Annals of Cold War II: Documenting the Horror of the Rogue Regime

Reader “Ron Raygun” directs our attention to the following brilliant, courageous expose of the Putin regime from the American Enterprise Institute’s magazine European Outlook. The author is Reuel Marc Gerecht (pictured), a resident fellow at AEI. He was a Central Intelligence Agency operative from 1985 to 1994 . Click through to the link to read the footnotes.

A Rogue Intelligence State
Why Europe and America Cannot Ignore Russia

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe: a state defined and dominated by former and active-duty security and intelligence officers. Not even fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union–all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia–were as top-heavy with intelligence talent. What does this mean for Russia and for us? Are we destined to see a post-Communist Russia that aggressively uses assassination and economic blackmail as essential tools of statecraft? Does a policy of engagement, which we have been practicing somewhat energetically since September 2001, now make sense?

The only unalloyed good thing one can say about Russia today is that it is not the Soviet Union: democracy is still, in principle, the basis for political legitimacy. Democracy in Russia is vibrant enough that the Kremlin cannot openly reject it; instead, it must “manage” it. The average Russian may care more about stability at home or respect for his country abroad than he does about abstract democratic virtues or “Western” civil liberties, but Putin’s regime still seems to adhere to the democratic franchise, even if it severely limits it by autocratic practices. As long as the democratic apparatus remains in place, political surprises are possible. Since Russia is an oil-rentier state–in which the economy fluctuates with the price of crude–its political future is volatile.

Putin’s powerful position could quickly change. Would-be dictators often overestimate their own popularity to the point that they do not cheat enough to win elections. The Russian state under Putin has no single, unifying, driving ideology. Lust for power, personal greed, and an aspiration for national greatness have yet to push Russia into fascism, although a number of factors–primitive nationalism, a reflexive “us vs. them” worldview that is often explicitly racist, and a zero-sum understanding of economics and foreign affairs–make it a real possibility. The Kremlin’s determined efforts to control the Russian media and–increasingly–the Internet leave little space for any meaningful check on state power.

It is difficult now to imagine a situation in which, under Putin or his designated successor, Russia can behave responsibly toward its own citizens or its neighbors. In the mid- to late-1990s, it was still possible to envision a Russia where the former Soviet elite or, to be more precise, the thirty-something children of the last ruling Soviet generation could evolve democratically into members of a historically honest elite who could openly criticize themselves and their parents for their complicity in Soviet oppression. In the 1990s, many former officers of the KGB or active-duty officers of the FSB or SVR (the Russian internal and foreign-intelligence services, respectively, which replaced the KGB) sincerely wished for their children to grow up free of the moral compromises they themselves had made. Although there is no way to know for sure, it is a good guess that many officers in the KGB knew they were the instruments of injustice under the Soviet system.

That moment of reflection seems now to be past. Largely because of former president Boris Yeltsin’s neglect of intelligence reform, the KGB and its successors never had a chance to evolve into institutions in which “good” KGB officers could anath-ematize bad officials like Putin and his many colleagues who now populate the government and Russian state-owned or state-dominated enterprises.[1] Given the penetration of former KGB officers into the power centers of post-Soviet Russia, Putin and Yeltsin before him bred a unique corporate, capitalist police-state. According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, of Russia’s 1,016 leading political figures–including departmental heads of the presidential administration, all members of the government, all deputies of both houses of parliament, the heads of federal units, and the heads of regional, executive, and legislative branches–“26 percent had reported serving in the KGB or its successor agencies.”[2] Looking more closely at the biographies of these persons, hunting for the gaps and oddities that almost always appear in the employment records of former intelligence officials trying to conceal their clandestine work, reveals that 78 percent have an intelligence affiliation.[3]

There is no historical precedent for a society so dominated by former and active-duty internal-security and intelligence officials–men who rose up in a professional culture in which murder could be an acceptable, even obligatory, business practice. All intelligence services create their own ethical universe. In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) is a slightly rougher version of the ethics common to most Americans. Until recently, for example, few CIA case officers probably sensed an ethical dilemma with “water-boarding” Khalid Sheikh Mohammad; rendering terrorist suspects to the gentle hands of the Egyptian, Jordanian, or Saudi security services; or using fairly severe psychological pressure in routine terrorist interrogations. But in Russia, the KGB’s ethics represent the domain where totalitarianism most perverted right and wrong and justified ugly practices from which the average Russian probably recoiled. All intelligence operatives study and exploit the dark side of human character. All good operatives search constantly for weakness. KGB officers excelled at finding the jugular. Those who operated within the Soviet sphere were the most malevolent in their practices. These men mentored and shaped Putin and his closest friends and allies. It is therefore unsurprising that Putin’s Russia has become an assassination-happy state where detention, interrogation, and torture–all tried and true methods of the Soviet KGB–are used to silence the voices of untoward journalists and businessmen who annoy or threaten Putin’s FSB state.

Requiem: Putin Style

To understand the extent of this activity, it is worthwhile to look at the list of political assassinations since 2000. The list below gives the lie to defenses of Putin’s Russia. We may not know who killed whom, and there may well be individuals on this list who were killed for causes unrelated to the Putin regime, but the vast majority of these murders are in harmony with Putin’s policies and preferences. The Russian leader prides himself on reestablishing a law-and-order state. His most cherished state institution appears to be the FSB. Yet would Putin allow his most prized instruments of state security to murder against his will?[4] With one, two, or even three murders, it might be possible to view Putin as a Russian Henry II, a willful monarch who in anger and frustration intimated a wish for the assassination of Thomas à Becket. Unlike Henry II, who could show remorse and contrition, Putin has shown only the coldest sympathy for those have “mysteriously” died during his presidency.

Those Who Have Died since 2000 ALEXANDER LITVINENKO former KGB spy, November 23, 2006 MOVLADI BAISAROV former Chechen commander, November 18, 2006 ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA journalist, October 7, 2006 ANDREI KOZLOV deputy chairman of Central Bank, September 13, 2006 PAUL KHLEBNIKOV journalist, July 9, 2004 ADLAN KHASANOV Reuters reporter, May 9, 2004 ZELIMKHAN YANDARBIYEV Chechen rebel leader, February 13, 2004 PETR BABENKO journalist, December 25, 2003 ALEXEI SIDOROV journalist, October 9, 2003 NADIRSHAKH KHACHILAYEV former Duma member, August 12, 2003 ALIKHAN GULIEV journalist, July 18, 2003 YURI SHCHEKOCHIKHIN deputy editor of independent daily Novaya Gazeta, July 2, 2003 DMITRI SHVETS deputy managing director of local television station, April 18, 2003 SERGEI YUSHENKOV Duma member, Liberal Russia Party, April 17, 2003 LEONID KUZNETSOV newspaper editor, September 4, 2002 NIKOLAI VASILYEV journalist, August 18, 2002 FIRAT VALEYEV* opposition newspaper editor, July 20, 2002 VALERY IVANOV journalist, April 29, 2002 SERGEI KALINOVSKY journalist, April 1, 2002 NATALIA SKRYL journalist, March 8, 2002 ELINA VORONOVA journalist, November 5, 2001 EDOUARD MARKEVITCH publisher of Novy, September 18, 2001 DMITRY ERMAKOV journalist, July 20, 2001 ISKANDAR KHATLONI* Radio Liberty journalist, September 21, 2000 SERGEI NOVIKOV* director of independent radio station, July 26, 2000 IGOR DOMNEKOV journalist, July 16, 2000 ALEXANDER YEFREMOV journalist, May 12, 2000 * Unclear if assassination is linked to victim’s journalism activities SOURCE: Compilation by author and AEI research assistant Jeffrey Azarva.

Even more alarmingly, Putin’s Russia has been directly implicated in the first known case of nuclear terrorism, the murder of former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Not even the Islamic Republic of Iran–Russia’s only superior in using assassination as a tool of statecraft– has killed someone with radiation poisoning.

There is another Russia-Iran parallel: in Iran it is difficult to separate the truth from frightful falsehoods because there is little transparency in the deliberations of the ruling elite. The result in Iran has been severe ethical corrosion as the regime’s disregard for life defines down what is acceptable. The politics of murder have left Iran’s political and intellectual classes in a moral freefall, where neither the killers nor the victims are sure of ethical boundaries. Dictatorships need these traditional barriers to keep their worst instincts in check. Russia’s moral freefall under Putin has probably weakened the ethical floor that keeps Russia from descending into the horrific domestic practices and immoral foreign policies that characterized the Soviet Union. Litvinenko played a significant role in advancing the story implicating the FSB in the supposedly Chechen bombings of Russian apartment complexes in 1999.[5] Given the ethics of Putin’s FSB, one can understand why the organization would have wanted to kill Litvinenko in an especially gruesome way.

This political aggression is mirrored in Russia’s business practices. Countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Poland; multinational corporations like Shell; and–indirectly–much of Western Europe have felt Putin’s strong-arm tactics in oil and gas, or in his shutting down essential food and export markets.[6] Russia has explored the possibility of creating gas cartels with Iran and Algeria, which, if erected, could wreak considerable economic havoc in Europe.

What Is to Be Done?

Europeans, and to a lesser extent Americans, are caught in a mindset that Putin is undoing. They believe that political systems with capitalist economies cannot be all that bad, and that the more capitalist they become, the more responsible they become. Leaving aside the question of whether an oil-centered economy can be properly called capitalist, it is dubious to suggest that a great deal of capitalism cannot coexist with dangerous tyranny (see Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, or Hitler’s Germany). A policy of engagement with Russia might make sense if there were some sign that there really is a serious internal struggle in Russia, within the FSB or between Russian businessmen and the FSB and SVR. After seven years of strong Western engagement with Putin, Russia is neither more pro-Western nor more civilized toward its own citizens, nor less inclined to use economic blackmail for political advantage, than it was before Putin became president.

Containing Russia as we once contained the Soviet Union is neither possible nor desirable. Russia is historically part of Europe, and Russia-Europe contact may help make Russia a more Western country. But the United States and Europe should confront the FSB and SVR. Putin loves these institutions. We should hurt them, letting Putin know that we can selectively target Russian institutions that have morally and operationally gone beyond the pale. The FSB and SVR are boldly but sloppily using nuclear hit teams abroad. The “wet jobs” of the former Soviet Union seem pristine in comparison. Western security and intelligence services should start harassing FSB and SVR personnel wherever possible. It should be routine to boot these officers from foreign postings. We should disrupt their lives and the lives of their families whenever and wherever possible. American and European internal-security and foreign-intelligence services should track the finances of former and active-duty FSB and SVR officers. If it is possible to cause them pain–for example, by regularly blocking the accounts of officers even tangentially connected to anti-dissident or criminal activity in Europe or Russia–we should do so.

It is conceivable the Europeans–or at least enough Europeans–would cooperate with actions aimed at former and active-duty FSB and SVR personnel. Even in Germany, where foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently reaffirmed his country’s view of Russia as “a partner of strategic significance,” whose relationship is defined by engagement, friendship, and “reciprocity,” many German officials, especially in the intelligence business, are not warmly disposed toward Moscow. They do not view Russia’s near-monopoly on Western Europe’s gas supplies as the sort of trade that makes Russia dependent on Europe, which is how Steinmeier would prefer to see it.[7] The polonium killing of Litvinenko and Putin’s aggressive use of Russian commerce as a political weapon against Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Caucasus has startled many in Europe, even in Germany’s sympathetic political class. The Russians will, of course, retaliate against any anti-FSB and anti-SVR actions. But it is far better to sacrifice the normal tours of U.S. and European intelligence officers than to allow Russian intelligence personnel to go unchecked.

We can also try to develop areas of possible mutual interest with Moscow. A common interest would be stopping clerical Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Russia’s recent contretemps with the Islamic Republic, in which Moscow refused to deliver fuel to the nearly completed Bushehr nuclear reactor, gives a little hope that Russia can act responsibly–even if Putin is now doing so in large part to demonstrate to the West that Russia is the indispensable nation to which the United States and Europe owe deference. It is worthwhile to recall that Russia previously rejected American and European overtures for a combined front against Iran, pointedly selling advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Iran in the midst of American and European efforts to pressure Iran to stop uranium enrichment. Only when the United States and Europe appeared to be failing at thwarting Iranian nuclear ambitions did Putin intercede. Intelligence officers always seek to exploit weakness in their targets. If we allow the Russians to believe we can be blackmailed over Iran, Putin will surely blackmail us. If Russia really believes a nuclear Iran is not in its national interest, then American efforts to counter rogue Russian behavior in Europe and the Caucasus are unlikely to change the Russian analysis of the menace from nuclear mullahs.

We should also audit and litigate against Russian businesses close to the Kremlin. Perhaps such tactics will have an effect on Putin and his successor. Needless to say, offering more than $20 billion[8] in Western financing for Putin’s renationalization of Russia’s energy industry–and the Kremlin’s continued pillaging of the once mighty and politically liberal Yukos oil company–is not the way to let Putin know that assassination, political oppression, and economic blackmail are acceptable practices. The George W. Bush administration surely could have discouraged American banks from being so eager to finance Putin’s and his friends’ theft of Yukos.

The United States and Europe ought to protect themselves from classic KGB techniques used during the Cold War. Given the KGB’s extensive use of journalists, academics, international organizations, and peace movements during the Cold War, it would not at all be surprising to see the FSB and SVR try to use established Russian businesses–which often have former KGB officers in senior positions–and front companies to fund pro-Russian causes and personalities in the West. Western journalists, universities, and think tanks may already be targets for generous Russian gifts. If an American think tank is receiving laundered Russian money, or a prominent Washingtonian is essentially doing consultancy work for Putin’s government through a non-Russian “cut-out”–that is, a Western company that is, in fact, doing the bidding of the Kremlin–it ought to be broadcast widely. One thing ought to be clear, however: doing nothing has encouraged Putin to become more aggressive.[9] Americans and Europeans are responsible for ignoring his increasingly rapacious behavior. If we continue this inaction, odds are the Kremlin will keep killing, and what is left of Russia’s governing ethics will collapse. Then all of us–Russians, Europeans, and Americans–could have hell to pay.

{click through the link to read the footnotes}

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Annals of Russian Incompetence: First the Alcohol, now the Markets . . . and this time with a Racism kicker

Some time ago, La Russophobe documented the ham-handed, neo-Soviet manner in which the Putin adminstration sought to implement administrative reform of alcoholic beverage regulation. The result was that alcohol, the Russian’s prize posesssion, disappeared entirely from store shelves for weeks on end. In a strikingly similar manner, the Kremlin’s policy to implement control over illegal aliens has hideously backfired, turning into a racist nightmare that has driven all foreign vendors from the Moscow street markets. It’s so classically Russian that despite this ludicrous level of incompetence the Putin regime continues to enjoy high public approval. Crude, moronic behavior just like this brought the USSR to its knees. The Moscow Times reports:

It was a bad week for Moscow ‘s markets. Seven days after new rules barring foreigners came into force, a silent panic was noticeable at many of the city’s sprawling food and clothing markets. Thousands of small shops and stalls are standing empty, and prices on some goods have increased sharply. At some markets, exotic fruit like rosy apples, pears, peaches and pomegranates have disappeared altogether with their foreign vendors.

City Hall, however, insisted that prices were stable and that the rules were having little effect on the markets. The Economic Development and Trade Ministry has warned that the changes, implemented nationwide on April 1, could hit the economy. A few Slavic-looking merchants dotted the cavernous Cheryomushkinsky market in southwest Moscow over the weekend, selling cabbage, carrots and chicken legs. Maruf Yusupov, an Uzbek who vowed a week earlier to stay put, stood near the entrance — but without his pyramids of red tomatoes and persimmons. “They see us as outlaws, and we did nothing criminal other than sell goods that the Russians refused to sell,” said Yusupov, who is now a security guard at the market.

The number of shoppers seems to have dwindled as well. “Where can we buy spices for our special dishes?” said Luara Tkebuchava, a Moscow resident of Georgian origin who was wandering around the empty stalls. “This used to be a specialized market selling ingredients and seasoning for Caucasus dishes.” Luara said prices had increased by about 10 percent over the previous week, but hoped this might be linked to Easter. At the Danilovsky market in central Moscow , row after row of empty stalls looked a bit like a graveyard. Shoppers were few and far between. Several elderly women stood near the entrance, offering a meager assortment of pickles and vegetables. A printed notice hung from the entrance, appealing to farmers with Moscow registration to please come forward. Beside it, another notice reminded foreigners that they were not welcome after April 1. Inside the huge domed market, where most of the stall holders used to be from Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan , some Slavic faces could be seen behind stalls selling pickles, honey and a few homegrown vegetables. Tamara from Dmitrov, near Moscow , said she was in the city to sell food from her garden. All she had to offer — cucumbers, a few other vegetables and jars of jams — barely covered one-third of her stall. “I’m doing this to supplement my meager pension,” she said. “But I’m already tired of standing here because sales have been very slow.”

The sprawling Metro Universitet outdoor market was a ghost town Saturday. Corrugated sheets that once provided cover for stalls were strewn about in careless abandon. Market administrators were nowhere to be seen. Roman, an Azeri national who refused to give his last name, sat in the administrator’s office, fidgeting with a mobile phone. “I’m a security guard here, and I can’t comment on the implementation of any law,” Roman said. “As you can see,” he added, “there are no Russian farmers, and no foreigners either.”

City officials, nonetheless, said nothing catastrophic would result from the implementation of the new rules. At a City Hall meeting titled “On Measures for Attracting Migrant Workers” on Wednesday, the city official in charge of retail markets, Vladimir Malyshkov, said about 10,000 stalls were now vacant, 3,000 of which had been left since April 1, according to Alliance Media, an organization of the city’s small and medium-size businesses. The other 7,000, Malyshkov said, were left on Jan. 15, when the first phase of the new rules came into force. Malyshkov, however, said the situation “has had little effect on sales,” and stressed that there was no break in supply or reduction in the assortment of goods being sold. On Tuesday, Mayor Yury Luzhkov said in televised remarks that apart from a small reduction in the assortment of goods, prices had remained stable after April 1. He noted, however, that it was difficult to find farmers to come to the markets, saying they were too busy at their farms.

Handwritten notices inviting Russian farmers to sell their produce hung on every other stall at the Vykhino market in southeast Moscow . Workers busily tore down stalls at the front Saturday, while a few people sold meat and sugar. “They’ve been given their marching orders, and that’s why they are packing up,” Andrei, a wholesale seller of potatoes from the Moscow region, said of the foreign merchants. “Order is order, there’s nothing you can do about it.” At the Preobrazhensky market, which used to have many merchants from Azerbaijan , Georgia and Kazakhstan selling grapes, tangerines and tomatoes, Alevtina complained about a lack of goods. “A price hike is not the problem. I simply don’t see enough groceries around to put a price on here,” the middle-aged Muscovite said, adding that she regularly shopped at the market. About half the stalls selling clothes and nuts at the Dmitrovsky market in north Moscow appeared to be empty. Merchants said police were checking for documents often. The merchants left at the Leningradsky market, also in north Moscow , offered assurances that prices had not gone up. A few Azeri traders could be seen at the market Friday, hastily trying to sell their last goods before leaving for Azerbaijan . They were reluctant to talk to a reporter.

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Annals of Russophile Gibberish

Writing in the Moscow Times, someone called Andreas Umland (pictured, left, is that one scary looking little fellow or what?), identified only as “a visiting lecturer at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev and editor of the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, recently spewed forth a disgusting torrent of anti-Yuschenko propaganda. Here it is, with LR’s running commentary. Note well the fact that not once in the entire crazed diatribe does the author mention the fact that Yushchenko is fighting to keep Russia from slipping into the hands of a neo-Soviet, imperialist Russia.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s recent decision to dissolve Ukraine’s parliament is a step so risky that it could threaten the integrity of his political legacy. Contrary to the nature of heated discussions about the constitutionality of Yushchenko’s decree, the main question about his decision is not a legal but political one. Yushchenko can’t win the fight he’s gotten himself into. Not only might the Constitutional Court strike down the decree as unconstitutional, which would leave his reputation fundamentally tainted, but the political conditions Yushchenko has created provide his political opponents with an opportunity to choose from a variety of possible counterstrategies. Moreover, he has plunged the country into a process that could spin out of control. Demonstrating a hubris similar to President Boris Yeltsin’s in 1993, Yushchenko and his entourage seem to think that they have finally put themselves firmly back in the saddle when, in fact, they have created a situation that could well turn against them.

LR: Below, the Umland admits that “the situation in Ukraine is very different from that in Russia in 1993.” Yet he begins by attacking Yuschenko as if the two situations were the same. Then, to make matters worse, he ignores the fact that Yeltsin won the elections he called decisively, and that his rule stabilized remarkably thereafter — meaning that if the two situations were the same, Yushchenko is right to copy Yeltsin. Taking matters to the point of pure insanity, the then suggests that Yushchenko will be “fundamentally damaged” if the Constitutional Court rules against him. This ignores the fact that (a) Yeltsin is still viewed as a hero in the West despite his attack on parliament, because he was seen as championing elections, and (b) Yushchenko will be far more damaged if he allows Ukraine to slip under Russia’s jackboot.

Oddly, a major protagonist in all three of these major bungles was Petro Poroshenko, a prominent business magnate, godfather to Yushchenko’s children, and one of the most unpopular public figures in Ukraine. In 2005, Poroshenko drove Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko out of office with his attempts to transfer governmental prerogatives to the Security Council, which Poroshenko headed at the time. During the parliamentary elections of early 2006, Poroshenko was one of Our Ukraine’s highest-profile members making regular — and often bizarre — appearances on ICTV’s popular political talk show “Svoboda Slova.” After Our Ukraine’s poor showing in the elections, the bloc still insisted that Poroshenko should be the speaker of the new parliament, in place of popular Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz. Facing the dim prospects of a second Orange coalition with Tymoshenko as prime minister and Poroshenko as speaker, the disillusioned Moroz switched sides, and the second Orange coalition fell apart before even having formed a government.

LR: These are the ravings of a lunatic. Is this wacko really suggesting that if only Poroshenko were not part of the proceedings, Yanukovich (notice how he doesn’t even mention Yanukovich, a convicted criminal and a Russian puppet) would not have moved to undermine Yushchenko? Was Yushchenko’s affection for Poroshenko the reason he got poisoned with Dioxin? Does this crazed foreigner really think he knows what’s best for Ukraine better than a man who has repeatedly risked his life for it?

What Yushchenko and company are unable to accept is that, after these and other lapses, it is natural that they have recently been losing power to their political opponents. Like the market punishes companies when their strategies do not fit current economic conditions, politics is a game where it is not the “bad guys” but the less effective organizers and campaigners who lose out. By trying to counter their previous blunders with one grand stroke — new elections — Yushchenko’s team is making the Ukrainian state a hostage of its own incapacity and risking the breakup of the country.

LR: Did Yushchenko ingest Dioxin because he was an ineffective organizer? Is this ultra-wacko actually suggesting that Ukraine is boiling with forces that desire splitting the country into parts, one free and one Russian, but if only it organized a bit better this wouldn’t happen? What planet is this freak descended from?

What is most important is not how the Constitutional Court assesses Yushchenko’s decree, but how the voters will react to the prospect of new elections. What happens if the elections really do take place? Ukraine’s exceptionally low 3 percent barrier to gain representation in the parliament creates the possibility of myriad combinations that are difficult to foresee. The result could be an even less favorable situation for the Orange factions in the parliament than with the current balance of forces.

LR: Didn’t he just say that if the Contitutional Court ruled against him then he would be “fundamentally “damaged? Is he now saying that Yushchenko should be faulted for supporting elections he will lose? Should elections be avoided so that Yushchenko, whom the author classifies as a horrible leader, can remain in power? Just how much Chernobyl-tainted water has this abject moron been drinking?

The situation is reminiscent of Russia’s State Duma elections in December 1993, which followed President Boris Yeltsin’s dissolution of the Congress of People’s Deputies three months earlier. It was Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s triumph in this vote that helped create the political atmosphere in Moscow leading to the decision in December 1994 to intervene in Chechnya. In turn, the Kremlin’s unhappy Chechnya adventure, in combination with the new 1993 Constitution, have been the two factors that have done the most to undermine post-Soviet Russia’s nascent democracy and prepared the ground for President Vladimir Putin’s tightening of control over public life. While the situation in Ukraine is very different from that in Russia in 1993, the events that have followed Yeltsin’s actions demonstrate how miscalculated the gamble the democrats took in 1993 was and the unexpected results that radical political steps in transition societies can often have. In Ukraine, the political context in which Yushchenko has made this move is, in some regards, even more complicated than that in Russia. What happens if large numbers of voters in eastern and southern Ukraine simply boycott the proposed elections this May? The country’s western regions will surely generate high turnout. This makes it possible that Tymoshenko’s party could come out ahead of all others in the vote. But what would a parliament in which the majority Russian-speaking regions are heavily underrepresented mean for the stability of the Ukrainian state?

LR: Ukraine isn’t going to invade Chechnya, or any similar place, and the author knows it. So why does he bring it up? Propaganda, pure and simple. Utterly disgraceful. If Yushchenko calls and holds fair and free elections which the Russia-lovers boycott because they know they’ll lose, then Yushchenko will be able to consolidate his power. That’s a best-case scenario for him, not a worse-case one. Is this maniac suggesting that the Russia-lovers will then take up arms against the state in revolution, perhaps supported by Russia, but if 0nly things were “organized” a bit differently this wouldn’t happen? He’s off his rocker! If the Russia-lovers are going to revolt, there’s no way to prevent that, and better sooner rather than later when Russia is weaker and less able to influence the result. If Ukraine must be split, let it be split. That’s better than forcing those who want a free country to live as slaves of Russia.

Crimean politicians have been for some time the most vocal critics of Yushchenko’s moves, and continuing on this path could push the Crimean legislature toward declaring itself separate from Ukraine, and even joining Russia. Given these scenarios, there is the possibility that Yushchenko and his team are merely bluffing and not really counting on new elections being held. Even if this is the case, they are still playing with fire. Given their record so far, you have to wonder not only whether they will be able to play the game well, but also whether they really comprehend just how high the stakes are. In this, the decree is only the latest instance in a series of awkward decisions by Yushchenko’s team since the Orange Revolution in 2004. These include the disintegration of the first Orange coalition, the embarrassing results for his Our Ukraine bloc in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and the failure to form a functional second Orange coalition in their aftermath.

LR: So let’s see now. It’s this obscure, wacko foreign “professor” who “really” understands what is going on in Urkaine, whilst those who risk their lives to run it are a bunch of monkeys who need to be trained by him. Hmmm . . . LR dares to wonder how much he expects to be paid for shedding his illumination upon the barbaric people of Ukraine. Given his attitude, it’s clear why he feels they can’t be trusted to decide their country’s fate at the voting booth, as does Ukraine’s heroic president Viktor Yushchenko.

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April 10, 2007

TUESDAY APRIL 10 CONTENTS

(1) Remembering Anna . . . and Defiling her Memory

(2) Annals of Russian “Democracy”: It would be Funny if Lives Weren’t at Stake

(3) Once Again, Neo-Soviet Russia Flouts International Law

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