Kasyanov Speaks

Reuters reports that former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is warning that Russia stands on the brink of collapse:

Russia could face economic chaos and even revolution unless the government acts swiftly to reform and relax political restrictions, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said on Thursday. Kasyanov, who now leads an opposition party, told a seminar in Brussels that by the end of this year inflation could reach 15 percent, toxic loans could rise to 30 percent of all loans and unemployment could reach 10 million. The government may also have to seek help from the International Monetary Fund “in the near future,” he said.

April 19, 2009 — Contents

SUNDAY APRIL 19 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Scandal in Sochi

(2)  EDITORIAL:  A Russian Economic Picturebook

(3)  A Tinderbox in Siberia

(4)  Latynina on Putin’s Sham Economy

(5)  A Russian Travel Advisory

(6)  Russian “Genius” Defines Perpetuity

EDITORIAL: Scandal in Sochi

EDITORIAL

Scandal in Sochi

Alexander Lebedev

Last week, the Kremlin disqualified the outspoken billionaire Alexander Lebedev from appearing on the April 26 ballot for mayor of the southern Russian city of Sochi, where the 2014 winter olympics are scheduled to be held.

Lebedev, whose name means “swan,”  is easily the most enigmatic living Russian.  A former KGB agent just like Vladimir Putin (he worked in the UK while Putin was in Germany), he somehow found the capital to create a bank holding company which purchased a tiny struggling bank called National Reserve in 1995.  Within three years that bank had grown to become one of the ten largest in Russia, and it was one of only two of those top ten to survive the 1998 financial collapse that brought Putin to power.  Today, Lebedev (who is close friends with former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev) not ony owns part of the Russia’s most strident opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, but also owns the major British paper The Evening Standard.  He also owns big chunks of Aeroflot, Gazprom and Sberbank.  Forbes says he’s worth $3 billion and the 385th-richest man on the planet.

EDITORIAL: A Russian Economic Picturebook

EDITORIAL

A Russian Economic Picturebook

The Russian economy has taken another plunge deeper into the abyss.  In today’s issue below, we carry an essay by Yulia Latynina exposing the more barbaric aspects, and on Monday in our editorial we’ll take a hard look at Russia’s announcement that as a result of Putin’s failures it will be forced to go begging for foreign loans for the first time in ten years.  Right now, let’s take a look at some of the stunning statistics that document Russia’s new apocalypse.

Russian Economy Watch states:

In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, real disposable income dropped 5.8 percent year on year, and by 10.2 percent in January 2009 (again year-on-year). And unpaid wages as a share of total enterprise turnover tripled to 0.12 percent in December 2008, compared with August 2008. The stock of wage arrears as of March 1, 2009 (8 billion rubles or about USD 240 million) remains small but is likely to increase as the crisis grows. At the present time such arrears are thought to affect up to 450,000 people, significantly less than 1 percent of total employment. Growth in real wages came to a complete halt in January-February 2009, following double-digit increases in previous years.

Russian wages are in freefall, with an ever-increasing number of Russians being paid nothing at all by their collapsing employers. But three pictures are worth a thousand screams:

A Tinderbox in Siberia

Paul Goble reports on a tinderbox in Siberia, just waiting for a spark:

Moscow’s push for the construction of a hydro-electric dam on the Lower Tunguska in Siberia is having an unexpected and very much unwanted consequence: the transformation of the land of the Evenk nationality into “a hot spot” far from any other, according to a leading Siberian analyst.  In an article posted online, Dmitry Verkhoturov says that “the struggle around the project of the Evenk Hydroelectric Station on the Lower Tunguska has entered a new stage,” one in which Moscow’s heavy-handedness is pushing the members of the numerically small but well-armed Evenk nation to consider violence.

Latynina on Putin’s Sham Economy

Hero journalist Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times:

Two stories came out in the media at the same time in late March. The first reported that First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin had initiated a review of Norilsk Nickel deals. Simultaneously, Vneshekonombank, VTB and the Audit Chamber started paying close attention to the company as well.

In a surprising coincidence, the State Council of China met in Beijing the next day to appoint Syao Yatsin, the former head of the Aluminum Corporation of China, as assistant secretary of the council. Yatsin’s task in his new post will be to manage the acquisition of shares in foreign raw materials firms for the benefit of China’s state-owned companies.

Russian Traveler’s Advisory

You may have thought, dear reader, that you knew all the risks associated with being in Russia.  We understand that, being a faithful LR peruser, you had no intention of exposing yourself to them.  But just so you know, you didn’t actually have the full accounting.  To wit:

Two cannibals have been feasting on the remains of their brother for the last six months in an effort to hide his murder, it was revealed today.

Russian “Genius” Defines Perpetuity

Turns out it’s just 15 years. Not nearly as long as we all thought. Thank heavens we have these brilliant Russian geniuses to enlighten us.  This is not a joke. They’re serious.  Really.

April 17, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY APRIL 17 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia to Obama — Drop Dead!

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Blasphemy at Belsan

(3)  EDITORIAL:  More Ridiculous Lies from Vladimir Frolov 

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Annals of the Keystone Rooskies

(5)  Putin and the Bomb

NOTE:  LR founder and publisher Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on the prestigious American Thinker blog is up and running.  In it, she condemns Russia’s horrifying repudiation of the rule of law, focusing on recent statements by the Chief Justice of Russia’s Supreme Court that validate authoritarian rule by the KGB.

NOTE:  For those who read Russian, Novaya Gazeta has published its interview with Russian “president” Dima Medvedev.  As an early commenter states, he talks much but says nothing. The Moscow Times has an English summary.

EDITORIAL: Russia to Obama — Drop Dead!

EDITORIAL

Russia to Obama — Drop Dead!

At a news conference in Strasbourg, France following a meeting with French President Nicholas Sarkozy on April 4th, Barack Obama stated in response to a question from an Austrian reporter:

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.

Nobody knows what that term is, Mr. Obama — because there is no “Austrian” language.  They speak German in Austria, sir.  You need to get out a bit more.  Or maybe just reading a tad more widely would do the trick.

It’s just this kind of thing that, quite likely, has led the Russian government to believe that the President of the United States is a moronic patsy, easily duped, and recent events involving Iran tend to confirm this.

EDITORIAL: Blasphemy at Beslan

EDITORIAL

Blasphemy at Beslan

Well, it’s another new low for the neo-Soviet Kremlin of Vladimir Putin.  Surprise, surprise.

EDITORIAL: Frolov Plumbs new Depths

EDITORIAL

Frolov Plumbs new Depths

Two weeks ago, the streets of Moldova exploded in flames.  Thousands of outraged Moldovans took to the streets directly flouting the authority of the Communist regime and sending out echoes of the street protests in Ukraine that marked the famous “orange revolution” that, for the clan of KGB spies that populates the Moscow Kremlin, were terrifying.  Russia has been desperately seeking to control the Moldovan state and wedge free a strip of territory along its eastern border in manner very similar to what it tried in Georgia with Abkhazia and Ossetia, with the obvious ultimate goal of resabsorbing the entire country.

The Putin regime reacted with frenzy and panic. Russia’s Foreign Minister wildly accused the protesters of being “pogrom-makers” and state-controlled television portrayed them breathlessly and continuously as criminals and agents of foreign countries.

“The Moscow authorities are afraid of spontaneous mass protests in the regions…and for this reason Russian television is showing what is happening in an exclusively negative light,” said Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.   Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation agreed:  “If the economic situation in Russia deteriorates, such a rebellion could become really possible. Young people will suffer the most from the economic collapse… and this is what the authorities are most afraid of. It’s a serious challenge for the leadership.”

But you’d never know about any of this by reading the crazed rantings of Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov in his most recent Moscow Times column.

EDITORIAL: Annals of the Keystone Rooskies

EDITORIAL

Annals of the Keystone Rooskies’

It came out earlier this week that Russia had a little bit of trouble with its unmanned drone aircraft during the war with Georgia.  Why exactly Russia felt it needed drone aircraft against that tiny country, which has no appreciable airforce, remains unclear.

The point is that it did attempt to fly its home-grown drone, with disastrous and humiliating results.  According to Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin:  ”You could hear it flying from 100 kilometers away.”  Meaning that the whole point of the craft, surveillance, was negated. But that wasn’t the worst of it.  This Russian drone was proven incapable of identifying itself to Russian guns as friendly, and Russians troops repeatedly opened fire on it.  “It returned all shot up,” said Popovkin.

Still not the very worst, though.

How Vladimir Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Pavel Felgenhauer, writing on the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor, explains why Russia will never give up its nuclear arsenal as Barack Obama seems to hope:

On April 5 President Barack Obama in his speech in Prague, outlined his vision of a nuclear-free world: “This goal will not be reached quickly -perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change.” Obama argued that if nuclear nations eliminated their arsenals, others would not move to acquire such weapons. He implied that the process of nuclear reduction began in London after a summit with President Dmitry Medvedev when it was agreed to prepare “by the end of this year a legally binding and sufficiently bold” new arms reduction treaty. This treaty, according to Obama “will set the stage for further cuts, and we will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.” He added, “As long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies” (AP, April 5).

In the Cold War Russian Communist leaders often used the theme of the elimination of nuclear weapons as a propaganda weapon to prod Western adversaries. Nuclear disarmament per se was never truly considered by the Russian military, but even if the West publicly took up the nuclear disarmament offer at face value, it was considered a safe option: during the Cold War Russia had a clear conventional troop superiority in Europe and an elimination of the nuclear deterrent would have shifted the balance in its favor.

Now the situation is radically different: Russia’s conventional forces are weak and outdated, while Western militaries are in the midst of a military-technical revolution, acquiring new capabilities of precision warfare that the Russians can only dream about. Russia’s nuclear deterrent is seen as practically the only item left that still keeps the country in the league of military superpowers. Safeguarding a credible nuclear deterrent is the main strategic goal of Russian military chiefs, diplomats and political leaders. Obama’s nuclear-free world vision was publicly ignored by the officialdom in Moscow (www.newsru.com, April 7).

April 15, 2009 — Contents

WEDNESDAY APRIL 15 CONENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:   Able to Leap Tall Russians! 

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia’s Breathtaking Gas Hypocrisy 

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Russia Lashes out at the Internet 

(4)  Saakashvili Speaks

(5)  Europe Bends Over for Russia

EDITORIAL: Able to Leap Tall Russians

EDITORIAL

Able to Leap Tall Russians

Mikheil Saakashvili

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Mikheil Saakashvili!

In Russia, when thousands want to march against the president, their leaders don’t even make it to the meeting place. Vladimir Putin has them arrested before they ever get there, and then his stormtroopers crush the rank and file, as they did just last weekend in Vladivostok.  Once, Putin went so far as to draft Oleg Kozlovsky, one of the lead organizers, into the armed forces in order to block his participation.  Over and over, those who most staunchly criticize the Moscow Kremlin (from Starovoitova and Politkovskaya to Litvinenko and Markelov) have been brutally shot and killed.  There is not even one such instance under Saakashviili, who has no connection to the secret police where Putin spent his entire career.

In Georgia, by contrast, they simply march, and live to tell the tale.  Saakashvili’s only response is to call elections — real elections, with opposition candidates supported aggressively by Russia  — and win them over and over, exposing Russian power as inherently laughable.  No wonder Putin hates this heroic Georgian patriot so much.

Russia police arresting a protester in Vladivostok last weekend.

 In Russia, the economy is in freefall, shrinking at least 7% in the first quarter of this year. Georgia, by contrast, expects 3-4% economic growth this year, up from 2% growth last year under Saaksashvili’s leadership.  Russia did better than Georgia in 2008 but Georgia, of course, didn’t have to overcome the obstacle of being invaded by a country ten times its size and having a huge part of its territory lopped off, as Georgia did, and Georgia doesn’t have any of the fossil fuel wealth by which Russia is blessed.  What would have become of the Russian economy last year if, in addition to all the other horror, it had been invaded by China? We don’t dare imagine.  In 2007, Georigan ecnomic growth was an amazing 12%.  One could almost think that the Kremlin decided to attack because it was the only way it could think of to stop Saakashvili’s economic juggernaut.

EDITORIAL: Russia’s Breathtaking Gas Hypocrisy

EDITORIAL

Russia’s Breathtaking Gas Hypocrisy

One of those truly amazing moments in the annals of Russian hypocrisy occurred last week, a demonstration of such flagrant two-faced dishonesty as only the Russians can produce.

No sooner had “prime minister” Vladimir Putin expressed outrage over Ukraine daring to import less gas from Russia than expected than Putin himself was infuriating Turkmenistan by refusing their gas shipments to Russia.  According to the Turkemen, in their case Russia’s action resulted in a massive explosion at a terminal that was not prepared to have gas flows back up so unexpectedly, Russia having given no warning of its actions.  Russia threatened to fine Ukraine for not buying enough; it didn’t offer to pay a fine to Turkmenistan, of course.

EDITORIAL: Neo-Soviet Russia Lashes out at the Internet

EDITORIAL

Neo-Soviet Russia Lashes out at the Internet

It was almost as if the Kremlin wanted to make neo-Soviet moron Kirill Pankratov look foolish.

Last week, just as Panratov was babbling insipidly about the freedom of the Russian Internet, Russia “president” Dima Medvedev was lashing out at foreign investors in Russian cyberspace, calling them a threat to Russian security. It was the classic stuff of neo-Soviet paranoia, laid bare for all to see.

Saakashvili Speaks

Newsweek‘s Anna Nemtsova interviews Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili:

Nemtsova: Who wants your resignation?

Saakashvili: Mostly unemployed people. We fired about 250,000 people as a result of our reforms. A big percentage of these people have not managed to find themselves in the new economy. Fighting corruption and crime, we put thousands of people in jail. In Tbilisi alone we convicted 8,000 people; all of their relatives are outside today, asking me to resign.

What is the most painful part of the criticism?

I am not hurt by the criticism in Georgia, as I am hearing it from two opposition TV channels all day long. I did not expect the West to put all the relationships with us on hold while waiting for this revolution. An official delegation from France decided to postpone their visit. A Turkish company moved a scheduled contract signing until after April 9, and an Arab company until April 12. What is the matter with these people? Do we stop going to Paris or Strasbourg during their street protests?

Europe Bends Over for Russia

Letters in Bottles reports on how Europe, in characterstically craven fashion, is exposing itself to the weaponization of Russian energy resources:

The gradual Russian seizure of control of oil and natural gas routes from Central Asia to Europe has been a pet concern of mine in the aftermath of the Russo-Georgian war last summer. It is quite clear to me that the move had two intentions: to destabilize the most democratic country in the region in an effort to increase Moscow’s control there, and to send a warning to energy producers in the region to transit their oil and natural gas supplies through Russia (rather than the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route through Georgia and Turkey).

Yesterday proved that Russia’s strategy is working beautifully. Arzu at Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines gives it to us straight:

April 13, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY APRIL 13 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Vladimir Putler is the New Stalin

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia and its Rogues

(3)  Annals of the Neo-Soviet Police State, Part I

(4)  Annals of the Neo-Soviet Police State, Part II

(5)  Kovalyov’s Letter to Putin

NOTE:  We congratulate our friend Paul Goble, one of whose posts we feature in today’s special issue, on having his blog syndicated by the Moscow Times.  Watch Paul strut his stuff in a YouTube interview with Khodorkovsy attorney Robert Amsterdam here.

EDITORIAL: Vladimir Putler is the New Stalin

EDITORIAL

Vladimir Putler is the New Stalin

Our issue today consists of a relentless barrage of evidence showing how Vladimir Putin has turned into a modern-day Stalin.  Our secondary editorial shows how Russia is siding with and protecting the world’s worst tyrants, and our news items document how the Putin regime is relentlessly cracking down on the last vestiges of civil society. Mind you, these two items both come from Russians.  Finally, we offer human rights champion Sergei Kovalyov’s open letter to Vladimir Putin, condemning the neo-Soviet crackdown in no uncertain terms.

EDITORIAL: Russia and its Rogues

EDITORIAL

Russia and its Rogues

No reader of this blog can have been surprised by Russia’s siding with the lunatic ruler of North Korea after he fired an ICBM over Japan in the direction of the United States a week ago.

Annals of Putin’s Police State Part I

Paul Goble reports:

Moscow is unlikely to follow the demand of one Russian churchman and declare Amway an “extremist” organization, but the way the Russian government compiles its ever-lengthening list of “extremist materials” guarantees any number of constitutional and legal absurdities, according to a Russian lawyer.

In an analysis posted online, Pavel Protasov describes the way in which the list of extremist materials is currently being compiled and updated – the last update is available online  – in order to show why this should be but isn’t an April Fool’s joke. “On April 1, when all progressive humanity was marking a holiday,” the Moscow lawyer writes, “the latest updating of the list of extremist materials” – including films, books, articles, and other items that courts in various parts of the country had declared extremist and subject to ban – “appeared on the official website of the [Russian Federation’s] justice ministry.”

Annals of Putin’s Police State, Part II

Dmitri Sidorov, Washington correspondent for Kommersant, writing in Forbes:

Have you ever confirmed receipt of real donkey ears shipped by FedEx? Not likely, I’d guess. Unless you work in Moscow at Novaya Gazeta, the Russian weekly famed for exposing Kremlin corruption and defending human rights. Journalists at the newspaper, which the Russian government considers unpatriotic and unnecessary, recently received severed donkey ears in a box with a note: “From the presidential administration…”

My heart goes out to the donkey, but my primary purpose here is not to address the issue of cruelty to animals. From threats that unnerve to bullets that kill, the difficulties that critically minded journalists in Russia are encountering are numerous and significant. The Donkey Defense Union will have to wait.