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

The number of people who say they'd vote for Putin again if there was an election tomorrow has dipped below 50% for the first time since the Ukraine crisis started - possibly a hint that there are concerns about sanctions hitting the economy.

http://rt.com/politics/200159-putin-rating-september-peskov/

It's still substantially higher than the 26% he was polling earlier in the year and with Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party in second place (with 7%) it's not exactly a sign of greater plurality.

This guy has just been made Chief Of Police in Kyiv

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

Note the insignia on his shirt.

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

He's Deputy Commander of the neo-Nazi Azov militia.

Neither of the two main parties are Fascist in any meaningful sense but clearly there's a perceived need to pander to the extreme right.

Reports are coming through suggesting that the suspected Moscow "Grand Theft Auto" killers have been caught.

They were apparently putting spikes on roads late at night and shooting anyone whose cars got stopped by them, for no apparent reason. Nothing was ever stolen. They were thought to have killed at least 14 people in the last few months. It sounds a bit like an urban legend but is supposedly 100% true.

http://i.imgur.com/O5Jw9hE.png

The Rouble has gone crazy. Was about 50 to the GBP this time last year. Was 71 yesterday, 76 today.

Banks are reportedly running out of foreign currency (as they did in Ukraine months ago) because so many people are trying to take their savings out in Dollars and Euro. If it hasn't happened already, i wouldn't be surprised to see them follow Ukraine in limiting the amount of cash people can take out in a day.

yikes

The "ceasefire", which was never really a ceasefire on either side, looks officially over now. Ukraine has claimed separatists in Donetsk have received a resupply of heavy weaponry from Russia and the Ukrainian army has stepped up shelling of the area. ITAR-TASS says that they've hit a kindergarten, killing several children. The Netherlands have donated €500k worth of what are euphemistically in Ukraine called "wearable anti-cold-systems" (which means warm coats and boots without holes in them) but nobody has committed to donating arms yet. There's speculation that the US Republicans might try to force something through, though idk if they would be allowed to even if they wanted to.

Interesting things happening in Georgia. The firing of the Defense Minister has been seen by some, particularly the fired Defense Minister, as a shift away from Europe and towards Russia. The government has restated that EU membership remains a priority though.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/70781

Azerbaijan has shot down an Armenian helicopter that was apparently flying close to the border of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan proper.

More on the Armenia / Azeri helicopter thing:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-12/azerbaijan-says-armenian-helicopter-shot-down-in-conflict-zone.html

“This is the worst military incident in more than 20 years since the cease-fire,” Thomas de Waal, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said by e-mail from Washington.

Seen as a continuation of the incidents that killed around 20 people in the summer, that's probably true.

http://i.imgur.com/k2QHZ7m.png

Not really region-specific but the ability of any currency to drop about 15% in an hour and a quarter when the automated trades are triggered is fairly terrifying. Ukraine keeps ploughing money into trying to stabilise the UAH and the effects last about a week before being totally wiped out. I'm not sure what you can do in that situation.

Interesting piece from the excellent Alec Luhn on 'domestic' politics in Novorossiya and the Kremlin's fear that socialist populism could spread across the border into actual Russia.

http://www.thenation.com/article/189137/eastern-ukraine-becoming-peoples-republic-or-puppet-state

Highlights the tension that comes when, what is to some extent at least, a genuine popular revolution is backed / bankrolled by a government like Putin's.

Reports are coming through suggesting that the suspected Moscow "Grand Theft Auto" killers have been caught.

They were apparently putting spikes on roads late at night and shooting anyone whose cars got stopped by them, for no apparent reason. Nothing was ever stolen. They were thought to have killed at least 14 people in the last few months. It sounds a bit like an urban legend but is supposedly 100% true.

This gets stranger. The police appear to have arrested a gang of 'Islamist terrorists' from Central Asia for the crimes, with the leader being killed during an attempt to take him in.

Quite why a terror cell would have done all this and not bothered to tell anyone hasn't been explained.

Needless to say, they've been "linked with ISIS".

A+ response from Mykki Blanco after a Moscow club he was scheduled to play at got raided by the police.

https://www.facebook.com/MykkiBlanco/posts/881332838551591

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/19/-sp-uzbekistan-political-prisoners-human-rights?CMP=share_btn_tw

A piece on the current human rights situation in Uzbekistan.

The cotton situation there is crazy. Last year the government agreed, under international pressure, to ban child labour in the cotton fields so, to make up the shortfall of workers, 4m people (doctors, teachers, university students, etc) are forced under threat of fines or jail to take their place during the picking season. This is apparently seen as progress by the international community.

http://i.imgur.com/vqFGF0M.jpg

Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has made a new home for himself in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I
used to look at this place from Manhattan, it was such a pity, it was mafia, a place where hit men dump bodies,” he
said. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Williamsburg hipster went to war with Russia before it was mainstream.

i think you or someone else i read linked to this a couple of months ago but i didnt read it then

the nyt writer does a creditable job of getting him to say hubristic and inane things like “they shut down traffic for us and our 20-car escort” and generally making him seem delusory and unpleasant

his lack of secrecy about his daily life would probably be noted by various former opponents, is he too far gone for putin to even care?

and did nobody in america do due diligence on him before they made him a brief cause celebre

He drew a crowd of about 3000 in Tbilisi this week, via audio link, but that's peanuts. He's still facing charges of abuse of office and there's no immediate prospect of him setting foot in the country again.

On paper, he was ideal for a US-backed leader in the region - American education, neo-liberal economics, fewer overt ties to organised crime than many, pro-NATO, etc. They've overlooked much worse than rampant corruption, delusions of grandeur and a mile-wide authoritarian streak. The objective was to have someone who'd reform the economy and bring Georgia closer to NATO membership, which he accomplished. The mystery is why nobody stopped him from trying to retake South Ossetia. To some extent he was a more obvious choice than Yushchenko, who was both corrupt and tainted by association with Kuchma, or Bakiyev who went round murdering his opponents the first chance he got.

He reminds me a lot of Sikorski - that kind of brash sociopathic arrogance. Like Sikorski, i'm not sure you could ever really rule him out in perpetuity.

They've overlooked much worse than rampant corruption, delusions of grandeur and a mile-wide authoritarian streak.

those are all potentially useful assets but saakashvil is just a fantasist

is there anyone in eastern europe with an anglo education and a subscription to the economist who isn't unremittingly dreadful

There's a fairly fine line between 'fantasist' and 'visionary idealist' and it's not too hard to convince people you fall into the latter camp if you're telling them what they want to hear and getting results. The line becomes less fine when your 'visionary idealism' leads you to invade Russia with the world's 64th most powerful army.

xp

I'm struggling to think of anyone.

visionary idealism is a good warning sign, people with ideas are unreliable
america seems to love these chalabi types when it is full of bright ideas and good intentions

Looks like i was overoptimistic in thinking that it should be easy to form a new Ukrainian governing coalition. Getting on for a month later, there's still no agreement, although there's talk of one being in place within the next week or two. There's suggestion that Timoshenko and Lyashko might be invited to join, even though, numerically, there's no need for them to be involved.

There are still substantial disagreements, though. Poroshenko has been talking a lot about ending the war / averting a worse crisis and is getting called out as a coward from sections of the nationalist right. Euromaidan PR, which internationally is often seen as the voice of the revolution - even if the reality is more complex, published an editorial calling for total war earlier in the week and there's a suspicion that that's what Yatseniuk would prefer. Poroshenko wants to buy coal in Hryvnia from Donbass, Yatseniuk is insisting it's bought at a 50% premium in USD from South Africa. There's still no guarantee Russia will send any gas as nobody has actually fronted up any money for it yet.

Poroshenko did take one radical move this week and that was finalising the proposal to remove state support from Donbass, meaning that state employees and pensioners won't get anything from the Kyiv government until the crisis is over. Russia is refusing to bankroll the region so pensioners who were struggling along on $100 a month from the state will now get nothing. It's one potential way of trying to get the people to turn against the DNR but it's a massive, massive risk. Starving your babushki isn't going to win hearts and minds. To some extent it would be fair enough if companies were paying tax to the tinpot warlords but, by and large, industrial revenue is still going to the central government as far as i can tell.

This is a really sweet personal interest story though: http://balkanist.net/lyonya-loves-vika/

http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/something-big-exploded-in-russ.html

???

That's amazing. The two competing theories are that it was a meteorite strike or the army detonating a stock of old explosives but they've denied the latter. Seems incredible that it was only 200km away from the huge Chelyabinsk impact earlier in the year. Sadly my grasp of physics is pretty much non-existent but i'd be interested to know whether some parts of the world are more vulnerable than others.

Interesting piece on the collapse of the EU / Yanukovich discussions prior to his removal from power:

http://m.spiegel.de/international/europe/a-1004706.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=

i'd be interested to know whether some parts of the world are more vulnerable than others

For small impactors that detonate in the atmosphere, the poles are safer.
For medium impactors (1 per 100k years) that generate tsunamis, inland areas are safer.
For extinction event impactors (1 per ~200+ million years) only some burrowing creatures and deep ocean detritovores are relatively safe, as the raining ejecta heats the entire surface above boiling for a few hours, then the dust from fires freezes the world for a couple years.

x-post: It's obviously smarter to focus on our own mistakes and what we can do better in the future, but... boy does Yanukovich and Putin come off as complete idiots in that telling.

Nobody comes out of it well. Russia was needlessly vindictive in threatening a trade war, the 'naïveté' of the EU was definitely undercut with a level of cynicism in the proposed terms (which doesn't come across fully in that report)', the IMF was typically uninterested in the practical consequences of the harsh measures they were demanding and Yanukovich, as a bumbling con artist, was clearly unqualified to try to pick a way through it. It is hard to know what he could have done that wouldn't have been disastrous for the economy. What's pretty clear though is that there was no ideological turn away from the EU. He'd have probably signed the deal if it was the best one on the table.

Xp, thanks!

The USD / RUB exchange rate is hovering just under 50 (49.99 at one point), which has always been the symbolic indicator of catastrophe. Seems likely to cross the rubicon today. OPEC's decision yesterday not to cut oil output is presumably one of the key factors. There are reports of queues at high-end jewelers across Moscow as people convert cash into diamonds.

The Ukrainian parliament met for for the first time since the election yesterday and the coalition looks settled now. The core is Poroshenko's bloc, Yatseniuk's bloc, Timoshenko's bloc and the far-right Lyashko bloc. Samopomich are playing a very clever game by working with them on some committees but, as far as i can tell, remaining outside of government. I think they're rightly calculating that this is going to be an extremely unpopular government irrespective of what happens so maintaining distance is likely to stand them well in the long term. It also allows them to deny they're part of the 'old politics' of oligarchs and autocrats.

Also, Misha Saakashvili has been charged for his role in covering up a high-profile murder:

http://www.rferl.org/content/georgia-charged-saakashvili-abuse-office/26714046.html

He's supposed to have colluded with the prosecutors to falsify evidence. He also released the killers after about two years in jail for no particular reason.

Elections in Moldova over the weekend.

The pro-Russian Socialist Party seems to have picked up the most votes with the pro-EU Liberal Party and pro-Russian Communist Party (the same party that was running the country in the Soviet era) roughly neck and neck in second and third.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30265985

It's pretty finely balanced as the parties in fourth and fifth place are both pro-EU so even if the Socialists and Communists finish first and second, the other parties could potentially form a coalition. Another pro-Russian party was banned prior to the election for allegedly receiving overseas funding. Transnistria didn't vote.

tbh, although it would be a struggle to convince the rest of the EU to let them in, i'm not sure what else could materially improve the quality of life in Moldova at this stage. GDP per capita is around $2000, compared to $18,000 across the border in Romania. It's the closest thing Europe has to a failed state. After agriculture, i wouldn't be surprised if the most important industries were organised crime and people-trafficking.

I am not sure I'd ever thought about Moldova before but I have this as-yet unrealized fantasy of visiting local tourist sites in Eastern Europe, like chilling on the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea and the like. and thus the Moldova tourism wiki page offers this gem:

Lower Prut Nature Reserve is the synonym of nature's virginity. It is composed of Beleu Lake and a network of ponds that, on the whole, form a unique ecosystem of importance not only national but international.

and this blog entry by someone who seems to be a Moldovan national; she writes

While driving down the highway to the Reserve, I felt like we were part of the contest “worst highway experience in your life”. I highly doubt tourists would be able to handle the excitement and suspense until the Reserve.... [T]he boats that are supposed to offer tourists an unbelievably great experience on the lake are not even equipped with life jackets, let alone a first aid kit.

her blog is awesome btw

Irllol. Prut is 'fart' in Danish, helps a bit.

That blog looks great.

I've been to Moldova but didn't really make it out of Chisinau. The quality of the road between there and Odessa didn't really give me much hope for the rural network.

The Bulgarian Black Sea resorts are meant to be ok but i've heard very good things about the Albanian Adriatic coast. The Belarussian forests and lakes are high on my list of places to go too.

From June:

http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraines-fight-against-corruption-may-be-toughest-struggle-yet/1941943.html

Fighting corruption is not easy, says anti-corruption crusader Alexander Kostrenko, who travels with a retinue of armed guards. He questions Poroshenko’s vow to fight corruption from within.

“Authorities shouldn’t establish anti-corruption committees inside their ministries," he said. "How can state authority organize their own state officials to fight against themselves? It’s ridiculous.”

Kostrenko was reportedly murdered yesterday.

A new ceasefire has apparently been agreed in Lugansk and possibly Donetsk, which is good news.

Kyiv Post, which is heavily government-leaning most of the time, was reporting on Saturday that Misha Saakashvili might be offered the role of Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, which would have been absolutely astonishing, but it looks like he has turned them down (if it was true). What does seem clear is that various posts have been offered to members of his administration.

The Rouble slipped to an unheard of 54 to the USD yesterday but is back at a still appalling 50 now.

Russia has scrapped the South Stream pipeline and will run a route through Turkey instead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30283571

Russia says its a defeat for the EU, the EU says its a defeat for Russia, everyone agrees it's bad news for Bulgaria and a massive win for Erdogan.

Russia has been throwing money at stabilising the rouble, without much apparent success. It is back at 54 to the USD.

The interesting news of the day is that Ukraine has made an American hedge fund manager Minister of Finance, a Lithuanian hedge fund manager Minister of Economics and appointed an ex-Saakashviki ally Minister of Health. All three got Ukrainian citizenship this morning and were made Ministers a few hours later. As a break from Ukrainian politics as usual it is a bold move but I'm not sure how well it's going to go down.

Three police officers killed in Grozny at a routine traffic stop. Kadyrov is reporting gun battles have killed at least six militants.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30323751

Yatseniuk announced that there had been an accident at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine yesterday and scheduled an emergency press conference. The press conference clarified it was just an issue with a generator and nbd but we there was half an hour of blind panic before that.

Death toll up to 13 police, 9 militants now.

Russia has requested that France deliver the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers they ordered or provide a refund on the down payment. It is quite brave of Hollande (pictured looking pretty baller in Kazakhstan) to risk having to give Russia $1bn, plus potential compensation, and be landed with a ship customised for Russian specs France might have trouble shifting to anyone else. Moral stances from western EU leaders are usually less costly.

http://i.imgur.com/VZD3HO4.jpg

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

Netrebko unlikely to win many friends back at the Met like this. She's probably the closest thing to a prima donna assoluta around at the moment so I'd be surprised if it severely hurt her career though.

http://rusemb.org.uk/consnews/29

British and Irish citizens now need to have fingerprints taken to get a Russian visa, meaning you have to physically go to the visa office yourself. Not a nuisance for me, as it is on my way to work, but will be a nightmare for most of the people I send there for business. There's one in London, one in Edinburgh and one in the Dublin suburbs, that's it. As they point out though, any Russians coming to the UK need to do the same thing (Moscow, SPB, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk being the only options).

New low for the Rouble today - hitting 90 to the Pound.

If you'd had $1000 worth of Roubles in January, they'd be worth $579 now.

If you'd have $1000 worth of Ukrainian Hryvnia they'd be worth about $500 now.

You can see why there has been so much investment (much of it illegal) in Cyprus, London, etc, especially in property over the years.

wow, good time for a trip to the Hermitage on foreign currency, no?

Yes, absolutely. Moscow has always been horrendously expensive and should now be pretty reasonable. Everywhere else will offer some pretty great bargains.

New low for the Rouble today - hitting 90 to the Pound.

101 to the GBP now.

Seems a bit like Brazil except the ominous upswing for Erdogan now has me thinking he will squeak it (because people looovveee jailing journalists and hyperinflation?).

Less than a week to go, bit of a kerfuffle with a bus and some stones in Erzurum.

Read a suggestion that because parliament is Erdogan controlled, after the run off Erdoğan’s line will be “vote me to avoid split government with Kılıçdaroğlu”. Be v interesting to see what happens. You certainly wouldn’t want to bet against Erdoğan - experienced and has the media and state control to generate his preferred outcome.

not sure this is exactly the right thread for ongoing turkey conversation but as we’re here, roll out the barrel:

Erdoğan gives public workers 45 percent pay rise in Turkey’s tight election race

Greece 's elections following on from this week after next, but its the upcoming Slovak elections in September that look most concerning, Slovakia been heading in a bad direction for a while now

Not sure whats happening here with delays in certain districts, but looks like it will go to second round as predicted?

Looks like Erdogan has this now in the run off

https://english.nv.ua/nation/lukashenko-pardons-belarusian-journalist-sentenced-to-eight-years-in-prison-50326284.html

That guy on the Ryanair flight Belarus forced to land a couple of years ago unexpectedly released!

damn what's the catch

Not really sure! like a lot of things of late