EDITORIAL: The Beast of Chechnya

EDITORIAL

The Beast of Chechnya

It’s almost as if Ramzan Kadyrov, designated and decorated as a national hero of Russia by Vladimir Putin, wants to help us folks here at La Russophobe prove conclusively what an inhuman neo-Soviet monster he is.  Why else, we can’t help but wonder, would he publicly say this about Natalia Estemirova:

She never had any honor, dignity or conscience. Why should Kadyrov kill a woman whom nobody needs?

Yes, he referred to himself in the third person.  Yes, he accused this single working mother who laid down her life for her beliefs of having no honor.  Yes, though she worked tirelessly and selflessly to protect the rights of the defenseless, he said she had no conscience.  Yes, he displayed for all the world his absolute contempt for her, confirming his motive to kill her.  Yes, he ignored her international reputation and many awards for journalistic and human rights achievement, something very few other Chechnya activists can boast of, and still claimed she mattered to nobody — ignoring too the hundreds of newspapers articles that deluged the worldwide media after her brutal killing.

Well, all we can say is “thank you, Mr. Kadyrov.” You’ve made our argument with your own words far better than we could ever dream of doing.  And, of course, the continued support of our maniacal, malignant, homicidal regime by the Moscow Kremlin tells the world all it needs to know about that regime as well.

Radio Free Europe has more analysis of the psychopathic ravings of this bloodthirsty, homicidal maniac who is Russia’s “hero.”

Putin Shows Exxon how “Business” is Done in Russia

Streetwise Professor reports:

A few days back I wrote about ExxonMobil was facing the prospect of losing its right to export gas from its Sakhalin I project to China, and sell it instead in the Russian domestic market at below market prices.  Today Bloomberg carries another article that dovetails perfectly with that story:

Der Spiegel exposes and Condemns Russian Barbarism

Mr. Medvedev takes Aim

Under the photograph shown above and the headline “The Triumph of Fear,” Der Speigel reports on the Kremlin’s barbaric homicidal rampage against civil society, using the strongest terms a major newspapers possibly can (truly, one  photograph with an automatic rifle is worth a thousand words):

Yet another Russian human rights activist has been silenced in yet another brutal attack. This week unknown gunmen shot anti-corruption activist Albert Pchelintsev in the mouth with rubber bullets, in front of his apartment in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The 38 year old was seriously wounded in the lower face and jaw but survived the attack.

Oh Nobama! Barack’s Approval is in Freefall

U.S. President Barack Obama’s benighted Russia policy is just one hallmark of an increasingly failed administration, and the people of the United States are getting wise. Just look at those job approval ratings!  He’s inches away from seeing the red disapproval line exceed the blue approval line, and he’s only a few months into his presidency. Time for a rethink, Mr. Obama?

Annals of Shamapova

Well, at least she's still got her looks . . . er . . . that's not a hint of mustache we spy, is it? Did anyone say Maria ShaROIDpova?

If we told you than none of the top 5 seeds made it as far as the semi-finals in last weeks WTA tour event in Los Angeles, California, it probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that three of those five, including the top two, were Russians. None of the players ranked #2-#6 in the world even showed up, so the going was hardly difficult. 

But the Russians still couldn’t hang.  Least of all Maria Sharoidpova.

August 10, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY AUGUST 10 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Long Knives in Sukhumi

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Georgia, Triumphant!

(3)  Sidorov on Georgia and Russian Imperialism

(4)  The West must not Abandon Georgia (Again)

(5)  The Women of Gori Remember Russian War Crimes

NOTE:  A special issue devoted to the Russian threat against Georgia on the one-year anniversary of the war of aggression by Putin against Saakashvili.  Remember this first of all:  Russia lied about civilian casualties in Ossetia, claiming thousands were killed in “genocide” when in fact only 162 were killed, 40% less civilian casualties than Russia inflicted on Georgia.  If anyone was guilty of “genocide,” then, it was Russia.  Russia has never apologized for its lies, and that tells you all you need to know about its role in war.  As the New York Times states:  “It was as if senior Russian officials pulled out a dog-eared Soviet propaganda playbook that called for hurling the most outlandish charge, without recognizing that in the modern global media climate, their credibility would quickly suffer if the facts proved otherwise”

EDITORIAL: Long Knives in Sukhumi

EDITORIAL

Long Knives in Sukhumi

Blogging on Live Journal (backed up on Google), Twitter and Facebook, a Georgian lecturer on economics at Sukhumi State University named “Giorgi” last week faced a massive campaign of cyberwar from Russia (read his posts in translation here and here).  Thanks to the free advertising from his beloved Russians, which got him written about in such places as the Times of London and interviewed by The Guardian, by the time the dust settled and he was fully back online (though the LJ blog still seems to be under assault), laughing at the Russian cowards who attacked him, the professor (who blogs as “cyxymu,” which looks like the Russian script for Sukhumi) now has well over 2,000 followers on Twitter and is ten thousand times more well read than before the crazed Russophile set tried to silence him. By the weekend, there were nearly 1,000 articles in the mainstream Western press blaming Russia and praising the Georgian’s courage.

Nice job, Russians! Maybe you’d like to do the same favor for La Russophobe?

EDITORIAL: Georgia, Triumphant!

EDITORIA

Georgia, Triumphant!

It’s not surprising that Russians are motivated to acts of craven, violent desperation as they see tiny Georgia humiliate them before world.

Last week, even as the proud and defiant words of Georgia’s president were appearing in the Washington Post, the IMF announced that it was increasing economic support to the Georgian government by more than 50%.  Meanwhile, Russia is saddled with the massive economic burden of maintaining the impoverished Ossetia and Abkahazia regions, while Georgia is relieved of it, even as the Russian economy enters its worst recession in modern history. And that’s to say nothing of the nearly $30 billion in costs and losses Russia incurred from the war itself — money Russia’s sick population, which does not rank in the top 150 nations of the world for lifespan, desperately needed for social services.

How can Russia respond? Only with truly pathetic efforts to crash websites through cyberterrorism.

Sidorov on Georgia and Russian Imperialism

Dmitri Sidorov, bureau chief for Kommersant in Washington DC, writing in Forbes:

The Russian proverb “trust but verify” gave Ronald Reagan some of his most memorable moments. He produced it repeatedly in interactions with the Soviets, including the 1978 ceremony to sign the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty in Moscow. There, he said it first in English, and then in Russian, incurring the displeasure of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In July 2009 President Obama signed a number of documents in Moscow, and according to sources in the Russian capital and Washington, he received the Kremlin’s assurance that Russian troops will not invade Georgia again. But Mr. Obama, following the practice of his recent predecessors, shied away from publicly stressing the importance of verification, and emphasized instead the value of trust.

But this doesn’t work with the Russians. No matter which leader occupies the throne in the Kremlin, Moscow has no plans to waive its proclaimed spheres of influence in most, if not all, the former republics of the USSR.

The West must not Abandon Georgia Again

Ronald Asmus, executive director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and author of The Little War that Shook the World: Georgia, Russia and the Future of the West, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, writing in the Financial Times:

A year ago this Friday Russia and Georgia went to war. By the standards of modern warfare it was a little war. It lasted five days. Casualties were modest. It nevertheless sparked the greatest European security crisis since Slobodan Milosevic unleashed the dogs of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s. Moscow invaded a neighbour for the first time since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It broke the cardinal rule of post-cold war European security that borders in Europe should never be changed by force of arms. It showed an ugly neo-imperial side of its policy that many in the west had hoped was part of the past.

The Women of Gori remember Russian War Crimes

The women of Gori, Georgia, commemorate the civilians from their city brutally murdered by Russian cluster bombs and other savage attacks on civilians during the war of aggression against the country one year ago last Friday.

August 9, 2009 — Contents

SUNDAY AUGUST 9 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Sergei Karaganov, Neo-Soviet Cockroach

(2)  Russia’s Bleak Winter Prospects

(3)  Russia’s KGB and Islamic Terror

(4)  Saakashvili Speaks

(5)  Vladimir Putin:  A Decade of Failure

(6)  The Sunday Funnies

EDITORIAL: Sergei Karaganov, Neo-Soviet Cockroach

EDITORIAL

Sergei Karaganov, Neo-Soviet Cockroach

We know, you think we're kidding. But we're not. This is really him! We swear!

Writing in the Moscow Times last week Sergei Karaganov,  chairman of the presidium of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs of the Higher School of Economics, claimed that the new cold war is all the West’s fault.

That’s right:  Russia bears no blame whatsoever for electing a proud KGB spy president, barbarically torturing Chechnya, murdering dissidents, wiping out free media, crushing opposition political parties and eviscerating federalism.  It’s all our fault.

It’s Russia’s version of the “reset,” showing Barack Obama exactly how Russia feels about his outstretched hand. His essay was, of course, full of shameless, cowardly, neo-Soviet lies and reads as if it was intended to be read by a clan of apes.

The Coming Winter is Hopelessly Bleak for Russia

Owen Matthews, reporting for Newsweek:

With both the price of oil and the Moscow Stock Exchange having roughly doubled in value over the past six months, Russia’s leaders are downright bullish. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has refused to make deep cuts in government spending, choosing instead to rely on $200 billion of saved up oil money. He recently told banks to increase lending and lower rates in order to signal the end of the crisis.Don’t be fooled: Russia’s still reeling from the commodities crash, and things are poised to get worse before they get better. Putin’s oil fund will be “practically exhausted” by the end of 2010, says Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. By the Russian government’s own estimate, the economy will shrink by up to 8.5 percent in 2009. Worse, many Russian businesses appear to be all but insolvent. They face a $200 billion mountain of debt, much of which comes due this fall. With Russia’s indebted businesses expected to net a mere $70 billion in profits this year, that leaves a potential $130 billion private-sector shortfall. Putin has tried to help by capping interest rates charged to private borrowers, but that means the pricing of risky loans has become artificially reduced. Overleveraged banks and corporations aren’t just a Russian phenomenon, but no other economy is as dangerously dependent on the boom-and-bust cycles of the world’s energy markets. Turns out Russia’s recovery isn’t nearly as tough as Putin’s talk.

Russia’s KGB and Islamic Terror

DEBKA reports:

Western intelligence sources in the Middle East have disclosed to DEBKAfile that a special unit of the Russian Federal Security Service – FSB, commissioned by Hizballah’s special security apparatus earlier this year, was responsible for the massive discovery of alleged Israel spy rings in Lebanon in recent months with the help of super-efficient detection systems.

Saakashvili Speaks

Georgian president Mikheil Saaskashvili, writing in the Washington Post:

On the night of Aug. 7, 2008, Russia’s 58th Army crossed over Georgia’s internationally recognized borders. Thus began what the evidence shows was a long-planned invasion aimed at toppling my government and increasing Moscow’s control over our region. A year later, the results are not what the Kremlin expected.

Tragically, 410 of our citizens, mostly civilians, were killed, and more than 1,700 were injured. Almost 130,000 people were forced to flee their homes, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, including tens of thousands ethnically cleansed from villages in the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Costs ran into the billions. And in violation of the cease-fire that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed Aug. 12, about 10,000 Russian troops remain in the two Georgian territories.

Vladimir Putin: A Decade of Failure

Top Russian pundit Yevgeny Kiselyov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Russians love to celebrate anniversaries, especially “jubilee anniversaries” — that is, those that are marked by round numbers (10 years, 20 years, 30 years, etc.)

But there is one 10-year anniversary on Sunday that leaves little room for celebration. On Aug. 9, 1999, then-President Boris Yeltsin, who at that point was physically exhausted, weak and easily manipulated, made what was probably the greatest mistake of his political career: He named a new government led by the little-known Vladimir Putin.

The Sunday Funnies

Translation: “Hey! Get back here! Damn you, World Trade Organization!”

Source: Ellustrator. (To view a photo of the Ellustrator himself, Sergei Yelkin, seated at a table with his son and two friends while on vacation, click here.)

August 7, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY AUGUST 7 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Annals of Putinomics

(2)  Putin Fails, and then he Fails Again

(3)  Putin Obliterates the Constitution

(4)  Latynina on the Coming war in Georgia

(5)  If it’s August, Putin must be Nude

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on Pajamas Media looks at the latest affront to American national security by Russia, nuclear submarines off our coastline, and reviews the litany of similar outrages over the past several years (it’s the lead item! congrats again KZ!). Where is Barack Obama?  Who knows.

NOTE:  Herein we offer another special issue devoted to exposing the many outrageous failures of Russia’s lunatic KGB dictator Vladimir Putin.

EDITORIAL: Annals of Putinomics

EDITORIAL

Annals of Putinomics

One third of Russia’s retail clothing businesses, 15,000 in all, will be shut down by the end of this year.

Russia’s second-largest bank posted a first quarter 2009 loss nearly twice as large as analysts had expected, as its bad loan portfolio exploded.  Its third-largest oil company saw profits fall by half.

Milk farmers aggrieved by insane, Soviet-like consumer price controls that threaten them with bankruptcy are on the verge of mass insurrection.

Credit Suisse downgraded the Russian stock market, ridiculing it as “more than ever a pure oil play.”

Violence related to economic hardship is soaring.

The bad economic news continues to roll in from Russia like a tsunami.

Putin Fails, and then he Fails Again

Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Russia’s foreign policy failures are snowballing at such a rate that they threaten a second geopolitical collapse on a par with the disintegration of the Soviet Union 20 years ago.

Once again, to consolidate Dictatorship Putin Ignores Constitution

Nikolai Petrov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Last week, a precedent was set in which a governor initiated the process of removing an elected mayor from office. It happened in the Perm region, well known for its active political and civil life. It was there that Governor Oleg Chirkunov called for the removal of Yury Vostrikov, the mayor of the city of Chaikovsky. (Chirkunov was never elected to his post, having been appointed in 2004 to replace his predecessor, Yury Trutnev, who left to become natural resources minister.) An amendment to the federal law on local government proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev and passed in May served as the legal basis for the move.

Latynina on the Coming war in Georgia

Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times:

Events in South Ossetia are unfolding according to last year’s scenario. No sooner had U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced that the United States would not provide arms to Georgia than South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity accused the United States of complicity in genocide against the Ossetian people and announced that Tskhinvali had come under fire from the Georgian village of Nikozi. Considering the fact that South Ossetian forces had already wiped Nikozi off the map, his statement sounded a bit strange.

The next day, a Georgian citizen died after stepping on a mine on the Georgian side of the border with the Akhalgorsk district. (Remember that before the Russia-Georgia war last August, the Akhalgorsk region belonged to Georgia, and after the war both Georgians and Ossetians began leaving the area.) President Kokoity announced that Georgia had intentionally blown up its own citizen as part of its policy of preventing Akhalgorsk refugees from returning home.

If it’s August, Vladimir Putin must be Nude in Public

In August, a young neo-Soviet lunatic’s thoughts turn once again to love . . .

August 5, 2009 — Contents

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 5 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  The Slobbering Russian Beast Eyes Georgia

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia in the Crosshairs of Europe

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Putin Sticks it to Medvedev (Again)

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Bruce Chapman, Talking to Himself

(5)  In Putin’s Russia, Wanton Savagery

NOTE:  For those who’ve always wondered what it felt like to be a spermatozoa of the Great Khan himself:  “Visitors can even take an elevator and emerge from between his legs to gaze at the lush Mongolian steppe from a deck atop his steed’s head.”