Russia: Other Points of View

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Election bet. I’ve put mine down: Medvedev will run, Putin will not, there may be a second Team candidate (ie one from United Russia and one from Just Russia).

Putin Q&A. Another session worth reading. He was in Magnitogorsk to open a new cold rolling complex  but, as usual, answered all the questions thrown at him with his customary frankness and mastery of detail. As I have noticed on several occasions lately, he seems to be in a reflective mood and is ready to speak about what he believes he accomplished (stability again: “Who is going to invest in a country that is always shaking like a leaf?”). Several times lately he has been looking back in detail but forward in generalities. Is this a (tiny, I agree) indication that he is contemplating retirement?

Legal activity.  Quite a lot since my last Sitrep. Contractor arrested for swindling the Navy (and, by the way, a rather easily detected swindle). Four people in the North Caucasus arrested as they were preparing a bomb attack on Moscow. Yet another RosAtom executive arrested on charges of embezzlement. Another traffic cop arrested in another “blue light” affair. Three police sentenced for abuse of office. Criminal investigation into a St Petersburg shipyard.  Charges laid in the Bulgaria sinking. Investigation into a “blue light” death re-opened. Extreme nationalist sentenced. Two charged in a laser blinding case (there have been a spate of these lately). A man arrested for a multiple murder. And, in the Magnitskiy case, charges have been laid and the investigation re-opened. That’s what I’ve noticed in three weeks – I wouldn’t say that nothing is being done about corruption and malfeasance.

The New York Times and Washington Post: All the Bias That’s Fit to Print

By Gordon M. Hahn

This week saw the New York Times’ and Washington Post’s continuation of their tradition of allowing only those articles and opeds that paint the worst picture of Russia and–– occluding from the American public the positive changes occurring in Russia under President Dmitrii Medvedev in tandem with former president Vladimir Putin, his Prime Minister. 

First there was the Washington Post oped piece by Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center.  She opined that “The rift between Vladi­mir Putin and incumbent Dmitry Medvedev is growing, says a well-known pundit. Medvedev has become a symbol of change, an influential journalist assures us. Quite a few are betting on Medvedev as a pro-Western reformer. This is just what Putin, now prime minister, needs as he prepares for the March 2012 election: Let the world think that a competition is underway in Moscow. Let the world believe that Medvedev has a chance. Let the world hope that Medvedev is a liberal” (Lilia Shevtsova, “Putin's best trick yet,” Washington Post, 22 May 22, 2011). 

PRESERVING INFLUENCE IN A CHANGING WORLD: RUSSIA'S GRAND STRATEGY

REPRINTS

By Andrei P. Tsygankov

San Francisco State University

Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 58, No. 1, March-April, 2011, pp. 28-44.

Abstract

Russia has been creating flexible international coalitions in order to achieve its central objective of becoming an independent center of power and influence.

Russia is never as strong as we fear and never as weak as we hope.

Klemens von Metternich

1. Introduction

From Europe to the Middle East and Asia, scholars and politicians are increasingly recognizing the prominent role of Russia in international affairs. From a weak and inward-looking nation of the 1990s, Russia has emerged into a power that is capable of defending its international prestige using available economic, military, and diplomatic means. It has exploited its energy clout to expand Russian relations abroad and cemented its military presence in the strategic area of the Southern Caucasus by defeating Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia. By mobilizing its soft power, the Kremlin has also contributed to reversing the colored revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. After being seriously hit by the global financial crisis, Russia has quickly recovered as an important international player.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Corruption. A reasonably big fish was hooked yesterday: the head of the CIS anti-organised crime bureau (!), Alexander Bokov, was arrested in Moscow on embezzlement charges. The case seems to be that he extorted a large bribe and then trousered it. A couple of days earlier a case opened in Altay in which several officials were charged with hunting endangered animals two years ago. The former Mayor of Barnaul was charged with what looks to be a privatisation swindle six years ago. Last week the Interior Minister said that “Criminal proceedings were launched against some 10,000 officials, one-third of them were started for taking brides”. The tax Service has opened a 24/7 phone line and e-mail address so that citizens can report corruption examples. This is not nothing; gradually the campaign is starting to bite.

THE THIRD TURN

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

by Patrick Armstrong

The hypothesis of this essay is that the conventional Western view of post-Communist Russia has passed through two cycles and is entering a third. While the first two were grounded mostly on what observers wished to see, the third is shaping up to be based more on reality.

Little Brother

As Tom Graham wisely observed some years ago: while no one will take seriously a country with a declining GDP, no one can ignore one whose GDP is rising. When the USSR fell apart in 1991, its extraordinarily centralised economy, whose links were now were blocked by new national borders, choked and died. Living standards sank, inflation exploded, the tax base collapsed, state employees went months without pay, factory employees were paid in kind, the social support system failed and the demographic decline that had begun in the Khrushchev period accelerated. All indicators worsened at once. This was the time when “free fall” was a favourite descriptor. A reminder of this period was a piece that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 2001, starkly entitled: “Russia is Finished.” Still available on the Net, it makes curious reading today.

RUSSIA INCLUDES EUROPEANS IN UKRAINE ENERGY PACT

REPRINTS

This report is republished with express permission of STRATFOR http://www.stratfor.com

October 27, 2010

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Nikolai Azarov, held talks in Kiev on Oct. 27. The two countries signed several bilateral agreements, mainly focusing on energy. An oil transit agreement, shale gas exploration deal and pact on a joint nuclear venture were among the agreements signed. But STRATFOR sources in Moscow have said a more significant agreement concerning Ukraine’s natural gas system was not publicized to the media.

STRATFOR has documented Russia’s growing influence in Ukraine since the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich took office. This has included landmark deals including a lease extension for Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol in exchange for a significant reduction in the price that Russia charges Ukraine for natural gas. But Moscow has been looking to increase its control of Kiev’s most prized asset: Ukrainian state energy firm Naftogaz, which controls Ukraine’s pipeline and energy transit infrastructure. At first, Moscow and Kiev discussed merging Naftogaz with Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom. However, internal politics in Ukraine and vehement opposition from the European Union stalled those talks. When Putin announced his trip to Kiev, it seemed those discussions could restart. Instead, STRATFOR sources in Moscow have said, the merger is off the table for now and another major deal was struck in Kiev — a private agreement between the European Union and Russia on how to run Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. An EU delegation just happened to be in Kiev on Oct. 27, and sources say the delegates were in on part of the Putin-Azarov talks.

Moscow decided that in order to make the Europeans feel more confident in Russia’s energy supplies, it would strike a deal with Brussels and not Kiev on the Ukrainian system. This accomplishes three things for Moscow. First, it assures the Europeans that though Ukraine is back in the Russian fold, Russia still has the incentive to involve the Europeans in energy matters concerning Ukraine. Second, it keeps any European discussion of Ukraine’s energy system between Moscow and Brussels instead of involving Kiev. Third, it reminds Kiev that from now on, the future of its energy transit system and any negotiations regarding the infrastructure will depend on Moscow

 

 

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

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.)

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

The “third turn”. If we look back over the last couple of decades, we see that the Western image of post communist Russia has gone through two major turns. In the 90s Russia was a sort of younger brother whom we would mould and usher into the light of democracy. That didn’t work out very well: that’s when Russians began to associate the word “democracy” with theft and poverty. Then Russia became “resurgent” and “assertive”, or, in other words, it stopped declining away. The obsession with containing and thwarting Russia made Russians come to associate “democracy” with geopolitics. I think that a third turn is underway and, for that, I would thank Saakashvili in part. NATO expansion is now somewhat of an embarrassment (as is “democratic” Georgia); the “coloured revolutions” are being revealed as grounded in fantasy; Russia has not collapsed (and how many predictions were there of the inevitable coming failure of the “Putin system”?). Added to which, when, year after year, you’ve cried wolf that Russia is about to take over a neighbour and it doesn’t happen, your credibility turns to credulity. We are beginning a third (and I think much more realistic) phase of seeing Russia as an ordinary power with which one does ordinary business – sometimes rancorous, but business based on facts. The anti-Russia diehards have not gone away, but they are losing their audience. I give a lot of the credit for this change to Paris (and I do think that a key event was Kouchner’s visit to the Ossetian refugees; that experience inoculated Paris against swallowing Tbilisi’s story whole). Berlin has also played an important realistic role as, of course, has Obama’s “reset”. More recently, the Russian reaction to Kaczynski’s death seems to be ending the instinctive Polish opposition to all things Russian. Thus we see the gradual draining away of the core axiom that “Putin wants a new Russian Empire” and the corollary ideological perspective that everything Moscow does is really about that: Russian gas pipelines are really threats; Medvedev’s proposals on security and financial systems are really designed to “split the Western alliance” and the other manifestations of seeing what you believe rather than believing what you see. Here are a few straws in the wind from the past week. (For former examples of Westerners seeing only what they wanted to see in Russia, I recommend Malia’s Russia Under Western Eyes which starts with Voltaire’s imaginary ideally-governed Russia or Foglesong’s The American Mission and the 'Evil Empire' which details a century of American obsessions about a Russia seen as a disappointingly stubborn and backwards twin brother.)

Rethinking Russia: U.S.-Russian Relations in an Age of American Triumphalism

REPRINTS

Interview with Stephen F. Cohen, Professor of Russian Studies and History at New York University and Professor of Politics Emeritus at Princeton University

Journal of International Affairs

Spring/Summer 2010

Journal: The world recently commemorated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. How has this event been received in Russia?

Cohen: For Russians, the more important date is this March, which marks 25 years since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and began the reforms he called perestroika. There will be very conflicting opinions in the Russian press about what happened to the nation in the past 25 years. The angriest view will lament the loss of the Soviet Union, which many Russians still do.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Long-term planning. Charles Heberle has been conducting a training program in a region of Russia for a decade. Based on his successful school program in the USA, the essence is to train subjects to become citizens. As time went on, it became clear to him that not only did Putin fully support his efforts, but that the whole thing had actually been Putin’s idea in the first place. Ten years ago a Russian NGO approached Heberle; convinced that the activities of Western NGOs would only create a new elite that used democratic slogans to disguise their rapacity, they had been searching the world for a better approach and had discovered his program. He accepted their invitation, arrived in Russia and instituted his training program in schools in their city and, eventually, their region. And there has been absolutely no publicity about it; I first heard about it from Heberle a year ago and was flabbergasted: I had no idea that Putin and his team were planning so far ahead. Putin has talked much about the need for a civil society, but I did not realise that he a) understood that such things cannot come by government decree and b) was actually sponsoring an attempt to change the mindset of a new generation, individual by individual. I urge everyone to read Heberle’s account and his description of how he came to realise that Putin was behind the whole idea – it’s a vital insight into what Putin and his team are trying to do.