EDITORIAL: A tale of a Russian Bull

EDITORIAL

A tale of a Russian Bull

Between February and April of this year, as shown in the chart at left, the Russian stock market (here represented by the RTS dollar-denominated index) staged an impressive rally, gaining 20%.

But in the last few weeks, the market has given up every single dollar of that gain, free-falling over 15% in another breathtaking debacle, the kind for which the Russian market has become hilariously infamous. Hilarious, that is, unless you are in that market yourself.  Then your emotions are rather different.

A serious crisis in Greece spread to Europe as a bailout was requested, and as traders saw the Western economies losing ground they realized that Western demand for Russian oil cold falter.  Since the only real value contained in the Russian stock market is in the form of oil stocks, the bottom dropped out of that market.

EDITORIAL: An Abomination in Russia

EDITORIAL

An Abomination in Russia

Nearly one half of all Georigan soldiers who fought to defend Russia from the Nazi hoards in World War II were killed.  700,000 valiant heroes from the tiny country answered the call to arms, and 300,000 of them perished.

But that was not good enough for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.  The vile, nasty, childish, cowardly, repugnant little “man” refused to allow Georgian soldiers to march through Red Square in celebration of the 65th anniversary of their victory in that great war.

EDITORIAL: Summer time, but the Livin’ Ain’t Easy in Russia

EDITORIAL

Summer time, but the Livin’ Ain’t Easy in Russia

It’s summer time in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and that means just one thing:  No hot water.

Nearly half of all Russians in the city of Moscow will be forced to heat water on their stove tops if they want to take a hot bath, carrying pot after pot to the tub.

But the Muscovites are Russia’s rich, and lucky. Each of them will likely go without hot water for only a few weeks.   Travel farther away from the capital, and you’ll find many cities that will go without hot water all summer long.

Russia’s Collapsing Roads, Putin’s Betrayal of the Nation

Can you imagine dear reader, do you dare, what a road is like that does not meet Russian standards? Paul Goble reports on the catastrophic failure of the Putin regime to maintain Russia’s crumbling road network:

Even as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin again promises to complete a trans-Russia highway and as Moscow media report progress on several high-profile road projects near the capital, including paid highways, the country’s road system in many parts of the country is near the point of collapse, officials say.

They point to two reasons for that conclusion. On the one hand, according to a report in Irkutsk’s Argumenty I Fakty, the number of cars and trucks using the roads is growing rapidly, putting pressure on highways that were not designed to carry either the number or weight of vehicles now passing over them every day.

And on the other, officials responsible for roads say, the amount of money available for keeping the roads in good repair has been declining each year, a trend that in domino fashion means that Russia will eventually have to spend even more to bring the highway system back even to the level it was at a decade or more ago.

Fast and Furious Humiliation for Russia

Dinara Safina

Svetlana Kuznetsova

Elena Dementieva

Maria Sharapova

Vera Zvonareva

What do they have in common?  Within days of its beginning, all five had been ousted from the WTA Tour event in Madrid, Spain.  They were among them four of Russia’s five seeds in the tournament, including its top three and its most famous player by far, blown away like lint. Not one got close to reaching even the quarter-finals of the tournament.  Only Zvonareva and Dementieva managed to win as much as single match, not one got close to winning a second.

May 12, 2010 — Contents

WEDNESDAY MAY 10 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  A Decade with Putin is a Lost Decade

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia jumps the Rails

(3)  The Horror of Russia’s Charlatan Science

(4)  Kadyrov on Pushkin

(5)  Russian ruin in Rome

(6)  CARTOON

EDITORIAL: A Decade with Putin is a Lost Decade

EDITORIAL

A Decade with Putin is a Lost Decade

Writing for the German Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, commentator Victor Radio concludes:

The inability to understand criticism as an opportunity to improve his nation has led Vladimir Putin to purse the glorification of the existing “Mother Russia” and a new blind spirit of patriotism.  Instead of reform, Putin permitted the nation to rediscover its self-esteem in response to perceived “insults” from the prior decade.  Finally holding power, Putin wanted nothing more than to lash out at the nation’s critics.  As a result, Russia has been driven to a state of impasse.  The Putin decade is a lost decade, with only a facade of democracy being created and no real progress. It is not entirely Putin’s fault, but he bears the entire responsibility.

That description applies not only to the Russian dictator, but to the vast majority of the hapless Russians he rules.  Let’s be clear:  It is not just that Putin publicly denies that Russia’s critics have any merit, it’s that he flouts their statements as a matter of policy, and allows his nation to continue to degenerate into filth and squalor.

EDITORIAL: Russia Jumps the Rails

EDITORIAL

Russia Jumps the Rails

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, space cadet, makes his move

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is the ruler of the Russian region of Kalmykia, next to Rostov, just south of Volgograd. He’s also chief of the FIDE, the international chess federation, thrust into that position by Russian lobbying.

Andrei Lebedev is a member of the Russian parliament, affiliated with Vladimir Zhironovsky’s “Liberal Democratic” party.  Hearing Zhirik’s name, you may suspect that this story is going to get weird and scary, but quick.  If so, you’re right in spades.

Last week, Lebedev called for an investigation of Ilyumzhinov.  The reason?  Lebedev believes that Ilyumzhinov may have passed important state secrets to Russia’s enemies.  On another planet.

The Horror of Russia’s Charlatan “Science”

Paul Goble reports:

A group of Russian scholars working both in that country and abroad have called on President Dmitry Medvedev to come to the defense of scientific research against the demands of politicians and businessmen who in some cases have been promoting “scientific charlatanism” and even a new wave of “’Lysenkoism.’”

In an open letter to Medvedev and to Yuri Osipov, the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences,  the lettter, which has attracted nearly 40 signatures so far, says that “a situation has arisen at present in Russia in which the importance of science and education is not understood by the majority of the population and even by a significant portion of government employees.”

This ignorance of what science is about, the authors say, “has led to the flowering, in fact financed by the government of scientific charlatanism, ‘Lysenkoism,’ the conduct of pseudo-scientific conferences and the appearance of an enormous number of ‘innovation’ projects and ‘inventions,’” that specialists have serious doubts about and that have generated criticism abroad.

Kadyrov on Pushkin

Paul Goble reports:

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has done many things that one might reasonably expect would offend people of good will in Russia, but now he and his administration have taken a step certain to offend many of them: suggesting that Chechen pupils that Russia’s national poet Aleksandr Pushkin wanted everyone to study the Koran.

In an article in yesterday’s Gazeta, Olesya Gerasimenko notes that Chechnya is one of the 19 regions of the Russian Federation in which the foundations of religious culture and civic ethics has been introduced, with 99.64 percent of all pupils there selecting Islam as their course of study. Only 73 of the 20,000 students in the fourth class, the Moscow journalist says, have chosen to study Orthodoxy. And that tilt, she continues, is reinforced by two other developments, one that has attracted some attention and another that few Russians appear to know about.

Russian Ruin in Rome

At the WTA Tour event in Rome, Italy last week, Russia had three of the top six seeds and therefore should have had three of eight slots in the quarter finals.  Yet, not a single one of Russia’s three top seeds made it that far.  In fact, they didn’t get remotely close.  Instead, as per usual, Russia’s so-called “dominant” women humiliated themselves before a slack-jawed world.

CARTOON

The "president" of Russia is Dmitri Medvedev. His last name is based on the Russian word for "bear." Get it?

Source.

May 10, 2010 — Contents

MONDAY MAY 10 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia, Loathed and Reviled

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Happy Mother’s Day?

(3)  Vera Trifonova, RIP

(4)  Russia and her “Heroes”

(5)  Russia and World War II

NOTE:  Blogger Julia Ioffe posts some remarkable photographs of Russian “president” Dima Medvedev in his pre-presidential days. Note in particular his son’s taste in t-shirts.

EDITORIAL: Russia, Loathed and Reviled

EDITORIAL

Russia, Loathed and Reviled

Russia, out of touch

“Views on Russia’s influence are still predominantly negative worldwide.”

That was the conclusion of the latest BBC poll on the attitudes of countries around the world towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The segment of China’s population having a positive view of Russia plummeted shockingly this year compared to last, falling a whopping 19 points from 74% to 55%.

As shown in the chart at left, China was one of only two countries in the entire survey that had a majority-positive attitude towards Russia (the other was lowly Azarbaijan).  Less than a quarter of the U.S. population viewed Russia positively, and less than a third of the population of the major nations of Western Europe did so.

Yet, a whopping three quarters of idiotic, isolated, ignorant Russians themselves believed their nation had a mainly positive role in the world, while a totally ridiculous 4% of Russians were willing to acknowledge that their country might be mainly negative .  By contrast, no such blind, crazed nationalism affected the way Americans viewed their own role in the world. Numerous other countries had a more positive view of America’s role than did Americans themselves.

EDITORIAL: Happy Mother’s Day in Russia . . . NOT!

EDITORIAL

Happy Mother’s Day in Russia . . . NOT!

Last week a commenter pointed to a recent survey by Save the Children which ranked the 43 “more developed” nations of the world in terms of their suitability for motherhood.

Only five of them were found less suitable than Russia. That’s right, Vladimir Putin’s Russia was more hostile than 37 of the 43 “more developed” nations of the world.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day in the USA. Russians, for their part, don’t even have have a holiday devoted to mothering.  And one can readily see why.  Happy Mother’s Day, Russians!

Vera Trifonova, RIP

Vera Trifonova, RIP. Before, and after, Vladimir Putin went to work on her.

Other Russia reports:

Nearly half a year has passed since Sergei Magnitsky’s scandalous death in a Moscow detention center sparked international outrage at Russia’s penitentiary system. Now, in a case that bears an unsettling resemblance to Magnitsky’s, a Russian businesswoman awaiting trial on charges of fraud has died in the same detention center. And like Magnitsky, her lawyer alleges that the woman died as a result of being denied necessary medical care.

According to Russian Federal Penitentiary Service representative Sergei Tsygankov, the 53-year-old Vera Trifonova died at 12:35 pm on April 30, 2010, in the intensive care unit of the hospital at the Matrosskaya Tishina criminal investigation detention facility (SIZO) in Moscow. Local police were called to the scene, established that there were no signs that the death has been violent, and have launched an investigation.

PHOTO: Russia and her “Heroes”

A bus that began operating in Russia this month to celebrate the wonderful Russian hero known as Stalin, greatest mass killer of Russians in world history. A quote from Stalin below his image reads: "“I would like to drink a toast to the health of the whole Soviet people, and, first and foremost, the Russian people!" Presumably, his goblet would be filled with their blood.

We can only ask ourselves: What kind of barbarous, self-loathing nation is this, anyway? This man was the greatest mass-murderer of Russians in world history! How dare they?! It’s like Israel putting Hitler on a bus!

Check out that reverse view image of Stalin in the window in the background. Yikes! What a country!

VE: Think you did it by yourselves, Russians? You’d best think again.

Canadian military history professor Alexander Hill, writing in the Moscow Times:

Many Russians are understandably proud of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War — the Soviet term for their war against Nazi Germany fr om June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945. Few historians in the East or West would disagree that the bulk of the German army was destroyed on the Eastern Front during World War II. The eastward advance of the German army and its allies was halted initially at Moscow in December 1941, then again at Stalingrad in November 1942, almost two years before the Americans had committed significant ground forces against Germany.

The surrender of German and Romanian forces at Stalingrad in February 1943 marked the destruction of a force of more than 250,000 men, of whom more than 91,000 surrendered to the Red Army. By the time of the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Red Army was advancing rapidly westward through Ukraine and Belarus, recapturing Minsk in July 1944 and reaching the gates of Warsaw by August. Berlin finally fell to the Red Army on May 2, 1945, with German capitulation following shortly afterward — technically on May 8 according to the Western Allies, or May 9 for the Soviets, although sporadic fighting continued for a day or two afterward.

These victories were achieved at horrendous cost — more than 8.5 million Soviet soldiers were either killed, died later of wounds or did not return from German captivity. Up to 27 million Soviet citizens died as a result of the war.

World War II was not, however, just a war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the victory in May 1945 was not just a Soviet victory but a victory for the Allied alliance as well. From June 1940 to June 1941, Britain and the Commonwealth fought alone against Nazi Germany, even while material assistance increased from the United States as 1941 progressed.

May 7, 2010 — Contents

FRIDAY MAY 7 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Putin the Psychopath

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Putin the Predator

(3)  Wormy, Leech-Ridden Russia

(4)  Latynina on Europe’s new Munich

(5)  In Russia, like Puppet like Master

NOTE:  Putin’s Russia has tortured and then murdered yet another defenseless prisoner, this time a woman.  Who can dare to claim this is not a barbaric nation?

EDITORIAL: Vladimir Putin, Raving Psychopath

EDITORIAL

Vladimir Putin, Raving Psychopath

As many predicted it would do after Russia’s 2008 annexation of Ossetia and Abkhazia, it appears Russian success with aggression in Georgia has induced it to turn its eye toward an even juicier tidbit known, for now, as Ukraine.

Last Friday, in one of the most fully deranged displays by a world leader in recent memory, Russian “prime minister” Vladimir Putin spontaneously announced at a press conference in front of his Ukrainian counterpart in Moscow that he thought it would be a good idea if Russia’s giant natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, acquired its Ukrainian counterpart Naftogaz lock, stock and gas pipelines.

What was so astounding was not that Putin would entertain such thoughts, or even that he would say them (most of Russian public supports neo-Soviet aggression against Ukraine and Georgia), but that he would publicly announce such a scheme without giving any advance warning to his diplomatic peer, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who could do nothing but stammer in diplomatese that Putin had “expressed it in an impromptu way.”  It’s simply unheard of for a the leader of a major nation to behave this way. Which means, of course, that it’s not the least bit surprising to find the Russians doing it.

EDITORIAL: Putin, Predator of the Press

EDITORIAL

Putin, Predator of the Press

Reporters without Borders has come out with a list of the 40 worst “predators of the press” on the planet, and unsurprisingly both Vladimir Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov are on it.

Here’s what RWB has to say about Putin:

Wormy, Leech-ridden Russia

Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Gleb Pavlovsky, a longtime Kremlin insider and pundit, hit the nail on the head when he described the pervasive corruption among Russia’s bureaucrats: “For the last 20 years, no one in the high levels of government has discussed whether this or that top bureaucrat abuses his official position for personal gain. It is taken as a given. They are all corrupt.”

That is why Russia — unlike China, Singapore, Japan and France — has not prosecuted a single high-ranking official on corruption charges in the entire 20 years of the post-Soviet period. The government’s whole “fight against corruption” boils down to nothing but empty speeches, useless anti-corruption legislation, amusing but meaningless “strategies” to combat the problem and occasional arrests on corruption charges of middle- and low-ranking officials — scapegoats who have no impact on solving the larger, systemic problem of corruption in government.

While the economy was growing in the 2000s thanks to high energy prices and business expansion fueled by a seemingly endless flow of cheap corporate credit, there was another boom taking place in Russia — the sharp rise in the number of bureaucrats since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000.

Latynina on Europe’s New Munich

Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times (if you read Russian, there is a longer version of this article posted on Yezhedevny Zhurnal):

It may seem strange that I am writing about the 2009 report by the European Union fact-finding commission on the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war since it was published a year ago.

But the report is still very important today — in some sense, even more important than the war itself. The report, which was lead by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, is a blatant appeasement to Russia — a new Munich Agreement of sorts.

If you build policy and the economy on lies and self-deception, if you sincerely believe that you are the defender of freedom but out of fear and indifference you appease a dictatorship, and if you sincerely believe that you have a market economy despite having long ago sunk into debt and micromanaging the economy, the eventual consequences will be catastrophic.

To be honest, I was shocked by the report. My first thoughts after reading it were: “Europe has gone into retirement” and “Europe is no more.” Now one year later, Europe is falling apart.

In Russia, like Puppet like Master

Human Rights Watch reports:

The Russian government should closely examine evidence gathered by the Austrian government which indicates the president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, ordered the kidnapping last year of a Chechen refugee in Vienna, Human Rights Watch said today. The refugee, Umar Israilov, died as a result of gunshot wounds inflicted by his assailants.

On April 27, 2010, the Austrian prosecutor’s office announced that, following a year-long investigation into Israilov’s murder, the country’s federal counterterrorism agency had concluded that Israilov had been killed as a result of a botched kidnapping, which was allegedly ordered by Kadyrov. All three suspected kidnappers are in custody in Austria, awaiting indictment by the prosecutor’s office. Kadyrov has denied any involvement in the crime.

May 5, 2010 — Contents

WEDNESDAY MAY 5 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Vladimir Putin, Liar

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia, Food Wasteland

(3)  The Russian Army on the Verge of Collapse

(4)  Russia, once again a Sucker

(5)  CARTOON:  Putin the Environmentalist

NOTE:  For those who read Russian, Yuri Felshtinsky’s book about Vladimir Putin and the KGB has been posted online.

NOTE: In the “we thought we had seen it all” department, a reader tips us that state-sponsored propaganda network Russia Today has opened an online dating service encouraging Russians to meet foreigners, and presumably then to leave the country.