Blogging the democratic revolution
Here are some articles about RosUkrEnergo, the middle-man company being used in the gas deal between Russia and the Ukraine, and the particularly shady way it’s involved. – RFE/RL goes into the history of the company and why it was created. Let’s just say it involved a certain ex-president of Ukraine, a certain current president of Russia, some “unnamed Ukrainian investors,” and millions of dollars shuffled under the table at the top of both governments. – David McDuff posts several articles dealing with the scandal. – Abdymok notes that after Tymoshenko’s cabinet was dissolved, and former SBU head Oleksandr Turchynov’s…
Our favorite babe of politics has come out swinging in the settlement of the gas dispute between the Ukraine and Russia, and will be challenging the deal in court. The reason has little to do with the actual price negotiated, but much more to do with the single issue that she really stands out on: corruption. Apparently, the intermediary company is a bit shady; and by a bit shady, I mean a lot shady, and was once at the center of a Tymoshenko-led organized crime investigation nixed by the Yushchenko government. Neeka sums up the details. But, as noted above,…
In a recent poll, Russian citizens picked superlatives for their politicians, naming among others who is the most honest, the smartest, and even who is the sexiest. As for the latter, ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the ironically named Liberal Democracy Party took the prize for the sexiest politician in the country. Just take a look at this handsome mug. He’s no pre-poison Yushchenko. I don’t see him going in the Babes Of Politics section anytime soon!
The gas crisis that has shaken relations between the Ukraine, Russia, and the European Union is now over. The air is clearing, but whatever the politicians are saying now, the damage has been done. So the question begs: who came out on top of this? Or perhaps we should be asking who came out on bottom, and though the answer may seem counter-intuitive at first, the answer is Russia. President Putin was embarrassed late last year when his favored candidated in the Ukrainian presidential election, Viktor Yanukovich, was defeated by pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko following the Orange Revolution. Demand for…
It looks like more truth is coming out about the Russian government’s 1) disregard for the hostages and 2) its attempt to cover up the raid on the Beslan school that was under siege. While the Russian government maintains that it stormed the school after terrorists explosives went off, new evidence shows that this was impossible, as the bombs were hooked up to the power supply and the electricity was cut before the explosions were heard. On 1 September, 2004, Ms Alikov went to make a picture report of the 1 September ceremony at school No 1, which was how…
I’m going to be starting a new feature here at Publius, where I take excerpts from books I’m reading or have read and post them along with some additional background or commentary. The first book we’ll be going over will be Kremlin Rising, a detailed look at Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but in particular the years since the beginning of Putin’s rule. Written by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser of the Washington Post, it does not just focus on Putin himself, but an array of things troubling the country such as Chechnya, the AIDS epidemic, the…
The North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the Beslan massacre is out, and guess who caused the fabled first explosion? Last week, the results of a North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the terrorist attack in Beslan were made public. The report went largely unnoticed. The pro-government media shied away from a number of awkward conclusions, while the opposition was dissatisfied with the level of invective directed at the government of President Vladimir Putin. There is no question that the parliamentary commission, headed by Stanislav Kesayev, deputy speaker of the North Ossetian legislature, came under enormous pressure. A good deal was also…
Russia, for some reason allowed to be a part of the OSCE, is fighting tooth and nail to dismember the best election monitoring team in the world. Why? Because behind Russia’s supposed concerns that the monitors are politically motivated, it is actually worried that the unveiling of more phony elections in its backyard will spark further pro-West revolutions. Instead, it would prefer that the OSCE monitoring team be complacent and say that elections are free and fair when they really aren’t. Charming, no? Well, we can’t have that. Ljubljana, 5 December 2005 (RFE/RL) — U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns…
Hey, why is only President Putin and his entourage of ass-kissers dancing? That’s because the first parliamentary elections in Chechnya since 1997 were held on Sunday, in what the dear leaders over in Moscow are hailing as the last legal step toward restoring the region. It’s all a flash-by cinematic sequence for those watching in the West, while on the ground the situation continues to deteriorate with democracy nowhere in sight. Officials are inflating turnout by the double-digits, the winning candidates were all hand-picked by the Kremlin, and it seems like the majority of voters were Russian soldiers. Doesn’t seem…
Garry Kasparov, writing for Newsweek International, calls President Putin out on the misnomer that he is a true ally of the West in the war on terror, and even less so committed to building a democratic society. And he really nails it. The embattled George W. Bush isn’t going to pick a fight with Mr. Putin on matters of democracy and economy when these days everything is secondary to the war on terror. Here we come to the most dangerous delusion of all????????that a strongman in the Kremlin is good for security and necessary for stability. What started as a…
The State Duma, in all of its scary Soviet decor, has completed its first reading of a bill that seeks to essentially halt the abilities of NGOs operating in Russia. It will forbid foreign funding, force them to register with the government, and allow the authorities to monitor every last activity that these organizations undertake. Most dreadfully, it will allow the government to brand any of them as an extremist organization, paving the way for politically motivated closings. It’s Yukos all over again, but instead of focusing on oligarchic opposition, the authorities are now focusing on civil society opposition. This…
President Putin made some cabinet shuffles today. It’s looking interesting. MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin gave his defense minister the additional post of deputy prime minister Monday in a Cabinet shake-up he said was designed to bolster efforts to improve Russia’s military. At a cabinet meeting shown on television station NTV, Putin said the appointment of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was aimed at overcoming a lack of coordination among ministries. Putin also named his chief of staff Dmitry Medvedev to become first deputy prime minister. Both Medvedev and Ivanov have been seen as potential candidates to run for president in…
Mark Steyn has a new killer essay at the Spectator about the collapse of Russia and the spread of Islamic fascism. It’s worth reading if only for the, er, fowl pun partway down page one (there’s one that’s actually funny further down, but I won’t ruin it for you). Excerpt: Moscow has reduced Grozny to rubble, yet is further than ever from solving its Chechen problem. Moreover, the sheer blundering thuggery of the Russian approach has no merits other than affording Moscow some short-term sadistic pleasure as it exacerbates the situation. The allegedly seething ???????Arab street????????, which the West????????s media…
Andy Young has a good post on Russia’s closed cities, in which over 2 million people are sealed off from the world.
A string of well-connected men are re-entering Russia’s political fray by directly entering as election candidates. These are household names, the men who made up and binded the country’s oligarchy during the ’90s. The big news today is that Mikhail Kasyanov, prime minister under Putin until 2004 and a man with big ties to the Yeltsin family of political and economic giants, has thrown in his hat for the presidency when Putin’s term expires in 2008. Mikhail Kasyanov, former Russian Prime Minister who was sacked by President Putin in 2004, said in a radio interview on Wednesday that he planned…
I’m in quite a bit of a mood for Russia at the moment after finishing Kremlin Rising. The book went into detail about Putin’s life and how he has consolidated power to the Kremlin since being elected, but it both started and ended with the massacre at Beslan School No 1. The authors themselves were WaPo correspondents and in Beslan during the hostage crisis, and they go into great detail about the actions of both the Chechen terrorists and the outright corruption of the Russian security forces, of which the latter is quite extensive and relatively untold since it isn’t…
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an in-depth essay today on the Babes of Politics theory, developed in depth here at Publius Pundit, at WILLisms and at Gateway Pundit. It’s excellent. Read it here.
In a continuing sequence of improved bilateral relations, Russia and China are staging first-ever joint military exercises over the next eight days. Andrew Young takes a look at all of the dimensions, both charitable and provocative. Here is his conclusion: Geopolitical considerations are also important to this exercise, although less important than the practical Russian and Chinese aims that I’ve outlined above. The two countries have an increasingly close, although still edgy relationship. Any kind of operation like this allows them to develop a closer working relationship and, more importantly, gives an outward show of co-operation to the rest of…
Poor President Putin. According to Russia’s constitution, he won’t be able to run for the presidency again when his second term ends in 2008. Speculation is always rampant about whether or not he will run again, and just a week ago he was lamenting the fact that he cannot run again because the constitution does not allow it. Russian president Vladimir Putin stressed that the constitution of the Russian Federation did not allow him to remain the head of state after 2008. ???????I may want it but the constitution doesn????????t allow me to do so. I think the most important…
A writer at Kommersant thinks so, given the trend of events over the last half year or so, and he thinks Russia’s banning of ABC over its airing of an interview with Shamil Basayev is the freezing point. It is not surprising that Washington defended the TV company. The thing is that the Nightline program with Shamil Basaev happened at the right time when Russian-American relationship has reached the maximum freezing point. It is not hard to remind that the main problem between Russian and the United States appeared right after the Beslan events. Then President of Russia Vladimir Putin…
Andy “Now that’s what I call inflation!” Young has come across a few gems detailing the incredible rate that corruption and bribe payments are growing in Russia since just after Putin took the presidency. In fact, sincev2001, the average bribe has grown 10-fold. INDEM’s “Corruption in Russia: Dynamics and Perspectives” report claims the average bribe in 2001 was $10,200 and has increased to $135,000 in 2005. The report claims bribes increased 10-fold since 2001 and equal to two and a half times the current federal budget. The Moscow Times report he links to also that businesses and individuals are “forking…
Last week I noted a leaked memo from the Kremlin discussing its fear of the collapse of the republic of Dagestan, located in the North Caucasus. In essense, their ultra repressive tactics against separatist Chechnya has led to an endless cycle of repression, which breeds extremism, which earns an even more repressive repsonse from Moscow. This extremism against the Russian state is being exported throughout the entire North Caucasus. Essentially, what once were separatist rebels are transformd into terrorists working alongside Islamic militants. Putin is now up against an entire region of his country that wants to break away violently.…
The Russian youth group “Nashi,” created not all that long ago, has been pledged to by the Kremlin to be the heirs of the government. They are among the most energetic of Putin supporters, often reported to have resorted to violence when dealing with those of opposing views. A Kremlin spin doctor has promised to ???????hand over the country??????? to the activists of the recently established Nashi movement, the Gazeta daily wrote Monday. Vladislav Surkov made the statement as he addressed a conference held by Nashi on the picturesque banks of Lake Seliger The event was closed to the press…
Eurasianet reports on a leaked memo (perhaps deliberately) that shows Russian policy makers worried about the situation in Dagestan, which has seen increased separatis sentiments and terrorist attacks of late. The increasing rebel attacks in Dagestan (see EDM, July 7) have finally forced Russian authorities to focus on the problems of the republic. Officials in Moscow now realize that the region needs special handling. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov recently conceded, “Of course we are worried about explosions in Dagestan, and this difficult problem should be resolved by civil methods as well as by force (yufo.ru, July 6). On July…
Usually this wouldn’t be a story to me as I’m sure this happens at least a hundred million times a day somewhere in the world. But I’ve never heard of someone calling our president the equivalent of Hitler for supporting democracy movements. About 20 youths have gathered in front of the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg shouting: ???????We have defeated Hitler, and will defeat Bush???????, Interfax reported. The protestors, members of a local branch of the United Socialistic Party of Russia and Congress of Socialist Youth, accuse the U.S. of supporting the so-called velvet revolutions in former Soviet republics. They…