The Kremlin's Failing Monopoly

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.