From [TBC] To The Polar Lands - Rolling Russia / "Near Abroad" News Thread

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFJP8hWWoAANvvw.jpg:large

The Duma has decided against a political investigation into the Nemtsov murder, apparently on the basis that it's not within their remit and should be left to the police. It was always highly unlikely / never gonna happen but it removes the only option I can see for openly questioning Kadyrov about his connections. Post-Nemtsov, it definitely looks like government critics are shifting some of the focus away from Putin and on to his problematic fave. The big scandal this week has been the lavish wedding Kadyrov oversaw between a decrepit 57-year-old chief of police and an understandably morose-looking 17-year-old girl.

Interesting piece on Peter Pomerantsev by Mark Ames at Pando:

http://pando.com/2015/05/17/neocons-2-0-the-problem-with-peter-pomerantsev/

Highlights that even some of the critics who are better, smarter and more nuanced than the shrill neocon cheerleaders have some very shady connections writing the cheques.

he doesnt look too bad for 57 though

Yeah, tbf, he has taken care of himself.

There seems to be some confusion over whether he's still also married to his first wife.

Alexei Mozgovoi, construction worker turned leader of the separatist Lugansk Prizrak brigade, has been assassinated along with his press secretary. He was probably the most visible face of the rebellion, post-Strelkov. He had been talking a lot over the last few days about the chances of the ceasefire holding being slim. Could have been offed by either side.

Saakashvili is being strongly tipped as the next governor of Odessa, presumably on the basis that they didn't suffer enough with the massacre.

#Spokesman for Odessa regional Governor's office confirms on Facebook that Saakashvili to be introduced as Governor at 2.30 pm tomorrow.
9:09pm - 29 May 15

Absolutely astonishing.

maybe they convinced it him it was little odessa, brooklyn

All the Hromadske journalists I follow on Twitter are horrified. The competing theories are:

1. Poroshenko needed to remove a key Kolomoisky ally but didn't have any Ukrainian allies of his own who he trusted to take over
2. The central government fears an invasion from Transdniestr and wants someone to organise resistance
3. Poroshenko was sick of having him in Kyiv and wanted to keep him busy
4. It's pure provocation - putting a fervent anti-Russian "reformer" in the biggest Russian-speaking city to stir the pot

None of these is all that convincing but each is more plausible than Poroshenko thinking he's going to clear up the city's notoriously complicated mix of corruption and organised crime. Various EU-leaning journalists and campaigners are claiming that Saakashvili attended a gathering of Georgia's leading Mafia clans in Kyiv last week, which is interesting if true.

http://i.imgur.com/PJINtWN.jpg

^ Kyiv Pride march was attacked by Pravii Sektor today.

Looks like it was a very moderate step forward despite the participants being bussed miles away from the centre of the city, asked not to hold hands and being attacked by neo-Nazis. Klitchko, the Mayor of Kyiv, and the city's police had apparently refused to meet with marchers and refused to guarantee protection until Poroshenko gave a speech yesterday telling them they had to. The police defended the marchers when they came under attack and, as the picture shows, did so at a cost. Compared to what happened in Moscow last week where three people were arrested for trying to hold an unauthorised protest march, it's a limited success.

This may or may not be interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/guardian-moscow-week

The Guardian is having a "Moscow week".

“The difference is huge — in reaction speed, memory, hand tremor — and in how they recover,” Vladimir Nuzhny, of the Health Ministry’s National Narcology Research Centre, said. “On average, 50 per cent of people in Moscow have this Mongoloid gene. So this, we think, is part of the problem.”

As part of the study, the scientists paid 12 volunteer students to drink 350 grams, about a third of a bottle, of vodka in an hour, and then monitored their behaviour.

“That’s a lot by Western standards, but it’s normal for Russia,” Dr Nuzhny told The Times. “At first they thought it was great, because they were being paid to drink, but after a while they realised it was more like work.”

Lumpen is a Russian modelling agency challenging the contemporary conceptions of beauty. Set up by Avdotja Alexandrova at the age of 24, it now has a look book of models from Moscow to Minsk.

Models have frizzy hair, bags under their eyes, and scratches on their faces. Not because they’ve been “dressed-down” to look normal, she says, but because they that’s the way they are.

Nothing says 'padding it out' like having three members of the same underground supper club in your 30 under 30 power list but the articles about migrant workers and the Kapkov development project have been decent.

About half the Polish government has been sacked, including Radek Sikorski, following a long ongoing scandal which started when waiters recorded key politicians bitching about everyone from David Cameron to low-paid workers over dinner:

http://www.politico.eu/article/a-polish-game-of-tapes/

If you believe the statisticians, Poland is probably the best run country in Europe in terms of economic efficiency. The cost of living increases over the last few years have ground people down immensely though.

The events in Moldova over the last few months illustrate the challenges the EU / US face in implementing effective reform in other post-Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine.

Until 2009, Moldova had effectively kept voting in the Communist party that used to run it when it was a Soviet republic. For much of the last decade, the official GDP per capita was less than $1000. The main source of income was probably remittances from Moldovans working abroad, often illegally - typically in construction or sex work. It was pretty clear a lot of the cash, even the money that was made within Moldova, wasn't filtering through official channels. I remember staying in a 'fully-booked' ex-Soviet hotel that only had about six actual guest - it was almost certainly a front for money laundering.

GDP picked up (I'd guess thanks to the construction boom in neighbouring countries) and dipped again after the stock market crash. The Communists were voted out and replaced with great fanfare in the West by a pro-EU, pro-free-market reformer who, like Yanukovich around the same time, promised to make Moldova more investment-friendly in return for loans. GDP reached its highest ever level (to put it in perspective, that's around $2000 - somewhere between Cameroon and Senegal in the rankings) with higher consumer spending partly driven by access to more credit.

It recently came to light, however, that local oligarch Ilan Shor (who is married to the Russian pop star Jasmine) had been running a massive loan scam through the bank he owned and three others owned by his associates. It's estimated that he stole $1bn - around 12.5% of the country's entire GDP in 2014. He had close links to both governments.

The new PM, who came in demanding that bank chiefs and senior prosecutors be fired or charged for their involvement has quit after three months in the wake of an investigation over whether he forged his school leaving certificate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/world/europe/moldova-bank-theft.html

Igor Dodon, the leader of the Socialists, said the disappearance of so much money showed how the European Union had backed the wrong horse by supporting Moldova’s pro-European forces, which have held power since 2009. “The more money Europe gives, the more money our oligarchs steal,”

All the animals have escaped from Tbilisi Zoo in the flooding!

http://i.imgur.com/TcX2sBb.jpg

There are lions and hippos roaming the streets.

http://www.repstatic.it/content/nazionale/img/2015/06/14/100251697-5b7cdde9-01d9-4e9d-8b49-39ec8bd84150.jpg

Over 200 arrested as police broke up the biggest protest in recent Armenian history with water cannons this morning. There were thousands in the central square in opposition to an increase in electricity prices.

Interesting piece about a Russian informant's difficulties with the FBI:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/26/russian-defectors-spies-dead-end-american-dream?CMP=share_btn_tw

Protests in Armenia are spreading:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/01/armenia-yerevan-electricity-protests-russia

The government agreed to cover the electricity price hike out of state funds but the complaints run much deeper than that. It's not entirely clear what the objectives of the protesters are at this stage, though, other than more transparency.

Three couples have used the protests as a venue for their weddings:

http://i.imgur.com/lgAppCa.jpg

There's apparently some renewed optimism that Ukraine won't default in three weeks, according to Bloomberg. The root seems to be the fact that the Finance Minister, Natalie Jaresko, has scheduled negotiations with creditors for the first time. As far as i can tell, the government has been doing something similar to Syriza and calling for immediate restructuring but only via the press - there have been no discussions with the people they owe the interest payments to. That's probably partly because a fairly large amount of Ukrainian debt is privately held - the country's single largest creditor isn't Germany or the IMF, it's Franklin Templeton investments. One of their fund managers sunk $7bn in to the country a few years ago:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24db6bec-b1dd-11e4-8396-00144feab7de.html#axzz3eqW634YG

Separately, the parliament has just voted to convert all consumer / mortgage debt to the Dollar rate when the loans were taken out - so if you took out a mortgage in USD when the rate was 5 UAH to the dollar, you'd pay 5UAH now, rather than the current exchange rate of 22 or 23. Jaresko has called it catastrophic as it'll come at a cost of $6bn to domestic banks that have been closing at a rate of one a week over the last year. Poroshenko will probably have to veto it, even though 72 of his own MPs voted in favour. Some have claimed they didn't know what they were voting on or that nobody explained the implications to them.

Good longish pieces on the authenticity / sustainability of Putin's poll ratings:

http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/?fa=60849

and the underlying divisions around identity in Ukraine:

http://harpers.org/archive/2015/07/fugue-state/

Interesting piece on Lithuania's absurd attempt to prosecute the Director of Tel Aviv's Holocaust museum for war crimes and the national identity issues driving it:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/07/lithuania_and_nazis_the_country_wants_to_forget_its_collaborationist_past.html

"The myth that Soviet citizens of all ethnicities had united to valiantly resist the Germans became the official party line" Ditto throughout Ukraine, Estonia as well where initially there were some of the worst WW2 era pogroms and from where large numbers of people volunteered to do the Einsatzgruppen's dirty work.

I meant to say pogroms occurred

The investigation also succeeded in muddling the historical narrative by positing a moral equivalence: Lithuanian paramilitaries may have paved the way for the Nazi’s Holocaust, but Jewish partisans had committed atrocities that helped pave the way for the Soviet “genocide.”

Yep, and that denial followed by generations of ignorance has played into the hands of revisionist historians across the region. This is good background reading on the situation in Lithuania:

http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/%20LITHUANIA%202012-%20HOLOCAUST%20DISTORTION%20AS%20BACKGROUND%20FOR%20INCREASED%20FOR%20ANTI-SEMITISM-FINAL-%204-19-2012%20.PDF

The adoption of the UON-B as national icons in Ukraine has been equally grim.

Latest polls for Ukrainian regional elections are interesting:

http://i.imgur.com/sktKEeJ.png

Poroshenko is still going well but Yatseniuk (the PM and leader of the party that came a very close second last year with 22%) has dropped to 3.2%, behind Pravy Sektor. Tymoshenko's party seems to be the main beneficiary.

Klitchko's party, UDAR, is polling behind the Communists who have been banned from even taking part.

UKROP (which means "dill" in Russian, oddly) is the party of the restive oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and currently in last place.

Perry Anderson writing on Russia, if anyone has an afternoon to spare:

http://newleftreview.org/II/94/perry-anderson-incommensurate-russia

This report on the perceptions focus groups in various former Soviet republics have about the US is interesting. Some of the framing is questionable but the fundamental point that the US shouldn't be investing in NGOs that 'promote democracy' or direct political change if it wants to be seen in a positive light seems like a sensible one. The argument is that the US can do more good through other forms of soft power - cultural exchange, study abroad programmes, etc, which can help shape opinions and build civil society but don't come off as 'meddling' in the same way.

http://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/summer-2015-an-age-of-connectivity/what-18-focus-groups-in-former-ussr-taught-us-about-americas-pr-problems/

The supposedly 'last ditch' talks to agree a deal on Ukrainian debt restructuring have ended in failure.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-14/ukraine-creditors-say-talks-to-continue-on-debt-restructuring

They averted a crisis in July by coming up with $120m from somewhere but look fairly certain to default in September when another $500m is due unless they can find a way to get debt relief. Half the $19bn debt is held by private US companies and the second largest creditor is Russia - neither has any incentive to make life easier. With the economy contracting by 15% in the last quarter, there's no money to finance the loans. Ukraine has asked for a 40% haircut, the private US creditors have offered 5% - conditional on future economic performance. If the US and EU are really serious about bringing the country into the fold, there needs to be something akin to a new Marshall Plan but there doesn't seem to be any appetite for that at the moment.

There's plenty of belligerence in the US press though, with the Washington Post using an editorial to rail against the international proposal, largely backed by Poroshenko, for discussions around federalism as a solution to the military crisis:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/putting-ukraine-in-an-untenable-position/2015/08/08/db76bba6-3c5a-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48_story.html

Former Bush advisor Kristofer Harrison accusing John Conyers of being "Putin's man in Congress" for demanding that US aid to Ukraine be withheld from the Neo-Nazi Azov brigade:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristofer-harrison/putins-man-in-congress_b_7957480.html

An aggressive PR defense would have been helpful when a couple of their soldiers allegedly sported swastika or SS patches, and it would have helped to counter Russia's smothering propaganda campaign aimed at convincing people that the Azov's emblem is a Nazi "Wolfsangel" (it's not, it an "N" and an "I" transposed over one another -- the resemblance is merely coincidental). As a result, they have some PR spade work to do. But let's be clear: We're talking about a unit at war, not a daycare. The Azov Battalion should not have to be responsible for defending itself against lies thrown over the transom from Moscow and repeated by irresponsible Members of Congress and reporters. Much of what little support the Obama administration has provided Ukraine is focused on integrating these volunteer units into Ukraine's National Guard. That is helping them regain some much needed legitimacy.

Heck of a coincidence:

http://i.imgur.com/ndsLgh3.jpg?1

I realise they need numbers but integrating Nazi idealogues is a very dangerous game. I bet some of these people are descendants of the genocidal trigger pullers of the 40's and proud of it.

Pretty much the only Ukrainian speakers eager to fight in the Donbas. The pre-2014 Ukrainian military was largly officered by ethnic Russians, and fell apart last March.

Not unlike the situation with the Iraqi military - the Sh'ia rank and file were there to collect paychecks, and only some Shia militia and their Iranian RG pals are willing to engage.

Russia continuing to make friends and influence people:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33986733

An Estonian border official has been jailed in Russia for 15 years on charges of espionage and gun-running. Estonia claims he is innocent and was not in Russian territory when he was seized - which would be a clear violation of international law.

The FSB might not be as scary as their Cheka/NKVD precedents, but they sure do seem to be slowly getting there.

If you believe a quarter of the rumours about what they were up to from the early 90s to the early Putin era, they're arguably a lot less scary now than they were back then, but it's very difficult to get a read on them. There has been a lot of talk this year about the FSB consolidating its behind-the-scenes power to jockey for influence against Kadyrov but i never get the impression anyone writing about this stuff in the West or in Russia really knows what's going on.

The crazy Night Wolves nationalist biker gang are putting on a show in Crimea and it looks like it has been art-directed by a combination of Laibach and the WWE Federation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XioHZPdCvU

In other weird Russian news, the country's widest man and a troupe of Cossacks have been going into supermarkets and destroying what they (incorrectly) believe to be sanctioned goods:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_1ZBmYNny8

Ukraine reached a deal with the private creditors for restructuring and more debt relief than was expected, so that's great news. The biggest risk of default now is the $3bn bond they have to pay back to Russia. Ukraine wants a 20% haircut on the not unreasonable grounds that they can't pay and Russia has annexed their peninsula, Russia isn't playing ball:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-27/forget-templeton-ukraine-still-has-putin-s-bond-to-contend-with

This clarifies things, kind of...

http://i.imgur.com/rafc4r8.png

In Chechnya, the deputy commander of of Kadyrov's Sever battalion has been murdered, along with his wife, and there's inevitable speculation it's part of the ongoing game between the FSB and Kadyrov's forces - not least because it happened six months to the day from the Nemtsov killing.

Interesting conversation between the excellent Maxim Eristavi and Jaresko on the IMF, bonds and future of the Ukrainian economy:

http://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-natalie-jaresko-debt-deal-russia-crimea-war-donetsk-hryvnia-inflation-crisis/

There's a brave face being put on it but heavy industry was a key part of the Ukrainian economy and the admission that a lot of it probably won't come back is big. The model seems to be Estonia - rapid cutting of spending and taxes to drive inward investment and a shift towards an IT and service economy. It's something that Russia and Ukraine have both failed to properly capitalise on - each trains more computer programmers than almost anywhere else but they tend to emigrate to higher-paying markets. I'm not sure that's going to be easy to change.

The Ukrainian parliament just voted to allow greater regional autonomy with a view to making rule from Kyiv less divisive in the regions. Svoboda / Pravyi Sektor clashed with police in protest, throwing a grenade at them. 100+ people are injured, some apparently seriously.

One member of the National Guard died in the grenade attack outside parliament, another lost a leg.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/31/blast-kiev-parliament-ukraine-mps-back-more-autonomy-for-rebels

The man who threw it has been provisionally identified as a member of Svoboda and the Sich militia. This is what a lot of people had feared - Kyiv is full of disgruntled nationalist ex-paramilitaries with nothing much to do since the fighting largely stopped.

Two more members of the National Guard who were defending the Rada died as a result of their injuries in the grenade attack.

Svoboda have called it a "pre-planned provocation" on the part of the government against "Ukrainian patriots" despite the fact that the guy filmed throwing the grenade appeared on their election campaign posters:

http://i.imgur.com/dpxfQaE.jpg?1

Pravii Sektor following the same unapologetic line:

"I say that today we saw that Poroshenko has shed this blood," Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadskiy told 112 Ukraine TV on August 31. "This is exactly the same thing that happened during the regime of Yanukovych -- the use of force, the violent dispersal of peaceful protests, beating the opposition, and so on."

Oleh Lyashko, the head of the Radical Party who were part of the ruling coalition and provided the Vice-Prime-Minister, has just echoed the Svoboda line and called the attack a provocation. They have now left the government and moved into opposition. Between the two of them, the Radical Party and Svoboda got about 13% of the vote at the election last year and i'd expect that might be higher now that the People's Front has gone from 22%+ to being so unpopular they aren't even bothering to stand in local elections.

Huge protests in Moldova over the bank fraud referred to upthread:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34174028

It's being talked up as another 'Maidan' situation in some sections of the press but the current government is broadly pro-EU and the two main Russia-aligned political parties are encouraging their supporters to join in. Like Electric Yerevan, it seems to cross partisan lines.

Ukraine has banned three BBC journalists, including Steve Rosenberg and Emma Wells, along with loads more from El Pais, Zeit and others from entering the country as a "threat to national security". Can't even imagine the rationale behind this.

They banned two of the three Spanish journalists who are currently being held captive by ISIS!

It's the day Belarusians gather together to tell Lukashenko how much they love him.

Seems like there's a good chance he might break the 80% barrier this time around.

http://i.imgur.com/AKrz984.jpg