WORLD ENERGY

Where Did Kilo, Mega, Giga and All Those Other Prefixes Come From?

2009-07-02T08:50:00.003-07:00

They have entered our language. Everyone uses them. The terms, particularly with "byte", are almost commonplace. Kilobyte, Megabyte and Gigabyte are part of our lexicon.

But do you know where they came from?

First, let's show the terms:

Kilo	1000¹	10³	1,000
Mega	1000²	10⁶	1,000,000
Giga	1000³	10⁹	1,000,000,000
Tera	1000⁴	10¹²	1,000,000,000,000
Peta	1000⁵	10¹⁵	1,000,000,000,000,000
Exa	1000⁶	10¹⁸	1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Zetta	1000⁷	10²¹	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Yotta	1000⁸	10²⁴	1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Ok. So where did they come from?

Kilo comes from the Greek khiloi and means, curiously enough, 1000. It is interesting enough, the only prefix with a direct numerical meaning.

The next three come from Greek and Latin and are either descriptive or mythological.

Mega comes from the Greek mega meaning "great", as in "Alexandros O Megas" or "Megas Alexandros" (Alexander the Great).

Giga comes from Latin gigas meaning "giant".

Tera comes from Greek teras meaning "monster".

Now we return to numbers. Though not direct numerical references, the next two are indirect references.

Peta comes from the Greek pente meaning five. This is the fifth prefix (for 1000⁵). This term, and the next one, were both added in 1975 by the General Conference of Weights and Measures (abbreviated CGMP because it is in France)

Exa comes from Greek hex meaning six. This is the sixth prefix (for 1000⁶). Taking "Hexa" and making the "H" silent (as it is in France, home of the CGMP) gives "Exa".

Here we leave the numerical references again. Unable to return to the mythological (after great, giants and monsters what else is there), we move to the Latin alphabet. For reasons I don't know, we start with the last letter (Zetta), working backwards to the beginning.

Zetta, often mistaken for the Greek Zeta, is the last letter of the Latin alphabet. This prefix and the next one were added in 1990 by CGMP.

Yotta is the penultimate (next to last) letter of the Latin alphabet.

Kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, and all that

2009-07-02T08:50:00.001-07:00

Kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta are among the list of prefixes that are used to denote the quantity of something, such as, in computing and telecommunications, a byte or a bit. Sometimes called prefix multipliers, these prefixes are also used in electronics and physics. Each multiplier consists of a one-letter abbreviation and the prefix that it stands for.

In communications, electronics, and physics, multipliers are defined in powers of 10 from 10^-24 to 10²⁴, proceeding in increments of three orders of magnitude (10³ or 1,000). In IT and data storage, multipliers are defined in powers of 2 from 2¹⁰ to 2⁸⁰, proceeding in increments of ten orders of magnitude (2¹⁰ or 1,024). These multipliers are denoted in the following table.

Prefix	Symbol(s)	Power of 10	Power of 2
yocto-	y	10^{-24 *}	--
zepto-	z	10^{-21 *}	--
atto-	a	10^{-18 *}	--
femto-	f	10^{-15 *}	--
pico-	p	10^{-12 *}	--
nano-	n	10^{-9 *}	--
micro-	m	10^{-6 *}	--
milli-	m	10^{-3 *}	--
centi-	c	10^{-2 *}	--
deci-	d	10^{-1 *}	--
(none)	--	10⁰	2⁰
deka-	D	10^{1 *}	--
hecto-	h	10^{2 *}	--
kilo-	k or K ^**	10³	2¹⁰
mega-	M	10⁶	2²⁰
giga-	G	10⁹	2³⁰
tera-	T	10¹²	2⁴⁰
peta-	P	10¹⁵	2⁵⁰
exa-	E	10^{18 *}	2⁶⁰
zetta-	Z	10^{21 *}	2⁷⁰
yotta-	Y	10^{24 *}	2⁸⁰
* Not generally used to express data speed
** k = 10³ and K = 2¹⁰

Examples of quantities or phenomena in which power-of-10 prefix multipliers apply include frequency (including computer clock speeds), physical mass, power, energy, electrical voltage, and electrical current. Power-of-10 multipiers are also used to define binary data speeds. Thus, for example, 1 kbps (one kilobit per second) is equal to 10³, or 1,000, bps (bits per second); 1 Mbps (one megabit per second) is equal to 10⁶, or 1,000,000, bps. (The lowercase k is the technically correct symbol for kilo- when it represents 10³, although the uppercase K is often used instead.)

When binary data is stored in memory or fixed media such as a hard drive, diskette, ZIP disk, tape, or CD-ROM, power-of-2 multipliers are used. Technically, the uppercase K should be used for kilo- when it represents 2¹⁰. Therefore 1 KB (one kilobyte) is 2¹⁰, or 1,024, bytes; 1 MB (one megabyte) is 2²⁰, or 1,048,576 bytes.

The choice of power-of-10 versus power-of-2 prefix multipliers can appear arbitrary. It helps to remember that in common usage, multiples of bits are almost always expressed in powers of 10, while multiples of bytes are almost always expressed in powers of 2. Rarely is data speed expressed in bytes per second, and rarely is data storage or memory expressed in bits. Such usages are considered improper. Confusion is not likely, therefore, provided one adheres strictly to the standard usages of the terms bit and byte.

Spinning Russia and Telenor

2009-06-24T08:00:00.001-07:00

24 June 2009 – The Moscow Times by William Dunkerley – When U.S. President Barack Obama first met President Dmitry Medvedev in April, almost two-thirds of Americans were thinking negative thoughts about Russia. Now, less than two weeks away from Obama's meeting with Medvedev in Moscow, the Kremlin is showing new concern about Russia's image abroad. Indeed, the importance of external PR has been elevated by making it a responsibility of presidential chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin.

What can Naryshkin possibly do to change the United States' negative views of Russia? Is simply putting a better spin on things really going to change anyone's mind about anything?

The answer is that it just might -- if it is done correctly. For many years I have studied the ups and downs of U.S. attitudes toward Russia, and what I found is that there seems to be a responsive relationship between attitudinal change and three external factors: leadership initiatives, geopolitical events and negative PR attacks.

In early 2001, Russia was viewed favorably by just over 50 percent of Americans. Then, following Sept. 11 and then-President Vladimir Putin's demonstrable overtures of support for the United States, Russia's favorability rating jumped to 66 percent. But a leadership initiative can influence opinions negatively, too. Take for example President Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" speech of 1983. Before the speech, the favorable rating of the Soviet Union had been riding just over 20 percent. Following that speech, only 8 percent of Americans maintained a favorable opinion. It took four long years before opinions rebounded.

In terms of geopolitical events, the collapse of the Soviet Union caused an upward spike in favorable opinion to 66 percent. The 1999 Kosovo conflict caused a sharp decline to 33 percent.

The impact of negative PR attacks can be seen in the past several years. There was a volley of assaults, most notably involving the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the poisoning death in London of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and the Georgia war in August. These events resulted in the drop of Russia's favorability rating from 58 percent in 2006 to a low of 40 percent in January.

Regarding the PR impact of the Russia-Georgia war, the administration of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili engaged a Western PR firm to help manage the event. That may explain in part why the headline "Russia Invades Georgia" predominated, while "Georgia Invades South Ossetia" got little play.

It's not only the Kremlin that falls victim to PR assaults. It was about three years ago that Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor was subjected to a negative PR campaign. On a single day, three major Russian newspapers ran stories alleging that Telenor was part of a NATO plot against Russia. The stories each had a slightly different slant and were bylined by three different journalists, but one of the names was strikingly similar to the name of an executive of Telenor's PR firm. Perhaps this was a mere coincidence, but this could have also been an attempt to add insult to injury.

Naryshkin has his work cut out for him in trying to improve Russia's image abroad. The latest Telenor scandal underscores this big challenge. On Friday, federal court marshals ordered the state to auction off Telenor's 26.6 percent stake in VimpelCom, which means that Telenor could lose its shares in the Russian telecommunications company. The proceeds of the auction will be used to pay off a $1.7 billion fine levied against Telenor for blocking VimpelCom's expansion in Ukraine after a little-known minority shareholder filed a lawsuit seeking damages.

The action by Russia's court marshals has been viewed by most foreign investors as a violation of investor rights. It is not clear how Naryshkin will be able to put a positive spin on this a heavy-handed government tactic. Perhaps he can get Medvedev to use a "leadership initiative" to turn around this latest PR disaster.

China, Russia steadily deepen cooperation

2009-06-16T07:42:00.001-07:00

(Xinhua) - 2009-06-15 - Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to pay a state visit to Russia on June 16-18.

The Sino-Russian strategic partnership has been steadily improving in recent years, as the two countries continue to achieve breakthroughs in political, economic and cultural cooperation.

Russian media said that China and Russia have set up an exemplar of international ties after 60 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations.

As friendly neighbors sharing common borders, China and Russia have unswervingly given emphasis to enhancing political trust and coordination while developing bilateral ties.

After the establishment of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership of cooperation in 1996, the two countries set up the mechanism for regular high-level visits, under which leaders from both countries can effectively communicate and understand each other through frequent meetings and talks.

Based on the consensus of a fair international order and the development of global situations, China and Russia hold the same or similar stances on a series of major world issues such as the situations on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East and Iran.

The two countries also have conducted effective collaboration under multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations.

Both sides believe pragmatic measures must be taken in fighting terrorism. With close cooperation within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China and Russia have realized great achievements in joint combat against the "three forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism, as well as drug trafficking.

In safeguarding regional security and stability, the two countries have expanded the scale of joint anti-terror drills and have conducted several joint anti-drug operations.

With a shared boundary of more than 4,300 km that was determined in a survey concluded in July 2008, the Sino-Russian border issue has come to an end. The conclusion not only laid foundation for the advancement of bilateral cooperation, it also provided precious experience for other countries seeking peaceful solutions to territorial disputes.

The economic and trade cooperation between China and Russia has seen rapid growth in recent years. The annual bilateral trade volume has increased from several billion dollars in the 1990s to about $10 billion at the beginning of the 21st century. It stood at $56.83 billion in 2008.

The bilateral trade structure has been upgraded along with the expansion of trade. In particular, The China-Russia Chamber of Commerce of Machinery and Electronic Products founded in 2007 has set up a platform for a higher level of bilateral trade development.

Increasingly close economic links have become a "stabilizer" for Sino-Russian relations guaranteeing the healthy and stable advancement of bilateral ties, said Sergei Sanakoyev, head of the Russian-Chinese Center of Trade and Economic Cooperation.

One of the key fields of Sino-Russian economic cooperation, the energy sector, has also recently seen major breakthroughs.

Under a loan-for-oil deal signed in February, China would offer Russian firms a long-term loan of $25 billion, while Russia would supply a total of 300 million tons of crude to China from 2011 to 2030.

In addition, negotiations and cooperation on natural gas, nuclear energy and electric power have also been actively underway between the two sides.

Regional economic cooperation between Chinese provinces and Russian regions bears huge potential. Hundreds of cooperation agreements have been signed by local governments of both countries.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in May that Russia should coordinate the development of its Far East region with Chinese efforts to rejuvenate its old northeastern industrial bases.

Cultural cooperation is an indispensable component within the framework of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership. Upon proposals by the two countries' leaders, China and Russia have staged reciprocal national theme year activities, with "Year of Russia" in China in 2006 and "Year of China" in Russia in 2007.

Medvedev, who at the time was first deputy prime minister in charge of the "Year of China," once told Xinhua that the two countries can deepen their mutual understanding and enjoy closer friendship through such events.

To further consolidate their cooperation, the two countries decided to hold the "Year of Russian Language" in China in 2009 and the "Year of Chinese Language" in Russia in 2010.

Alexander Zhukov, Russia's deputy prime minister, said in Beijing in March when attending the opening ceremony for the "Year of Russian Language" that the event would promote mutual understanding and trust between the two peoples and advance bilateral cooperation.

After the devastating earthquake that claimed tens of thousands of lives in China's southwest Sichuan Province in May 2008, Russia immediately offered China aid, rescue workers and medical teams. A total of 1,571 Chinese children from the quake-hit regions were invited to Russian resorts for rehabilitation.

Liu Jianchao, spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said Russia's move embodied the profound friendship of its people toward the Chinese people, and demonstrated a special Sino-Russian partnership of cooperation.

Sergei Razov, the Russian ambassador to China, said recently that the friendly cooperation between China and Russia has brought concrete benefits to the two peoples.

He said the bilateral ties have huge potential and he believed that Hu's upcoming visit to Russia will inject new energy into the development of Sino-Russian relations.

Chernomyrdin Fired as Envoy to Kiev

2009-06-15T15:50:00.001-07:00

15 June 2009 – The Moscow Times by Anatoly Medetsky - President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed Russia's long-serving ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, months before the presidential elections in a country that handles most of the Russian gas transit to the European Union.

Chernomyrdin's replacement, who hasn't been named yet, may pursue a tougher Moscow line in relations with Kiev but display more courtesy and be more public in promoting the Russian policy, observers said.

Medvedev ordered the dismissal Thursday night, appointing 71-year-old Chernomyrdin as special presidential envoy for economic cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS, the loose group of former Soviet republics.

In the same decree, Medvedev canceled the position of a special presidential envoy for developing trade and economic ties with Ukraine, which Chernomyrdin also held.

Russia's choice for the new ambassador will probably reflect the frostier relations between the two neighbors after the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought more pro-Western political leaders to power in Kiev, said Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the CIS Institute, a think tank. That person will also have to bring a more diplomatic style to the job, as opposed to Chernomyrdin's colorful but sometimes offensive language and overall lack of public statements and appearances, Zharikhin said.

"The style will be less of behind-the-scenes stuff and more about openness … and conformity with the traditional diplomacy, including ethic rules," he said Sunday. "An ambassador must be reserved about his feelings and emotions. Aphorisms are good but not enough."

Chernomyrdin said in one of his most recent newspaper interviews, in February, that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko "fight like cats and dogs," prompting an official reprimand from Kiev.

Russia could appoint a "tougher diplomat" to represent Moscow's more aggressive foreign policy, said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy.

"For us, the next ambassador will obviously be more difficult and more of a problem than Chernomyrdin," he said, Interfax reported.

Chernomyrdin was willing to seek compromises, he said.

The new ambassador will likely have the task of making clear Russia's preferences for the next Ukrainian president. The parliament will soon call a presidential election for some time at the end of this year or the start of next year.

The chairman of the Ukrainian parliament's international relations committee, Oleh Bilorus, named Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as a possible candidate for the posting.

Interfax, however, cited "well-informed" Russian sources as saying Karasin was not in the running. They declined to give any names.

Chernomyrdin is a former head of the Soviet gas monopoly that later became Gazprom and a longtime prime minister under former President Boris Yeltsin.

Despite his history with Gazprom, Chernomyrdin's role in the recent gas disputes with Ukraine that left European countries without heat during the winter months was limited, at least publicly.

His stint as ambassador passed the eight-year mark on May 30.

The dismissal came after vigorous denials in December that he was on his way out.

Reacting to speculation about Chernomyrdin's departure, Karasin called it "media brouhaha" and "blatantly offensive."

Chernomyrdin bid farewell at a Kiev reception on Thursday dedicated to the Russia Day holiday.

"My presence here is drawing to an end, but I don't regret the years that I spent in Ukraine," he told the guests. "Thank you for everything."

When Interpreting History Becomes a Crime

2009-06-03T08:29:00.001-07:00

03 June 2009 - Moscow Times by Yevgeny Kiselyov

I would be fascinated to know if Westerners can fully appreciate the political significance behind President Dmitry Medvedev's decision to create a special commission "for counteracting attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests." Most foreigners would probably say, "This is very strange. Doesn't Russia have more pressing problems it needs to tackle, such as the managing the crisis, modernizing the country's political and economic institutions or battling corruption?"

Had the year been 1950, when the Soviet Union was making colossal efforts to recover from the aftermath of World War II, foreigners would have been equally perplexed that Josef Stalin chose that moment to initiate a huge public debate on the Marxist approach to linguistics.

Two decades before that, Stalin rewrote the history of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Red Terror and civil war. In this spirit, "A Short History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)" was published under Stalin's orders to make sure that all Soviets understood the "historical record" correctly -- that Stalin was the one and only successor to Lenin.

In 1934, Stalin's childhood friend and top Kremlin bureaucrat Avel Yenukidze published the book "The Underground Print Shop in the Caucasus." It was interpreted as having diminished Stalin's contributions to the printing press and to Bolshevism in general. As a result, Stalin did not spare his old friend. Yenukidze was arrested and executed as an "enemy of the people." The crime: writing about his revolutionary youth without the necessary respect owed to Stalin.

Similarly, it was anyone's guess why Stalin prohibited the sequel to the film "Ivan Grozny" by the famous director Sergei Eisenstein or why Pravda lambasted a new opera by Dmitry Shostakovich. Soviet intelligentsia were left scratching their heads trying to figure out why Mikhail Zoshchenko's short stories and Anna Akhmatova's poems were subject to such harsh criticism in literary magazine reviews.

The worst "falsifier" of history, of course, has been the Kremlin, and it is difficult not to draw a parallel between Medvedev's decision to combat the falsification of history and similar steps taken during Stalin's rule.

As soon as Medvedev uttered the words "attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests," it was clear what he really meant: The state would crack down on any attempts to objectively examine the more unpleasant -- and incriminating -- aspects of Russian and Soviet history. This includes a candid, historical discussion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of nonaggression between the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany -- and, by extension, Stalin's passive and active role in helping Hitler start World War II. Likewise, questioning the Soviet Union's annexation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia would be highly discouraged, as would raising the issue of how the Kremlin created and supported repressive puppet regimes all across Eastern Europe after rolling back Nazi forces at the end of World War II.

It is highly symbolic and ironic that "The Gulag Archipelago," written by Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was denounced by the Soviet regime as "a gross falsification of history." This was because the novel exposed crimes that bankrupted the foundation of the Soviet system. The book thoroughly documented that mass repression began under Lenin, that terror was premeditated, systemic and systematic and that the country created and fostered a giant impersonal bureaucratic machine for the moral and physical destruction of human beings.

"The Gulag Archipelago" changed the world's attitude toward the Soviet Union. If there were people who previously viewed Soviet communism through rose-tinted glasses, "The Gulag Archipelago" exposed the harrowing truth about the government's heinous crimes. Published in the West in 1973, Solzhenitsyn's great "falsification of history" proved to be the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union.

Medvedev's plan for keeping the historical record "accurate" coincides with the introduction of a bill "opposing the rehabilitation of Nazism, Nazi criminals and their accomplices on the territory of the independent states, former republics of the Soviet Union." A prison term of three to five years is the recommended sentence for Russian and foreign offenders alike.

For example, anyone who condemns the Allies for handing over to the Soviet authorities in 1945 about 2 million "victims of Yalta" could be labeled as a "criminal." According to the secret agreement between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union that was confirmed at the 1945 Yalta conference, the Allies agreed to forcefully repatriate all Soviet citizens who had fallen into German hands before they were freed by the Allied advance. These victims included Russian Cossacks, prisoners of war, forced laborers, emigres and anti-Communists who had fought for Germany against Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of these people were executed upon their "repatriation" to the Soviet Union or sent to the gulag.

Similarly, authorities could bring criminal charges against any historian who questions the whether the British and U.S. bombing of Dresden in February 1945 was justified.

Even while declaring battle against "falsifying history," today's authorities turn a blind eye to history textbooks that describe Stalin as an "effective manager" and portray the mass repression of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s as the only way Stalin could overcome the country's colossal economic and security challenges.

Meanwhile, prime-time, state-controlled television is filled with historically garbled pseudo-documentaries. For example, one depicted the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis as being almost the greatest triumphs of Nikita Khrushchev's foreign policy because the United States feared -- which is to say, "respected," according to Russian psychology -- the Soviet Union as an equal superpower. Other "documentaries" portray the years under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Boris Yeltsin as being exclusively dominated by crises, disintegration and the loss of society's orientation and values. In general, then-President Vladimir Putin set the stage for this politically driven historical bias when he referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."

Regarding questions of history, it seems that Medvedev is dutifully following in Putin's footsteps. And this once again demonstrates who is really calling the shots in the country.

Yevgeny Kiselyov is a political analyst and hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Gazprom eyes role in Iran-Pakistan pipeline

2009-05-27T07:57:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-26T16:06:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-26T11:52:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-21T08:57:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-04T07:55:00.001-07:00

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.

Berlusconi Postpones Visit After Earthquake

2009-04-06T11:11:00.001-07:00

06 April 2009 - Moscow Times - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has postponed a visit to Moscow after an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude shook central Italy early Monday morning, leaving more than 20 dead and thousands injured. Berlusconi declared a state of emergency and has not announced a new date for the visit, the Italian Embassy in Moscow said. A group of businessmen were to accompany him for an Italian-Russian economic forum. The visit was expected to be capped with a signing ceremony Tuesday between Gazprom and Eni, Italy's biggest oil and gas group. The two companies agreed last month that Gazprom would buy a 20 percent stake in its oil arm that Eni won in an auction in April 2007. Eni could become the outright owner of the Gazprom Neft shares if Thursday's deadline for the buyback passes. Gazprom may also acquire from Eni and its partner Enel a 51 percent stake in Siberian gas assets won at the same auction.

Russian Orthodox Church a growing political force

2009-04-06T10:06:00.001-07:00

04-05-2009 - MOSCOW (AP by Mansur Mirovalef) — The glittering Christ the Savior Cathedral, a pale-white marble structure decorated with bronze statuary and swaths of gold leaf, is more than just Moscow's grandest and most opulent place of worship. Built in the 1990s as a replica of a church dynamited by Communists in 1931, the cathedral symbolizes the Moscow Patriarchate's rising political influence — which may be greater today than at any time since the 17th century. It also serves as global headquarters of vast and expanding business operations that experts say are worth several billion dollars. To tens of millions of Russian believers, the Orthodox Church is first of all a sacred institution, a pillar of the country's 1,000-year-old identity and culture. The death of Patriarch Alexy II in December caused an outpouring of heartfelt grief, with crowds of people lining up to view his remains. On Feb. 1, top clerics enthroned Alexy's successor, Kirill — a towering figure with a gray-flecked beard and sonorous voice — in a cathedral filled with celebrities and political leaders. The first person to receive communion from Patriarch Kirill was President Dmitry Medvedev's wife, Svetlana. These events would have been unimaginable in the Soviet era, when the officially atheist Communist government treated the devout like moral lepers and criminals, defrocking and imprisoning tens of thousands of clerics of all creeds. Now the church "has become a serious power in society," former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told The Associated Press in early March. But critics claim that in the past decade the Moscow Patriarchate has sacrificed some of its spiritual authority in the pursuit of political power and commercial success. Some go as far as to compare the church to its former nemesis, the Communist Party's ruling Politburo. Roman Lunkin of the Keston Institute, which studies religion in the former Soviet Union, says the church has "turned into an authoritarian and totalitarian structure." A priest who condemned the 2005 conviction and imprisonment of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a leading foe of then-President Vladimir Putin, was defrocked and appointed to guard a church store in 2006. Orthodox leaders said the decision was not political, but had to do with the priest's "discipline." Bishop Diomid of Chukotka, who lambasted Alexy II's alleged subservience to the Kremlin, found himself demoted to the rank of a monk last year. The church accused Diomid's supporters of planning to seize power in the Patriarchate. A church council excommunicated Gleb Yakunin, a priest and former lawmaker, in 1997 after he headed a government commission that concluded that most top clerics, including Patriarch Alexy and his future successor Kirill, were KGB informers. The church has long denied these claims as "absolutely unsubstantiated" and said top clerics had to "communicate" with the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, which forwarded their reports to the KGB. The church also claimed Yakunin worked for U.S. intelligence. "Unfortunately, Orthodox Christianity is antidemocratic and hails authoritarian rule," said Yakunin, who spent years in the gulag for criticizing Soviet religious policies, during an interview in his Moscow office. Today, the 74-year-old priest leads the Apostolic Orthodox Church, a splinter group that is harassed by authorities in Russia and Belarus. Despite the Russian constitution's legal separation of church and state, President Boris Yeltsin and his successor Vladimir Putin forged a political alliance with the Orthodox Church — an alliance that has continued under Putin's successor, Medvedev. Kirill is escorted around Moscow by a cavalcade of Kremlin security guards and was listed No. 6 on the government's list of state dignitaries. Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst with close Kremlin ties, says the church has become "the Kremlin's Ministry for the Salvation of Souls." Church leaders have blessed Kremlin plans to eliminate some social benefits for the elderly, called on Russia's youth to volunteer for military service in Chechnya and consecrated new warships and nuclear missiles, calling the latter "Russia's guardian angels." The church has also supported the Kremlin's official ideology, which asserts that Russia's unique historic role makes it unsuited for Western-style liberal democracy. "The church is trying to offer a new anti-European Utopia," prominent writer Viktor Yerofeyev complained in a December article in the French newspaper Le Monde. "Its main principle: Russian values are different from Western values." For the church, political loyalty has paid handsomely. The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, is considering a bill to return to the church up to 7.41 million acres nationalized after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Both federal and local authorities have granted the church donations, tax breaks and broad immunity from government regulation of its businesses. Moscow officials, in particular, have helped the church raise money for favored causes — such as rebuilding the Christ the Savior Cathedral — by pressuring private business to contribute. The cathedral itself reflects a dual focus on the spiritual and commercial. The structure has a dry cleaner, ATM machines, meeting halls for rent and convenient underground parking. According to Nikolai Mitrokhin, director of a research institute that studies religions in the former Soviet Union, the church built its fortune starting in the 1990s through trade in tobacco and alcohol, through exports of oil and sturgeon, by the construction of shopping malls and hotels and by operating jewelry stores — allegedly with counterfeit bling. The church also runs book publishing concerns and organic farms. A church spokesman, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, confirmed that the Patriarchate controlled many businesses. But Chaplin said neither the tobacco nor the oil business proved profitable, and claimed the church is no longer involved in them. He also dismissed the notion that the church's commercial deals had undermined its spiritual mission. "I don't see anything detrimental if the church can invest in this kind of work," he told AP. The Patriarchate does not make its financial reports public, but Mitrokhin estimates the Orthodox Church's annual income at several billion dollars. This secrecy has led to allegations — denied by the church — that it has engaged in money laundering. "All of their financial streams flow in the dark," said Sergei Filatov, a scholar of religion at Moscow State University. Today, the church says nearly half of its income comes from the four-star hotel in the Danilovsky Monastery, a short walk from the Kremlin, and a factory outside the capital that produces icons and other religious items. The church sells religious goods in places like the golden-domed Holy Trinity monasterial complex in Sergiyev Posad, 100 miles northwest of Moscow, where on a recent day pilgrims lined up in the cold to kiss the sarcophagus of St. Sergius, one of Russia's patron saints. Many of the pilgrims stopped by some of the dozen shops peddling icons, calendars and refrigerator magnets, or pricier goods such as jewelry with images of Jesus or the saints. Some Sergiyev Posad residents grumbled about the commercial atmosphere. "It's like a supermarket," said Alexander Bekker, 38, a martial arts instructor and a devout believer. "What spirituality are you talking about among these merchants?" Other believers say that the church's affluence has helped spread the gospel, aid the needy and restore thousands of churches and monasteries destroyed or desecrated during Communist rule. "We still have to rebuild what Communist iconoclasts destroyed," said Father Vitaly, 51, a priest from the central city of Vladimir. "Funds won't fly down from the sky." Top church officials may live amid pomp and splendor. But many priests scrape by selling candles and souvenirs, charging modest fees for performing wedding and funeral ceremonies and blessing new houses, offices or cars. "We trust in God, but rely on ourselves," said Father Alexander, a smiling 37-year-old priest, who consecrated a new office in downtown Moscow for $140. Some experts say that the Orthodox-led religious revival has made Russia's post-Soviet political leadership a kinder, gentler group than their Communist Party predecessors. "In Communist times, authorities completely lacked human, moral principles," said church historian Andrei Zubov, of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. "Now that many politicians are religious, they relate their lives to moral principles."

Russia, U.S. seek fresh start toward better ties

2009-04-02T11:58:00.001-07:00

April 2, 2009-04-03 by Xinhua writer Yu Maofeng – MOSCOW, In the latest effort to reset strained ties, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama held their first face-to-face meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in London. Without a breakthrough agreement in place, the leaders pledged in a joint statement to negotiate a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by the end of the year. A new treaty on strategic offensive weapons, though of limited significance in overall Russian-U.S. relations, will create a favorable climate for mending their relations, analysts said.
CHARTING FRESH START IN RELATIONS: The much-anticipated meeting was seen as a historic opportunity for the presidents to build a better Russian-U.S. relationship. "We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between our two countries," Medvedev and Obama said in a joint statement after their meeting. Nevertheless, expectations are low for much immediate progress on disputes between the White House and the Kremlin, as the presidents were meeting on the eve of the G20 summit, which focuses on the global economic downturn. But an agreement to negotiate a new deal on cutting nuclear warheads raised hopes that the two countries are on track toward a better relationship. The two countries will "begin bilateral intergovernmental negotiations to work out a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms to replace the START treaty," the statement said. The leaders have instructed negotiators to report their first results on the new agreement by July, when Obama visits Moscow. The START I, signed in 1991 between the United States and the former Soviet Union, places a limit of 6,000 strategic or long-range nuclear warheads on each side and allows the inspection of weapons. The subsequent 2002 treaty signed in Moscow called for reducing nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012, but made no provision for verification. If START expires in December without a follow-up, the Moscow treaty would be left with no legally binding system for verification. It is estimated that the United States currently has at least 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed and Russia between 2,000and 3,000. The joint statement of Medvedev and Obama said the new treaty would set lower limits for strategic weapons than the 2002 treaty. Both sides could agree on cutting their nuclear warheads to 1,300-1,500 under the new treaty, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, a senior fellow with the International Security Center at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said. However, a number of stumbling blocks remain on concluding such a treaty. "Among them, the major one is the coordination of principles on the accounting of warheads, because there has been a lot of disputes on this issue over the years," Dvorkin was quoted by Interfax as saying. During their meeting, the two presidents also "agreed to work toward and support a coordinated international response with the UN playing a key role" on Afghanistan, according to the joint statement. As for Iran, they said they would continue to work on a comprehensive diplomatic solution.
END OF OLD ERA: Russian-U.S. relations have sunk to a post-Cold War low amid an array of rows, including Washington's missile defense plan in Eastern Europe, Russia's brief war with Georgia last August and NATO's eastward expansion. In their joint statement, Obama and Medvedev declared that the "era when our countries viewed each other as enemies is long over." Obama reiterated that the United States wants to "press the reset button," as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden put it at a Munich conference in February. Analysts said Washington is seeking to improve relations with Moscow because the Bush administration's policies on Russia have not produced the desired results, but only aggregated tensions between the two countries. Normal relations with Russia will most likely allow the United States to settle more easily many of its problems, such as Afghanistan and possibly Iran, media observers said. Russia shares a common ground with the U.S. on some security issues as the Taliban and al-Qaida are the common foes of both countries, Alexander Shumilin, an expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said. He said Moscow also hopes the improvement of political ties between the two countries could directly boost exchanges in economy, trade, and scientific technology, needed to overcome the financial crisis. Medvedev and Obama acknowledged that differences remain over the planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe, saying they "discussed new possibilities for mutual international cooperation in the field." They were also at adds over the Caucasus but agreed to work on them jointly. NATO's further eastern expansion toward Georgia and Ukraine remains a dangerous trigger for fresh conflicts as Obama has not changed the course of the Bush administration on this issue. Analysts said it will not be easy for the two countries, whose interests and perspectives differ significantly, to build strong relations any time soon. Still, the negotiations about a new arms treaty were "an excellent first step," Sam Greene, deputy head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, was quoted as saying by The Moscow Times newspaper. The nascent thaw in Russian-U.S. relations may still fall short of expectations, but the process that started in London is likely to continue, analysts said.

Time to settle the “flying saucers” question

2009-04-01T07:48:00.001-07:00

1 April 2009 - MOSCOW - (Andrei Kislyakov, for RIA Novosti) - So do UFOs with little green men inside exist or not? CNN supposedly filmed a UFO moving at a great speed from the right to the left during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. (But those who watched the replay say it was a bird.) After that, former President Clinton's White House Chief John Podesta, now one of Obama's closest associates, demanded that the thick UFO files be made public. The number of UFO sightings has dramatically increased in recent times. According to Britain's Ministry of Defense, there were supposedly 285 UFO sightings in the UK in 2008, double the figure for 2007, when the number of alleged UFO sightings was reckoned at 137. (UFOs attacking Ukraine. Video UFO seen over Moscow during Russia - Netherlands match. Video) The defense departments of the United States and the Soviet Union scrupulously registered alleged sightings of UFOs for decades. American ufologists say that the U.S. authorities were quite serious about the UFO question in the 1940s through 1960s. Project Blue Book, terminated in 1969, had two goals: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data. The USAF concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security. Paradoxically, the military still refuse to provide information about UFOs for security reasons. Ufologists insist that the USAF must give them access to certain documents, such as Project Moon Dust and Project Blue Fly. Project Moon Dust was started in 1953, ostensibly to recover "returning space debris." Operation Blue Fly was launched to facilitate expeditious delivery to Foreign Technology Division of moon dust and other items of great technological intelligence interest. It is assumed that they were in fact connected with UFOs. According to ufologists, the U.S. military also have kept the bodies of extraterrestrials who died in spaceship crashes over the United States. The most widely known of such episodes, the Roswell Incident, took place in New Mexico on July 2, 1947, when an object crash-landed on a ranch approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell, leaving a large field of debris. The local air base at Roswell investigated the incident and announced that they had recovered a "flying disk." In fact, the crash was seen by a number of people. There were allegedly alien bodies found in the disk, but the film showing their autopsy was later denounced as a fraud. If UFOs existed and military units were investigating them, there should also be a place for their deployment. This is Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, a secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. At the center of it there is a large air base the government will not discuss about. The Roswell story speaks of alien bodies and wreckage being taken to a "Hangar 18" in Area 51. Space photographs of the area show a huge landing strip crisscrossing the area and strange circles that can be interpreted as traces of landing of huge "flying saucers." Ufologists are convinced that this is so. As President, George W. Bush moved Area 51 from the Nevada jurisdiction to that of the Pentagon and Washington. Slightly more than 10 years ago, civilian aircraft were prohibited to fly over the area. The archives of the former Soviet Union are filled to capacity with data about contacts with extraterrestrials. They contain records of over 20,000 UFO sightings. The Academy of Sciences and the Defense Ministry both undertook investigations under the secret project names of Setka, Galaktika and Gorizont. It is even said that "competent agencies," meaning the secret services, established contact with aliens and waited for their arrival to Earth. The media is now writing about a team of General Staff officers and academicians waiting for the arrival of an UFO in the Kyzylkum desert in June 1991. Clearly, humans will always strive to search for beings of humanoid form in the Universe. But it is also apparent that apart from tall tales about "little green men" there are also facts that logically point to the presence of alien intelligence on the Earth. In this case, maybe the time has come for the U.S. and Russian authorities to declassify information on unidentified flying objects and their masters?

Which country will be first to default?

2009-03-31T08:00:00.001-07:00

03–31–2009 – MOSCOW. (Oleg Mityayev, RIA Novosti economic commentator) - The global economic downturn has sent tumbling governments of smaller European countries. The first country to see its national currency collapse was Iceland in January; in February, Latvian prime minister filed resignation. The Czech government is resigning now as well, and the Hungarian and Bulgarian governments are likely to follow suit. Ukraine's largest and most influential opposition party, the Party of Regions, has demanded a resignation of the government. So why are European governments collapsing like houses of cards? The key reason is looming default that some of them may announce soon. Some countries could default because of the harsh terms on which they received financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. The money they receive must only be spent to support the national currency, which is usually directly linked to either the dollar or the euro, or to cover the budget deficit. However, national banks of the aid recipients are forbidden to print more cash to support internal demand, because, according to the IMF, such actions fuel inflation and undermine a country's financial stability. That a flagrant example of double standards. U.S. President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke do not have to ask anyone's permission to print another $800 billion to stimulate American producers. Even though these steps increase inflation in the United States, and, what is more, they devalue other countries' assets denominated in U.S. dollars, such as their central banks' reserves. The need to reform the IMF has been widely discussed lately. In fact, the IMF itself revised its credit terms as recently as last week. The main innovation is a new lending instrument, dubbed the Flexible Credit Line. The FCL, without any conditions or a limit on the amount of money that can be borrowed, will allow countries to use the credit line as a "precautionary instrument" and can be drawn on at any time, the IMF said, amending, however, that the FCL was designed for member countries the IMF views as having well-managed economies, "with very strong fundamentals, policies, and track records of policy implementation." In other words, it is unlikely to be available to countries on the verge of default. The most powerful emerging economies, the BRIC nations, currently support a radical reform of the IMF. These countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - suggest revising the international group's role and harmonizing it with the current global financial architecture. The BRIC counties insist on changing the system of distribution of votes in the IMF in favor of the most rapidly developing countries, which play a substantial role in the global economy. This would help augment the IMF's funds and make its loans more easily available to countries that need them. Along with the BRIC countries, the IMF reform plans are supported by the United Kingdom, Germany, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Mexico. The idea to replace the dollar as the international reserve currency by another supra-national currency that would be controlled by a reformed IMF is also gaining supporters. The proposal was made by Russia, China and Kazakhstan. However, while the world's leading economies are busy discussing reform plans for the global financial system, smaller nations may decide that announcing default is the shortest way out of their blind alley.

How the crisis affects the world leaders’ earnings

2009-03-31T07:32:00.001-07:00

March 31, 2009 - Ecommerce Journal by Kara Deniz - Today, when the whole world is suffering consequences of the global crisis , when most of the countries are in the deepest recession, when even the largest corporations have to reduce their business significantly, when a lot of companies have to stop their activity, when people increasingly lose their jobs or have their salaries cut off at best, one important question is arising: whether the global economic recession influences somehow the incomes of the heads of the states, who are supposed to “take care” of the nations’ economic health. So let’s check which of the leaders earns more than others. The US President Barack Obama gets $ 400,000 annually, Prime Minister of UK Gordon Brown gets $353,188 annually, while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earns just $81,000 (that reflects almost the five, and four and a half times difference respectively). At the same time, as www.paywizard.org shows, the former President of the USA, present Public speaker, Bill Clinton has $51,855,599.00 annually. Charles, Prince of Wales earns $ 26,043,520 annually, Willem-Alexander, Prince of the Netherlands - $1,290,240, Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands - $6,401,280, while Prime Minister of the Netherlands earns only $172,800 annually. These huge salaries can be compared to President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s earnings, who has just $5,337 per year; or to President of India Pratibha Patil’s incomes, who has $ 36,434.00, or to President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s salary, that equals $53,468. President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet gets $134,429.00 yearly. President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon gets $189,027.00 annually. Thus Prime Minister of Denmark has $181,517, while Prime Minister of Russia earns yearly only $69,468 per year. It’s obvious, that world leaders earnings don’t even depend on the size of the country. Well, probably the size of world leaders’ incomes could be explained from the point of country’s riches. Actually, earnings of the heads of the sates do not even reflect the results of their work. So it doesn’t matter how successful they are in their business they will get as much money as it’s possible and as their governments allow. However, exceptions also exist. Thus in 2007 salary of Ireland Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, was raised to € 310,000 (38,000 increase), that was the time when Ireland was lightly affected by the crisis. But in 2008 Brian Cowen, who stepped in after him, agreed to get €257,000. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, got his salary doubled in 2008, now he earns $346,000.00 annually. However, he didn’t succeed enough in leading the country through the economic crisis that made French dissatisfied. So last week France faced the wave of protest demonstrations. Another well-paid European leader is Gordon Brown, whose salary was reduced, but it was just because of sterling weakening against the dollar. At the same time some leaders are trying to win their voters’ hearts by reducing their own salaries. Thereby Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia since 2006, halved the salary prescribed to him that made him elected by 67% of citizens. Well, how could it happen, that the President of the USA, the country that suffered mostly, the country that gave a start for the global crisis, has the incomes that exceed the incomes of the majority of country leaders? And why, when enormous amount of people across the world have no jobs and no earnings for living, our rulers’ salary size cannot be reduced, moreover it grows? Well, we can continue to ask questions like these, but unfortunately they can just stay rhetorical for us… - Article

Kissinger back in Operation ‘Reset’

2009-03-20T15:09:00.001-07:00

19 March 2009 - Moscow News №10 2009 by Ayano Hodouchi, Anna Arutunyan and Tim Wall - Henry Kissinger, the arch-practitioner of realpolitik and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, is back in a new role - to reset relations between the new U.S. administration of Barack Obama and Russia. In Moscow, Kissinger is famous as Richard Nixon's National Security Adviser, who negotiated the historic Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. He has been involved in talks with every head of state in the Soviet Union and later Russia over the last 40 years. On Friday, he is to have talks with President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow as part of a group of four "wise men" in U.S. foreign policy, according to Kommersant. While Kissinger's role is being billed as an unofficial one, his access to Russian leaders in recent years has been nothing short of phenomenal - gaining several one-on-one meetings with then-President Vladimir Putin during his two terms in office. He also was the first senior U.S. figure to visit President Medvedev after his inauguration last summer, and most recently met with Medvedev in December. Then, sources say, he was acting as an unofficial envoy for Obama's transition team in proposing a revamping of U.S.-Russian relations after the Cold War-style falling out under George W. Bush's administration. The U.S. Embassy said on Thursday it did not have any information about Kissinger's visit. The choice of Kissinger to spearhead talks with Russia appears to be based on his long experience and popularity amongst Russian politicians. The Russians respect him for thinking and talking in concrete, realistic terms, and not about ideology. While Kissinger enjoys wide respect among Russian leaders, he has a controversial reputation internationally - particularly in South America, where he has been accused of involvement in the so-called Operation Condor in the 1970s, when the United States allegedly backed right-wing military dictatorships in Chile, Brazil and elsewhere in killing and repressing left-wing activists. Kissinger has denied any involvement. The Obama administration is seeking to rebuild relations with the Kremlin and win support over Afghanistan, Iran, missile defense and the reduction of nuclear arms. For Obama, U.S.-Russia relations seem to be an issue of considerable importance. This week Obama announced he would nominate Rose Gottemoeller, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre from 2006 to 2008, as Assistant Secretary of State for verification and compliance. If her nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate, Gottemoeller, a leading expert on U.S.-Russian relations and nuclear security, will have the great responsibility of negotiating a follow-up for the START Treaty, the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, which expires in December. The current Under Secretary of State, William Burns, served three years until 2008 as the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and Alexander Vershbow, who preceded Burns as ambassador, was nominated this month by Obama as Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security. With so many old Russia hands nominated to key positions in his administration, Obama has made it clear that he considers cooperation with Moscow one of the most important issues for his presidency. Jeff Mankoff, adjunct fellow for Russia Studies at Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said that the administration of George W. Bush believed the Clinton presidency had paid too much attention to Russia. While Russia at times rose to the top of Bush's inbox - for instance during the war with Georgia last summer - his administration never seemed to have a clear sense of where Russia fitted in the larger U.S. strategic landscape, Mankoff said. "Obama's interest in pressing the reset button seems to me not only about having better relations with Moscow, but also appears motivated by a belief that Russia really matters," Mankoff said. Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, put it even more strongly. In an advance copy of his testimony to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, Cohen said: "Moscow's efforts at carving out a ‘sphere of privileged interests' in Eurasia and rewriting the rules of European security have negative implications for U.S.-Russia relations, international security, and the autonomy of the independent former Soviet states. Russia is and will remain one of the most significant foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration. Failure to stem Russia's revisionist efforts will lead to a deteriorating security situation in Eurasia and a decline of American influence in Europe and the Middle East." Cohen said that hopes for reaching an agreement on a third anti-ballistic missile base in Europe could be dashed in a few months' time, as Russia's sending of strategic bombers to Cuba and Venezuela, and the rearmament plan announced by Medevedev on Tuesday, clearly do not indicate that Russia is disposed to be amenable to U.S. suggestions. Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said on Thursday that Russia was also eager to clear up "stuff clogging relations between the two countries, thanks to Bush and his team." In particular, Rogozin pointed to the issue of NATO expansion towards Russia's borders as a key stumbling block, but identified weapons control and cooperation in dealing with the financial crisis as potential areas for progress. Gennady Yevstafyev, a security policy analyst and former official in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, expressed skepticism about U.S. hopes that Russia would play an important role in restraining Iranian nuclear ambitions. "I've always said - Iran is a thing in itself, and they will not do anything for another country," Yevstafyev said. "They act only in their own interests. To think that we can influence their decision in the sense that they will listen to us and stop their program - that is mistaken. We can assume certain commitments not to ship offensive military weapons, but we cannot make commitments not to supply defensive-type weapons. Every country has a right to defend itself, and the Americans have never made such concessions themselves." On March 16, a U.S. policy commission on Russia outlined a new approach to U.S.-Russia relations in a report. It was enthusiastically received in Russia, with Kommersant calling it "the most flattering description of Russia [since] the end of the Cold War." The report offers some concessions to Russia, including stopping short of backing NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, cooperation on arms control, and helping Russia's WTO accession.

A Crisis Crash Test

2009-03-18T08:33:00.001-07:00

March 6, 2009 - St.Pete Times by Yulia Latynina - Of all the official statements coming from the government and big business over the past few weeks, three stand out as most important. First, multibillionaire Oleg Deripaska announced that he would not request any more government assistance for his ailing business empire. Second, Olimpstroi, the state corporation responsible for preparing Sochi for the 2014 Olympics, will reportedly return 50 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) to state coffers. (Rosnano and Russian Railways will also hand back 130 billion rubles and 80 billion rubles, respectively.) The third most important announcement was made by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday when he met with United Russia leaders: “The crisis is far from hitting its peak,” he said. Translated from “Kremlinese” into ordinary English, the first statement means that even Deripaska — the most-connected oligarch among Putin’s favorites — won’t get any more cold cash from the government. The second means that financing for Putin’s pet project to turn Sochi into a winter wonderland is drying up. When oil prices were high, the Kremlin suffered no political fallout for making poor decisions. After former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced in May 2005 to eight years in a prison located in a remote, radioactive Siberian town, the markets had a brief scare, but they recovered relatively quickly because the economy was in the midst of an oil-driven boom. Almost a year after Khodorkovsky was arrested, then-President Putin abolished elections of regional governors, but few seemed to care too much because most Russians enjoyed higher living standards as petrodollars flooded the economy. Now, of course, the situation has reversed completely. The political cost of making bad decisions is extremely high, but poor decisions are the only kind the Kremlin is capable of making — in good times as well as bad. The authorities are unable to grapple with the crisis because it was precisely their actions that caused it in the first place. When a drunk driver slams into a tree, the tree is not the cause of the accident. Russia’s leaders are like a drunk driver. Intoxicated by petrodollars and racing along the highway at 200 kilometers per hour in his armor-plated Mercedes, the driver slammed into a huge tree called the global financial crisis. The driver is still alive thanks to the car’s fat air bag — the country’s stabilization fund. Although heavily bruised and injured, the driver is able to get out of the smashed car, look at the tree and scream, “It was you, America, that caused this whole mess!” Russia’s economy is falling at a record rate, comparable only to its rapid decline in fall 1941. The country has spent a whopping $200 billion on “supporting” the ruble. In the end, the only support to speak of is that the ruble has lost about 50 percent of its value since last summer, while the $200 billion spent on this accomplishment is gone forever. Few know for sure how much money is really left in the Reserve Fund. Meanwhile, the market value of Russian companies has decreased by roughly 75 percent on average since their peaks last year, while their huge debts have not gone away. This imbalance could easily result in mass defaults or bankruptcies. The ruling elite were willing to forgive Putin for his mistakes during the prosperous years, but when the magic goose stopped laying its golden eggs, they started taking a hard, sober look at the person who sparked a gas war with Ukraine in the heat of a dire financial crisis and who threatens to shoot protesters at unsanctioned political rallies.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

The Kremlin's Failing Monopoly

2009-03-17T08:25:00.001-07:00

17 March 2009 - The Moscow Times by Alexander Etkind - Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power a decade ago, the Kremlin regime has relied on two pillars: the security forces and energy exports. By suppressing internal rivals and absorbing their assets, the regime created a dual monopoly. Redistributing some of the profits from high energy prices enabled the regime to improve living standards and make itself popular with ordinary Russians. And resolving internal problems through a disproportionate use of force reassured even the regime's security-obsessed former KGB men. Until recently, this combination of carrots and sticks functioned effectively. The virtual absence of popular protest in Russia during the Putin years seems amazing. But make no mistake: Putin's popularity ratings relied not on his vigor, humor or mystique, but on salaries and credits that Russians had never enjoyed before. And as long as oil prices were growing faster than Russian salaries, those in power could still grab a big slice of the profits. Now that happy union between the Kremlin and ordinary Russians is ending. Few Russian policymakers, much less the people, expected oil and gas prices to collapse as they have. We do not know what will happen next. If prices rebound, Putin and his people will glorify themselves for their wisdom. But if prices remain stagnant at current levels, Putin's system is doomed to failure. It is no coincidence that George W. Bush's and Putin's disastrous presidencies were cotemporaneous. By driving up energy prices, Bush was Putin's greatest ally. Putin returned the favor by refocusing Russia from its multiple problems to "terrorism." Both sought to undo the work of their successful predecessors, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. Both led their countries into traps with which their successors must deal. When Bush said that he liked what he saw in Putin's eyes, he meant it. But their successors are as different as the procedures that brought them to power. Since Soviet times, the Kremlin has traditionally been wary about Democratic administrations in the United States. John F. Kennedy refused to tolerate the Soviet military presence in Cuba. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Clinton led the successful operation against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, the Kremlin's best friend in Europe. And U.S. President Barack Obama's triumph heralded the fall in oil prices. With energy revenues screeching to a halt, Putin's regime will lose popularity. Central myths about Putin being the healer of the nation and the supplier of giveaway budgets are collapsing. And Putin cannot avoid responsibility. If the Kremlin claimed credit for the oil- and gas-fired prosperity of the past six years -- prosperity only because of economic exuberance elsewhere in the world -- the Kremlin should be accountable for the current devastation. In the 1998 crisis, Russians did not yet take for granted imported cars, foreign tourism and other middle-class perks. The ruling group in the Kremlin was variegated and conflict-ridden, but its response to the crisis was effective and even creative. Now, the ruling group is uniform, unanimous and most likely unfit for any serious revision of policy. It is a dangerous situation. Though the current level of anti-Americanism in Russia's official media seems unprecedented, the regime is most worried about internal problems. During the current financial crisis, which hit Russia right after the war with Georgia in August, the Kremlin and the State Duma issued a series of laws and orders that have turned Putin's authoritarianism into a dictatorship. Opposition parties have become negligible. The oligarchs' businesses have been largely nationalized. The presidential term has been extended. Industrial centers with growing unemployment will receive more troops. Trial by jury, which was infrequent anyway, is being seen less and less. The concept of high treason is bandied about almost daily. We will see more persecution of scientists, journalists and businessmen, whose work with international charities, media or corporations will now be construed as treachery. Some of these people will be murdered rather than tried; others will be tried by state-appointed judges rather than murdered. But this is not news anymore in Putin's Russia. What will become news will be the sort of mass protests that were seen recently in Ukraine, Thailand or Greece. Can Putin's dual monopoly survive them? Perhaps, but it will do so only if it risks deep change, a new perestroika rather than simply a thaw. But it is more likely that the regime is too rigid and too blinkered to act.

Medvedev orders large-scale Russian rearmament

2009-03-17T07:24:00.001-07:00

17 March 2009 - AFP - MOSCOW: President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday announced a "large-scale" rearmament and renewal of Russia's nuclear arsenal, accusing NATO of pushing ahead with expansion near Russian borders. Meeting defence chiefs in Moscow, Medvedev said he was determined to implement reforms designed to streamline Russia's bloated military. Russia continued to face various security threats requiring robust defense capacity, he said. "From 2011, a large-scale rearmament of the army and navy will begin," Medvedev said at the meeting of the country's top defence chiefs. He called for a renewal of Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal and added that NATO was pursuing a drive to expand the alliance's physical presence near Russia's borders. "Analysis of the military-political situation in the world shows that a serious conflict potential remains in some regions," Medvedev said. He listed local crises and international terrorism as security threats and also stated: "Attempts to expand the military infrastructure of NATO near the borders of our country are continuing. "The primary task is to increase the combat readiness of our forces, first of all our strategic nuclear forces. They must be able to fulfil all tasks necessary to ensure Russia's security," Medvedev said. And while he praised Russia's military thrust into Georgia last year in defence of the rebel region of South Ossetia, he also said the conflict had also shown up the military's failings. The comments came despite statements by Russia's leaders suggesting a thaw in relations with the United States after the George W. Bush era and the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Medvedev, who took office last May and has struggled to escape the shadow of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is due to meet Obama for the first time next month in London. Some analysts have detected a softening of US support for NATO enlargement to ex-Soviet countries on Russia's borders such as Georgia and Ukraine, an expansion that Moscow vehemently opposes. In recent days a bipartisan commission of former US senators visited Moscow to try to frame Obama's future policies and recommended he stop encouraging Georgia and Ukraine's NATO bids. The Obama administration has said it is weighing what to do about a Bush-era project to build missile defence facilities in eastern Europe that has angered Moscow. Moscow-based defence expert Alexander Golts said he detected a contradiction in Medvedev's rhetoric, arguing that demonising NATO is at odds with Russia's stated goal of a slimmed down, efficient military. "The president is confusing two types of threats - real and mythical," said Golts. "There are real threats, notably instability in Central Asia, but there, Russia can resist them alongside NATO. In Afghanistan it is clear NATO is also helping to defend Russia." Russia, the world's largest country and one of a handful of nuclear-armed states, was attempting to streamline its military, which currently numbers about one million personnel, he added. And the army was also burdened by corruption, bureaucracy and an array of non-core organisations. Another independent expert, Pavel Felgenhauer, said it was unclear if the Kremlin had the stomach for military reforms likely to involve mass lay-offs in the current economic crisis. "There's a lot of opposition in the ranks and this opposition will grow," Felgenhauer said. "It's unclear if the Kremlin will stay the course." At Tuesday's meeting Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, a civilian who once ran a Saint Petersburg furniture company, said non-combat deaths in the military remained high at 471 last year. He spoke of what he called an "unhealthy moral and psychological atmosphere in certain military formations." A host of non-core activity, from guest-house management to weapons repair and food production, would be transferred from the defence ministry to a state-owned civilian company, Oboronservis, he added.

A Russia united by anti-westernism

2009-02-04T09:20:00.001-08:00

February 4 2009 - Financial Times by John Thornhill - In its recent disputes with Georgia and Ukraine, Russia has been crashing around like a bear in a china shop. As a result, the west has been hyperventilating about the dangers of Russia's resurgence and a new cold war. But as the global financial crisis and collapsing commodity prices shake Russia's economy and strain its political system, the west may soon be worrying again about the country's weaknesses rather than its strengths.
Just as economic booms amplify a country's assets, so busts magnify their frailties. This crisis is rapidly exposing the design flaws in Vladimir Putin's project: the failure to create impartial state institutions; the elimination of constitutional checks and balances; and a potentially brittle social compact dependent on the Kremlin delivering the economic goods. In such dangerous times it is all the more urgent for the west and Russia to devise new rules of engagement.
First, though, the west must acknowledge it has "lost" Russia and try to understand why. The hopes of the early 1990s that Russia would evolve into an instinctively pro-western partner have evaporated. Opinion polls show anti-western feelings are now deeply rooted in Russian society, irrespective of age, geography or income. Like much of the Muslim world, Russia feels humiliated by the west. It is determined to pursue a separate destiny.
Undoubtedly, the west has contributed to Russia's anti-westernism. In the 1990s the west was guilty of doing both too little and too much to help postSoviet Russia. It did not provide enough financial assistance to transform the Russian economy. Yet the International Monetary Fund, unfairly entrusted with managing the west's relationship with Russia, was heavily implicated in the economic misery of the 1990s - even if that misery was inevitable given the ruination of the Soviet economy and low commodity prices. "We have twice tried to take western theories and apply them in Russia: Marxism and liberalism. We must rely on our own thinking and values now," says Andrei Klimov, a parliamentary deputy.
Nato's embrace of ex-Warsaw Pact countries (contrary to earlier assurances given to Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev), the western military alliance's bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the subsequent recognition of Kosovo's independence have also antagonised Russia. Worse, the west gave the impression it did not care.
Yet during his eight-year presidency Mr Putin deliberately stoked anti-western sentiments for his own advantage. Rejecting western democratic values meant the Russian leadership could ignore any transparency or account-ability. Instead, the Kremlin has tried to define a separate Russian identity largely in opposition to the west. Ideologues have invented an autocratic version of "sovereign democracy" even if - the Kremlin's critics claim - sovereign democracy is to democracy what electric chair is to chair.
But the third reason for Russia's anti-westernism is perhaps more accidental, the indirect political consequences of the high oil price and fast economic growth. Sergei Guriev, head of the New Economic School in Moscow and co-author of a paper on Russia's attitudes to the west, suggests that cause and correlation have been confused. "There is a sense that Gorbachev and Yeltsin integrated with the west and failed. Putin was anti-western and worked well. By being anti-western, it seems, you live better," he says. "But this is an attribution error."
What lessons will Russians draw from the current crisis? Will they conclude that the west has "infected" Russia and retreat into isolationism? Or will they realise that Russia's fate is inextricably tied to the world economy and engage more fully? Surprisingly perhaps, there are signs that the leadership thinks the latter. Russia's heavy-handed response to Georgia alarmed foreign investors, accelerating a capital outflow that has undermined the rouble and depleted foreign currency reserves. By temporarily shutting off gas to Europe (even if Moscow still blames Kiev), Russia has alienated even traditional allies, such as Germany and Bulgaria. This has perhaps prompted a new realism in Russia about its vulnerabilities, which could lead to a more positive dialogue with the west. According to Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister: "The lower the reserves the higher the quality of the decision-making process."
At some point, the new US administration will engage Moscow on security issues such as missile defence and Nato enlargement. But meanwhile the European Union is right to take the lead on reworking economic and political ties. The EU intermediated between Russia and Georgia. It also helped broker a gas deal between Moscow and Kiev. As Russia's biggest gas customer and trading partner, the EU has no alternative but to engage. José Manuel Barroso, EU Commission president, is leading a delegation to Moscow this week to talk about energy, trade and investment.
Many Russians scorn the EU as a strange animal they do not understand (they are not alone in that). In their view, the EU is overly political, cumbersome and obsessed with process. But that process has its advantages too. It leads to a robust and transparent debate between the EU's 27 members that ultimately leads to a common approach. Britain, Poland and the Baltic states argue that the EU must diversify its energy supplies. Germany, France and Italy suggest it would be folly to isolate Russia.
Russia's leaders say they want a multi-polar world. The EU is its embodiment in all its maddening - but often useful - complexity.
The writer is the FT's Europe edition editor

Eurostat: One in two immigrants in CR is from Ukraine

2008-11-21T13:43:00.001-08:00

11.20.2008 – CzechNews – Prague - In 2006, about three million of foreign immigrants settled in the European Union countries, while the largest "nomads" of today were citizens of Poland, according to Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. Around 290,000 Poles left Poland to settle in another EU country. The second and third largest immigrant groups that year were Romanians and Moroccans, with 230,000 and 140,000 leaving their homelands respectively, Eurostat reports. Spain was the most frequent destination for foreign immigrants with 803,000 persons settling in, meanwhile Germany and the United Kingdom had almost half a million foreign persons two years ago. Czechs and foreigners: The Czech Republic was surprisingly among the countries welcoming a sizeable number of foreigners too. Around 66,000 of them settled in the country, which is much higher a figure than in Denmark or Portugal. About 60 percent of foreign immigrants in EU member states were non-EU citizens. The highest share of immigrants from non-EU countries were recorded in Slovenia (90 percent), Romania (86 percent) and the Czech Republic (83 percent). Out of this number 46 percent were Ukrainians. In other words, every second foreign immigrant in the Czech Republic is Ukrainian. By immigrant Eurostat means a person who established his or her usual residence in the territory of a country for a period of at least twelve months.

Immigration in EU in 2006
	Foreign immigrants in total	Non-EU citizens
Czech Rep.	66,100	83%
Slovakia	11,300	46%
Denmark	34,300	51%
Poland	1,800	78%
France	182,400	data missing
United Kingdom	451,700	69%
Spain	803,000	62%
Germany	558,500	43%
In total in EU27	3 000 000	60%
Source: Eurostat

Another great flood: time to build an ark?

2008-11-17T07:40:00.001-08:00

MOSCOW. (Andrei Kislyakov, scientific commentator, for RIA Novosti) - The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come. Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently. These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering. The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years. This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity. If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System's position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood. The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event. The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood. The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle. The transitional process in the electrical machine "planet Earth" can be divided into three phases. During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth's magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean. This change in the Earth's magnetic field is accompanied by strong magnetic storms, earthquakes and disastrous atmospheric events caused by a change in the circulation of oceanic waters and the atmosphere. The change in the magnetic field leads to changes in the Earth's ozone layer, which cause abrupt leaps in the biosphere's evolution owing to the altered level of radiation. As the average temperature of the planet rises, ice glaciers begin to thaw, raising ocean levels across the world. The first, "warm" phase of the transitional period is the shortest and most active. This period witnesses a relatively fast braking of the planet and the release of tremendous amounts of heat, leading to global warming. In the second phase, the magnetic field will stabilize. The Earth will slowly increase its speed of rotation, and the electrical machine "Earth" will revert to near normal speed. The increased speed of rotation will bring on a cold spell, the ice glaciers will regain their mass, and the oceans will displace their former volumes. In the third phase, the transitional period will end, the speed of Earth rotation will stabilize, and the planet's energy balance will return to the conditions of previous millennia. Following the last Great Flood, people began migrating from East to West. Are we now to see a great exodus to the East? It looks as if we should give serious thought to developing Siberia ...

Obama becomes a 'Renegade' on U.S. secret service list

2008-11-12T07:59:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON, November 11 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. president-elect Barack Obama has been assigned Renegade as his secret service codename, the Chicago Tribune reported. Obama's wife is to be known as Renaissance, his daughter Malia has been given the name Radiance and her sister Sasha Rosebud. Although the "secret names" are usually widely known the White House Communications Agency, which assigns the names, has not revealed its selection method, a tradition started after WWII. The only restriction is they should be easily pronounced and clearly understood by those transmitting and receiving radio communications. However, some thought has obviously gone into the names. Vice-president-elect Joe Biden, who has Irish roots, has been assigned Celtic and Dick Cheney, a keen fisherman, is known as Angler. Outgoing-president George Bush is known as Tumbler - his father was assigned Timberwolf. Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor who appeared in numerous Westerns, was known as Rawhide, John F. Kennedy Lancer and Bill Clinton Eagle. Pope John Paul II was assigned the codename Halo during a visit to the U.S. and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is known as Kittyhawk or Redfern.

Brezhnev Comes to Washington

2008-10-09T08:13:00.001-07:00

October 7, 2008 The St. Petersburg Times by Alexei Bayer - I have repeatedly drawn parallels in this column between President George W. Bush’s United States and the Soviet Union during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev. The similarities between the two regimes are uncanny, ranging from the messianic drive to spread ideology abroad — at the point of a bayonet if need be — to tight surveillance at home. Now comes the U.S. financial debacle to complete the list. It is ironic that the first U.S. president with an MBA presided over the disintegration of the nation’s financial system and the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch — names that are synonymous with modern capitalism. Speaking of capitalism, after having spent eight years lecturing about the virtues of an unbridled free market and the private sector, and even outsourcing his wars to private contractors, Bush has reached for a “socialist” straw of public money to bolster the banking system. This comes straight from Lenin’s dialectic playbook. The founder of the Soviet state also taught his Bolsheviks to shift tactics shamelessly whenever expediency required. But the main similarity with the Soviet Union is not the nationalization of bad banking debt via the $700 billion rescue package signed by Bush on Friday. Rather, it is the nexus between an unnecessary war abroad and economic collapse at home. The foray into Afghanistan proved to be the Soviet Union’s undoing. The old fools in the Kremlin decided in 1979 that their small neighbor was ripe for communism — or at least could be pacified by a limited contingent of Soviet troops. The engagement lasted nearly a decade, cost 15,000 Soviet lives, spread disgust with the government and contributed to the fall of Soviet communism. Bush’s neoconservatives similarly believed that Iraq was ripe for Western-style democracy and that Americans would be met with flowers on the streets of Baghdad. The war’s supporters thought it would be a short victorious campaign — a cakewalk. Now, 5 1/2 years on, open-ended occupation has created cynicism and hypocrisy among Americans who shrug off evidence of torture of “enemy combatants,” ignore massive pilfering and war profiteering going on in Iraq and pay sanctimonious lip service to the wanton deaths of U.S. soldiers. Whether moral turpitude or the economic impact of the war will be more damaging in the long run is for historians to decide. In many ways, the current economic crisis is the result of the Iraq war. Iraq — and more broadly, the misguided war on terror — has cost the United States trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs. It is the money the country didn’t have and had to borrow from foreign investors. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush invited the country to go out and shop. He didn’t want his countrymen to analyze the causes of the terrorist attacks or to take a hard look at Washington’s response. He wanted U.S. citizens to keep on living beyond their means and to wander in a daze in the interminable aisles of Wal-Mart and Home Depot. To ease the shopping spree, his administration kept financial oversight lax and taxes low in the face of widening budget deficits. Wall Street then helped Americans squeeze every last dollar of credit from their leverageable assets. Uncle Sam faces the financial crisis bereft of resources and heavily in debt. The congressional debate about the $700 billion bailout package ignored the fact that the country simply doesn’t have this money. The Kremlin faced severe challenges in the 1980s — when oil revenues declined and Ronald Reagan unleashed a costly arms race — with an economy badly weakened by the Afghan misadventure. If Americans emerge from this crisis much poorer and far less secure, they could ask the Russians what it felt like living in the Soviet Union circa 1990. Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

What Vladimir Putin has done within the 8 years in office

2008-05-08T15:09:00.001-07:00

According to the official site of the President, president.kremlin.ru, Vladimir Putin has worked for 2494 days. He has managed to accomplish 9906 deals (the number of positions mentioned in his schedule), with moving from one destination to another and work with documents excluded. Workdays account for 85% of all days of the year (common people usually have 70% of workdays). The majority of the deals regarded meetings with different people (37%). Every year Russia’s PMs were the leaders in terms of the frequency of meetings with the president – he received them as often as twice a week on average. Visiting various sights, and telephone talks take an important place in the schedule (10-11% each), with participation in ceremonies and sessions accounting for 8-9%.
Public speeches have been part and parcel of the president’s life. Vladimir Putin has delivered speeches 1900 times and said 2.2 mln words within the eight years. Assuming that he pronounced some 160 words per minute, he had to spend 230 hours on giving speeches.
Trips and visits of the President are an indispensable part of his work. Vladimir Putin covered a 1.4 mln km distance (it means that he could travel round the Earth 35 times). His longest journey was the one of 2007 on the route Moscow – Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky – Jakarta (Indonesia) – Sydney (Australia) – Abu Dhabi (the UAE) – Moscow (36.500 km in total). During his term in office Vladimir Putin visited 54 countries (Ukraine – 16 times, Germany – 12, Kazakhstan – 11, France – 9, Belorus – 8). The favourite destinations of the President in Russia were St. Petersburg (38 visits) and Sochi (34).
Vladimir Putin paid much attention to his staff: 60 people have managed to work as ministers for the eight years. Three PMs (Mikhail Kasyanov, Mikhail Fradkov and Victor Zubkov) and three Chiefs of the Presidential Administration (Alexander Voloshin, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergey Sobyanin) have been changed. Only five Deputy Prime Ministers and Ministers who were in the government early 2000 are still in office (Alexey Kudrin, Sergey Shoigu, Alexey Gordeyev, Leonid Reyman and Nikolay Patrushev).
Besides, Vladimir Putin has worked much with documents. He has signed 1.853 Federal Laws, 46 Constitutional Laws, rejected 39 bills, issued 13.006 decrees and 5.299 orders. In sum, the President signed 20.243 documents of that kind, that is 8 pieces daily.

Vladimir Putin’s terms in office. The bottom line

2008-05-08T15:01:00.001-07:00

May 08, 2008 – Kommersant – The population of the Russian Federation decreased by 4.88 mln people. It amounted to 146.89 mln (January 1, 2000), and dropped to 142.01 (January 1, 2008). Occupying the 6th place in the world 2000, Russia sunk to the 8th position 2008. At that, the natural loss fell from 929.6 to 477.7 people per annum.

From 1999-2007 an average monthly salary grew 9 times (from 1522.6 roubles to 13.518 roubles), pensions – 7 times (from 521.5 roubles to 3682.3 roubles). The number of Russians on the bboks of labor registry offices remained the same (1.791.800 and 1.774.500 correspondingly).

According to the IMF data, the Russian GDP boosted 6 times in current terms (from $195.91 bln 1999 – the 23th place in the world, – to $1289.58 bln 2007 – the 11th place). Russia is now the world leader in producing oil. The mining increased from 305 mln tons to 490.7 tons annually, and as to gas, – from 592 bln to 651 bln m2. The volume of agricultural production grew 3 times (from 611.9 bln roubles to 2017.2 roubles), the volume of house-building got twice as high (from 32 mln m2 to 60.4 mln m2). Exports grew 5 times (from $75.6 bln to $355.5 bln), and imports – 6 times (from $39.5 bln to $223.4).

The state budget surged 10 times becoming a surplus one, incomes went up from 615.53 bln roubles to 6644.45 bln roubles, and public spending – from 666.93 bln roubles to 6570.3 bln roubles. The oil and gas sector used to account for 5.6% of the GDP, whereas now it amounts to 6.8%. Gold and exchange currency reserves soared 40 times (from $12.456 bln on January 1, 2000 to $534,422 bln on May 1, 2008), which allowed Russia to occupy the 3rd place in the world. A Stability Fund was set up in Russia ($162.52 on May 1, 2008). The state foreign debt decreased 3 times (from $158.4 bln to $44,1 bln). Overall inflation from 2000-2007 was 131% (the 22nd place in the world).

The bureaucratic apparatus grew 150%: 1999 there were 397.240 executive officials in Russia, and 2007 – 655.790. At the same time Russia lost 30 positions in the Heritage Foundation economic liberty rating (it fell from the 104th place to the 134th one), and 61 positions in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (dropping from the 82nd place to the 143rd one).

The number of registered crimes grew from 3 mln 1999 to 3.58 mln 2007. Though there are less people in jail now (1.06 mln on January 1, 2000 compared with 891.7 on April 1, 2008). The incarceration rate in Russia is only lower than that in the United States, occupying the 1st place.

No Munich in Bucharest

2008-04-07T07:55:00.001-07:00

04–04–2008 – MOSCOW - RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Kosyrev - Those who followed the NATO summit in Bucharest had every reason to expect a "second Munich," that is, one more address in which President Vladimir Putin would tell the global audience what Russia thinks of the West's attitude to it. But there was no Munich in Bucharest, and it had not been planned. Drafting his last presidential speech before a major world forum, Putin intended from the very start to balance out Russia's discontent with NATO's actions with its proposals on future relations between the two sides. The Munich conference was a relatively open forum unlike the Bucharest meeting. This time, Putin did not deliver a public speech. He addressed the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, which his presence turned into a summit. The media were groping for information about Putin's speech. One of the sources was NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer; others were from the Russian delegation. So, what did the Russian president talk about? Here is the first half of his speech about Moscow's grievances. He called the extension of the alliance a "direct threat" to Russia - a very serious warning. Russia does not have the right of veto, and it is not seeking it. States should be able to hear each other's concerns without any vetoes. NATO should not ensure its security at the expense of the security of other countries, Russia included. NATO is a military alliance, and as such it should display restraint it the military sphere. If NATO continues approaching the Russian borders, Moscow will take "necessary measures." Russia has seen repeated violations of international law - it is enough to mention the bombing of Yugoslavia, or Kosovo's unilateral recognition. As we see, there are no sensations, everything is obvious. Now let's turn to the second half of the speech, where Putin voiced Russia's proposals for cooperation with NATO. Having suspended the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) last December, Russia is ready to resume it on the basis of reciprocity. The Iranian problem should be resolved on the basis of transparency - hardly anyone can imagine Iran attacking the United States. Instead of cornering the Iranians, the world community should find another approach. NATO and Russia could cooperate on Afghanistan. He spoke highly about the participation of warships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Operation Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean, and pointed out that for Moscow cooperation with NATO is an informed choice. This is about all, or at least the main points. Not a single sensation - Russia has been telling NATO about these things for many years, but NATO has turned a deaf ear to them, and has been implacably moving towards the Russian borders. Moscow should not feel any triumph about the Bucharest summit's previous decisions - to suspend the Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia. This is a trifle because in December this process will be resumed. But Scheffer's words about NATO's inevitable expansion are important, and NATO's decision to regard the missile defense system as its own brainchild rather than an American idea imposed on Europe is a serious symptom. The Bucharest summit has shown that NATO and Europe or the West in general, have even more problems than it seems at first sight. Muslim Albania's NATO entry is part of the conflict between the West and the Muslim world, and its solution is nowhere in sight. The well-concealed contradictions about NATO's participation in missions in Afghanistan point to Alliance's military insolvency, and its ambiguous position of an accessory for the American war machine. The Bucharest summit is the hardest of all. NATO is beset with problems - Paris and Berlin feel Iraq-related mistrust of Washington (despite the change of leaders in France and Germany), Polish-German and Greek-Macedonian relations remain complicated; NATO is reluctant to aggravate relations with President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev; and Ukraine and Georgia do not fit NATO's criteria in a whole number of parameters. It is hard to be an American or European today. For several centuries, the Western civilization nurtured illusions about its eternal leadership and supremacy over all other cultures. But this era is coming to a close, and it is time for the West to adapt to a new reality. But for the time being this adaptation is more in the nature of panic in front of the imminent invasion of a poorly reinforced fortress - "All those who can bear arms should come inside, and the bridge should be lifted. There is no point in reacting to the signals from the aliens, no matter what they suggest." This is how NATO behaved with Russia under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. No internal NATO problems matter when it comes to relations with Russia. NATO has never listened to Russia. Nor does it heed Russia's concerns now. This was the argument of those in Moscow who opposed Putin's visit to Bucharest, but the other view prevailed despite all skepticism. This is why there was no "new Munich" in Bucharest - one was enough.

Fears of recession hang over Davos

2008-01-28T07:53:00.001-08:00

January 23, 2008 - Russia Today - Sliding stock markets and fears of a global recession are likely to dominate talks at the annual economic forum, which opens in the Swiss city of Davos on Wednesday. Also on the agenda are the legacies of Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, the outgoing presidents of Russia and the U.S. respectively. Although the Davos forum hasn't officially started, several meetings have already taken place on the sidelines. Later, delegates will hear opening remarks by the Afghan president Hamid Karzai and a welcoming speech by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The main subjects of the forum will then be discussed at a plenary session. The corridors at the Congress Centre will be swarming with the great and the good, including about 27 heads of state or government, 113 cabinet ministers, hundreds of chief executives and bankers. Altogether, about 2,500 participants will attend. The Russian delegation includes the Russian Finance Minister, Aleksey Kudrin, the head of Sberbank German Gref and representatives of large Russian businesses. This year’s theme sounds, as usual, somewhat blurred - ‘The Power of Collaborative Innovation’. To put it simply, it’s global tensions - both political and economic. Business leaders will focus on private equity investors and the growing power of India, China and oil-rich nations, including Russia. Lee Howell, Senior Director, Head of Asia and Head of Global Agenda at the forum says Russia has an important role to play on the key issues. Among those under discussion in Switzerland include climate change, energy security, arms non-proliferation, the war on terrorism, and sovereign wealth funds. “The assumption is that if the U.S. economy slows down, then it will have an adverse impact on global growth. The hope is that there will be a decoupling and that it will come from the BRIC economies, and the R in BRIC is Russia,” Lee Howell added. But with turmoil on the world's stock markets, Russia is unlikely to top the agenda.

Total Faces Budget Problems on its LNG Project

2008-01-25T13:44:00.001-08:00

24.01.2008 - [Neftegaz.RU] - The French oil company Total said Tuesday that it was facing budget problems on a major liquefied natural gas project in Iran and that it was reviewing plans with the Iranian government. "We are reviewing the project with the Iranian government, and it could take some time," said Philippe Boisseau, president of gas and power at Total. He declined to give an estimate on the latest cost of Pars LNG, which will be the Islamic Republic's first liquefied natural gas export terminal or say when Total might make an investment decision. Pars LNG would be fed by developing part of the giant South Pars gas field in a project, but construction costs have spiraled throughout the energy sector. The terminal was due to start in 2009 but has been pushed back to at least 2011.