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

Election continues to deliver.

“European future of Ukraine” — a group directly associated with Poroshenko’s reelection campaign — is promoting a video in which his opponent & frontrunner Zelenskiy is hit by a truck. The video ends with suggestion he’s a drug addict & the message: “Everyone has their own way.” pic.twitter.com/OCBXy3ZRce

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 11, 2019

The current state of the election can probably best be summarised by that gif of two dogs barking at each other through a retracting fence that stop and turn around as soon as the fence has disappeared and they can see each other face-to-face.

Poroshenko called the '14-14'14' debate for 14:14 on the 14th of April and packed the Olympic stadium with his supporters. Zelenskiy, who had just returned from a meeting with Macron in Paris, didn't turn up. Zelenskiy has called a similar debate on the 19th of April and it seems almost inevitable that Poroshenko won't turn up to that one.

State media, Poroshenko and the Chairman of parliament, Andriy Parubiy, have gone into full Yeltsin-in-96 mode, calling the possibility of Zelenskiy winning an existential threat to Ukraine, a victory for Russia, and end to the march towards progress, etc. Although the odds (the last poll i saw had Zelenskiy on 49% and Poroshenko on 20%) look fairly insurmountable, Yeltsin came back from worse.

Poroshenko falling back on nationalism was inevitable but idk if it is going to be that effective. It's generally assumed that Arsen Avakov, the Interior Minister and godfather of the far-right nationalist Azov battalion supports Zelenskiy and Zelenskiy's patron, Ihor Kolomoskiy, has probably donated more money than anyone to similar militia groups fighting separatists.

State media, Poroshenko and the Chairman of parliament, Andriy Parubiy, have gone into full Yeltsin-in-96 mode, calling the possibility of Zelenskiy winning an existential threat to Ukraine, a victory for Russia, and end to the march towards progress, etc.

So a bit like the Tories and Corbyn then?

lol, i was just thinking that yesterday. The idea that 'managed democracies' are uniquely prone to this kind of this is obviously not true.

Latest polling ahead of Sunday's election:

Poll by KIIS research firm showed Zelenskiy on 72.2 percent of the vote.

Incumbent Petro Poroshenko was on 25.4 percent.https://t.co/IaPkbRDtj7

— Polina Ivanova (@polinaivanovva) April 16, 2019

Impressive if true as it looks like almost all the undecided voters are breaking for Zelenskiy.

It looks like there will be a debate at the Olympic stadium today after all but the candidates will be on two separate stages. idk how that works but we will find out. The final vote is on Sunday.

The big news yesterday was that Ihor Kolomoisky, the oligarch apparently backing Zelenskiy, won his legal case over the nationalisation of his private bank. He had been accused of pinching billions of dollars of investors’ money and using fraudulent loans to cover it up, and has been in Israel avoiding extradition ever since. A court ruled there wasn’t enough evidence / justification for Poroshenko to have the bank expropriated. It potentially means a massive payout, and the opportunity to return to Ukraine - particularly if his man wins. Poroshenko has suggested returning the bank to Kolomoisky could mean Ukraine defaulting on their international/ IMF debts, whoever wins.

The debate seems like a farce - set up with two stages with rival supporters in ‘fan zones’ taking up one half of the pitch each, with a line of police separating them. The moderator was going to be on the half-way line as well. Eventually Zelenskiy and Poroshenko did share a stage but spent the entire time insulting each other and suggesting the other was a puppet / going to jail. It looks like barely anyone turned up. However, the fact that it took place at all - a first for Ukraine and not going to happen any time soon in Russia - is being seen as a victory of sorts.

This Atlantic Council article blaming ‘the west’ for the rise of Zelenskiy is magnificent, in its own way.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-the-west-helped-put-a-comedian-in-reach-of-ukraine-s-presidency

The gist is that investing money in independent investigative journalism is a terrible thing as it exposes corruption and makes everyone unhappy with the government. Better to gloss over the corruption and focus on the reforms.

To reduce corruption, Ukraine needs a competent legal system that does not exist. Without it, the continued focus on exposes of alleged crimes that can’t realistically be punished seems irresponsible and counterproductive. Better to spend the money on an entertaining and educational series like a “CSI Kyiv.”

The problem for both the West and whoever wins is that the ‘reforms’ are even more unpopular than the corruption. Tying IMF loans to conditions like reductions in already terrible pensions, ending fuel subsidies for heating, etc, etc, means that, given a free-ish choice, people are always going to vote for someone else.

Ze has won by a landslide, close to three quarters of the vote and carrying 23 of Ukraine’s 24 regions. The final vote hasn’t finished but Poroshenko has conceded.

I can't wait till someone from UK comedy decides to save us from this rotten and dysfunctional two party system...

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.

Three years on, the police have just arrested a metal guitarist and his partner after identifying the distinctive band logo on the former’s hoodie via surveillance footage,

There it is. Ukrainian police name suspects as Yulia Kuzmenko and Andriy Antonenko. They tie Antonenko to the crime via his sweatshirt logo. See above in this thread for background on that. pic.twitter.com/XdRPYv3VaB

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) December 12, 2019

Both suspects were in a nationalist militia group and Antonenko just got a fawning interview from the US-government-funded Radio Liberty / Svoboda last week. It’s great to see someone potentially being brought to justice for this. It is one of a couple of crimes that had hung over the head of journalists, and broader civil society, for years.

Big new constitutional proposals from Putin - suggesting an absolute two-term maximum on the Presidency and the potential delegation of a lot more power to Parliament. This is a fairly interesting bit of quick analysis / speculation:

It's been a while since a major #Putin policy address has been anything other than boring. Not today. Today, Putin proposed a radical reshaping of #Russia's political system.

Kind of.

THREAD #Послание2020

/1

— Sam Greene (@samagreene) January 15, 2020

Medvedev, who was assumed to be Putin's successor again for years but who has been sidelined a bit following corruption allegations, has resigned as Prime Minister, along with the rest of the government. The expectation is that some will be rehired to their posts but not him.

Rise in nuclear particles detected in Sweden and assessed to be originating from western Russia.

That is similar to how the Chernobyl disaster came to light in 1986. https://t.co/Wk1bsUhLAJ

— Marten Hendriksma (@MHendriksma) June 27, 2020

Anybody got any insight into the Sergey Furgal murder case?

I’ve not seen anything particularly useful.

The allegations stem back, at least in part, to his time as a scrap metal processor. The mother of one of the victims says Furgal refused to pay for a consignment of scrap and sent some heavies round when her son complained, who ended up shooting him. Furgal’s assistant, at the time, was arrested but the case was nixed somewhere along the bureaucratic chain. It’s impossible to say whether that’s true but it’s not far-fetched when it comes to LDPR politicians.

The trouble central government has is that Furgal is popular and a lot of people don’t really care whether he’s a murderer or not. There’s a default assumption that most of the elite were up to no good fifteen years ago and as long as he’s not ripping people off now, that’s the important thing.

The question is why is it being brought up now, which idk if there has been anything insightful on. Old cases do sometimes catch up with politicians but it’s usually when they’re causing a particular nuisance to central government. There was a fairly similar case with Anatoly Bykov from Krasnoyarsk back in May, which again, I haven’t seen much on.

The official explanation in both cases, iirc, is confederates were arrested for something else and informed on them but I’m not sure how many people buy that.

Up to 40k people protesting now.

Khabarovsk’s protests against the arrest of their governor are quite something. The murder allegations could very well be true, but the case is nevertheless political and the public fucking knows it. pic.twitter.com/jcAitsONVA

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) July 11, 2020

Aha. There are reports that the investigation into Furgal kicked off again after a conflict with a businessman from Boris and Arkady Rotenberg's circle.

Furgal bought half of the Amurmetal steel producer (on paper, it was Furgal's wife who bought it), the other half was purchased by a businessman who borrowed their stake from the Rotenberg family. Furgal subsequently supported a ban on the export of scrap metal through Eastern ports, giving Amurmetal a monopoly. The businessman wanted to sell his share to Chinese investors, Furgal didn't and they ended up accusing each other of fraud. It was apparently around this time that the murder investigation was opened again.

The Rotenbergs are two of Putin's closest advisors and, generally, when they want their interests advanced by the state, they are. As is often the case, all this political intrigue can probably be traced back to a couple of criminals fighting over privatised state assets.

Incidentally Boris Rotenberg jr's contract has finally expired at Lokomotiv Moscow. He was a non-playing substitute for the best part of five years - getting on the pitch nine times over that period, and not once since 2017-2018. He also has a solitary cap for Finland.

Today's O_o news is that the Belarusian press agency has announced 32 mercenaries from Wagner were arrested at a sanatorium in Minsk and have been accused of trying to destabilise Lukashenko's election campaign.

Nobody i've seen can make any sense of it.

The most plausible explanation so far is that they were transiting through Belarus before or after fighting in Libya to avoid the Russian COVID travel restrictions but Lukashenko's media seizing on the opportunity to claim he was being undermined is interesting.

Difficult to predict what'll happen in Belarus now but i'd guess that if anything's going to move the dial, it'd be large-scale industrial action. There have been a few state-linked companies whose workers have gone on strike, idk how much that'll grow.

It's probably fair to assume that even people who voted for Lukashenko on the grounds of stability will be aware that the ballot was massively rigged. He has never appeared more vulnerable or rattled. A speech he gave prior to the vote suggested that he thought his fifteen year-old son, and presumed long-term successor, Kolya, had turned against him.

Well there you go:

A number of major enterprises have joined the strike in #Belarus
Now it's truly national

New-joiners:
- Grodno Azot, chemical-industry giant
- Belmedpreparaty, pharmaceutical plant
- Keramin, one of the largest ceramic tiles producers in Europe

— Denis Kazakiewicz (@Den_2042) August 13, 2020

This seems like a good analysis both of why this is happening now and why it's different from opposition movements in other parts of the region.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/08/the-crackdown-in-belarus

thanks for these links

Today's O_o news is that the Belarusian press agency has announced 32 mercenaries from Wagner were arrested at a sanatorium in Minsk and have been accused of trying to destabilise Lukashenko's election campaign.

Nobody i've seen can make any sense of it.

There's a completely bananas and as yet thinly-sourced story circulating that this was part of an elaborate sting operation by the Ukrainian secret services. Essentially, they set up a fake mercenary company in Russia and recruited a bunch of people they wanted to arrest for fighting in Donbas, on the pretext that they were sending them to Syria. They'd be deployed from Belarus but, on the way from Minsk to Istanbul, the plane would run into 'technical difficulties' and be forced to land in Kyiv, where they'd be arrested.

This was supposedly leaked by someone in the Ukrainian government, so Russia and Belarus had to swoop in to 'arrest' them before they could get on the plane - leading to recriminations between the security services and government in Ukraine.

Alex Navalny has been med-evac’d to Berlin, which can only be a good thing.

The assumption for years, which is still in place for a lot of analysts, including some harsh Putin critics, has been that Navalny is officially ‘untouchable’. He’s divisive enough not to be a major threat but popular enough that if anything happened to him, you can expect a wave of protests that would destabilise the country. The timing, against the backdrop of what’s happening with Furgal and in Belarus would also be strange.

However, Oleg Kashin, a friend of Navalny who is not typically given to massive hyperbole, is speculating about changing circumstances meaning the system has ‘moved past the need for opposition’.

The most obvious alternative, that Putin has lost control over the levers of political violence, is no more comforting. As with the Nemtsov case, there was speculation at the time that it wasn’t green-lit by Putin but whoever organised it didn’t care.

Looks like he hasn’t made it to Berlin...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/world/europe/russia-navalny-poison-hospital.html

It was delayed but the plane apparently landed in Germany a couple of hours ago.

Khabarovsk protests continuing, and it seems still very little crackdown?

The German government has released a statement suggesting Navalny was poisoned with something similar to Novichok.

Poisoning someone with a deadly nerve agent in a busy-ish airport doesn't seem like something that'll go down particularly well with the public.

Azerbaijan have released a military music video, featuring their soldiers playing guitars in front of APCs and other military hardware. This is truly is bizarre. pic.twitter.com/FjHCzjw4Za

— Julian Lacey 🕊️ (@simulacrax) October 1, 2020

We have modern weaponry and high fighting spirit. We showed who’s who and proved that Armenia’s ”invincible army” was a myth. They have already admitted defeat. This is an acknowledgment of their military defeat and our victory.

— Ilham Aliyev (@presidentaz) November 4, 2020

The "this" referred to is a request from Armenia to Russia for military assistance. Realistically, it seems virtually inconceivable that Russia could send troops / commanders to offer the same kind of assistance that Azerbaijan has received from Turkey.

Nikol Pashinyan, PM of Armenia, has said via Facebook that he has signed an ‘unspeakably painful’ peace declaration to end the war tonight - almost inevitably ceding control of Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

1. Armenia implements UN resolutions, different districts hand over to Azerbaijani authorities before 15th November, 20th November, 1 December,
2. Current frontlines halt as of Moscow midnight
3. Russian Federation peacekeepers to protect 5kms Lachin corridor for 5 years pic.twitter.com/2q9Q7Df1Zn

— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) November 9, 2020

It turns out the President of Armenia only found out about the ceasefire treaty via Facebook as well and has said the PM can’t sign anything without it being based on a ‘national consensus’.

"If it Hadn't Been for the Prompt Work of the Medics": FSB Officer Inadvertently Confesses Murder Plot to Navalny

this seems significant?

Russia braces for latest Navalny protests

It’s honestly hard to tell at this stage whether it’s going to be any more significant than the 2019 protests but we’ll see. There is a clear individual injustice that a lot of people can agree needs to be remedied - Navalny should be released - but idk where this goes when that does / doesn’t happen.

Anyway just wanted to showcase this happening tomorrow!

Sign up now for the Zoom-Panel with Soviet Rock 'n' Roll Musicians with Joanna Stingray 🎸 March 5 from 12pm - 1pm Pacific Time, hosted by the Wende Museum of the Cold War and moderated by music journalist @NedRaggett https://t.co/6NoNtmwyOh pic.twitter.com/zMtREYEg6V

— DoppelHouse Press (@DoppelHouse) February 25, 2021

Can anyone explain what just happened at the Ukrainian border?

This piece from the Carnegie Moscow Centre has some background on the situation:

https://carnegie.ru/commentary/84250

The announcements yesterday were that the bulk of the Russian divisions taking part in the exercise would withdraw, either to their home bases or to a temporary midpoint until pre-planned drills later in the year. It sounds like a smaller division will probably remain in Crimea and convert to a permanent regiment there.

Michael Kofman is usually worth following for updates on this stuff.

Russian MoD shows signs of beginning a troop withdrawal - looks like they're redeploying. Will continue to watch this space. Questions remain on what units besides elements of the 41st CAA might be left forward deployed in the region.

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) April 23, 2021

Thanks, that Carnegie piece links to this, which I got a lot out of: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/02/biden-putin-killer-kremlin-propaganda-crimea-approval-rating-economy/

For Putin, this fall from grace was totally avoidable. His ratings nosedive can be traced directly back to June 2018, when the Russian government announced a proposal to raise the retirement age from 55 to 63 for women and from 60 to 65 for men. (The unpopular bill, which was enacted that October, ended up raising the retirement age for women to just 60.) It was a violation of the core, unwritten social contract of Putin’s Russia: We vote for you, and you don’t touch our social benefits.

This feels like an escalation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/belarus-seizure-blogger-ryanair-flight-us-outcry

Yes, and difficult to imagine it won’t lead to repercussions for Belarus, though it’s not completely clear what those are going to be, given that the leadership is already under sanction. Could possibly mean ending flights in to / over the country,

The press release from RyanAir was a fucking disgrace.

Belavia has been banned from operating via the U.K.

The Belarusian authorities have, rather optimistically, tried to blame Hamas.

BA flight from London to Islamabad now bypassing Belarus following Raab's announcement
https://www.flightradar24.com/BAW261/27cff638

What the fuck is going on in Belarus right now? Is this accurate?

Bonkers... Belarussian authorities have granted thousands of migrants from the Middle East visas to visit, and then escorted them to the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, under watchful eye of Belarussian authorities, and stranded them in the cold. https://t.co/ySzHmk7n0l

— Vivian Salama (@vmsalama) November 11, 2021

Belarus dictator is the pits, but this is some real passive-aggressive shit-stirring.

This is a good piece on the use of ‘weaponised migration’ as a concept:

https://www.statewatch.org/news/2021/november/eu-the-weaponised-migration-discourse-dehumanises-asylum-seekers/

Both sides are behaving appallingly. Belarus is, at minimum, profiteering from people’s desperation to reach the EU, financially and politically. Poland and Lithuania have blocked routes, had guards violently attack people trying to cross and are preventing NGOs from coming within 2km of the border to offer food and medical aid. This has been going on for months and is only going to get worse as the temperatures drop.

Heavy artillery fire being reported from Azerbaijan towards Armenia. pic.twitter.com/q3uNO4mJHi

— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) September 12, 2022

unsurprising timing