Russia Profile Weekly Expert’s Panel

Patrick Armstrong, retired Russian Affairs Analyst for the Canadian Government, Ottawa:

Saakashvili seems to have completely lost his credibility among most of his Western supporters, who uncritically bought the line that Russia – in his own words – wanted to extinguish the shining city with tanks. This is best illustrated by the derision with which his claims that the Russians tried to assassinate him the other day have been received: even a Georgian news outlet showed lightly veiled disbelief. His versions of the reasons for the attack on South Ossetia are fading quickly, as he invents ever earlier Russian movements. The inquiry in Tbilisi on the causes of the war is falling apart – the testimony of Georgia’s former ambassador to Russia is particularly devastating.

In that respect, Moscow has been vindicated: its story, which has not changed, is holding up, while Saakashvili’s is collapsing. Even the U.S. State Department is trying to change the subject: “I think we need to get away from looking at, you know, who did what first, because as I said, I don’t think we’ll ever really get to the bottom of that,” said Robert Wood, a deputy spokesman of the Department of State, at a news briefing on November 7. “Who did what first” was very important indeed to the State Department a month or two ago.

“Have Russian media strategies proven more successful than those of Georgia?” I would say that it wasn’t clever “media strategies” that triumphed, it was the simple truth. Tbilisi’s attack on the sleeping inhabitants of Tskhinvali is too recent and too well attested to be forgotten: this is not something that slowly came to light as, for example, did the truth of Moscow’s allegations about the Pankisi Gorge; we can, in fact, “get to the bottom of that.” But it has nothing to do with Moscow’s rather poor skills of news management – despite fantasies in official Tbilisi which intimate that the OSCE observers were bought or suborned. Tbilisi had been preparing an invasion for some time, it lied about the sequence of events, and there is evidence to prove it and people who are angry enough to want to do so.

The West is still absorbing the fact that “Saakashvili lied 100 percent to all of us, the Europeans and the Americans.” The process will be slow and it will take time for Western governments to absorb this reality. Paris – perhaps because it has access to Salome Zurabishvili and Irakli Okruashvili, both former Saakashvili cabinet ministers now in opposition to him – understood the reality sooner than others. Perhaps people will start to learn that while, like most governments, Moscow lies some of the time, it does not lie all of the time.

My suspicion is that there will be a quiet replacement of Saakashvili by someone who is, how shall we put it, less volatile, but the real question will then be: will the West take a more realistic and fact-based view of Georgia and its problems with its large neighbor after he is gone?

The West has been gulled for years by Tbilisi. One can only hope that this latest Georgian catastrophe brought on by chauvinism and violence will finally destroy the Panglossian view of Georgia as a “shining city” menaced by Moscow.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 27 November 2008

On November 27, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

TERM LIMITS. The Duma has approved the Constitutional amendments on term increases for itself and the President. When two-thirds of the regional legislatures approve (and not much doubt that they will) the new rules will take effect at the next election cycle. A reminder, for those who are still obsessed with the idea that Putin wants to be President forever, of how easy it would have been for Putin to have abolished or modified Art 81.3 had he wanted to.

POLITKOVSKAYA TRIAL. After much back and forth, the trial re-opened yesterday. The prosecution’s attempt to remove the judge has failed and the trial is open now to reporters and they are reporting.

DEMOGRAPHICS. More signs of an improvement: RosStat says the Russian population decreased by 116,600 to 141.9 million in the first 9 months of the year; last year’s equivalent decrease being 199,900. Births are up to 1.27 million from 1.18 million. Deaths are up slightly to 1.57 million from 1.56 million. Too early to make long-term conclusions, but the various programs are evidently having an effect. Not unconnected with the death rate is the Interior Minister’s statement that Russia has the highest rate of traffic accident mortality in Europe.

CORRUPTION. An Interior Ministry official tells us that, so far this year, police in Russia have committed over 60,000 violations and more than 3000 crimes. Public surveys typically rank police near the top of corrupt institutions.

UNITED RUSSIA CONGRESS. The ruling party held its annual meeting last week. Putin’s address concentrated on the financial crisis and his confidence that Russia would weather it. (For what it’s worth, the Finance Minister says banks’ liquidity has improved and they are lending more to the real sector). Putin also spoke of the social programs designed to reduce poverty and improve mortality numbers. These seem to be his current priorities.

SUBMARINE ACCIDENT. A sailor from the SSN Nerpa has been charged with negligence in connection with the fatal accident on the 8th.

UKRAINIAN ARMS SUPPLIES. Georgia received a lot of offensive weapons from Ukraine and the issue is causing a slow-burning scandal there. A summary of the situation can be found at JRL/2008/213/29. Certainly, it is hard to imagine how Georgia could have paid for what it received (or from the Czech Republic where, to my knowledge, there has been silence). So who did?

GEORGIA. On the 23rd Saakashvili claimed that shots were fired at him and Polish President Kaczynski near the border with South Ossetia. This report was picked up by a few Western news outlets but seems to have been generally treated with the derision it deserved and it is now reported that the Polish security forces are calling it a “Georgian provocation”. He has lost his credibility: the Civil Georgia report of the incident is remarkable for its lightly veiled disbelief. Meanwhile, Nino Burjanadze seems to be playing a careful game; keeping away from street demonstrations, she has created a new opposition party and described its immediate program: “We must get elections held and a new democratic leadership brought to power in a constitutional way”. Saakashvili has said he will not run again: do we see the shape of a palace coup developing? The Georgia parliamentary commission on the war is starting to run out of control. The testimony of the Georgian Ambassador to Russia has been especially devastating to Saakashvili’s version of events and his claims of endless Russian hostility. He stated there was a plan to attack Abkhazia in May that was called off (in late July Moscow sent some aircraft over Georgia that it thought, wrongly as it turned out, “dampened the zeal of hotheads in Tbilisi”). He also reported that “our leadership was saying that they had US support to carry out the military operation”. Personally, while I do not believe that Washington actually approved the invasion, I do regard it as culpable for not recognising what sort of person Saakashvili really is: in dealing with “hotheads” or “volatile” people, diplomatic language is rarely blunt enough. Tbilisi certainly thought it had Washington’s approval and it is understandable that it would: the training, the courtship, the rhetorical support. And all those weapons that flowed in while Washington said nothing.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 20 November 2008

On November 20, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

POLITKOVSKAYA TRIAL. Indictments were handed down and, having first agreed to have the trial open, the judge closed it at the request of the jury. Given that the prosecution’s contention is that she was murdered in a mob hit, that both the actual killer and the boss who ordered it are in Europe and that the plot was assisted by members of the security forces, I can’t blame them for feeling insecure. However, one juror, who has resigned, said the jury only objected to live video and TV. The trial has been recessed until 1 December.

RUSSIA’S PROSPECTS. The World Bank has produced a report. The prognosis is not so bad: growth this year is estimated at 6% but will fall to 3% next year (which, the way things are going, may make Russia a star); inflation will remain in the 12%-14% range. As it says, the impact of the global crisis in Russia is cushioned by its large cash reserves and “prudent fiscal policy”.

BALANCE SHEET. The Duma heard reports on Russia’s reserves. The Reserve Fund is US$131.26 billion ($129.32 billion in June) and the National Welfare Fund US$61.16 billion ($32.60 billion in June). Some money is invested outside Russia; the Central Bank reduced its investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds from US$65.6 billion to US$20.9 billion over the year (everybody thought they were solid investments it seems!). The Bank has spent $57.5 billion between September and October supporting the ruble exchange rate. So, still money in the kitty although it is being spent and energy prices mean it is not arriving at the old rate.

DEMOGRAPHICS. The Health Ministry reported the highest birthrate in 16 years: up 100,000 in the first 9 months to 1.2 million. Reasons were a combination of the encouragement program and better medical care.

NEW PARTY. SPS, Civil Force and the Democratic Party have disbanded and re-formed as Pravoye Delo.

FIRST FRUITS? The Ingushetia Supreme Court has overturned the “accidental death” ruling in the case of Magomed Yevloyev and ordered a new investigation. New President, new telephone? Or shutting off the old?

PIRACY. A Russian warship, Neustrashimyy, is escorting ships in the Horn of Africa and claims to have prevented the seizure of a Saudi Arabian ship on Sunday. An issue that offers the possibility of real international cooperation and there have been meetings between French and Russian sea officers in the area.

OSCE. The former OSCE official, Ryan Grist, insists that the observers in Tskhinvali warned Vienna of Georgian preparations to attack saying it was an “absolute failure” that the warnings were not passed on. Not for the first time I wonder what they do in the OSCE headquarters. (See Ruslan Gelayev’s attack on Abkhazia in 2001 right under the noses of observers).

EU-US. I have long suspected that a fallout of the war will be a rift between the EU and Washington. Sarkozy is quoted as saying that Washington did not want him to go to Moscow in the first place. I remain stunned, given the resources it is supposed to have, by how ill-informed the White House was (I prefer that to the other possibility). When Daniel Fried testifies “the Georgians told us” as his source for key events, all I can say is !!!.

SOUTH CAUCASUS SECURITY. The Geneva meeting on Tuesday produced some progress and delegations from South Ossetia and Abkhazia attended. Given that the root cause of the situation is their refusal to be part of Georgia, nothing can be decided without their presence. Meanwhile Moscow says its bases in Abkhazia (Gudauta) and South Ossetia (Java) are fully manned with 3700 troops each.

GAS WARS. Ukraine is – again – behind in payments. Will we have another orgy of “Russian gas weapon” stories? Or will the West, having been so readily manipulated in the Ossetian war, have learned scepticism? Why shouldn’t Ukraine, and the others, pay the going rate?

UKRAINE AND NATO. Another poll in Ukraine in which 45.6% of respondents say NATO membership would be destabilising. I cannot think of any issue better calculated to split Ukraine than NATO membership – so much so that one wonders whether Washington wants to break up the country.

CAUCASIAN RUMOURS OF WARS. More events. In Ingushetia attacks on military convoys on the 13th and 18th and a bomb on the 16th ; in Dagestan 4 jihadists were killed on the 17th and there was an assassination attempt on a cleric on the 18th.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 13 November 2008

On November 13, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

POLITICAL CHANGES. Medvedev has sent his first changes in the political system to the Duma. He wants the President’s term to be 6 and the Duma’s to be 5 years. It appears, from what the Speaker said, that the Federation Council will return to being elective (the method of choosing “senators” has gone through several iterations). In his speech Medvedev also spoke of loosening the (in my opinion) over-strict requirements for parties to qualify for Duma elections. Naturally the Western press is fitting this and that into their preconceptions. Especially worthless was this piece. Let it be repeated again: if Putin had wanted to stay on as President, he could have. He had the power and the popularity to have the Constitution amended; there was no need for some later elaborate scheme. But logic should never get in the way of the anti-Russia meme.

MILITARY REFORM. We move another (long-awaited) step; at least in planning. The Soviet Army was structured to fight a very big war with the basic building blocks being divisions organised into armies and fronts. The actual decisions were made at front level (as they had been in the Second World War). The formations were designed to be filled out by conscription. Thus an army of many divisions, many officers, much weaponry, huge reserves but fully manned only in front-line formations. This is obsolete today, and has been for some time. For several years there has been an intention to move towards brigades (in Commonwealth military terms: “brigade groups”) and a number of steps have been taken in this direction. Eight years ago Putin called for “a smaller, better-equipped, technically perfect army” but there is a powerful vested interest for the old way in the Russian Armed Forces, especially in a context where so many in the West are doing their best to create a new cold war. These interests have fought hard: they have been losing, but they have dragged the process out for many years. The latest plans to restructure formations have been announced: starting next year and finishing in 2012, all divisions will be disbanded (23) and be replaced by 12 brigade groups. In the process the Armed Forces will shrink by 270,000 soldiers and officers (160,000 of them!). The program is quite correct: Russia’s real threats require smaller and more flexible formations that can operate independently but we will see if the reform succeeds this time.

MISSILES. Foreign Minister Lavrov has made it clear that the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad would only take place if Washington were to emplace its missiles.

SUBMARINE. On the 8th there was an accident in the Russian SSN Nerpa in the Sea of Japan while on sea trials. Apparently the Freon fire suppressant system was accidentally triggered and 20 people, most of them civilian workers, suffocated. The boat is said to be undamaged and will be taken into Russian Navy service (and not leased to India as some reports have it).

OLD STORIES NEVER DIE. The US Defense Secretary congratulated Estonia with beating off mass-scale Russian cyber attacks. The Moscow cyber attack story is rubbish – read this: “These were simply hackers whose fathers and grandfathers had made huge sacrifices for Russia during World War II.”

CHECHNYA. It has been announced that the Vostok and Zapad battalions will be disbanded and re-constituted as companies in an MR division in Chechnya. The Russian Prosecution Service has ordered the Chechen Interior Ministry to bring former Vostok commander Sulim Yamadayev to interrogators by force. This could lead to trouble: this photo of a captured Georgian BMP shows a certain loyalty to Yamadayev in the Vostok battalion; he created it.

GEORGIA. The opposition held a one-day protest in Tbilisi attracting several thousand people; one notable slogan was “Stop Russia-Stop Misha!”. It passed off without incident. The opposition has developed a plan to hold protests with the goal of holding parliamentary and presidential elections in the spring. Saakashvili’s version of the start of the war is collapsing rapidly with testimony from OSCE observers and the like. I am amused that a US State Department spokesman was quoted as saying: “We may or may never get to the bottom of who was actually responsible for what went on there”, which is quite a change from the earlier line. Actually, it’s not such a mystery as all that. See this.

Saakashvili’s story is sinking fast

On November 12, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, SOUTH CAUCASUS

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2008/11/saakashvilis-st.html

Moscow’s version of events in the recent Ossetia war has not varied. It says that Georgia attacked on the night of 7 August and that Russian troops did not arrive until the next day. It is clear, furthermore, that they did not appear in South Ossetia in strength until at least 24 hours after the first Georgian shots were fired.

Saakashvili’s story, on the other hand, has changed several times. On the 7th, a few hours before his forces opened fire, he made a speech on TV in which he said he had ordered a ceasefire adding “And I am offering the Russian Federation to be a guarantor of the South Ossetian autonomy within Georgia… I offer a very important role to Russia in resolving this conflict… Georgia is a natural ally for Russia… We need a real mediator.” The next day, when he believed victory was at hand, he made another speech. A Georgian source reported him saying that Georgian forces now controlled “most of South Ossetia” and that “A large part of Tskhinvali is now liberated and fighting is ongoing in the centre of Tskhinvali”. In this he made two assertions to justify the attack: first that “South Ossetian militias responded to his peace initiative on August 7 by shelling Georgian villages” and second that “Georgia had come under aerial attack from Russian warplanes”. No mention of Russian troops entering South Ossetia then.

Of course, his victory announcement was premature and a few days later, he needed a bigger justification for the catastrophe. It was then that he started claiming that the Russians moved first. “‘I am sickened by the speculation that Georgia started anything,’ Mr Saakashvili told a conference call with journalists days later on August 13. ‘We clearly responded to the Russians . . . The point here is that around 11 o’clock, Russian tanks started to move into Georgian territory, 150 at first. And that was a clear-cut invasion. That was the moment when we started to open fire with artillery, because otherwise they would have crossed the bridge and moved into Tskhinvali.’”

Then the story changed again: on 23 September in a piece he wrote in the Washington Post, he claimed that “Russia then started its land invasion in the early hours of Aug. 7, after days of heavy shelling that killed civilians and Georgian peacekeepers.” He expected his readership to believe that the Russians had had an 18-hour head start on a 60-kilometre race and that Georgia had invaded anyway. Too preposterous and it seems to have been quietly forgotten.

Saakashvili’s stories are collapsing one after the other: the first story about a response to heavy Ossetian shelling is directly contradicted by two former British officers who were part of the OSCE team in the area: they report “Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds” and deny that there was the shelling of Georgia villages that Saakashvili claimed on the 8th.

The second story of the Russians entering South Ossetia just before – “supported” with the laughable claim of an intercepted telephone call which was mysteriously “lost” for several weeks – collapses in the BBC program of a couple of weeks ago (Part 1, Part 2). Americans were finally introduced to the accurate version in the New York Times nearly three months after the war began.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 6 November 2008

On November 6, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

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.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 30 October 2008

On October 30, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

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.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 16 October 2008

On October 16, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

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.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 2 October 2008

On October 2, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

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.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP 25 September 2008

On September 25, 2008January 26, 2016 By Patrick ArmstrongIn RF SITREP

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.

Russia Observer

Has Russia Been Vindicated? (Ossetia War)