Russia: Other Points of View

The U.S. Mainstream Media Redoes Ukraine’s and Yanukovich’s Font Color

ANALYSIS

by Gordon Hahn

As Ukranians went to the polls this month to elect their president in a runoff vote between the iron lady of the 2004 Orange ‘revolution’, Yulia Timoshenko, and her opponent then and now former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the U.S. mainstream media desperately tried to re-position itself in anticipation of Yanukovich’s victory.  A case in point is the Wall Street Journal, which on January 27 printed an article by Matthew Kaminski, a member of its editorial board.  According to the earlier view of both Kaminski and the WSJ, Ukraine like Georgia is a beacon of democracy in the “inhospitable terrain” of “an authoritarian wilderness” stretching “from Belarus to the Caucasus and Central Asia” (Matthew Kaminski, “Ukraine Needs the West's Support - A European democracy sits uncomfortably close to Russia,” Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2010). 

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

The Sobchak influence. Medvedev and Putin are disciples and admirers of Anatoliy Sobchak and both commemorated the tenth anniversary of his death on Saturday.  Medvedev, who knew him as one of his students and later worked with him in St Petersburg, gave praise to “the man who first brought legitimacy to Soviet politics”. In an interview for a program on his life and work, Putin paid very high tribute to him. He described how he began working for him when he was Mayor of St Petersburg, how he quit the KGB in the August 1991 coup attempt (“I wrote a letter of resignation in the first hours after the coup began… The point is that I had made my choice and I could not change it. It was my duty to be there, defending our shared ideals and the concept of national development which Mr Sobchak and I had put into words and implemented together.”) and how much he learned from him in work habits and morality: “The time when I worked with Mr Sobchak was the most valuable part of my education. It was in that period that my basic principles of work and communication took shape. The fundamentals of my personal principles and behaviour probably began to develop much earlier, at home and later at the university, where I studied and he taught. However, my work with him had tremendous practical significance for me”. So we have both the present and previous Presidents telling us that they regard Sobchak as their mentor and example and regard their times working under him as formative. Perhaps, the Kommentariat should pay more attention to this relationship and less to the lazy assumption that all we need to know is that Putin was a KGB officer and Medvedev is his sock puppet.

THE OLYMPIC MYTHOLOGY

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

by Eugene Ivanov

I can understand why Yevgeny Plyushchenko's silver medal in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics men's figure skating competition was such a huge disappointment for him and for the whole Russian team.  And although I generally try to stay clear of discussing sports events, let me say this: in the controversy between "without a quad, it's not men's figure skating, now it's dancing" and "it's called figure skating...not ...figure jumping", I tend to support the latter statement.  In other words, I believe that Evan Lysacek has earned his gold. 

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Mistral panic now joined by outright misrepresentation

REPRINTS

by Dmitry Gorenburg 

Ariel Cohen’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the Mistral sale adds nothing to the previous neo-con screeds on this topic. It’s basically a mish-mash of every bit of anti-Russian fear-mongering one can squeeze into 800 words. Nothing surprising and wouldn’t have been worth commenting on except for one thing. Cohen states that Russia’s new military doctrine “lowers the threshold for pre-emptive nuclear strikes.” This is actually just a false statement. A sentence by sentence comparison of the text with the 2000 military doctrine shows that the threshold was actually raised slightly in the new edition, as I noted in a previous post. I have no problem with differences of opinion on the nature and extent of the threat posed by Russia to the rest of the world. But let’s stick to the facts and avoid outright misrepresentation of what’s in published documents. 

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RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

 by Patrick Armstrong

Medvedev program. Medvedev’s (ie The Team’s) program for the first year was derailed by two unexpected events: the international financial crisis and Saakashvili’s invasion of South Ossetia. Nonetheless, we do have an idea of what he (ie The Team) has in mind. While not very much has happened, there is talk of selling off a number of state-owned companies and many speeches about the problem of corruption. Overtures to, if not the opposition, at least non-Kremlinocentric opinion and, many many references to modernisation: “perhaps the most important topic on our agenda, namely the modernisation of our economy. The modernisation of Russia's economy must be based on new technologies, innovation and the radical restructuring of the country's internal economic structure.” Medvedev spends a lot of his time exhorting people and talking about the big strategic picture (for example, to energy sector executives on Friday). Thus far, not that much legislation has hit the street, but it is coming (education, police, quality control, banking).

RUSSIAN MILITARY REFORM

REPRINTS

http://russiamil.wordpress.com/

By Dmitry Gorenburg

The recent news that the French government has agreed to sell one or more of its Mistral amphibious assault ships to Russia has led to virtual panic in some quarters. The cold warriors who have never quite gotten over the view that the Soviet Union Russia is hell-bent on threatening the rest of the world seem to believe that Russia will use these ships to attack (or at least threaten to attack) any neighboring states that dare to oppose it.  Here’s a typical statement (from Vlad Socor):

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RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

 by Patrick Armstrong

Military Doctrine. On Friday Medvedev signed off on the latest military doctrine (officially the third after 1993 and 2000). I don’t see anything very different from its predecessors: NATO expansion, terrorism, nuclear weapons will be used if we think we have to. (The last seems to be hailed as a new development whenever it appears: in 2010 or 1999; but it’s every nuclear power’s actual policy). Perhaps there’s a bit more emphasis on modernisation of the Armed Forces and their equipment as a consequence of deficiencies discovered in the Ossetia war. I must confess, I never understand what these documents are supposed to do: large sections are simply a list of the obvious. For example:  “36. The main tasks of military planning are” a, b, c, d, e, f; all of which could be summarised as “to plan for eventualities”. But they must serve some planning or authorisation purpose in the Russian bureaucratic structure. A calm and thoughtful assessment here.

Jihad in the Caucasus: A Side Show for the U.S Mainstream Media

COMMENTARY

 by Gordon Hahn

The U.S. mainstream media (MSM) continues to treat the Caucasus Emirate (CE) mujahedin as a virtual sideshow when it comes to covering violence in Russia’s North Caucasus.  The MSM failed to print even one article focused on the jihadi terrorist network during the first two years of the CE’s existence.  The first and only such article appeared in the Washington Post on October 30, 2009; the CE was founded in late October 2007. 

The two most recent examples of the MSM’s denial in the Caucasus are “Behind the Kremlin’s Reach,” The Economist, January 30 – February 5 2010  and Ellen Barry, “Political Uncertainty Grips a Russian Republic,” New York Times, 31 January 2010.  The Economist’s single nod to the CE mujahedin’s terrorism was substantial by U.S. MSM standards: “(T)he transfer of power in Dagestan, a Muslim republic in the north Caucasus, has been accompanied by murder, explosions and civil strife. The region has seen a surge in home-grown Islamic fundamentalism, increasing lawlessness among the police and security services and feuding between local clans. On January 6th a suicide bomber drove into a police station, killing six officers. Last summer the republic's interior minister was assassinated.”  This description leaves it unclear whether it is the police, security services, clans, or jihadists that have committed these terrorist attacks.  Both the authorities and the jihadists have stated the CE mujahedin were behind these attacks.

Russia and U.S. Lead Calls to Reduce Nuclear Arsenals

REPRINTS

New York Times, February 8, 2010

By Judy Dempsey

MUNICH — For many years, the Munich Security Conference has been dominated by rivalry and suspicion between Russia and the United States. The suspicion continues to be fueled by Russian hatred of the idea of NATO expansion even further eastward, eventually admitting Ukraine.

But at the conference this weekend, the atmosphere was markedly different. On arms control, both sides tried to determine whether it was at all possible for President Barack Obama to realize his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. The debate was free of polemics and recriminations.

With North Korea already having acquired nuclear weapons and Iran seemingly determined to acquire them, and with the increase of international terrorism, U.S. and Russia officials said here that they believed the Cold War dominated by two nuclear superpowers was truly over.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

 by Patrick Armstrong

Over-centralisation. I have long thought that Putin, probably as a result of his fear that Russia would break up, over-centralised control (From his first phone-in in 2000: “The ‘power component’ in this country has become weakened and everything went tumbling down”.). One of Medvedev’s problems, therefore, is to reduce this centralisation: his goal of “modernisation” is impossible if all decisions are made at the centre. Yesterday, the Institute of Contemporary Development, with which Medvedev is associated, issued its report on what should be done. In brief, it calls for a general loosening of the political and command system of the country and a number of changes; many reverse decisions Putin made when he was President and mark somewhat of a return to the Yeltsin period. No doubt the Kommentariat will go into a frenzy of speculation about a struggle between the two Duumvirs, but I believe that this is all part of the next stage of the Team’s Plan. The report is probably to be seen as a contribution to the discussion. We will see what happens.