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

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

it's true what they say - everybody looks good harvesting potatoes

84% with an 87% turnout!

If he can get the sanctions lifted and bring peace to Ukraine I see no reason he shouldn't be aiming for the full 100 next time.

My sister is leaving for Ukraine next week to work as an election observer (think she's working for OSCE this time). Expecting some good emails ahead....

Which part of the country?

Not sure yet.

Former Moldovan PM Vlad Filat, leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democratic party, was taken away from Parliament in handcuffs yesterday in relation to the ongoing $1bn fraud investigation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/15/us-moldova-protests-filat-idUSKCN0S91BY20151015

Plenty of local colour in the UKrainian elections:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/21/ukraine-elections-dirty-tricks

“We need to create Mossad-style special operative groups to enter Russia and kidnap Yanukovych and his associates, and bring them back to face trial,” said Korban, a businessman, who is barely 5ft and speaks in whispers

Five policemen trying to handcuff Chewbacca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ6yF1N4JLY&feature=youtu.be

The ongoing process of decentralising the government means the local politicians will have more power than ever before, so the local elections are getting a) more important and b) dirtier, with the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky leading on the latter.

Another oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is the key figure behind the cancellation of the vote in Mariupol, the second biggest city in Donetsk oblast. For some bizarre reason, the ballot papers were being printed at a company he owns (though having said that he may own most of the companies) and Poroshenko has cancelled the whole election on the belief that too many ballots were being printed to enable fraud.

The hawkish PM Yatseniuk, whose party got 22% in the general election last year, decided not to put up any candidates this time as they've slumped to about 2%.

http://tinyurl.com/pss24xz

Good update on the Ukrainian election, though votes still being counted:

http://www.politico.eu/article/petro-poroshenko-hobbles-on-ukraine-local-election-vote-rigging/

The short version is that everyone lost. None of the major parties put in a good showing and a lot of big cities, including Kharkiv, Odessa and Dniepropetrovsk (the second, third and fourth largest in the country) either went with ex-Yanukovich men or Kolomoisky's pick, if initial results are right. Klitchko, running for Poroshenko's bloc, seems to have taken Kyiv though.

Kramatorsk, which was on the front line of fighting, stuck with Yanukovich allies.

There is some brilliant stuff in the new Snyder book Black Earth about how in double occupied Soviet zones people became compliant in murder for both the Nazi/Soviet regimes, even triple collaborators in some cases. Also stuff about members of the Polish Home Army who fought partisan warfare against the Nazis and were either shot or shipped off to Lubyanka as "Facists" by the Soviets in the post war years. Ukranians that initially were shooting Jews into death pits in '42 being recruited to swap sides, revelatory to me type stuff anyway.

It looks interesting but seems to have been quite controversial - though I don't know much of that is a hangover from Snyder's recent foray into contemporary political commentary.

I trust him but admittedly am not the most nuanced judge of historians, but for better or worse he has changed the way I look at 20th century Eastern European history and the holocaust and I think he is a great writer.

This David Bell piece highlights some of the main concerns with his work - particularly the apparent effort to shift blame onto ex-Communists rather than non-Communist Poles and Ukrainians and the broader sense that the Holocaust was a reaction to the Soviet Union rather than something that sprang from German society and European anti-semitism. idk, i'm not an expert. I might pinch Black Earth from the office if i see it around.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/history%E2%80%99s-black-hole-the-holocaust-eastern-europe-13645

He's one of the worst commentators on contemporary CEU politics but has a better rep in his day job.

Jesus, a Kogalymavia plane with 200 tourists on board has reportedly crashed after taking off from Sharm el Sheikh on route to St Petersburg.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34687139

Hennady Korban, the five foot tall ' businessman' who was speculating about sending a Mossad style squad into Russia to get Yanukovich upthread has just been arrested, either for embezzlement or for running a private army (!). Nobody seems sure.

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1446335891

He's obviously a crook but there is concern that the arrest is political. He is the leader of UKROP, Kolomoisky's party and a thorn in the side of Poroshenko. It is a tough position as these guys are a genuine threat to government security but any attepts to squash them are going to read as partisan politics.

Hard not to feel sorry for Poroshenko in these situations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/ukraine-visa-free-european-travel-anti-gay-law

The EU had effectively promised visa free travel to all Ukrainians, which would be an unbelievably huge deal for tourists and business, if the Rada passed legislation stopping workplace discrimination again gay people. 75% of MPs refused.

One apparently capped the day by bottling another MP, a 62 year old woman, inside the debating chamber. She's now in hospital with concussion.

I am considering spending a tenner on Anna Bikont's The Crime and The Silence, mainly on the strength of the first few paragraphs of the NYRB review (until I hit the paywall) and it seems to be getting a lot of good reviews elsewhere. It is an account the Jedwabne massacre that has only just now been translated into English 11 years after the Polish edition.

Looks like Russia might be suspended from the 2016 Olympics over doping.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/14918/production/_86584248_86584195.jpg
"Pyotr Pavlensky set the door of the Lubyanka building alight and was pictured standing in front of the blaze holding a petrol can."
That is just taking the piss! I could imagine decades later it will be revealed that this was his first stunt after the FSB recruited him.

It's interesting as he's quite well regarded by the state-sponsored art sector. I went to an exhibition of his stuff at the Tretyakov gallery about two years ago, which might not happen again for a while.

Poland looks set to appoint as Minister of Defence a guy who thinks Russia deliberately caused the 2010 plane crash that killed the President along with lots of other senior Polish officials.

http://news.yahoo.com/polands-pm-waiting-taps-controversial-defence-minister-183353053.html

Even more fun, he also believes Donald Tusk, PM at the time and current EU President, is an undercover agent and was in on it.

http://carnegie.ru/2015/10/29/silence-of-cis-russia-s-neighbors-and-syria-crisis/ikmb

I'd take that with a pinch of salt. The US has very pointedly just congratulated Kazakhstan on its 550th anniversary after comments from Putin that were interpreted as implying that it didn't have a pre-Soviet history of statehood but relations between the countries seem relatively good on the whole, with the biggest problem being the ongoing economic crisis. There hasn't been any public division over Syria and a couple of the leaders, particularly Rahmon are fanatically opposed to ISIS to a degree that makes Putin look mild. Public cheerleading for the bombing in countries already leaking fighters to ISIS and Al-Nusra is probably nagl though.

Thoughts on http://www.interpretermag.com/moscow-seen-laying-groundwork-to-annex-belarus-open-second-front-against-ukraine-next-year/ ?

That's embarrassing. It's worth remembering that The Interpreter is a project run by Pavel Khodorkovsky and funded by his father. Most Russian journalists, even those who are actively anti-government, won't touch it.

Lukashenko appears to be normalising relations with Europe (political prisoners released, playing peacemaker in Ukraine, getting sanctions lifted) rather than moving in the other direction. There doesn't seem much appetite for deepening hostilities in Ukraine at the moment, let alone annexing other countries to make it easier.

Pavlensky is going admirably all-in with this and demanding that the charges against him be changed from vandalism to terrorism:

http://calvertjournal.com/news/show/4971/russian-art-activist-pyotr-pavlensky-asks-to-face-terrorism-charges

The objective seems to be highlighting the Sentsov case where a Ukrainian film director was convicted of terrorist offences in Crimea on the basis of very shaky evidence.

Dmytro Yarosh has resigned as leader of Pravii Sektor. The rationale is a little unclear but there's speculation that there are splits in the organisation and his authority had been fatally undermined. Some of the analysis following his resignation has suggested that he is too 'moderate' for the hardline wing of the party, which is worrying.

It turns out the new Polish Defence Minister doesn't believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are real but he also doesn't *not* believe that they're real.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/polish-defence-minister-condemned-over-jewish-conspiracy-theory

What a difference a week can make.

Putin seems to have acknowledged that the plane was bombed, Cameron and Putin have both suggested they work together to fight ISIS and the US and Russia are apparently "closer" on agreeing a plan of action for a political settlement in Syria. Putin and Obama had both said they wouldn't meet each other at the G20 summit but had a "productive" chat over coffee (as seen in this great gif):

http://gfycat.com/ReflectingLargeFurseal

Putin has also said that he'll offer Ukraine full debt restructuring which will enable them to avoid default and take the current round of IMF funding. Rather than paying $3bn before the end of this year, they will pay $1bn per year in 2016 - 2018.

what is going on there? that is my favorite recent gif

is that guy supposed to be getting a secret scoop about the coffee meeting?

That's what it looks like. I love his attempt to sidle backwards inconspicuously.

the bag helps add to the effect

The TurkStream gas pipeline has been suspended, for obvious reasons:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34995472

Suspect it's too big not to go forward after an appropriate delay though. Turkey needs gas and Russia probably needs to sell it to someone.

Ukraine is having great fun trying to stop Dmytro Firtash coming back. He's an oligarch who was arrested in Austria on a U.S. warrant that was dismissed by the Austrian courts as politically motivated. It was thought he'd fly back on a charter plane so Ukraine banned all charter planes from entering the country. He's not charged with anything domestically so the Interior Minister was reduced to stationing the neo-Nazi Azov militia on the tarmac at Borispol to dissuade him from taking a regular plane.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/02/ukrainian-billionaire-cancels-trip-home-after-threat-of-arrest

I'll be there tomorrow so I hope they have cleared off.

Biden's over here at the moment trying to gee up the Rada in the fight against corruption:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/biden-warns-ukraine-backsliding-corruption-35640048

The message boils down to 'the international community has bent over backwards to help Ukraine so don't fuck it up again'.

Slightly awkward that Hunter Biden is on the board of a company run by a guy who stole $23m from the state and whose prosecution the current authorities have been aggressively stalling.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukrainians-see-conflict-in-bidens-anticorruption-message-1449523458

It's the crucial message to send, though whether it'll have any impact remains to be seen.

Khodorkovsky officially charged with two murders from 1998.

One side says it is because he has refused to stay out of politics following his release, another that he killed loads of people and deserves to pay for it. Both are probably correct.

The Ukrainian Parliament's war on its own dignity continues with gusto.

http://i.imgur.com/HO4eqg8.jpg?1

^^ highlight from this round of "mass brawl in the Rada". That's the PM getting manhandled.

Full fight on Youtube, of course:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/sCsnSuf5vaQ

These guys are all in the same coalition.

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

Beautiful shot.

The guy trying to grapple Yatseniuk is Oleh Barna - a member of the President's party.

Interior Minister Avakov throws water in Saakashvili's face, apparently on the basis that he was 'hysterical' in accusing Yatseniuk + co of corruption and the only other option would have been to punch him.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/15/ukrainian-minister-throws-water-in-odessa-governors-face

MP Mustafa Nayyem wrote on his Facebook page: “This hell will keep going until Poroshenko states his position. A governor can’t accuse the prime minister of corruption and keep his post! Or if he does, it means either he is telling the truth, or people are scared of him, or they are using him.”

He added that in the case of Saakashvili, it appeared the president was using him, and the prime minister was scared of him.

Meanwhile if you want to sum up everything that is wrong with Russia in two news stories:

Alex Navalny reveals allegations that the country's top prosecutor is involved in a criminal conspiracy extending from high financial fraud to the massacre of a family in the sticks:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35044224

Alex Navalny reveals that his opposition bloc will be led at the next election by Mikhail Kasyanov:

http://www.rferl.mobi/a/russia-kasyanov-leading-opposition-elections/27422618.html

Kasyanov is universally known as "Misha 2%" thanks to his policy of taking a personal commission on every corrupt deal passing through government when he was Prime Minister. Idk why anyone would bother voting for any party.

sounds like they're in a strong position to resist russian challenges to ukrainian sovereignty.

Pretty much the only thing that they can do in a divided nation is try to convince people who didn't buy in to the overthrow of the previous government that they are competent technocrats who will improve quality of life and, as you can see, they're absolutely nailing that right now. Perversely, Saakashvili, who is a corrupt, stupid megalomaniac, in addition to not being Ukrainian, appears to be the most respected politician in a lot of national polls. He at least gives the impression that he wants reform and isn't beholden to the same oligarchs who have been running the country behind the scenes since independence.

Do you have any opinions on Anna Bikont, SV? Only asking because I just bought her well received book about the Jedwabne pogrom and thought you might have some take on it.