Annals of Putin’s Wealthy Russia: The Disabled Starve Themselves

The Moscow Times reports yet more information dispelling the ridiculous notion that Russians are prospering under Dictator Putin:

KISELYOVSK, Kemerovo Region — In a cramped, two-room apartment here, six people with work-related disabilities on Thursday entered the 60th day of a hunger strike over prescription medicine subsidies and pensions.

“We want the laws to work in this country. We want to be able to go to the pharmacy and get our medicine as the law provides,” said Alexander Gartman, the protest organizer and a participant.

“The hunger strike is our last chance. The authorities have turned their backs on us, and our appeals and complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Now we’re prepared to go all the way,” said Gartman, the head of Regressnik, a regional nongovernmental organization that serves the needs of people disabled on the job.

The emaciated protesters lie on mattresses on the floor of Gartman’s apartment. On the 42nd day of the hunger strike, doctors told the protesters that if they continued, their bodies would suffer irreparable damage and they would eventually die. “We had no choice but to start taking in a minimal amount of nourishment from sugar water, juice and herbal tea to stay alive,” Gartman said.

Other disabled workers come to the apartment every day to offer their support. Many of them are prevented by health problems from taking part.

“If I were to join the hunger strike, my only act of protest would be to die,” said Alexander Uskov, a diabetic, who was visiting the apartment earlier this week.

As Uskov was speaking, Gartman sent home an elderly couple, Nikolai Pulyayev and his wife Valentina, who had also come to show their support. “Nikolai would like to join us, but he has a serious stomach ailment that doesn’t allow him to,” Gartman said.

At issue in the hunger strike are reductions in disabled workers’ benefits that have made it next to impossible for the workers to pay for vital prescription drugs.

In May 2006, the government decided to compensate disabled workers only for Russian medicines. Previously, they had been reimbursed in full for all prescribed medicines. The government issued a list of medicines included in the program and the amount it would pay in compensation.

Doctors often prescribe foreign-made medicines, however, leaving disabled workers to pay the sizeable difference out of their own pockets.

“If the prescribed medicine is imported, payment covers only the cost of the Russian-made equivalent,” said Irina Kadetova, director of the regional branch of the state Social Insurance Fund.

Even the prices the government sets on domestic medicines lag well behind actual retail prices.

The protesters have appealed to authorities all the way to Moscow, but so far with no success. After two months without food, they aren’t sure they will live to see their concerns addressed.

Over two months, medical personnel have responded to three calls from the apartment, and a number of protesters have been forced to quit because of failing health. Sergei Geiger was hospitalized after 20 days with stomach trouble. Nikolai Kuchmar was also forced to drop out after developing intestinal complications. Geiger and Kuchmar worked for years in a local coal mine.

The other protesters and their supporters have similar stories.

Nikolai Pulyayev worked in a mine for 25 years until he was injured in 1987. He has been fighting ever since to receive the benefits to which he is entitled by law. After 17 years, the government finally classified him as unfit to work, but his benefits are not indexed to inflation. The state pays him 1,700 rubles ($66) per month.

So far, the authorities have done little to respond to the protesters’ demands.

Not long ago, a letter arrived from Mikhail Mironov, head of the department that handles citizens’ appeals in the administration of President Vladimir Putin. In the letter, Gartman said, Mironov directed Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev to deal with the hunger strikers’ demands.

In response, Deputy Governor Yevgeny Baranov told the protesters that none of their demands fell within the purview of the regional government.

Last Friday, the protesters received a second letter from Mironov, in which he renewed his request for Tuleyev to sit down and talk with Gartman and the others. The governor’s office has responded with silence.

Such indifference is the best the hunger strikers have received from the authorities.

In the first few days, Kiselyovsk police tried to disrupt the protest. “Some officers entered the apartment when one of us opened to door to go outside. They made no attempt to conceal their intention to use force against us,” said hunger striker Vladimir Korovkin.

“The officers grabbed Vasily Kisel, a diabetic, by the legs and hair and started dragging him toward the door,” Korovkin said. “He nearly passed out. The frightened cops called for an ambulance.”

A dozen policemen also sealed off the apartment and discouraged supporters from entering by demanding ID and making threats. The protesters filmed the harassment.

“Police personnel did in fact exceed their authority,” said Kiselyovsk’s chief prosecutor, Alexander Zharikov.

After looking into the matter, Zharikov sent legal opinions to this effect to Lieutenant General Anatoly Vinogradov, the regional police chief, and to Kiselyovsk Mayor Sergei Lavrentyev.

“They’re exacerbating the situation when these issues could be solved peacefully,” Zharikov said.

As fate would have it, during the third week of the hunger strike, Lavrentyev was given an award for defending human rights by the regional human rights ombudsman, Nikolai Volkov.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Putin’s Wealthy Russia: The Disabled Starve Themselves

The Moscow Times reports yet more information dispelling the ridiculous notion that Russians are prospering under Dictator Putin:

KISELYOVSK, Kemerovo Region — In a cramped, two-room apartment here, six people with work-related disabilities on Thursday entered the 60th day of a hunger strike over prescription medicine subsidies and pensions.

“We want the laws to work in this country. We want to be able to go to the pharmacy and get our medicine as the law provides,” said Alexander Gartman, the protest organizer and a participant.

“The hunger strike is our last chance. The authorities have turned their backs on us, and our appeals and complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Now we’re prepared to go all the way,” said Gartman, the head of Regressnik, a regional nongovernmental organization that serves the needs of people disabled on the job.

The emaciated protesters lie on mattresses on the floor of Gartman’s apartment. On the 42nd day of the hunger strike, doctors told the protesters that if they continued, their bodies would suffer irreparable damage and they would eventually die. “We had no choice but to start taking in a minimal amount of nourishment from sugar water, juice and herbal tea to stay alive,” Gartman said.

Other disabled workers come to the apartment every day to offer their support. Many of them are prevented by health problems from taking part.

“If I were to join the hunger strike, my only act of protest would be to die,” said Alexander Uskov, a diabetic, who was visiting the apartment earlier this week.

As Uskov was speaking, Gartman sent home an elderly couple, Nikolai Pulyayev and his wife Valentina, who had also come to show their support. “Nikolai would like to join us, but he has a serious stomach ailment that doesn’t allow him to,” Gartman said.

At issue in the hunger strike are reductions in disabled workers’ benefits that have made it next to impossible for the workers to pay for vital prescription drugs.

In May 2006, the government decided to compensate disabled workers only for Russian medicines. Previously, they had been reimbursed in full for all prescribed medicines. The government issued a list of medicines included in the program and the amount it would pay in compensation.

Doctors often prescribe foreign-made medicines, however, leaving disabled workers to pay the sizeable difference out of their own pockets.

“If the prescribed medicine is imported, payment covers only the cost of the Russian-made equivalent,” said Irina Kadetova, director of the regional branch of the state Social Insurance Fund.

Even the prices the government sets on domestic medicines lag well behind actual retail prices.

The protesters have appealed to authorities all the way to Moscow, but so far with no success. After two months without food, they aren’t sure they will live to see their concerns addressed.

Over two months, medical personnel have responded to three calls from the apartment, and a number of protesters have been forced to quit because of failing health. Sergei Geiger was hospitalized after 20 days with stomach trouble. Nikolai Kuchmar was also forced to drop out after developing intestinal complications. Geiger and Kuchmar worked for years in a local coal mine.

The other protesters and their supporters have similar stories.

Nikolai Pulyayev worked in a mine for 25 years until he was injured in 1987. He has been fighting ever since to receive the benefits to which he is entitled by law. After 17 years, the government finally classified him as unfit to work, but his benefits are not indexed to inflation. The state pays him 1,700 rubles ($66) per month.

So far, the authorities have done little to respond to the protesters’ demands.

Not long ago, a letter arrived from Mikhail Mironov, head of the department that handles citizens’ appeals in the administration of President Vladimir Putin. In the letter, Gartman said, Mironov directed Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev to deal with the hunger strikers’ demands.

In response, Deputy Governor Yevgeny Baranov told the protesters that none of their demands fell within the purview of the regional government.

Last Friday, the protesters received a second letter from Mironov, in which he renewed his request for Tuleyev to sit down and talk with Gartman and the others. The governor’s office has responded with silence.

Such indifference is the best the hunger strikers have received from the authorities.

In the first few days, Kiselyovsk police tried to disrupt the protest. “Some officers entered the apartment when one of us opened to door to go outside. They made no attempt to conceal their intention to use force against us,” said hunger striker Vladimir Korovkin.

“The officers grabbed Vasily Kisel, a diabetic, by the legs and hair and started dragging him toward the door,” Korovkin said. “He nearly passed out. The frightened cops called for an ambulance.”

A dozen policemen also sealed off the apartment and discouraged supporters from entering by demanding ID and making threats. The protesters filmed the harassment.

“Police personnel did in fact exceed their authority,” said Kiselyovsk’s chief prosecutor, Alexander Zharikov.

After looking into the matter, Zharikov sent legal opinions to this effect to Lieutenant General Anatoly Vinogradov, the regional police chief, and to Kiselyovsk Mayor Sergei Lavrentyev.

“They’re exacerbating the situation when these issues could be solved peacefully,” Zharikov said.

As fate would have it, during the third week of the hunger strike, Lavrentyev was given an award for defending human rights by the regional human rights ombudsman, Nikolai Volkov.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Broken Heart

Writing in the Moscow Times, Dr. Harald M. Lipman, the former senior medical adviser to Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who served as the regional medical adviser to the British Embassy in Moscow in 1983-1985 and 1987-1991, tells the tale of Russia’s broken heart:

Heart disease and related circulatory illnesses like strokes are arguably the single largest threat to Russia’s economic well-being and political future that the country will have to face in the 21st century. Fortunately, they are also problems that can, with appropriate measures, be controlled most easily. Cardiovascular disease is not a new problem. Deaths from heart disease in the Soviet Union doubled from 1965 to 1989.

Russia’s population is declining at a rate of 700,000 people per year, and it fell by 6 million during the 10 years leading up to 2003. If present trends continue, it is estimated that the total population will have fallen by a further 40 million, to about 100 million by 2050.

Life expectancy for Russian men is currently 58 years, compared with 77 years in Britain and 74 years in France and Germany. Over half of all early deaths are caused by heart and circulatory illness, with 1.25 million Russian men below retirement age dying from heart disease every year.

Some of the factors that increase the risk and likelihood of developing heart and circulatory disease, such as genetic predisposition, severe stress and infections cannot be modified significantly. The good news is that many of the risk factors are related to lifestyle and potentially modifiable. These include diet, obesity and level of physical activity. Eating too much animal fat and dairy products, for example, raises blood-cholesterol levels and the likelihood of blockage of blood vessels. Too much salt increases the risk of developing high blood pressure, which is associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces blood supply to the heart and brain, while diabetes also increases risks. All of these factors can be modified. The excessive consumption of alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, has a direct toxic effect on heart muscle and is a major cause of sudden deaths in Russian men.

Ongoing studies in the United States over the last 60 years and in Finland since 1970 have shown convincingly that the modification of lifestyle risk factors significantly reduces illness and death due to heart and circulatory disease. Similar small-scale trials in Karelia, Chelayabinsk, Yekaterinburg Tver and other regions have confirmed these findings.

Early deaths often cause devastating family and social problems, contributing to increased individual stress, depression and alcoholism. By further fueling the problem, this is creating more widows, destabilizing families and reducing their incomes. It is a never-ending spiral.

At the national level the economy is already experiencing serious losses as a result of early deaths and illness — at a rate of about $11 billion per year, or 1 percent of total gross domestic product. According to the World Bank, in the absence of successful measures to remedy the situation, this could rise to an annual loss of as much as $66 billion, or 5 percent of total GDP.

There will be increasing medical costs and worker absenteeism along with reductions in productivity, tax revenues, savings and healthy men to serve in the military. At a more general level, there will also be a greater risk of political instability.

President Vladimir Putin has publicly discussed the problem of Russia’s declining population on numerous occasions and has initiated and financed measures to combat it. These have largely concentrated on increasing family size, improving standards of healthcare and reducing the imbalance between immigration and emigration. These measures are essential, but unless the numbers of men who die early can be significantly reduced, the population will continue to fall.

A team of British experts in medicine, public health and medical education will be launching a project in London on Wednesday titled “Reducing Early Mortality in the Russian Federation” with the aim of helping Russia combat this problem.

A holistic project has been devised to give postgraduate training to Russian polyclinic doctors and other healthcare workers in recognizing the causes of heart and circulatory disease, as well as diagnosing and treating it. Simultaneously, intensive long-term public education programs will be undertaken at the local level involving all levels of society — families, schools, educational institutions, factories and workplaces — with the objective of educating people about cardiovascular illnesses and their causes, prevention and treatment. This will be combined with the preventative use by those at risk of developing heart disease of small daily doses of aspirin to thin the blood and of a medication known as statins to reduce blood-cholesterol levels.

For this program to be implemented and succeed it will have to receive authorization from the federal and regional governments and be planned and implemented in conjunction with Russian cardiologists, preventive medicine specialists and medical educators. Our initial experiences lead us to believe that this initiative will be welcomed by the Russian authorities.

We are proposing to begin with a three-year pilot project in a region yet to be determined, with the objective of demonstrating the benefits of the program on the ground and modifying it where necessary. Subsequently, similar programs will be initiated in other regions, ultimately stretching to cover the entire country.

Funding for the pilot scheme will probably come largely from non-Russian sources, but due to the vast scope of the project and the need to continue it indefinitely, subsequent funding will have to come from Russian sources — federal and regional governments, the corporate sector and individuals.

The benefits will be felt at the personal level as fathers, sons, brothers and uncles live longer and healthier lives, and at the national level in the form of a markedly improved economy. A 20 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease by 2025 will increase male life expectancy by six years and restore the anticipated 5 percent annual loss in GDP.

Changing long-established life styles will not be easy. But evidence from other projects show that it is not only possible, but can be highly successful. Many other healthcare problems will continue to exist, with those to combat infectious diseases, cancer and trauma to name just a few. But if this single project can save the lives of 250,000 men per year and improve the quality of life for many, many more, it must be implemented. For the sake of Russia’s future and the future of its people such a program has to succeed.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Broken Heart

Writing in the Moscow Times, Dr. Harald M. Lipman, the former senior medical adviser to Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who served as the regional medical adviser to the British Embassy in Moscow in 1983-1985 and 1987-1991, tells the tale of Russia’s broken heart:

Heart disease and related circulatory illnesses like strokes are arguably the single largest threat to Russia’s economic well-being and political future that the country will have to face in the 21st century. Fortunately, they are also problems that can, with appropriate measures, be controlled most easily. Cardiovascular disease is not a new problem. Deaths from heart disease in the Soviet Union doubled from 1965 to 1989.

Russia’s population is declining at a rate of 700,000 people per year, and it fell by 6 million during the 10 years leading up to 2003. If present trends continue, it is estimated that the total population will have fallen by a further 40 million, to about 100 million by 2050.

Life expectancy for Russian men is currently 58 years, compared with 77 years in Britain and 74 years in France and Germany. Over half of all early deaths are caused by heart and circulatory illness, with 1.25 million Russian men below retirement age dying from heart disease every year.

Some of the factors that increase the risk and likelihood of developing heart and circulatory disease, such as genetic predisposition, severe stress and infections cannot be modified significantly. The good news is that many of the risk factors are related to lifestyle and potentially modifiable. These include diet, obesity and level of physical activity. Eating too much animal fat and dairy products, for example, raises blood-cholesterol levels and the likelihood of blockage of blood vessels. Too much salt increases the risk of developing high blood pressure, which is associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces blood supply to the heart and brain, while diabetes also increases risks. All of these factors can be modified. The excessive consumption of alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, has a direct toxic effect on heart muscle and is a major cause of sudden deaths in Russian men.

Ongoing studies in the United States over the last 60 years and in Finland since 1970 have shown convincingly that the modification of lifestyle risk factors significantly reduces illness and death due to heart and circulatory disease. Similar small-scale trials in Karelia, Chelayabinsk, Yekaterinburg Tver and other regions have confirmed these findings.

Early deaths often cause devastating family and social problems, contributing to increased individual stress, depression and alcoholism. By further fueling the problem, this is creating more widows, destabilizing families and reducing their incomes. It is a never-ending spiral.

At the national level the economy is already experiencing serious losses as a result of early deaths and illness — at a rate of about $11 billion per year, or 1 percent of total gross domestic product. According to the World Bank, in the absence of successful measures to remedy the situation, this could rise to an annual loss of as much as $66 billion, or 5 percent of total GDP.

There will be increasing medical costs and worker absenteeism along with reductions in productivity, tax revenues, savings and healthy men to serve in the military. At a more general level, there will also be a greater risk of political instability.

President Vladimir Putin has publicly discussed the problem of Russia’s declining population on numerous occasions and has initiated and financed measures to combat it. These have largely concentrated on increasing family size, improving standards of healthcare and reducing the imbalance between immigration and emigration. These measures are essential, but unless the numbers of men who die early can be significantly reduced, the population will continue to fall.

A team of British experts in medicine, public health and medical education will be launching a project in London on Wednesday titled “Reducing Early Mortality in the Russian Federation” with the aim of helping Russia combat this problem.

A holistic project has been devised to give postgraduate training to Russian polyclinic doctors and other healthcare workers in recognizing the causes of heart and circulatory disease, as well as diagnosing and treating it. Simultaneously, intensive long-term public education programs will be undertaken at the local level involving all levels of society — families, schools, educational institutions, factories and workplaces — with the objective of educating people about cardiovascular illnesses and their causes, prevention and treatment. This will be combined with the preventative use by those at risk of developing heart disease of small daily doses of aspirin to thin the blood and of a medication known as statins to reduce blood-cholesterol levels.

For this program to be implemented and succeed it will have to receive authorization from the federal and regional governments and be planned and implemented in conjunction with Russian cardiologists, preventive medicine specialists and medical educators. Our initial experiences lead us to believe that this initiative will be welcomed by the Russian authorities.

We are proposing to begin with a three-year pilot project in a region yet to be determined, with the objective of demonstrating the benefits of the program on the ground and modifying it where necessary. Subsequently, similar programs will be initiated in other regions, ultimately stretching to cover the entire country.

Funding for the pilot scheme will probably come largely from non-Russian sources, but due to the vast scope of the project and the need to continue it indefinitely, subsequent funding will have to come from Russian sources — federal and regional governments, the corporate sector and individuals.

The benefits will be felt at the personal level as fathers, sons, brothers and uncles live longer and healthier lives, and at the national level in the form of a markedly improved economy. A 20 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease by 2025 will increase male life expectancy by six years and restore the anticipated 5 percent annual loss in GDP.

Changing long-established life styles will not be easy. But evidence from other projects show that it is not only possible, but can be highly successful. Many other healthcare problems will continue to exist, with those to combat infectious diseases, cancer and trauma to name just a few. But if this single project can save the lives of 250,000 men per year and improve the quality of life for many, many more, it must be implemented. For the sake of Russia’s future and the future of its people such a program has to succeed.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Broken Heart

Writing in the Moscow Times, Dr. Harald M. Lipman, the former senior medical adviser to Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who served as the regional medical adviser to the British Embassy in Moscow in 1983-1985 and 1987-1991, tells the tale of Russia’s broken heart:

Heart disease and related circulatory illnesses like strokes are arguably the single largest threat to Russia’s economic well-being and political future that the country will have to face in the 21st century. Fortunately, they are also problems that can, with appropriate measures, be controlled most easily. Cardiovascular disease is not a new problem. Deaths from heart disease in the Soviet Union doubled from 1965 to 1989.

Russia’s population is declining at a rate of 700,000 people per year, and it fell by 6 million during the 10 years leading up to 2003. If present trends continue, it is estimated that the total population will have fallen by a further 40 million, to about 100 million by 2050.

Life expectancy for Russian men is currently 58 years, compared with 77 years in Britain and 74 years in France and Germany. Over half of all early deaths are caused by heart and circulatory illness, with 1.25 million Russian men below retirement age dying from heart disease every year.

Some of the factors that increase the risk and likelihood of developing heart and circulatory disease, such as genetic predisposition, severe stress and infections cannot be modified significantly. The good news is that many of the risk factors are related to lifestyle and potentially modifiable. These include diet, obesity and level of physical activity. Eating too much animal fat and dairy products, for example, raises blood-cholesterol levels and the likelihood of blockage of blood vessels. Too much salt increases the risk of developing high blood pressure, which is associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces blood supply to the heart and brain, while diabetes also increases risks. All of these factors can be modified. The excessive consumption of alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, has a direct toxic effect on heart muscle and is a major cause of sudden deaths in Russian men.

Ongoing studies in the United States over the last 60 years and in Finland since 1970 have shown convincingly that the modification of lifestyle risk factors significantly reduces illness and death due to heart and circulatory disease. Similar small-scale trials in Karelia, Chelayabinsk, Yekaterinburg Tver and other regions have confirmed these findings.

Early deaths often cause devastating family and social problems, contributing to increased individual stress, depression and alcoholism. By further fueling the problem, this is creating more widows, destabilizing families and reducing their incomes. It is a never-ending spiral.

At the national level the economy is already experiencing serious losses as a result of early deaths and illness — at a rate of about $11 billion per year, or 1 percent of total gross domestic product. According to the World Bank, in the absence of successful measures to remedy the situation, this could rise to an annual loss of as much as $66 billion, or 5 percent of total GDP.

There will be increasing medical costs and worker absenteeism along with reductions in productivity, tax revenues, savings and healthy men to serve in the military. At a more general level, there will also be a greater risk of political instability.

President Vladimir Putin has publicly discussed the problem of Russia’s declining population on numerous occasions and has initiated and financed measures to combat it. These have largely concentrated on increasing family size, improving standards of healthcare and reducing the imbalance between immigration and emigration. These measures are essential, but unless the numbers of men who die early can be significantly reduced, the population will continue to fall.

A team of British experts in medicine, public health and medical education will be launching a project in London on Wednesday titled “Reducing Early Mortality in the Russian Federation” with the aim of helping Russia combat this problem.

A holistic project has been devised to give postgraduate training to Russian polyclinic doctors and other healthcare workers in recognizing the causes of heart and circulatory disease, as well as diagnosing and treating it. Simultaneously, intensive long-term public education programs will be undertaken at the local level involving all levels of society — families, schools, educational institutions, factories and workplaces — with the objective of educating people about cardiovascular illnesses and their causes, prevention and treatment. This will be combined with the preventative use by those at risk of developing heart disease of small daily doses of aspirin to thin the blood and of a medication known as statins to reduce blood-cholesterol levels.

For this program to be implemented and succeed it will have to receive authorization from the federal and regional governments and be planned and implemented in conjunction with Russian cardiologists, preventive medicine specialists and medical educators. Our initial experiences lead us to believe that this initiative will be welcomed by the Russian authorities.

We are proposing to begin with a three-year pilot project in a region yet to be determined, with the objective of demonstrating the benefits of the program on the ground and modifying it where necessary. Subsequently, similar programs will be initiated in other regions, ultimately stretching to cover the entire country.

Funding for the pilot scheme will probably come largely from non-Russian sources, but due to the vast scope of the project and the need to continue it indefinitely, subsequent funding will have to come from Russian sources — federal and regional governments, the corporate sector and individuals.

The benefits will be felt at the personal level as fathers, sons, brothers and uncles live longer and healthier lives, and at the national level in the form of a markedly improved economy. A 20 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease by 2025 will increase male life expectancy by six years and restore the anticipated 5 percent annual loss in GDP.

Changing long-established life styles will not be easy. But evidence from other projects show that it is not only possible, but can be highly successful. Many other healthcare problems will continue to exist, with those to combat infectious diseases, cancer and trauma to name just a few. But if this single project can save the lives of 250,000 men per year and improve the quality of life for many, many more, it must be implemented. For the sake of Russia’s future and the future of its people such a program has to succeed.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Broken Heart

Writing in the Moscow Times, Dr. Harald M. Lipman, the former senior medical adviser to Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who served as the regional medical adviser to the British Embassy in Moscow in 1983-1985 and 1987-1991, tells the tale of Russia’s broken heart:

Heart disease and related circulatory illnesses like strokes are arguably the single largest threat to Russia’s economic well-being and political future that the country will have to face in the 21st century. Fortunately, they are also problems that can, with appropriate measures, be controlled most easily. Cardiovascular disease is not a new problem. Deaths from heart disease in the Soviet Union doubled from 1965 to 1989.

Russia’s population is declining at a rate of 700,000 people per year, and it fell by 6 million during the 10 years leading up to 2003. If present trends continue, it is estimated that the total population will have fallen by a further 40 million, to about 100 million by 2050.

Life expectancy for Russian men is currently 58 years, compared with 77 years in Britain and 74 years in France and Germany. Over half of all early deaths are caused by heart and circulatory illness, with 1.25 million Russian men below retirement age dying from heart disease every year.

Some of the factors that increase the risk and likelihood of developing heart and circulatory disease, such as genetic predisposition, severe stress and infections cannot be modified significantly. The good news is that many of the risk factors are related to lifestyle and potentially modifiable. These include diet, obesity and level of physical activity. Eating too much animal fat and dairy products, for example, raises blood-cholesterol levels and the likelihood of blockage of blood vessels. Too much salt increases the risk of developing high blood pressure, which is associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces blood supply to the heart and brain, while diabetes also increases risks. All of these factors can be modified. The excessive consumption of alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, has a direct toxic effect on heart muscle and is a major cause of sudden deaths in Russian men.

Ongoing studies in the United States over the last 60 years and in Finland since 1970 have shown convincingly that the modification of lifestyle risk factors significantly reduces illness and death due to heart and circulatory disease. Similar small-scale trials in Karelia, Chelayabinsk, Yekaterinburg Tver and other regions have confirmed these findings.

Early deaths often cause devastating family and social problems, contributing to increased individual stress, depression and alcoholism. By further fueling the problem, this is creating more widows, destabilizing families and reducing their incomes. It is a never-ending spiral.

At the national level the economy is already experiencing serious losses as a result of early deaths and illness — at a rate of about $11 billion per year, or 1 percent of total gross domestic product. According to the World Bank, in the absence of successful measures to remedy the situation, this could rise to an annual loss of as much as $66 billion, or 5 percent of total GDP.

There will be increasing medical costs and worker absenteeism along with reductions in productivity, tax revenues, savings and healthy men to serve in the military. At a more general level, there will also be a greater risk of political instability.

President Vladimir Putin has publicly discussed the problem of Russia’s declining population on numerous occasions and has initiated and financed measures to combat it. These have largely concentrated on increasing family size, improving standards of healthcare and reducing the imbalance between immigration and emigration. These measures are essential, but unless the numbers of men who die early can be significantly reduced, the population will continue to fall.

A team of British experts in medicine, public health and medical education will be launching a project in London on Wednesday titled “Reducing Early Mortality in the Russian Federation” with the aim of helping Russia combat this problem.

A holistic project has been devised to give postgraduate training to Russian polyclinic doctors and other healthcare workers in recognizing the causes of heart and circulatory disease, as well as diagnosing and treating it. Simultaneously, intensive long-term public education programs will be undertaken at the local level involving all levels of society — families, schools, educational institutions, factories and workplaces — with the objective of educating people about cardiovascular illnesses and their causes, prevention and treatment. This will be combined with the preventative use by those at risk of developing heart disease of small daily doses of aspirin to thin the blood and of a medication known as statins to reduce blood-cholesterol levels.

For this program to be implemented and succeed it will have to receive authorization from the federal and regional governments and be planned and implemented in conjunction with Russian cardiologists, preventive medicine specialists and medical educators. Our initial experiences lead us to believe that this initiative will be welcomed by the Russian authorities.

We are proposing to begin with a three-year pilot project in a region yet to be determined, with the objective of demonstrating the benefits of the program on the ground and modifying it where necessary. Subsequently, similar programs will be initiated in other regions, ultimately stretching to cover the entire country.

Funding for the pilot scheme will probably come largely from non-Russian sources, but due to the vast scope of the project and the need to continue it indefinitely, subsequent funding will have to come from Russian sources — federal and regional governments, the corporate sector and individuals.

The benefits will be felt at the personal level as fathers, sons, brothers and uncles live longer and healthier lives, and at the national level in the form of a markedly improved economy. A 20 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease by 2025 will increase male life expectancy by six years and restore the anticipated 5 percent annual loss in GDP.

Changing long-established life styles will not be easy. But evidence from other projects show that it is not only possible, but can be highly successful. Many other healthcare problems will continue to exist, with those to combat infectious diseases, cancer and trauma to name just a few. But if this single project can save the lives of 250,000 men per year and improve the quality of life for many, many more, it must be implemented. For the sake of Russia’s future and the future of its people such a program has to succeed.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Broken Heart

Writing in the Moscow Times, Dr. Harald M. Lipman, the former senior medical adviser to Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who served as the regional medical adviser to the British Embassy in Moscow in 1983-1985 and 1987-1991, tells the tale of Russia’s broken heart:

Heart disease and related circulatory illnesses like strokes are arguably the single largest threat to Russia’s economic well-being and political future that the country will have to face in the 21st century. Fortunately, they are also problems that can, with appropriate measures, be controlled most easily. Cardiovascular disease is not a new problem. Deaths from heart disease in the Soviet Union doubled from 1965 to 1989.

Russia’s population is declining at a rate of 700,000 people per year, and it fell by 6 million during the 10 years leading up to 2003. If present trends continue, it is estimated that the total population will have fallen by a further 40 million, to about 100 million by 2050.

Life expectancy for Russian men is currently 58 years, compared with 77 years in Britain and 74 years in France and Germany. Over half of all early deaths are caused by heart and circulatory illness, with 1.25 million Russian men below retirement age dying from heart disease every year.

Some of the factors that increase the risk and likelihood of developing heart and circulatory disease, such as genetic predisposition, severe stress and infections cannot be modified significantly. The good news is that many of the risk factors are related to lifestyle and potentially modifiable. These include diet, obesity and level of physical activity. Eating too much animal fat and dairy products, for example, raises blood-cholesterol levels and the likelihood of blockage of blood vessels. Too much salt increases the risk of developing high blood pressure, which is associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces blood supply to the heart and brain, while diabetes also increases risks. All of these factors can be modified. The excessive consumption of alcohol, and binge drinking in particular, has a direct toxic effect on heart muscle and is a major cause of sudden deaths in Russian men.

Ongoing studies in the United States over the last 60 years and in Finland since 1970 have shown convincingly that the modification of lifestyle risk factors significantly reduces illness and death due to heart and circulatory disease. Similar small-scale trials in Karelia, Chelayabinsk, Yekaterinburg Tver and other regions have confirmed these findings.

Early deaths often cause devastating family and social problems, contributing to increased individual stress, depression and alcoholism. By further fueling the problem, this is creating more widows, destabilizing families and reducing their incomes. It is a never-ending spiral.

At the national level the economy is already experiencing serious losses as a result of early deaths and illness — at a rate of about $11 billion per year, or 1 percent of total gross domestic product. According to the World Bank, in the absence of successful measures to remedy the situation, this could rise to an annual loss of as much as $66 billion, or 5 percent of total GDP.

There will be increasing medical costs and worker absenteeism along with reductions in productivity, tax revenues, savings and healthy men to serve in the military. At a more general level, there will also be a greater risk of political instability.

President Vladimir Putin has publicly discussed the problem of Russia’s declining population on numerous occasions and has initiated and financed measures to combat it. These have largely concentrated on increasing family size, improving standards of healthcare and reducing the imbalance between immigration and emigration. These measures are essential, but unless the numbers of men who die early can be significantly reduced, the population will continue to fall.

A team of British experts in medicine, public health and medical education will be launching a project in London on Wednesday titled “Reducing Early Mortality in the Russian Federation” with the aim of helping Russia combat this problem.

A holistic project has been devised to give postgraduate training to Russian polyclinic doctors and other healthcare workers in recognizing the causes of heart and circulatory disease, as well as diagnosing and treating it. Simultaneously, intensive long-term public education programs will be undertaken at the local level involving all levels of society — families, schools, educational institutions, factories and workplaces — with the objective of educating people about cardiovascular illnesses and their causes, prevention and treatment. This will be combined with the preventative use by those at risk of developing heart disease of small daily doses of aspirin to thin the blood and of a medication known as statins to reduce blood-cholesterol levels.

For this program to be implemented and succeed it will have to receive authorization from the federal and regional governments and be planned and implemented in conjunction with Russian cardiologists, preventive medicine specialists and medical educators. Our initial experiences lead us to believe that this initiative will be welcomed by the Russian authorities.

We are proposing to begin with a three-year pilot project in a region yet to be determined, with the objective of demonstrating the benefits of the program on the ground and modifying it where necessary. Subsequently, similar programs will be initiated in other regions, ultimately stretching to cover the entire country.

Funding for the pilot scheme will probably come largely from non-Russian sources, but due to the vast scope of the project and the need to continue it indefinitely, subsequent funding will have to come from Russian sources — federal and regional governments, the corporate sector and individuals.

The benefits will be felt at the personal level as fathers, sons, brothers and uncles live longer and healthier lives, and at the national level in the form of a markedly improved economy. A 20 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease by 2025 will increase male life expectancy by six years and restore the anticipated 5 percent annual loss in GDP.

Changing long-established life styles will not be easy. But evidence from other projects show that it is not only possible, but can be highly successful. Many other healthcare problems will continue to exist, with those to combat infectious diseases, cancer and trauma to name just a few. But if this single project can save the lives of 250,000 men per year and improve the quality of life for many, many more, it must be implemented. For the sake of Russia’s future and the future of its people such a program has to succeed.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Americans Saving Russian Orphans

More Russian children cast off by Russian society saved by big-hearted American famlies. The Cook County News Herald reports:

A Grand Marais, Minnesota, family with a big heart wants to bring one more Russian orphan to the United States so that he can join his twin brother and three other Russian orphans as the newest member of this extraordinary family. Mike and Laurie Senty and their youngest daughter, Hana, are determined to find a way to bring Ilya to the United States, but at this point, they can’t really afford to. Enter Marce Wood, a good friend of the Senty family with a big heart of her own, who watched as the Sentys went to Russia and brought home the first two teenaged orphans two years ago. Then, within months, a third Russian orphan joined the family and before the year was over a fourth. More about this later. So Wood, who wants Kostya re-united with his twin brother, Ilya, as much as the Sentys do, decided to organize a wonderful art fundraiser at Betsy Bowen’s Studio April 21 to begin to raise money for “Ilya’s Fund.” There will be music and art and pony rides as well as lots of good food — and everyone in the community is invited, she said. Kostya, a talented artist in his own right, will have several drawings at the benefit and Hana will have her “famous” hand-knitted headbands, which she’s been making for the last two years to help raise money for her new brothers. Her mother, Laurie, a talented photographer, will have a slide show of photos she took on her trips to Russia.

The story of how Mike and Laurie Senty managed to adopt four Russian orphan teenagers from Pskov, Russia, started innocently enough — they agreed that they would give an orphan in Russia a chance to live with an American family for the summer. But two weeks into Ilya’s visit, the Sentys knew they didn’t want to send him back. “We wanted to keep him,” Laurie said. She called the adoption agency she was working with and made the request, and was informed that Ilya had a brother. They couldn’t be separated. Did the Sentys want to adopt the brother, too? Hmmmm. But an hour later, this generous couple had made up their minds — “What the heck,” Laurie said. “Let’s take his brother, too.”

When they returned to Russia to complete the adoption, they discovered Ilya’s brother, Alex, wasn’t the least bit interested in going with them. “Alex didn’t like us. He didn’t want to see us,” Laurie said. They kept on trying to get him interested, but to no avail. He didn’t want to go to America with them, apparently. But then Kostya, who had just met the Senty family (including Hana, their daughter), intervened. The 16-year-old who had been in the orphanage since he was an infant, began talking to Alex on his own. This was a good family, he told his fellow orphan. You’ll never get another chance to go to America. Four days later, Alex came in to the room where the Sentys were waiting, sat down and counted to 10 in English. “It was his way of showing us that he wanted to come,” Laurie said.

The papers completed, the Sentys returned to America. But during a layover in Amsterdam, Hana and her mother looked at each other and said — we can’t leave Kostya. “We went off to this little cafe,” remembers Laurie. “And we kept asking ourselves — ‘What should we tell Mike?’” Mike, as it turned out, had opened his heart to the friendly young Russian, too, and he agreed. So now there were to be three. At this point, things began to get really complicated.
When they went back to Russia to get Kostya, they were told that adopting him would be fine, but he had a twin brother who had to go, too. It was a shock to find this out, Laurie said. The twin boys had been separated for schooling, with Ilya, the twin, being sent to an orphanage out in the country, while Kostya stayed in town. Kostya, who didn’t speak English, couldn’t tell the Sentys about his brother and since, at that time, the family had no intention of adopting him, no one at the orphanage mentioned it either. What to do? Their finances couldn’t handle adopting any more children, Laurie said. But there was a legal way around this, they soon discovered. When Kostya reached legal age, he could formally submit a request to have his brother join him in America. The courts agreed to this stipulation and Kostya flew back to the states with his new parents.

But the story doesn’t end here. Hana, who, Laurie said, was an important part of this whole process, couldn’t get one other orphan named Losha out of her mind. They had made eye contact during each of her visits to the orphanage, and she just couldn’t let it go. Finally, Laurie suggested that Losha come and visit them, just for the summer. “We tried the whole summer to find a family who would adopt him,” she said, but they didn’t have any luck. She contacted the adoption agency again and explained the dilemma. They didn’t want this Russian orphan to have to go back, she told them, but she and Mike didn’t have enough money to adopt him. And then, wonder of all wonders, the adoption agency offed to pay for his adoption by raising the money for it. “They just said, ‘We have this opportunity to help,’ and they did,” Laurie said. And so the couch in their living room in Grand Marais is full of happy, well-fed boys today. It’s been a struggle, certainly, but worth every minute of it, she said. The boys all had their own issues that had to be worked out before they felt they were truly part of a family, and the household that first year when the boys didn’t speak English and the Sentys didn’t speak Russian was rather hectic — but it has all worked out, she said.

She’s very concerned about Kostya’s brother having to stay in Russia. The country doesn’t have a social security system like we do, she said. When Russian orphans are 18, they have to leave the orphanage. They can’t find work, primarily because they haven’t been trained for jobs, and they end up on the street. It is a miserable and dangerous life, she said, and they’re worried about Kostya’s twin. At this point, they’re working with an attorney in St. Paul to determine the best way to bring Kostya’s brother to America. Any way you look at it, it will cost money, she said, and the fundraiser Marce Wood is organizing is the first step in that direction. Hopefully, Ilya can walk through that door by fall. Kostya sure hopes so. “I just want to open my eyes and he’ll be right here now,” he said.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Horror of "Life" in Russia

The New York Times‘ Russia correspondent Steven Lee Myers reports on the fundmental horror of so-called “life” in Russia:

THERE was something sadly predictable about the reaction to Russia’s latest convulsion of disasters: a plane crash, a mine blast and a nursing home fire. In the span of four days, 180 Russians died and the country, more or less, shrugged.

“They thought about this between the borscht and the cutlet,” Matvei Ganapolsky, a radio host, said on Ekho Moskvy, comparing Russia’s collective reaction to tragedy, unfavorably, to that of other countries. Outrage or grief or sympathy lasts about as long as a pause between the courses.

It would be wrong to stereotype, to say that Russians are fatalistic or heartless. They are, however, not only resigned to tragedy but inured to it in a way that to many raises alarms about the country’s future. They’re not just helpless in the face of disaster; they could be called complicit, ever beckoning the next one by their actions or lack of.

Disasters, natural and man-made, occur everywhere, but unnatural death occurs in Russia with unnatural frequency and in unnatural quantity.

In a report in 2005 called “Dying Too Young,” the World Bank warned that accidents, which affect men of working age most, were contributing to Russia’s decline in population. The country is now a world leader in industrial accidents, like the explosion at a Siberian mine on Monday that killed 110, in traffic accidents, in fires, in murders and in suicides.

Russians grieve, but they do so privately. They rarely demand public action — through the media, elected representatives or, in the extreme, street protests. A result is a lack of accountability, even impunity, that lets corruption fester, otherwise solvable problems mount and disasters repeat.

A fire early Tuesday engulfed a government home for the elderly and disabled in a small town on the Azov Sea, killing 63 at last count. It quickly became apparent that the building had been declared unsafe, inadequately equipped to suppress fire and built with toxic materials that almost certainly increased the death toll. And yet somehow it remained open. A night guard, officials said, made things worse by ignoring two alarms before calling the fire department, which was more than 30 miles away, anyway.

If it seemed shockingly familiar, that’s because it was. A fire in December killed 46 at a drug-treatment hospital in Moscow. The doors and windows were locked. Inspectors had spotted violations that were apparently never fixed. A day later 10 patients died in a fire at a home for the mentally ill in Siberia.

Igor L. Trunov, a prominent lawyer in Moscow, argued that a lack of legal — or political — accountability allowed private companies and public agencies to flout rules and regulations and escape punishment for wrongdoing. He cited the airline industry, saying that aging equipment, shoddy maintenance and poor training contributed to a rash of crashes.

The latest came on March 17 when a Soviet-era airliner missed a runway in Samara and flipped, killing 7 of 57 people aboard in an accident preliminarily attributed to mechanical problems and pilot error.

That crash followed two major disasters last year — a crash landing in Irkutsk, in Sibera, which killed 125, and a flight to St. Petersburg that crashed in a storm over eastern Ukraine, killing 170 — that cast doubt not only on the safety of the fleets, but also on the state’s enforcement policies.

Mr. Trunov’s answer is still a novelty here: the lawsuit.

He has campaigned to win more compensation for victims of some prominent tragedies: an avalanche in the Northern Caucasus in 2002 (125 dead); the botched rescue of hostages in a Moscow theater in 2002 (128); the collapse of a water park in Moscow in 2004 (28); and both of last year’s air disasters (295). He has so far lost them all.

Russia, he said, suffers from a mentality in which human life is not valued. In a recent article he computed the value of a person based on various countries’ laws for compensating injuries or death. Life in Russia is, in fact, cheap. According to his calculation a Russian is worth $118,000; an American, $3.2 million.

While an avalanche may seem like an unavoidable act of God, Mr. Trunov pointed out that there had been four previous ones in the same gorge. And each time the authorities have rebuilt the village that was destroyed. “The fact that the authorities do nothing about it is, I think, criminal negligence,” he said.

President Vladimir V. Putin has carefully cultivated an image as a capable, competent manager. He has hectored officials about each new tragedy, but neither he nor they seem inclined, or able, to resolve the root causes.

A promised investigation into the terrorist siege at Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, which resulted in the deaths of 334, was so intent to lay the entire blame with the terrorists that it lied about aspects of the rescuers’ actions (like tanks firing into the school). There was no effort to explore — and learn from — the mistakes or misconduct of any officials.

It has become a sorry routine: the promise of action and the failure to deliver. After the disaster at the indoor water park, the emergencies minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, appeared before TV cameras and demanded an end to shoddy building and maintenance. No one has yet been held to account. In February 2006 the roof of a market built by the same architect collapsed; 56 died.

History might explain part of the country’s indifference. Russia has endured revolution and war on a scale that can be difficult to comprehend. A former commandant of the Army War College in the United States, Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, once recalled giving a Russian general a tour of Gettysburg. The Russian asked the American how many casualties the battle produced. Told that 51,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing, the Russian swept his hand dismissively. “Skirmish,” he said.

But Mr. Ganapolsky, the radio host, said history alone did not explain today’s Russia. Russians care, he said in an interview, but they stay home and express their anger or sorrow in private.

“Why do Italians come out into the streets?” he said. “Because they know they can change their government. Why don’t Russians come out in the street? Because they know they will meet the riot police.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Horror of Day-to-Day life in Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia

Gas explosion at coal mine kills 106 miners.

Nursing home fire kills 62 senior citizens.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

— Bob Dylan
“Blowin’ in the Wind”
1963

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Horror of Day-to-Day life in Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia

Gas explosion at coal mine kills 106 miners.

Nursing home fire kills 62 senior citizens.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

— Bob Dylan
“Blowin’ in the Wind”
1963

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Horror of Day-to-Day life in Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia

Gas explosion at coal mine kills 106 miners.

Nursing home fire kills 62 senior citizens.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

— Bob Dylan
“Blowin’ in the Wind”
1963

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Horror of Day-to-Day life in Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia

Gas explosion at coal mine kills 106 miners.

Nursing home fire kills 62 senior citizens.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

— Bob Dylan
“Blowin’ in the Wind”
1963

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Horror of Day-to-Day life in Putin’s Neo-Soviet Russia

Gas explosion at coal mine kills 106 miners.

Nursing home fire kills 62 senior citizens.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

— Bob Dylan
“Blowin’ in the Wind”
1963

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Yes, Even on Cheery Cooking Shows Neo-Soviet Russia is Exposed

La Russophobe is a fan of cooking shows, and one of her very favorites is Scandinavian Cooking, hosted by a little Norwegian elf named Andreas Viestad, one of the most charming and adorable young fellows LR has ever come across.

In one of the programs, entitled “Artic Cuisine with a Russian Twist,” Andreas visits the Svalbard Archipelago above the artic circle, where Norway has a sizeable community, to do some cooking in the ice. Andreas couldn’t be cuter, decked out in a huge floppy fur hat.

Andreas is gets a major downer, however, when he visits a community of Russians living on the archipelago; he notes with dismay that “despite the change in government in Russia” the people he finds continue to live in a pathetic, crude Soviet style, without any of the standard elements of civilization enjoyed by the prosperous Norwegians. His pity for the hapless, backward Russians, who seem trapped in a time warp, is palpable.

One daren’t imagine what he would think if he went to Chelyabinsk.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Another Russian Plane Goes Down

Yet another Russian airliner has crashed, killing at least seven of the nearly 60 passengers. The Observer reports: “At least seven people died and 23 were injured when an airliner crash-landed in fog yesterday in the city of Samara, 550 miles southeast of Moscow. Aministry spokeswoman said the Russian Tu-134 carrying 57 people grazed the runway with a wing. ‘Its fuselage then collapsed and it crashed,’ she said.” RIA Novosti continued:

Media reports that a Tu-134 plane that crashed in southern Russia Saturday, killing six people, was technically unsafe are untrue, the press office of the air company that owns the plane said Sunday. The Tu-134 jet liner, en route from the West Siberian town of Surgut, had 50 passengers and seven crewmen on board when it crash-landed in foggy weather in the Volga city of Samara Saturday morning. Twenty-one people, including four crewmen, were hospitalized. “Some media reports that the TU-134 plane allegedly had defects do not correspond to reality. The plane, before it hit the ground, was technically fit and met airworthiness and maintenance standards applicable to this type of aircraft,” the press office of UTAir said. A sudden deterioration of weather conditions, which was confirmed by a report filed immediately after the crash, could have been a possible reason for the crash, the press office said.The Transportation Ministry said Saturday UTAir had decided to pay $75,000 to each family of those killed in the crash. Transportation Minister Igor Levitin said in February the aging Russian medium-haul airliners Tu-154 and Tu-134 would be phased out of commercial use within the next five years. The Russian government has recently launched projects to replace the old Tu-154 and Tu-134 models with more technologically advanced SuperJet-100 and MS-21 mid-haulers. But these aircraft will not enter service until 2012.

LR has previously documented the horrors of Russia’s very unfriendly skies. The photo above is from the scene of the crash of a Tupalev-154 while flying from the Russian Black Sea holiday resort of Anapa to St Petersburg in August 2006.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russian Post Office Still Hopelessly Incompetent

Global Voices translates a post from the Russian blogophere and observes “it takes roughly ten hours to travel from Moscow, Russia, to Kyiv, Ukraine, by train. But a letter sent via Air Mail from Moscow will most likely reach Kyiv in ten days. It becomes obvious right away why it takes three days for a package from the States to reach Russia, and then a month to reach the addressee in Moscow.” Obvious indeed: The utter failure of the government imposed by the malignant little troll in the Kremlin. Welcome to the Neo-Soviet Union!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russian Situation Normal, All Fouled Up

Writing in the Moscow Times Nikolai Petrov (pictured, left), scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, exposes the utter sham of Russian domestic investment. On the one hand, Russia attempts huges projects it cannot possibly realize. On the other, these insane charades draw investment away from the vast majority of the country where it is desperately needed. In other words, welcome to the neo-Soviet Union.

At a recent economic forum in Krasnoyarsk, estimates of total expected investment in Russia’s economy by the year 2020 were more than impressive: The cumulative total in planned investment projects with price tags of $100 million or more could reach $450 billion. Oil and gas projects are set to account for as much as half of these funds, with another one-fifth earmarked for transportation and one-sixth for electrical generation. Two-thirds of the total are slated for projects in locations to the east of the Urals, which is home to only a little more than one quarter of the country’s population.

The disparities are even greater if the potential investment is broken down by region. A mere six of the country’s 88 regions account for more than half of all possible investment funding, standing to receive upward of $15 billion each. These are the Sakhalin, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutia, Irkutsk and Murmansk regions and the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district. On the other hand, there are 25 regions not slated to receive any investment funding whatsoever. The investment in European Russia may be inadequate to maintain existing activity, but that east of the Urals should allow for the expansion of production.

Focusing on projects valued at $100 million or higher significantly distorts both the general picture and the view in particular regions and economic sectors. This almost completely ignores the rapidly expanding food, light industry, heavy machinery and high-tech sectors of the economy. The planned investment in modernization is minor, with the vast majority of funding to be devoted to new construction.

All of this suggests that Russia, having survived protracted socioeconomic crises, is now set to enter a new phase of economic expansion. The country is set for new industrialization in the east and service sector growth in the west. There remain, however, serious doubts as to whether such ambitious goals can actually be reached.

One of the problems with the plans is that they point more toward the preservation and even strengthening of the economy’s orientation toward the export of resources than toward the high-tech and innovation sectors enjoying such a vogue in most government pronouncements. Moreover, the emphasis on the eastern and northern parts of the country will bring some inevitable consequences, including enormous investment in infrastructure, distant time horizons before the investments reach their full development and recovery.

There is actually a whole range of problems connected with bringing these loudly touted projects to fruition. First off, the planning assumptions are based on current high global commodity prices, and those for energy in particular. If these prices fail to any serious degree, many of the projects will fail due to lack of profitability. Second, the relative abundance of mineral resources and the long-awaited availability of funding will only struggle against two major barriers that will only become worse with time. These are the continued decrease in the working-aged population in the regions where investment is planned to be the greatest and the impoverishment that has resulted from two decades of economic crises and the gradual decline of the former Soviet-era industrial and infrastructure capacities. The overall decrease in numbers of qualified personnel such as designers, builders, engineers and a wide range of other specialists is also unlikely to help matters.

Simply put, the implementation of the more than 400 major investment projects in question over the next five to 10 years is impossible given current stocks of equipment and qualified personnel. There is no way to develop atomic energy at the speed which the Federal Atomic Energy Agency is suggesting without first restoring the necessary nuclear engineering and construction capacities. Work on the colossal scale these projects entail will be impossible due to an elementary shortage in the east of cement and other building materials. These are already insufficient for even the current levels of proposed housing expansion.

Russia is simply not yet ready for such a golden age. Investment projects on this scale are almost physically impossible simply to drop on the rest of the economy. Before this growth can begin, investment is needed in the basic foundations of the economy. If the state is unable to orchestrate the process correctly, then the enormous sums ready to be invested — both state and private — could end up playing a negative role. Instead of rapid growth, we will end up with increased economic dysfunction.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russian Woman: This is Your So-Called "Life"

The Guardian reports:

For four years girls and young women disappeared from their homes in the drab industrial Russian town of Nizhny Tagil. Their parents called the police and pasted up posters. But in the end it was a stray dog that tracked them down. The decomposing bodies of 30 females aged from 13 to 25 were found in a mass grave in woodland near the village of Levikha, 40 miles away.

The discovery sent a ripple of horror through a country inured to brutal tales. Prosecutors in the town on the eastern flank of the Urals, the crinkle of mountains separating the European and Asian parts of Russia, have now charged eight men aged between 25 and 46 with murder. But it has revealed a catalogue of errors on the part of Nizhny Tagil police who failed to link a string of missing persons reports from 2002 to 2005.

It is thought a gang led by two brothers used a handsome young man to lure the girls to a flat where they were raped and beaten. Those who refused to become prostitutes at the gang’s massage parlour ended up in the Levikha grave. The scale of the horror has reminded rich Muscovites of the brutal life out in the provinces where low pay and lack of work can drive ordinary people to shocking crimes. ‘In four years in Nizhny Tagila, a city of 400,000, girls were going missing left, right and centre and nobody raised the alarm,’ one newspaper commented. ‘Tens of girls and young women missing? And nobody gave a damn?’

Mark Kustovsky, the factory worker who acted as the bait, wooed the women with presents and visits to cafes. His wife said the ringleaders forced him to put bodies in the grave, telling him: ‘If you don’t bury them, you’ll be lying there yourself.’ But the police say he was a willing gang member.

‘The girls who didn’t agree to work in the brothel were taken to the forest and there killed and buried,’ prosecutor Nail Rizvanov said. The gang told the girls they were going for a picnic, feeding them kebabs before they were murdered. It is not clear how they were killed, but some had crushed skulls.

So far, 15 bodies have been identified in a process complicated by wild animals disturbing the remains. One of the girls is thought to be Yelena Chudinova, 15, daughter of one of the gang leaders.

The grave was close to a bus stop and dachas. Towards the end of their spree the gang gave up burying the bodies, just throwing branches over them instead.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia has no Heart . . . literally

RIA Novosti reports that while “President” Putin is spending billions on weapons, Russians are dropping like flies from heart disease:

About 1.3 million people die of cardiovascular diseases annually in Russia, the country’s chief cardiologist said Wednesday. “Cardiovascular diseases are the most frequent cause of death in Russia. The mortality rate is high compared to Western European countries, which have been experiencing a decrease in mortality rates for the past 20 years,” Rafael Oganov said. “Lifestyle is the main factor that accounts for the mortality rate”, he said, adding that there is no clear relation between mortality and economic status.

About 16 million Russians suffer from cardiovascular diseases, placing Russia second in the world, after Ukraine, in this respect.

Heart diseases account for 56.7% of total deaths, with about 30% involving people still of working age. Mortality among Russian men rose by 60% since 1991, four to five times higher than in Europe.

The average life expectancy for men in Russia is about 57.

Undoubtedly, the crazed apologists for dictatorship will say that this is proof Russians cannot govern themselves and must have their choices made for them by Grandpa Putin, as if they were puppies. The only problem is that this logic is what desroyed the USSR.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

The Beeb on Cruelty to Russian Infants

The BBC has done a nice investigation of the “gagged baby” story that La Russophobe reported several days ago. Here it is:

Mobile phone video of babies in a Russian hospital with sticking plaster apparently covering their mouths made headlines around the world but the plight of the otkazniki – the infants abandoned by their mothers in hospital – goes much deeper. For Maxim Gareyev, editor of Yekaterinburg’s parenting newspaper Yeka-mama, the story which broke at Hospital No 15 was no great surprise. “We get confidential letters and private messages from officials and others about babies being maltreated in hospitals but nobody wants to speak out because they don’t want to lose their jobs or they fear for their reputations,” he told the BBC News website. Mr Gareyev has little to say about the “gagging” case, pointing out that city prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation.

But what he can talk about is the circumstances of the babies, because it is something he knows well from both his newspaper’s own reporting and his charity work to help them. Babies officially taken into care by the state on the grounds that their parents are unfit to rear them are usually out of hospital and in a children’s home within a few days of birth, says Mr Gareyev. But otkazniki are often left behind in hospitals for months, awaiting a vacancy. If a carer is not found, they will be packed off to orphanages at the age of three. And their experiences during those first years of life may mark them permanently.

Nowhere to go

The reported events at Hospital No 15 are a first for Carel de Rooy, the Unicef representative in Russia and Belarus, but the issue of otkazniki is one that he has long been pushing for the Russian authorities to address. “Hospital staff are trained to care for the sick – they are not trained to deal with the cognitive and emotional development of babies,” he told the BBC News website. “This has serious implications both for the development and long-term health of the child.” Given the potential for damage to these babies’ make-up, why do they get left in hospital? The answer, Maxim Gareyev explains, is lack of resources.

“We simply do not have enough children’s homes in Sverdlovsk [the region around Yekaterinburg] and Russia in general,” he says. “These babies get left in hospitals but there are no funds or trained medical staff or special facilities for caring for them. “Of course, the hospitals make space for these babies but the problem is that in the first year of life a baby needs to be cuddled, it needs to be talked to, if it is to develop as a human being.”

Overworked nurses

Charities have stepped in to do what they can for the babies. Olga Bizimova, a 27-year-old married mother of two, became a volunteer in Yekaterinburg’s Little Stork group because she felt sorry for them. “We buy disposable nappies and baby food,” she told the BBC News website.
“We visit our local hospital. We give the babies a bath, we dress them and, if we get permission, we take them out for walks. Then we come back and we play games and feed them.” She also once visited Hospital No 15, which treats infectious diseases, and she had the impression that it was a “good, clean hospital where the kids are looked after well. The only problem was that the nurses in charge of them had an awful lot of work to do looking after sick children and simply did not have the time to look after the abandoned babies too,” she says.

When Mrs Bizimova was at No 15, she was warned that some of the babies could have infectious diseases. The city has a children’s home specially equipped for treating such children but it is currently full, she says. Carel de Rooy notes that the situation of children infected with HIV/Aids in Russia is particularly serious, with some babies “lingering in hospitals for 18 months or more”.

Culprits

About 730,000 children are growing up in Russia without their biological parents, of whom only 10% are orphans in the true sense of the word, according to Unicef. Almost 75% of them grow up in families through guardianship, foster care, patronage or adoption but that leaves about 186,000 children growing up in institutions. For volunteer Olga Bizimova, the main reasons why mothers give up their babies are lack of money and living-space along with problems such as alcoholism. Mr de Rooy agrees that Russia’s economic growth has “unfortunately not translated into support for the poorest families”. But he also calls on the state to allow mothers more time to decide about keeping their children and invest in training for families, which “costs less in the long run than care in state institutions”. Maxim Gareyev finds a positive in the investigation at Hospital No 15: hospital staff have been given a “good scare” which will make them more careful about babies, he says. Yet he is worried that a successful prosecution may only mask the longer-term problem of babies left neglected in hospitals. “I for one could not bring myself to condemn outright any nurse that is convicted – it is not the job of hospital staff to care for babies full-time,” he says.

“I am afraid that she may be used here as a scapegoat when the real culprit is our state.”

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Now, They’re Even Gagging the Babies!!!

The LEDE reports:

Score another one for citizen journalists, as well as the digital technologies that have given rise to their number — and made institutional bad actors much more prone to discovery.

The latest auteur is Elena Kuritsyna, whose cellphone camera work has launched an investigation into a hospital in the southern Ural town of Yekaterinburg, Russia, where staff had apparently taken to dealing with the cries of infant orphans by gagging them.

The video (LR : click the LEDE link to watch) has caused waves across Russian culture, according to BBC News:

The patient who reported the incident, Elena Kuritsyna, had been in the hospital with her own children.

She said she heard the suppressed crying of young children in the next ward.

“I heard that a baby was mumbling in a neighboring room; when I looked in, I saw the baby with plaster over his mouth; he could not cry or do anything, was just mumbling,” she told Reuters television.

She approached the nurse in the ward and was initially told to mind her own business. Children were crying too loudly, and distracting nurses from their work, she was told.

She eventually persuaded the nurse to remove the plaster, but she says that afterwards the nurse did it again.

The nurse has been suspended and on Wednesday the head doctor at the hospital was reprimanded.

It was not an isolated incident. A criminal investigation has been opened and, according to the prosecutors’ press service, as quoted by the BBC, “children in the first year of life were systematically gagged with sticking plaster to make children behave quietly.”

The hospital said it was understaffed.

For the unfiltered condemnation of a blogger (now THAT’S a russophobe), click here.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Now, They’re Even Gagging the Babies!!!

The LEDE reports:

Score another one for citizen journalists, as well as the digital technologies that have given rise to their number — and made institutional bad actors much more prone to discovery.

The latest auteur is Elena Kuritsyna, whose cellphone camera work has launched an investigation into a hospital in the southern Ural town of Yekaterinburg, Russia, where staff had apparently taken to dealing with the cries of infant orphans by gagging them.

The video (LR : click the LEDE link to watch) has caused waves across Russian culture, according to BBC News:

The patient who reported the incident, Elena Kuritsyna, had been in the hospital with her own children.

She said she heard the suppressed crying of young children in the next ward.

“I heard that a baby was mumbling in a neighboring room; when I looked in, I saw the baby with plaster over his mouth; he could not cry or do anything, was just mumbling,” she told Reuters television.

She approached the nurse in the ward and was initially told to mind her own business. Children were crying too loudly, and distracting nurses from their work, she was told.

She eventually persuaded the nurse to remove the plaster, but she says that afterwards the nurse did it again.

The nurse has been suspended and on Wednesday the head doctor at the hospital was reprimanded.

It was not an isolated incident. A criminal investigation has been opened and, according to the prosecutors’ press service, as quoted by the BBC, “children in the first year of life were systematically gagged with sticking plaster to make children behave quietly.”

The hospital said it was understaffed.

For the unfiltered condemnation of a blogger (now THAT’S a russophobe), click here.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Now, They’re Even Gagging the Babies!!!

The LEDE reports:

Score another one for citizen journalists, as well as the digital technologies that have given rise to their number — and made institutional bad actors much more prone to discovery.

The latest auteur is Elena Kuritsyna, whose cellphone camera work has launched an investigation into a hospital in the southern Ural town of Yekaterinburg, Russia, where staff had apparently taken to dealing with the cries of infant orphans by gagging them.

The video (LR : click the LEDE link to watch) has caused waves across Russian culture, according to BBC News:

The patient who reported the incident, Elena Kuritsyna, had been in the hospital with her own children.

She said she heard the suppressed crying of young children in the next ward.

“I heard that a baby was mumbling in a neighboring room; when I looked in, I saw the baby with plaster over his mouth; he could not cry or do anything, was just mumbling,” she told Reuters television.

She approached the nurse in the ward and was initially told to mind her own business. Children were crying too loudly, and distracting nurses from their work, she was told.

She eventually persuaded the nurse to remove the plaster, but she says that afterwards the nurse did it again.

The nurse has been suspended and on Wednesday the head doctor at the hospital was reprimanded.

It was not an isolated incident. A criminal investigation has been opened and, according to the prosecutors’ press service, as quoted by the BBC, “children in the first year of life were systematically gagged with sticking plaster to make children behave quietly.”

The hospital said it was understaffed.

For the unfiltered condemnation of a blogger (now THAT’S a russophobe), click here.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Now, They’re Even Gagging the Babies!!!

The LEDE reports:

Score another one for citizen journalists, as well as the digital technologies that have given rise to their number — and made institutional bad actors much more prone to discovery.

The latest auteur is Elena Kuritsyna, whose cellphone camera work has launched an investigation into a hospital in the southern Ural town of Yekaterinburg, Russia, where staff had apparently taken to dealing with the cries of infant orphans by gagging them.

The video (LR : click the LEDE link to watch) has caused waves across Russian culture, according to BBC News:

The patient who reported the incident, Elena Kuritsyna, had been in the hospital with her own children.

She said she heard the suppressed crying of young children in the next ward.

“I heard that a baby was mumbling in a neighboring room; when I looked in, I saw the baby with plaster over his mouth; he could not cry or do anything, was just mumbling,” she told Reuters television.

She approached the nurse in the ward and was initially told to mind her own business. Children were crying too loudly, and distracting nurses from their work, she was told.

She eventually persuaded the nurse to remove the plaster, but she says that afterwards the nurse did it again.

The nurse has been suspended and on Wednesday the head doctor at the hospital was reprimanded.

It was not an isolated incident. A criminal investigation has been opened and, according to the prosecutors’ press service, as quoted by the BBC, “children in the first year of life were systematically gagged with sticking plaster to make children behave quietly.”

The hospital said it was understaffed.

For the unfiltered condemnation of a blogger (now THAT’S a russophobe), click here.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !