The Agonist - Russian Federation

Russia enshrines ban on death penalty

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:47:31 -0800

Moscow | November 19

BBC - Russia's ban on the death penalty will remain when a current legal suspension expires on 1 January, the country's Constitutional Court has ruled.

It said the use of the death penalty was now impossible because Russia had signed international deals banning it.

Russian announced the moratorium in 1996 when it joined the Council of Europe, although it retains capital punishment in its criminal code.

Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Russians back the death penalty.

US-Russia nuclear talks hit snag

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:47:04 -0800

Moscow | Nov 12

AFP - Talks between Moscow and Washington to replace a key nuclear disarmament treaty that expires next month have hit a snag over proposed restrictions on Russian missiles, a newspaper said Thursday.

The dispute threatens to derail high-stakes talks on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which US President Barack Obama's administration hopes to replace before it expires on December 5.

The Kommersant daily, citing an expert familiar with the START talks, said Washington was seeking to keep a provision from the original treaty for monitoring Russia's arsenal of mobile ground-based missiles.

"They are offering to keep and even strengthen control over our mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) such as the Topol," the expert was quoted as saying by Kommersant.

Russia is against the proposal since the United States currently does not have its own mobile ground-based ICBMs and it is therefore of "unilateral character," he said.

The maximum number of "carriers" capable of delivering nuclear warheads remains another sticking point, the newspaper reported.

"In their package, the Americans stipulated a new ceiling for warhead carriers that we don't quite agree with," the expert told Kommersant, referring to proposals presented to Moscow last month by US National Security Adviser James Jones.

Besides ground-based ICBMs, the term "carriers" also encompasses submarine-launched missiles and heavy bombers.

Russia Tries, Once Again, to Rein in Vodka Habit

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:05:25 -0800

Clifford J. Levy | Mytishchi, Russia | November 11

NYT - It was late on a Monday afternoon at the drunk tank in this Moscow suburb, but it could have been any day, at any hour, at any similar facility across this land. People would come. They always do. Such is Russia’s ruinous penchant for the bottle — and the challenge facing a new government policy to curb it.

First to be escorted in by police officers was a construction worker named Damir M. Askerkhanov, who said he had been bingeing on vodka and beer — “This is my very own holiday!” — before he was found stumbling about in the cold. At 23, he admitted that he had already been picked up intoxicated twice recently. “Only even drunker,” he said.

Sergey A. Yurovsky, 36, who is studying to be a government clerk, arrived next, mumbling and getting tangled up in his sweater when he was asked to take it off for a brief medical exam. After he was moved to a room to sober up, and dozed off, officers showed up with Larisa V. Lobachyova, 53, whose hair was matted with dirt from a fall.

“It is this way all the time,” said Inspector Igor I. Poludnitsyn, who has supervised the drunk tank for seven years. “It is our national calamity.”

[...]

Drinking has increased sharply since the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991, though heavily intoxicated people have been somewhat less visible on the streets in recent years, in part because the police do a better job of whisking them away.

Also: Tackling ‘the Russian God’,

New York Times, By Robert Mackey, November 3

My colleague Clifford Levy reports in Tuesday’s New York Times that the Russian government is trying, once again, to find some way of addressing the alarming fact that “Russians consume roughly 4.75 gallons of pure alcohol a person annually, more than double the level that the World Health Organization considers a health threat.”

Among the measures under consideration for curbing what Mr. Levy calls “Russia’s ruinous penchant for the bottle” are tougher penalties for selling alcohol to minors and restrictions on the sale of beer, which has grown more popular. Vodka, though, remains the national drink, and finding a way to keep Russians from drinking it will require some creative thinking.

In 2002, the Russian writer Victor Erofeyev explained in The New Yorker that vodka was supposedly invented by monks at the Chudov Monastery more than 500 years ago, around the time the Russians finally freed themselves of Tatar rule. He added that even though vodka “is unlike other forms of alcohol in that there is no justifiable excuse for drinking it

,” it has become such a central feature of Russian life that “some historians compare the Russian national dependence on vodka to the Tatar yoke.”

The US-Russia-Ukraine Triangle

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:10:48 -0700

With the possible exception of Georgia-US-Russia, no US relationship in the former Soviet region is more fraught today than the US-Russia-Ukraine triangle. At a time when Washington and Moscow have variously committed to a relationship reset, a new operating system, and a rerun of the Clinton-Yeltsin strategic partnership, it is disappointing how little substance has followed rhetoric. Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe are still reeling from the US Administration’s abrupt and ill-timed reversal on missile defense deployment, and Team Obama is eager for opportunities to demonstrate its commitment to the new Europe, which received no shortage of love from the Bush Administration.

Enter the prospect of US-Ukraine cooperation on missile defense. According to Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US, the two countries have begun working discussions on sharing data from Ukrainian radar for use with a revised US-led missile defense system in Southeastern Europe. The Ukrainians may be overreaching here, trying to manufacture a moment of decision that the US Administration prefers to avoid, however there is no doubt that missile defense cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe remains very much on the table, even after the Bush plan was scrapped last month. And while the Obama Administration insists any radar-interceptor system is still intended primarily to defend against a rogue missile launch by Iran, Moscow has renewed its objection that missile defense based in former Warsaw Pact territory is a threat to its nuclear deterrent, an absolute red line for an ex-superpower whose conventional forces are not up to the task of defending its sprawling borders.

All of this makes perfect sense in the context of an increasingly zero sum US-Russian relationship: If the possibility of US-Ukraine missile defense cooperation reassures Kiev (and Warsaw and Prague) that the US is still fully engaged in the region, it should be no surprise that Russia is as upset over this as it was over the Bush Administration’s plans for a Polish and the Czech system–perhaps more so because some of the radars at issue are in Crimea, a Russian majority region of Ukraine where Moscow could exploit ethnic tension to empower a pro-Russian separatist movement. Ironically, during the month between Obama’s cancellation of the original missile defense plan and now, Moscow had refused to acknowledge the importance of the US concession, latching onto the system’s technical shortcomings to dismiss it as destined for failure from the outset. In turn, Congressional hawks have argued that Russia’s offer to cut its deployed nuclear arsenal by about a quarter is hollow, since most of those weapons are unreliable antiques.

The bigger picture: If it can’t have close ties with both Russia and the West, Ukraine’s best bet is security through NATO membership, and prosperity through EU membership. Both are threatened by Russia’s plans to build the Nord Stream pipeline, which will cut Ukraine out of the gas trade, and Moscow’s ambition to control a sphere of influence, which will, at a minimum, extend to borderlands with large Russian populations. The Ukrainian Presidential election in January will reshuffle Kiev’s cast of players, but is unlikely to effect a permanent reorientation toward Moscow over Brussels and Washington. For the US, opening a dialogue on potential cooperation with Ukraine signals that the missile defense reversal in September was not the beginning of the end of US engagement in the region.

By Matthew Rojansky. To see more articles by Matthew, go to http://blog.psaonline.org/

Adrift On A Russian Island, Part 1

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:22:19 -0700

Oct 15

Asia Times -

ADRIFT ON A RUSSIAN ISLAND, Part 1
Koreans left high and dry

When Sakhalin Island, off Russia's east coast, became a Japanese colony in 1905, thousands of Koreans were brought in to work in the fishery and timber industries. When the Soviet Union regained the island 45 years later, the Koreans became virtual prisoners, and a stormy coexistence began that lasts to this day.

This is the first article in a two-part report.

Quite the history lesson~ tina

map: http://www.treehugger.com/2009/01/25-week/

Benchmarks prove elusive in Iran talks

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:22:02 -0700

Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Oct 14

Asia Times - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's high-profile trip to Moscow this week to shore up Russian support for tougher sanctions on Iran if talks on its nuclear program fail has been openly rebuffed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

He labeled as "counter-productive" even the mere threat of sanctions at this delicate moment in the Iran nuclear standoff. "At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process. Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counter-productive," Lavrov said.

Ukraine fears for its future as Moscow muscles in on Crimea

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:54:03 -0700

Luke Harding | Yalta | Oct 11

The Observer - As Ukraine prepares for its first presidential election since the Orange Revolution, there are signs that its giant neighbour to the east will not tolerate a pro-western outcome.

From the terrace there are views of the Crimean peninsula, with fir trees, dark green cypresses and a shimmering bay. Inside – through a pleasant Italian courtyard – is the room where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sat together around a wooden table and divided up postwar Europe.

But almost 65 years after the "big three" met in the Crimean seaside resort of Yalta – now in Ukraine – the question of zones of influence has come back to haunt Europe. Russia has made it clear that it sees Ukraine as crucial to its bold claim that it is entitled to a zone of influence in its post-Soviet backyard.

Last month, a group of east European leaders and intellectuals gathered in the Livadia Palace, where Britain, the US and the Soviet Union held the Yalta conference in February 1945. The idea was to discuss Ukraine's strategic future. But the discussion was overshadowed by one question: will there be a war between Russia and Ukraine?

The scenario is not as daft as it seems. In August, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, gave his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, an unprecedented diplomatic mugging. In a seething letter, and subsequent video message, Medvedev reprimanded Yushchenko for his "anti-Russian" stance. He told him that, as far as Russia was concerned, the pro-western Yushchenko was now a non-person.

Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea
Russia and Ukraine in Intensifying Standoff

Mother Russia Is Dying

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:38:42 -0700

I've been on a bit of a Russian kick lately. I've never read much Russian history (China always seemed so much more interesting) so I've been nibbling around the edges with some random tomes on minor topics so I can start getting a feel for the geography and culture before really jumping into a comprehensive historical survey.

There are many fascinating things about Russia, but right now to me it all boils down to "what the hell happened to a once great nation?" The country that produced Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Nabokov, etc etc. The country that beat back the Nazis and dominated all of Eastern Europe. The country at the center of the Soviet empire that contended with the U.S. and NATO for world domination for nearly fifty years.

Now it's a wreck. From the Financial Times:

Everyone interested in modern Russia should read a report out this week on the nation's deepening demographic crisis. It's published by the United Nations Development Programme, but is written by a team of Russian academic experts, so no one can say it is tainted with bias.

The report describes the stark reality of a country whose population is falling fast, to a considerable extent because of rampant alcohol abuse among men, who on average are dying before they are 60. "Short life expectancy is the main feature of this crisis, though by no means its only feature. The birth rate is too low, the population is shrinking and ageing, and Russia is on the threshold of rapid loss of able-bodied population, which will be accompanied by a growing demographic burden per able-bodied individual. The number of potential mothers is starting to decline and the country needs to host large flows of immigrants," the report says.

Since 1992, the natural decrease of Russia's population has amounted to a staggering 12.3m people. This has been compensated to some degree by the arrival of 5.7m immigrants. But many are ethnic Russians from former Soviet republics, and the source is drying up. Overall, Russia had 142m people at the start of 2008, compared with 148.6m in 1993. By 2025, the figure will almost certainly fall below 140m and could be as low as 128m. The implications for Russia's economy are enormous. The authors cite forecasts from Rosstat, the national statistics agency, that Russia's working age population will decline by 14m between now and 2025. As Vladimir Putin said three years ago when he was president, the demographic emergency is "the most acute problem facing Russia today".

My reading on Russia so far has largely focused on Siberia for whatever reason. I just completed Jeffrey Taylor's Siberian Dawn, detailing his early 1990's trek across the breadth of Siberia from Magadan to Warsaw. It's a bracing read as Taylor chronicles his impressions of the unbelievable climate and the people struggling and stumbling to adapt to the fall of the USSR. The shadow of Stalin looms over the book, even forty years after the tyrant's death.

I also read The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, the story of a Polish calvary officer who escaped from a Siberian prison camp in WWII by heading south -- thru the Gobi Desert and over the Himalayas into India. The account of his trial by the Stalinist authorities (and the months of torture that preceded it) outdoes anything by Kafka. Its hard enough to process the facts of tale, much less fathom the deprivation, suffering, fortitude and will to be free that powered these people through their ordeal. A short and understated book of remarkable power. Could potentially make an incredible movie.

Wrapping up the trilogy, I read Brian Moynahan's Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned. Two things jumped out at me about that one: 1) the period from 1904 to 1914 was a true interregnum; 2) monarchy is an inherently criminal form of government. The Czar nearly lost power after getting utterly whipped in a war with Japan and only brutal repression and some superficial reforms managed to cement his hold on power. But it was clear that the old Russian empire of God and the Czar was intellectually and morally spent. I found the descriptions of the anomie of that period hit very close to home and our current predicament. Into this vacuum came the shyster Grigory Rasputin.

For all his machinations and self-indulgence, Rasputin offended me far less than the Czar Nicholas II and his awful wife, the power behind the throne. They systematically eliminated (sometimes with murder) every competent administrator and general in their service until they could no longer insulate themselves from the consequences of the disasters they caused Russia. By the end of the book I was looking forward to the Bolsheviks' arrival.

I'm bracing myself for studying the following periods of revolution, terror and tyranny as well as the preceding eras. Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. Catherine the Great. Lenin. Trotsky. Stalin. Pretty scary stuff. Any recommendations for what to read next?

Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:55:09 -0700

Philip P. Pan | Oct 6

WaPo -

On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

The humiliating episode underscored Russia's continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine's first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia's interests in January.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country's first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a "possible military intervention" by Russia that would "bring back the division of Europe." Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

Crimea is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine's current government insists it must go.

"It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine," said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. "That's the message they're sending to any future president."

Ingushetia's cycle of violence

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:26:16 -0700

Dom Rotheroe | Oct 3

BBC - Political violence and killings seem to be daily occurrences in the tiny mainly Muslim republic of Ingushetia in the Russian North Caucasus, which shares a border with Chechnya. Dom Rotheroe explains why.

"Don't mention to our mother that he was tortured before he died," one of the sisters of the late Batyr Albakov whispers to us before we interview his family.

"She doesn't know about that and she has a weak heart."

They came in the early hours of 10 July to take Mamma Albakov's son away. Two carloads of security forces had barged their way into the family flat in Russia's Caucasian republic of Ingushetia.

Eleven days later, Batyr's family learned of his death through a report on the internet.

In that time, the 26-year-old aeroplane engineer had supposedly become an Islamic militant, acquired a gun and camouflage gear and been killed in a shoot-out with security forces.

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili blamed for starting Russian war

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:48:46 -0700

Ian Traynor | Oct 1

The Guardian - An investigation into last year's Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war.

In more than 1,000 pages of analysis, documentation and witness statements, the most exhaustive inquiry into the five-day conflict dismissed Georgian claims that the artillery attack was in response to a Russian invasion, accused both sides of violations of the laws of war, indicated that war crimes had been perpetrated against Georgian civilians and rejected Russian claims of "genocide" in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.

The EU-commissioned report, by a fact-finding mission of more than 20 political, military, human rights and international law experts led by the Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, was unveiled in Brussels today after nine months of work.

"There is no way to assign overall responsibility for the conflict to one side alone," the report found.

But the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a "penchant for acting in the heat of the moment".

The war started "with a massive Georgian artillery attack", the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia.

Flatly dismissing Saakashvili's version, the report said: "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated ... It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack."

70 years on, Polish resolution condemns crimes under Stalin

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:21:18 -0700

Rafal Kiepuszewski | Sept 25

Deutsche Welle - A resolution unanimously approved by the Polish parliament this week condemns the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939. The resolution referred to a series of massacres of Poles in Russia, as well as mass deportations of over one million Poles to Siberia. Poland also called on Russia to condemn the crimes.

Sixteen days after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on Sept. 1, 1939, troops under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin were sent into eastern Poland. A year later, a Soviet-led massacre in the Katyn forest left over 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals dead.

The response from Russia warned that the Polish resolution, which said the Stalin-era crimes amount to genocide, was a set-back to improving ties between Russia and Poland.

"The resolution adopted by the parliament deals a serious blow to efforts to develop normal neighborly relations between our countries," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the resolution was "tendentious and politicized."

Polish parliamentary speaker Bronislaw Komorowski said Russia's reaction indicates the country is still coming to grips with its past.

"The fact that Russia has reacted so nervously to a resolution that has nothing to do with present-day foreign policy is a sign that it is still unable to come to terms with its own history," Komorowski said

Heroin addiction spreads like wildfire in Russia

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:00:27 -0700

Megan K. Stack | Podolsk, Russia | September 24

LAT - The young man named Anton is a member of Russia's "lost generation."

He's the son of middle-class, college-educated engineers; he studied at a good university and became a truck sales manager in Moscow. He's also a 28-year-old heroin addict.

In the years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan triggered a sharp increase in poppy cultivation, Russia has been flooded with heroin. The dope has crept along a drug trail stretching from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations and over the Russian border, turning this country into the world's top consumer of heroin, the government says.

The drug has spread like fire through a country uniquely unqualified to cope with its dangers: Narcotics were largely absent during Soviet times, and most people are still unaware of the risk of heroin addiction, even as an estimated 83 Russians a day die by overdosing on the drug, government figures show.

"It's a catastrophe for us. We were completely unprepared for this turn of events," says Evgeny Bryun, Moscow's chief drug addiction specialist. "We have our own lost generation."

[...]

Methadone, which is widely used in the West to wean people off heroin, is illegal in Russia, and rehabilitation programs are unavailable in many parts of the country. In 2007, Human Rights Watch concluded that the treatment at state drug clinics was "so poor as to constitute a violation of the right to health."

Crew 'welcomed' Russian 'pirates'

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:24:42 -0700

Richard Galpin | Moscow | Sept 24

BBC - Eight alleged hijackers of the Russian ship the Arctic Sea were in fact welcomed on board after being rescued in the Baltic Sea, a lawyer claims.

Konstantin Baranovsky, who represents one of the eight men, said the alleged pirates were testing a navigation system on a small boat.

They were then rescued after getting into difficulties, Mr Baranovsky said.

The eight were arrested in mid-August by the Russian navy and taken to Moscow to face kidnapping and piracy charges.

According to Mr Baranovsky, the eight men were welcomed on board the Arctic Sea, as they were Russians, like the ship's crew.

They were offered vodka, and allowed to use the ship's gym.

There were many more parties after that first night as the boat continued its voyage from the Baltic Sea through the English Channel and out into the Atlantic Ocean, Mr Baranovsky said.

That is where the alleged pirates were eventually arrested.