More Evidence of Shocking and Entrenched Russian Racism

Check out the Moderate Voice blog’s item exposing the outrages of racism in the Russian media, some shocking revelations are made. Hat tip!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Bad News Pouring in like a Deluge for Putin’s Russia

Cutting-edge bomber crashes.

Disastrous oil spill at major pipeline.

WTO admission won’t happen in 2006 at all.

Another spectacular tennis flameout by a Russian against a lower-ranked player.

Massive art theft at the Hermitage.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Gessen Remembers Itogi and Ruminates on the Neo-Soviet Union, Land of Thugs

In her column in the Moscow Times last week, Masha Gessen remembers the beginning of the end for Russian media (the Kremlin’s obliteraton of Itogi magazine, something that may well be remembered as the first sign of the Neo-Soviet apocalypse) and ruminates on the end of the beginning of the creation of the the Neo-Soviet state:

Be Careful What You Say

By Masha Gessen

Russia’s chief health inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, the man who has left us wine-less, brandy-less and Borzhomi-less, has shut down the cafeteria at the Moscow Regional Arbitration Court. He said it was the “height of disregard for the most elementary of health standards,” adding that he could “say with certainty that it was the worst dining establishment in Moscow.” Onishchenko concluded that it was “pure luck” that none of the judges who eat there had gotten food poisoning.

That almost sounded like a threat.You might wonder how a man as busy and as powerful as Onishchenko came to micromanage the closure of a single cafeteria in Moscow, one that is not even open to the general public. Does he take such pains to protect the health of all Russians, especially public servants? Guess again. The Moscow Regional Arbitration Court had taken up a complaint against Onishchenko’s ban on Moldovan and Georgian wines filed by the importers of these wines. Remarkably, Kommersant seems to be the only paper to have reported on the case, so inconsequential have such court proceedings apparently become.

And yes, what Onishchenko said was indeed a threat. He mentioned that the leadership of the court was not “taking measures to normalize” the feeding of judges and that it had refused to allow Onishchenko’s staff to inspect labor conditions at the court. Want to know what that was about?

A half dozen years ago I worked at Itogi, a weekly magazine that, together with NTV television, became one of the first two victims of Putin’s attack on independent media. The tax people came first, and had to admit that the magazine’s payroll and other financial records were in good order. Then the fire inspectors came, and the magazine banned smoking on the premises, posted inane evacuation instructions on every wall, and appointed the managing editor emergency fire chief. Finally the health inspectors came and claimed that one of the typefaces used in the magazine lacked a requisite sanitation certificate and might therefore be harmful to readers’ eyes.

I think that was when we knew that we had lost.Onishchenko will clearly not be able to shut down the arbitration court as easily as he put the wine importers out of business, but his agency may be able to declare the entire court building a health hazard, forcing it to suspend operations until the Health Code violations have been addressed. If you were a judge, you might think twice about offending a man who had just shut down your cafeteria and was threatening you with indefinite leave. Just imagine the enormous backlog of cases you would face when you came back to work.So Onishchenko is threatening a court the way bureaucrats usually threaten private businesses.

This is a curious fact but, to my mind, not the moral of the story. The moral of the story is that we should never forget how spiteful and small-minded these people are. It seems extremely unlikely any decision of the arbitration court could reverse Onishchenko’s actions, but the all-powerful doctor punished the court for thinking it could butt in at all.This is a useful lesson to keep in mind whenever you wonder why things happen the way they do in Russia. Why was businessman Bill Browder, one of the most shameless promoters of investment in this country, denied an entry visa? He has been making inquiries through official channels, and recently received an answer that said, in essence: Yes, you were denied entry. It must have been something he said.

Why was Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested and sent to rot in a colony near the Chinese border? I had a chance to ask his wife about this recently. “Politics,” she answered, “and personal ambitions.” Whose personal ambitions? “The opposite side’s.” Is this country really ruled by people who are prepared to take away someone’s property and freedom just because they feel somehow slighted? I’m afraid so.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Facts on Russian and U.S. Economic Growth

In the second quarter of 2006, each American contributed on average $250* to economic growth. This growth rate caused the New York Times lead story on Saturday (July 29th) to proclaim American economic growth to be “modest” and related to a “big toll” on the economy.

During the second quarter of 2006, each Russian contributed on average $175 to Russian economic growth. In other words, each American produced 43% more economic growth for his country than each Russian did for his. Despite this fact, this growth rate caused an op-ed writer in the LA Times to call Russia’s economic growth “surging” so that “urban Russians in particular are enjoying higher living standards — and not just because of oil wealth.”

This isn’t just your typical media ineptness and inaccuracy where Russia is concerned. Clearly, we’re through the looking glass here. And it gets worse.

Because this figure of $175 per person is wildly liberal and inflated. It assumes that the Russian GDP is $1.5 trillion (so that 7.1% growth amounts to $105 billion per year or about $25 billion for the quarter, which works out to about $175 per person). But in fact, Russian GDP is only $1.5 trillion under the “purchasing power parity” formulation, which assumes among other things that the quality of medical care received from a doctor earning $4,000 per year is the same as that received from one earning $400,000 per year – in other words, it’s a totally bogus notion. What’s more, it asumes that the economic production data produced by the Kremlin, controlled by a clan of KGB spies who spent their lives learning how to lie, is trustworthy. To say the least, Russia’s actual per capita growth figure is far less than $175 per person. To say the most, when you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME.

And that is to say nothing of the fact that economic growth is distributed among the population far more evenly in the U.S. than in Russia, where the Kremlin is hoarding a vast amount of Russia’s “economic growth” (which is really just increased income from rising oil prices, not increased productivity among Russian workers) as reserves rather than investing it in the country. In other words,the $175 is pure smoke and mirrors.

*This number is calculated based on 2.5% of America’s $12 trillion economy or $300 billion annual growth, which translates into $75 billion in second quarter growth divided by America’s population of 300 million, which works out to about $250 per person.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

In Helsinki, Freedom House Condemns Russian Autocracy

The director of Freedom House gave lengthy testimony before the Helsinki Commission on July 27th concerning the rise of totalitarianism in Russia. The link will survive so La Russopobe will simply direct readers to it, and urge them to support the heroic work of Freedom House to defend civil liberties. The overview is:

While there, we released our most recent report on Russia, from our survey called Nations in Transit, at a well attended press conference on June 14, and so these findings were conveyed to at least some Russians through the dwindling array of still independent newspapers and radio stations in Moscow. That report documents the continuing erosion of freedom in Russia during the past year, and I have brought copies today for your reference. The report, by one of America’s most eminent Russia-watchers, Robert W. Orttung of American University, focuses on several specific developments that have been prominent in the last year – the resurgence of corruption in the growing state-owned economy; the development of the NGO law that would further curtail civic activity, and obstruct international efforts to assist civil society; the adoption of election laws that will make it even more difficult for opposition parties to win seats in the Duma and virtually impossible for independent monitors to observe the electoral process. But the larger, even moreimportant story to be told is found in the accumulated series of reports on Russia that track the steady, continuing restriction of political space in Russia. In the annual assessments contained in Nations in Transit, one notes that the scores for Russia’s democratic performance have been declining in every year since 1997.

Freedom House reports that it is regularly harassed and attacked by Neo-Soviet Russian authorities for its work in trying to speak to Russians about the rise of authoritarianism and its attempts to educate them and document their findings, and concludes that Russia remains in the dark third of the world that is “unfree.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

More Tax Atrocities in Neo-Soviet Russia

Sharp & Sound reports that Russia is using bogus tax claims to take over the last remaining oil pipeline in Russia that state-controlled TRANSNEFT does not already have.

Russia has totally abandoned any notion that it has the rule of law, meaning that foreign investment is out of the question and corruption is the status quo in the domestic economy. Even a diverse and vibrant developed economy like the U.S. could not survive this kind of environment, so what chance does Russia have?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Clapton Ain’t Gonna Play Neo-Soviet City

The Beeb reports that the Kremlin is afraid of Eric Clapton and won’t let him play a concert in Neo-Soviet Russia. It’s deja vu all over again. Welcome to the Neo-Soviet Union.

Musician Eric Clapton has called off a concert in Moscow’s Red Square after Russian officials withdrew permission for the event.

The singer had been scheduled to play before 20,000 people on 3 August and had a permit “signed by all appropriate Russian city and state authorities”.

According to his website, however, the permit was withdrawn on 28 July.

The statement said he was “extremely sorry” to disappoint his fans, but the situation was “beyond his control”.

Clapton had intended to end his current European tour in Moscow. Instead it will now finish on Monday in Helsinki, Finland.

The 61-year-old performs in the Swedish capital Stockholm on Saturday night.

Later this year he will tour the US and Canada with blues musician Robert Cray.

In 2005 Clapton joined his former Cream bandmates Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce for a handful of reunion concerts.

The British guitarist’s many hits include I Shot the Sheriff, Wonderful Tonight and Layla, recorded as Derek and the Dominoes.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Sunday Funnies: Russian Fashion Edition

Ludmila Putina, clothes horse (and I do mean horse) . . .

That’s the wife of the President of Russia on the right. Think
that gaudy getup is nasty? It gets worse . . .

. . . and worse . . .

. . . and dowright embarassing. Either Putin is
making her clothes choices for her (like he makes
choices for all lemming-like Russians), or . . . no,
that alternative is too godawful to mention.

Plus which, Lyuda dear, get thyself to a gymnasium!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Creating the Illusion of Success in Russia: Back to the Neo-Soviet Future

As the LA Times reports (here via the Sydney Herald), Russia is a society based on illusion and lies, not substance, which is why its edifice repeatedly comes tumbling down.

ALWAYS wanted to brag to your friends about your trip to Brazil, but couldn’t afford to go? No problem!

For $US500 ($655), nobody will believe you weren’t sunning yourself last week on Copacabana Beach, just before you trekked through the Amazon rainforest and slept in a thatched hut.

Persey Tours was barely keeping the bill collectors at bay before it started offering fake holidays. Now it is selling 15 a month – providing ticket stubs, hotel receipts and photos with clients’ images superimposed on famous landmarks.

If the customer is an errant husband who wants his wife to believe he is on a fishing trip, Persey offers not just photos of him on the river, but a mobile phone with a distant number, a lodge that will swear the husband is checked in but not available, and a few dead fish on ice.

Of course, it is not the real thing. But in Russia this is a distinction that can easily drift into irrelevance. If there is a world capital of audacious fabrication, it must be Moscow, where fake is never a four-letter word.

Forget fake Rolexes and Gucci bags – that’s kids’ stuff. Russian entrepreneurs offer million-dollar fake Ivan Shishkin paintings, forged passes to the Kremlin bearing President Vladimir Putin’s apparent signature, false medical school diplomas and alley cats palmed off for $US300 as “Siberian purebreds”.

The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, German Gref, estimates that half of all consumer goods sold in Russia are fake. The counterfeit trade, Mr Gref announced in January, has reached $US6 billion a year – no one knows exactly, because the books are cooked.
Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of pirated music products – many of them brazenly manufactured behind the locked gates of former military bases.

“What you’re witnessing on the piracy front is kind of emblematic of what’s happening in Russia generally,” said Neil Turkewitz, the executive vice-president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Every Russian must ford a river of flim-flam, much of which is tolerated because it makes everyone’s life cheaper and more manageable than the real thing.

Even Mr Putin’s doctoral dissertation, researchers from the Brookings Institution revealed this year, contained sections lifted from a text published by academics from the University of Pittsburgh.

The revelations were barely repeated in the Moscow press, not because they were scandalous, but because they weren’t.

Yuri Lubimov, an adviser to the Economic Development Minister, said to understand the Russian public’s appetite for fakes, one must understand the importance of appearances.

“It’s better to look like something than to be something,” he said. “I know people here who have not very much money at all, but he will buy a very big car so that other people will see that he’s rich, he’s powerful.”

Or maybe he has a photo proving he was on the Great Wall of China during his last holiday.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Neo-Soviet Russia Cracks Down on Religion

The Washington File reports that the U.S. Congress is holding hearings to document increasing religious persecution in Russia:

Washington — President Bush and other U.S. officials should “be prepared to counter persistent claims by Russian leaders” that U.S. and U.N. efforts to advance human rights constitute foreign “meddling” or are intended to harm the Russian Federation, the head of a U.S. commission charged with making policy recommendations advised July 27.

At a congressional hearing on human rights and U.S.-Russian relations, Felice D. Gaer, chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), presented a number of recommendations based on a recent trip to Russia by a USCIRF delegation.

The delegation visited the Russian cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan June 17-28, meeting with Russian government officials, legislators, academics and representatives from a range of Russia’s religious communities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

As a result of that trip, the USCIRF recommended that President Bush and other U.S. officials raise human rights concerns both publicly and privately at the July 15-17 Group of Eight (G8) Summit in St. Petersburg.

Gaer said the delegation found several “major areas of concern,” including the Russian government’s failure to address the rise in xenophobia and ethnic and religious intolerance in the country; official actions related to countering terrorism that have resulted in harassment of individual Muslims and Muslim communities; and continuing restrictions on religious freedom, particularly at the regional and local levels.

The USCIRF also said it was concerned that recently adopted Russian legislation on NGOs, including religious organizations, “may be used to restrict severely their ability to function.” The legislation increases the Russian government’s oversight of the registration, financing and activities of NGOs in Russia. (See related article.)

“One key purpose of the new legislation was to prevent NGOs – especially those receiving foreign funding – from engaging in so-called political activities, a purpose not spelled out or defined in the legislation,” Gaer said.

She linked the NGO legislation to the Russian government’s challenging of international human rights institutions and its claim that foreign funding of Russian human rights organizations constitutes illegitimate interference in Russia’s internal affairs.

Noting the NGO legislation’s special strictures on foreign funding, Gaer said, “It is the commission’s view that these provisions of the NGO law on foreign funding are a part of the broader effort by Russian officials … to link human rights groups to ‘foreign interference,’ and thus to discredit — and perhaps ultimately halt — their activities.”

Gaer also linked rising ethnic and religious intolerance to the efforts of Russian government officials to label foreign funding of NGOs as “meddling” in Russia’s internal affairs. “Moreover, the official branding of human rights organizations as ‘foreign’ has increased the vulnerability of Russia’s human rights advocates and those they defend,” she added.

Gaer said the commission recommends the U.S. government encourage the Russian government to:

• Affirm publicly that all religious communities in Russia are equal under the law and entitled to equal treatment, publicly express its reported opposition to any legislation that would grant preferences to so-called “traditional” religions over other groups, and direct national government agencies to address and resolve continuing violations of religious freedom at the regional and local levels;

• Speak out frequently and specifically to the citizens of Russia to condemn specific acts of xenophobia, anti-Semitism and hate crimes, and to affirm a commitment to uphold the multiethnic nature of Russian society.

• Develop regulations in accordance with international standards that clarify and sharply limit the state’s discretion to interfere with the activities of NGOs, including religious groups.

• Implement the many specific recommendations made by Russia’s Presidential Council on Human Rights, the official Human Rights Ombudsman’s office and the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance to address xenophobia and prevent and punish hate crimes.

USCIRF intends to issue a further report and recommendations in the fall of 2006, she said.

ther panelists at the hearing included Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Tom Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House; Fritz Ermarth, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council and former CIA officer; and Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of The National Interest.

Congress created the USCIRF through the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to give religious freedom and other freedoms a more prominent place in U.S. foreign policy. The full text of Gaer’s prepared testimony is available on the USCIRF Web site.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia Says Hezbollah and Hamas are not Terrorists

In another shocking outrage from Neo-Soviet Russia, the Kremlin has decided that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are terrorist organizations, and it doesn’t care what the rest of the world may say. If the world applies Russia’s definition, then there are no terrorists in Chechnya. The speed at which Russia is taking flight from reality and departure from common sense is really quite terrifying. The Associated Press reports:

MOSCOW — Russia on Friday published a list of 17 groups it regards as terrorist organizations, but did not include the Palestinian militant movement Hamas or Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla group, both regarded as terrorists in Washington.

Separately, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Hezbollah must have a say in any agreements in the Middle East crisis, Russian news agencies reported – another sign of differences between Russia and the United States about the region.

“Any agreements must be coordinated with all the basic forces in Lebanon, including Hezbollah, as an organization that is represented in the parliament and government of Lebanon,” RIA-Novosti reported quoted Lavrov as saying on a plane returning from an Asian security meeting in Malaysia. Hezbollah has 11 members in Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament, and two Cabinet ministers.

The terrorist list, published in the official daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, included al-Qaida and the Taliban as well as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a rebel group fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India, and Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood.

The Russian Federal Security Service’s top official in charge of fighting international terrorism, Yuri Sapunov, said Hamas and Hezbollah were not a major threat to Russia and were not regarded as terrorist groups worldwide.

But he said Russian security agencies took account of international lists of terrorist groups when exchanging intelligence with foreign counterparts.

Sapunov told Rossiiskaya Gazeta the list of 17 “includes only those organizations which represent the greatest threat to the security of our country.” Groups linked to separatist militants in Chechnya and Islamic radicals in Central Asia made the list.

Russia has come under criticism for its refusal to list Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

Israel is now fighting a ground and air war in Lebanon against Hezbollah guerrillas, who are firing rockets into northern Israel. Israeli forces have also attacked the Gaza Strip to target Hamas militants. Russia has criticized the scale of the Israeli offensive, while the United States has blamed Hezbollah for the violence.

President Vladimir Putin earlier this year provoked U.S. and Israeli anger by inviting leaders of Hamas to Moscow shortly after their January election victory. The meeting made no progress in softening the group’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist or foreswear violence.

Lavrov’s reported comment about Hezbollah echoed the arguments Russian officials made for inviting Hamas leaders, when they said that they were dealing with Hamas as an entity that had just come to power in elections.

Lavrov said that Russia’s support for a Hezbollah role in decision-making in the Mideast crisis was shared by European countries and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, adding: “As for support from the Americans for this position, I have no such information,” RIA-Novosti reported.

The European Union considers Hamas a terrorist organization and along with the United States slapped financial sanctions on the new Hamas-led government. But it does not list Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Somber Anniversary of Mass Murder by Russians in Kyrgyzstan

Radio Free Europe reports:

BISHKEK, July 27, 2006 (RFE/RL) — Dozens of people gathered today on Bishkek’s central Alatoo Square to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the 1916 anti-Russian armed revolt that was suppressed with great loss of life.

Known as “Urkun” in the Kyrgyz language, the uprising was triggered by Russia’s attempts at drafting non-Slavs into the army as part of its war efforts against Germany. Anti-Russian riots took place throughout most of today’s Central Asia.

Some historians believe up to 150,000 ethnic Kyrgyz and Kazakh were either killed by Russian forces or died while attempting to flee to neighboring China.

Burkan Zulkainarov, a member of the Asaba Party, told RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service today the remains of thousands who died of cold and hunger in the high mountain passes that lead to China are still lying there, unburied.

“From the Bedel Pass, which is 4,000 meters above the level of the sea, to the Chinese border flows a river whose banks are covered with human bones,” he said. “I was shocked [when I visited it]. Under Soviet times there was a military garrison there and, as we were told, soldiers from Muslim [Soviet] republics were never taken there.”

Although the Urkun uprising was directed against Tsarist Russia, commemorating the 1916 events was forbidden under the Soviet Union.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

More Intense Humiliation for Russia: ANOTHER Rocket Crashes at Baikonur, with EIGHTEEN Satellites Aboard

First Russia is totally humiliated at the G-8 Summit, then cruelly spurned by not one but four CIS countries at the CIS Summit, and then it destroys a host of international satellites in a spectacular rocket failure. Radio New Zealand reports:

A Russian rocket that was trying to launch 18 satellites into orbit around the Earth has crashed shortly after lift-off. All the satellites were destroyed as the unmanned rocket came down about 25 kilometres from the launch pad at Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Seventeen of the satellites belonged to foreign countries, including what would have been the first from Belarus.

Officials say the first and second stages of the rocket failed to separate correctly after 86 seconds of flight, causing the Dnepr – a converted intercontinental missile – to crash.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko had travelled to Baikonur especially to witness the launch.

Welcome to the reality of life under Valdimir Putin. Unending humiliation before the world, just like in the USSR.

Hopes for Montana science students crushed by Russian incompetence.

Lukashenko humiliated.

Norway regrets putting eggs in Russian basket.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia Jails Scientists

When Neo-Soviet Russia isn’t simply killing people it doesn’t like (especially reporters), it slaps them with absurdly fanciful tax charges and drives them into bankruptcy or prison. An alternative, as the Moscow Times reports, is to accuse them of treason, just as the bad old USSR used to do. Ironically, then as now, those accused by the Kremlin of treason are generally much greater patriots than those making the accusations.

Yury Ryzhov is at his wits’ end. The Public Committee for the Protection of Scientists, which he heads, has been unable to defend an increasing number of scientists against charges of espionage and illegal technology exports, which the committee regards as unfounded.

“I’m overwhelmed by despair. Nothing helps. I don’t know what we are going to do,” Ryzhov, a prominent physicist and former ambassador to France, said glumly to a gathering of scientists, defense lawyers and liberal political leaders on Thursday at the Central House of Scientists in central Moscow.

Ryzhov was referring to the high-profile cases of weapons researcher Igor Sutyagin and physicist Valentin Danilov, who were convicted of espionage after working with British and Chinese companies, respectively.

A court in Ufa is expected to issue a verdict on Aug. 2 in the case of Oskar Kaibyshev, the suspended director of the Institute for Metal Superplasticity Problems. Kaibyshev is charged with exporting dual-use technologies to South Korea. Prosecutors have called for a six-year sentence in the case. UPDATE: Kaibyshev received a crushing $132,000 fine and a suspended jail sentence.

The latest major case involves Novosibirsk chemist Oleg Korobeinichev. The Federal Security Service has accused Korobeinichev of divulging state secrets. The chemist has ties to U.S. and European research institutions.

A number of speakers Thursday criticized the Federal Security Service, the lead agency in such cases, for asking the courts to hold espionage trials behind closed doors. The classification of the verdict in Danilov’s case “flew in the face of common sense,” said Ernst Chyorny, a committee member.

An FSB spokesman made no comment on the committee’s accusations, insisting that questions regarding Thursday’s meeting be faxed to FSB headquarters.

FSB Deputy Director Yury Gorbunov promised in May that his agency would release more information about such cases in the future. The agency has said nothing about the cases against Kaibyshev and Korobeinichev, however.

Sergei Dzyuba, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion, where Korobeinichev runs a laboratory, said Western grants for scientific work did not pose a threat to national security.

By providing grants, Western foundations are not trying to “buy up scientific achievements on the cheap,” but rather to draw researchers into the democratic community, Dzyuba wrote in an article published Wednesday in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

The article appeared to be the institute’s first public comment on the Korobeinichev case.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Another Reporter Murdered in Russia

UNIAN News Agency reports:

Reporters Without Borders said today it was “deeply shocked” at the murder of Yevgeny Gerasimenko, of the regional weekly Saratovski Rasklad, whose body was found at his apartment yesterday by his mother, and called on the authorities to thoroughly investigate his death, which it said was probably linked to his work, according to an RWB press-release, forwarded to UNIAN.

“This has happened just a few days after the end of the G8 summit meeting that Russia chaired in St. Petersburg,” the international press freedom organisation said. “None of the world leaders attending publicly mentioned Russia`s ever-worsening press freedom. At least 13 journalists have been killed in the country because of their work since 2000 and none of the cases has been solved by the authorities.”

Gerasimenko was a sports and music reporter on the paper, in Saratov (southeast of Moscow), but also did investigative reporting. Colleagues said he had been looking into local corruption and the activities of firms in the region and was about report on this in the next issue of the paper on 1 August.

He was found with a plastic bag on his head and had been tortured. His computer was missing, which suggested, along with other evidence, that he was killed for his work. The regional prosecutor`s office has begun an enquiry under article 105 of the criminal code.

Reporters Without Borders expresses condolences to his family and colleagues.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Verdict is In: European Court for Human Rights finds Russia . . . GUILTY!

The Beeb reports that Russia has been caught red-handed in massive and outrageous human rights abuses and war crimes in Chechnya, been tried and convicted before the European Court of Human Rights. The question now is, will Russia respect the law or flout it? Actually, that’s a rhetorical question, since we all know perfectly well what Russia will do.

The European Court of Human Rights has held Russia responsible for the disappearance and presumed death of a Chechen man, in a landmark ruling.

Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev, 25, disappeared after being detained by Russian troops in Chechnya in 1999.

The case was brought by his mother, Fatima Bazorkina, after she saw TV footage in 2000 in which a Russian officer ordered her son to be shot.

Mrs Bazorkina sued Russia for failing to adequately investigate the case.

Russia had argued that there was no formal order to execute Mr Yandiyev and no hard evidence that he was dead.

But the judges said it had to be presumed that he was dead and they held Russia liable for his death.

This is the first such case the court is hearing from the Chechen conflict. It could set an important precedent for the 200 or so other similar claims which are waiting to be heard, the BBC’s Emma Simpson in Moscow says.

The ruling was posted on the Strasbourg-based court’s official website.

It said that a chamber of seven judges in the case Bazorkina v Russia unanimously held that:

• there had been a violation of Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of Mr Yandiyev’s disappearance

• there had been a violation of Article 2 of the Convention in respect of the failure to conduct an effective investigation into the circumstances in which Mr Yandiyev disappeared

• there had been no violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) in respect of the failure to protect Mr Yandiyev from ill-treatment

• there had been a violation of Article 3 in respect of Mrs Bazorkina

• there had been a violation of Article 5 (right to liberty and security) with regard to Mr Yandiyev’s detention

• there had been a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) in respect of the violations of Mrs Bazorkina’s rights under Articles 2 and 3

The court awarded Mrs Bazorkina 35,000 euros (£24,000) in damages and 12,241 euros (£8,400) for costs and expenses.

The ruling did not specify who would pay the damages and costs to the applicant.

Caught on camera

Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev was arrested during the military campaign to regain control of the Chechen capital Grozny in 1999. He had returned from Moscow, where he had been studying sociology.

His mother, Fatima Bazorkina, filed the complaint against Russia in 2001, saying the authorities had failed to adequately investigate the case.

She spent the last six years trying to find out what happened and sued the Russian government for violating the European Convention of Human Rights, alleging Russian forces killed her son.

The alleged execution order was caught on camera in the TV footage that Mrs Bazorkina saw in 2000.

Television journalists were travelling with Russian forces who captured a group of rebel fighters sheltering in the village of Alkhan-Kala.

Mr Yandiyev, dressed in camouflage, can be seen in the footage standing injured near a bus.

He is questioned by a Russian general who eventually shouts: “Take him away, finish him off, shoot him, damn it!”

Mr Yandiyev was then led away and has not been seen since.

General Alexander Baranov, who was seen on camera sending him off to be shot, has since been promoted and awarded a Hero of Russia medal.

Human rights campaigners estimate that since 1999 – the start of the second Chechen conflict – as many as 5,000 people have disappeared and are feared dead.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

LRant (an Editorial): Vladimir Putin, Neo-Soviet Gorilla

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you”

– Frank Lloyd Wright

Um, yeah. OK, Mr. Wright, sure. We’ll be sure to tell that to the families of all the victims of the Asian Tsunami and the San Franscico Earthquake and the Krakatau eruption and all the millions of other victims of natural disasters during the short history of humanity on the planet. We’ll be sure to remind all the mothers of children killed by malaria-laden mosqitoes and killer ants and killer bees and eaten by tigers and struck down by all manner of diseases and infestations, we’re sure your insightful words will be great comfort to them. And when our little daughters ask why daddy lions eat little girl lions for breakfast, we’ll quote you to her and she’ll be bound to sleep like a baby. As a philosopher, sir, you’re a truly brilliant architect.

People can be such total morons, can’t they? Even geniuses. And now, with that in mind, to business . . .

When the Cold War ended badly for Russia, crude uneducated Soviet thugs like Vladimir Putin had two choices.

They could admit that the past several decades of their lives had been absurd flights of egomania and get down to the hard work of saving their country from oblivion.

Or they could attribute the downfall of the USSR to bad luck and a few mistakes that anyone could have made, and they could set about to do it all over again, but this time the “right” way.

Guess which one Putin chose.

Of course, it always turns out to be harder to do a thing in practice than in theory. If you’re a government official with a tiny little gorilla brain, for instance, you might think: “I need some money. Well, OK, I’m a government official, I’ll just print some.” Or you might think: “Gee, I don’t like that fellow. Well, OK, I’m a government official, I’ll just invent some taxes that he doesn’t know about and arrest him for not paying them.”

Now, to be sure, all government officials have thoughts like these. But as you may have noticed, not all of them actually put their thoughts into practice. If you just start printing money, for instance, then suddenly money is everywhere and anyone can get some, and pretty soon money doesn’t have any value at all, and a loaf of bread starts costing as much as house used to. It’s a problem.

But Russia is not afraid of taking such chances, never has been. That’s why, as La Russophobe recently reported, the Kremlin has no problem simply inventing taxes and tax rules that nobody has ever heard of and using them to bludgeon anyone the Kremlin doesn’t like, particularly charitable and defenseless NGOs and foreign investors. Apparently, the Kremlin has never seen the movie Star Wars. If it had, it might have thought to itself before throwing Mikhail Khodorkovsky into prison, that it might be making him much more powerful by doing so, just like Darth Vader made Obi Wan Kenobi more powerful by killing him. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King weren’t reduced by being imprisoned, they were empowered and enobled. If Gorilla Putin really thinks that he is somehow improving on the ham-handed behavior of his Soviet predecessors which brought the USSR tumbling down, he’s truly mental.

And, worse than simply printing money, the Kremlin has no problem hoarding it. It isn’t spending a single cent of Russia’s oil price windfall on domestic investment, but rather piling it up in a mountain like the dragon Smaug in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit (or, to be more precise, like all the failed dictatorships of the past).

So now the Russian people have two choices.

They can admit that the past several years of their lives had been absurd flights of egomania and get down to the hard work of saving their country from oblivion. They can realize that if they were right in hating Boris Yeltsin then they were insane to annoint his chosen successor as their ruler.

Or they can attribute the downfall of the USSR to bad luck and a few mistakes that anyone could have made, and they can set about to do it all over again, but this time the “right” way.

Guess which one they’ll choose.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia Far From WTO Admission, Propaganda Exposed

Kommersant reveals that not only the U.S. but several countries have withheld their consent to Russia joining the WTO, as the Kremlin moves forward to alienate the entire world this can come as no surprise. At the same time, Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin is revealed as being either a crazed loose cannon, spewing forth ridiculous nonsense beyond the Kremlin’s control, or a reflection of a deeply ignorant and insular Kremlin which itself has no idea what is happening and believes its own propaganda.

Chief Russian negotiator on WTO accession Maxim Medvedkov spoke yesterday about the condition of those negotiations. He directly contradicted the optimistic statements made by Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref and Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin immediately before and after the G8 summit. The Russian Federation has not reached an agreement with the United States, nor with Moldova, Costa Rica and Georgia. Furthermore, besides the disagreement with the U.S. over meat inspection, half of the topics discussed earlier remain open. Gref had stated that the U.S. was the last country that it was necessary to reach an agreement with and that inspection of imported meat was the final issue in negotiations with it. Kudrin said that agreement had been reached on liberalization of financial markets and protection of intellectual property.

Medvedkov said that Russian inspectors would travel to the U.S. within a few weeks to examine American meat plants and that that issue was effectively settled. But that is not the end of the process. “Nothing is agreed on until everything is agreed on,” Medvedkov explained WTO rules. That means that American negotiators can still make new demands in areas that had been considered finalized. No agreement on meat quotas after 2009 has been reached either. Medvedkov did not say whether agreement had been reached on liberalization of the services market.

A source close to the negotiations told Kommersant yesterday that “Rumors that the opening of insurance company branches means selling the Russian insurance sector are highly exaggerated. There are no sectors that we are willing to sacrifice for the sake of the WTO. The opening of any market will be gradual and not complete.” This indicates that Kudrin’s statement on that subject was also erroneous.

Medvedkov said that the U.S. is not the last country that Russia has to reach bilateral agreements with. Agreements still must be reached with Costa Rica (the Economic Ministry unofficially announced the conclusion of an agreement with that country on June 6), Moldova and Georgia (resumption of negotiations). The issue of conditions on access to the sugar market has to be settled with Costa Rica, conditions on access to the wine and fruits and vegetables market has to be settled with Georgia and the levying of VAT on Russian natural gas on Moldovan territory has to agreed on with that country.

Negotiations with the U.S. will continue this week. Medvedkov estimated that negotiations with Costa Rica, Moldova and Georgia may be completed by September, and with the U.S. by late October.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Uh-oh, Russia . . . Here Comes Nuclear Fusion

The Scotsman reports that the Chinese are about to begin beta testing nuclear fusion reactors, which promise gigantic quantities of energy with a fraction of the radiation risk posed by today’s fission reactors. This news should terrify Russia, as it hastens the day when the world will have no use for Russia’s oil and gas reserves. When that day arrives, Russia as we know it will cease to exist unless before then it undertakes massive reform.

CHINESE scientists will next month test a so-called “artificial sun” device which will help scientists working to build a nuclear fusion reactor to produce huge supplies of energy for the world.

The device, an “experimental advanced superconducting tokamak” (East), is a prototype fusion engine and it is expected to carry out its first plasma discharge some time around 15 August.

The results of the test will inform work being done in the south of France to build the Iter fusion reactor, which will bring together the best practices from around the world for the first time.

The attempt to create a fusion reactor, which would produce abundant energy at a fraction of the radiation produced by fission reactors, and with less radioactive waste, is a rare example of international co-operation involving China, the European Union, the United States, Russia and Japan among other countries.

The East device, on Science Island in Hefei, is the biggest of its type. It uses super-conducting magnets as part of a process that involves heating hydrogen ions to between 100 million and 200 million degrees Celsius so they fuse together to become helium.

This process produces more energy, in the form of heat, than it uses, which can be used to drive a steam turbine.

Christopher Carpenter, of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which provides support to Iter, said the plasma discharge test was an important step on the road to fusion energy, which may become a commercial reality within 30 years.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

It’s from the front page of the Moscow Times yesterday, unfortunatley no story ran with it, only the caption: “More than 700 demonstrators gathering Tuesday on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, calling for authorities to defend the rights of victims of political repression.“

Give up? OK, I’ll give you a hint.

Do you notice how everone in the photograph seems to be about a hundred million years old? Where are all the young people? And how come in Russia, nation of 140 million people with a KGB president only a few years removed from a totalitarian nightmare, only 700 people show up for an event like this?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Kremlin Begins Khodorkovskizing NGOs and Investors

The Moscow Times reports that the Kremlin has begun a tax attack on foreign NGOs seeking to drive them out of the country just as it did against Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Will the world stand idly by and watch it happen?

The Center for Assistance in International Defense, a nongovernmental organization headed by one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, has been slapped with a bill for back taxes that could force it to close its doors.

The Federal Tax Service has ordered the NGO to pay more than 4.5 million rubles ($167,000) in back taxes and penalties for failing to pay income tax on grants it received from 2002 to 2004, the center’s deputy director, Valentin Moiseyev, said Tuesday.

The center, founded by lawyer Karina Moskalenko, a member of Khodorkovsky’s Moscow-based legal team, helps Russians file claims in the European Court of Human Rights when they have exhausted their legal options in this country.

Under the federal Tax Code, grants received for educational, analytical and research purposes are not taxed, Moiseyev said, adding that he hoped the back tax bill was a mistake that could be resolved without going to court.

Moiseyev said he could not rule out the possibility that the bill was an attempt to pressure the center to stop its work. The center, he said, cannot afford to pay the bill.

“Our organization and the lawyers who work with us have more than 250 cases in the European Court,” Moiseyev said. “Rulings have already been handed down in favor of many of our clients. The authorities can’t possibly look favorably on these sorts of claims against the state.”

A spokesman for the Federal Tax Service declined to comment immediately Tuesday.

Yelena Zhemkova, executive director of the rights group Memorial, said tax authorities frequently accused NGOs of breaking rules that are inapplicable to their work. For example, tax inspectors often take NGOs to task for failing to pay taxes on labor performed by volunteers, she said.

Zhemkova also said she knew of several small NGOs in the regions that were planning to shut down after being overwhelmed with paperwork from the tax service.

The Mercury News reports, relying on Kommersant, that the Kremlin has pursued a similar line against Chevron. seeking to undermine the company’s role in the Caspian Sea pipeline. In other words, there is no such thing as private property in Russia, and the Kremlin doesn’t care who knows it. So much for the idea of foreign investment in Russia or the country being any kind of reliable partner for any civilized nation.

Meanwhile, the Lukashenko dictatorship is resorting to more direct means, simply making activists disappear, as Belarus blog reports.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Attempting to Hide Dark Soviet Past, Neo-Soviet Russia Refuses Visas and Alienates World

The Baltic Times reports that crazed Neo-Soviet Russia thinks it can sweep its Soviet past under the carpet, just like in the bad old days of the USSR. Only the names have changed . . . actually, even some of the names are still the same.

VILNIUS – A refusal by Russian consular officials to issue visas to a group of Lithuanian students who wanted to travel to Siberia in order to pay respects to victims of Soviet repression and deportations has sparked indignation and an official note of protest from the Foreign Ministry.

The Council of Lithuanian Youth Organizations, which organized the expedition, said on July 21 that it was unclear why the group had been refused visas.
“The Russian Embassy has sent a reply, saying that it is impossible to issue visas. We intend to ask Lithuania’s president and prime minister to help solve this problem. We hope we will have an opportunity to decorate the graves of Lithuanians killed in the Krasnoyarsk region,” LiJOT program manager Sarunas Frolenka told the Baltic News Service.

The Foreign Ministry expressed protest to Russia over its refusal to issue visas, a high-ranking ministry official said. In the diplomat’s words, Russia was warned that Lithuania, in its turn, would respond on the basis of parity and would not issue visas to Russian citizens.

“The Foreign Ministry has intensively worked for several days to achieve that the Lithuanian youth expedition be issued Russian visas. Russia refuses to provide official comments as to why they have not been issued visas,” the Foreign Ministry official said.

In his words, Russian officials explained off the record that when the embassy issued visas to the first youth expedition to Siberia earlier this summer the aim of the expedition was believed to be to visit places of exile, decorate victims’ graves, but not to politicize. But, as the official explained, since group members and Lithuanian politicians allegedly started making political statements, members of the second expedition have not been issued visas.

In the Russian officials’ words, the participants in the expedition should make up their mind as to whether they want to go to decorate graves or politicize. “We disagree with such an explanation and have expressed protest. There will be a respective response based on parity – visas will not be issued to Russian citizens,” the Lithuanian diplomat said.

News about the refusal rankled some politicians. Audronius Azubalis, deputy chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said, “In refusing to issue visas to the group of Lithuanian youth going to Siberia to decorate Lithuanian exiles’ graves, Russia resembles Belarus, whose visa issuance policy is used as a tool of revenge against foreigners criticizing Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.”

“But what have young people of Lithuania going to honor the places of exile and the graves of victims of Stalin’s regime done wrong to Russia? Maybe by refusing to issue visas Russia is just starting to deny Stalin’s and his collaborators’ crimes against mankind?” Azubalis has asked rhetorically.

The group planned to go to the Krasnoyarsk region, where 165 Lithuanians were brought for forestry work in 1948. They were accommodated in several stables. Some 50 Lithuanians are buried at a cemetery in the area. The expedition was planned to decorate the Lithuanian cemetery and get acquainted with the living conditions of Lithuanian exiles.

But there was hope the group would still be able to make the trip. Ambassador to the U.S. Vygaudas Usackas, who intended to go to Siberia together with the group, has expressed hope that the Russian consuls’ decision was just a misunderstanding. “I hope that this misunderstanding will be resolved and Russian diplomats will understand the significance of the LiJOT mission to not only Lithuania’s youth but also to humanitarian relations between Russia and Lithuania,” Usackas has said. The diplomat and his son have received Russian visas in Washington.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

96% of Fabulous G-8 Piter’s Beaches are Toxic

Yesterday we learned that Russians seeking to bathe at home don’t have much to hope for. Today we find out that if they seek to solve the problem in the natural world, they’re not likely to fare any better. The St. Petersburg Times reports:

Only one out of twenty-five officially registered beaches in and around St. Petersburg is safe for use, according to this week’s report from Rospotrebnadzor, a state consumer surveillance organization with hygienic supervision functions.

Twenty-four beaches checked by the center’s specialists were found to be contaminated. Water showed dangerous levels of toxins, contaminants or bacteria, and thus the beaches can only be used for sunbathing. Only a beach on the island of Kronshtadt has passed all tests and proved reliable and safe.

The long blacklist of places unsuitable for swimming includes the popular beach at the Peter and Paul Fortress that hosted the SWATCH-FIVB World Tour competition last week.

Swimmers were also advised to avoid two beaches at Primorsky Park Pobedy, the Bezymyannoye Lake beach in the Krasnoselsky District, Zolotoi beach in Zelenogorsk, Laskovy beach in Solnechnoye, Chudny beach in Repino, two beaches on the Izhora River in the Kolpino District, the beaches at Lisy Nos and the Belaya Gora and the Zelenaya Gora beaches in Sestroretsk.

“If people swim in the polluted waters, the very least they can expect is a severe stomach infection,” said Nikolai Borovkov, an expert with the center’s Environmental Hygiene Department.

Borovkov said that the local water was tested for bacteria, including germs that cause dysentery, salmonella and even cholera, although experts believe the latter is unlikely to be found in the Neva River.

The center’s specialists take sand samples from all the city’s beaches once a month. They also take water samples to test for chemical contaminants such as heavy metals and sample water once a week for dangerous bacteria. On June 16, beaches were declared safe for swimmers but microbiological contamination has increased following several weeks of high temperatures, experts say.

The water pollution is also caused by pumping untreated industrial waste and human waste into the Neva River, where the water is always far from clean.

With the completion of the new Southwest Water-Treatment Plant in 2005, the local water-and-sewage monopolist Vodokanal is able to filter out 85 percent of the waste, but much more money is needed to solve the problem completely.

There is also the problem of illegally pumped industrial waste. Dmitry Artamonov, head of the local Greenpeace office, said that many city residents are either unconcerned about the problem or unaware of the state of the water.

Illegally pumped water may contain anything from dyes and oils to various chemicals, Artamonov said, warning that polluted water may often appear clean, as much of the illegal waste disposal takes place at night.

“The Neva is fast-flowing, so if you throw something into it at night it will be far away by morning,” he said. “Even if the water looks clean, with no obvious oily patches, don’t trust your eyes — they just don’t give you the whole picture.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Crazed Russian Nationalists Say Amnesty International is a CIA Front

The New Times reports that the crazed Russian nationalist press is now accusing, in classic Neo-Soviet style, Amnesty International of being . . . wait for it . . . a tool of the C.I.A. No kidding, that is what they really are saying in response to Amnesty’s scathing critique of Russian racism as previously documented in La Russophobe.

The New Times quotes KM.ru as follows:

Having mentioned some points from the AI report, the author of the article, Alexander Pugachenko says without beating about the bush that this is one more provocation among many directed against Russia by Western secret services. And further, “It is well known that public, and especially human-rights, organizations are the most suitable and favorable instruments of the West in its information war against Russia. In this case, Amnesty International is the classical example of such effective instrument. This organization is trying to force on Russian citizens views that are not only harmful, but also dangerous to society and the country. Under the guise of the struggle against fascism, Russia is forced to adopt the unique and absurd law-enforcement practice, according to which any crime against a nona-Russian person is automatically made more serious by adding the motive of national hatred. Thus they are made the caste of ‘untouchables.’ And the struggle against mythical fascism acquires the traits of the struggle against Russians.” And now the crux of the matter: “Who benefits if there should be as few Russians in Russia as possible? You know the answer to this question. The disappearance of Russian civilization is the main goal of the West, primarily the United States.”

The New Times concludes:

Such articles are interesting because their authors blurt out what many of their fellow thinkers do not dare say because of their high social or political position. In an interview with the German radio Die Deutsche Welle, AI analyst Peter Frank said that Russian authorities could be seriously reproached for their belittling, and sometimes ignoring and denying, the problem of racism. It had been considered unthinkable in the Soviet Union, which was the bulwark of “the friendship of the peoples,” although there were some completely unexpected events in Sumgait and Baku. And in the anti-fascist German Democratic Republic, neo-Nazi skinheads popped up as if by miracle, and there were many more of them there than in the Federal Republic of Germany. An admirer of the communist past could say something like “Here you are with the fruits of your democracy.” And this would only illustrate the concealment of information in the Soviet Union. Just as the authorities hid the truth about Chernobyl and Semipalatinsk, they did the same with Uzbekistan, where terrible pogroms of the Russian population took place in 1969. Is there a solution for xenophobia? In mid-April, two foreigners killed a Belgian youth in Brussels, not because of national hatred; it was a banal robbery. A protest meeting was held in the Belgian capital, in which more than 80,000 people took part. As journalists noted, despite the fact that the killers were foreigners, there was not one xenophobic word said.

Once again, we see that despite absurd claims appearing in the popular press there has in fact been no significant transformation of any kind in the hearts and minds of Russians. And why should there be? If America had lost the cold war to Russia, would we expect Americans to give up their ideas about freedom, democracy and capitalism and to resolutely adopt Russian notions of slavery, dictatorship and poverty? Hardly.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia Provokes Energy Cold War

The Guardian reports that after making personal attacks on both the president and the vice president of the USA, Russia is now intentionally provoking Cold War over energy by seeking to exclude American oil companies from exploiting Russian fields. “President” Putin, and Russians generally, are manifestly incapable of doing what is in their best interests, literally prepared to cut off their nose to spite their face. Putin is prepared to lash out like a spoiled child whenever he doesn’t get what he wants (WTO) no matter what the consequences are, just like his Soviet forebears. And no Russia is prepared to lift a finger to stop him. In fact, they applaud as he douses the nation with gasoline and strikes a match.

President Vladimir Putin is set to keep US oil companies out of a lucrative gas field in the latest sign of the deteriorating relationship between Moscow and Washington.

The Russian leader is expected to favour Norwegian companies and reject bids by America’s Chevron and ConocoPhillips after failing to secure backing from the United States for his country’s attempt to join the World Trade Organisation.

The tit-for-tat snub will be a blow to US companies scrambling for access to Russia’s huge gas reserves at a time of high energy prices. It comes after Putin failed to resolve differences with US President George Bush over trade and human rights at the G8 conference in St Petersburg last week.

The two leaders were barbed about each other’s democratic records at a tense G8 press conference. Putin later publicly praised Norsk Hydro and Statoil, the Norwegian firms that are competing with US companies for a role in developing the highly prized Shtokman gas field. ‘There is very little chance the American majors will win that tender now,’ a Russian oil analyst said yesterday. ‘Putin was hoping WTO membership would be wrapped up in time for St Petersburg. The failure to do that is a blow to his prestige.’

A final decision on awarding the contracts – which involves extracting and transporting gas from Shtokman in partnership with Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled company – was also originally expected before the G8 summit but has been postponed until next month at the earliest.

As well as the US and Norwegian companies, Total of France is also on the shortlist to develop the 3.7 trillion cubic metre gas field, which is located in the Barents Sea, near the Arctic Circle.
Igor Shuvalov, a Putin aide, warned in April that the US firms’ chances of participating in the undersea drilling project were tied to US support for Russia’s WTO bid, although this has since been denied by the Kremlin.

Last week, however, Putin singled out the Norwegian bidders for praise when asked by reporters about energy deposits in the Barents Sea.

‘You have probably heard that we are holding talks with several countries on the development of different fields, but companies from Norway are among the first on this list,’ he said. He added: ‘They don’t go around with their noses in the air. They work objectively, very professionally.’ Viktor Khristenko, the Russian energy minister, also praised the Norwegian firms’ record on protecting the environment last week.

Analysts have tipped the Kremlin to pick the Norwegian contractors following the recent resolution of a Barents Sea territorial dispute between Oslo and Moscow.

But the Shtokman project is also important to Russia’s long-term relations with the US, since most gas from the field is to be shipped to north America in the form of liquefied natural gas. Participation by Chevron or ConocoPhillips could help ease access to the US market. Russia has been very reluctant to allow foreign oil groups access to its energy reserves other than as junior partners on joint ventures with Gazprom. Russia supplies 25 per cent of the European Union’s gas but has also resisted EU demands that it loosen Gazprom’s control over the country’s pipeline network.

A dispute over gas prices earlier this year between Russia and Ukraine led to temporary disruptions in the flow of gas to western Europe and prompted Dick Cheney, the US vice president, to accuse Moscow of using energy as a tool of ‘intimidation and blackmail’.
But these diplomatic ructions have not extinguished the appetite of western investors for Russian energy stocks. Last week the oil group Rosneft successfully floated in London and Moscow with a $10.4bn placing.

Despite its size, the IPO represents only a small fraction of Rosneft’s total equity, and the company remains majority-controlled by the Russian state. LR: This is almost a non sequitor. Even if Russia had sold 100% of Rosneft, or any other country for that matter, is more than capable of simply negating the sale and taking back what it sold. Even were that not the case, anyone foolish enough to go into partnership with the fundamentally corrupt, lawless Kremlin deserves to lose his shirt.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !