all work together.

RESOLUTION 2249

The first of these Resolutions is Resolution 2249 passed unanimously on 20th November 2015. Its full text can be found here.

Its key provision is paragraph 5 which reads as follows:

"5. (The Security Council) Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter, as well as international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Da'esh, in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by ISIL also known as Da'esh as well as ANF, and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al-Qaida, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the United Nations Security Council, and as may further be agreed by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) and endorsed by the UN Security Council, pursuant to the statement of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) of 14 November, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria."
I have discussed Resolution 2249 previously here.  

Some readers on the thread of my earlier discussion pointed out that Resolution 2249 was actually proposed to the Security Council not by Russia but by France.  

That however was simply an act of courtesy - undertaken for very practical reasons - extended by Russia to France in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attack.  

The Russians had been working hard for weeks to get a Resolution like Resolution 2249 passed. They had even proposed two drafts. Until the Paris attack all these efforts had got nowhere because of opposition from the US.

Following the Paris attack the Russians negotiated directly with the French, and agreed that it would be the French who would propose the Resolution to the Security Council.

They did this both as an act of courtesy to the French, and in order to ensure the US would support the Resolution. The US could not oppose a Resolution proposed by its NATO ally France in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attack.  

That this is what happened is clear not just from the events that led up to the passing of the Resolution, but from the text of the Resolution itself, which follows closely Russian thinking.

Resolution 2249 targets the various terrorist jihadi groups that have proliferated in Syria and Iraq since the start of the wars in those two countries. First and foremost these are the Islamic State, but also - in the Resolution's words - "individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups".

It authorises:

"Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter, as well as international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Da'esh, in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts".
In Britain this provision has been seized on by the British government to justify its bombing campaign in Syria.

It should be said clearly that it does no such thing.

The key point is that the "necessary measures....to prevent and suppress terrorist acts" authorised by the Resolution, must - as clearly set out in the Resolution - be "in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter."

International law does not permit a bombing campaign by one country of the territory of another country save (1) with the consent of the government of the country whose territory is being bombed; or (2) following a mandate from the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (Chapter VII is the part of the UN Charter which empowers the Security Council to act where there is a threat to peace); or (3) as an act of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

The British government has not obtained or sought to obtain the consent of the Syrian government to attack the Islamic State on Syrian territory.

Resolution 2249 does not authorise action under Chapter VII. In fact Resolution 2249 makes no reference to Chapter VII - the Russians were careful to make sure it did not.

The British government argues it is acting in self-defence under Article 51 in accordance with the so-called "pre-emption" principle, which allows a country to launch a pre-emptive attack on another country if it has good grounds to believe it is about to be attacked itself. The British government claims this principle gives it the right to bomb the Islamic State in Syria because the Islamic State poses an "immediate threat" to Britain, even if it is a threat that has not yet been realised.

This is a bogus argument, a fact accepted by the great majority of international lawyers, including British international lawyers.

Article 51 can only be used in this way where the Security Council is not acting or has not had time to act.

In this case the Security Council has acted by passing Resolution 2249. There are no grounds to say Britain can bomb the Islamic State in Syria under Article 51 because the Security Council has not acted, when it has plainly done so.

The right of self-defence in Article 51 anyway only arises where there has been an attack - or where there is an imminent threat of an attack - by one sovereign state upon another.

The Islamic State is not a sovereign state. It is a rebel entity in control illegally of certain territories within the territories of the sovereign states of Iraq and Syria, with whose governments it is at war.

Article 51 does not authorise an attack on the Islamic State inside the territory of states with which it is at war unless the governments of those states agree to it, or the Security Council authorises it.

In the case of Britain - and the US and France and the other states of the US-led coalition - neither the permission of the Syrian government or of the Security Council has been sought or provided.

Resolution 2249 therefore authorises the military action Russia and Iran are taking in Syria with the consent of the Syrian government, but not the military action taken by anyone else without the Syrian government's consent.  

It specifically does not authorise the military action taken by the members of the US-led coalition. Military action in Syria by the countries that make up this coalition - the US, Britain, France and the rest -  remains illegal.

What Resolution 2249 does is give the Russians and the Iranians - but no-one else - the Security Council's authority to conduct military operations against jihadi terrorists in Syria, because they have the permission of the Syrian government to do this.  

That is the purpose of Resolution 2249 and that is why the Russians worked so hard to get it passed.

Why did the Russians need Resolution 2249 when they already had the permission of the Syrian government?

The reason for that is that the Russians understand very well that the US and its allies dispute the legitimacy of the Syrian government.  

That opens up the possibility that at some time in the future the US and its allies might argue that Russia is acting illegally in Syria because it is acting with the consent of a government that has supposedly "lost" its legitimacy, and which is therefore no longer the true government of Syria.

Resolution 2249 scotches that possibility by giving the Russians a Security Council mandate before that argument is ever made.

KERRY'S VISIT TO MOSCOW AND RESOLUTIONS 2253 AND 2254

These two Resolutions - Resolutions 2253 and 2254 - were voted through on successive days (17th and 18th December 2015) hot on the heels of US Secretary of State Kerry's visit to Moscow.

Clearly they were the subject of prolonged negotiations between Russia and the US.

Kerry's visit to Moscow was in order to seal the deal.

The result is that both Resolutions had the formal backing of the US.  

The first Resolution - Resolution 2253 - was proposed by the US and Russia.  

The second Resolution - Resolution 2254 - was proposed to the Security Council by the US. However, as was the case with Resolution 2249, this is a formality taken to ensure US support. As is clear from its text, Resolution 2254 - just like Resolutions 2249 and 2253 - reflects Russian not US thinking and is clearly the product of Russia's diplomacy.

RESOLUTION 2253

Of these two Resolutions, the more important is Resolution 2253.

Unlike Resolutions 2249 and 2254, this is a Chapter VII Resolution.

It imposes financial sanctions on the Islamic State, other jihadi groups and their supporters.  

It is a gigantic Resolution, running to 28 pages, of a highly technical nature. Because it is so long and so technical its full implications have not been widely understood. Its full text can be found here.

Resolution 2253 imposes on the Islamic State and on various other jihadi groups the usual range of financial and other sanctions (asset freezes, travels bans etc) the Security Council is authorised to impose by Chapter VII of the UN Charter.  

It also sets up the usual range of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms (sanctions' committees etc) to enforce these sanctions. The greater part of the Resolution is taken up with these questions.

The key point to Resolution 2253 is however that it criminalises what the Russians say Turkey and some of the Gulf States have been doing by providing help to the Islamic State and to the various other jihadi groups that they support.

Since this is a very complex and technical Resolution, this point has generally been overlooked.  

The best summary of the Resolution's objectives is set out in its preamble:

"(the Security Council) Reaffirming its resolution 1373 (2001) and in particular its decisions that all States shall prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist acts and refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists...."
The Resolution then sets out various detailed provisions to achieve this objective.  

Paragraph 2(c) imposes a comprehensive arms embargo on the Islamic State and other jihadi groups.  

Paragraph 13 prohibits providing the Islamic State and other jihadi groups with any form of economic assistance.  

Paragraph 12 affirms that providing any form of prohibited assistance to the Islamic State and the other jihadi groups is a crime.  

Arguably, since a Security Council Resolution says this, that make this crime an international crime, which may mean that individuals who commit it can be prosecuted in the courts of any country and not just their own country or the country where they live.

That this is indeed so is suggested by paragraph 20, in which the Security Council pointedly reminds UN member states that they have a legal duty to pass legislation to make this a crime under their domestic law.

That suggests that if member states fail to do this, or if they pass such legislation but fail to act on it, then other member states have a legal duty to execute the will of the Security Council by acting to bring people to justice in their place.

If so then Resolution 2253 has indeed made providing help to the Islamic State and to other jihadi groups in Syria an international crime.

The Russians have publicly accused Turkey of doing precisely the things - supplying arms and economic and financial assistance to the Islamic State and other jihadi groups - that Resolution 2253 expressly prohibits and says are a crime.  

The Russians in recent weeks have also made very serious allegations concerning the illegal oil trade between Turkey and the Islamic State, which if true Resolution 2253 also says would be a crime.

There are also widespread concerns - expressed not just by the Russians - that the Islamic State and other jihadi groups are being financially supported by other governments and by wealthy individuals in some of the Gulf States.

At the G20 summit in Antaliya Putin famously showed the other G20 leaders evidence that this was indeed the case, and said publicly that some of the assistance the Islamic State and other jihadi groups are getting is coming from within certain G20 states.

If these various claims are true, then all those involved in carrying out these actions, in Turkey, the Gulf States and elsewhere, must now take into account the fact that the Security Council in a Resolution under Chapter VII has said that what they are doing is a crime, and probably an international crime, for which they can be tried in the courts of countries other than their own.

Here is what paragraph 13 of the Resolution says about what sort of activities are prohibited. Note the particular emphasis given to the illegal oil trade:

"13. (The Security Council) Reiterates Member States' obligation to ensure that their nationals and persons in their territory not make available economic resources to ISIL, Al-Qaida, and associated individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities, recalls also that this obligation applies to the direct and indirect trade in oil and refined oil products, modular refineries, and related material including chemicals and lubricants, and other natural resources, and recalls further the importance of all Member States complying with their obligation to ensure that their nationals and persons within their territory do not make donations to individuals and entities designated by the Committee or those acting on behalf of or at the direction of designated individuals or entities".
If Erdogan's son and members of Erdogan's family really are involved in the illegal oil trade with the Islamic State, and if some Saudi and Qatari individuals and even princes really are providing financial assistance to jihadi groups in Syria, then they are committing a crime, which is probably an international crime, for which they can now be tried in the courts of countries other than their own. One such country where they can now be tried is of course Russia.

That certain countries - Turkey and the Gulf States - are very unhappy and are probably very alarmed by this Resolution, is suggested by one small but interesting fact.

This is that no representative of any of these countries turned up to the Security Council to address the session where the Resolution was passed. Nor did any representative of the Saudi dominated Arab League. That no representative from any of these states attended the session is confirmed by the UN's summary of the discussion that preceded the vote on the Resolution.  

Only one Arab state - Jordan - is currently a member of the Security Council. Its ambassador did attend and speak at the session, and did support the Resolution.  

Jordan has however in recent weeks distanced itself from the other members of the anti-Assad coalition - a fact that became clear during the Jordanian King's recent visit to Moscow, which coincidentally happened on the same day that the Russian SU24 was shot down.

States that are not members of the Security Council can however ask to attend and speak at a session that is discussing an issue they consider important to themselves, and so can bodies like the Arab League. Syria and Ukraine do this often - as has the Arab League in the past - and their requests to do so are almost always granted.  

It is interesting that neither Turkey nor any other Arab state apparently asked to address the Security Council on this occasion, even though their interest in the subject under discussion is obvious.

RESOLUTION 2254

The third Resolution, Resolution 2254, was passed on the following day. Its text can be found here.

This Resolution provokes bitter feelings.  

It sets out a road-map for a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict.  

In doing so it revives the Annan peace plan that was agreed in Geneva in 2012.

That the Resolution revives the Annan peace plan is admitted by paragraph 1, which refers to the final communique of the 2012 Geneva conference where the Annan peace plan was agreed:

"1. (The Security Council) Reconfirms its endorsement of the Geneva Communiqué of 30 June 2012, endorses the "Vienna Statements" in pursuit of the full implementation of the Geneva Communiqué, as the basis for a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition in order to end the conflict in Syria, and stresses that the Syrian people will decide the future of Syria".
The Annan peace plan called for a ceasefire, negotiations to set up a transitional government, further negotiations to agree the terms of a new constitution for a non-sectarian ie. non-Islamist Syrian state, and eventual UN supervised elections when all this had been done.

Paragraph 4 of Resolution 2254 says all the same things, though it adds a highly ambitious and probably over-optimistic timetable:

"4. (The Security Council) Expresses its support, in this regard, for a Syrian-led political process that is facilitated by the United Nations and, within a target of six months, establishes credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance and sets a schedule and process for drafting a new constitution, and further expresses its support for free and fair elections, pursuant to the new constitution, to be held within 18 months and administered under supervision of the United Nations, to the satisfaction of the governance and to the highest international standards of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians, including members of the diaspora, eligible to participate, as set forth in the 14 November 2015 ISSG Statement".
The most important provisions in paragraph 4 are those which say that the process must be "Syrian-led" and that the final outcome must be "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian (ie. non-Islamist) governance".

This in essence is what the Russians have been calling for since 2011 when the Syrian conflict first started. Ever since then they have called for talks between the Syrian parties to settle the conflict peacefully.  

Back in 2011 President Assad agreed to the same thing - just as he agreed in the autumn of that year to an Arab League peace plan that said essentially the same thing, and to the Annan peace plan that said the same thing the following year.

It could all have been set out in a Security Council Resolution at any time since then, and could certainly have been so after all the parties supposedly agreed to it in Geneva back in 2012.   

The reason no Security Council Resolution like Resolution 2254 was passed in 2012 - or even sooner - is because the Syrian opposition backed by the US has always said they will not negotiate with the Syrian government whilst it is still led by President Assad, and the US has refused to support until now a Security Council Resolution that does not back this demand.

In other words the US and the Syrian opposition and the other Western states demanded President Assad's removal - a possible outcome of the negotiations - as a precondition for the negotiations taking place.

That would have rendered the negotiations pointless since there would have been nothing serious to talk about except how to transfer power from President Assad to his opponents.

Three and a half years later, after Syria has been completely devastated by a terrible civil war, the US has - very grudgingly and only for the moment - dropped this demand.

It appears nowhere in Resolution 2254, and Secretary of State Kerry's words show that the US has finally accepted the logic of Russian thinking on this issue, which is that demanding that President Assad goes as a precondition for talks taking place, simply guarantees that the talks will never take place, and that the war will continue.   

Kerry now says that demanding President Assad goes as a precondition for the talks is "a non starting position, obviously".

That of course is true. It is a tragedy that so many thousands of people have had to die before this truth was accepted.

It is because the US has finally dropped demand that President Assad goes which has made Resolution 2254 finally possible

The result is that three years late the Security Council has finally passed a Resolution that enshrines what is in effect Annan's peace plan, giving it the authority of the Security Council and of international law.

Henceforth Syrian opposition groups - and the states which support them - which continue to insist on President Assad's departure as a precondition for talks, are acting in defiance of the Security Council, making them legally responsible for any prolongation of the war that results from their stance.

CONCLUSION

This trio of Resolutions has to be treated as a major victory for Russian diplomacy - one that looked unthinkable just a few months ago.  

In four years of conflict the Security Council has been deadlocked. Now, in quick succession, it has passed three Resolutions all of which follow Russian thinking.

They (1) give a Security Council mandate for Russia's actions in Syria; (2) require Turkey, the Gulf States and others to cease their support for jihadi groups in Syria and for the Islamic State -with the threat of criminal prosecution if they don't; and (3) endorse a peace plan for Syria in every respect identical to the one the Russians have always called for ever since the conflict began in 2011.

These Resolutions do not however mean that the Syrian conflict is near to being over, or that Russia - or Syria or Iran - have "won".

The supporters of regime change - whether in Washington, Paris, London, Riyadh and Ankara - or in Syria itself - have not gone away or given up their plans.

They continue to insist that President Assad's ouster is the only outcome they will accept.

This remains the objective of the US, and there is no evidence it has given up on it.

The strongly negative attitude to the Russian diplomatic breakthrough of the Western regime change community is shown by one curious fact. This is that Samantha Power, the US's UN ambassador and regime change crusader in chief, has somehow contrived to avoid casting the US's vote for a single one of the three Resolutions that have just passed. On each occasion that the Security Council voted for one of these Resolutions the US's vote was wielded by someone else.

Nor will Turkey any of the Gulf states that want regime change in Syria cease to support their clients in Syria, even if it is now a criminal act for them to do so.

On the contrary a struggle is already underway over which groups fighting in Syria should be listed as terrorist groups or not, with regime change supporters in the West, in Turkey and in the Gulf all pressing to have groups they  support labelled "non-terrorist" so they can continue to support them.

Nonetheless the Resolutions do matter and have made a difference.  

Russia's approach to Syria has now received vindication from the UN and has the full weight of international law behind it.  

The Russians can henceforth insist that their point of view on any subject pertaining to the Syrian conflict - whether it concerns the closing of the Turkish border, the ending of the illegal oil trade, or the shape of the eventual Syrian settlement - is the only one that has the full weight of international law and of the international community behind it, since it is the one that the Security Council has determined.

The Russians are also now in a far stronger position to press their claim that those who are act in a contrary way - President Erdogan first and foremost - are acting illegally, in defiance of the Security Council and of the international community, and should be held to account for it.

As to how the Russians have achieved such a victory, that is a complex question, but the shift in the military balance in Syria caused by the Russian military intervention, and the revulsion amongst the Western public against the Islamic State and jihadi terrorism generally stirred up by the attack on Paris, have obviously been the decisive factors.

In every conflict, particularly one as complex and as finely balanced as the Syrian conflict, it is the side which over time manages to accumulates the most advantages that in the end wins.  

As the Syrian army continues its offensive, the trio of Security Council Resolutions Russian diplomacy has secured, together with the shift in the military balance on the ground, are starting to give the Russians what looks like a winning hand.

The big question over the next few weeks is to what extent the Russians - and their Syrian and Iranian allies - will be able to capitalise on this, and how they will press the advantage they have now secured.

 [return to Contents] 

 #32
The Unz Review
www.unz.com
December 19, 2015
Week Eleven of the Russian Intervention in Syria: A Step Back from the Brink?
By The Saker
[Text with links here http://www.unz.com/tsaker/week-eleven-of-the-russian-intervention-in-syria-a-step-back-from-the-brink/]

This has been an amazing week. While last week I concluded that "The only way to avoid a war is to finally give up, even if that is initially denied publicly, on the "Assad must go" policy". Now it is true that various US officials, including Kerry, did make statements about the fact that Assad need not go right now, that a "transition" was important or that "the institutions of the state" had to be preserved, but of course what I, and many others really meant, was that the US needed to fundamentally change its policy towards the Syrian conflict. Furthermore, since Turkey committed an act of war against Russia under the "umbrella" of the US and NATO, this also created a fantastically dangerous situation in which a rogue state like Turkey could have the impression of impunity because of its membership in NATO. Here again, what was needed was not just a positive statement, but a fundamental change in US policy.

There is a possibility that this fundamental change might have happened this week. Others have a very different interpretation of what took place and I am not categorically affirming that it did - only time will show - but at least it is possible that it has. Let's look at what happened.

First, there were some very unambiguous statements from John Kerry in Moscow. The most noticed ones were:

"As I emphasized today, the United States and our partners are not seeking so-called "regime change," as it is known in Syria" source.

"Now, we don't seek to isolate Russia as a matter of policy, no" source.

Now, I am acutely aware that Kerry has "lost" every single negotiation he has had with the Russians and I have written about that many times. I am also aware that Kerry has a record of saying A while with the Russians and non-A as soon as he gets back home. Finally, I also understand that Kerry is not the one really making the decisions but that this is what the US "deep state" does. But with all those caveats in mind, it is undeniable that these two statements constitute an official, if not necessarily factual, 180 degree turn, an abandonment of official US goals towards both Russia and Syria. Furthermore, we have seen not only words, but actual actions from the Americans. First, the US and Russia have agreed to draft a common list of "recognized terrorists" (as opposed to "moderate" freedom fighters). While it is debatable as to who will end up on the "good guys list", it is certain that all those who matter in Syria - al-Qaeda and Daesh - will make it to the "bad guys" list. That, in turn, will make it much harder, but not impossible (remember the Contras!) for the US to continue to assist and finance them. But the US did something even more interesting:

The USA announced that it was withdrawing 12 of its F-15s from Turkey, 6 F-15C and 6 F-15E. Now this might not look like much, but these are highly symbolic aircraft as they are the aircraft which were suspected of "covering" for the Turkish F-16s which shot down the Russian SU-24. The F-15Cs, in particular, are pure air-to-air fighters which could only have been directed at the Russian aircraft in Syria. Of course, the US declared that this was a normal rotation, that it has been an exercise, but the bottom line is here: while NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg had promised to reinforce the NATO presence in Turkey, the US just pulled out 12 of its top of the line aircraft. Compare that with the Russians who continued to increase their capabilities in Syria, especially their artillery (see here, here and here). Furthermore, there is this very interesting news item: "Erdogan's Spin Machine Now Blames Su-24 Shoot-Down on Turkish Air Force Chief". Read the full article, it appears that there is a trial balloon launched in the Turkish social media to blame the downing of the SU-24 on the Turkish Air Force Chief (nevermind that Erdogan publicly declared that he personally gave that order). Finally, Russia succeeded in getting a unanimous decision of the UNSC to adopt a Russian resolution targeting Daesh finances. Needless to say, if the Resolution was officially aimed at Daesh money sources, it really puts Qatar, Saudi Arabia and, especially, Turkey in a very difficult situation: not only does the Resolution foresee sanctions against any country or entity dealing with Daesh, but the investigation of any claims of such financial relationships will be conducted by the UN. According to Russia Today,

"The resolution also asks countries to report on what they have accomplished in disrupting IS' financing within the next 120 days. It also calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to write up a "strategic-level report" analyzing IS' sources of revenue within 45 days. "We are counting on it to be a very concrete and honest report," Churkin told RT. Churkin also mentioned Turkey's involvement in the illegal oil trade with IS, stressing that Turkish individuals as well as companies could be sanctioned under the resolution. He added that countries could even be sanctioned "if it turned out that [one of them] has not implemented enough effective measures against the fight of financial terrorism." According to the UN envoy, Russia was the only member that could provide proof of concrete schemes used by other countries to engage in illegal oil trade with Islamic State or how IS able to use the revenue from those transactions to purchase weapons from other countries, particularly from a few in Eastern Europe. The document, which is based on UN Charter Article VII and takes effect immediately, calls for members to "move vigorously and decisively to cut the flow of funds" to IS. It says that governments must prevent its citizens from funding or providing services to "terrorist organizations or individual terrorists for any purpose, including but not limited to recruitment, training, or travel, even in the absence of a link to a specific terrorist act."

So not only do the Russians now have the means to channel their intelligence about the collaboration between Daesh and Turkey to the UNSC, but the Secretary General will now produce a report based, in part, on this intelligence. This is all very, very bad news for Ankara.

So what is happening here?

Here is what I think might have happened.

My hypothesis

First, the downing of the Russian SU-24 is becoming a major liability. The Russians have immediately claimed that this was a carefully planned and cowardly ambush, but now top western experts agree. This is very embarrassing, and it could get much worse with the deciphering of the flight recorders of the SU-24 (which the Russians have found and brought to Moscow). The picture which emerges is this: not only was this a deliberate provocation, an ambush, but there is overwhelming evidence that the Turks used the information the Russians have provided to the USA about their planned sorties. The fact that the Americans gave that information to the Turks is bad enough, but the fact that the Turks then used that information to shoot down a Russian aircraft makes the US directly responsible. The USA is also responsible by the simple fact that there is no way the Turks could have set up this complex ambush without the USA knowing about it. Now, it is possible that some in the US military machine knew about it while others didn't. This entire operation sounds to me like exactly the kind of goofball plan the CIA is famous for, so maybe Kerry at State or even Obama did not really "know" about it. Or they did and are now pretending like they did not. Whatever may be the case, the US is now obviously trying to "off-load" this latest screwup on Erdogan who himself is trying to off-load it on his Air Force chief. What is certain is that the plan failed, the Russians did not take the bait and did not retaliate militarily, and that now the political consequences of this disaster are starting to pile up. As for Erdogan, he wanted to come out of this as the Big Pasha, the tough man of the region, but he now looks like an irresponsible coward (Putin ridiculed how the Turks ran to NATO as soon as the Russian SU-24 was shot down when he said: "they immediately ran to Brussels, shouting: "Help, we have been hurt." Who is hurting you? Did we touch anybody there? No. They started covering themselves with NATO."). Even the US and Europe are, reportedly, fed up and angry with him. As for the Russians, they seem to believe that he is a "Saakashvili v2" - a guy with whom there is nothing to discuss and whom the Kremlin considers as politically dead.

Second, look at Syria. Even under maximal pressure, the Russians did not yield or show signs of hesitation but did the exact opposite: they more than doubled their presence, brought in heavy artillery systems and even floated the idea of opening a 2nd major airport in Syria (this intention was later denied by Russian officials). For the Americans this meant something very simple: while the Russians are much weaker in Syria than the USA, they were clearly undeterred and were not only holding their ground, but digging in. In other words, they were ready for war.

I want to believe that the various warnings issued by many, including myself, might have contributed to convince the US analysts that the Russians were really ready to fight. First, there is Peter Lavelle who on his RT show CrossTalk has been warning about the path to war for literally months now. But there have been many others, including Pepe Escobar, Paul Craig Roberts, Alastair Crooke, Stephen Landeman, Stephen Cohen, who were sounding the alarm and warning the Empire that Russia would not 'blink' or 'back down' and that war was a very real, possibly inevitable, danger (you can see some my own warnings about that here, here, here and, of course, in my last week's column). I know how the intelligence process works and I believe that such a loud chorus of warnings might well have played a rule in the US decision to change course, if only for the immediate future.

As I have stressed over and over again, the "tactical-operational contingent of the Russian AirSpace forces in Syria" (that is their official name) is small, isolated and vulnerable. Syria is stuck between NATO and CENTCOM and the US can, if needed, bring an immense amount of firepower into Syria and there is nothing the Russians could do about that. See for yourself how many air bases the US has in CENTCOM and Turkey by clicking here: http://imageshack.com/a/img908/9391/B61WCG.jpg (high resolution, 7MB image created by SouthFront). But there is one thing even a small force can do: become a "tripwire" force.

Regardless of the limited capabilities of the Russian task force in Syria, it was large enough to be considered a "tripwire" force - one which attacked would result in a full-scale war with Russia. If the Americans had any doubts about that, they were instantly dispelled when they heard Putin officially declared that "I order you to act very extreme resolve. Any targets that threaten Russia's group or our terrestrial infrastructure is to be immediately destroyed".

The combination of all these factors was, apparently, sufficient to convince the US to step on the breaks before things really got out of hand.

Again, I am not affirming that this is what took place, but I want to believe that I am correct and that somebody in the USA finally understood that war with Russia was inevitable if the USA continued on the same course and took the decision to stop before it was too late. If this is really what happened, this is extremely encouraging and very, very good news. While stupidity and insanity, not to mention outright evil, are definitely present in the AngloZionist Empire's top command, there is always the possibility for decent and sane men to do the right thing and try to stop the crazies (like Admiral Mike Mullen did when the Neocons wanted to start a war with Iran).

The other big event of the week was, of course, the annual press conference of Vladimir Putin. I have posted the full text on my blog, so I will only mention one particularly interesting part here: Putin was asked about whether Russia wanted to keep a base in Syria forever. Here is what he replied:

"Some people in Europe and the US repeatedly said that our interests would be respected, and that our [military] base can remain there if we want it to. But I do not know if we need a base there. A military base implies considerable infrastructure and investment. After all, what we have there today is our planes and temporary modules, which serve as a cafeteria and dormitories. We can pack up in a matter of two days, get everything aboard Antei transport planes and go home. Maintaining a base is different. Some believe, including in Russia, that we must have a base there. I am not so sure. Why? My European colleagues told me that I am probably nurturing such ideas. I asked why, and they said: so that you can control things there. Why would we want to control things there? This is a major question. We showed that we in fact did not have any medium-range missiles. We destroyed them all, because all we had were ground-based medium-range missiles. The Americans have destroyed their Pershing ground-based medium-range missiles as well. However, they have kept their sea- and aircraft-based Tomahawks. We did not have such missiles, but now we do - a 1,500-kilometre-range Kalibr sea-based missile and aircraft-carried Kh-101 missile with a 4,500-kilometre range. So why would we need a base there? Should we need to reach somebody, we can do so without a base. It might make sense, I am not sure. We still need to give it some thought. Perhaps we might need some kind of temporary site, but taking root there and getting ourselves heavily involved does not make sense, I believe. We will give it some thought."

I find that reply quiet amazing. Can you imagine a US President actually thinking that way and openly saying it? Putin is quite obviously making fun of the so-called "experts" who have been telling us for years how much Russia cared about a base in Tartus and who now tell us that the airbase in Khmeimim is the next "forever base" for Russia not so much to protect Syria but to project Russian power. It turns out that Russia has no interest and no desire for any such costly power projection: " Should we need to reach somebody, we can do so without a base".

By the way, this translation is incorrect. What Putin really said was "Если кого-то надо достать, мы и так достанем". The word "dostat'" is translated here by "reach" but I would translate it by "get" meaning "if we need to get somebody (in the sense of "strike at somebody") we can already do that (i.e. without a base)". This was most definitely a veiled threat even if the official translation does not render it accurately (and yes, a supersonic and stealthy cruise missile with a reach of 4,500km does allow Russia to 'get' anybody anywhere on the planet, especially when delivered by aircraft with a 12,000km flying range).

When western leaders and expert assume that Russia is about building bases abroad they are really only projecting their own, imperial, mindset. I have said that over and over again: Russia has no intention of ever become an empire again simply because being an empire is bad for Russia. All Russia wants is to be a truly sovereign state and not to be a colony of the AngloZionists, but she has no intention whatsoever of becoming an "anti-USA" or a "Soviet Union reloaded". Hillary can scare herself at night with nightmare of Putin rebuilding the USSR, but there is no constituency in Russia for such a plan. Russia wants to be free and strong, yes, but an empire, no.

It is quite amazing to see how western leaders and experts project their own mindset unto others and then end up terrifying themselves in the process. It's quite pathetic, really.

In conclusion I will just add that it is quite likely that the focus will shift back to the Ukraine again. Not only is the Ukraine hours away from an official default, but the Ukronazis are openly threatening Crimea with, I kid you not, a "naval blockade"! Considering the lack of US and NATO enthusiasm for Erdogan's shooting down of the Russian SU-24, I very much doubt that anybody in the West will be happy with that goofy idea. So between the economic collapse, the political chaos, the coming winter and the Nazi freaks and their crazy plans to fight Russia, there is a pretty good chance that the next flashpoint will be in the Nazi-occuppied Ukraine again. I doubt that the US has the "mental CPU power" to deal with both crises at the same time, at least not in a sustained and energetic manner. That, again, is good news - the Empire is over-committed and overstretched and that is typically the only situation when it is willing to compromise. We shall soon know if my very cautious optimism is warranted or not.

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 #33
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
December 18, 2015
DEMOCRACY ≠ LIBERALISM
By Paul Robinson
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. Paul Robinson holds an MA in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Toronto and a D. Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a regular officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994, and as a reserve officer in the Canadian Forces from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as a media research executive in Moscow in 1995.
[Text with links here https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/democracy-%E2%89%A0-liberalism/]

Conspiracy theorists who imagine that the world is run by Freemasons, Zionists, or the Illuminati have it all wrong. The people really pulling the strings are graduates of St Antony's College, Oxford, many of whom have infiltrated the foreign ministries of countries around the world. Being a member of this global conspiracy, I received this week the college's annual newsletter, 'The Antonian'. An article by Dan Healy, the Director of St Antony's Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, entitled 'Irreconcilable Foes? LGBT Russians and their government?', looks at 'the roots of the 2013 law banning "propaganda among minors for non-traditional sexual relations".' It contains an interesting lesson about Russian democracy.

Healy explains that the roots of the legislation 'might be found in the early 2000s, when conservative-nationalists and religious lobbyists in the Duma began calling for such a law. ... The Russian MPs' crude early versions of their ban on "propaganda for homosexualism" were rejected.' Rebuffed nationally, conservatives moved their campaign to the local level. According to Healy, by 2012, 'Local authorities around the country had enacted their own versions of "gay propaganda" bans and from Novosibirsk the Duma received a formal request for a national ban.' At this point the Kremlin finally abandoned its opposition, perhaps because President Vladimir Putin had himself become more conservative and/or perhaps because the government recognized the public mood and wanted to score popularity points.

Normally, the Western press casts the blame for the 2013 law on Putin personally. What I find interesting about Healy's description is that it shows something rather different. The Kremlin initially resisted the policy, but in the end succumbed to perceived public demand. This reveals: first, that Russia is perhaps more democratic than people make it out to be; and second, that democracy in Russia does not necessarily equate with liberalism.

Nowadays, people in the West assume that more democracy equals more liberty. I think that in the longer term that does tend to be true. But not always. Often, the elites who govern Western democracies are more liberal than many or most of the people they represent, as seen for instance with opposition to the death penalty and support for immigration. Also, some of the more important advances in human rights have come not from legislatures, but from the courts - in other words, from the non-elected part of constitutional systems. If governments in Western countries accurately reflected the desires of their peoples, they might well be much less liberal than they are.

Americans often forget that their founding fathers were actually rather suspicious of democracy, which they felt would lead to mob rule and was thus injurious to liberty. They therefore devised a semi-democratic, semi-monarchical, constitution. Similarly, 19th century Russian liberal conservative thinkers believed that only an autocratic government could bring about liberal reform - democratic governments would in practice prove to be reactionary. I don't think that they were entirely right about that, but as the example above shows, they weren't entirely wrong either.

In a 2004 letter, imprisoned Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky wrote that, 'Putin is probably neither a liberal nor a democrat, but he is still more liberal and democratic than 70 percent of our country's population'. If Putin is now less liberal, that means that he has become closer to the people he represents, not the opposite. A recent article by the University of Copenhagen's Matthew Del Santo highlights this:

"Mikhail Remizov, director of Russia's Institute of National Strategy, shares this view, saying in a recent interview: 'Russian democracy must by definition be conservative, populist, nationalist and protectionist'. Until 2012, he said, the conservatives 'who really enjoy the sympathies of the majority of the nation occupied the place of an opposition. Real power remained in the hands of the neo-liberal elite that had run the country since the 1990s'. This has now changed. 'Putin is falsely presented as a nationalist', said Remizov. 'In a Russian context, he's a sovereigntist. But in general, the agenda of the Kremlin today is formed by the opposition of the 2000s: the conservative, patriotic majority.'"

None of this is meant to say that democracy is a bad thing; it has many advantages above and beyond its capacity to deliver liberal reform. Not least of these advantages is improved accountability. Rather, the point is that Russia's government consists of a curious mix of democratic and non-democratic elements, and Healy's article draws our attention to the uncomfortable fact that some of the aspects of Russian behaviour that we in the West don't like are due more to the former than to the latter.

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 #34
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
December 18, 2015
US-Russia relations should be seen beyond the immediate agenda
RD Interview: Stanford University's Kathryn Stoner offers her views on what needs to be done next to fix U.S.-Russian relations. One long-term opportunity, she says, is the promotion of peer-to-peer programs that engage young Russians and Americans.
By Pavel Koshkin

Russia Direct sat down with Stanford University's Kathryn Stoner to discuss the recent visit of U.S. Secretary John Kerry to Moscow, the challenges facing U.S.-Russia relations and the nature and the roots of mutual misunderstanding between the U.S. and Russia. In addition, Stoner analyzes the potential of peer-to-peer programs in bringing the two countries together.

Russia Direct: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moscow this week after the Russian and American presidents had several meetings on the sidelines of the G20 Summit and the UN Climate Change Summit in Paris. Is it a good sign?

I think it is significant, yes. However, I would not interpret the these meetings as a definitive thaw in relations. Although the U.S. wants to get some sort of ceasefire and possible peace agreement in Syria, I don't think we should expect a close partnership over other issues any time soon. The U.S. will not do anything substantive with Russia until Russian forces pull out of Eastern Ukraine. Mr. Putin has evidently acknowledged this in his most recent annual press conference with the Russian people.

RD: The Kremlin denies its involvement in Eastern Ukraine.

K.S.: What Russia says they are doing there is different than what we think they are doing. That [Russia's pullback of its support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine] would be a very good first step in terms of building up goodwill with the United States. Until that's done, it is very unlikely it is going to be any kind of strong or close relationship, which is frankly bad for both countries.         

RD: Some experts who participated in the 2015 ASEEES convention argue that the Kremlin is seeking to break the international rules, but cannot come up with new ones. In contrast, Russia believes that the West is not committed to international norms and repeatedly accusing it of double standards.  Amidst this background, it is almost impossible to find common ground between Putin and Obama and future American presidents. What is your take?

K.S.:  It's too late for Russia to re-establish relations with Mr. Obama, but Mr. Putin has to adjust to the possibility that the next president of the United States will be Hillary Clinton, who will peruse effectively the same policy with Russia as Mr. Obama has in last two or three years.

That is, that policy is not going to be softened at all. In the recent Republican presidential candidate debate, several of the candidates expressed even tougher stances toward Russia, and Mr. Putin personally, but much of this is just posturing for their constituents here in the U.S.

I think the big issue is that Russia has grievances with a post-Cold war settlement and some of those are legitimate, including to some degree, NATO expansion, but U.S. policy makers see this very differently from Russia. They don't see NATO expansion as being purposely aggressive, nor do they consider NATO expansion aimed at containing Russia - at least not until recently.

They see it as sovereign nations in Eastern Europe asking to join NATO and declaring themselves, more generally, closer to Europe than to Russia.

And I think Putin and his team should understand that this is the choice coming from sovereign nations, not from countries that are still under the sphere of Russia's historical influence. And that's just a fundamental disagreement; it is not going to be easy to re-negotiate with any subsequent American leader.

RD: If so, the Kremlin would better understand what exactly it gets wrong about the United States in general and about the American president specifically. So, what are the major flaws in Russia's approaches toward the U.S.?  

K.S.:  Actually, it is difficult to understand the American process for anybody who is not American. For any leader of Russia it is likely very difficult to understand that the President of the United States does not have the same kind of decision-making flexibility as the President of Russia has.

Here in the United States we have a lot of interests to take into account and the U.S. is an increasingly divided country. The elections are very meaningful and the process is protracted, the length of the primary season is very protracted. And an American president has to bring any decision-making on most of the very important foreign policy issues to the Congress and the Senate.

With a divided government now (that is, the Democrats holding the White House and the Republicans having a majority in Congress), it is hard to get agreement on new initiatives. The other issue is that the Republican party itself is very divided, making decision making and governance even more of a challenge in Congress in particular.

In addition, just as Russia feels it has responsibility to Russian speakers in different parts of the world, the U.S. leadership feels it has responsibility for protecting human rights and this is not a new thing. This is not something that is likely to change between administrations, but we actually believe in democracy and we believe we want to fight for democracies.

It's as much a security argument as it is a normative argument: historically, democracies since the end of the Second World War have not fought each other, so we have an interest in promoting democracy in order to promote more peaceful international relations.

So, the view of the world is very different. Mr. Putin seems to attribute a lot to the power of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, but the CIA is not the driver of American policy. It is also just not capable of fomenting Maidan or something like that, there is just no reliable evidence that Maidan was a foreign plot. It was unhappy Ukrainians protesting a corrupt President.

RD: The Kremlin's foreign policy has been a big surprise for the West in 2015. In your view, what has driven Russia when it kept supporting rebels in Donbas and launched a military gambit in Syria?

K.S.: The major drivers of the Russian foreign policy this year would be Mr. Putin's desire to re-establish Russia in international relations and what the Russian leadership sees as the rightful place in the international system, that Russia is a great power that has the right to reassert itself.

Mr. Putin is also seeking to end Russia's isolation in the international community, especially, in respect to some countries of Europe and the United States. And that's partly what brought Putin into Syria as well, I think. Finally Russia has its own Islamic terrorist worries that are also related to involvement in Syria. I suppose what has surprised American policy makers the most, though, is that Russia would seek to undertake the Syrian intervention at a time when its economy is doing so poorly.  

RD: What do American leaders and politicians get wrong about Russia's political system, in your view?

K.S.: There is a misunderstanding about how threatening NATO's expansion looks to Russia, there is a limited understanding of that. We see the expansion as very benign, that we didn't invite and that Poland and Romania would like to come to NATO rather than being asked to come in.

Also, frankly, we have a very limited interest in Ukraine or in Georgia: It is not like there is a huge Ukrainian or Georgian diaspora that is going to sway elections in the U.S.  But the Russian government is very nervous about NATO on its borders. I think the U.S. underestimates how nervous Russian leaders are about this.

Although Mr. Putin may see American hands in every thing, we just don't have strategic interest there and right now, any American president is thinking in terms of the Unites States' strategic interest after, particularly, these two disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is really no interest in putting troops on the ground in Ukraine or in having a big permanent NATO presence in Western Europe. So, this is Russia's misunderstanding.
 
In the U.S., I think there is confusion about what the Russian political system is. It seems to be increasingly authoritarian, where individual rights are being limited and NGOs, for example, are being closed down; however, on the other hand, Mr. Putin's approval rating seems to be very high. It is hard for American liberal democrats to understand how both things can happen at the same time.

RD: Yes, despite the economic crisis Russia is currently facing, the support for Putin is not decreasing, but, instead, increasing.  How can you account for it?

K.S.:  Mr. Putin is still popular in Russia despite the economic crisis because there is no real alternative to him in the political sphere. There is no effective opposition that would present an alternative vision for Russia. And also, for a while at least, nationalism and patriotism can help people to get through the economic crisis. In addition, Crimea is viewed as a legitimate part of Russia.

And, finally, the economic crisis has been blamed more on the sanctions by the West as opposed to Russia's policy and not diversifying the economy. But I think the reasonable question is how long people hang on, you can't eat nationalism and patriotism. It remains to be seen.

RD: What is your recommendation to the next American president of how to deal with Russia?

K.S.:  There is a kind of neo-containment strategy in terms of political actors unless Russia pulls out of Ukraine. I think [returning] Crimea would be ideal as well, but at least, withdrawing from Donbass would be good.

But I would recommend looking beyond the immediate administration in Russia or in the United States, because Russian society is complex, there are different strains of opinion within Russian society and I think what we'll have to do is fostering more person-to-person, peer-to-peer dialogue and all sorts of such programs as we did in the 1980s and the early 1990s.

RD: Given the fact the current Russia-West differences affected educational exchanges, do you think that peer-to-peer programs will be viable and effective in such politically charged atmosphere when even a think tank like Moscow Carnegie Center is accused of being a channel for promoting the Kremlin's view?

K.S.: That's why I think they [peer-to-peer programs] will be [effective] in the long-term. And it also has to go to a younger generation of people under 30, who don't necessarily have memories of the Soviet Union, who don't' necessarily care about whether or not Russia owns Crimea as much as they want to do business. And business now is done globally.

One of the most valuable things I've seen over last two years while dealing with Russia's students and academics (which I do regularly) is actually the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum (SURF) program: listening to the perspectives of young Russians and Americans, hearing how they argue among one another (Russians with Russians, and Americans with Americans, that is).

One of things you appreciate when you travel is that when you talk about Russia or the United Sates, there are many aspects of Russia and the United States. As one of my colleagues says: "There is no "Mr. Russia." I find it eye-opening.

RD: What do you think about the current state of Russian Studies in the United States given the fact that some claim that America lacks good experts on Russia?

K.S.:  Money has been put into the study of Arabic as opposed to the study of the Russian language, because the opinion under the Bush administration was that the Cold War was over and Russia was done.  So, we should put more money in Russia Studies until we start seeing the interest in rejuvenating the study of Russian in American academia.
RD: Could American Studies in Russia and Russian Studies in the U.S. be a sort of academic soft power tool to improve relations between the two?

K.S.: Yes, again, student exchanges can increase [to a certain] extent peer-to-peer dialogue and that's a generational issue. But putting more money from both sides in these fields to bring together academic and business people from each country would be great.

After all, now we have a national security interest in a stable and prosperous Russia. It means if Russia is liberalized and becomes democratic, this will be better for the U.S. , because a lot of the U.S. foreign policy, regardless of whether it is run by a Democratic or Republican president, is based on the idea of democratic peace and the concept that "democracies don't fight democracies."

This is not just the line, but it has penetrated the American foreign policy establishment pretty thoroughly. This is one reason why there is such an interest in democracy promotion, it is not a matter of undermining autocracies all over the world, but to it is a matter of enhancing national security and stability.

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 #35
BBC
December 21, 2015
Is Russia still a key world power?
By James Nixey
Russia and Eurasia Programme head, Chatham House

Whether Russia, one of 15 successor states to the USSR, which broke up in 1991, is still a genuine world power in 2015 is open to question.

-It remains the world's largest country and the largest oil producer

-It retains its permanent seat on the UN Security Council (one among five)

-Its nuclear arsenal (in Cold War times one of five countries, but now one of nine) has been progressively modernised

-Sustained increases in defence spending have brought it close to its goal of escalation dominance in local and regional war

But the economic base for these capabilities is steadily declining.

Russia's economy is the 10th largest in the world, producing little of value beyond hydrocarbons.

Corruption and rent-seeking extract an enormous economic toll.

It remains burdened with Soviet era infrastructure, and its ability to meet the educational and medical needs of its population is rapidly declining.

Whatever one's view, two further points for and against Russia's global standing are undeniable:

-Russia regards itself as a great power - it is not in question anywhere inside the country

-China has long since eclipsed Russia as the world's number two power behind the US

Yet for all Russia's pretence about a rebalancing of priorities towards Asia, since the fallout over Ukraine, it still measures itself against the West, and America in particular.

Distinct Eurasian niche

Regardless of hypothetical rankings or real-world measurements, Russia has carved out a niche for itself as a distinct Eurasian pole in world politics, allied to neither Europe nor Asia but seeking influence there and beyond.

Its membership of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of rising powers suggests an acknowledgement that Russia has not quite arrived (there is no contradiction for Russia between this and pre-existing great power status) but also that is it is civilisationally distinct from Europe.

Certainly, there is no current desire to be part of most prominent Western-led organisations such as the European Union.

Indeed, Russia has striven to come up with its own alternatives over the years, the latest of which, a Eurasian Union, is designed precisely as a counterweight but free of the burden of Western norms and values.

Whether it will have a longer life than its antecedents, considering Russia's failing economic fortunes and other countries' evident reluctance to be joined too closely, remains to be seen.

Russia's mission beyond the quest for influence is hard to discern.

It is the world's most ostentatious foe of democracy promotion.

But its foreign aid is minimal (especially beyond the other former Soviet states - where its purpose is often regarded as a double-edged sword), and its contribution to UN-led peacekeeping has withered since the 1990s.

World's largest economies by gross domestic product (GDP) (in millions of US dollars, 2014):
US: 17,419,000
China: 10,360,105
Japan: 4,601,461
Germany: 3,852,556
UK: 2,941,886
France: 2,829,192
Brazil: 2,346,118
Italy: 2,144,338
India: 2,066,902
Russian Federation: 1,860,598

Until the recent campaign in Syria, Russia had talked of itself as a global power, but behaved like a regional power.

Russia's greatest challenge is to preserve its global importance while most of the relevant indicators are dropping and its allies are few and far between (dictators, largely).

For some, Russia's natural and historical pre-eminence mean it will always be a key player.

Others fear Russia may compensate for weakness with risky foreign adventurism.

Indeed, for many, it is already doing just that.

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 #36
Consortiumnews.com
December 17, 2015
The Danger After Putin
By Gilbert Doctorow
Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of the American Committee for East West Accord. His most recent book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

Exclusive: America's neocons are lusting for their ultimate "regime change" - destabilizing Russia and getting rid of President Putin - but they ignore the likelihood that the leader after Putin would be a much more hardline nationalist, a prospect addressed by Gilbert Doctorow.

As in Soviet times, Russian taxi drivers remain among the best informed and eager interlocutors about the ins and outs of the country's often opaque politics - what we used to call "Kremlinologists" who would decipher who was rising or falling based on who was standing closest to whom at public events.

To show that "Kremlinology" is alive and well, the taxi drivers were speculating this week on the imminent removal of St. Petersburg Governor Georgi Poltavchenko because he was nowhere to be seen at the top shows of the Fourth International Cultural Forum, a major event in the old imperial capital which attracted the big bosses from Moscow who were everywhere.

But more significant to the West is the power line-up behind President Vladimir Putin if he were to leave office for whatever reason. For years now, American hardliners and particularly the neoconservatives have been lusting for "regime change" in Moscow, hoping that some malleable figure like the late President Boris Yeltsin would be put back on top.

However, as my well-informed taxi drivers tell me, the man one heart-beat away from Putin is Sergei Ivanov, who would make Putin look like a pussy-cat in dealing with the West.  And if not Ivanov, the next in line is likely Dmitry Rogozin, another fervent patriot and Kremlin favorite.

Despite what Russian dissidents Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Masha Gessen have been telling the readers of The New York Times, "regime change" in Moscow would almost surely not achieve the goal of a second Yeltsin era. Memories are still too fresh of the humiliating 1990s after the Soviet collapse when the West dispatched financial "experts" who prescribed capitalist "shock therapy" for the Russian system - leading to a precipitous decline in living standards and an alarming rise in death rates.

What's clear is that there are no "liberals" beloved of the West in Russia's present Matryoshka doll of power, a message that Beltway insiders would do well to absorb. Not that there is any significant sign of public disapproval of Putin.

On the streets of St. Petersburg, the hoopla of the Cultural Forum was just a backdrop for the visit to the city by Putin, who has not been here for months, I was told. His expected appearance at opening ceremonies of the Forum was the talk of the town.

Russian media promoted the event to the domestic audience as the "Davos of Culture," a reference to the renowned international business conference at Davos, Switzerland. There would be 9,000 visitors to concerts, dance performances and panel discussions led by curators, film directors and a lot of well-known art scholars.

The venues were concentrated in the General Staff building of the Hermitage on Palace Square but also spread out across the historic center of the city. The international dimension would come from diplomats and government officials from more than 40 countries.  If Europe would be woefully underrepresented (just Luxembourg was on the roster of participants), there would be a lot of Far Eastern worthies to make up the gaps.

Moreover, the biggest foreign presence was UNESCO-related, part of the 70th anniversary of that institution which just happens to be headed by a Russian-speaking graduate of the Moscow University for International Affairs, Irina Bokova from Bulgaria.

A vast number of little celebrities vied for an invitation to the closed events, while various "security organs" at local and federal levels tried to outdo themselves to ensure there were no incidents.

Some bright guys in these special services put so many hurdles in the path of issuing badges, with or without access to certain events (notably the ones with Putin), with or without holograms, that their computer system crashed, causing utter chaos in processing visitors from the general public, journalists and participants in the Forum.

The madness continued at the entrance to the Mariinsky-2 Theater, where the main opening ceremony was held Monday evening. Our printed invitations proved to be worthless. The end result was improvised violation of the system by the staff who were totally overwhelmed and pasted on the essential holograms to move folks along.

Once past the lines for re-accreditation, past the machine verification of access and the metal detectors, a surreal calm and note of elegant hospitality at the presidential level took over.  Flutes of champagne were distributed by radiant young staff.

Putin did not keep us waiting. He was first to speak on stage, delivering a brief salutation to the audience and making a quick exit. The two-hour ceremony was followed by a traditional Russian "walking dinner" as guests thronged and picked clean the passing trays of caviar and crab sandwiches.

For those who read into my account the suggestion that there are vulnerabilities in the presidential security, my best advice is to send in emails to the Kremlin urging Putin to yet again sack his security detail and bring in more clever folks. The last thing we all need is "regime change" in Russia.

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 #37
TASS
December 20, 2015
We cannot allow east Ukraine's Russian speakers to be "devoured", Putin says

Vladivostok, 20 December: Russia cannot abandon the Russian-speaking residents of Donbass to be "devoured" by Ukraine's nationalists, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview for the documentary "World Order" shown on the TV channel Rossiya 1.

The extension of the West's sanctions against Russia is often linked to the implementation of the Minsk accords, he recalled. "Come on, it is not we who have to pass changes to the constitution (in Ukraine to comply with Minsk-2 - TASS), is it? Of course not," Putin said.

According to him, everyone realizes this full well "but they think they need to put pressure on Russia a little bit so that we make more concessions somewhere".

"It is nothing at all to do with us to go on the offensive somewhere or to insist on something. Our sole concern is that we cannot abandon those people who live in the southeast of the country, not just Russians but also the Russian-speaking population that aligns itself with Russia, to be devoured by the nationalists," the Russian president said, adding that "there is nothing extreme in this position".

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 #38
www.rt.com
December 18, 2015
NATO chief misinterpreted Putin's words on military presence in Ukraine - Kremlin

Any allegations of Vladimir Putin acknowledging Russian military presence in Ukraine are "absolutely incorrect," presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has told reporters.
"This is absolutely incorrect," Peskov said after a journalist asked him if it was possible to say that Russian military specialists were present in southeast Ukraine at some point of the conflict there.

The comment came less than one day after President Putin told a major press conference in Moscow that it was wrong to say that there were regular Russian troops in Ukraine, but added, "We have never said that there are no people there engaged in solving certain questions, including ones in the military sphere."

This statement caused NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to announce that the Russian president was admitting his country's military presence in Ukraine. "He has confirmed Russia has personnel in eastern Ukraine and these personnel have conducted military activities. That is what we normally call soldiers," the Wall Street Journal quoted Stoltenberg as saying.

"If you read the president's words without bias [you would notice that] he has repeatedly talked about citizens of Russia and other CIS countries who were going there on their own initiative," Peskov said in a comment Friday. "Some of these people did not have a particular employment, some took their regular vacations or made a self-sponsored break from work. The people who go there had in their time expressed their solidarity with Donbass and considered it inappropriate to put up with the fact that Ukrainian military forces started to destroy settlements in southeast Ukraine," Peskov said.

The spokesman further explained that what was going on in Ukraine was a real war and this caused Putin to choose the term "military sphere." He again stressed that the people mentioned were volunteers and it was wrong to describe them as "Russian military specialists."

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 #39
Interfax
December 20, 2015
West mistaken - no plans to re-create Soviet Union - Putin on Ukraine

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, 20 December: Russian President Vladimir Putin regrets that in the implementation of its policy with regard to Ukraine and the whole post-Soviet space, the West is guided by the erroneous notion that Moscow wants to restore the Soviet Union.

"As for Ukraine and all the former Soviet Union, I am convinced that the position of our partners, both European and American, is driven not by the protection of the interests of Ukraine but is an attempt to prevent the restoration of the Soviet Union. And nobody wants to believe us that we have no plans to recreate the Soviet Union," the president said in an interview as part of the TV channel Rossiya 1 (VGTRK) documentary "World Order".

As Putin put it, "even the hypothetical possibility itself that Russia and Ukraine might join forces as part of modern, primarily economic integration processes which would certainly make both Russia and Ukraine more competitive in the global economy - even this hypothetical possibility itself is causing our partners to have sleepless nights [literally: "is not letting our partners have a good, deep sleep"]".

"I think that their main aim is to prevent this joining of forces. It is indeed an open secret that the West did everything in its power to prevent the creation of the Single Economic Space, as up till now they did not even want to talk to the Eurasian Economic Union as a full member of international life. Somehow, it's OK to create the European Union but not the Eurasian Union," he said.

Nevertheless, according to Putin, the "realization that this position is destructive [counterproductive] is now gradually dawning on our partners".

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#40
The Guardian
December 18, 2015
Kiev has a nasty case of anti-communist hysteria
Ukraine has banned a party that is neither communist nor dangerous - clearing the way for a new left loyal to neither Russia nor the west
By Volodymyr Ishchenko
Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist studying social protests in Ukraine. He is the deputy director of the Center for Social and Labor Research, a member of the editorial board of Commons: Journal for Social Criticism and LeftEast web-magazine, and a lecturer at the Department of Sociology in Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

An anti-communist hysteria is prevailing in Kiev. After banning Soviet symbols earlier this year, a court has now outlawed the Communist party of Ukraine, preventing it from organising and taking part in elections.

The ban has been criticised by civil liberties campaigners, who say it contravenes the European Convention of Human Rights, to which Ukraine is a signatory. Under the convention, a political party cannot be banned for its symbols - rather there must be "proven activities" dangerous to the national security.

But the irony is that the Communist party of Ukraine is neither communist nor dangerous. The only things the party has in common with the determined Bolshevik revolutionaries of the past who spared neither themselves nor others are devotion to the Soviet symbols and appeals to empty "Marxist-Leninist" phrases.

Ukraine's Communist party was the most popular political group in the country during market reforms in the 1990s, but has since degenerated into a conservative and pro-Russian rather than pro-working class grouping, gradually losing its voters and elderly membership.

Party leaders became a part of the bourgeois elite and invited business support for their cause. The richest woman in the previous session of Ukrainian parliament, multimillionaire Oksana Kaletnik, was a member of the Communist group.

After the fall of Viktor Yanukovich's government following the pro-European Maidan protests in 2014, some Communist activists and local organisations did support the separatist uprising in the east of the country. However the party leadership repeatedly stated its support for Ukrainian territorial integrity and excluded dissenters from its membership.

The party's inconsistent stance towards the war in eastern Ukraine is one of the reasons for its current crisis. It hysterically criticised the "national fascist" regime that took over in Kiev while saying not a single critical word abut Russia.

Yet its statements were not backed by deeds. Communist party leaders disappointed many former members who expected more decisive actions against the post-Maidan government of billionaire chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko.

Combined with the loss of a large part of the pro-Communist electorate in Russian and separatist-controlled Crimea and Donbass, the party failed to get into the parliament in October 2014 for the first time in its history.

Despite being banned from local elections two months ago, Communist party candidates participated under the banner of the New State party - but performed even worse, winning only slightly more than one per cent of the votes.

Now the Communist party is simply an easy scapegoat. The Ukrainian government needs to continue the ideological war to divert attention from rising prices and austerity. In doing so, it is building political intolerance in a country already torn apart by war.

The ban will not make the party stronger. This is not an organisation able to close ranks, go underground and fight. It will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and might well win the case - as has happened in similar situations of anti-communist repression and censorship in eastern Europe.

But the crackdowns and electoral defeats have exacerbated already deep internal divisions within the party. Recently 19 local leaders from southern and eastern Ukrainian organisations resigned from the central committee to protest against repression of internal dissent.

They blamed a very unpopular Petro Symonenko, who has been party leader since it was founded in 1993.

The left flank of Ukrainian politics is vacant for now but won't be for long. New "left" political projects sponsored by oligarchs are likely to appear, trying to gather the former Communist votes and some of the local membership.

On the other side, some "pro-Ukrainian left" party will probably arise to legitimise the government in the eyes of the west. It will mostly support the government's policies against Russia and Donbas separatists but will criticise it from mild social-democratic or left-liberal positions.

But the genuine left should not become pawns in oligarchs electoral games nor act as the loyal whitewashers of a neo-liberal nationalist government.

A new left party should be deeply embedded into Ukrainian social movements and labour unions. It should be neither pro-Kiev nor pro-Moscow, but bring together ordinary people in the west and east in a fight for their shared class interests against their common enemies in Kiev, Donetsk, Moscow, Brussels and Washington.

Genuine internationalism and going back to the class roots is the only way for the new left in Ukraine. Every person who values democracy must oppose the ban of the Communist party. It violates human rights. It adds to political hysteria. It diverts attention from urgent problems in the Ukrainian economy.

But we have to understand the mistakes the Communists made and to avoid them in the reconstruction of the Ukrainian left.

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 #41
The Jerusalem Post
December 21, 2015
Ukrainian Jews shocked after city elects neo-Nazi mayor
By Sam Sokol

Two months after local elections were held across Ukraine, the residents of the small northern city of Konotop are expressing shock and dismay over the behavior of newly-chosen Mayor Artem Semenikhin of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party.

According to news reports, Semenikhin drives around in a car bearing the number 14/88, a numerological reference to the phrases "we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" and "Heil Hitler"; replaced the picture of President Petro Poroshenko in his office with a portrait of Ukrainian national leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera; and refused to fly the city's official flag at the opening meeting of the city council because he objected to the star of David emblazoned on it.

Svoboda, known as the Social-National Party of Ukraine until 2004, has been accused of being a neo-Nazi party by Ukrainian Jews and while party leaders have a history of making anti-Semitic remarks, their rhetoric has toned down considerably over the past years as they attempted to go mainstream.

While it managed to enter mainstream politics and gain 36 out of 450 seats in the Rada, Ukraine's parliament, the party's support seemed to evaporate following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, in which it played a central role. It currently only holds six seats in the legislature.

The party managed to improve its standing during recent municipal elections, however, obtaining some 10 percent of the vote in the capital of Kiev and garnering second place in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. For the most part, however, Svoboda is far from the major worry for Ukrainian Jews that it was only two years ago.

"It is a sad, but a reality when anti-Semites are being elected in local governing bodies, even mayors promoting hate and intolerance. Konotop is a clear case," said Eduard Dolinsky of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee.

For the Jews of Konotop, however, worries persist, with Ilya Bezruchko, the Ukrainian representative of the US-based National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, saying that he believed that residents, who generally get along well with local Jews, voted for Semenikhin because he projected an image of someone who could bring change and reform a corrupt system.

However, Semenikhin himself has a history of fraud, having been arrested for posing as an electricity company worker in order to extract payments from businesses in Kiev in 2012, Bezruchko charged.

Bezruchko, whose late grandfather was the head of the community and whose mother currently works for the city council, said that Semenikhin and his assistant have left angry comments on his Facebook page in response to critical articles that the Jewish activist had posted on his blog.

He claimed that someone close to the mayor claimed that he would be hospitalized if he returned to the city from Kiev, where he currently lives, and that the mayor himself posted to say that his mother was corrupt and should be fired from her job.

"The reaction of community is shock. People are shocked it could happen in the city and nobody believed it could happen here but it happened somehow," community activist Igor Nechayev told the Jerusalem Post by phone on Monday.

While there have been a couple of instances of anti-Semitic graffiti over the past decade and one occasionally hears references to conspiracy theories identifying Ukrainian political leaders as Jews, for the most part relations between the Jewish community and their non-Jewish neighbors are cordial, he said.

However, while the mayor attempts make sure that his statements never cross over into outright anti-Semitism, many things he says can be interpreted in such a way, he continued. As an example, he referred to a recent statement by Semenikhin in which the Mayor refused to apologize for anti-Jewish actions taken by far right nationalists during the Second World War, intimating that it was because those responsible for the Holodomor famine of the 1930s were largely Jewish.

The Holodomor was a man-made famine that came about during the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union and which led to the starving deaths of millions. Ukrainians consider it a genocide.

"The community is discussing the situation and they understand that the mayor is balancing between anti-Semitism- he isn't crossing a red line with statements but saying borderline things that can be understood as antisemitic," he explained.

While the Jews are not scared, Nechayev said that they are wary because "Svoboda has a lot of activists [and] fighters in region and [they] can be dangerous."

Many of the community's members are elderly and there aren't many young activists. However he said, members of the city council who have approached by members of the community seem in agreement regarding the Mayor, with several indicating that he has insufficient experience and will not last long in the job.

Speaking to the Post, Vyacheslav Likhachev, an anti-Semitism researcher affiliated with the Vaad of Ukraine and the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, said that "Ukrainians are afraid of the Russian threat, not the threat of national radicalism" and that "Semenikhin has successfully created himself an image of defender of Ukrainian independence, and voters were able to support him, not paying attention to the radicalism of his views."

"Unfortunately, the current Ukrainian legislation does not allow it to be forbidden to take part in the election candidates with right-wing views, or to remove them from the elected positions. The special anti-communist and anti-Nazi law talks about banning the symbols of the National Socialist (Nazi) of the totalitarian regime, which includes symbols of the Nazi Party and the state symbols of the Third Reich only. It is impossible to interpret, in legal terms, symbols like '14/88.'"

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 #42
Financial Times
December 21, 2015
Ukraine: Still hoping for change
By Roman Olearchyk and Neil Buckley

A crowd gathered recently in cold rain on Kiev's Maidan square to mark two years since street protests began that would end up toppling Ukraine's Moscow-backed government. The heady mood of late 2013 had been replaced by a sense of gloom.

"These are the tears of the Heavenly Hundred," said Tanya, a 38-year-old housewife, laying flowers to honour dozens of protesters killed by sniper fire in the final days of the protests that brought down President Viktor Yanukovich. "What's changed if they can't even bring to justice the people behind these murders? There's no war against corruption either. There's nothing."

Ukrainians may not be ready yet to return to the streets in large numbers. But two years after the Maidan protests, polls show many share a strong sense that the pro-western leadership they brought to power has failed to deliver on demonstrators' demands: a break from kleptocracy, higher living standards and the rule of law.

These ideals of cleaner, more effective government were intimately bound up with the historic shift towards the EU and away from domination by Moscow that the Kiev revolution represented.

Thanks in part to Russia's aggressive response, they exacted a high price. Since the revolution, Ukrainians have watched as their economy shrank by 18 per cent, Russia annexed Crimea and a war with Moscow-backed separatists in the east claimed more than 9,000 lives.

The sense of disillusionment and anger was apparent during the November commemoration on Maidan square. Some in the crowd called for the removal of Petro Poroshenko, who replaced Mr Yanukovich as president.

With government forces having largely halted the advance of rebels in the east and the recession bottoming out, the public's focus is shifting back to the battle against corruption. Above all, that means breaking the grip on the state of powerful vested interests, including Ukraine's handful of billionaire "oligarchs". Business clans and their allies in the political leadership and bureaucracy have long been able to manipulate the economic and legal system for their own profit.

"Pretty much nothing has changed in the country," one senior businessman with links to the top oligarchs told the Financial Times. On a piece of paper, the businessman sketched out a network of alleged kickbacks, bribery and rent-seeking that he estimates results in theft worth at least $4bn a year.
Ukraine GDP chart

"A hidden system is still in place where the main oligarch groups are feeding like parasites, in an unholy alliance between themselves and...the top echelons of government," he added.

Not all the businessman's allegations can be corroborated. But senior officials and anti-corruption watchdogs agree that corruption remains deeply entrenched. The failure to curb it and enforce the law threatens to rip apart the fragile ruling coalition.

Tension has burst into the open in the past 10 days, further fuelling public disillusionment, with farcical scenes in Kiev. In a parliamentary debate, one lawmaker grabbed Arseniy Yatseniuk, prime minister, by the legs and tried to carry him from the podium as he defended his record. Then, in a leaked video, a minister was seen hurling a glass at Mikheil Saakashvili, the ex-president of Georgia who is now a regional governor in Ukraine, as each called the other a "thief" in a meeting of a presidential council on reform.

All this is creating unease in western capitals that have backed the government in the face of Russian hostility.

On a visit to Kiev this month, Joe Biden, US vice-president, delivered a blunt message. "For Ukraine to continue to make progress and to keep the support of the international community, you have to do more," he said in a speech to parliament. Ukraine, he warned, faced perhaps its "last moment" to build a better future.

Claims of success

Western officials and government insiders insist Kiev's post-revolution administration has notched up impressive achievements - even while grappling with the war in the Donbass region. One senior European official lists business deregulation, greater transparency of public finances, decentralisation, reform of the gas market - long seen as a hotbed of corruption - and "impressive" banking sector reform, as well as macroeconomic stabilisation.

Kiev's pro-western leaders have also pushed through painful austerity measures, including big increases in domestic gas prices, as part of a $40bn western bailout package.
Ukraine inflation chart

The big gap in their record, however, is the failure to establish a genuinely independent judiciary as well as prosecutors and investigators who can hold even senior businesspeople, officials and politicians properly to account.

Critics fear that Mr Poroshenko, himself a billionaire businessman, and Mr Yatseniuk may not be capable of reforming the system because they are too much products of it themselves. Both now routinely face accusations of having ties that are too close to networks of business interests.

Serhiy Leshchenko, an investigative journalist, has continued to probe high-level corruption since being elected to the post-Maidan parliament. One of his main targets has been Mykola Martynenko, a prominent businessman-politician in Mr Yatseniuk's People's Front party, the main coalition partner of Mr Poroshenko's bloc. Denying allegations linking him to a Swiss bribery probe, Mr Martynenko last month announced he would resign from parliament to preserve the coalition while he proved his innocence in court.

Mr Yatseniuk has denied any corrupt links and suggested allegations against him were smear tactics. But corruption scandals, the impact of the utility price increases imposed by the International Monetary Fund, and plunging living standards have eroded his approval ratings to nearly zero.

Voter support has halved for Mr Poroshenko, who owns Ukraine's largest chocolate company, media and machine-building assets. Domestic media have accused at least two businessmen of either abusing their links to the president or acting on his behalf in business dealings.

Mr Poroshenko has denied such links, and has said he put all his business interests under the control of an asset management company when he became head of state.

Kiev government's decision sets the stage for a protracted legal stand-off with Moscow

The president has come under pressure for refusing to fire Viktor Shokin, the chief prosecutor and a longtime Poroshenko loyalist. Mr Shokin has been criticised for failing to bring to justice the shadowy snipers who killed protesters, and for dragging his feet over investigating senior officials and businesspeople. Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, warned in a speech this autumn: "Rather than supporting Ukraine's reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the prosecutor-general's office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform."

Apparently attempting to defuse such allegations, Mr Poroshenko unveiled a renewed anti-corruption campaign in October, with a number of arrests by the prosecutor's office. They included a former Yanukovich ally, plus an associate of the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who resigned as a regional governor this year after a stand-off with Mr Poroshenko over attempts to curb his influence over a state oil company.

But after the people detained were released on house arrest, and with prosecutors continuing to steer clear of other oligarchs, critics suggested the campaign amounted to political theatre, if not selective justice.

Last month, a selection commission, including former Maidan activists, appointed an independent anti-corruption prosecutor. It will take months for the institution to become fully operational alongside a new anti-corruption bureau. And few expect real progress on the rule of law until thousands of underpaid, corruption-prone judges are replaced.

One foreign adviser to Ukraine's government admits public opinion is "very bad" but says it is heavily influenced by oligarch-controlled television channels.
Established weaknesses

Vasyl Hrytsak, head of Ukraine's SBU state security service, alleges that some oligarchic groups are trying to strengthen their hand by using their influence to discredit the country's leadership, aiming to topple the ruling coalition and trigger early elections.

He and other officials warn this suits the plans of Moscow. Russia, suggests Mr Hrytsak, has changed tactics from its "hybrid blitzkrieg" of the separatist war in the east and is instead trying to exploit Kiev's two main weaknesses of corruption and fragile political stability.

"We don't have strong enough political unity," he warns.

As 2015 draws to a close, the government faces potential challenges both from activists and parliament.

On December 1, activists and journalists who were prominent in the Maidan demonstrations wrote an open letter to Mr Poroshenko and Mr Yatseniuk. Among them were Mr Leshchenko and Mustafa Nayem, another journalist-turned-MP credited with starting the protests two years ago with a tweet after Mr Yanukovich pulled out of signing a EU integration deal. They urged Ukraine's leadership to end mere "imitation" of reforms and corruption crackdowns - or face a new Maidan.

"Two years ago it was hard for us to imagine that bureaucrats and businessmen close to leadership would still be robbing the country," they wrote.

"The people see this. The people are on the edge."

Parliament, meanwhile, is threatening a no-confidence motion in the government. This could, in theory, provide an opening for a more radical and controversial figure to step on to Ukraine's national political stage: Mr Saakashvili.

In his two terms as president following Georgia's "Rose" revolution in 2003, Mr Saakashvili made sweeping reforms that took the ex-Soviet republic into the top 10 of the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings. He was voted out after his government was accused of bending the rules too often, and faces what he says are politically motivated corruption charges in Georgia.

Appointed governor of Odessa in May by Mr Poroshenko, with whom he studied in Kiev in the 1990s, Mr Saakashvili is seen by many Ukrainians as a forceful outsider who might just be able to break the grip of corruption and vested interests. "We have a shadow government and oligarchy that runs Ukraine like its personal joint stock company," Mr Saakashvili told the FT in an interview.

Mr Saakashvili played down speculation that he might become Ukraine's prime minister, saying his corruption allegations had upset too many people. But he warned that a new premier and government were needed quickly, or Mr Poroshenko's support could crumble.

Without decisive action, unrest threatens to spread, including among fighters returning from the east. At last month's Maidan commemoration, one camouflage-clad fighter, nicknamed Yarmol, warned with a gesture at government offices: "If nothing changes soon, we will start firing at them."

Such comments worry Volodymyr Gonsky, who rallied protesters from a stage on Kiev's square two years ago.

"It's true that our country is still in the hands of the oligarchs, while our enemy is attacking us," he told an impatient crowd at last month's anniversary. But he warned a new revolution would play into the Kremlin's hands.

"How many times in history have we lost our country?" he said. "We can't let that happen again. We need to suffer a bit more. Things will get better with time. This is our fate."
Corruption: Shareholders in a shadow economy

Ukraine's endemic corruption is likened by some experts to a form of joint stock company. Politicians and business patrons to whom they often have close but shadowy links sit on top of an institutionalised, vertical system of graft. They act like executives on a corporate board - yet instead of collecting legal bonuses, they are the principal recipients of bribes and kickbacks from a huge and deeply entrenched shadow economy.

Bribes collected across the economy range from small-time payments passed to tax inspectors to encourage them to ignore tax evasion, to large-scale rent-seeking from state enterprises. Much of these illicit proceeds are said to be passed up to the high echelons of influence. From there, the pie gets divided.

Where sums involve millions or billions of dollars between oligarchs and middlemen who funnel payments to politicians and political parties, they often go into complex webs of offshore shell companies.

At lower levels, cash is passed up and down administrative hierarchies. Lower-level state employees funnel bribes upwards to superiors, say corruption experts, while bureaucrats often preserve subordinates' loyalty by supplementing their meagre salaries with cash in envelopes.

Many companies pay large portions of salaries under the table to circumvent a complicated and often corrupt tax administration - or just avoid paying taxes altogether.

The recipe to crack this system is "prevent, publicise and punish", according to Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. "In terms of prevention, you need to increase salaries of public servants," he says, referring to monthly wages which are typically between $150 and $300.

One idea is to use foreign support to boost civil service salaries temporarily, says Mr Hunder. This would reduce the predilection for corruption and improve governance, until tax reform and economic growth boost budget revenues. "But the question is where will the money come from and how will it be administered in a transparent and legal manner," he says.

"In terms of publicising, there is a strong civil society and journalists that are naming and shaming corrupt individuals," adds Mr Hunder. "In terms of punishment, very little is being done...the criminals aren't going to jail."

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 #43
www.rt.com
December 21, 2015
Moscow lawyers up to take Kiev to court over debt

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the Cabinet to get lawyers ready to prepare to fight Ukraine in court over its $3 billion debt to Russia.
"There's no doubt that Kiev won't pay," Medvedev said on Monday at the meeting of Cabinet ministers. He added that Russia should recover Ukraine's debt along with penalties.

He said the repayment deadline expired on December 20, signifying Ukraine is in default.

Kiev still has a 10-day grace period during which it could pay the debt without penalty, said Medvedev.

"But due to the statements from Ukrainian officials, they are not planning to do that. Accordingly, a de facto default will happen in 10 days," added the Prime Minister.

He also said he had signed a decree to introduce economic measures (starting from January 1) as the economic part of Ukraine's Association Agreement with the EU kicks in. "We need to protect the Russian market, our producers and prevent the import of goods [from sanctioned EU countries - Ed.] marked as Ukrainian products," Medvedev said.

On Friday, Kiev imposed a moratorium on Russian debt repayment, saying it was halted until the Ukrainian government "makes restructuring proposals or a relevant court decision comes out." The announcement came ahead of the December 20 deadline.

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Finance Ministry to file a lawsuit against Ukraine if Kiev failed to pay.

In November Putin proposed restructuring Ukraine's debt. The offer would have delayed Kiev's default and allow it to repay $1 billion per year for three years, from 2016 to 2018. Moscow demanded guarantees from the US, EU, and international financial organizations on future payments of the Ukrainian sovereign debt. None were given.

Ukraine's sovereign debt to Russia dates back to a deal between President Putin and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich struck in 2013 which envisaged Moscow buying $15 billion worth of Ukrainian bonds. In December 2013 Russia bought $3 billion worth of Ukrainian bonds.

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#44
Bloomberg
December 20, 2015
After Default to Putin, What's Next for Ukraine-Russia Bond Row
By Natasha Doff and Marton Eder

A two-year feud between Ukraine and Russia is on the verge of being played out in a London courtroom after the government in Kiev defaulted on $3 billion in bonds.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko followed through on months of threats on Friday by reneging on the debt sold by his predecessor to Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2013, two months before Viktor Yanukovych was toppled and the former Soviet republics went from allies to adversaries.

The bond has since become a focal point of the deteriorating ties.

As Putin's annexation of Crimea and support of separatists in Ukraine's easternmost regions battered the economy, the government in Kiev came to the brink of insolvency before securing aid from the International Monetary Fund. To qualify for the bailout, Ukraine negotiated a $15 billion debt restructuring with investors including Franklin Templeton.

Russia refused to take part.

While there are signs the two sides are willing to reach an out-of-court settlement, a legal battle in the U.K., either through the court system or arbitration, is a growing possibility. Just hours after the moratorium was imposed, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak reiterated that Moscow will sue, saying Ukraine has "no chance of winning this case." Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday ordered the government to prepare a lawsuit.

* Where and how would legal action take place?

The Eurobonds were drafted under English Law, so any claim must be submitted to a court in London. The prospectus also allows parties to use the London Court of International Arbitration, a tribunal favored by former Soviet nations. Russia has said it will sue Ukraine for the $3 billion, plus an outstanding $75 million interest payment and all other interest that accumulates between now and a court verdict.

Russia may opt for the latter as arbitration is faster and more discrete. The country "probably has at least a reasonably strong case" of securing a ruling in its favor, according to Michael Waibel, a professor of international law at the University of Cambridge.

Getting its money back may prove challenging even if arbitrators order Ukraine to pay compensation, however. Russia may try to seize Ukrainian state assets abroad through legal processes in the countries where they're located, Waibel said.

Andrew Wilkinson, a partner at law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP who worked on drafting Ukraine's restructuring documents, said: "legally, Russia's options are very limited if it wants to get its money back." He said lawyers took care to draft the debt deal to prevent holdouts getting the upper hand.

A defeat could cause "great embarrassment" for Putin if a judge determines that Russia already had plans to annex Crimea when the bond documents were drawn up, according to Mitu Gulati, a law professor at Duke University who specializes in sovereign debt.

* Could an out-of-court resolution still be reached?

Russia and Ukraine have indicated they're willing to settle outside of court.

Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko on Friday said she was "hopeful" an agreement could be reached without resorting to a legal battle. On Dec. 15, she said the sides are in "everyday contact" through mediators from Germany, one of the key players in brokering a fragile cease-fire that's taken hold in Ukraine's easternmost regions since September.

Her counterpart in Moscow, Anton Siluanov, said the next day that Russia is open to cooperation, although the chances for an out-of-court settlement may be "impossible" due to time constraints. On Saturday, Siluanov said Russia still expects full payment and will wait until the new year to start litigation.

* What could a potential diplomatic deal look like?

To reach an accord, the two sides would probably have to agree to terms somewhere between the conditions of Ukraine's broader restructuring and an offer made by Putin last month.

The restructuring imposed on Franklin Templeton and others involved a 20 percent writedown to principal, maturity extensions of at least four years and warrants tied to economic growth. Russia wouldn't take part on the grounds that its debt should be treated as a sovereign loan. Moscow bought the note paying 5 percent interest, less than half the yield on Ukraine's bonds at the time.

During the Group of 20 meeting in Ankara in November, Putin said he would let Ukraine settle the debt in three $1 billion instalments from 2016 to 2018, so long as Western governments or banks provided a repayment guarantee. The proposal fell through after the U.S. refused to offer the financial backing.

Even if a diplomatic solution is reached, Ukraine's other bondholders must sign off since the debt deal barred the government from giving any holdout better terms. Franklin Templeton, Ukraine's biggest investor, would therefore need to approve.

Any accord must also appease the IMF. Its aid package is contingent on Ukraine making savings of $15.3 billion in debt-servicing costs over four years.

* What does the default mean for Ukraine's bondholders?

For investors in Ukrainian bonds, the moratorium will probably have little immediate effect. Before the restructuring, the missed payment on the Russian bond would have triggered defaults across other bonds. Now that the old securities have been exchanged for new securities, that can no longer happen.

* Is there any risk to Ukraine's IMF rescue funding?

The IMF, which granted Ukraine a $17.5 billion lifeline over the next three years, probably won't stop lending to Ukraine over the dispute. The Washington-based fund loosened its loan policies this month to allow it to keep disbursing aid to countries in arrears to sovereign creditors.

However, it also stressed that Ukraine must engage in substantive bilateral talks with Russia to try to resolve the dispute. Jaresko said Friday that Ukraine was acting in "good faith."

The IMF executive board last week sided with Russia by branding the $3 billion bond as an official debt, undermining Ukraine's argument that Moscow should accept the same terms as commercial creditors and nudging it toward reaching a separate resolution with its neighbor.

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 #45
Some 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees stay in Russia - Federation Council vice speaker

MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. About 1.2 million refugees from Ukraine are currently staying in Russia, deputy speaker of Russia's Federation Council Yuri Vorobyov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Wednesday.

"Some 1.2 million Ukrainians are in Russia, all of them are accommodated," Vorobyov said quoting the latest data from the Federal Migration Service.

According to him, nearly 10,000 people are staying at the centers of temporary accommodation, some 500,000 refugees live in apartments, others are staying at their relatives.

"Russians and Ukrainians are close nations, so many refugees come here," he said. "But the figure of 1.118 million is extremely high."

About 2 million refugees were in Russia in different periods of the conflict in Ukraine, he added.

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 #46
RFE/RL
December 18, 2015
Ukrainian Refugees Say Russia Not So Welcoming Anymore
by Svitlana Prokopyeva and Tony Wesolowsky

PSKOV, Russia -- Svitlana Moroz, her two sons, and her elderly mother have lived in the spartan Sport hotel in Pskov, in western Russia, for nearly a year and a half now.
But they and hundreds more like them who fled the fighting at home in eastern Ukraine could soon be out on the streets after Moscow in November adopted tougher new rules for the refugees.

In the past, those fleeing the conflict in Ukraine's Donbas region could live in so-called temporary accommodation points (TAP) -- mostly rundown hotels like the Sport -- for as long as it took them to get back on their feet. Now, as of November 1, those stays in TAPs will be limited to 60 days, as will daily allowances.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a point of warmly welcoming Ukrainian refugees in large part to demonstrate Kremlin concern at the plight of Russian speakers, who Moscow claimed were suffering persecution under the new authorities in Ukraine.

But Moscow is in a less generous mood these days, as the Russian economy sags under the weight of depressed global oil prices and international sanctions over Russian actions in Ukraine, including the forced annexation of Crimea and alleged support for armed separatists.

And the refugees are becoming a drag on Russia's federal budget. According to official data, 16,418 Ukrainian citizens who fled the conflict are still living in temporary housing in Russia. Quick math suggests that Moscow is spending nearly 400 million rubles ($5.7 million) a month to house them, not a paltry sum. Every refugee is also entitled to 800 rubles ($11.34) a day as a subsistence allowance.

The Sport hotel, which arguably saw its best days back in the 1980s, has accommodated 326 eastern Ukrainians since the conflict erupted in early 2014. Today, most have moved on, with many finding jobs elsewhere in Russia and some having even returned to the Donbas. Twenty-three people remain, however, including Moroz and her family.

She tells RFE/RL's Russian Service that she and her family fled their hometown of Makiivka in the Donetsk region in June 2014 after fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces intensified. Moroz says they were lucky, getting out just before their apartment block was hit by artillery fire. She saw some of the aftermath in photos posted on social media, she says.

Moroz says that aside from her apartment, she left behind two sisters -- though her son interrupts to add a couch to the list. She laughs, acknowledging that furniture is in short supply in their room.

But Moroz says her concerns have mounted since being informed in November by local authorities that her refugee status was not renewed and she and her family would have to vacate the hotel.

Moroz came to Russia with the hope of becoming a Russian citizen.

Her mother, Irina Germanovna, was born in Russia, in the city of Kostroma, some 350 kilometers northeast of Moscow. She moved to Ukraine when she was 19, following her husband, who served in the Soviet military and was sent there to serve. Germanovna was looking to "reclaim" her lost Russian citizenship, which would entitle her to disability benefits and a pension.

"We thought everything would go quickly after they told us, 'Everything will be sped up, and you will become citizens of Russia in six months,'" Moroz recounts. "As a result, I went and submitted all the required documents but was told I needed to be locally registered for three years. How are we supposed to get that?" she asks incredulously.

Moroz's older son, Danil, has neither a Russian nor a Ukrainian passport, since he arrived in Pskov just as he was turning 16, normally the age when passports are issued. She is worried he will be unable to continue his studies after the ninth grade or find a job. However, she says that local officials have promised to issue him some type of document.

"If only they would issue the documents, we would already be..." says Germanovna, her voice fading.

Documents are the biggest bane of the refugees, the crucial key to opening opportunities to employment, housing, and benefits. Many refugees complain that if only they didn't need them, they could find housing and work much more easily.

Yevhenia Bogatyr and her husband and three children considered heading back to their home in the Popasna district in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine during a lull in the fighting but abandoned those plans for good when hostilities erupted again. They were told at the end of November, however, that they would have to vacate the Sport hotel. Their home district was not listed by the Russian government as "dangerous territory," and therefore they were no longer entitled to temporary refugee status.

"I cried," says Yevhenia. But local authorities came to her family's rescue, finding a "sponsor" who agreed to pay for their housing until the end of the school year.

If the conflict in eastern Ukraine doesn't end by then, she says they and other families facing eviction in the Sport hotel will have only one choice -- head to Smuravyevo, site of a former Russian air base in Pskov Oblast.

There are 120 empty apartments in Smuravyevo, and local authorities are eager to see them rented out and the refugees in the Sport are being urged to go there.

After the military personnel left the town years ago, about 500 people remained. The former Soviet-era "Culture House" is abandoned, many of its windows smashed. Abandoned barracks are scattered among the gloomy apartment blocks. Grass and weeds sprout through the sidewalks, a sign of years of neglect. Living here requires courage or desperation.

Yulia and her husband and two children have been living in a three-room apartment in Smuravyevo for about a year. Speaking to RFE/RL, Yulia says they are more or less content.

They had to do some repair work to the bathroom, but all the apartments here are in need of work. The local school is good. Neighbors are friendly. And her husband found work at the lumber mill some 20 kilometers away.

After the frequent shelling back home, for all its faults, Smuravyevo can almost look like paradise.

But for Svitlana Moroz, her mother, and other refugees from eastern Ukraine, it's a far cry from the hopes they once placed in Russia and, in particular, in Putin.

Moroz says she and her mother voted in May 2014 in the referendum in eastern Ukraine, not so much to voice their support for the self-declared, separatist-run "Donetsk People's Republic," but for something else.

"We took part in the referendum and voted with the hope that Putin would take us in, as he did with Crimea. We basically were voting for Putin," Moroz says, hoping that, like Crimea, Russia would swallow up the Donbas as well.

Asked if she now thinks Putin has abandoned them, Moroz says bitterly but slightly unconvincingly: "No."

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 #47
Transitions Online
www.tol.org
December 21, 2015
Crimea in Darkness, Part 3
As Crimea's power supply slowly returns to normal, TOL looks at how people are coping with blackouts and shortages.
By Julia Ivanova
Julia Ivanova is a pseudonym of a journalist living in the region

The trip from Kyiv to Kerch takes almost a day. First you go by train to the small station at Novooleksiivka, then take a taxi through the checkpoints at Chongar to Simferopol. From there, a bus travels 200 kilometers along a completely unlighted highway to the easternmost point of the peninsula - Kerch.
 
I ask the driver of the newish Opel taxi what happened to his business after Russia annexed Crimea. Passengers coming from mainland Ukraine, like me, are his main source of income now. The business belongs to a group of his family members and neighbors, all Crimean Tatars. "We use only foreign cars," he says, indicating the vehicles around us as we wait in line at the passport checkpoint.
 
"Around 80 trains used to go through Novooleksiivka before the annexation. Now there are only three," the driver continues.
 
Official border guards and customs agents check travelers at a border that does not officially exist - Ukraine, like almost every other country, does not recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea almost two years ago. We also pass through a checkpoint manned by fighters from the Ukrainian nationalist Right Sector organization.
 
Right Sector members are cooperating with Crimean Tatar activists to keep up the blockade of goods and power. The blockade itself does not bother my taxi driver because he lives just outside of Crimea, in the Kherson region.
 
"Oh, that blockade. We're in Ukraine; we have electricity. Let them block what they want. Actually, both sides are to blame," he tells me.
 
The whole trip costs me about 2,500 rubles ($35). Before the annexation, the trip to Kerch would have cost half that much.
 
This is how Ukrainians get to Crimea. For Russian citizens, the rules are different - they have to obtain a special permit from the Ukrainian authorities if they want to enter Crimea. Otherwise, they are technically violating Ukrainian law.

The Kerch ferry is a vital link between the peninsula and mainland Russia.
 
Nevertheless, many Russians fly in to Simferopol or take a short ferry ride to Kerch. Since the blockade stopped all freight transport to Crimea, Kerch has become the only major gateway to the peninsula. Along with passengers, ferries across the Kerch Strait carry Russian food trucks, trains loaded with fuel, military trucks, humanitarian convoys, and now Ministry of Emergency Situations vehicles bringing generators. Ferries depart when full, and the trip takes less than half an hour, if the weather is good. Traffic jams often form, especially in the summer, when the line of tourist cars can stretch for many kilometers.
 
'We Have Light!'
 
After the annexation in early 2014, the Russian government revived the old idea of bridging the strait so as to ease access to Crimea from Russia proper. The bridge will cross Tuzla, a thin, 3.5-square-kilometer sand island in the middle of the strait. In 2003, conflict flared around the island. Russia wanted to build a causeway to Tuzla and declared that the island belonged to it. But the situation calmed down, and the sides signed a new cooperation agreement. After the annexation, Russia set to work on the bridge, which at first will carry freight only. Now half-built, it stretches from the town of Taman to the island. While in Kerch, I saw a series of piles extending from Tuzla towards the Crimean city.
 
"Greetings from Kerch. We have light! Hold on, everything will be fine!" A young man's voice greets Crimeans on a local radio station. In contrast to Simferopol and Sevastopol, the city was completely bereft of electricity for almost a week. Not until 27 November was the electricity supply partially restored. Electricity in other cities was rationed according to various schedules, to a few hours a day.
 
The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations didn't rush to help. Eventually, the ministry set up heating points - tents where people could charge mobile devices and drink hot tea - after the partial return of electricity, a couple of days before the first power line across the strait began supplying power on 2 December.

By the time Russian authorities erected tents where people could warm up and recharge their phones, the first power line across the Kerch Strait was almost complete.

"Do you have light?" people ask each other when they meet, just as they do all over Crimea. Their main concern is to keep food fresh and protect electrical appliances from power surges.
 
Fresh Food - For a Price
 
There is enough food in Kerch, though. Although supermarket shelves for perishable goods such as milk, meat, and fish are empty, people can buy these products at the market. Not all supermarkets are open. The branch of the Ukrainian Silpo chain is in business, thanks to power generators, but other chain stores, such as Furshen and PUD, are closed.
 
Emma, a Crimean Tatar, sells meat at the Kerch market. While she is cutting and weighing it, she says that her son is studying in Dnipropetrovsk. He recently sent Emma a parcel with candles and food.

Many products have disappeared from supermarkets.
 
"I used to send those to him. Now it's his turn," she says, smiling.
 
She asks about the price of meat in Kyiv. About half the price in Kerch, it turns out. A woman at the meat counter, a Russian Crimean, agrees that prices are much higher here.
 
"I had boots sent to me from Kyiv, and they cost 5,000 rubles. But here in Kerch they sell for 15,000."
 
There is also a small counter where you can buy "Nasha Ryaba" brand Ukrainian chicken. I ask the woman how her business has fared since the annexation.
 
"At first there was a small problem but then we solved it," she says. "Look at your Poroshenko - he is also good. He promised to sell the business, but it hasn't been sold yet."
 
Tension between Russia and Ukraine is not the only cause of shortages. Since Russia began boycotting Turkish products in retaliation for the shooting down of its fighter jet over Syria, Turkish tangerines have disappeared from the market. The best-selling New Year's fruit has been replaced by tangerines from Abkhazia, down the Black Sea coast, another territory that is recognized by virtually no one but Moscow.

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#48
http://newcoldwar.org
December 20, 2015
Dutch newspaper: Corruption in Ukrainian secret service taints MH17 investigation
By Jolande van der Graaf, De Telegraaf (Holland), Dec 15, 2015, translation by New Cold War.org (translation revised on Dec 20)

Questions over Ukrainian intelligence as former spy boss turns up in criminal affairs

THE HAGUE-The reliability of evidence in the investigation of the crash last year of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine is at issue because of the sinister role of the Ukrainian secret service SBU in corruption and crime scandals.

Criminal law experts predict problems for criminal proceedings against the murderers of the passengers who died in the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 now that it appears that everything is false with the intelligence work that delivered all kinds of material evidence. The Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is set to ask questions about this in today's parliamentary session.

"The 'noise' is guaranteed to play a role in any legal case," said law professor Theo de Roos. "That goes for the defense but also for the judges who will examine evidence very critically. The public prosecution department should be looking now rather than later at the integrity of the evidence."

It was the SBU that provided the wiretapped telephone conversations between pro-Russian [sic] rebels in the war zone just before and after the Malaysian Airlines Boeing was shot down from the sky. The Ukrainian security forces had also a big role in securing human remains, debris and rocket parts in the disaster area.

But the same SBU also appears in numerous criminal affairs. Several informants in the scandal of the paintings stolen from the West Frisian Museum in Hoorn, Holland in 2005 indicate former SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko of this year is a mastermind in the stolen art trade. Nalyvaichenko was fired in June of this year.

Last year, the name of the former SBU chief was linked to large-scale smuggling of antiques discovered by Finnish police.

The ongoing investigation into corrupt Limburg policeman Mark M is also linked to Ukraine. A justice in Brabant recently requested assistance from Kiev. According to investigation sources, Mark M. kept a network in Ukraine of 'gangsters and members of the secret service'. This past summer alone, 22 members of the SBU disappeared behind bars because of corruption and criminal practices.

Great risks

The CDA calls the SBU scandals a great risk for the criminal investigation into the MH17 case and wants documents and explanations from Justice Minister Ard van der Steur.

"There is little actual evidence [in the investigation]," says Christian Democrat parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt. "What there is may have been compromised to some extent. The evidence was collected way too late at the scene of the crash and now appears to have been collected by dishonest people."

The CDA wants to know why satellite and radar data of Ukrainians, Russians and Americans is lacking from the report of the Dutch Safety Board into the crash of the MH17. "It appears this has still not been discussed with Ukrainian air traffic control."

Dutch police say cooperation with Ukrainian researchers is "good" and all the submitted evidence "has been critically examined". Professor of international law Geert-Jan Knoops, however, feels that more research into the reliability of evidence is needed.

"The prosecution has the duty to exclude any evidence in a scenario where evidence has been tampered with. That means, for example, it must closely examine how the SBU selected wiretapped phone calls and who was involved in that selection."

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 #49
Facebook
Maidan Snipers
By Ivan Katchanovski
University of Ottawa

December 18
The Maidan massacre trial sessions today and yesterday have again produced new revelations about "snipers" in the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina, Muzeinyi Lane buildings, and Zhovtnevyi Palace and about falsification of the investigation concerning the Berkut massacring 39 protesters. But again Google News searchers indicate that not a single mainstream media in Ukraine and in the West has reported about these revelations. These disclosures include the following: previously denied information in the government investigation documents about snipers in Zhovtnevyi Palace, a Polish video showing Maidan "snipers" or spotters on Zhovtnevyi Palace, a testimony of a Maidan protestor to investigators that he was wounded from the Hotel Ukraina, and results of forensic medical and ballistic reports indicating that Mykola Dziavulsky was killed from a direction of Muzeinyi Lane buildings or possibly the Hotel Ukraina. My APSA paper presented various evidence about snipers or spotters in all these locations and cited this Polish TV video.  http://society.lb.ua/.../17/323784_sud_doprosil_mat_ubitogo.h...

---

December 20
Another "dog that did not bark" during the Maidan massacre

The leader of C14, a neo-Nazi organization affiliated with the far right Svoboda party, confirmed that his C14-based 2-d Company of the Maidan Self-Defence took refuge in the Canadian embassy in Kyiv on February 18 and stayed there during the Maidan massacre. This is important not only because the Canadian embassy gave refuge to the Svoboda company, formed on the basis of the neo-Nazi C14, but also because this is another "dog that did not bark" evidence that the Maidan sniper massacre was a false-flag operation involving far right organizations. Similarly to the Right Sector, C14 and the 2-d Company of the Maidan Self-Defence stayed away from the massacre area on February 20, and not a single their member was killed by "snipers."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8WHzVEYpxs

Similarly to the Right Sector, C14 and its Maidan Self-Defence company were involved in many cases of political violence during the "Euromaidan" and afterwards, specifically during the war in Donbas. C14 activists were also arrested as suspects in the assassination of a prominent Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzyna. Today, C14 organized a torch-lit rally in front of the Prosecutor General Office with demands to release the suspected assassins. http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/12/19/7093070/

The overt absence of the C14 and its Maidan Self-Defence company during the Maidan massacre suggests that C14 leaders at least knew in advance about the massacre. Some evidence indicates that C14 had its own unit of Maidan "snipers," as the Right Sector did. The C14 leader stated that Medvedko, one of the top C14 activists and commanders of its Maidan Self-Defence company, who is arrested for the killing of Buzyna, organized a group of C14 members and led "partisan resistance" since the evening of February 18, specifically during the Maidan massacre. But the C14 leader said that details of these actions could be made public in twenty years. This is an indication that this neo-Nazi partisan group was likely a covert group of "snipers." http://www.svobody-patriotam.com/biografiya-andriya-medved.../
In his interview cited in my APSA paper, a Swedish neo-Nazi member of C14 admitted that he knew two "snipers" who shot at the police on the Maidan from Kalashnikov-based Saiga hunting rifles with telescopic sights from the third floor of the Trade Unions Building. http://www.friatider.se/swede-patrols-ukraines-streets-with...

This is another illustration that the Western governments supported the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government by an alliance of the far right and oligarchic organizations but misrepresented this overthrow as a peaceful protest of liberal democratic opposition. The Western mainstream media, with some exceptions like this BBC report concerning C14, followed their governments line in misrepresenting the role of the far right, specifically neo-Nazis, in the "Euromaidan" and in the Maidan massacre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY#t=226

There was similar misrepresentation by the Western governments and the media of the opposition, dominated by illiberal and non-democratic elements, such as fundamentalist Islamists, as pro-freedom, democratic, and moderate during the Western-backed regime change in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Egypt.

The use of the Canadian embassy as a refuge by the neo-Nazi-led Svoboda company during the Maidan massacre has not been reported by the previous Canadian government or any mainstream media in Canada. The Canadian Press investigation only revealed this summer that a group of Maidan protesters took refuge in the Canadian embassy. http://www.cbc.ca/.../canadian-embassy-used-as-safe-haven-dur...
ВСЕ ТІЛЬКИ ПОЧИНАЄТЬСЯ
Про те що було і що буде далі. Розповідь Євгена Карася командира сотні імені Святослава Хороброго. Сотня Святослава - це сотня самооборони "Свободи" сформова...

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 #50
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
December 18, 2015
Full Transcript: Expletive-Loaded Shout-fest Ukraine Cabinet - Must See Video!!
The US's hand-picked morons who run the Ukraine go postal...
(South Front)
[Video here http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/sensational-government-session-european-country-historic-precedent/ri11914]

This is an excellent, idiomatically correct translation from the great guys at South Front.

This is the culmination of $6 billion of US taxpayer money spent on the Ukraine over the last few years.  

Yeah, they wrecked the country, killed 20,000 people and displaced a couple million more, and almost started WWIII, but at least they got an entertaining video out of it. - it is headed for Youtube superstardom...

Keep up the great work neocons!

The political life of the "bank cartel's" newest satellite has long been the butt of jokes all over the civilized world, but in recent days Ukraine's political circus exceeded even the wildest expectations. The video depicts a session of the Ukrainian government, presided over by the country's President himself. Dear readers, please keep this in mind. This is no run-of-the-mill Verkhovna Rada fist fight or any other countries' legislative body. This is what happens among the members of the CABINET.

The cast:

Arsen Avakov, Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (one Armenian, supported by the US)

Mikhail Saakashvili, Governor of Odessa Region of Ukraine, former President of Georgia, on the wanted list in Georgia now (one Georgian, appointed by the US) to make a dispute about Ukrainian wealth.

00:01 AVAKOV: Mikhail Grigorievich, I'm reacting to the things you've said

00:04 AVAKOV: I've written some of them here

00:05 AVAKOV: I paid close attention to your speech

00:07 AVAKOV: and summary regarding... that was happening on your Odessa...

00:12 AVAKOV: anti-corruption forum

00:13 AVAKOV: You are speaking softer now

00:15 AVAKOV: I don't get it

00:16 AVAKOV: You said that the cabinet of ministers itself was heading the corruption

00:19 AVAKOV: You stated that without proofs, you stated that loud and clear

00:23 AVAKOV: explicitly

00:23 SAAKASHVILI: With lots of proofs

00:24 AVAKOV: Maybe let me finish first and then you'll answer?

00:25 SAAKASHVILI: With lots of proofs

00:27 SAAKASHVILI: With lots of proofs and I'm going to find even more proofs

00:29 SAAKASHVILI: and inform general public about it

00:30 AVAKOV: Mr. President, I've got a favor to ask from you, are we maintaining the order here?

00:33 SAAKASHVILI: ...what do you mean I'm softer? Yes, your Martinenko is a criminal

00:35 AVAKOV: How do you usually speak in such cases?

00:37 AVAKOV: Be-be-be-be-be, like that, right?

00:39 SAAKASHVILI: What do you mean?

00:40 SAAKASHVILI: Be-be-be-be, no one has ever spoken to me like this!

00:43 AVAKOV: I'm going to speak to you like this!

00:44 SAAKASHVILI: I don't give a damn about how you are going to speak to me

00:46 AVAKOV: Then get the damn out of here if you don't give a damn

00:48 Poroshenko: Arsen Borisovich, I'm...

00:50 SAAKASHVILI: I'm calling you to politeness

00:53 AVAKOV: Shut up

00:54 SAAKASHVILI: Unlike you I don't have millions and billions

00:56 AVAKOV: I'm not speaking for you

00:57 SAAKASHVILI: No, I'm repeating it

00:58 AVAKOV: You'll answer for your billions somewhere else

1:00 SAAKASHVILI: My... regarding my billions, Russia already attempted to find them. Look for them properly

1:05 AVAKOV: I.. I.. SAAKASHVILI: Look for them!

1:07 SAAKASHVILI: Look for them!

1:08 POROSHENKO: Everybody... I...

1:09 POROSHENKO: Stop it everyone!

1:11 SAAKASHVILI: I'm not going to tolerate such words from a corrupt minister

1:13 AVAKOV: Shut up, you corrupt governor

1:16 SAAKASHVILI: What?

1:17 POROSHENKO: I'm asking...

1:17 AVAKOV: What you heard!

1:19 AVAKOV: f4cking thief

1:21 POROSHENKO: Arsen Borisovich

1:22 POROSHENKO: May you avoid usage of the obscene language?

1:23 AVAKOV: Was there an obscene language?

1:25 POROSHENKO: Yes, there was

1:27 POROSHENKO: Alright, Arseniy Petrovich [Yatsenuk], please...

1:29 AVAKOV: I'd like to finish

1:31 POROSHENKO: Then I ask you to keep to the topic of the speech

1:34 POROSHENKO: not to the comments

1:36 POROSHENKO: The scene is yours, Arsen Borisovich

1:39 AVAKOV: When we are speaking about the whole list of things that have been said

1:42 AVAKOV: Of course privatization

1:44 AVAKOV: Of course a total privatization

1:46 AVAKOV: including OPZ [Odessa Port Plant]

1:49 AVAKOV: In order to, among the other things, maximize bring to the bright light and privatize the entire OPZ

1:56 AVAKOV: So, I have a question

1:57 AVAKOV: Are you, Mr. Saakashvili, preventing the privatization of the OPZ with your actions or not?

2:03 SAAKASHVILI: I'm not going to discuss anything with you after your words

2:06 SAAKASHVILI: After your words I'll be debating with you only publicly

2:10 SAAKASHVILI: I'll prove that you personally are a thief!

2:12 SAAKASHVILI: I'll prove that indeed that cabinet of ministers is heading the corruption

2:17 SAAKASHVILI: And I will... No one... I will never allow... I... unlike you, I don't have money

2:20 SAAKASHVILI: But instead I have a conscience and the reputation!

2:22 SAAKASHVILI: I'm not going to tolerate some Avakov, who's a thief...

2:26 SAAKASHVILI: Who everyone knows he's controlling the [corruption] schemes!

2:29 SAAKASHVILI: to speak to Saakashvili in such a manner

2:31 SAAKASHVILI: I have nothing... but my reputation

2:32 SAAKASHVILI: And I'm not going... not going to tolerate some corrupt minister

2:36 SAAKASHVILI: who, the entire country knows he's a thief

2:38 SAAKASHVILI: the entire country knows...

2:39 POROSHENKO: Vitaliy Vasilievich...

2:40 SAAKASHVILI: The entire country knows what are you doing

2:41 POROSHENKO: Arsen!

2:42 SAAKASHVILI: ...knows that are you doing

2:45 SAAKASHVILI: the entire country knows

2:46 AVAKOV: I need to punch him or something?

2:47 POROSHENKO: I'm... I'm adjourning the meeting

2:51 AVAKOV: F4cking faggot!

2:52 POROSHENKO: Arsen... AVAKOV: Damn bastard!

2:55 SAAKASHVILI: Thief!

2:57 AVAKOV: Yes, a thief [irony]

2:58 SAAKASHVILI: So, you will be in a jail, or just because you are...

3:01 AVAKOV: Piss off!

3:02 SAAKASHVILI: We are going to restore the country and you'll be in a jail

3:04 AVAKOV: You've already driven your country to disaster!

3:06 AVAKOV: Get the hell out from my country!

3:07 POROSHENKO: Arsen Borisovich...

3:08 AVAKOV: Rascal!

3:10 SAAKASHVILI: From your country? I'm Ukrainian

3:12 AVAKOV: Right [sarcasm] SAAKASHVILI: For your information...

3:13 AVAKOV: I'm Ukrainian, I'm at home

3:14 SAAKASHVILI: No, you are a thief!

3:15 AVAKOV: And you are a fibster and a traveling actor!

3:16 SAAKASHVILI: You're a thief! That's who you are!

3:18 AVAKOV: Actor, clown, damn scum!

3:19 AVAKOV: and then SAAKASHVILI: You're a thief!

3:22 AVAKOV: Barnstormer! Fibster and barnstormer!

3:24 SAAKASHVILI: You are a thief

3:25 AVAKOV: Sh1thead

3:26 SAAKASHVILI: I was invited to the country to accomplish the tasks

3:29 SAAKASHVILI: not to be engaged in the political fraudulence

3:32 AVAKOV: Damn liar

3:35 SAAKASHVILI: You are insulting the president

3:36 SAAKASHVILI: You are insulting the country

3:38 AVAKOV: Yes SAAKASHVILI: You are insulting the officials

3:41 SAAKASHVILI: You are insulting the Ukrainian people

3:45 SAAKASHVILI: You are insulting the president... the Ukrainian people

3:47 POROSHENKO: Stop it right now

3:48 SAAKASHVILI: You are going to take responsibility for this

3:49 POROSHENKO: Enough!

3:51 POROSHENKO: Everybody is free

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