February 6, 2008 — Contents

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 6 CONTENTS

(1) EDITORIAL: No Country Disappoints Like Russia

Special Feature: Annals of Humiliation for Putin’s Russia

(2) Part I: Losing in Serbia

(3) Part II: Losing in Poland

(4) Part III: Losses in the Stock Market

(5) Part IV: Losing to Suicide and Disease

(6) Part V: Losing Even the PR Battle

NOTE: We report on Publius Pundit that a high-ranking British official has said he has evidence that Vladimir Putin masterminded the 1999 Moscow apartment buildings in order to generate support for his war in Chechnya. Check it out, and feel free to leave your comments as to how the West should best respond to this outrage.

NOTE: In case you are interested, the reader whose literary question we published previously got her answer from another reader who wrote us by e-mail. The answer is: The Exile by Allan Folsom. The questioner expresses her profuse gratitude to the reader who helped. The power of community!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

EDITORIAL: No Country Disappoints Like Russia

EDITORIAL

No Country Disappoints Like Russia

Today we report on a stunning litany of evidence that Vladimir Putin’s government is in freefall.

From Poland to Kosovo to Moscow’s stock market to the prying eyes of international human rights groups to the secret dark places within Russia’s hospitals and the Russian home itself, Putin’s Russia is time and again proven a dismal disaster — yet the lemming-like Russian people ignore this failure, just as they ignored the failure of the USSR, and favor Putin with ridiculously high approval ratings. As such, they are accountable to history as a root cause of the neo-Soviet problem, and cannot plead for its mercy on Judgment Day.

Once again, we see a Russia totally cut off from reality which chooses to simply imagine it is successful rather than to actually be so, which thinks it can simply deny any problem and thereby solve it (as the Kremlin press secretary pathetically does when confronted with the most recent Human Rights Watch report, which equates Putin with crude African despot Robert Mugabe). As we showed in a recent post on Publius Pundit, Russia’s level of economic attainment is laughably inferior to that of the G-8 countries it seeks to sit at the same table with, and even more so with that of the U.S., which it perpetually seeks to confront and provoke. If Russia continues on this path, it can only meet the same fate as the USSR.

In a major pathbreaking editorial about independence for Kosovo, which Russia fears since it will diminish its Serbian little brother, the Wall Street Journal boldly states:

With its own Presidential poll next month, Russia may be tempted to press this hot button issue by again claiming a Kosovo precedent for “frozen conflicts” such as Abkhazia and Trans-Dniestr in its neighborhood. But someone could remind Moscow that it then might apply to Russia’s own ethnic minority republics, starting with Chechnya. In the meantime, the Western allies would be wise to guard against instability in the Caucasus and Moldova and come up with a credible response against any misbehavior by Moscow, including with sanctions.

This is what Vladimir Putin’s Russia has come to. Sanctions from the civilized world just as if it were Libya or Iran. John McCain, leading U.S. senator, calling for its ouster from the G-8. This man Putin (Lenin, Stalin — how ironic that they sound so similar) has led his country right to the precipice of disaster.

But no matter how bad things get in Russia, they can always get spectacularly worse, horrifyingly more humiliating. Moscow Times columnist Richard Lourie, for example, states:

Mentioning Senator Hillary Clinton’s name in an e-mail to a Moscow friend evoked a fury in the reply that caught me off guard. Though counting herself no great follower of President Vladimir Putin, my friend was still put out by Clinton’s comment that he had no soul. She was offended both as a patriot and as an Orthodox believer. It is never pleasant to hear your country’s leader compared to the walking dead — especially by a foreigner. This also would seem to be a perfect example of the “politics of personal destruction” that Bill Clinton wished to put aside during his own run for U.S. president. My friend and her family are beneficiaries of the success of the Putin years. They are able to worship freely without fear of consequence in their careers. They are able to make a decent, honest living and have risen from the squalor of a communal apartment to acquiring a comfortable, spacious apartment of their own. They travel frequently and freely. Though they speak of their annual vacation in Spain with casual insouciance, on some level they remember when the Soviet border had a lock and key. Their pleasures are keener precisely because they don’t take them for granted.

So get this: The Russians have no problem when their “president” jokes about liquidating the Chechens in their outhouses or complimenting the president of Israel on his sexual prowess after a rape. They have no problem with his devoting vast uncounted sums towards military confrontation with the United States, nor do they have the slightest difficulty with all manner of public and private attacks on Georgians, Ukrainians, and every other racial and ethnic minority in Russia. They cheer loudly when he publicly attacks and ridicules the U.S. and when he provides weapons to American foes like Venezulea and Iran. But let any U.S. leader give their “president” the business, and they start sobbing like little babies, claiming righteous indignation?

Isn’t it possible for Russians to ask: What have we done to deserve this? How can we change to stop it? Are Russians really so fundamentally barbaric that all they can do is physically destroy their critics, ignoring the basis of the criticism until they themselves are physically destroyed by it?

No, it’s not possible. And that’s the reason we routinely report so much disastrous news for Russia on our virtual pages.

A tiny group of wealthy Russians with foreign friends now live in luxury, and this is an excuse to ignore the plight of the vast unwashed population, consign it to misery and squalor just as in the time of the Tsars? Can Russia really have learned so little from the terrors of the Soviet interlude? Indeed, of course, one can easily argue that all the Soviets themselves did was to replace one oligarchy with another, and that Putin has done exactly the same thing, simply bringing in yet a third.

It would be hilariously funny, if it were not so brutally tragic.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation I: Losing in Serbia

Serbia has sold its soul to the Russian devil, and now it will pay the ultimate price. The Guardian reports on still more humiliating foreign policy failure for Vladimir Putin’s Russia:

From this morning Serbia faces up to a bruising battle over how to react to the looming secession of its southern province of Kosovo, after President Boris Tadic, a pro-western liberal, won a renewed five-year term in a close election last night. Tadic’s victory, by a projected 2.6 percentage points, or 100,000 votes, over the extreme nationalist Tomislav Nikolic puts him in a strong position to push for an alliance with the European Union, despite the EU’s support for Kosovo independence. But this policy will set the re-elected president on a collision course with the more powerful prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, who is threatening to sever relations with much of the EU when Brussels deploys an 1,800-strong nation-building mission in an independent Kosovo.

The Tadic-Kostunica fight is turning into a proxy showdown between the west and Russia – with the Kremlin aiding the prime minister, and the EU and the US shoring up the president. According to reliable projections last night, Tadic – who had lost the first round to Nikolic a fortnight ago – took 50.5% of the vote and edged ahead of Nikolic’s 47.9%. Serbs turned out in droves for the most important and most heavily attended ballot since the late Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown in 2000. In a victory speech in front of thousands of supporters at a rally in Belgrade, Tadic told his country: “We want to go to Europe. We want to cooperate with the world. We want to say to the people of Kosovo that we’ll never let them down. We need to work together to fulfil Serbia’s potential.”

Nikolic conceded defeat, despite the narrow margin, and offered Tadic his congratulations. “I would like to thank all those who voted for me, who understood how much Serbia needed a change,” he said. “This result gives us a reason to be optimistic. I congratulate him [Tadic] on his victory … I will continue to be his tough opposition.” How Belgrade reacts to the impending loss of 15% of its territory to Kosovo’s Albanian leadership now hinges on the struggle between Tadic and Kostunica. Yesterday’s contest was presented as a battle between the past and the future, and between east and west because Nikolic, a member of the old-guard Milosevic coterie, favoured a close alliance with Moscow, while Tadic’s campaign was based on pledges of European integration. Brussels feared that Nikolic might win, and made last-minute offers to Belgrade to try to swing the vote. And the EU rushed to congratulate Tadic last night.

The 67% turnout confirmed the high stakes and helped Tadic. But, with Serbia’s biggest ballot in years out of the way and Tadic’s victory secured, the focus now turns to Kosovo where key decisions have been delayed pending last night’s outcome. Kosovo’s independence declaration is expected within a couple of weeks. The state will quickly be recognised by the US and a large majority of the EU’s 27 members, including all the biggest countries, with the possible exception of Spain. Both Tadic and Kostunica strongly oppose Kosovo’s separation, but differ fundamentally on how to respond to a fait accompli. Kostunica refused to endorse Tadic in the election because of the latter’s position on the EU and Kosovo. Kostunica will call the shots on how Serbia responds to the loss of Kosovo and to the overtures from Brussels. Tadic is weaker, but can claim a clearer and stronger mandate than the prime minister after winning his election with an uncompromising pro-European message. Kostunica has prepared an “action plan” to try to frustrate Kosovo independence; western officials say that all Serbia’s government ministries have been ordered to draw up sabotage plans.

These are likely to concentrate on blocking energy and water supplies from Serbia to Kosovo, and perhaps Serbia severing diplomatic ties – at least temporarily – with EU states that recognise Kosovo. Tadic opposes such a move. The EU’s presidency, Slovenia, welcomed Tadic’s victory, saying it speeded up moves towards EU candidacy. “The presidency welcomes the fact that the Serbian people seem to have confirmed their support to the democratic and European course of their country,” it said. “The EU presidency reiterates its commitment to the European perspective of Serbia.”

EuroNews adds:

For the majority of the 120,000-or-so ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo, the result of the Serbian Presidential election brought disappointment. At the headquarters of the losing candidate’s party in the divided city of Mitrovica, they spoke of anxiety over the President’s next moves. The Radical Party leader in Kosovo, Lyubomir Kragovic thanked the two-thirds of voters who cast their ballot for Nikolic. “They sent a clear message to Serbia, Europe and the world that the citizens of Kosovo strongly support what Tomislav Nikolic insisted, that Kosovo must stay part of Serbia.” Nikolic was deputy prime-minister, when NATO bombed Serbia for two and a half months in 1999 to stop Slobodan Milosevic’s brutal crackdown on Kosovo’s separatists. In Mitrovica’s bars, many of the Serbian population watched the results on TV with a growing sense of gloom. One Kosovo Serb said: “I have lost everything that I had. I’m a refugee now. I don’t see that the new President will bring about any changes for the better.” 90 per cent or so of Kosovo’s population are ethnic Albanians. They are expected to declare independence unilaterally within the next few weeks

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliaton II: Losing in Poland

The Moscow Times reports:

The United States and Poland reached “an agreement in principle” on missile defense Friday, prompting an angry reaction from Russia over the weekend. Poland agreed to let the U.S. military install missile interceptors on its territory after Washington consented to a demand by Warsaw’s new center-right government to beef up the country’s air defenses.

Since coming to power in November, the government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has lobbied Washington for additional security guarantees in response to Russian threats of retaliation against the proposed missile defense site.

Moscow has adamantly opposed the plans of U.S. President George W. Bush to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar installation in the Czech Republic, which Washington says are meant to protect against an attack by Iran or other “rogue states.” The Kremlin — which believes the U.S. missile shield is directed against Russia — has threatened to target the Polish and Czech sites and to deploy missiles in the Kaliningrad region, which borders Poland. The Russian threats have prompted Poland to demand more from its NATO ally. In his electoral campaign, Tusk vowed to push Washington for more rewards in exchange for hosting the interceptors.

On Friday, Poland got what it wanted — and derailed Russian hopes that Tusk’s government would put the brakes on Washington’s missile defense plan. “We understand that there is a desire for defense modernization in Poland and particularly for air-defense modernization,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday after a meeting with her Polish counterpart in Washington [pictured above]. “This is something that we support because it will make our ally, Poland, more capable,” she added, according to a transcript on the U.S. State Department’s web site.

For his part, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski stressed that negotiations were still ongoing and that a final agreement would only be reached after Tusk visited Washington in March. “We are not at the end of the road as regards negotiations,” Sikorski said. “We are in the middle of the road. We have an agreement in principle.”

The previous day, Sikorski had used the word “blackmail” in an apparent allusion to Russian threats during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank where he once worked. “As many of you know, Poland has come under political pressure and has even been blackmailed by some of our neighbors, who fiercely oppose this project,” Sikorski said, Reuters reported. He also raised the prospect of hosting a full-fledged NATO base in Poland. “The prospect of American troops on our soil … is something that we would welcome,” he told Reuters in an interview. Russian officials criticized Sikorski’s comments and the U.S.-Polish radar agreement. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s newly appointed representative to NATO, implied that Tusk’s government had broken a promise to consult with Moscow before pursuing missile defense plans with Washington. “The new Polish prime minister … claimed this issue would be tackled in dialogue with Washington, Brussels and Moscow,” Rogozin said Sunday, Interfax reported. “It is obvious now that the dialogue with Moscow has ended without having even started.” Tusk is scheduled to visit Moscow on Friday for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Rogozin, a former leader of the nationalist Rodina party who started his new job in Brussels last week, raised the specter of World War II in his comments about the tightening U.S.-Polish alliance. “The Polish colleagues must be reminded of their recent history, which indicates that attempts to place Poland ‘on the confrontation line’ have always led to tragedies. That way Poland lost nearly one-third of its citizens during World War II,” he said. “I was sure this horrible lesson would not be wasted and Poland would plan its foreign policy relying on friendly relations all along the borderline,” he added.

Meanwhile, a senior Russian diplomat suggested that the U.S.-Polish radar deal could spell the end of Moscow’s proposal to cooperate with Washington on missile defense. Last year, Putin proposed that Washington use a Russian-operated radar facility in Gabala, Azerbaijan, as well as another one under construction at Armavir, in southern Russia, as part of a joint U.S.-Russian missile shield. Putin argued that the sites would be much closer to Iran than the Pentagon’s proposed installations in Poland and Czech Republic. U.S. officials welcomed the proposal but said the proposed Azeri and Russian facilities would only be used in addition to the Eastern European ones, not in place of them. That position is not acceptable to Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak reiterated Saturday. “The United States wants to use the potential radar installations at Gabala and, possibly, Armavir, not as an alternative to [the Eastern European sites] but to strengthen their own systems,” Kislyak said, Interfax reported. “A general settlement will not be reached,” he added.

The Kremlin’s opposition to the missile shield has created a diplomatic headache for Washington, which has sought to reassure Moscow that the sites are directed against a potential threat from Iran, not at Russia’s own arsenal. On Friday, Rice appeared to be addressing Russian concerns when she said the current missile shield plan was not a revival of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called “Star Wars” program that was meant to protect the United States from attack by the Soviet Union’s nuclear ballistic missiles. “This is not that program,” Rice said. “This is not the son of that program. This is not the grandson of that program. This is a very different program that is meant to deal with limited threats. There is no way that a few interceptors in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic can degrade the thousands of nuclear warheads that the Russians have and there is no intent to do so.”

Neither Rice nor Sikorski said exactly what Washington had agreed to give Warsaw in exchange for hosting the interceptors, but Polish officials had previously requested short- and medium-range air-defense systems such as the Patriot missile system.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation III: Losing in the Stock Market

The Moscow Times reports:

Russian stock markets bowed out of January with one of their worst months of trading in years, the benchmark RTS suffering its biggest losses since 2000. Few would have it believed it in those days of cautious optimism of early January, as investors rolled back from vacation. But global fears over a U.S. recession sent international markets tumbling — with Russia no exception — and few are willing to bet on when the markets will turn.

Stocks tumbled by 17 percent on both the MICEX and RTS indexes in January, with the former losing more than 20 percent since its December high.

In Russia, trading was volatile during the week, and a rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve had quite the opposite effect of what might have been expected, sending Russian stocks down Thursday by 3.8 percent and 4.2 percent on the RTS and MICEX, respectively, in what UralSib termed an “irrational frenzy” of selling. The markets started to pick up Friday, spurred by interest in coal miner Raspadskaya, which rose 11.8 percent. Gazprom and UES jumped by 4.6 percent and 5.15 percent, respectively. The RTS finished the day up 3.3 percent, and the MICEX up 4.2 percent. “The market has come off enough that people have started to come back into the market,” said Douglas Rohlfs, who works in international equity sales at Metropol. “Most of the gainers have been the blue chips. A lot of these names were heavily sold off.”

If anything was an incentive to buy, it’s how far some of these stocks fell in January. On the RTS, Rosneft has plunged 27.4 percent, while Unified Energy System has fallen 23 percent. Gazprom fell 15.1 percent on MICEX. But worse may be to come, after Friday’s U.S. job figures for January were down 17,000. “There are probably a few more bouncy days,” said James Fenkner, managing partner at Red Star Asset Management. “For big money to come back, volatility has to come down, and there has to be clarity on the depth of the U.S. recession.”

Investors noted that some of the Russian mutual funds would be showing big losses, given their tendency to buy after the market goes up and sell after it goes down. In Europe, French insurer AXA became the latest in a line of companies to place a temporary ban on withdrawals from its property funds, after investors rushed to take money out amid concerns of a property crash. “Within Russia, there was this view than long could never go wrong,” Fenkner said. “And so people were leveraged and had options … that they had to cover, and that pushed the market further.”

Weekly data suggested that Russia was still in favor, with a miniscule inflow of $1.5 million, while China and Brazil suffered substantial outflows, according to EPFR Global. Few wished to predict the bottom of the market, stressing the view that the Russian markets have succumbed to global stimuli, rather than anything of its own making. “It’s not a market anyone should try to train,” said Robin Geffen, managing director of London-based Neptune Investment Management, who has $450 million under management in the firm’s Russia-focused fund. “Russia has very interesting growth characteristics — an emerging middle class, a good resource base and a clear political outlook. That’s attractive to sensible investors.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation IV: Putin’s Russia Leads the World . . . in Child Suicide

The Russian websites Noviye Izvetiye and Newsru.com report that Putin’s Russia is now a world leader . . . in suicide, especially among children.

Russia ranks second in the world in the number of suicide. This information was reported at the end of last week by Tatyana Dmitriyeva, Director of the Serbsky State Scientific Center of Social and Forensic Psychiatry. And increasingly suicidal are children and adolescents. In 2007 alone almost three thousand Russians aged from 5 to 19 years committed suicide. In the past thirty years, the rate of suicide has risen by a factor of thirty. Moreover 70% of adolescent cases involve children from the very affluent families. Experts believe that apart from the major causes – conflict in the family and with other people – the decision to withdraw from the life by teenagers s driven by the accessibility of alcohol and drugs. In addition, Russia still has no system for preventing suicide.

Ah, the paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Why, of course there is no program to counsel suicide cases — because everyone knows that nobody wants to kill themselves in Putin’s paradise — just as was the case in the USSR.

Speaking of the USSR, did it occur to these doctors that perhaps the reason suicide numbers appear to be rising is that information is more available now than under the totalitarian dictatorship? And more important, did it occur to anyone that if suicides really are way up recently, it might be because of the trauma associated with the collapse of the USSR, in which case it might be a really bad idea to make the same mistakes all over again, such as being ruled by the KGB, and thus causing Russia as well to collapse?

Apparently not.

The St. Petersburg Times heaps on more horror:

Russia’s current healthcare system cannot cope with the scale of what they see as a cancer epidemic in the country, a number of Russia’s top oncologists admitted at a conference in Moscow on Monday.

Each year in Russia, 300,000 people die of cancer. Around 2.5 million Russians suffer from cancer, and more than 450,000 new cases are registered annually. The average age of cancer patients in Russia is 63.3 for men and 62.9 for women.

Cancer specialists are calling for the government to take immediate steps, including funding a federal program aimed at combating cancer. “A special service must be created that would be directly responsible to the government and the parliament,” said Mikhail Davydov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Davydov was speaking at the “Movement Against Cancer” forum that opened in Moscow on Monday. “But most importantly, the state is responsible for the health of its citizens, including the two million cancer sufferers,” he said. Davydov urged the government to substantially increase the funding for buying more equipment and medicines to enable doctors to provide the necessary treatment for all patients.

“For instance, Russia has only 70 radiation therapy machines, while there are around 3,000 in U.S. clinics,” Davydov said. To make matters worse, of the very few machines that Russia does have, a large proportion are outdated and are therefore of little help.

The gap between conditions in some Moscow clinics and hospitals in small towns in other regions is huge and felt on all levels, from equipment to training, experts say.

Healthcare is one of Russia’s four declared “national projects,” along with education, housing, and agriculture. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor, is responsible for these projects. However, oncology or cancer treatment is not listed as a priority in healthcare projects, Davydov said.

Cancer is widely seen in Russia as an untreatable illness. Public awareness of new methods and medicines is very low, the doctors said. Vladimir Semiglazov, the director of the Petrov Oncology Institute, said many Russian women are reluctant to undertake regular breast screening, and often contact clinics when the illness is in an advanced stage. “In countries where women undergo regular breast screening, the number of fatal cases of breast cancer has been in decline,” Semiglazov said. “In Russia, by contrast, breast cancer fatalities have increased by 13 percent during the past 8 years.” Semiglazov said the breast cancer statistics for Russia today are seemingly worse than Soviet era figures, when fewer opportunities were available in terms of both screening and treatment. In 2006, almost 20 percent of all breast cancer patients died in Russia, whereas only 13.5 percent of patients died in 1980. Many people postpone seeing a doctor until it becomes impossible to ignore symptoms and the disease progresses to its final stages.

Boris Poddubny, head of the endoscopic division of Russia’s Blokhin Oncology Medical Center, urged doctors to change their attitudes and be more outspoken both with their patients and the media. “People need to know as much as possible about their condition and what can be done to help it,” Poddubny said. “They need to know that there are methods and medicines to treat their illness. At the very least we need to get everyone to learn once and for all that a timely diagnosis can lead to a complete recovery.” However, with many treatments unavailable, education is only part of the answer. Drugs for certain illnesses, including many types of cancer, are free on prescription and according to government estimates, about 5 million people can technically benefit from the system. But the government has failed to provide enough funds for the program. In 2007, the 34.9 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) allocated to the system was less than half the 74.5 billion rubles spent in 2006, Dmitry Reikhart, head of the Federal Fund for Obligatory Medical Insurance, told reporters at a Moscow press conference in October 2007.

To complicate matters further, the government has been slow to pay drug providers, resulting in diminished supplies. The state debt amounts to about 20 billion rubles, down from about 36 billion rubles in January 2007, according to Tatyana Golikova, minister for health and social development.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation IV: Putin’s Russia Leads the World . . . in Child Suicide

The Russian websites Noviye Izvetiye and Newsru.com report that Putin’s Russia is now a world leader . . . in suicide, especially among children.

Russia ranks second in the world in the number of suicide. This information was reported at the end of last week by Tatyana Dmitriyeva, Director of the Serbsky State Scientific Center of Social and Forensic Psychiatry. And increasingly suicidal are children and adolescents. In 2007 alone almost three thousand Russians aged from 5 to 19 years committed suicide. In the past thirty years, the rate of suicide has risen by a factor of thirty. Moreover 70% of adolescent cases involve children from the very affluent families. Experts believe that apart from the major causes – conflict in the family and with other people – the decision to withdraw from the life by teenagers s driven by the accessibility of alcohol and drugs. In addition, Russia still has no system for preventing suicide.

Ah, the paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Why, of course there is no program to counsel suicide cases — because everyone knows that nobody wants to kill themselves in Putin’s paradise — just as was the case in the USSR.

Speaking of the USSR, did it occur to these doctors that perhaps the reason suicide numbers appear to be rising is that information is more available now than under the totalitarian dictatorship? And more important, did it occur to anyone that if suicides really are way up recently, it might be because of the trauma associated with the collapse of the USSR, in which case it might be a really bad idea to make the same mistakes all over again, such as being ruled by the KGB, and thus causing Russia as well to collapse?

Apparently not.

The St. Petersburg Times heaps on more horror:

Russia’s current healthcare system cannot cope with the scale of what they see as a cancer epidemic in the country, a number of Russia’s top oncologists admitted at a conference in Moscow on Monday.

Each year in Russia, 300,000 people die of cancer. Around 2.5 million Russians suffer from cancer, and more than 450,000 new cases are registered annually. The average age of cancer patients in Russia is 63.3 for men and 62.9 for women.

Cancer specialists are calling for the government to take immediate steps, including funding a federal program aimed at combating cancer. “A special service must be created that would be directly responsible to the government and the parliament,” said Mikhail Davydov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Davydov was speaking at the “Movement Against Cancer” forum that opened in Moscow on Monday. “But most importantly, the state is responsible for the health of its citizens, including the two million cancer sufferers,” he said. Davydov urged the government to substantially increase the funding for buying more equipment and medicines to enable doctors to provide the necessary treatment for all patients.

“For instance, Russia has only 70 radiation therapy machines, while there are around 3,000 in U.S. clinics,” Davydov said. To make matters worse, of the very few machines that Russia does have, a large proportion are outdated and are therefore of little help.

The gap between conditions in some Moscow clinics and hospitals in small towns in other regions is huge and felt on all levels, from equipment to training, experts say.

Healthcare is one of Russia’s four declared “national projects,” along with education, housing, and agriculture. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor, is responsible for these projects. However, oncology or cancer treatment is not listed as a priority in healthcare projects, Davydov said.

Cancer is widely seen in Russia as an untreatable illness. Public awareness of new methods and medicines is very low, the doctors said. Vladimir Semiglazov, the director of the Petrov Oncology Institute, said many Russian women are reluctant to undertake regular breast screening, and often contact clinics when the illness is in an advanced stage. “In countries where women undergo regular breast screening, the number of fatal cases of breast cancer has been in decline,” Semiglazov said. “In Russia, by contrast, breast cancer fatalities have increased by 13 percent during the past 8 years.” Semiglazov said the breast cancer statistics for Russia today are seemingly worse than Soviet era figures, when fewer opportunities were available in terms of both screening and treatment. In 2006, almost 20 percent of all breast cancer patients died in Russia, whereas only 13.5 percent of patients died in 1980. Many people postpone seeing a doctor until it becomes impossible to ignore symptoms and the disease progresses to its final stages.

Boris Poddubny, head of the endoscopic division of Russia’s Blokhin Oncology Medical Center, urged doctors to change their attitudes and be more outspoken both with their patients and the media. “People need to know as much as possible about their condition and what can be done to help it,” Poddubny said. “They need to know that there are methods and medicines to treat their illness. At the very least we need to get everyone to learn once and for all that a timely diagnosis can lead to a complete recovery.” However, with many treatments unavailable, education is only part of the answer. Drugs for certain illnesses, including many types of cancer, are free on prescription and according to government estimates, about 5 million people can technically benefit from the system. But the government has failed to provide enough funds for the program. In 2007, the 34.9 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) allocated to the system was less than half the 74.5 billion rubles spent in 2006, Dmitry Reikhart, head of the Federal Fund for Obligatory Medical Insurance, told reporters at a Moscow press conference in October 2007.

To complicate matters further, the government has been slow to pay drug providers, resulting in diminished supplies. The state debt amounts to about 20 billion rubles, down from about 36 billion rubles in January 2007, according to Tatyana Golikova, minister for health and social development.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation IV: Putin’s Russia Leads the World . . . in Child Suicide

The Russian websites Noviye Izvetiye and Newsru.com report that Putin’s Russia is now a world leader . . . in suicide, especially among children.

Russia ranks second in the world in the number of suicide. This information was reported at the end of last week by Tatyana Dmitriyeva, Director of the Serbsky State Scientific Center of Social and Forensic Psychiatry. And increasingly suicidal are children and adolescents. In 2007 alone almost three thousand Russians aged from 5 to 19 years committed suicide. In the past thirty years, the rate of suicide has risen by a factor of thirty. Moreover 70% of adolescent cases involve children from the very affluent families. Experts believe that apart from the major causes – conflict in the family and with other people – the decision to withdraw from the life by teenagers s driven by the accessibility of alcohol and drugs. In addition, Russia still has no system for preventing suicide.

Ah, the paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Why, of course there is no program to counsel suicide cases — because everyone knows that nobody wants to kill themselves in Putin’s paradise — just as was the case in the USSR.

Speaking of the USSR, did it occur to these doctors that perhaps the reason suicide numbers appear to be rising is that information is more available now than under the totalitarian dictatorship? And more important, did it occur to anyone that if suicides really are way up recently, it might be because of the trauma associated with the collapse of the USSR, in which case it might be a really bad idea to make the same mistakes all over again, such as being ruled by the KGB, and thus causing Russia as well to collapse?

Apparently not.

The St. Petersburg Times heaps on more horror:

Russia’s current healthcare system cannot cope with the scale of what they see as a cancer epidemic in the country, a number of Russia’s top oncologists admitted at a conference in Moscow on Monday.

Each year in Russia, 300,000 people die of cancer. Around 2.5 million Russians suffer from cancer, and more than 450,000 new cases are registered annually. The average age of cancer patients in Russia is 63.3 for men and 62.9 for women.

Cancer specialists are calling for the government to take immediate steps, including funding a federal program aimed at combating cancer. “A special service must be created that would be directly responsible to the government and the parliament,” said Mikhail Davydov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Davydov was speaking at the “Movement Against Cancer” forum that opened in Moscow on Monday. “But most importantly, the state is responsible for the health of its citizens, including the two million cancer sufferers,” he said. Davydov urged the government to substantially increase the funding for buying more equipment and medicines to enable doctors to provide the necessary treatment for all patients.

“For instance, Russia has only 70 radiation therapy machines, while there are around 3,000 in U.S. clinics,” Davydov said. To make matters worse, of the very few machines that Russia does have, a large proportion are outdated and are therefore of little help.

The gap between conditions in some Moscow clinics and hospitals in small towns in other regions is huge and felt on all levels, from equipment to training, experts say.

Healthcare is one of Russia’s four declared “national projects,” along with education, housing, and agriculture. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor, is responsible for these projects. However, oncology or cancer treatment is not listed as a priority in healthcare projects, Davydov said.

Cancer is widely seen in Russia as an untreatable illness. Public awareness of new methods and medicines is very low, the doctors said. Vladimir Semiglazov, the director of the Petrov Oncology Institute, said many Russian women are reluctant to undertake regular breast screening, and often contact clinics when the illness is in an advanced stage. “In countries where women undergo regular breast screening, the number of fatal cases of breast cancer has been in decline,” Semiglazov said. “In Russia, by contrast, breast cancer fatalities have increased by 13 percent during the past 8 years.” Semiglazov said the breast cancer statistics for Russia today are seemingly worse than Soviet era figures, when fewer opportunities were available in terms of both screening and treatment. In 2006, almost 20 percent of all breast cancer patients died in Russia, whereas only 13.5 percent of patients died in 1980. Many people postpone seeing a doctor until it becomes impossible to ignore symptoms and the disease progresses to its final stages.

Boris Poddubny, head of the endoscopic division of Russia’s Blokhin Oncology Medical Center, urged doctors to change their attitudes and be more outspoken both with their patients and the media. “People need to know as much as possible about their condition and what can be done to help it,” Poddubny said. “They need to know that there are methods and medicines to treat their illness. At the very least we need to get everyone to learn once and for all that a timely diagnosis can lead to a complete recovery.” However, with many treatments unavailable, education is only part of the answer. Drugs for certain illnesses, including many types of cancer, are free on prescription and according to government estimates, about 5 million people can technically benefit from the system. But the government has failed to provide enough funds for the program. In 2007, the 34.9 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) allocated to the system was less than half the 74.5 billion rubles spent in 2006, Dmitry Reikhart, head of the Federal Fund for Obligatory Medical Insurance, told reporters at a Moscow press conference in October 2007.

To complicate matters further, the government has been slow to pay drug providers, resulting in diminished supplies. The state debt amounts to about 20 billion rubles, down from about 36 billion rubles in January 2007, according to Tatyana Golikova, minister for health and social development.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation IV: Putin’s Russia Leads the World . . . in Child Suicide

The Russian websites Noviye Izvetiye and Newsru.com report that Putin’s Russia is now a world leader . . . in suicide, especially among children.

Russia ranks second in the world in the number of suicide. This information was reported at the end of last week by Tatyana Dmitriyeva, Director of the Serbsky State Scientific Center of Social and Forensic Psychiatry. And increasingly suicidal are children and adolescents. In 2007 alone almost three thousand Russians aged from 5 to 19 years committed suicide. In the past thirty years, the rate of suicide has risen by a factor of thirty. Moreover 70% of adolescent cases involve children from the very affluent families. Experts believe that apart from the major causes – conflict in the family and with other people – the decision to withdraw from the life by teenagers s driven by the accessibility of alcohol and drugs. In addition, Russia still has no system for preventing suicide.

Ah, the paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Why, of course there is no program to counsel suicide cases — because everyone knows that nobody wants to kill themselves in Putin’s paradise — just as was the case in the USSR.

Speaking of the USSR, did it occur to these doctors that perhaps the reason suicide numbers appear to be rising is that information is more available now than under the totalitarian dictatorship? And more important, did it occur to anyone that if suicides really are way up recently, it might be because of the trauma associated with the collapse of the USSR, in which case it might be a really bad idea to make the same mistakes all over again, such as being ruled by the KGB, and thus causing Russia as well to collapse?

Apparently not.

The St. Petersburg Times heaps on more horror:

Russia’s current healthcare system cannot cope with the scale of what they see as a cancer epidemic in the country, a number of Russia’s top oncologists admitted at a conference in Moscow on Monday.

Each year in Russia, 300,000 people die of cancer. Around 2.5 million Russians suffer from cancer, and more than 450,000 new cases are registered annually. The average age of cancer patients in Russia is 63.3 for men and 62.9 for women.

Cancer specialists are calling for the government to take immediate steps, including funding a federal program aimed at combating cancer. “A special service must be created that would be directly responsible to the government and the parliament,” said Mikhail Davydov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Davydov was speaking at the “Movement Against Cancer” forum that opened in Moscow on Monday. “But most importantly, the state is responsible for the health of its citizens, including the two million cancer sufferers,” he said. Davydov urged the government to substantially increase the funding for buying more equipment and medicines to enable doctors to provide the necessary treatment for all patients.

“For instance, Russia has only 70 radiation therapy machines, while there are around 3,000 in U.S. clinics,” Davydov said. To make matters worse, of the very few machines that Russia does have, a large proportion are outdated and are therefore of little help.

The gap between conditions in some Moscow clinics and hospitals in small towns in other regions is huge and felt on all levels, from equipment to training, experts say.

Healthcare is one of Russia’s four declared “national projects,” along with education, housing, and agriculture. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor, is responsible for these projects. However, oncology or cancer treatment is not listed as a priority in healthcare projects, Davydov said.

Cancer is widely seen in Russia as an untreatable illness. Public awareness of new methods and medicines is very low, the doctors said. Vladimir Semiglazov, the director of the Petrov Oncology Institute, said many Russian women are reluctant to undertake regular breast screening, and often contact clinics when the illness is in an advanced stage. “In countries where women undergo regular breast screening, the number of fatal cases of breast cancer has been in decline,” Semiglazov said. “In Russia, by contrast, breast cancer fatalities have increased by 13 percent during the past 8 years.” Semiglazov said the breast cancer statistics for Russia today are seemingly worse than Soviet era figures, when fewer opportunities were available in terms of both screening and treatment. In 2006, almost 20 percent of all breast cancer patients died in Russia, whereas only 13.5 percent of patients died in 1980. Many people postpone seeing a doctor until it becomes impossible to ignore symptoms and the disease progresses to its final stages.

Boris Poddubny, head of the endoscopic division of Russia’s Blokhin Oncology Medical Center, urged doctors to change their attitudes and be more outspoken both with their patients and the media. “People need to know as much as possible about their condition and what can be done to help it,” Poddubny said. “They need to know that there are methods and medicines to treat their illness. At the very least we need to get everyone to learn once and for all that a timely diagnosis can lead to a complete recovery.” However, with many treatments unavailable, education is only part of the answer. Drugs for certain illnesses, including many types of cancer, are free on prescription and according to government estimates, about 5 million people can technically benefit from the system. But the government has failed to provide enough funds for the program. In 2007, the 34.9 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) allocated to the system was less than half the 74.5 billion rubles spent in 2006, Dmitry Reikhart, head of the Federal Fund for Obligatory Medical Insurance, told reporters at a Moscow press conference in October 2007.

To complicate matters further, the government has been slow to pay drug providers, resulting in diminished supplies. The state debt amounts to about 20 billion rubles, down from about 36 billion rubles in January 2007, according to Tatyana Golikova, minister for health and social development.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation IV: Putin’s Russia Leads the World . . . in Child Suicide

The Russian websites Noviye Izvetiye and Newsru.com report that Putin’s Russia is now a world leader . . . in suicide, especially among children.

Russia ranks second in the world in the number of suicide. This information was reported at the end of last week by Tatyana Dmitriyeva, Director of the Serbsky State Scientific Center of Social and Forensic Psychiatry. And increasingly suicidal are children and adolescents. In 2007 alone almost three thousand Russians aged from 5 to 19 years committed suicide. In the past thirty years, the rate of suicide has risen by a factor of thirty. Moreover 70% of adolescent cases involve children from the very affluent families. Experts believe that apart from the major causes – conflict in the family and with other people – the decision to withdraw from the life by teenagers s driven by the accessibility of alcohol and drugs. In addition, Russia still has no system for preventing suicide.

Ah, the paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Why, of course there is no program to counsel suicide cases — because everyone knows that nobody wants to kill themselves in Putin’s paradise — just as was the case in the USSR.

Speaking of the USSR, did it occur to these doctors that perhaps the reason suicide numbers appear to be rising is that information is more available now than under the totalitarian dictatorship? And more important, did it occur to anyone that if suicides really are way up recently, it might be because of the trauma associated with the collapse of the USSR, in which case it might be a really bad idea to make the same mistakes all over again, such as being ruled by the KGB, and thus causing Russia as well to collapse?

Apparently not.

The St. Petersburg Times heaps on more horror:

Russia’s current healthcare system cannot cope with the scale of what they see as a cancer epidemic in the country, a number of Russia’s top oncologists admitted at a conference in Moscow on Monday.

Each year in Russia, 300,000 people die of cancer. Around 2.5 million Russians suffer from cancer, and more than 450,000 new cases are registered annually. The average age of cancer patients in Russia is 63.3 for men and 62.9 for women.

Cancer specialists are calling for the government to take immediate steps, including funding a federal program aimed at combating cancer. “A special service must be created that would be directly responsible to the government and the parliament,” said Mikhail Davydov, the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Davydov was speaking at the “Movement Against Cancer” forum that opened in Moscow on Monday. “But most importantly, the state is responsible for the health of its citizens, including the two million cancer sufferers,” he said. Davydov urged the government to substantially increase the funding for buying more equipment and medicines to enable doctors to provide the necessary treatment for all patients.

“For instance, Russia has only 70 radiation therapy machines, while there are around 3,000 in U.S. clinics,” Davydov said. To make matters worse, of the very few machines that Russia does have, a large proportion are outdated and are therefore of little help.

The gap between conditions in some Moscow clinics and hospitals in small towns in other regions is huge and felt on all levels, from equipment to training, experts say.

Healthcare is one of Russia’s four declared “national projects,” along with education, housing, and agriculture. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin’s handpicked successor, is responsible for these projects. However, oncology or cancer treatment is not listed as a priority in healthcare projects, Davydov said.

Cancer is widely seen in Russia as an untreatable illness. Public awareness of new methods and medicines is very low, the doctors said. Vladimir Semiglazov, the director of the Petrov Oncology Institute, said many Russian women are reluctant to undertake regular breast screening, and often contact clinics when the illness is in an advanced stage. “In countries where women undergo regular breast screening, the number of fatal cases of breast cancer has been in decline,” Semiglazov said. “In Russia, by contrast, breast cancer fatalities have increased by 13 percent during the past 8 years.” Semiglazov said the breast cancer statistics for Russia today are seemingly worse than Soviet era figures, when fewer opportunities were available in terms of both screening and treatment. In 2006, almost 20 percent of all breast cancer patients died in Russia, whereas only 13.5 percent of patients died in 1980. Many people postpone seeing a doctor until it becomes impossible to ignore symptoms and the disease progresses to its final stages.

Boris Poddubny, head of the endoscopic division of Russia’s Blokhin Oncology Medical Center, urged doctors to change their attitudes and be more outspoken both with their patients and the media. “People need to know as much as possible about their condition and what can be done to help it,” Poddubny said. “They need to know that there are methods and medicines to treat their illness. At the very least we need to get everyone to learn once and for all that a timely diagnosis can lead to a complete recovery.” However, with many treatments unavailable, education is only part of the answer. Drugs for certain illnesses, including many types of cancer, are free on prescription and according to government estimates, about 5 million people can technically benefit from the system. But the government has failed to provide enough funds for the program. In 2007, the 34.9 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) allocated to the system was less than half the 74.5 billion rubles spent in 2006, Dmitry Reikhart, head of the Federal Fund for Obligatory Medical Insurance, told reporters at a Moscow press conference in October 2007.

To complicate matters further, the government has been slow to pay drug providers, resulting in diminished supplies. The state debt amounts to about 20 billion rubles, down from about 36 billion rubles in January 2007, according to Tatyana Golikova, minister for health and social development.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Neo-Soviet Humiliation V: Losing the PR Battle

The Moscow Times reports:

Human Rights Watch has called President Vladimir Putin a “repressive” and “brutal” leader on par with the leaders of Zimbabwe and Pakistan.

In its annual report on the state of human rights across the globe released last week, the rights watchdog said Putin had “crippled democracy” and succeeded in “silencing the media, “shutting down civil society” and stifling political opposition. The report, released late last week, compared Putin to the leaders to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, among others, for “manipulating elections” to “legitimize his reign.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday laughed off the comparisons of Putin to the leaders of third-world countries. “We take this with a grain of salt because it proves that the report’s authors don’t know the reality and don’t want to know it,” Peskov said. Peskov said the Kremlin “undoubtedly appreciated the work of various nongovernmental organizations” but that it does not always share their opinions.

In the scathing report, Human Rights Watch also blamed the United States and Europe for undermining human rights by allowing autocrats to pretend that they are democratic. The report cited Russia, along with Bahrain, Jordan, Nigeria, and Thailand, as acting ”as if simply holding a vote is enough to prove a nation democratic, and Washington, Brussels and European capitals played along.” Russia, along with Jordan and “even China,” the group said, have ”gotten into the game” of merely using the word democracy to claim real democratic credentials.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !