Gazprom eyes role in Iran-Pakistan pipeline

05-27-2009 - AFP - MOSCOW, Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom is keen to participate in a pipeline to carry Iranian gas to Pakistan, the Kommersant daily reported on Wednesday, citing company and government officials. "We are ready to join the project as soon as we receive an offer," Russia's deputy energy minister Anatoly Yankovsky told the daily. The paper quoted another top government official as saying Moscow sees the pipeline as a means to divert Iranian gas from competing with Russian exports on the European market. "This project is advantageous to Moscow since its realisation would carry Iranian gas toward South Asian markets so that in the near future it would not compete with Russian gas to Europe," Kommersant wrote. Russian exports satisfy over one quarter of Europe's gas needs, but the European Union has sought to lessen its dependence with the construction of the Nabucco pipeline to pump Caspian Sea gas to Europe which would bypass Russia. The multi-billion dollar Iran-Pakistan pipeline, which aims to pump an initial 11 billion cubic metres of Iranian gas per year to Pakistan, could deprive the Nabucco project of one possible source for gas supplies. Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupryanov confirmed the company's interest in the project, Kommersant reported. It cited an unnamed official in the company as saying Gazprom could serve as the pipeline operator or also participate in its construction. The start date for construction of the much-delayed pipeline is planned for september 2009 to be completed in June 2014, the paper reported. Iranian officials have said the supply of gas to Pakistan could begin in three to four years. The pipeline project, when initially mooted in 1994, had proposed to carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and India. But India withdrew last year from the talks over repeated disputes on prices and transit fees. The 900-kilometre (560-mile) pipeline is being built between Asalooyeh in southern Iran and Iranshahr near the border with Pakistan and will carry the gas from Iran's South Pars field. Iranian officials said Monday that the final contract would be signed in three weeks.

Medvedev Forms a Commission to Protect Russian History

May 21, 2009 - Eurasia Daily Monitor by Pavel Felgenhauer - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has recently made public comments about "the falsifiers of history," attacking the country and its heritage. This was a serious political statement of strategic importance - not merely a rhetorical proclamation, made just before the World War II Victory-Day military parade on May 9: "We will not allow anyone to undermine the sacrifice of our people" (EDM, May 13). Medvedev's statement was followed by the creation of a special presidential inter-departmental commission: "the commission to counteract against attempts to falsify history that undermine the interests of Russia." The presidential order to set up this "historic truth" commission was signed on May 15 and published on the Kremlin website on May 19 together with a list of its members (www.kremlin.ru, May 19). The state-controlled television (Rossiya TV, NTV, and First Channel) immediately lavished praise on "the timely move" to save Russian history from the "falsifiers" -namely the authorities in the Ukrainian, Georgian and Baltic republics. However, the more independent press was much more critical, pointing out that in the 28-member commission there are only three professional historians, and even these are not independent researchers, but government-appointed directors of two official historical research institutions and the chief of the official Russian government archive. Instead of appointing independent historians, the commission has been filled with high-ranking bureaucrats as well as a number of pro-Kremlin spin-doctors and nationalistic lawmakers. Two commission members - Sergey Markov and Konstantin Zatulin - have been banned from entering Ukraine for allegedly promoting the transfer of Crimea to Russia. Zatulin has been accused of being one of the organizers of the mass distribution of Russian passports in Abkhazia and South Ossetia that was used as a justification of the Russian invasion last August. Fear has been expressed that the commission may punish liberal historians or dissidents (Kommersant, Vedomosti, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 20). "There are only three historians there, and even they are not recognized among professionals," prominent historian Roy Medvedev told Kommersant. "I am afraid that the commission will be used for witch-hunts and the settling of scores," the military historian Alexei Isayev commented to Kommersant. "If we are going back to those [Soviet] years, then hopes for Medvedev the liberal, in whose name the commission is being established, are somewhat unjustified," Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow, warned in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. These fears, though justified and genuine, might be somewhat misplaced. The Russian authorities already possess sufficient legal power under the existing "anti-terrorist" and "anti-extremist" laws to punish dissidents. In addition, the Duma is reported to be rushing through amendments to the Penal Code to make the "falsification of history" a criminal offense. The first reading of the anti-falsification law is planned for June 3 (Vedomosti, May 20). However, as a body the new "historic truth" commission per se appears to be too powerful and administratively weighted to be exclusively or primarily aimed at silencing the few independent researchers, dissidents and writers in contemporary Russia. The overall composition of the "historic truth" commission follows the pattern of other commissions that formulate Russian foreign, defense and national-security policies by establishing an inter-departmental consensus -which is the foundation of Russian executive decision-making. The actual composition of such commissions always includes prominent representatives of departments and ministries concerned about particular issues, which might prove an indicator as to any sanction they recommend. The chairman of the newly established "historic truth" commission is the chief of Medvedev's administration Sergei Naryshkin, a well-known loyal supporter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. A number of other prominent presidential administration figures are members of the commission. The justice and culture ministers are represented by deputies as well as the chiefs of the government departments of education, science and the mass media. Deputy Chiefs also represent the foreign ministry and the security council. The intelligence community is represented by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). The commission member from the armed forces is the top Russian military commander, the Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defense Minister, Army-General Nikolai Makarov. The official task of the commission is to "analyze information about the falsification of historic facts aimed against Russia," to prepare "recommendations on adequate reactions to falsifications that hinder Russian interests and to neutralize their possible negative consequences" (www.kremlin.ru, May 19). The language is clearly aimed not at dissidents, but at Russia's neighboring states and the presence of such prominent figures as the chief of administration and the Chief of the General Staff might indicate that military action such as the war last August against Georgia is not excluded. The Georgian authorities are not attempting to rehabilitate any Nazi collaborators. However, Rossiya TV on May 19 accused them of falsifying history by assuming that Georgia was annexed by imperial Russia. According to Moscow, the Georgians gladly volunteered to join the Russian empire. After the commission makes its recommendations and adequate action is taken to "neutralize," dissidents, the Georgians, Ukrainians and others might face additional pressure to submit to the Kremlin's views.

Discontent Rises Sharply Among Russian Troops

May 26, 2009 - Washington Post by Philip P. Pan - USSURIYSK, Russia - As a young officer fresh out of a Soviet military academy, Alexander Primak was assigned to serve in this frontier city in the Russian Far East, eight time zones away from his home town in Ukraine. He spent the next quarter-century in the region, moving from garrison to garrison, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. But he always dreamed of moving back west, counting on the government's promise to reward officers with apartments upon retirement. Now, as the Russian government pushes ahead with an overhaul of the military that eliminates the positions of more than half the army's officers, Primak is jobless at age 46 and stuck in Ussuriysk waiting for an apartment he may never get. "They're finding any excuse not to keep their promises," the gray-haired colonel said coolly, maintaining ramrod posture as he sighed over a plastic cup of coffee in a roadside eatery. "When we were young, we put the motherland first. We were ready to tolerate discomfort and wait for something better. . . . Of course I'm disappointed." Low morale over pay and housing has afflicted the Russian military since the fall of the Soviet Union, but grumbling in the ranks is rising sharply as President Dmitry Medvedev attempts to carry out the most ambitious restructuring of the nation's armed forces since World War II in the face of a severe economic downturn. The plan seeks to transform an impoverished, unwieldy conscript army built to fight a protracted war in Europe into a more nimble, battle-ready force that can respond quickly to regional conflicts. Key to the overhaul is a drastic reduction in the number of officers, who now account for nearly one in three Russian servicemen. By eliminating thousands of officer-only units that were designed to call up draftees in wartime, and moving to a leaner, brigade-based structure, Medvedev intends to cut Russia's officer corps from 355,000 to 150,000, dismissing more than 200 generals, 15,000 colonels and 70,000 majors. The plan has run into stiff resistance, with some top military officials resigning in protest and the Kremlin firing others. Retired generals and nationalist politicians have accused Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of scaling back Russia's military ambitions by essentially giving up on trying to maintain an army capable of confronting NATO. Officers and troops have staged scattered demonstrations across the country against the reform plan, which would also shut dozens of military hospitals, schools and research institutes. A top complaint is the government's failure to provide apartments to all officers who are discharged after more than a decade of service -- a benefit that dates to the Soviet era and is written into Russian law. The apartments are important because military pay has lagged far behind the cost of living and few officers have enough savings to buy homes. But the army has suffered a severe housing shortage since the fall of the Soviet Union, when a wave of servicemen in need of lodging returned to Russia. The military's construction efforts have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency, and hundreds of thousands of active-duty officers as well as retirees are on waiting lists for accommodations. "Our military organization, our fleet, has cheated me with housing," said Vyacheslav Zaytsev, a former submarine officer who was interviewed on television during a protest in the arctic city of Murmansk. "A homeless officer is a shame for a nation," read one demonstrator's sign. Here in the coastal province of Primorye, tucked between China, North Korea and the Sea of Japan, as many as 8,000 officers are expected to be discharged in the restructuring, local activists said. "In our region, over 3,000 officers will be fired from the navy alone. . . . Where will these people go? How will they live?" said Boris Prikhodko, a retired vice admiral, before a protest last month in nearby Vladivostok, the provincial capital and headquarters of the Pacific Fleet. Under the law, retiring officers can request apartments anywhere in Russia or ask to keep the quarters assigned to them by the military. But in practice, most who have been sent to the Far East have little chance of getting housing anywhere else when they are discharged. When Primak became eligible for retirement, for example, he asked for an apartment in Kursk, a city near the border with Ukraine, where his parents still live. But he was released without being given any apartment. "I realized then that in Russia there are laws that are enforced, and other laws that are maybe for the future," he said. "What they say on television and do in reality are completely different." He and other officers in this city of 150,000 say local authorities have fallen behind in housing construction and have begun using loopholes to discharge officers without giving them apartments. Some have been given certificates that aren't worth enough to buy adequate homes. Others have been relieved of duty but formally remain registered with their units with minimal pay so commanders can keep them on waiting lists. The worst off are officers stationed in the scores of military garrisons scattered across the countryside here, isolated outposts that have fallen into severe disrepair and are set to be closed as part of the shift to a brigade structure. Many of these officers have been told to just keep their current quarters, which often lack running water. "These poor guys have to stay the rest of their lives in these ruined garrisons, without even minimal sanitation conditions," said Vladimir Kaplyuk, a retired colonel who heads an aid organization for veterans in Ussuriysk. "But after the units are shut down, there won't be anything left but these officers there. No troops, no jobs, nothing." Technically, Kaplyuk said, the officers will be on waiting lists for housing. "But for how long?" he said. "Some officers here have been waiting 12 years already." One 48-year-old lieutenant colonel assigned to a garrison near the Chinese border said he was offered a certificate that would have allowed him to buy only a tiny studio apartment on the outskirts of Ussuriysk or a rural house without a sewer system or running water. When he refused to take it, he was discharged without an apartment and had to sue his commanders to get reinstated. "I felt like they seized me by the scruff of my neck and threw me away as if I was something useless," said the colonel, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who asked to be identified only by his first name, Viktor, because he feared reprisals. "I'm upset with everyone -- the state, the commanders -- and there are many people like me facing similar problems." Officers said it would be difficult for them to unite and pose a serious challenge because they are forbidden from engaging in political activities. They said local authorities have been effective at containing dissent, recently quashing an attempt by discharged officers to stage a protest and arranging for them to gather in a room outside the city instead. The Kremlin has also pledged to upgrade equipment and weapons and to sharply increase wages for the officers who are not dismissed -- promises that have helped it win support in the military for the reform plan, analysts said. But most of the planned cuts and dismissals have yet to be completed, and discontent could rise further if the economy worsens, they said. Alexander Ovechkin, 50, a lieutenant colonel in Ussuriysk who retired without receiving an apartment, said officers are frustrated in part because Medvedev and Putin have raised expectations, repeatedly pledging to build enough housing for all discharged and active-duty officers by next year. "You can feel the social tension and uncertainty," he said. "They have promised a lot. . . . I'd like to believe it, but my experience is too sad."

Medvedev Creates History Commission

MAY 21, 2009 - Wall Street Journal by Andrew Osborn - MOSCOW—President Dmitry Medvedev has created a special commission to counter what he says are increasingly aggressive attempts to rewrite history to Russia's disadvantage. Supporters said the commission is needed to tackle anti-Russian propaganda in the former Soviet Union, an area Moscow regards as its backyard, but liberal historians called the initiative a return to Soviet-era controls. In a signal that the Kremlin is continuing its assertive foreign policy despite Russia's weakening economy, Mr. Medvedev, in a decree made public Tuesday, ordered the commission to investigate and counter falsified versions of history that damage Russia's "international prestige." Mr. Medvedev empowered the commission—comprising senior military, government and intelligence officials—to launch inquiries, unearth historical documents, and call government and expert witnesses, as well as formulate possible policy responses for the president to consider. The ruling United Russia party also has proposed a draft law that would mandate jail terms of three to five years for anyone in the former Soviet Union convicted of rehabilitating Nazism. Analysts say they expect it to become law, though it will only be enforceable in Russia. First under Mr. Putin, who is now prime minister, and now under Mr. Medvedev, the Kremlin has sought to boost patriotic sentiment and its own popularity by tapping nostalgia for Soviet wartime achievements. But while the Kremlin encourages Russians to celebrate the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazism, politicians in several former Soviet republics denounce the Red Army as occupiers who brought their countries decades of totalitarianism. Russia in turn has accused those countries, including Estonia and Latvia, of rehabilitating Nazism, highlighting, for example, that some Estonians and Latvians fought alongside the Nazis. In Ukraine, attempts to classify a Stalin-era famine as ethnically targeted genocide have angered Russia. The Kremlin says ethnic Russians too died of hunger during the same period in other parts of the U.S.S.R., and that the Ukrainian initiative is a ploy to stir anti-Russian sentiment. Polish attempts to delve into a massacre of Polish officers at the hands of Soviet secret police during World War II have also rankled. Russian authorities have refused to disclose information about the killings from their archives or to initiate a new investigation. Estonia's decision to relocate a monument to the Red Army away from the center of its capital, Tallinn, is another source of tension. The Kremlin also has accused Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia of honoring those who fought alongside the Nazis by allowing them to hold public commemorations. Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker and member of the new commission, said the new body wouldn't throw people in jail or blacklist historians whose analyses it disagrees with. Its priority, he said, was to challenge what he said were distorted interpretations of the Soviet Union's role in World War II. "There's an information war going on," he said. "This is about defining who the Russians were historically." The new commission will ensure the Russian view prevails, said Mr. Markov. He said grants would be given to pro-Russian historians in other countries to ensure their voices were heard. "We have to choose which history textbooks are telling the truth and which are lying," he said. Inside Russia, the Kremlin has already mandated certain textbooks for all Russian schoolchildren. Critics say the new books go easy on Stalin and justify Mr. Putin's political model of "sovereign democracy." Liberal historians said the commission initiative undermines Kremlin claims that Mr. Medvedev is less hard-line than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. "One year ago Mr. Medvedev said he preferred freedom to non-freedom," said Alexander Cherkasov of human-rights group Memorial. "Initiatives of this sort have never led to greater freedom." Mr. Cherkasov compared the commission to Soviet-era bodies that had tried to establish a monopoly on various scientific and ideological truths. Earlier this month, shortly before Russia marked the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade on Red Square, Mr. Medvedev said attempts to falsify history had become intolerable. "Such attempts are becoming more hostile, more evil, and more aggressive," he said in his online video blog. "We must fight for the historical truth." Historian and author Orlando Figes, a professor at the University of London, says the new commission is part of a clampdown on historical scholarship. "They're idiots if they think they can change the discussion of Soviet history internationally," Prof. Figes said. "But they can make it hard for Russian historians to teach and publish. It's like we're back to the old days."

Anti-Graft Measure Fails to Impress the Public

04 May 2009 - The Moscow Times by Anna Malpas - When senior officials declared their incomes and those of their wives and children last month, some claimed that they owned tiny apartments and ancient cars -- while others said they earned as much as $11 million and owned snazzy Porsches and Lexuses. Ordinary Russians merely shrugged; they expected nothing less. "The declarations didn't make any real impact," said Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, a think tank. "There's no challenge to society. The public didn't expect anything different." But President Dmitry Medvedev did succeed in ruffling feathers by forcing top officials to reveal their incomes as part of an anti-corruption drive, a flagship program of his administration. Many mid-level bureaucrats have good reason to worry; they will be next, analysts said. Officials had to include property and earnings by their wives and underage children for the first time in their income declarations. Several officials claimed to own no cars, or only a 10-year-old car, like Medvedev's wife, Svetlana, who is often photographed in designer outfits. Several officials said they owned no property at all, like Vladislav Surkov, the powerful first deputy head of the presidential administration. On the other hand, some officials declared extreme wealth, such as Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev, who put his earnings at about 370 million rubles ($11 million) and listed among his property a Porsche Cayenne and a Porsche 911. The staff at the Prosecutor General's Office also published their declarations, revealing that Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, could vacation in the Czech Republic in an apartment owned by his wife. This inflamed United Russia Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, who told Kommersant that it was "nonsense" for a senior official's family to own property in a NATO country. Bastrykin also declared earnings of 5,255,800 rubles ($156,702), more than Medvedev (4.13 million rubles, or $123,900) or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (4.6 million rubles, or $138,350). Opinion polls on the declarations have shown mixed results. A VTsIOM poll found that 31 percent of Russians rated the idea of the declarations as an "excellent, long-overdue anti-corruption measure." Meanwhile, an informal poll conducted on the web site of Vedomosti asked if the publication of the declarations was an effective anti-corruption measure. Eighty percent of respondents said "no." "The average Russian understands very well that a bureaucrat can't be poor," said Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information. "Medvedev practically took no risk" in requiring the declarations. "There was never going to be any public outrage. That would be nonsensical." Public interest in the declarations is rather selective, Mukhin said. People were interested to read about Medvedev and Putin but felt "indifference" to the rest. They would rather see oligarchs' earnings, he said. Medvedev, however, is thinking beyond immediate popularity, said Tatyana Stanovaya, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies. "This is a personal, historic project of Medvedev that is not linked to short-time aims of raising public faith in officials right now," she said, pointing to a speech that Medvedev gave to a group of human rights activists late last month. Medvedev told the activists that many people had told him not to get involved in fighting corruption, saying, "Why bother, because you won't solve it quickly all the same?" The president also described his anti-corruption campaign so far as "modest steps." "Medvedev is thinking like a lawyer," Stanovaya said. "It's the beginning of a very long journey." Medvedev was unable to push through legislation forcing lower-ranking officials to declare their families' income and property this year. Instead, State Duma deputies postponed those declarations to 2010. Deputies "turned the bill into a damp squib," Mukhin said. "Medvedev was clearly not happy." "There's a standoff between the bureaucracy and what the president wants," Kabanov said. Things promise to get interesting next year when the legislation takes effect for lower-level bureaucrats, Mukhin said. The declarations will be used to remove the "most-hated figures" and the "unjustifiably rich" from among lower-ranking officials, he said. "Bureaucrats are about to have a mass inventory." The legislation, however, lacks a clear explanation of who should check the declarations and concrete punishments for providing false information. It would be more effective for officials to declare not only income but their families' business interests as well, said Vladimir Yuzhakov, an analyst at the Center for Strategic Research. "It often happens that an official makes decisions on an enterprise where he has shares or his wife is on the board," he said. The recently released declarations are a source of some real information, but they need to be taken with a pinch of salt, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who tracks Kremlin politics and recently joined United Russia. "In fact, their earnings are more," she said. She said the high earnings or property attributed to wives and children raise red flags about possible corruption. Nevertheless, there are numerous ways that officials gain material benefits without having to declare them. Many officials drive cars that belong to their organizations or register their chauffeurs as owners of their cars, Mukhin said. Officials enjoy perks ranging from free vacations at state resorts to the free use of state apartments that they can privatize after only one year, Stanovaya said. "There should be monetization of officials' privileges," she said.