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

I'm sure Obama - as the highest profile genocide denier - won't be losing any sleep over such foul offence against genocide victims on his own patch.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/upload/photos/large/2007_05/2007_05_24/front_2.jpg

This is kind of nuts:

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/78496

A bus was bombed in Yerevan last night, killing two people. This is in the week of the genocide remembrance, with various international figures in town, and obviously shortly after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflagration, so the assumption a lot of people made was that it was Armenia's first terrorist attack in recent memory, with Turkish or Azeri nationalists to blame. It looks like it was just a guy who wanted to blow up his parents and accidentally killed himself on the way there.

The Turkish / Russian divorce seems to be getting even more bitter:

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/78741

Erdogan has called the Black Sea 'almost a Russian lake' and has urged NATO to create a rival 'Black Sea Fleet'.

The big news in Ukraine at the moment is that Poroshenko cancelled his trip to the anti-corruption conference in London at 24 hours notice so he could stay behind and push the Rada into appointing his friend Yury Lutsenko (who has a conviction for embezzlement and no law degree) as Prosecutor General. This hasn't worked yet as they rejected an amendment to the law requiring the Prosecutor General to have the appropriate qualifications but efforts are ongoing.

long interview with pevear/volokhonsky on translating, russian:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6385/the-art-of-translation-no-4-richard-pevear-and-larissa-volokhonsky

https://twitter.com/RussianEmbassy/status/730701444823826432

Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot elevated to Joan of Arc status when she was arrested (or kidnapped) for alleged participation in the murder of Russian journalists and given a transparently unfair trial over the border, has been released today.

She's being swapped with two Russians arrested for alleged participation in separatist activities in Ukraine. This was always more or less inevitable but will be a huge deal in Kyiv - expect processions, etc.

Ukraine claims to have foiled an anti-Muslim / antisemitic terrorist plot targeting Euro 2016 in France.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/ukraine-detained-french-citizen-plotting-euro-2016-attacks

A man was caught trying to cross from Ukraine into Poland with 125kg of TNT, 100 detonators, RPGs and various other hardware he'd picked up in Eastern Ukraine. Although his identity hasn't been formally announced, he's apparently a former livestock inseminator / farmhand who went to fight for an extreme-right, pro-Ukrainian militia. If true, and the French seem to be taking a while to confirm the story, it would be the first example of a foreign fighter in a Ukrainian militia planning attacks abroad.

It goes both ways, though, as the recent profile of the pro-Russian militia leader, Igor Strelkov, in the Guardian shows:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/05/russias-valiant-hero-in-ukraine-turns-his-fire-on-vladimir-putin

The big unknown is how influential Russia's own militaristic irregulars will be on domestic politics and how they'll seek to make that influence felt. It has often been said that the biggest threat to the current government is more likely to come from the extreme right or the extreme left than centrist 'liberals' and Ukraine has been a fairly effective way for them to network and gain a profile.

he's apparently a former livestock inseminator / farmhand not to read too much into this but there is a weird kind of synchronicity that someone so intimately involved in the insemination / reproduction of animals should have such intense opinions about human populations, presumably miscegenation, etc.

http://i.imgur.com/WVJGKG0.png

Certainly looks like a deep thinker.

I'm not current on Russia/Mongolia political news posturing right now, but nevertheless: http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/features/f232-extreme-warnings-issued-that-lake-baikal-could-drain-dry-like-the-aral-sea/

Newspaper Izvestia this week was blunt in assessing the eco-damage threat to Baikal, a natural reservoir which contains around 20% of the world's unfrozen freshwater.

'Baikal might share the destiny of the Aral Sea,' it stated. 'Construction of three hydro power stations on the Selenga River and its tributaries can cause the unique lake to dry out.'

The 25 million year old lake - a UNESCO world heritage site - is 'on the edge of environmental catastrophe and if certain measures are not taken, it might disappear just like the Aral sea.'

The impact of proposed Mongolian hydro projects could also be to threaten the Buryatian capital city, Ulan-Ude, in the event of an accident to one of three planned dams.

Environmental activist Sergey Shapkhayev warned: 'Potential damage from the third hydro power station which will be located on the Eg River (a Selenga tributary) could cause a huge catastrophe. Hydrological experts believe that this power station is the most dangerous of all.

The Aral, once one of the four largest lakes in the world, has substantially dried up due mainly to Soviet planners diverting rivers to use for irrigation projects. Pictures: Anna Baranova, Satellite images USGS

'This power station will be located in the seismically active part of Mongolia. And any seismic activity can cause all the stored water to wash away part of Mongolia and in half a day it would reach Ulan-Ude' - a city with a population of 415,000. At the same time, speed of water will be compatible to tsunami.'

The warnings come amid new hopes in Russia that ways can be found to persuade Mongolia not to go ahead with the the hydro schemes - see our earlier story here.

Izvestia said that the claims about an Aral-like denuding of Baikal were aired at a closed doors meeting at the Energy Ministry. Crucial to the dams not being built are an offer acceptable to Mongolia of guaranteed cheap energy - from Russia.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/22/poland-to-dig-up-bodies-of-victims-of-2010-smolensk-presidential-jet-crash

A reminder that the Polish Defence Minster (and probably the government itself) seems to believe that EU Council president / former Polish PM Donald Tusk is a Stasi sleeper agent who conspired with the Russian secret service to blow up Lech Kaczynski.

"Turkish sources" have said that all the participants in the Ataturk Airport attack were from the former USSR - Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36670576

The suspected mastermind is meant to be Akhmed Chatayev - a Chechen militant who switched to recruiting for ISIS. Russia is predictably pointing out they've had an arrest warrant out for him for over a decade, during which time he was arrested and jailed for a year (!) in Sweden for being found in possession of high explosives and assault rifles, arrested in Ukraine with bomb-making plans and a manual on the destruction of buildings (where the ECHR blocked his deportation to Russia) and granted political asylum in Austria.

Erdogan and Putin seem to have settled some of their differences. Erdogan apologised for the unfortunate incident with the Russian jet and Putin, after six days of making him wait, has accepted and loosened restrictions on trade and travel.

Something going down in Armenia:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-armenia-violence-idUKKCN0ZX06S

Armed men have seized a police station and there is talk of an attempted coup (though this seems a stretch).

There have been protests in Freedom Square and mass arrests.

protests in Freedom Square and mass arrests.

kinda lol but mostly sad

Pavel Sheremet, a top Belarussian journalist, was killed with a car bomb in Kyiv this morning. He was driving the car of the head of Ukrainian Pravda, possibly one of the most important papers looking into political and corporate corruption in the wider region. He was a critic of Putin and Lukashenko and a friend of Boris Nemtsov, so fingers will inevitably be pointed in that direction, but in the current situation there is unfortunately no shortage of people with the means or motive to kill investigative reporters.

Ukrainian Pravda was founded by Georgiy Gongadze, another investigative journalist, who was murdered (it is assumed) on the orders of former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko and President Leonid Kuchma in 2000.

It's thought the current editor, Olena Pritula, who was Sheremet's partner may have been the target. She wasn't in the car but he borrowed hers to get to work.

trump to baltics: drop dead

As mentioned on the other thread, Estonia (and Poland fwiw) do meet the spending requirements. An argument could be made that Lithuania and Latvia consistently requesting more activity but contributing less money does need to be addressed - though it would also apply to 21 other NATO members iirc. It's a stupid question to ask though - Russia isn't going to invade the EU and the US wouldn't fail to assist if it did. The more interesting policy decisions would be around things like NATO expansion - would Trump continue the US press for Ukraine and Georgia to obtain full member status, etc?

It seems fairly odd for "would probably not invade Russia" to be a key plank of a Democrat argument against Trump given all the other ammunition he has provided them with. Assuming Clinton wants to improve relations in Eastern Europe, running a scare campaign around Trump being soft on Russia is probably not a good way to go about it. It also paints them into a corner if things do kick off in more plausible places like Ossetia and Abhkazia - given a re-run of the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict, would they support bombing Russian troops, as Cheney apparently did?

I assume it's pitched at Polish and Ukrainian communities in swing states like Pennsylvania though.

having grown up in a heavily polish pennsylvania neighborhood, i would be very surprised if the community finds any of this of much concern

Pavel Sheremet's paper is reporting that the Prosecutor General has opened a criminal case into illegal surveillance of Sheremet and Prytula by the Deputy Head of the Ukrainian police force.

http://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2016/07/25/7115801/

Vadim Troyan, the guy in question, was a leading figure in the Neo-Nazi Azov battalion and his appointment was widely criticised at the time. Sheremet's last major story was an investigation into Azov acting above the law.

The surveillance and the murder aren't necessarily linked but he'll be questioned about both when he returns from holiday.

Not taking a view on who hacked the DNC but if it was Russia the level of incompetence is genuinely absurd.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/why-security-experts-think-russia-was-behind-dnc-breach-1.2736031

1. Not clearing metadata
2. Not getting one of the agents fluent in Romanian to pretend to be Romanian
3. Using "Felix Edmundovich" (Dzerzhinsky), founder of the Cheka secret police, as the name in the document editor.

It's like MI6 having "James Bond" as a code name. If it was a state actor, they either wanted to get caught for some reason or the capabilities of the Russian intelligence services are amazingly terrible.

So who do you suspect it is? If it isn't a Romanian civilian, and isn't the Russians, who is it?

Roger Stone

It's definitely possible it was Russian intelligence and they are just really bad. Another possibility would be Russian amateur hackers - and there are plenty of them tied in with Wikileaks.

According to the link you posted, the Guccifer character, and the first leaks, was created 24 hours after the Dems revealed the hack, which could explain a lot of the ineptitude. And if it's just amateur hackers, why go through the Guccifer deception?

If they can't get a Romanian speaker and wipe metadata within 24 hours it's still a pretty damning indictment of their abilities.

I've seen a few people suggesting a third position - that it could be government-linked online propagandists not operationally connected to the GNU or FSB - a 'troll factory' or something similar. It looks like the VPN IP address has only been used for a few things in the past - predominantly nuisance attacks and a Russian bride scam. It might explain the lower level of tech savvy.

Well, a lot of is still unknown, so who knows. But that would still make it government-linked, quite scary, and a really bad look for wiki-leaks.

Yes, it would still make it government linked. It would be quite reassuring if it was the FSB and they're staffed by bumbling incompetents these days. I'm sure they get up to much worse before breakfast though.

Assange has his own show on RT - which probably makes RT looks worse by association than Assange these days tbh.

Something going down in Armenia:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-armenia-violence-idUKKCN0ZX06S

Armed men have seized a police station and there is talk of an attempted coup (though this seems a stretch).

There have been protests in Freedom Square and mass arrests.

This siege is still going on, btw. They have held the police station for ten days and added more hostages today when they captured an ambulance crew.

The "Primorsky Partisans" have been released, following their acquittal at retrial last week:

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/jury-rules-not-guilty-in-primorsky-partizany-retrial-54654

It's a fascinating rabbit hole to go down.

What has always widely been assumed is that they were a group of around eight men who went on a rampage in Eastern Russia - shooting / stabbing police officers and raiding a station. They'd been convicted of two murders, along with a variety of other crimes, and were thought to have killed at least another four people.

The question had always been whether they did so as part of a wider criminal enterprise - essentially that they were bandits who killed police officers who were on their trail - or, as was claimed by associates, that they were leading a civilian fightback against corrupt police involved in drug trafficking. They got quite a lot of local support and have been picked up by some higher-profile Kremlin critics as counter-cultural heroes.

Sympathetic coverage of the "Sassoun Daredevils" in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/30/armenia-hostage-police-station-fourth-summer-of-protest

Doesn't mention the group actually killed one of the policemen.

The 'Daredevils' apparently killed another police officer with sniper fire from within the compound today.

Fairly balanced statement from the EU:

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/armenia/press_corner/all_news/news/2016/2016_07_21_en.htm

Crowds of protesters are gathering in the central square again so there will be a lot of scrutiny of how the police respond. They were widely condemned for heavy-handed tactics last night.

Siege in Yerevan over!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36937346?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central

Interesting piece on Manafort's activities in Ukraine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/us/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html?_r=0

It suggests that he was actually pushing Yanukovich to move closer to Europe and lobbying the US to support EU membership - advice Yanukovich ultimately ignored.

Also covers some of his business activity - including the private equity company he founded with Rick Davis that drew a huge amount of money from Oleg Deripaska, who has an interesting and colourful business history.

It's worth noting that Rick Davis (and Davis-Manafort inc.) had a major role in John McCain's 2008 presidential run. He set up a meeting between Deripaska and McCain too.

A fairly blunt assessment of the current state of government in Ukraine from a pro-Euromaidan, anti-Yanukovich journalist:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/01/kiev-in-denial-ukraine-poroshenko-corruption/

The gist is that corruption is deepening and the elites are banking on Ukraine's notional position as a bulwark against Russia to ensure indefinite, unscrutinised foreign funding. Also a dark hint towards the end that the nationalists currently fighting separatists could easily turn on the government.

Crimea a flashpoint again:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/10/russia-accuses-ukraine-of-armed-crimea-incursion

Notwithstanding the fact that Crimea is technically still Ukraine, Russia has accused Ukrainian border guards of starting a firefight with soldiers to distract from a group of 20 saboteurs crossing over. Two Russian soldiers were supposedly killed. Ukraine denies any of this took place and says it's 'hybrid warfare' / a provocation designed to justify retaliatory action at some point in the future.

Saboteurs have apparently bombed power lines supplying Crimea before, though i think they were located in 'mainland Ukraine' rather than Crimea. There have been quite a few minor bombings blamed on Ukrainians / Tatars.

I've seen a few people suggesting that if it did take place, the fact that it took them two or three days to catch two of the twenty and the rest were able to cross and recross the border at will would be pretty embarrassing to Russia.

Putin has replaced Sergei Ivanov, his chief of staff, with Anton Vaino. Ivanov was generally thought of as one of the three or four most powerful people in the government..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37058751

The takes range from 'Ivanov was trying to defuse tension over Ukraine in the face of renewed adventurism from Putin' to 'replacing a former FSB chief with a diplomat shows that Russia wants to refocus on negotiation and engagement', which goes to show how remarkably little anyone really knows about what goes on at the Kremlin.

There's speculation that Islam Karimov may have popped his clogs. He was taken to hospital in a "serious condition" last night.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-37208407

Good, fairly balanced profile piece on Ukrainian journalists-turned-political-reformers Mustafa Nayyem and Sergei Leshchenko in The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/reforming-ukraine-after-maidan

thanks for that link

Looks like today could be the day someone finally opens the box on Schrödinger's Karimov, though the new Reuters headline "Karimov dies - diplomatic sources" still links through to an article about him being critically ill and Nazarbayev going to pay him a visit.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-uzbekistan-president-health-idUKKCN1180A8?il=0

It appears to have been confirmed by his family (in true Central Asian style) via Instagram.

There is a lot of speculation that the succession was more or less finalised when Gulnara was given the boot for being too fabulous but nobody seems to know who is taking over.

Was he the one with the crazy pop star plutocrat daughter?

Yep - who hasn't been seen for two years.

Yeah I just read that! Good luck Uzbecks.

tbh, as long as whoever comes in doesn't boil dissidents alive and shorten the school year so nine-year-olds can do extra unpaid forced labour in the cotton fields they at least have a shot at being an improvement.

Former Gawker co-owner Viktor Vekselberg is currently having his offices raided and top management staff interviewed by police over allegations of corruption. His mining business is accused of bribing the regional government of Komi.

It's presumably linked to the criminal case against the former governor of Komi, Vyacheslav Gaizer, who's accused of running an organised crime ring. When police searched his property, they found 60kg of jewelry and 150 watches - worth between $30k and $1m each.

The offices of Kiev oligarch Dmytro Firtash's TV station, Inter, were set on fire in an arson attack yesterday - with staff still inside. It has been accused of being too sympathetic to Russia.

http://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/inter-tv-studios-set-ablaze-in-arson-attack-422228.html

Depressing to see the very good polling operation Levada potentially blacklisted by the Russian government under laws designed to give extra scrutiny to NGOs receiving money from foreign actors - in this case, allegedly, the U.S. government:

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/levada-center-blacklisted-55217

Hopefully they will win the appeal. There is speculation it has been timed to stop them reflecting a dip in a United Russia's ratings ahead of the election.

idk whether it's connected to the Vekselberg investigation but the police raided the home of one of Russia's top anti-corruption officials at the weekend and found $122m in cash, which will take some explaining.

https://www.rt.com/news/358891-russia-corruption-officer-dollars/

He was keeping it safe from evildoers