Look What They’re Doing in Venezuela!

Above, you see a photograph (from Publius Pundit) of a street in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, thronged with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the regime of dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuela faces a challenge to democracy from Chavez that is very similar to what Russia faces from Putin (in fact, Putin and Chavez are pals just like Krushschev and Castro used to be), but here we see the difference between Venezuelans and Russians: The former are prepared to take risks for democracy and to build a better future for their children. It seems that the latter are not. Not only have we never seen such a scene in Russia, we cannot imagine there ever being one.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Look What They’re Doing in Venezuela!

Above, you see a photograph (from Publius Pundit) of a street in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, thronged with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the regime of dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuela faces a challenge to democracy from Chavez that is very similar to what Russia faces from Putin (in fact, Putin and Chavez are pals just like Krushschev and Castro used to be), but here we see the difference between Venezuelans and Russians: The former are prepared to take risks for democracy and to build a better future for their children. It seems that the latter are not. Not only have we never seen such a scene in Russia, we cannot imagine there ever being one.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Look What They’re Doing in Venezuela!

Above, you see a photograph (from Publius Pundit) of a street in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, thronged with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the regime of dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuela faces a challenge to democracy from Chavez that is very similar to what Russia faces from Putin (in fact, Putin and Chavez are pals just like Krushschev and Castro used to be), but here we see the difference between Venezuelans and Russians: The former are prepared to take risks for democracy and to build a better future for their children. It seems that the latter are not. Not only have we never seen such a scene in Russia, we cannot imagine there ever being one.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Look What They’re Doing in Venezuela!

Above, you see a photograph (from Publius Pundit) of a street in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, thronged with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the regime of dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuela faces a challenge to democracy from Chavez that is very similar to what Russia faces from Putin (in fact, Putin and Chavez are pals just like Krushschev and Castro used to be), but here we see the difference between Venezuelans and Russians: The former are prepared to take risks for democracy and to build a better future for their children. It seems that the latter are not. Not only have we never seen such a scene in Russia, we cannot imagine there ever being one.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Look What They’re Doing in Venezuela!

Above, you see a photograph (from Publius Pundit) of a street in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas, thronged with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the regime of dictator Hugo Chavez. Venezuela faces a challenge to democracy from Chavez that is very similar to what Russia faces from Putin (in fact, Putin and Chavez are pals just like Krushschev and Castro used to be), but here we see the difference between Venezuelans and Russians: The former are prepared to take risks for democracy and to build a better future for their children. It seems that the latter are not. Not only have we never seen such a scene in Russia, we cannot imagine there ever being one.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

LR on PP

Check out La Russophobe‘s magnum opus on Publius Pundit, reviewing the developments concerning Litvinenko and Gaidar and calling for action. Please feel free to add your comments as to how we can best deal with this widening and terrifying crisis (Publius has an open comment policy that allows anonymous comments, unlike LR, so all are free to leave their thoughts).

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Neo-Soviet Russia Doing Little Pal North Korea a Big Favor

RIA Novosti reports that Russia is going to write of a huge portion of the $8 billion owed it by North Korea. Isn’t that lovely? Now North Korea’s crazed despot will have plenty of extra money to invest in his nuclear weapons program!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Neo-Soviet Imperialism Eats Away at Russia

Writing in the Moscow Times, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, points out that Russia’s impulse to neo-imperialism is self-destructive because it diverts needed ressources away from domestic investment.

There seems to be more geopolitical pluralism in the former Soviet states than there actually is. The United States doesn’t have a very good handle on what is happening, and its hands are bound by other foreign policy problems. The EU is divided. Russia’s position could be strengthened not by its own successes, but exclusively by the difficulties of others. Despite its growing self-confidence, however, Russia is not prepared for expansion. If it is driven in this direction by external factors, expansion will compromise internal development, as has happened many times in Russian history. The temptation to engage in geopolitical “charity work” is great; for some reason this is always more appealing than solving tedious but pressing problems at home. Russian officials have already begun to change their tune. Sergei Rogov, director of the USA and Canada Institute, said last week that a NATO failure in Afghanistan could open the way for Russia to return to regional politics. In discussions of the Caucasus region, some have begun to argue that in the early 1920s the Red Army brought peace to the region, which couldn’t live in peace without an external patron. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the victors in the Cold War set out zealously to carve up its geopolitical legacy. But they didn’t have the strength to digest it. Now a newly strengthened Russia is ready to join the battle for what was lost but has yet to find a new master. It this happens, the development of Russia will proceed further along the same old historical spiral.

Everything old is new again in Russia. The same wealth disparity, the same autocracy, the same crazed lust for territory by the country that already has the world’s largest supply.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Guardian Rips Russia Over Weaponizing Energy

Writing in the Guardian David Clark, Chairman of the Russia Foundation, asks why it has taken us so long to see the true colors of the neo-Soviet Union:

The murder of Alexander Litvinenko is an irresistible story, but it shouldn’t have taken the death of one man to alert us to the fact that we have a serious problem with Putin’s Russia. Whether Litvinenko’s poisoning was ordered by the Kremlin or not, it has been obvious for some time that we are dealing with a regime whose contempt for democracy and human rights at home is matched by an increasingly aggressive and unilateralist approach to foreign policy.

Offstage from last week’s spy drama, a storm was brewing with far more profound long-term implications for our relations with Russia. It was brought to a head by Poland’s decision to veto negotiations over a new cooperation agreement between the EU and Russia. Poland’s grievances are perfectly valid. Russia is not only violating an agreement on energy by using gas supplies as a political weapon, but it has banned Polish meat imports in an act of pure diplomatic spite. Russia has now threatened to extend that ban to the whole of the EU from January.

Trade embargoes imposed for bogus health-and-safety reasons are fast becoming a favourite foreign-policy weapon for Russia. Georgia and Moldova have been similarly targeted. But the coercive use of energy policy gives greatest cause for concern. Europe now depends on Russia for 25% of its gas, a figure set to rise to 70% by 2020, at a time when Russian behaviour is becoming more belligerent.

Optimists point out that even during the Soviet era Russia remained a reliable energy supplier. But this ignores one crucial difference. Post-Yalta, the Soviet Union’s main objective was to maintain the status quo and preserve its sprawling empire with subsidies and military force. For this it needed to trade with the west; energy for hard currency. But just as the west is no longer the only potential customer, Russia is no longer a status-quo power. It is a revisionist power whose president publicly laments the collapse of the Soviet empire and seeks to restore its dominant position by fair means or foul. Energy is now its instrument of choice.

It is a cardinal principle of Putin’s hard nationalist outlook that the countries on Russia’s borders are not entitled to choose their political destinies. That’s why Russia reacted so furiously to the rose and orange revolutions. In this respect, Russo-European tensions reflect a fundamental clash of strategic cultures. While modern Europe has embraced voluntary integration and the rule of international law, Putin’s foreign policy belongs to an older European tradition with its “spheres of influence” and great-power rivalries. To the extent that the EU provides a pole of attraction for parts of the former Soviet Union that wish to escape this Hobbesian universe, Putin has come to see it as a geopolitical rival.

Russia’s role as an increasingly dominant energy supplier is sometimes said to be an example of “soft power”. But there is nothing soft about cutting off gas supplies to a country such as Ukraine in the dead of winter. It is an illegitimate instrument of intimidation. Beyond Russia’s “near abroad”, Putin combines measures to increase Europe’s dependency on Russian supplies with reminders that Asia provides an alternative outlet. The idea is that Europe should take the hint and avoid disagreement with Moscow – a form of diplomatic self-policing known as “Finlandisation”.

European diplomacy should be aimed at presenting Russian policy makers with a clear choice. They can have a constructive and profitable energy partnership on fair commercial terms, provided they renounce monopolistic practices and abandon the use of energy supplies for geopolitical advantage. That means living up to their obligations under the energy charter treaty and ending their pipeline monopoly by signing the transit protocol. Otherwise Europe will single-mindedly pursue a policy of energy independence by diversifying its energy mix, improving efficiency and building the supply infrastructure needed to access non-Russian sources.

There is no appetite for cold-war revivalism in Europe, but we will not develop an effective policy towards Russia until we get over the post-cold-war cringe of believing there is something shameful about standing up to a leader like Putin. It is not “Russophobic” to oppose the hegemonic ambitions of the Kremlin any more than it is “anti-American” to object to the unipolar pretensions of neoconservative policy makers in Washington. Both reflect a mindset that reveres power politics and rejects sovereign equality as the basis for international relations. That’s not the European way, and it’s time we made that clear.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Business in Russia: Nothing but a Roulette Wheel

The Guardian exposes more of the horrors of doing business in Russia (note well that George Soros used to be an ardent Russophile — right up until the he actually got some experience in country):

Just two months ago in this column we quoted George Soros’s view of Russia as “a country that does not hesitate to use its monopoly power in devious and arbitrary ways”. Mr Soros was referring to letting the state-controlled Rosneft list in London, but his view was also a good description of events that had just unfolded at the huge Shell-led Sakhalin-2 project. Just as the state-controlled Gazprom was agitating to buy a 25% stake in the $20bn (£10bn) venture, Shell lost its operating licence on environmental grounds. Yesterday, as if relations between Russia and the UK were not strained enough, the Russian Natural Resources Ministry was at it again. This time it was Peter Hambro Mining in its sights.

With no notice the Russians threatened to withdraw five of the Aim-listed group’s exploration licences, wiping 20% off its value, although the shares regained some composure and ended down 14%. As with Sakhalin-2, the man wielding the big stick was Oleg Mitvol, deputy chief of the Rosprirodnadzor natural resources watchdog, a wealthy businessman-turned-civil servant.

Peter Hambro Mining has been something of a success story in recent years. Peter Hambro, of the banking dynasty, has built PHM into one of Russia’s biggest gold mining groups and the company has thrived as the gold price has risen to 25-year highs. It has ambitions to boost production from 250,000 ounces to 1m ounces by 2009 and, with costs currently at only about $150 per ounce, could be highly profitable.

Until yesterday Hambro had insisted his company was protected because it had hired Russians and given them shareholdings. Uppermost among them is deputy chairman Pavel Maslovsky, once a missile specialist and part of the Soviet old guard, who has a 23% stake worth nearly £200m. In the last election, Maslovsky was the personal representative to the president, Vladimir Putin, in the Amur region. There are also several former Russian civil servants on the books who deal with local and government relations.

Last night Hambro was still trying to ascertain what PHM had done wrong. Of the five licences, he said, only two would have an impact as PHM had recently sold its interest in the other three. PHM has 54 licences and the two affected are not production sites, but Mitvol’s action, and his threat to inspect every one of PHM’s other facilities for similar environmental violations, will hit corporate confidence and investor sentiment.

The west is pouring billions into Russia and companies from every sector involved will be worried. The fear that Putin’s Russia might tear up and rewrite contracts has moved from energy to mining. Where next? Marks & Spencer in Moscow?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Future of Russia is . . . China!

The Hankyoreh, a Korean newspaper, reports on the Chinese takeover of Russia already underway. Chinese in the East, Muslim in the West, soon Russia will be unrecognizable, all thanks to the polices of the neo-Soviet government.

The Chinese food is excellent at the Xianggang Restaurant. After dinner, people dance to the tunes of Hotel California in front of the bar. The place is popular-full every night-and “Xianggang” means, of course, “Hong Kong” in pinyin, the standard Romanization across the border in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang. For this is not a Chinese eatery in the West, but in Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East.

The Xianggang Restaurant is only one example of how Chinese influence is spreading in Russia’s easternmost territories. Chinese merchants already dominate local trade and commerce, and many have settled not only in Khabarovsk but also in Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok and Irkutsk, at the same time as the Russian population is declining. The birth rate is low, and every year thousands of Russians move to European Russia to look for jobs because factories are closing down and military installations have been withdrawn.

Many local residents and government officials believe that 100 years from now, this region may no longer be part of Russia. Economically, the Russian Far East is already more or less separated from European Russia.

Before the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the Far East supplied European Russia and the other Western republics with fish and crabs from the Sea of Okhotsk. The area’s heavy industry produced steel, aircraft and even ships, and few foreign consumer goods could be found in shops and markets.

Today, Chinese consumer goods, cheaper and better than those produced far away in European Russia, are flooding the markets along with Chinese food, while timber and raw materials are going across the border to Heilongjiang. Entire factories are being dismantled and sold as scrap metal to China, and Chinese seafood is almost exclusively sold to South Korea and Japan.

Given this climate, demographic changes are becoming evident. When communism essentially collapsed along with the Soviet Union, Chinese border traders and seasonal workers arrived in the Russian Far East. Here, it is still mainly a floating population that moves back and forth across the border, but now many are choosing to stay, as Vilya Gelbras, professor and China specialist at Moscow State University, pointed out at a seminar in Blagoveshchensk last year: “Now every second Chinese arrives in Russia with a firm intention not to go back to China. Most of them cannot be classified as ‘free migrants’ anymore.” Many acquire false documents, even citizenship, from corrupt local officials, who are more willing to accept bribes from Chinese and other foreigners than from fellow Russians, who may complain to the authorities.

Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District is huge. Having always attracted settlers and adventurers, it was conquered by the Russians in the 19th century, and it became a dumping ground for criminals and political undesirables. But its population remained extremely sparse. “The District”, as it is called, covers 6,215,900 square km, but contains only 7 million people, which is a figure down from 9 million in 1991. Across the border, China’s three northeastern provinces-Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning-are home to 100 million people, and the area has, even by Chinese standards, an unusually high unemployment rate. Or, as one Western analyst told me: “If the Russians continue to move out, the Chinese are ready to fill the resultant population vacuum in the area.”

That could lead to more than just a change of the demographic balance in what is still the Russian Far East, as political loyalties of the Chinese in the region will remain with China. Russia is too poor, backward and different for any Chinese migrant to easily find identity with.

Officially, 40,000 Chinese live more or less permanently in the Russian Far East – which stretches from the Lena River basin to the Bering Sea – but the actual figure is believed to be much higher. The largest concentrations are in the three main cities in the area, and the economic dominance of Chinese immigrants is felt the strongest in Blagoveshchensk, the economy of which is less developed and diversified than those of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok.

Blagoveshchensk is also on the banks of the Amur river, with the Chinese city of Heihe visible on the other side. Hydrofoils carrying Chinese traders bringing in goods ply between the two cities every half hour. This reporter saw some Russian traders, too, but they were also carrying household utensils, toys, shoes and tools from China.

Not only trade in consumer goods is in the hands of the Chinese: the construction sector in Blagoveshchensk is dominated by a Chinese-owned company, Hua Fu, which has just begun working on what will be the tallest building in the Russian Far East. Chinese New Year is not an official holiday here, but is celebrated in style with fireworks, drums and lion dances.

Even the mayor of the city and the governor of the province usually participate as guests of honour. This province, Amursky Oblast, may also be the most vulnerable Russian province for what many Russians call a “creeping invasion” by the Chinese. It is huge-363,700 square km, the same area as Japan-but with a population of only 900,000. More than 35 million live in Heilongjiang across the Amur river.

Local Russians told me their land is not suitable for farming, the weather being too cold most of the year. But the Chinese who have settled here have managed to cultivate the land. According to Lyudmila Erokhina, a researcher at Vladivostok State University, Chinese businessmen have bribed local officials in order to acquire land from Russian farmers, and then have brought in agricultural workers from China. A major problem is that Russia has no law that regulates private ownership of land, she said. All land belongs to the state, and individual farmers can only get the right to use it.

But more food-vegetables, fruit, pork, and even eggs-are brought in from China, which has led to concerns about food security in the Russian Far East. “The Chinese now dominate the agricultural sector and the food supply,” Erokhina told me in Vladivostok. “We’re totally dependent on them.”

There may not be more than 40,000, or perhaps 50,000, Chinese living permanently in the Russian Far East. But that is 40,000 or 50,000 more than in 1991, and as the Russian exodus continues, the Chinese may move into an empty Siberia resulting in its detachment from Russia and reorientation toward Beijing. Chinese expansion is a fact of life in the Russian Far East, and there is little Russia can do to stop it.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Litvinenko Special Edition

Today (below) La Russophobe is pleased to present a special edition, a set of posts devoted to following up on the Litivinenko killing. We begin with a translation original to La Russophobe from the Russian press, followed by a set of blog posts and media articles analyzing this latest neo-Soviet ourtage. Also included is YouTube footage of Litivenko’s last speech, at the Frontline club. This focus could not be more timely in light of, as La Russophobe notes with horror, the recent news that Yegor Gaidar has fallen ill in Moscow with a “mysterious illness” that doctors cannot diagnose after a vist to Ireland. Gaidar was the driving force behind the “shock therapy” move towards democracy under Boris Yeltsin, believing that Russia was fully capable of blacksliding into a neo-Soviet state and therefore needed to rapidly disperse assets away from the center. As such, Gaidar is obviously a major target of Kremlin ire, and his sickness coming in such close proximity to the demise of Litvinenko is horrifying indeed, and even more so in close proximity to the actions of his daughter, previously documented on La Russophobe, in hanging a public banner calling the Kremlin thugs “bastards” for altering the elections law. Even if the illness is purely natural, it’s a reminder of the nature of the problem we face.

Gaidar’s colleague Anatoli Chubais was quoted as saying on NTV: “Yegor Gaidar on 24 November was in the balance between life and death. Could this be simply some sort of natural illness? According to what the most professional doctors, who have first-hand knowledge of the situation, say — no. A poisoning, an attempted murder: this is precisely the version that needs to be examined. For me there is no doubt that the deathly Politkovskaya-Litvinenko-Gaidar chain, which by a miracle was not completed, would have been extremely attractive for the supporters of an unconstitutional, forceful change of power in Russia.” He told RIA Novosti: “This deadly design would have been extremely attractive for those supporting unconstitutional, violent means of changing power in Russia.”

Gaidar’s daughter told Kommersant: “The doctors are leaning towards the conclusion that all the symptoms… point specifically to poisoning.” The doctors will make their final diagnosis on Friday, with “a poison unknown to civilian medicine” deemed the most likely cause of his illness, she said. The Novye Izvestia daily quoted Maria Gaidar saying that her father had eaten a “simple breakfast of fruit salad and a cup of tea.” Shortly after, Gaidar fainted. “I went up to him. He was lying on the floor unconscious. There was blood coming from his nose, he was vomiting blood. This went on for more than half an hour,” Maria Gaidar said. According to Novye Izvestia, Gaidar then remained unconscious for three hours in hospital and for a full day his life was considered in danger.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !