MEDVEDEV ADDRESS. Yesterday Medvedev made the annual address to parliament (Russian, English ). It is a meaty speech and is the formal announcement of his program. A memorable remark: “The cult of the state and the alleged wisdom of the administrative apparatus reigned in Russia for centuries. A person, with his rights and freedoms, personal interests and problems, was viewed as a tool, at best, or, at worst, as an impediment to the strengthening of state might.” He then quoted Stolypin saying that first comes the citizen and then the civic consciousness will follow (I watch for references to Stolypin). What struck me about it was evidence of something I have predicted before. Putin had a tendency to settle all problems by centralising power; perhaps necessary in 2000, over-centralisation now strangles initiative. I see in Medvedev’s speech many proposals to decrease centralisation of power. He gave a strong statement of Russia’s values which, one may be sure, will receive little coverage in the West. I would summarise the speech by saying that the overall emphasis was on making Russia “modern” in all senses of the word. In short, Putin stopped the rot, Medvedev has to build something and that something may require some dismantling of Putin’s structures. Read it yourselves: don’t let the biased and incompetent Western MSM tell you what he said. As a guide to coverage: the Russian text is 8315 words. Security occupied 13% of it and missiles in Kaliningrad 1.7%.

MISSILES. Medvedev’s announcement that Russia will station missiles and radar jamming equipment in response to the planned US deployment in Europe should be understood as conditional. If the US does that, Russia will do this. He made it clear that he believes Moscow has been forced to respond.

SOMETHING YOU WON’T HEAR ABOUT. An organiser of the nationalist “Russian March” in Moscow on Tuesday has been fined for organising an unauthorised demonstration.

DUUMVIRATE. Putin has opened a website which will have an English section. I do not recall any other PM having his own website and this is another indication, to my mind, that a degree of pluralism of power exists in Russia with two (cooperating) power centres.

INFLATION. RosStat announced that consumer prices grew 11.6% January to October as compared with 9.3% for the same period last year. This is not as bad as was feared earlier in the year.

CORRUPTION. A Moscow court found the former 1st Deputy Director of the Kremlin Property Department Settlements-Financial Centre, “guilty of squandering money” (I quote Interfax) and sentenced him to 7 years in prison. It is good that officials are being hit in the anti-corruption drive (a significant theme in Medvedev’s address) but it would be better yet if their offices were closer to Medvedev’s.

INGUSH REPUBLIC. Medvedev has repaired one of Putin’s mistakes and replaced Murat Zyazikov as President of the Ingush Republic (“at his own request”). Security has been gradually getting worse and he was extremely unpopular. Medvedev nominated a general, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, born in 1963 in Prigorodniy Rayon, North Ossetia. Will this prove to be the popular and effective choice that Zyazikov never was?

BEST LEADER IN 100 YEARS. VTsIOM asked Russians who were the best and worst rulers of the past 100 years and Putin won handily. The ratios of “best” to “worst” responses are: Putin 10 to one best over worst; Nikolay II 1.41:1; Brezhnev 1.17:1; Lenin 0.94:1; Stalin 0.73:1; Yeltsin 0.27:1; Gorbachev 0.27:1; No particular nostalgia here for the Soviet past (although some for the placidity of the Brezhnev years).

HISTORY. A plaque commemorating Admiral Kolchak was unveiled at a Moscow church last week. There has also been a successful movie made about him.

PRESIDENT OBAMA. What will be the future of Russia-US relations? I don’t know: as I see it, Obama is a palimpsest on which his supporters have written their dreams.

GEORGIA. The opposition – now with a great number of former allies of Saakashvili – is planning a big demonstration tomorrow. We will see what happens: but my bet is that, at the end, Saakashvili will be gone.

KARABAKH. On Sunday the presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Moscow and issued a statement on Karabakh. It is rather anodyne but may represent a step forward. I suspect that the disaster of Tbilisi’s latest military adventure has had a sobering effect all round.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada

COURTS. The Moscow Arbitration Council has ruled invalid most of the tax claims against the British Council. In other cases, several oil and gas companies were found to have violated anti-monopoly legislation and PWC’s appeal connected with its Yukos audits was successful. The difficulty with court decisions on subjects with political content is to decide whether they were made independently or under instruction.

GDP. The Economic Development Ministry has lowered its growth forecast to 7.3% from 7.8%. A government source reported that GDP had grown 7.7% in the first 9 months of the year. Still respectable.

FINANCIAL CRISIS. The stock market continues to follow world trends; on Friday the Duma approved bills allowing the government to spend more than $18.5 billion bailing out banks and supporting the stock market.

RUSSIAN JUSTICE. Slow, but eventually gets there. Russian Central Bank 1st Deputy Chairman Andrey Kozlov was murdered in September 2006; arrests were made in January 2007 and on Tuesday a jury found banker Aleksey Frenkel guilty of organising the assassination.

MOSKALENKO. On the 14th a lawyer in France, Karina Moskalenko, connected with the Politkovskaya case, complained of a mercury-like substance in her car. Naturally, some jumped to the conclusion that Putindunnit and, on the 22nd, the Washington Post effectively blamed him. Unfortunately for the editorialists of that paper, that very day the French police released the results of their investigation: the mercury had come from a barometer that broke while being transported by the car’s previous owner, an antiques dealer. No wonder so many Russians think there is an “information war” against Russia.

TRANSDNESTR. I have been wrong before on this one, but I have been detecting signs recently that this longstanding secessionist issue may be unthawing: nothing dramatic, but some openings visible.

CAUCASIAN RUMOURS OF WARS. More small scale activity across the North Caucasus. On the 18th a military convoy was attacked in Ingushetia; 2 bombs were defused in Makhachkala on the 20th; a car exploded in Vladikavkaz on the 22nd and on Tuesday 3 jihadists were killed in Groznyy.

GEORGIA. An opposition rally is being planned for 7 November, the anniversary of the rally that was crushed by the security apparatus last year. Nino Burjanadze, former member of the “Rose Revolution” triumvirate (the second, Zurab Zhvania is dead, murdered some say), and former speaker of Parliament, has now formally gone into the opposition, saying among other things: “Democratic principles have been ignored” and “The priority of today’s government is to keep its power” and calling for early elections but, this time “only under the conditions of an improved election code, a healthy electoral environment and free media.” She is also scornful about the latest government changes. She is someone to be taken very seriously. The Prime Minister has been just replaced; I wonder if he will join the many of Saakashvili’s former colleagues now in opposition.

TALKS. Tbilisi wants “the international community” to prevent South Ossetian and Abkhazian representatives attending the Geneva talks. It would be foolish to do so because the situation will never be resolved if the principals are excluded: the origin of the whole mess is that Ossetians and Abkhazians do not want to be in Georgia and if Stalin had drawn a different map, they wouldn’t be.

THE STORY KEEPS CHANGING. When he made his “victory” speech on 8 August, Saakashvili made no reference to Russian forces having entered South Ossetia. A few weeks later he claimed that the Georgians attacked late on the 7th because the Russians were then entering. In the Washington Post, his story changed again: there he claimed the Russians had entered early in the morning of the 7th. This third story seems to have been dropped: now it is stated that the Georgian Peacekeeping Force Commander’s statement late on the 7th that Georgian troops had began an operation to bring “constitutional order” to the Tskhinvali region was false. Hard to keep up. The BBC has partly redeemed its slavish relaying of Tbilisi’s talking points during the war in this report: Part 1, Part 2. Well worth watching for those who followed the war on the Western media and think they know what happened. No news, however, for those who watched Russia Today, available on your home computer .

RE-DRAWING THE MAP. Daniel Fried has now joined in this cartographical enterprise by accusing Moscow of violating the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan by remaining in Akhalgori (are there actually any Russian troops there?) According to my USSR Atlas (1984) this area was part of South Ossetia then.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada

FINANCIAL CRISIS. According to Standard & Poor’s, Russia’s stock exchange has fallen 53% this year to 3 Oct (and there have been more declines since). This is the worst of the “emerging markets” that it watches. On Monday Medvedev signed a package of laws designed to stabilise Russia’s financial market. We shall see.

MILITARY REFORM. The Defence Minister has announced that Armed Forces strength will be down to one million by 2012 (original date had been 2016) and officers reduced from today’s 355,000 (!) to 150,000.

LAW CASES. The Director of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office has filled us in on some on-going investigations. Its finding is that Magomed Yevloyev was accidentally killed and the police officer responsible has been charged with “reckless manslaughter”. Meanwhile the Litvinenko investigation has come to a halt because of lack of cooperation: specifically the British have not provided the autopsy report and the Germans have given no details on the alleged traces of polonium found in Hamburg. A cynic would suggest that the whole Berezovskiy-created story is collapsing. The Politkovskaya murder case will go to trial. Her former editor is satisfied with the investigation but has reiterated that because neither the person who ordered the murder nor the actual killer has been arrested (they are believed to be in a European country) the case can hardly be considered to be “closed”.

TECHNOLOGY. As a reminder that Russia is not a country of string and wood, two ICBMs were successfully launched (one from a submarine) on the 12th and two days later a Russian spacecraft docked with the ISS.

JUST WHAT WE NEED. A group of opposition leaders are talking about creating a new movement perhaps to be called “Solidarity”. Most of the people in the group are leaders of personal groupuscules, fractions of other parties or the now-dissolved SPS. Just what Russia needs: more opposition groups arguing with each other and (dare I say it?) living off foreign NGOs (one of them, Lev Ponomaryov, has recently been quoted as saying that Russian human rights organisations live on foreign grants).

NORTH CAUCASUS. The Director of the FSB gave some figures on “bandit” activity in the North Caucasus. He said 170 fighters had been “neutralised”, more than 350 arrested and 15 turned themselves in. About 200 arms caches were found. The situation seems to be growing slowly worse.

GAS WARS. While Ukrainian PM Tymoshenko and Putin signed an agreement that gas prices will go to world levels over the next 3 years, Putin has called for the end of cheap gas for Russian consumers as well.

NEW SECURITY PLAN. Medvedev is calling for a new European security treaty: “It needs to follow three ‘don’t-do-it’ principles – do not ensure one’s own security at the expense of other’s security, do not allow measures that would weaken the unity of the common security space, and, thirdly, do not allow military unions to develop at the expense of the security of other signatories to the treaty”. This reminds me of an idea from the early Gorbachev years: you will never be truly secure if your measures make the other feel less secure.

STRANGER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. There is a proposal to remove the statue of Stalin in Gori to the Stalin Museum and re-name it the Museum of the Russian Occupation of Georgia. Stalin becomes a Russian!

GEORGIA ETC. Russian forces left the buffer zones slightly ahead of schedule. As usual, there were attempts to re-write the deal with complaints that they remain in areas in South Ossetia (Akhalgori) and Abkhazia (Kodori). But these areas have been clearly within the borders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia since the Soviet days. I speculate that Paris says these things to placate Washington while the actual agreement goes ahead. Meanwhile there have been several car bombs in South Ossetia (one on the 3rd killed 11). Tbilisi claims they are Moscow’s doing, but no rational observer could believe that. German Chancellor Merkel has evidently vetoed Ukraine’s and Georgia’s accession to a NATO MAP anytime soon. An Israeli official has flatly denied that Israel ever sold offensive weapons to Georgia and, in doing so, revealed “There is a covert agreement with Russia that it would not sell offensive armaments to Iran and Syria either”.

UKRAINE. The political crisis continues as President Yushchenko dissolves parliament and courts that disagree with him: more of a Lemon Revolution, I say. Meanwhile the question of arms supplies to Georgia is percolating in the background with a Ukrainian parliament member saying Kiev supplied ammunition, disguised as humanitarian aid, while the war was on. A Ukrainian government commission denies this.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada

CORRUPTION. Medvedev has sent the first elements of his anti-corruption legislation to the Duma. At the first meeting of the Council for Corruption Prevention on Tuesday, introducing the effort, he said “Corruption in our country has become rampant. It has become commonplace and it characterises the life of Russian society… In effect, the solution of this strategic task is connected to most of the tasks we have set ourselves”. I believe he is correct in seeing corruption, at every level, as the principal problem in Russia. It has deep roots in the Soviet system (blat and na levo) and was greatly intensified (with Western help; see Wedel’s book) in the 1990s.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC. The government has produced a draft social and economic program to cover the period up to 2020. The principal points are said to be raising life expectancy to 72-75 and at least doubling real incomes.

DUUMVIRATE. These two programs show, I believe, how the division of labour between Medvedev and Putin is settling out. Anti-corruption is a “presidential” program: it’s strategic and it affects everything. The social program is “nuts and bolts” and is a continuation of what the government has been trying to do for some years. Likewise, during the August war, Medvedev basically handled the “outside” duties and Putin the “inside” duties.

MILITARY. Putin has announced that an additional 80 billion rubles (about US$3 billion) will be allocated to buy new military hardware and armaments. The August war showed some deficiencies. And, had something similar happened anywhere else, the Russian forces could not have reacted as quickly as they did.

TNK-BP. Last month the two sides signed an MoU by which CEO Robert Dudley will leave by the end of 2008 and BP will propose a replacement to be approved unanimously by the TNK-BP Ltd board.

HISTORY. After some legal action, the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office has granted the relatives of the Polish officers murdered at Katyn in 1943 access to some classified documents.

GAS WARS. Ukrainian PM Tymoshenko is in Moscow and a principal purpose of her trip will be to negotiate new gas prices. She will not have a happy time. The old agreement, by which Ukraine paid much less than the going rate, was in large part a consequence of Turkmenistan’s willingness to sell its gas (about 60% of what Ukraine burns) at a low price. But it is not willing to do so any more. Meanwhile Gazprom is getting nearly US$500 tcm in Germany. She says that there will be no intermediaries this time (the earlier agreement had a number of very opaque middlemen) and hoped that the “world price” could be phased in “within a period of several years”. She and Putin announced an agreement today which, said Putin, “could later serve as a basis for a future gas treaty between Gazprom and Naftohaz Ukrainy”.

TRANSDNESTR. A Moldovan minister told the OSCE that Chisinau was ready to continue direct contacts with Transdnestr without any preconditions and President Voronin has made an important statement. He said there was no question of Moldova ever joining NATO and that reunification with Transdnestr would “strengthen the country’s constitutional neutrality”. Russian troops in Transdnestr were guarding warehouses with weapons “that were hastily withdrawn from Germany and other members of the Warsaw Pact after the break-up of the Soviet Union”. The statement may be designed to clear the way for a settlement.

GEORGIA. Erosi Kitsmarishvili, a former close ally of Saakashvili, has broken with Georgia’s “discredited authorities” and calls the death of former PM Zurab Zhvania murder. The Public Defender says Georgia is not “ruled correctly” and that it is necessary to replace the existing “authoritarianism” with real democracy in order to save the country; he lists 13 demands. It seems that the only people still calling Georgia a “democracy” without any qualifier are Saakashvili himself and his supporters in the USA. Nino Burjanadze has presented a list of 43 questions for the authorities to answer. Generally they are of the theme how could the government have been so stupid and irresponsible as to have started the war? She has made a common error; the proper question is: what war did the authorities think they were starting? Certainly not the catastrophic defeat that happened. Meanwhile the EU observers have arrived and the Russian forces are withdrawing from the buffer zones on schedule. And, just to show that the situation is more complicated than most Western coverage describes, Georgia resumed export of power to Russia from one of its HEP stations – there is a long-standing agreement under which Georgia sends power north in the summer and receives it back from Russia in the winter.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada

AFTERMATH. I think the dust is still settling after what has been a power earthquake of some significance and it’s still too early to make pronouncements. But one thing that seems to be happening is a rift between Washington and the EU, at least under Paris’ presidency. Sarkozy reacted quickly and decisively and negotiated the settlement that is actually being put into effect. But then it started to become rather murky: when, for example, did Saakashvili sign the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan? Was it 12 August as the French reported? Or was it on the 15th when Rice visited? Did Washington try to re-write it? And if so, how would Sarkozy feel about such second-guessing from the sidelines? At any case, while Washington is doubling down on its bet on Saakashvili and talking of excluding Russia, France, apart from pro forma references to territorial integrity, is moving in the opposite direction. The French PM was quoted as saying “Russia should play an important role in the world as well as the EU for the sake of the world’s stability, and besides, the more we talk to each other and the more confidence is between us, the closer our economic ties and the more stability and peace on our planet”. Meanwhile – and perhaps this is his answer to Washington – Sarkozy has suggested a “joint economic community” between Europe and Russia. This is quite different from regarding Russia as a pariah state that must be shunned.

FINANCIAL CRISIS. Seems to be dying down, at least for now, with the stock markets and ruble making a recovery.

DUUMVIRATE. I am more and more inclined to think my fifth hypothesis is the winner. In any event, the latest Levada poll shows that Medvedev is becoming almost as popular and trusted as Putin (83% to 88%). I believe that this is the very first time since 1991 when we have seen the President and the PM equal in popularity and both at a high level. So, at last, there are in Russia two centres of constitutional power.

ENERGY SUPPLY. In yet another attempt to try and get the obvious across, Medvedev has said supplies of energy resources should be predictable and stable both for suppliers and consumers. Given that Russia earns so much through oil and gas supplies and the government gets so much of its taxes from this source it would be disastrous for Moscow to cut supplies to its customers to the West. And vice versa. It is, in fact, a mutual dependence between Russia and its customers.

SKINHEADS. A court in Moscow has sentenced a group of skinheads to prison terms varying between 3 and 10 years for numerous crimes, including the murder of the Yakut chess master Sergey Nikolayev last October.

NEWS YOU PROBABLY WON’T HEAR. Russia just moved 40 T-72 tanks out of Kaliningrad, through Lithuania (with the complete, nay enthusiastic, approval of Vilnius) into “mainland” Russia.

SEVASTOPOL. The treaty between Moscow and Kiev has the Russian Black Sea fleet leaving the base in Sevastopol by 2017. A few years ago it was announced that Moscow would begin construction of a base in Novorossiysk but it is very unclear how much, if anything, has been done. The Russian Defence Minister has just said that Moscow is prepared to offer Kiev “lucrative” terms to keep the base there after 2017. Discussions begin today in Kiev.

YAMADAYEV. Ruslan Yamadayev, the brother of Sulim, was assassinated in Moscow. Sulim, who fought against Moscow in the first war and was a most effective hunter-killer of jihadists in the second, is now being accused by Groznyy of a multitude of crimes. I noticed a BMP captured by Chechens from the Georgians last month had “Yamadayevtsy” written on it indicating support for him. Neither event augurs well for peace and quiet in Chechnya.

ABKHAZIA. President Sergey Bagapsh has announced that there will be two Russian basses in Abkhazia: an army base in Gudauta and a naval group at Achamchira. Meanwhile, the first EU observers have arrived in Tbilisi and should take up their posts in Poti soon.

UKRAINE. The “Orange coalition” has now become outright political war with President Yushchenko describing PM Tymoshenko’s actions as “treachery”. She, possibly in connection with the rather large amount of heavy weaponry acquired by Georgia from Ukraine, has called for an inquiry into the arms trade carried by Ukrspetsexport. Meanwhile a recent poll shows that 61.2% of respondents would vote “no” in a referendum on NATO membership and 23.7% “yes”. Nonetheless Washington still pushes for NATO membership for Ukraine.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Ottawa, Canada

CORRUPTION. A poll this week suggests the size of the problem. About three-quarters of the respondents believe the corruption level in Russia to be “high” or “very high” and that there has been no improvement in the last year or only an insignificant amount. The only encouraging thing from Medvedev’s perspective is that 15% believe corruption in the federal government is high down from 20% in 2006. (The cynic would suggest that the decrease may be more a result of publicity than reality). The most corrupt elements were named by respondents as: traffic police (33%), local government (28%), police in general (26%), society on the whole (23%), medical sphere (16%), education sector (15%), federal government (15%) and judicial branch (15%), big business (13%), military commandant offices (8%), show business (6%), the armed forces (5%), the trade sector (4%), the media (3%), political parties (3%), and parliament (3%). A comprehensive list indeed.

WAR AFTERMATH. Sarkozy and Medvedev worked out a settlement. Sarkozy said he brought a letter “from President Saakashvili with [Georgia’s] commitment to not using force against Abkhazia and South Ossetia”. An EU observer force of at least 200 will patrol the “security zones” in Georgia proper and Russia will withdraw its forces from there (the pullout from western Georgia is already underway). The EU, Medvedev reported, has said that it will “assist in resolving the conflict, including by launching international mechanisms to maintain security around South Ossetia and Abkhazia”. Yesterday Medvedev signed treaties with South Ossetia and Abkhazia that will allow Russian troops to be based there: “We will not allow any new military adventure”, and there are plans to build a gas pipeline from Russia into South Ossetia. The peace settlements of the early 1990s are, of course, dead. Meanwhile Saakashvili continues to make ever wilder accusations: the most outrageous being that the Russians destroyed Tskhinvali. As to his current excuse that the Russians moved first, see JRL2008/170/21. Two accounts of the war: Georgian and Russian; they both provide indications, as I thought, that the Georgians were stopped by the Ossetians and, when the Russian got there, fled.

KHODORKOVSKIY. Lost in last month’s news was the fact that the local court rejected his request for parole.

ECONOMY ETC. Inflation seems to be coming down in the second half of the year as the government hoped: RosStat reports that the cost of the basic food basket declined 3.7% in Aug from Jul and, more recently, that inflation has been 10% since the beginning of the year. The Central Bank, however, expects the year-end rate to be 12%. But the financial crisis is hitting Russia hard with big losses on its stock exchanges; the government remains publicly confident and has just made large short-term loans to some banks. So, all bets are off.

ARCTIC. Turn up the hyperventilation index to eleven.

CARIBBEAN ADVENTURES. Russia will send some naval units, including the Petr Velikiy, to exercise with the Venezuelan Navy. A couple of long-range bombers visited recently. No doubt designed to irritate Washington. But all I can say is: does Moscow really think that Venezuela, Nicaragua and Belarus are very useful allies?

CAUCASIAN RUMOURS OF WARS. In the last two weeks, there have been several fights with “illegal armed groups”, as Moscow calls them, in Dagestan and Ingushetia. The situation is not getting quieter – especially in Ingushetia where the ill fruits of Putin’s decision to push Ruslan Aushev out of the presidency are being harvested.

OPPOSITION IN GEORGIA. Immediately upon the ending of martial law in Georgia on the 4th, the opposition began demanding Saakashvili’ departure. An open letter called for the launch of a public debate; Nino Burjanadze, and many in the opposition, refused to sign his “Charter of Georgian Politicians”; Kakha Kukava said the United Opposition will demand early elections: “We will not allow Saakashvili to continue living in a virtual world and people in a bitter reality”. Former Defence Minister Okruashvili, confirmed as a political refugee in France last week, confirmed there were long-standing invasion plans; said Saakashvili’s “days are numbered”; his party demanded Saakashvili’s immediate resignation as did several others. Even though the news media in Georgia is completely under the control of the government, this level of dissatisfaction cannot be hidden. (Something that got little coverage in the West was the shutdown of Georgia’s last independent TV station in November: last broadcast in Georgian, Russia Today coverage, interview with US manager). I do not see Saakashvili going willingly and the question will likely turn on whether his security apparatus will be as loyal to him as it was a year ago.

© Patrick Armstrong, Ottawa, Canada

GEORGIA. Moscow has announced that all troops introduced on and after the 8th are back in Russia. But the peacekeepers remain, at a strength it is said, of 500 in South Ossetia. They have set up checkpoints south of the South Ossetian border (as well as to the east of the Abkhazia border). Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in a statement yesterday, insisted that the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan has in it “written in black and white that, before international mechanisms are created, Russian peacekeepers must carry out additional security measures”. Moscow is clearly taking this to mean that its forces can set up check points on the edges of the demilitarised zones (Map for Abkhazia showing restricted weapons zone; for South Ossetia reference (II.A.3)to 14-km band on either side of the border). Thus, pending the arrival of patrollers from elsewhere (Moscow has just said it would welcome an international police presence in the security zone), Moscow argues that it is abiding by the ceasefire agreements of the early 1990s. (Here is Shevardnadze discussing the South Ossetia agreement and its necessity: “Gamsakhurdia decided to invade the region… the Georgians were not ready for war and they were defeated”).

REINFORCING FAILURE. The US Vice President has just doubled Washington’s bet on Saakashvili. I particularly enjoyed his statement: “After your nation won its freedom in the Rose Revolution”. Freedom from what? Shevardnadze in his time was hailed as a brave democrat too, and not that long ago either.

AFTERMATH. The Organisation of Residents of South Ossetia Against Genocide has filed more than 300 lawsuits with the International Court. This website lists the names of 311 South Ossetian citizens killed who have been identified so far. Meanwhile there are credible reports of Georgians being driven out of South Ossetia. The Chairman of Georgia’s parliamentary defence and national security committee has slightly revised the figure he gave a couple of weeks ago to 156 soldiers, 13 police and 69 civilians killed.

AGITPROP. Two films. South Ossetian point of view (“The Wounds of Tskhinvali” – 30 min Russian, English subtitles). Georgian TV “Russian Marauding in Poti” – 4min, Georgian, no subtitles).

RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY PRINCIPLES. On Sunday Medvedev outlined five points of Moscow’s foreign policy. Appeal to international law principles (ie the UN et al); opposition to unilateralism; no desire for isolation; protection of citizens and interests; there are parts of the world where Russian has special interests. All this should be familiar from years of repetition, but no one used to bother to listen. Now they do and, because it all seems new to them, they draw the wrong conclusions.

A REMINDER. On Thursday a Russian ICBM, said to have measures against ABM systems, was launched.

TNK-BP. The long struggle may be over – the principals signed an MOU today.

CHICKEN WARS. PM Putin has announced that 19 US firms will not be allowed to export to Russia; he claimed sanitary grounds saying that the 19 had ignored Russian remonstrations.

MAGOMED YEVLOYEV. Magomed Yevloyev, an opponent of President Zyazikov of Ingushetia. was killed while in police custody on Sunday. The police story is that he was accidentally shot while trying to seize a weapon. The federal Investigative Committee has opened an investigation into his death.

GAS WARS. The low price that Ukraine has been paying for gas since 2006 was the consequence of Turkmenistan’s willingness to sell cheap. But it, the source of about 60% of Ukraine’s gas, is no longer prepared to do so; this has been clear since at least October 2007 and the Achilles heel of the January 2006 deal was always the question of how long it was willing to subsidise Ukrainian customers. It all began to unravel when President Niyazov died about 18 months ago and Berdymukhammedov started slowly reversing his acts. This will, as usual, be painted as another piece of Russian imperialism.

UKRAINE. The two principals of the “Orange Revolution” are again at each other’s throats. Yesterday, saying that PM Tymoshenko was starting a “political and constitutional coup d’état”, President Yushchenko threatened to dissolve parliament and call new elections. Tymoshenko’s party scorned this as “adventuristic lies”. Meanwhile, Yanukovich, head of the largest single party in the parliament, must be smiling. A new poll shows 46% of Ukrainians expecting NATO accession to destabilise the country and only 30% disagreeing with that proposition. But what do Ukrainians know about their own interests?

© Patrick Armstrong, Ottawa, Canada

HYPOCRISY. There’s plenty of that to go around. NATO is taking its stance on the principle of territorial integrity – something that apparently didn’t apply in Kosovo – and Russia’s supposedly “disproportionate” response, despite NATO’s bombing of the Danube bridges in Novy Sad. For its part, Moscow is posing as a humanitarian hero – a quality in short supply in the Chechen wars, especially the first – and a defender of self-determination, ditto. So let us concentrate on the two salient facts, and ignore the posturing.

TWO FACTS. The first fact is that Ossetians do not want to be part of Georgia. And, apart from the Georgian Empire of the 1200s (and maybe not then either – note Alania on the map), Ossetia was only in the Georgian SSR because Stalin-Jughashvili, a Georgian, decided that it should be. There have been three wars since 1918 in which the Ossetians have made their feelings plain. The second fact is that South Ossetia trusts only Moscow, not NATO, the EU or the UN, for its protection. These are the central facts upon which any solution to this present mess must be based. The world made a mistake in recognising Georgia, and some other examples of Stalin’s cartographical jokes, without making the qualification that the secessionist problems had to be dealt with in a civilised fashion (as, for example, Kiev did with Crimea and Chisinau with the Gagauz; granting a sufficient degree of autonomy in each case).

RECOGNITION. After almost unanimous recommendations from the Federation Council and the Duma, Medvedev formally recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; here are the reasons he gave. Each is now pressing for Russian troops to be based in them. In my opinion, the recognition would have been better had it waited, but I don’t think Moscow cares any more: WTO membership is an ever-receding carrot; the Medvedev-Sarkozy agreement seems to have been changed somehow (discussion); relations with NATO have never amounted to anything real; and as far as much opinion in the West is concerned, Russia is at fault anyway.

CASUALTIES IN SOUTH OSSETIA. The South Ossetian Prosecutor General Teimuraz Khugayev is reported by Interfax to have stated: “As of August 28, 1,692 people were killed and 1,500 were wounded as a result of the Georgian aggression. An estimated 3,500 citizens have been recognized as victims: those are the people who have lost their relatives and homes”. Having watched a lot of film from Tskhinvali, I do not find the numbers unbelievable but there is a disparity between the killed and wounded (normally the latter figure is two to three times the first. But Tskhinvali’s hospital was badly damaged early on).

INTERNATIONAL MONITORS. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has announced that Moscow would like to see international monitors replace Russian troops in the parts of Georgia adjacent to Abkhazia and South Ossetia (EU and OSCE were mentioned) and Medvedev confirmed this today. This is consistent with the 6th point of the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan (if that still exists).

GEORGIAN OPPOSITION. Generally speaking, the opposition has rallied around the flag. But I do not expect this to last. An opposition leader, Koba Davitashvili, has called for a government of national unity saying: “all decisions on the governing of the state should be taken not by one person, but collectively”. Saakashvili does not take kindly to collective decisions, as Davitashvili, a former close ally, knows. Nino Burjanadze, another former ally of Saakashvili, said recently: “I’m afraid it will not be very easy for the government to answer all the questions”. Other opposition members are beginning to point the finger at Saakashvili. Something to watch.

MORE FROZEN CONFLICTS. Another of Stalin’s cartographical legacies is the territory on the east bank of the Dnepr; it was used as the nucleus of the Moldavian SSR pending the acquisition of the necessary territory from Romania in 1940. During the breakup of the USSR, when many in Moldova could only think that they should join Romania, the inhabitants of Transdnestr balked and a war began. The situation has been “frozen” since then and a tripartite peacekeeping force keeps the temperature down. Another Stalin decision to put people where they do not want to be is Karabakh in Azerbaijan. Again fighting broke out in the late 1980s and early 1990s and again the secessionists won. There is a ceasefire agreement which has held reasonably well but very little political movement. I believe that the inhabitants of Transdnestr can stomach being in Moldova with a reasonable degree of autonomy, but the inhabitants of Karabakh will never accept rule from Baku.

© Patrick Armstrong, Ottawa, Canada

WHAT MOSCOW SAYS. Moscow says that the Georgian retreat from South Ossetia became precipitous; the civil authorities, police and armed forces abandoned Gori. Russian reconnaissance elements (and it should be understood that the Russian Army, like many others, practises heavy recce – ie with tanks) found a base with many tanks, APCs and ammunition quite abandoned. The Russian command elected to “secure” this dump lest it fall into irresponsible hands. Moscow say that it is maintaining order in the power vacuum and suppressing looters. It says that something similar happened in many areas of Western Georgia where Russian forces are “securing” another dump in Senaki. There is a good deal of evidence from Western news agencies to support this. Readers are invited to check these links: not everything gets the emphasis it should. Retreat, power vacuum and looting, Western Georgia (note that reporter does not entertain the possibility that these are abandoned Georgian vehicles the Russians are driving: a similar mistake was made by the BBC in Gori), at least one jailbreak in Georgia, looters, some of whom are Georgians (go to 48sec). Moscow claims there is still occasional firing.

BUT/BUT. Moscow keeps saying that it has, or will soon, withdraw, but that never quite seems to happen: it has just been announced that troops will be pulled back “to the area of responsibility of the peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia” by the end of today; or will it be in ten days? Russian troops keep appearing in the port of Poti and elsewhere, something for which Moscow has given no reason, while Moscow announces there are no Russian troops outside of South Ossetia. There are reports of determined efforts to destroy Georgia military infrastructure. There are unmistakeable indications of triumphalism and hubris in Moscow; perhaps understandable but most unwise. Moscow is also playing a game in which the difference between “peacekeepers” and “servicemen” is blurred. Moscow also intends to increase the “security zone” around South Ossetia. As Shevardnadze said in an interview: the longer the Russians stay and the more they call for Saakashvili’s departure, the less likely it is that the Georgian population will turn on him.

CEASEFIRE. There have been innumerable reports of ceasefire violations which obscure the question of when exactly the agreement that Sarkozy and Medvedev negotiated on the 12th was signed in Tbilisi. I believed, from the reports I had seen, that Saakashvili signed it in Sarkozy’s presence that day but it now seems it was not signed by him until the 15th. So what happened here? And what precisely are the terms of the agreement?

LATEST ACCUSATION. Moscow today charges that the OSCE observers in South Ossetia knew about the Georgian attack but did not warn the Russian peacekeeper force. Moscow is already asserting that the Georgian peacekeepers opened fire on their Russian colleagues. When Ruslan Gelayev’s fighters were moved across Georgia with Tbilisi’s involvement to attack Abkhazia in October 2001, Moscow made similar charges that the OSCE observers had failed to report it.

REPORTING. Interfax claims to have been quoted more often than any other news source during the war. I followed its reporting and found it to be invariably first with the news and most accurate. (No passing off Tskhinvali as Gori, for example).

AFTERMATH. A Georgian parliamentarian has given the following casualty figures on the Georgian side: 133 soldiers and 69 civilians killed and nearly 1500 injured of whom 446 are in hospital. A Russian spokesman has announced army deaths of 64 and 323 wounded. Prisoner exchanges are now happening. Casualties in South Ossetia are still not known, but will likely prove to be significantly fewer than the thousands originally reported but many people are said to have been killed in collapsed buildings or quickly buried. (French report from Tskhinvali.) A rally in Tskhinvali has asked Moscow to recognise South Ossetia’s independence. Abkhazia has likewise asked for Moscow’s recognition.

RUSSIA INC. It is reported that capital flight out of Russia (said to have been $US7 billion) as a result of the war has stopped; that revenue from energy sales has probably peaked as of 2008; agricultural output is said to be up about 5% year-on-year. Putin says that the first half year’s economic numbers were “not bad” but affected by inflation. The question to be asked is: does Moscow care any more about the West’s opinion? It seems to be coming to believe that WTO membership is nothing but an ever-receding carrot.

BLOGS. I have terminated my association with russiablog.org and will now appear here.

© Patrick Armstrong, Ottawa, Canada

THE WAR. A few hours after President Saakashvili went on TV and promised autonomy to South Ossetia and that Russia could be its guarantor, Georgian MLRSs opened fire in Tskhinvali. Hundreds if not thousands of Ossetians were killed and wounded. Moscow came to their rescue. French President Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Kouchner (who actually went to talk to the refugees who had escaped into North Ossetia) swiftly negotiated a settlement with Medvedev and then induced (what is the mot just?) Saakashvili to sign it. The leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have just signed as well. The settlement exactly corresponds to what Moscow has said was its intention from the beginning: cessation of fire; withdrawal of Georgian forces from South Ossetia (and Russian from South Ossetia); a declaration by Tbilisi that it will not use force in the future; opening access for aid and the beginning of a serious international discussion of Georgia’s secessionist problems. The Medvedev-Sarkozy settlement has two important points in it that Moscow has been calling for for years: Tbilisi is to make a formal promise not to use force (now perhaps one can understand why Moscow was always calling for such a promise) and the world should start taking a closer and more balanced look at Georgia’s secessionist problems. The EU is taking the lead: Sarkozy’s fast initiative has got us to where we are today. Besides, Washington is seen by Moscow (and the Ossetians) as too complicit.

SAAKASHVILI. Long time readers will know that I have been warning about Saakashvili and his bellicose desires for years. An attack on South Ossetia in 2006 failed in defeat and so, as I have long predicted, did this one. Complete defeat: thousands of refugees in Georgia, the apparent collapse and precipitate withdrawal of the Georgian army and the local administration from Gori, the abandonment of weapons and ammunition in Gori and Senaki (which, in the power vacuum, the Russians are securing), Georgia’s credit rating is dropping. And a legacy of destruction in Tskhinvali which the Western press is just now starting to discover. In November thousands of people on the streets of Tbilisi demanded his ouster – I would not be the least surprised to see bigger crowds in a few days when the extent of this folly becomes apparent. If I may give some advice to my readers regarding Georgian politicians: take the effort to find out what they say when they think you’re not listening: it’s often very different. See this, by a Georgian as it happens, summarising his recent statements. Will he be President of Georgia in a week? From his first domestic-audience statements, I expected Gamsakhurdia redivivus – someone else hailed as a “democrat” by naïve Westerners – and so he has proved to be.

MEDIA COVERAGE. The Western news media covered itself with shame, relaying every report from Tbilisi without hesitation. Some balance has been restored – the BBC in particular is starting to report what its people actually see in Tskhinvali and Gori rather than passing on Tbilisi’s press releases. But the degree of inaccuracy and bias have been made plain to any objective viewer.

LARGER ISSUES. It is too early to speculate on NATO-Russia, Moscow-Washington or anything like that. The West – especially Washington, whose reaction has been especially ill-informed – has a severe learning curve in front of it and Sarkozy (and Kouchner) have begun the process. For 15 years the West has believed the secessionists in Georgia were something created out of whole cloth by Russia; since the “Rose Revolution” Saakashvili has been a darling in the West; for years Moscow’s warnings have been contemptuously dismissed.

SOUTH OSSETIA FUTURE STATUS. No one in South Ossetia will ever believe a Georgian politician again unless there is a complete change and admission of what they have done since 1991. This is the third time since 1991 Tbilisi has attacked and they still speak of the “genocide” of 1920. Too much history, too much blood. This is simple reality. Stalin made these maps: they are not fixed by God.

ABKHAZIA. Expecting to be next on the list, the Abkhazians have driven Georgian forces out of Kodori.

OTHER POSSIBLE SECESSIONS. Tbilisi has not been able to locate Emzar Kvitsiani in Svanetia; the people in Javakhetia are potentially restive; Ajaria may take advantage.

FURTHER READING. By me on the sequence of events, “Now comes the hangover” and this on the terrible situation in Gori yesterday (the Georgian police have apparently come back). This essay on the cost of the West’s ignorance is very informed or this which is more breathless and not entirely to my taste but has lots of links. Russia Today has, until very recently, given the only coverage of Tskhinvali and the refugees in North Ossetia.

© Patrick Armstrong, Ottawa, Canada