by Patrick Armstrong
Luzhkov. The number one story in Moscow these days is the
future of Mayor Luzhkov. It is highly probable that the present campaign
against him is blessed by the Kremlin. It is rumoured that the
object is to get him to go quietly. Luzhkov is a powerful man but that’s a lot
of pressure. I expect that he will “retire at his own request for personal
reasons” as they used to say (vide Ilyumzhinov). There is a
style to the way the Team handles these problems: Nazdratenko was ousted as
governor in 2001 with the excuse of poor handling of power failures and
appointed head of the State Fishing Commission (where he served at Putin’s
pleasure); that pleasure ended in 2003. The Team evidently agrees with Lyndon Johnson’s advice on
tents. Nazdratenko is still in the tent, but far off in the corner. What’s
happening here I think (most commentators didn’t notice Ilyuzhinov’s departure)
is that, bit by bit, the Team is getting rid of people who thought they had
jobs for life (and, of course, who aren’t as loyal as they might be. But that’s
politics and power the world
over.)
Bureaucracy. The Finance Minister said the other day
that the number of federal bureaucrats was to be reduced by 100,000 over the
next 3 years. World experience shows that this is much easier to say than to
do. By the way, one of the many wrong things repeated by the Kommentariat is
that Russia’s bureaucracy is bigger than it was in the Communist days. Not so:
they forget the enormous CPSU structure that paralleled and directed the
government structure. The overall total of state functionaries is surely much
lower today. There was a sort of coup that took place in the 1990s in which the
local GorIspolKoms (ie “government”) took over the local GorKom (CPSU)
building. This can be seen in towns all over Russia if you look: the huge
building on Lenin/October/Revolution Square that used to be the local Party HQ is
now the City government. Vide Smolniy
in St Petersburg.
NATO. NATO has officially invited Medvedev to
attend the NATO
summit in Lisbon in November. To its surprise, NATO now finds Russia
useful. I wonder what will come of this: it’s a significant gesture but NATO is
a pretty dead tree organisation these days, capable of little more than
platitudes.
Wildfires. Changes are being made to prevent such disasters
again: amendments to the law; centralisation of the Federal Forestry
Agency; new
equipment.
Military Chaplains. The Patriarch
says that priests
will soon appear in military units to serve as chaplains. This (a little like
rumours of Cossack
units) keeps being announced but never seems to actually happen.
Boeing. Happy days for it: it won the bid and
50 or more 737
Next Generation airliners will
be bought for Aeroflot; it beat out Russia’s United Aircraft and Airbus.
Iran. Medvedev signed a decree
Wednesday banning the sale of many weapons systems (including the S-300 SAM) to Iran;
he was also reported to have placed restrictions
on movement through Russia of “a number of Iranian nationals” connected with
Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow has held out the S-300 carrot for years now; I
believe as part of its (unsuccessful) attempt to influence Tehran. It has now
given up. And another
staple
of the
“charge
sheet”
against Russia bites the dust. Where does this leave Bushehr? The billion
dollars or so that Russia received for completing the reactor is chump change
to Russia Inc these days. But, we are told, there’s no
effect on it.
Poison. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office is taking another
look at the Yushchenko poisoning story. This story, which was a major component of the
“Orange Revolution” narrative, is very fishy indeed. I always found it
significant that, during Yushchenko’s presidency, we never heard anything
more about it. Perhaps now we will. A complete fake in my opinion.
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