December 2007 Archives

Ringing Out the Old

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

The new year is a holiday for all. For the president of Russia especially: he was officially appointed to this post precisely on New Year’s Day, in 2000.

They say that in this upcoming year, Putin is going to leave the post of president: the Constitution does not allow him to be elected to a third term. But they also say that he doesn’t intend to wander too far away from this post, so that there would be an opportunity in a year to once again return in the capacity of president. What can you do? Power, like a disease, is infectious.

In the year about to end, the American magazine «Time» acknowledged the Russian president as person of the year. Let’s take a look – in honor of the New Year! – at this person with a bit of light humor, and from another side – not the one from which the obsequious colleagues from «Time» looked at him.

It's getting close to 6:30 PM in Moscow, and no doubt some seriously entertaining festivities are already well underway as Russia concludes quite a memorable year. But will the Russians ring in 2008 with the same energy and apprehension as 1965? I found this entertaining tidbit from the TIME magazine archive which shows a rather remarkable government-planned New Year's Eve celebration from more than 40 years ago at the height of the Cold War: Nothing, in Soviet doctrine, is much more reactionary than Christmas, combining as it does "bourgeois" religion with capitalist commercialism. But the New Year is something else again. For years, the Communists have emphasized this ideologically safer holiday while downgrading or disguising Christmas (which in the Russian calendar falls on Jan. 7). With beaming approval from the Kremlin, Moscow last week was feverishly preparing for the biggest, brassiest and most bountiful New Year's blowout in Communist history.

There's been no shortage of criticism of the TIME selection - this one is from a column in the San Antonio Express News: So here's some criticism based on Stengel's own standard. If you define "powerful" as having at your disposal the economic, military, police — secret and otherwise — and media forces of an increasingly autocratic nation, then Putin's your man. If using that immense power to throw your opponents in jail as your critics perish under the most extraordinary circumstances amounts to bold, earth-changing leadership, then Putin has it in spades.

Nord Stream, a consortium led by Russia's Gazprom, is building a new pipeline that will cost at least €5 billion. The controversial project is facing “growing opposition from governments and private environmental groups.”

The Lithuanian president has acknowledged that energy issues with Russia create tension, but says that they “should in no way harm Lithuanian-Russian relations”.

Gazprom is doubling its number of liquid gas filling stations in Russia, boosting its monopoly on the domestic LPG market. The president of Gazresurs says that “large state-owned energy companies like Gazprom continue to buy up gas refineries and filling station chains. At the same time, they also dictate the price for independent retailers, for example, by increasing transportation tariffs.”

The Russian Natural Resources Ministry is hoping to attract $32 billion in investment for six major new projects. Russia's state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport has filed a lawsuit against Kommersant newspaper over comments made by Oleg Shvartsman about “velvet reprivatization” in an interview. Foreign investment in car production in Russia will exceed $1.8 billion this year. Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control, will impose temporary restrictions on fish imports from a number of foreign companies starting January 1, 2008. Countries to be affected include Argentina, Vietnam, China and the US. Russian engineering and steel company OMZ will invest just under half a billion dollars in the next five years in steel and nuclear equipment plants in the Czech Republic. Many fund managers believes that “Russia will take over China’s crown next year” as the Russian market becomes an increasingly attractive option. “It is rich in commodities and natural resources, for which there is huge global demand, and share prices are still quite cheap.” Luxembourg's Bluebird Securities has acquired a 5.7% stake in Russia's second largest gas producer Novatek. Severstal, Russia's biggest steelmaker, aims to increase profit from its US operations almost threefold by 2010 with the help of a $1bn investment plan to increase output and improve quality.

PHOTO: This undated handout photo shows a gas-well of Russian gas company Novatek in Yamalo-Nentsky region. (AFP/HO/File)

Today: RA show to go ahead; Putin praises Bush’s “personal commitment”; foreign policy will be “constructive” next year, says Lavrov; Russia’s relations with Iran and South Korea could strengthen; Moscow’s property boom; Yukos administrator can “ignore” earlier ruling; new survey says Russia’s is a “surveillance society”.

President Vladimir Putin has been accused of “sexing up the Duma [...] with an array of glamorous new female recruits” including former athletes who have starred in topless photoshoots and the principal ballerina of the Bolshoi.

Post-election Metastases

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Scientists at Cornell University (USA) in 2005 succeeded in identifying the mechanism for the spread of metastases of a cancerous tumor. The scientists established that the appearance of metastases in any organ is preceded by the formation of colonies of bone marrow cells, preparing a kind of “landing site” for the cancer cells.

The scientists discovered that during the formation of metastases, bone marrow cells receive biochemical signals from the “mother” tumor, forcing them to migrate throughout the entire body of the sick organism.

Colonies of chekists – former members of the KGB – are spreading throughout all of Russia at incredible speed. The “biochemical signals” are being spread throughout the entire country from the Kremlin. Former and current chekists, catching these signals, start to migrate throughout the entire body of the big country in the search for any kind of power at all. Nowadays, it is hard to find an agency, all the more so a federal one, in which chekists do not occupy the leadership posts.

Often buried under the more sexy foreign policy issues such as terrorism, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and imported steroids for baseball players, U.S. politicians only rarely speak up about what they believe should be done vis-à-vis Russia. Now, probably thanks to TIME Magazine's selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year, the Kremlin problem is finally getting its due among the field of candidates for the U.S. presidency.

The sudden realization of some of these politicians that there could be some good political mileage to be had by squawking on about Russia has not always produced fruitful proposals or new ideas. Nevertheless, today the Council on Foreign Relations has provided a helpful rundown of each candidate's foreign policy position on Russia. Russia policy was stated as "unknown" for candidates Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo.

In a recent column by Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times about the torture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah by the U.S. Government, an interesting question is posed: if this cover-up of a war crime is finally unraveled, will it eventually lead to accountability at the highest levels of the Oval Office?

Sullivan writes, “Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.”

In making the case for George Bush as a war criminal, Sullivan has raised a very important point – when a high profile prisoner is severely mistreated by the authorities and threatened with death, the responsibility goes to the highest levels of executive power which authorized these actions.

We can now observe a parallel example in Russia, which although lacking the dramatic headline-grabbing stories of terrorist plots, waterboarding, and destroyed videotapes, features the same repugnant cruelty as the former Yukos general counsel Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan is systematically being denied access to emergency life-saving medical care and chemotherapy treatments.

[The following is the final installment of Grigory Pasko's reporting on punitive psychiatry and interviews with journalist Andrei Novikov. See Part 1 and Part 2.]

“Psychiatry for the state is a supplementary element of the police system, convenient when it isn’t possible to prove somebody’s guilt, but when the person is just really getting in the way of the state.” – from I. Girich’s foreword to V. Nekipelov’s 2005 book «Institut durakov» [Institute of Fools]

“You can’t understand Russia with the mind…”

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Some men were sitting next to me in the train back home from Yaroslavl, drinking beer. One was reading a book about chekists (you can’t even imagine how many of them are being published in contemporary Russia!), the other was talking incessantly: about railroads, about perestroika (which had “destroyed the USSR”), about how the toilet was perpetually closed…

I recalled a phrase from Anton Chekhov’s tale «Ward No. 6»: “‘Which one of us two is insane?’, he thought with aggravation. ‘Is it I, who an trying not to trouble the passengers in any way, or is it this egoist, who thinks he’s smarter and more interesting than everybody here, and therefore isn’t giving anybody any peace?’”

Main building of the psychiatric hospital in Rybinsk (photo by Grigory Pasko)

This question was posed by Russia Profile to Ethan S. Burger, Eric Kraus, Ira Straus, Andrei Tsygankov, and Stephen Blank. The latter is the only one to really question some of the fundamental assumptions about Russia's resurgence: "The deliberate stoking of nationalist, chauvinistic rhetoric warning of enemies at the gates, generated for domestic purposes, is now exacting its cost."

Yesterday we blogged about Russia's need to keep Iran in the lurch with regard to delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. Also, the unexpected announcement by the Iranians appeared to have caught the Russians off guard, and led many to conclude that it was a preemptive bargaining tactic to force Moscow's hand (Gazprom has perfected this method of premature announcements of deals).

True to form, today the Russians are denying the delivery of this missile system, and even denying that talks are taking place: "The question of deliveries of S-300 systems to Iran, which has now arisen in the mass media, is not currently taking place, is not being considered and is not being discussed at this time with the Iranian side," said a representative from the Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service (FSVTS).

I wonder what the response from Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and the Iranians will be to this news? Perhaps silence, or perhaps more Nabucco and gas export talk...

Today: Russia denies sale of anti-aircraft missile to Iran, delivers second shipment of nuclear fuel; contraband caviar; British-Russian relations - “Cold War lite”.

At the cabinet’s final session for the year, Vladimir Putin said that Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov’s job for the new year would be “to ensure work of such intensity that even my possible arrival at the White House would seem like a holiday to everyone." A poll by the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Studies found that inflation was the key event of the year for Russians. Putin has topped business daily Kommersant's annual rankings of Russia's elite for the seventh consecutive time.

Gazprom took control of Shell's Sakhalin-2 project last year, and now appears to want a stake in ExxonMobil's Sakhalin-1 venture as well, according to new reports alleging that Gazprom held talks to join the oil and gas project earlier this year.

Russia's state-controlled Rosneft says it will raise oil output by 11% in 2008.

The Middle East's share of Japan's crude imports fell to 84.3% in November from 89.4% a year ago, partly due to a surge in crude imports from Russia and Vietnam.

US aviation giant Boeing has agreed to buy more than $1 billion worth of titanium components from domestic manufacturer VSMPO-Avisma. Peugeot Citron is to construct an automobile plant in Kaluga, signalling that its global partner, Mitsubishi, may construct a plant there also. In the first step towards such an agreement, Mitsubishi, Japan's fastest-growing car exporter, has signed an accord with the Russian government granting it incentives to assemble vehicles. VTB’s purchase of a stake in EADS has been interpreted as “a renewed attempt by the Kremlin to develop Russia’s aerospace industry.” VTB has become the first Russian bank to win a license to operate in China. Sberbank has completed its $150 million purchase of Ukraine's NRB Bank.

In 2007, there were more than 50 billionaires in Russia and more than 100,000 millionaires. In 2002, there were just seven billionaires. (source: Economist)

Scholar Janusz Bugajski of CSIS thinks that the Kosovo issue will be the first major challenge of relations with Russia to be addressed during the U.S. presidential elections next year: The Putin leadership has deliberately created a sense of danger through its anti-Western rhetoric. It claims that the United States and its closest NATO allies, such as Britain and Poland, are seeking to encircle Russia and prevent the country from regaining its rightful position as a major global player. The expansion of Western alliances and the promotion of liberal democracies are depicted as direct threats to Russia's interests.

Among the priority items for the United States will be dealing with an expansionist Kremlin that is once again seeking to divide the Western alliance and diminish U.S. influence. The decision on Kosovo's statehood will be an early indication of whether Washington is determined to stand by its principles and is capable of ensuring trans-Atlantic cohesion -- even at the cost of exacerbating the inevitable confrontation with Russia.

This polling data comes from Levada via Angus Reid.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? - The purpose of America’s foreign policy is the complete destruction of Russia.

Agree - 43%

Disagree - 42%

Hard to answer - 15%

Source: Yury Levada Analytical Center
Methodology: Interviews to 1,600 Russian adults, conducted from Dec. 7 to Dec. 10, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

Earlier today during President Vladimir Putin's speech at the last cabinet meeting of the year, he commented on economic growth, foreign investment, food price controls and inflation, and said "we no longer depend on large profits from oil and natural gas exports alone." He also pledged for the government to work hard to keep the country running during the election, as though responding to fears of instability:

Last but not least, the entire state machinery must operate reliably and effectively during the presidential election. It mostly concerns the Government of the Russian Federation. So Mr Zubkov must guarantee performance intense enough for all to heave a sigh of relief even if I become Prime Minister. The Government must work efficiently and dynamically, and be aloof to any domestic political events, even such crucial ones as the presidential election. I want to stress that we are working for our nation, for our people, and we must guarantee them normal life.

"A sigh of relief"? "Be aloof to any domestic political events"? Sometimes it feels like the Kremlin lives in some whole other reality...

[Below is an exclusive translation of a press statement from the former general counsel and vice president of Yukos, Vasily Alexanyan, who has been unlawfully imprisoned in Russia since 2006. The statement, distributed by All-Russia Public Movement «For human rights», describes the cruel and outrageous circumstances by which the Russian procuracy have illegally denied this prisoner access to urgent chemotherapy treatments and other medical care to save his life. For many years, I've argued that the true criminals in the Yukos case were those individuals seeking to dress up these show trials in the minimal trappings of counterfeit legality, and here with their treatment of Mr. Alexanyan, who is literally on the brink of death without proper medical care, we see that the procuracy is not above getting involved in manslaughter if not murder. Not once or twice, but three times the Russian Federation has ignored an exceptionally clear directive from the European Court of Human Rights to provide proper medical care to Mr. Alexanyan. Against all known international norms, law, and due process, the Russian procuracy has flaunted rule of law repeatedly in this case, and I urge you to refer anyone who defends the legitimacy or minimal adequacy of Russia's justice system to this statement. - Robert Amsterdam]

“The authorities of the Russian Federation have truly brought me to the brink of the grave by their actions”

Statement for the press and the human rights community from Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan, being held at FGU IZ-77/1 of the UFSIN of Russia for the city of Moscow

On 27 December 2007, the Russian Federation is required to carry out what are already the third Interim Measures of the European Court of Human Rights indicating that I be immediately transferred from the prison where I am now being held to a specialised civilian clinic for hospitalization.

Below is the continuation of the statement from Andrei Novikov, the government critic and journalist who has been illegally held against his will in psychiatric confinement (see Part 1 here). Novikov, who is supported by international press freedom groups such as Reporters without Borders, made a plea for political asylum on an exclusive video first featured on this blog. - Grigory Pasko

Andrei Novikov’s monologue continued...

….Also I was quarrelsome with policemen. I demanded of them that they show identification. Once a policeman beat me up. I turned for help to the police. There they told me that since I didn’t know the surname of the policeman who had beaten me up, then there was no element of a crime, either. They taught me that you need to demand that they show identification. And so I started demanding. They wouldn’t give it. I complained about them to the internal security administration. This too they didn’t forget.

The psychiatric hospital where Novikov spent nearly a year (photo by Grigory Pasko)

For all those of a libertarian bent out there complaining about their own intrusive, nanny state, they should take a look at Russia, where it has become illegal to question the existence of Father Frost, the Russian version of Santa Claus. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (why this bureaucratic arm of government over other options puzzles me) has banned a TV ad from an electronics retailer which poked fun at the existence of this mythical gift giver on the grounds that it broke a rule discrediting parents and teachers.

"It means that parents are not telling the truth to children when they say Father Frost exists. In that way the ad induces negative relations between children and their parents," said a government source.

Perhaps the real reason for the ban was that the Kremlin didn't want to ruin the Nashi's version of Santacon, when thousands from the youth movement take to the streets in the fabled costume to worship the president...

As has been noted on this blog many times in the past, the Kremlin has been exceptionally effective in using its relationship with Iran to move markets to their benefit. Today, for example, the big upswing in oil prices is partly credited to the news that Russia will finally deliver its promised advanced anti-aircraft missile system to Tehran (the S-300), which will "dramatically increase its ability to repel an attack," said the defense minister.

But will Russia really commit this time? Or will it just be another tease, like the past interminable delays and excuses at the Bushehr nuclear reactor? As Stratfor has noted, the Russians are determined to maintain some wiggle-room with these commitments to Iran for various reasons:

The last issue of the New York Times Magazine has a compelling article from Peter Maass about an alleged CIA officer who bribed the president of Kazakhstan more than $78 million to guide oil and gas toward Europe and the United States instead of toward Russia and China. In the era of scarce oil, some governments are looking to drop bribery and corruption investigations lest they scare off important supply deals - an extremely negative development, to say the least.

Today: Nemtsov withdraws from elections; Medvedev receives increased support, pledges to increase spending on national projects; Russia to provide Iran with new air defence system; Khodorkovsky's custody extended.

Boris Nemtsov, the liberal opposition leader, has pulled out of the March presidential election in Russia, saying that improper pressure by the Kremlin turned the campaign into a farce. The head of the Union of Right Forces also said that he was withdrawing so as not to split the vote with what he described as the only other remaining candidate from the democratic opposition, Mikhail Kasyanov. “[The Kremlin] is using Goebbels-esque propaganda, law-enforcement and administrative resources against opposition candidates,” Nemtsov said.

Aluminium producer Rusal said it will raise its stake in Norilsk Nickel from 25% to 27%. The board of KM-Invest, a Russian firm that manages some assets of tycoons Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin, has voted to sell more of its assets. A review of the year’s Russian metal market deals can be found here. The board of Russia's Bank of Development will purchase a 5% stake in European aerospace company EADS from VTB Bank for about $1.43 billion. Russia’s state-owned banks are rapidly increasing their share of the market, with the top ten banks accounting for 46% of total banking assets in 2007. A new survey of German investors shows that German companies continue to see Russia as a business opportunity “in spite of political tensions between the two countries.” Alliance Group and billionaire Polymetal owner Suleiman Kerimov plan to bid for a stake worth $622 million in Polyus Gold. The government will keep its $151 billion stabilization fund entirely in sovereign bonds next year and will not invest a $19 billion subfund in corporate debt or stock. The Association of Russian Banks has asked Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to postpone the introduction of amendments to the law on fighting money-laundering until it is clear on how to implement them.

"We have received an extremely negative experience of foreign participation in exploration projects in Russia's East," said Gazprom’s deputy chairman. The company is against giving Russian subsoil to foreign companies to develop.

In an attempt to reduce Russia's dependence on Belarus for oil transit, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Energy and the pipeline monopoly Transneft have prepared a draft for the construction of a second pipeline leading to the Baltic port of Primorsk.

Unified Energy System (UES) said its net profit had decreased 31%, year on year.

The FT is running a new op/ed which both predicts the difficulties and points to the opportunities for the West to improve relations with Russia: "The question for the west is how to deal with such an important but increasingly unco-operative country. The answer is to engage with Russia on many fronts but avoid compromising on western values, particularly the rule of law. It will not be easy, but the US and the European Union must try and apply some basic principles.

First, forget about trying to turn Russia into a democracy from the outside. If Russia is to develop into a democracy, it will be done largely by Russians. Foreigners can help only at the margin – and only when the time is ripe, which is not now. The west should not refrain from highlighting Russia’s domestic warts but it should focus on key human rights issues, such as political killings, rather than vague comments about democracy."

Old-style mercantilism, as compared to free trade, was an economic doctrine formerly implemented by national governments to advance their country's interests at the expense of others - a divide-and-conquer approach to trade and investment as an instrument of power. Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post argues that a new form of mercantilism is making a strong comeback, as governments (the Kremlin among them) once again make moves to manipulate markets against principles of competition to advance political (and sometimes personal) interests. He asks an intriguing question: can growing economic interdependence and rising nationalism coexist, or will they collide?

Michael McFaul writes about the TIME selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year in Slate:

In mistaking correlation for causation—in arguing that the coincidence of Putin's time in power and Russia's economic recovery proves that "individuals can make a difference to history"—Time has delivered a public relations coup to Putin. Kremlin officials have already applauded. For those in Russia still fighting for independent media and still convinced that objective journalism is a noble aspiration, Time's decision to celebrate Putin with this un-honor most certainly doesn't "feel right," and it most certainly doesn't feel like journalism. Some traditions should come to an end.

Nationalist Alexander Dugin, who heads the «Eurasian Movement», recently declared: “There are no more opponents of the Putinite course, and if there are, then they are mentally ill and need to be sent to get a medical examination. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, Putin is irreplaceable.”

Independence is punished by the nut-house

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

In search of the insane

In the sixth hour of the evening, the Moscow-Vorkuta train brought me to Yaroslavl. I stepped out of the car. It was dark, damp, and very cold. The first thing I saw was a young man strolling along the platform… in his underpants. As it was, I happened to be travelling to meet with a resident of Yaroslavl Oblast whom the power had called insane. That is, I was prepared for all kinds of things. But something like this, right there on the platform when I had just barely arrived?!

On the way to the hotel, I stepped into the local «McDonald’s» for a cup of tea. Two teenagers sat down at the table next to mine. I watched as during the course of ten minutes they ate… four Cheeseburger Royales® [known as Quarter Pounders® in North America–Trans.] apiece. Were they insane?

But I should be talking… What normal person would go drink tea of the Russian firm «Maysky chai» in a «McDonald’s»?

Russia is willing to participate in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus.

Russia will raise duties on oil exports by 21%, starting in February.

A new pumped storage hydropower station in the Leningrad region, to be completed by HydroOGK by 2016, will be the largest in Europe.

Sergei Lavrov says that Russia would freeze its cooperation with Iran on nuclear energy if there was any deviation from agreements currently in place on Bushehr.

Vneshtorgbank, Russia's second largest bank, is to invest roughly $260 million in "the purchase and construction of a residential complex" in London. Magnit, Russia's largest supermarket chain by stores, may seek to sell at least $500 million of shares in London next year. The owner of OAO Seventh Continent reportedly rejected a $1.37 billion offer for the Russian supermarket chain from US buyout firm TPG because it was too low. The state-run monopoly, Unified Energy System, is against passing its name on to its successor company when the country’s electric power sector is reformed. Some analysts suspect that the current rise in retail prices for petrol was initiated by Rosneft. The company say that their prices “are based on market calculations. And we would like to point out that the prices at our petrol stations are growing slower than inflation.” Ball Corp. is in talks with South Russia's Rostov regional authorities to build a beverage can manufacturing plant.

(PHOTO: People pass by a branch of Vneshtorgbank (VTB) in Moscow, September 2006. (AFP/File/Maxim Marmur))

Today: State corporations; GPS satellites launched and ballistic missiles tested; Lavrov discusses foreign policy; anti-globalists hold anti-luxury rally in St. Petersburg.

The State Duma began passing laws to set up new state corporations in the autumn of 2007. The campaign for state corporations is “the logical conclusion of the first stage of the construction of capitalism in Russia”. At a meeting on the implementation of national projects, Dmitri Medvedev announced that “A free, educated and healthy person is the main thing that determines perspective for the country’s development now.”

A few days ago Lilia Shevtsova published the following column in the Moscow Times:

The Power Paralysis

By Lilia Shevtsova

Those watching President Vladimir Putin on television could not fail to see a change in his mood. After he decided on his partnership with First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, he started to look like a different person. He is very much at ease -- as if a huge burden has been taken off his back. Last week, he was joking at the State Council meeting, and he curtly put the Time magazine journalists in their place during an interview at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence. His body language shows that he is enjoying his position of power immensely.

Russia’s retail turnover for November 2007 exceeded 1 trillion rubles for the first time ever, and the country will become the world's fifth largest economy by 2020, provided its gross domestic product keeps its current annual growth rate. Russia has exported a record $7 billion worth of arms in 2007, with state-controlled Rosoboronexport overseeing most of the contracts. The duties on stainless steel import will go up by 35% to 40% early in 2008, with Russian traders of Chinese steel imports feeling the heaviest impact of the increase. French giant Renault is conducting a due diligence review before signing a final deal to buy a 25% blocking stake in Russia's largest carmaker AvtoVAZ. Toyota Motor Corp expects its sales in Europe to continue growing at around 2% next year, although this rate excludes the rapidly expanding Russian market. “Russia is pulling the European market.” Rusal’s acquisition of Norilsk Nickel is seen as the companies “first step towards creating Russia’s first global and diversified mining and metallurgical enterprise.”

(PHOTO: A New Year tree with changeable lights stands at the Red Square in Moscow Monday, Dec. 24, 2007. New Year is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, and is followed by the Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko))

Part of Russia’s plans to build Rosatom, the state nuclear power corporation, will include the setting up of a national nuclear energy university, to be based at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.

Unified Energy System (UES) has completed the restructuring of the thermal power sector as part of a broader electric power system reform.

Russia's Resources Ministry could ease access to state auctions of large oil, gas or metal deposits by foreign companies, but is to tighten control over large equity deals.

Gazprom, Russia's biggest supplier of natural gas for power plants, paid almost $850 million for new shares in OAO OGK-6, Russia's third-largest power generator by capacity.

Today: bird flu; pro-Kremlin youth groups; relations with Iran steadily improving; US missile shield tensions continue; a satellite tracker for Putin's labrador?

Russia’s equivalent of Santa Claus is called Ded Moroz, or Father Frost. Every December, a free three-week course called the Moscow School of Ded Moroz is run at a government-funded youth center. "Ded Moroz is the wizard of New Year’s. His origins predate Christianity, as the pagan god of winter.” Some say he acts as an emblem of Russia’s search for its own identity within existing Western cultural symbols.

Gazprom Neft Finance, a subsidiary of the energy giant Gazprom, has asked permission from the Federal Antitrust Service (FAS) to buy a 50% stake in Tomskneft from Rosneft.

Libya's leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi has met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Tripoli to discuss bilateral relations and international issues, including a joint nuclear energy programme.

Vladimir Putin’s love of judo has apparently landed him a starring role in an instructional DVD. The BBC today is running a story about Vladimir Putin’s forthcoming appearance alongside an Olympic champion.

They write: “Russia's judo-loving President, Vladimir Putin, has recorded an instructional DVD along with Japanese Olympic champion Yasuhiro Yamashita. The DVD will be released as a supplement to a judo manual and is due to come out in January or February, the Kremlin's most famous black belt said. He and Yamashita attended a judo lesson in his home city St Petersburg, two years ago after meeting in Tokyo. "Sports like judo teach you mutual respect," Mr Putin said. "Respect for your rival, with the knowledge that an adversary who appears weak can put up resistance and even beat you if you lose concentration and become complacent."

Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov is seeking to buy the 7.4% stake in Polyus Gold, Russia's biggest producer of the metal, jointly held by former partners Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin. As predicted, Oleg Deripaska's United Company Rusal has won its battle to grab a 25% blocking stake in Norilsk Nickel, the first step toward acquiring control of the company. A full takeover by Rusal of Norilsk would create a $100 billion metals giant. It is being predicted that the Russian stock market will have a strong year in 2008. “The market here should continue to perform even if the economies in Western Europe and the US do not,” said one analyst. Europe's second-biggest insurer, AXA, has made a “major entry” into Russia with a deal to buy a 36.7% stake in insurer RESO-Garantia for about $1.16 billion. Russia's largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, plans to borrow $3 billion to $4 billion on international capital markets in 2008.

(PHOTO: A worker climbs inside a 46-meter (151 feet) Christmas tree in the centre of Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk December 24, 2007. The artificial Christmas tree is the highest in Russia, local media reported. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin (RUSSIA))

Today: Gunvor denies links with Putin; Fifth State Duma opens; Medvedev to begin presidential campaigning; Zubkov initiates wage hike for public sector; Khodorkovsky lawyers apply for case dismissal; corruption; Badri Patarkatsishvili assassination plot.

The oil company Gunvor has spoken out about its alleged links with Vladimir Putin, denying that the Russian president was the company's "beneficiary" owner but admitting that he was a friend of its founder. "None of the shares of this organisation are held by President Putin or anyone allied by him," Tornqvist wrote in a letter published in today's Guardian.

Here's a Reuters news clip on Russia's art loan fiasco with the United Kingdom, which this weekend was unexpectedly reversed. Matisse lovers in London can breathe a sigh of relief.

Writing on Japan Focus, M K Bhadrakumar points out the patently clear quid pro quo going on between Russia and Iran in energy and geopolitics. Extensive high quality analysis after the cut.

In fact, how Moscow proceeds with the reconfiguration of Russo-Iranian relations could well form the centerpiece of the geopolitics of energy security in Eurasia during 2008. The dynamics on this front will doubtless play out on a vast theater stretching well beyond the Eurasian space, all the way to China and Japan in the east and to the very heart of Europe in the west where the Rhine River flows. ...

You'd never say that the Kremlin doesn't know how to win friends and influence people, as this latest nuclear gesture toward Delhi indicates:

Russia’s willingness to sign a nuclear agreement with India, without waiting for international restrictions on technology transfer to New Delhi to be lifted, is welcome. When President Vladimir Putin visited India in January 2007, the two countries had signed a Memorandum of Intent for the construction of four nuclear power reactors in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. Now Moscow seems keen to formalise that agreement and also build half a dozen more reactors elsewhere in India. The offer includes the supply of offshore nuclear plants to India without restrictions, as well. Since the proposal doesn’t seem to carry any riders like the Hyde Act clause that hamstrings the Indo-US deal, New Delhi shouldn’t find it too difficult to decide on it soon.

Russia's relationship with India, one of the fellow BRIC economies, is getting warmer and warmer, despite some hiccups as observed by some.

Outdoing even Russia, the authoritarian Central Asian country of Uzbekistan seem to have no problem ignoring its constitution when it comes to keeping the top boss in office: two-time president Islam Karimov, who has had both his terms in office extended by referendums already, has been cleared by the Central Electoral Commission to run for a third term, despite the small matter of a constitutional limit of two terms. Although there are three other candidates running for the office - all of whom are regarded as Karimov loyalists - our money's definitely on Karimov. He won his last election with 92 percent of the vote.

For those of you who thought that the Kremlin was the first to invent false opposition parties, think again.

A timely paper by Stanford University professors Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss has just been published in the January/February 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs. The article’s title says it all: “The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin’s Crackdown Holds Russia Back.” A PDF version of the article can be downloaded here.

First, a disclosure: I have read and admired the scholarship of these distinguished academics for years, and I have recently had the pleasure to meet with them at Stanford, where I attended a joint seminar that was had standing-room-only attendance from scholars throughout the university.

Ahmadinejad is Better than Putin

By the Polittechnologist

It being Christmastime, I would have liked to write about something pleasant. For example, about good people. Today, I’ve got three candidates – Hitler, Putin, and the current president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Do not look so surprised, dear reader. Hitler is not here by accident. If Time magazine at one time let his photograph grace its cover, that means that at one time he was considered a good person, the way Putin is today.

Yesterday I had an interview with the journalist Andrey Novikov, who since last February has been held against his will in psychiatric confinement on a spurious charge of "publicly inciting constitutional change by means of force." Press freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders comments that "Novikov has been the victim of practices contrary to the rule of law. ... It seems that Russia’s special services and psychiatrists are still empowered to take charge of anyone whose words or actions stray from the Kremlin line. The use of punitive confinement is very dissuasive for all those who might be tempted to express their disagreement with the authorities.”

Below is an exclusive video statement I got from Novikov in which he requests political asylum to escape the persecution he is suffering from in Russia. Stay tuned for more - Grigory Pasko.

Our correspondent in Russia, Grigory Pasko, has been following a tragic story that has been unfolding in Moscow. On December 20, police came to the home of opposition activist and "Oborona" leader Oleg Kozlovsky and forcibly took him to the local military draft board, where the medical commission obediently declared him fit for military duty, despite health problems. He was then immediately taken to a camp for draftees. (La Russophobe has also blogged about it here).

(We are also considering a new daily round up feature of all the best in business news for Russia and the surrounding regions. Bear with us as we work out the kinks! - Editors)

Toyota Motor; Rosbank; VimpelCom; Bank Rossiya; Sberbank

Japanese automaker, Toyota Motor, has opened its first plant in Russia. “We are hoping that one day the plant will produce 200,000 to 300,000 units per year.” The company has also suggested that it could build a second plant in St. Petersburg.

French bank Société Générale will exercise a $1.7 billion call option to take a majority stake in Russian rival Rosbank. VimpelCom, Russia's second-largest mobile-phone company, has agreed to purchase Golden Telecom for about $4.3 billion. The co-owner of Bank Rossiya, Oleg Rudnov, has taken control of Komsomolskaya Pravda. The move is being seen as a concentration of popular media in the hands of Kremlin loyalists in the run-up to the presidential elections. Billionaire Elena Baturina has sold half of her stake in Sberbank. A similar trend in Russian business suggests that liquidity problems are leading the business community to place funds in projects with higher potential yield. Sberbank says that it may decide to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange at the end of the first quarter of 2008.

PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and St.Petersburg's Governor Valentina Matviyenko attend the opening ceremony of a Toyota Motor Corp. plant in St.Petersburg, December 21, 2007. REUTERS/RIA Novosti/Kremlin (RUSSIA)

(Here goes our first test of a new daily feature summarizing what's new in the energy sector. Bear with us while we make some adjustments to the format and style. As always, let us know your thoughts. Cheers! - Editors)

Russian Energy News

Gazprom has pitched a $99 billion plan to develop new supplies of natural gas to potential investors in Tokyo, and has outlined plans to build 9,000km of new pipelines by 2030. Good news for Gazprom at home - Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said that the ministry “doesn’t view it expedient to hike the severance tax for gas.” Gazprom Neft, the company’s oil arm, has announced a drop in net profit and a rise in core earnings. Tatneft has posted a nine-month profit of $1.19 billion for 2007.

The Industry and Energy Ministry has approved the crude oil export schedule for the first quarter of 2008.

Russia’s delivery of nuclear fuel to Iran is, some say, only the beginning of cooperation for the countries, and the Bushehr plant is “a necessary prerequisite” for further dealings. The plant is not expected to start operating before late 2008. “Iran’s legal nuclear cooperation with Russia could mask and facilitate a variety of illegal transfers”. The experience of London-listed Imperial Energy “exemplifies what it means to navigate the mazes of corruption that permeate President Vladimir Putin's Russia.”

This cartoon comes from the artist Jim Morin, which I found over at Slate.com.

What started as a small rumor voiced in German press has finally hit the front pages of a major Western outlet: the Guardian is reporting on the corruption allegations that Vladimir Putin has amassed a $40 billion fortune.

This article is an earth shattering demonstration that VVP himself has been dragged into the center of the clan wars which have roiled the country over the past number of months. This front page story in the Guardian demonstrates that at least one of the clans is so afraid that Putin may not be president that they have launched an all out offensive to further de-legitimize the Russian leader, remove his impunity, and make it impossible for him to leave office.

Behind the story is the political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, who has given a new interview to the Guardian's Luke Harding to rival the bomb-dropping of the "velvet reprivatization" story in Kommersant. Belkovsky claims that Putin conceals his holdings behind a "non-transparent network of offshore trusts" to control 37% of Surgutneftegaz (worth $20 billion), 4.5% of Gazprom, and about 75% of the shadowy oil trading company "Gunvor."

I continue to stress to that the real campaign in Russia is not one of a candidate before the voting public, but rather is one amongst the clans, which has been up until the Oleg Shvartsman interview, was well hidden yet bitterly fought. A front page story like this leaked to the Western press, exactly around the time of the selection of Dmitri Medvedev, does not happen by accident. It is a clear personal attack on the impunity of the president, and whoever has fired this shot at the top, is fighting desperately for their political and physical survival.

It is far too early to say very much at all about the Belkovsky allegations or who is behind them, but the early betting from Moscow says that Viktor Cherkesov, head of the government's anti-narcotics division and chief rival of Igor Sechin, may be the person behind the leak - however these are just the preliminary soundings and speculations. Whatever may be the further permutations of this infighting, given that Putin has become the last institution of Russia the destructive potential of these events cannot be exaggerated.

Stay tuned here as the situation continues to unravel.

UPDATE: Journalist and author Steve LeVine is discussing the same story from a different perspective over at his blog The Oil and the Glory.

Inasmuch as TIME is allowed to anoint their own Person of the Year, I thought that this blog would do so as well, for what it's worth.

So without further ado, the 2007 RA Blog Person of the Year is.... The Russian Journalist.

These intrepid individuals fight tirelessly against incredible odds every day, unhindered by one of the most hostile official environments in the world which has sought to criminalize their craft, and often risking their lives to accomplish their thankless yet vital work.

Today: Putin’s $40 billion fortune; Medvedev’s political character; Zubkov lays plans for successor; Russian government gives way on Royal Academy paintings.

It is being reported that “an unprecedented battle is taking place inside the Kremlin in advance of Vladimir Putin’s departure from office” in relation to claims that Putin has a secret personal fortune of over $40 billion and a “non-transparent network of offshore trusts”. In October, Putin “revealed” his yearly income to be roughly $80,000 a year. This article offers an analysis of Putin’s career history.

There's a long cover story on Vladimir Putin's democratic credentials running in the Wall Street Journal today, even including this great photo with the 1980s haircut. Ever since the TIME selection, every newspaper and magazine out there seems to be fighting to have the next big scoop on Russia. They write: "The Kremlin squeezed the politically connected Russian tycoons who had consolidated former state industries and bought up media properties in the 1990s. The government wrested the main television station from an erstwhile Putin ally, Boris Berezovsky. It gained control of another independent TV station, Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV, engineering its sale to state-owned gas giant Gazprom. The Kremlin jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil, banking and media baron who had supported opposition politics, on fraud and tax-evasion charges.

Mr. Rybakov, the Soviet-era dissident on the Leningrad city council, mourns the tough-fisted turn Mr. Putin took. "It will take a generation for us to make up for the lost ground," he said. "We had all hoped for much better."

Independent journalist from Russia Andrey Novikov intends to ask for political asylum

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Andrei Novikov, independent journalist, was detained on 5 December 2006 in the city of Rybinsk of Yaroslavl Oblast. Officially, the reason for bringing him to criminal liability became two unpublished electronic letters, in which the procuracy discerned a violation of item 1 of article 280 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“public calls for the implementation of extremist activity”).

Andrei Novikov (photo by Grigory Pasko)

After some thought, and more than a few conversations with colleagues who expected me to be outraged or scandalized, I continue to unreservedly believe that TIME Magazine’s selection of Vladimir Putin as person of the year is truly a great thing. I congratulate the magazine’s editors on the selection.

The exact wording is that “TIME's Person of the Year is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse” – and, for better or worse, I think it is a very positive thing that one of America’s major media outlets has decided that Russia is again playing a crucial role in the world and should be #1 on everyone’s agenda. Far too much of what Putin has been doing has gone under the radar screen, and TIME has provided a major public service to shine the light of Western media attention on Putin’s accumulation and wielding of power.

The following is an exclusive translation of an article from the Russian newspaper РБК Daily, a partner publication of Germany's Handelsblatt, providing a startling look into the social reality of an espionage obsessed state. РБК Daily is ordinarily a straight-laced business paper, and it is highly unusual (and perhaps a worrying sign of the times) that it is now publishing material like this, totally unrelated to business. In our opinion, this clearly looks like a "contract article" ordered and paid for by an interested party.

Spy passions

By Nikolai Ivashov, 20.12.2007

The West is preparing to wage war on our territory

Foreign special services in recent times have stepped up their activity in the Russian direction. After the elections under conditions of stability in Russia, the accent of the work of Western intelligence services will shift from interest in the socio-political and economic situation in the direction of military secrets. The «James Bonds» are already now very interested in defense technologies and the state of the Armed forces of the RF. The spies are devoting particular attention to the missile forces of strategic designation (RVSN) and the nuclear arsenal.

[please see yesterday's post featuring a by-lined article by Oleg Kozlovsky of Oborona.]

The power isn’t prepared for mass repressions. For now…

an interview with the leader of the opposition movement «Oborona», Oleg Kozlovsky

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Oleg Kozlovsky (photo from SPS party website)

How do you assess the results of the recent elections and what is going to take place with the upcoming elections?

It would not be right to call what took place “elections”, because the word itself presupposes the existence of some kind of alternatives [The Russian word for elections, “vybory”, literally means “choices”—Trans.]. But here, the results were known and even announced in advance and all that was left was the little matter of making sure that the results of the voting “fit the answer”.

Christmas has come early for the resource nationalists, as the Kazakbashi, the Turkmenbashi, and the Rusbashi have announced the signing of a critical agreement to build a natural gas pipeline along the Caspian coast, ending months of flirtation with a competing proposal backed by Western nations to build an undersea pipeline bypassing Russia.

Following a conference call between Vladimir Putin, the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and the unpronounceable Turkmen President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, the trilateral agreement was signed begin the massive project, first proposed last May to export 20 billion cubic meters of gas annually to Central and Western Europe - an amount that could cover the demands of a country as large as France.

Like many recent energy deals masterminded by the Kremlin, this pipeline victory carries enormous geopolitical significance and was years in the making.

From Reuters: "I don't feel fear, but I do feel nervousness, because I will have to justify the faith of an enormous number of people who are counting on me to carry out what is, for this country, a tough job," he told reporters at the elections commission.

"People have begun to feel pride in the fact that they have a Russian passport in their pockets," Medvedev added.

Oleg Shvartsman is starting to get quoted more than even Chris Weafer these days. The shadowy government financier, who infamously coined the term "velvet reprivatization" in a tell-all interview with Kommersant before the parliamentary elections, finds himself in a tough spot, and seems to have adopted a "regret nothing" attitude and has even manufactured a sense of self-righteousness to explain his role in helping to turn former spies into CEOs and industrialists. His claims that Kommersant misrepresented him seem to be going nowhere, and his subsequent retractions (first on Echo Moskvy) and clarification interviews appear to have been ordered by higher powers in the Kremlin.

Today in the Financial Times: "It is difficult to tell whether - as some Russian observers have claimed - Mr Shvartsman is just a pawn in a complex political chess game between Russia's warring elite. He says Kommersant portrayed him as a victim of the political infighting that broke out as Russia prepares for a transfer of power next year.
...
He is representative of a growing political class of mid-level managers working for the state, with ties to the security services, who believe it is time for Russia's nascent class of business owners to hand their property back to the state, former government officials said. "This was a manifesto for state raiding," said Alexander Temerko, a former vice-president of Yukos, the defunct oil group once run by jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. "There are a lot of companies like his, and now there are so many of them they are a force.""

Today: Yabloko Youth Leader plans to unseat Yavlinsky and create a new movement; Economic Development and Trade Ministry will help spin Russia’s image to inspire investors; Sochi draws huge investment, Kaliningrad is experiencing a boom; London’s Royal Academy exhibition of French and Russian paintings is in jeopardy after Russia withdraws loans of its works.

President Vladimir Putin is the first Russian to be named Time magazine's person of the year since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev won the title in the late 1980s. The article outlining the choice explains: “TIME's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world — for better or for worse.” Many have called the announcement “unlikely”.

Oleg Kozlovsky’s name should be familiar to regular readers of this blog. I recently visited his website and read his wonderful stories about his arrest and trial. Oh well, yet another one of Those Who Disagree with Putin and his “team” has undergone the baptism of jail. I am amazed by the stupidity of the Russian power: after all, it is known that Russian jail only toughens a person, especially a person with firm convictions. And all the more so if this person is a political prisoner. I, for example, do not know of one person from the National-Bolshevik party, which has been prohibited in Russia, who, after having done time in a camp (and there are already very many like this), has abandoned his or her convictions.

Below we offer an excerpt from an article by Oleg Kozlovsky, and soon we will post up an interview I did with him. - Grigory Pasko

Here's an interesting one from Daniel Altman at IHT:

China already has a tough time generating enough energy to supply its rapidly growing economy. But with a successful bid from China to operate the power grid in the Philippines, I wonder whether it will be long before China pursues the same vertical integration strategy for energy that Russia has sought: complete domination of the generation, distribution and sale of energy to the public.

The Kremlin, it seems, is getting quite fed up of all the negative news flowing out from its borders, bringing the world stories of political prisoners, crushed dissent, and flawed democratic process. Bad for business, no?

Tonight the Moscow Times is reporting that Russia's state-owned Development Bank has been put in charge of changing that with the launch of a new NGO to promote Russia's image abroad: "The draft program of improving the country's image abroad, an 80-page document prepared by Nabiullina's ministry, calls for closer cooperation with international media and promotion of nonenergy sectors through international fairs and exhibitions."

What, wasn't getting your president named TIME's Person of the Year enough? Someone should let the Kremlin (as well as Gazprom) know that the best way to change your image is to change your conduct. Let's just hope that the expulsion of Natalia Morari is not Russia's idea of "closer cooperation with international media."

Michael Weiss, an editor of Jewcy.com, a blogger, and occasional columnist, has a new piece out about Vladimir Putin's nomination of Dmitri Medvedev: "So the dim prospect that Medvedev is a late-blooming champion of de-Putinization brings us to the other two scenarios that exist for keeping him in check. Unless he purges the cabinet, he will find himself surrounded by the Kremlin "uncles" who aggressively jockey for the coveted spot as second-in-command--to Putin. Medvedev has gone on record as being dismissive of factions or intrigue in the executive: "[I]f you ask me if it is reflected in our work, and moreover, in state decisions, I can firmly answer--no." However, there is no question that the ex-secret policemen who, like their current paymaster, matured in the cask of Andropov's KGB and now masquerade as public servants, will view him as an impotent steward and nothing else. These include Igor Sechin, first deputy chief of the Russian presidential administration and the chairman of Gazprom's sister oil monopoly Rosneft, also the presumed pack leader of the siloviki; Sergei Chemestov, the head of the state defense contractor Rosoboronexport; Nikolai Patrushev; and Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Antinarcotics Service. Garry Kasparov has called Medvedev's selection a "defeat for the Igor Sechin group," which also underscores its inherent danger if that group isn't removed. In the event of a severe power struggle that effectively hobbles the presidency, Prime Minister Putin has the right, under the constitution, to impeach Medvedev with a two-thirds majority vote in the Duma, He can then return to the post himself."

Check out the full article here.

There is a growing chorus of voices that argues that the United States and her closest allies are principally to blame for unfortunate revival of not-so-velvet authoritarianism in Russia. I agree wholeheartedly with some of these arguments - Washington has been particularly disrespectful toward Russia since the end of the Cold War, and squandered numerous opportunities to build upon positive areas of cooperation in terms of security, anti-terrorism, nuclear proliferation and trade. In general, Washington and commentators in the U.S. media should show a greater amount of respect for Russia's renewed great power status and its important role in global affairs (which is not the same as ignoring problems like human rights).

However I am not a subscriber to the emerging "Russia Guilt Complex" put forward in the last issue of Foreign Affairs by the Nixon Center's Dimitri K. Simes, and other similar calls to bury all values in pursuit of "critical objectives." The guilt complex depends upon false trade-offs, which in the end will leave the U.S.-Russia partnership in worse condition than it is today.

Case in point, today the Economist takes on the Simes et al. approach: "This argument has strong points, but many weak ones. Mr Simes is right to say that Russia was not a defeated adversary. But who said it was? He overlooks the main point, which is that the Soviet system (a Russian empire clothed in totalitarian ideology) had indeed been utterly defeated at home and abroad."

[This blog has closely followed the story of the FSB's forced exile of Natalia Morari, an investigative journalist from the New Times magazine, and below we're pleased to feature a special interview with her by our correspondent Grigory Pasko. This blog also has translations of Morari's two articles about Raiffeisen and the Kozlov murder. Note that many previous reports have incorrectly stated her name as "Natalia Morar" instead of "Morari" - Trans.]

Natalia Morari: “We are undesirable in Russia…”

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Natalia Morari (photo from the archive of Grigory Pasko)

Beating out the stiff competition Al Gore, Hu Jintao, Barry Bonds and others, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been chosen as Time Magazine's Person of the Year. I'll have more commentary on this later when I finish some meetings, but in general I think that it is a good thing for Americans to start focusing attention on Russia (however I am surprised that no mention was made of Mikhail Khodorkovsky or other similar figures). Some excerpts from the magazine are after the cut.

Sean's Russia Blog has an interesting post which argues that just one scene from the beloved film The Godfather "says more about the fabled 'Operation Successor' than the typical analysis spewing from the pens and mouths of so-called experts":

The scene takes place in Vito Corleone’s office where he and Michael are informing their capos Clemenza and Tessio about the Family’s future move to Nevada. “Forgive me, Godfather, but with you gone — me and Pete’ll come under Barzini’s thumb sooner or later…,” Tessio asks. “And I hate that goddamn Barzini! In six months’ time there won’t be nothing left to build on . . .,” Clemenza declares. “Do you have faith in my judgment?” the ailing Don asks. “Yes.” “Do I have your loyalty?” “Yes — always, Godfather…” “Then be a friend to Michael, and do as he says.” Michael, now seated in the Don’s chair explains, “There are things being negotiated now that are gonna solve all your problems and answer all your questions. That’s all I can tell you now…”

Garry Kasparov came to a similar conclusion last July. Sean also does a bit of math on the spy wars: Cherkesov's famous letter + the Sergei Storchak arrest + the Oleg Shvartsman interview + the Investigative Committee probe = Putin's selection of Medvedev. Not a gesture of personal power, but of elite survival, he argues.

Today: Warning on Russia’s stabilization fund; Rosprirodnadzor fines Sakhalin II project operator; Tymoshenko speaks about gas negotiations with Russia; relations improving with Greece, Poland and Iran; Foreign Ministry to release captured Japanese fisherman.

The official in charge of Russia’s stabilization fund has warned that “irrational” domestic spending could cause further inflation and make the economy dependent on the movements of the global oil market.

More info on the Natalia Morar case from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which put out a statement today: She said that in May she had investigated complex money-laundering schemes involving government officials who funneled large sums of money out of the country. That month, she received a warning from sources close to the FSB who told her, “There is no need to end your life with an article—someone might simply wait for you at the entrance to your apartment building and they will not find a killer afterward.” Morar did not call the police but she told her colleagues what had happened and stayed away from her home for a week to be safe.

RSF has also made a statement. This blog expects to feature an interview with Ms. Morar in the near future. CPJ text after the jump.

Despite the billions in petro-dollars flooding into Russia from oil exports, when it comes time for the U.S. lawmakers to fight over the pork-laden appropriations bill, the Americans still find time to think about Russia.

However the AP reports this year's paltry $72.2 million in U.S. foreign aid for Russia (mostly meant for civil society) could potentially be withheld to send a message to the Kremlin. Congress is demanding that the Russian government make improvements in freedom of the press, stop the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of activists, and provide more religious freedom. (if anyone can find the actual text of these conditions, please let us know...)

Their poke at Moscow is virtually weightless, however, as President Bush is allowed to waive these conditions at his discretion. Furthermore Moscow, which controls a $158 billion sovereign fund, would laugh at this amount of foreign aid as nothing more than a drop in the bucket. Also, why would the United States be interested in cutting funding for police departments and judicial training in Russia? Not to mention that now the Russians will probably just refuse to accept these funds to thumb their nose at Washington.

No wonder practically no news outlets are running the AP story - it's an embarrassment.

It's been quite a long time since ideology figured into Russian politics (as long as we're not counting kleptocracy as a belief). However, with the selection of a successor and the move of Vladimir Putin to the office of prime minister, some people are thinking that some of these slight shifts of power and introduction of new structures, a polarization could occur. Academic Andreas Umland hopefully writes "Medvedev’s rise means that Russia might have a serious chance to embark anew on a course of political liberalization and democratization. It will provide a welcome opportunity for Western governments and organizations to reestablish a better partnership with Moscow. However, it also presents a threat that Moscow politics will once again become ideological: Medvedev’s office may become the focal point of liberal and pro-Western trends in Russia while other institution could become the power base for Moscow’s anti-Western nationalists."

I think it's still far too early to make these kinds of predictions.

The separation of church and state in Russia has been all but erased this week as Patriarch Alexy II of the Russian Orthodox Church has gone on state television for an extended special to officially bless First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as the next president.

The public gesture by the Patriarch, who also voiced his support for the ongoing role of Vladimir Putin in government as prime minister, has raised strong opposition from some quarters. A Moscow Times editorial declares "Church leaders should realize that supporting specific politicians -- no matter how much they like them -- will drag them into politics. This may eventually bring the church under the control of the ruling elite at the cost of its independence. ... What if the Kremlinologists who see politics in a Machiavellian light are right and Putin decides to endorse a second candidate for the sake of a "fair" competition in the presidential election? What if that candidate also promised to continue Putin's course? What would the patriarch say then?"

However Putin's Orthodox endorsement should be no surprise, and actually was years in the making.

Andrew Kramer at the Times digs into the Oleg Shvartsman story, and gives particular attention to Renault's due diligence and business dealings with AvtoVaz and Sergei V. Chemezov:

For big Western companies, the prevalence of former Federal Security Service agents in Russian business is raising questions of ethics and due diligence, as a growing number — including Boeing, Exxon Mobil and Renault — have business transactions with Russian companies linked to former spies or members of the political police.

Boeing and Exxon declined to comment on their companies’ due-diligence criteria for deals with former K.G.B. officials. A spokeswoman for Renault said her company was “not concerned” with the matter.

Today: United Russia party congress: Putin to accept premiership if Medvedev becomes president; SPS leader resigns; Russia threatens to target two proposed American bases in Europe with nuclear missiles; ArcelorMittal to move into Russia; Severstal to cut greenhouse gas emissions; Bush supports nuclear fuel delivery to Iran; Gazprom continues to dominate business news.

In an announcement that has “baffled many analysts”, Vladimir Putin has said he would accept the job of prime minister next year if Dmitri Medvedev became Russia's next president. The strategy, announced at the United Russia party congress this week, is “risky, and could cripple Medvedev's presidency.” While Putin says that there would be no redistribution of authority, one analyst commented that “de facto there will almost certainly be a change, simply because the prime minister will be Vladimir Putin.” Medvedev’s lack of connections with the Federal Security Services (FSB) “creates a whole series of problems regarding his chances of becoming the next president.”

Can we please get something clear here? There are two ongoing political narratives in Russia today. The first, a narrative put forward by the likes of Steinmeier, Schröder, Gadhafi, Sarkozy and other United Russia apologists, talks about the only slightly flawed elections and Russia's positive move toward democracy. The second, a narrative which may be more inconvenient to some, tells the true story of vicious clan infighting, and the incredible emergence of these disputes into the public sphere. It is amazing, in my view, that these two competing narratives seem to exist independently, failing to make a notable impact on their respective assumptions.

As the news came out today that over the weekend the Prosecutor General's Office ordered a probe against its very own Investigative Committee, signaling virtual civil war among the most powerful figures in the Kremlin, how on earth are so many governments and corporations able to applaud the elections process and praise "stability" in Russia with a straight face? Why the impairment of reason?

If I put my mind to it, I could easily draw up quite a long list of reporters and activists in Russia whom the siloviki would prefer to see exiled from the country, or worse (not to give anyone ideas...). So why, out of everyone, has the Kremlin decided to exile reporter Natalia Morar of the New Times? After all, even though the investigative articles offer great information, it is not a high circulation magazine nor all that influential. It seems that Morar, talented muckraker that she is, was into so many different stories that it is hard to tell which one triggered this harsh reaction...

Populism as a political concept is notoriously difficult to pin down, and is exceptionally prone to misuse. It describes neither policy nor ideology, but is rather best captured by the argument that populism above all constitutes a individualist "rhetorical style" and tends to weaken institutions and rule of law. Regardless, it has become a very rich area for comparative studies between Latin America and the former Soviet Union (see Alvaro Vargas Llosa), which is one reason why we always keep our eyes open for new perspectives on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who although is quite different from Vladimir Putin in many respects, also shares a great number of qualities (oil, resource nationalism, and a cult of personality, to name a few). Oftentimes theories put forward about Chavez and Venezuela have interesting applicability to Putin and Russia.

Reading this new piece about Venezuela by former Foreign Minister of Mexico and political scientist Jorge Castañeda in the New Republic, I was struck by how often I was able to substitute in "Putin" and "Russia." Is it possible for Russia to separate the current administration's policies from the individual, or are the two inextricably linked? The succession process we are witnessing right now in the Kremlin makes it a very intriguing question: can Russia have Putinism without Putin or Putin without Putinism?

This one is quite peculiar. Over at the advertising industry blog Adrants there's a post about an campaign for the violent video game "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" which uses "real-life warmongers" posing as reviewers such as Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muammar Qadafi, and yes, Vladimir Putin.

In the overdubbed news conference footage, the president says his game playing title is "ShootinPutin187", and that as a sniper he is "silent, but deadly, like a Boris Yeltsin fart." However he is disappointed by the plot about stolen Russian nukes, which he finds "disgusting like Polish vodka."

If the goal was to get our attention, it worked.

Today's news that the national champion hailing from my native Canada is pulling out of its $3.5 billion Baltic LNG project with Gazprom on the Yamal Peninsula offers a reminder of the perils of the energy business in Russia. According to CEO Ron Brenneman, "There's a lot of gas up in the Yamal Peninsula and at one time we were in discussions with the licence holder, but subsequent to that the licence holder got bought out by a consortium of Russian businessmen. So we are no longer in those discussions."

Yikes - that sure is an unfortunate and unexpected turn of events for Petro-Canada, which is still looking to lock up LNG suppliers for its planned Gros Cacouna regasification plant in Quebec. No doubt Gazprom is driving an exceptionally hard bargain against the Canadians, who appear to have at least stopped denying that they are considering major asset swaps of heavy oil licenses in Canada with Gazprom. Looks like the Shtokman Syndrome is still alive and well.

This evening I am pleased to share the company of the Russia analyst Mr. David Satter, a colleague whose work I highly respect. During our conversation tonight, David mentioned that he had a new piece coming out in the Weekly Standard today, so I asked if he might give a short introduction for us to post up on the blog.

Although his article largely speaks for itself (see full text after the jump), he commented that "Given the overt signs of tension in the Russian leadership, it’s a little premature for anyone to draw conclusions about the succession. Unexpected events are still possible. This is really a system without rules, and provocation is not out of the question."

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, has a devastating new piece about the Kremlin's business activities in Human Events: On June 2, 2006 proposing that Russia should retain control over strategic companies, according to Itar-Tass, Medvedev (then First Deputy Prime Minister) admitted the government is “not the most efficient proprietor.” However, he insisted that Russia should control companies “vital for the country."
...
Buyers, bankers and regulators, however, would be wise to investigate the provenance of Russian assets offered by state-owned companies and subservient Kremlin businessmen -- and ask how long Russia will take before “legally” confiscating their potential investments.

A very important story in the Moscow Times reports that Igor Sechin's clan is rapidly losing ground to the cadre headed up Viktor Cherkesov.

Today: Putin could become leader of new state; Bukovsky and Zyuganov to run for the presidency; Gazprom raises prices; Moldovan journalist barred from entering Russia; Medvedka vodka?

Kremlin sources say Vladimir Putin could still accept the Russian prime ministership, but that it would be “a step backwards”. Instead, he is “taken with the idea of becoming president of a new Russian-Belarussian state.” “Artifice plays a role in politics everywhere, yet Russia seems to have adopted a kind of imitation of democracy.” Yabloko has announced that it will not support its veteran leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, to run for president in the next election, but will instead back Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet-era dissident who has been living in London in recent years. The Communist Party has nominated its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, to run for president.

Investigative journalist Natalia Morar of the New Times magazine, who had published muckraking articles about the falsification of election results and graft by high ranking government officials, has been expelled from the Russian Federation to Moldova in response to her work, says her editor. Aidan White of International Federation of Journalists said "This action is a shocking violation of press freedom and is clearly a warning to others not to try to expose the dark side of politics in modern Russia."

In the past this blog has featured translations of New Times investigative articles. More info about this case after the cut.

It is particularly illustrative (no pun intended) of how the Western media views the nomination of Dmitri Medvedev to look at the various graphic arts work published along with the articles. Two of the more amusing are below, from the New York Times's "Russia's Knockoff Democracy" (left) and the Economist, whose headline on the cover ran "Putin's Mini-Me" (right). Excerpts after the cut.

Yesterday an Other Russia activist, the 20-year-old Artem Basyrov, was committed to a psychiatric hospital against his will - another startling example of how the Soviet-era practice of punitive psychiatry is making a comeback. Other examples of this odious practice include Andrei Novikov and Larisa Arap.

From the report: "A local psychiatric board agreed with police, who alleged that Basyrov had assaulted a girl, and concluded he was suffering from some mental illness. Basyrov was finally transferred from an isolation ward and allowed to have visitors on Thursday, said Mikhail Klyuzhev, a National Bolshevik member from the city of Yoshkar-Ola."

An op/ed on the subject by the Morning Journal frames the problem in exceptionally simple and clear language: "Freedom is every person's right, and no government should be able to deny that right because people speak freely in dissent. Putin's heavy-handed regime is violating the human rights of those who are being killed or being imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. It is a terrible, tragic and dangerous step backward in history for Russians."

Let's keep our eyes on The Other Russia's vastly improved blog for more information.

Here's a news clip looking into how Russia's oil boom and new class of aristocracy is helping bring back some of the nation's most treasured and valuable pieces of art and cultural patrimony.

What's behind the Kremlin's deep-seated suspicion of the West? The BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes takes a trip to Russia and finds himself quite unwelcome, and also quite unable to find his way around. His column is annoyingly anti-Russian, which always drives me crazy, but is extrapolated largely from the hard facts of how the UK-Russia relationship has so disastrously deteriorated.

BBC: "Speaking afterwards one of his colleagues put it to me this way: "In the 1990s we had an opportunity to turn Russia outwards towards the West. But we failed. Now it's gone, and it won't be back for at least a generation.""

No big surprise here, but the Russian Communists have officially selected Gennady Zyuganov to run for the presidency on the party ticket. It is particularly illustrative of how Russia has changed that the only tolerated political opposition are Zyuganov, who despite his terrific ability to produce priceless soundbites, is running on a platform to re-nationalize all privately held natural resources and re-institute the death penalty, and ultra-right nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose main claim to fame involves racial slurs against the U.S. Secretary of State among other outlandish comments. Both of them are allowed to publicly bash United Russia, which I imagine functions as a strategic pressure valve for the siloviki.

[The last time we heard from Dr. Chee Soon Juan, the leader of Singapore's opposition party (SDP), he penned a column for this blog on the comparative authoritarian capitalist systems of Russia and Singapore. Since then, I've seen this comparison come up in several other examples, including the FT's cheeky suggestion that Russia should solve the succession challenge by importing a Singaporean president. Here Soon Juan continues the arguments explored in his first piece. - Robert Amsterdam]

Autocrat see, autocrat do

By Dr. Chee Soon Juan

Nearly half-a-century ago Lee Kuan Yew came into power with the help of the British government which was then the colonial overlord of Singapore. After becoming the prime minister, Lee wasted no time in cracking down on his opponents.

He used the Internal Security Act to detain without trial opposition leaders, brought the mass media under the control of his government, and systematically dismantled civil society, including trade unions.

This enabled the ruling party to retain power uninterrupted from 1959 till the present. Lee himself was prime minister for 31 years until 1990 when he handed over the reins to his successor, Goh Chok Tong who was then the deputy prime minister.

The following is an exclusive translation of an interview with Georgy Satarov, an adviser to Boris Yeltsin, speaking out about Siemen's use of bribery slush funds in Russia.

Excerpt from Süddeutsche Zeitung:

SZ: Siemens paid bribes in order to receive contracts in the telecommunications sector. Is this a particularly corrupt area of business?

Satarov: The Russian telecommunications sector is developing rapidly. And it is tightly controlled by government bureaucrats. The state tends to get involved wherever there is fast and easy money to be made. This is true for the oil sector, but equally applicable for telecommunications. Wherever government bureaucrats are involved, there is also corruption.

It seems like there have been a lot of stories recently about the marriage of Russia's emerging political culture and style. First there was that story of the oxymoronic $2,000 Communist-style coats, men and fur (“It makes me feel like a sexy Bolshevik,” Josh Wood, a Manhattan night life promoter told the Times), and then the tabloid glorification of the daughters of the powerful on par with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton (which is perhaps an improvement).

Today Karen von Hahn of the Globe and Mail introduces us to the new faces of Russian style: Dacha/Folklore, Czarist Luxe, Icy Allure, Mobster Chic, and Modern Russian Design. With Moscow as a trend setter, happiness is a warm, bedside Kalashnikov lamp. Does Russian fashion imitate Russian political life or vice versa? Either way, this is some very surreal stuff ... Apparently Putinist authoritarianism isn't just a system you suffer from, you can also wear it and show it off in your home.

From Anders Aslund in the Moscow Times: "The fundamental point is that we have no idea what Putin is going to do because he does not want us to know -- and because he enjoys dictatorial powers. The good news is that by overplaying his hand and surprising almost everybody at every turn, Putin is quickly and effectively compromising his authoritarian rule. The profound advantage of democracy is that decisions take time and require a certain consensus and elaboration. People need stability and predictability -- something that Putin promises but no longer delivers."

One wears "sartorial" black turtlenecks, the other prefers bright stripy alpaca wool sweaters - even at diplomatic meetings. Yet Vladimir Putin and Bolivian President Evo Morales, both of whom have seen their presidencies enormously affected by political issues surrounding natural gas, are looking into striking an energy deal - yet another seemingly ideal marriage of resource populists.

Reports indicate that Gazprom is currently negotiating with YPFB (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos), the Bolivian state energy company, on a $2 billion investment in two gas exploration sites in the resource-rich Tarija region of the South, despite the many difficulties experienced by other energy investors.

Has Gazprom, one of the world's leading practitioners of resource nationalism, lost its sense of risk aversion in Bolivia?

Andrei Illarionov doesn't think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is really helping matters in Russia when she offers her endorsement of Vladimir Putin's selected candidate. Writing in the Washington Post today, he reasonably asks why Rice is "dead silent" on the fates of other pro-democracy figures such as Vladimir Ryzhkov and Garry Kasparov. He declares "This duplicitous game has real consequences. Rice's endorsement of Medvedev is interpreted in the Kremlin as carte blanche for an undemocratic succession."

Today: Russian-British relations worsen; Zhirinovsky to run for president; pharmaceutical deal could fall through due to nationalization fears; Nord Stream to hike project costs on key pipeline; Russia-US deadlock over missile defense continues.

Relations between Britain and Russia suffered another blow after Gordon Brown described President Vladimir Putin's decision to restrict the work of the British Council in Russia as "totally unacceptable" and pointed out that the only countries that blocked the Council's work were Burma and Iran. Foreign secretary David Milliband also commented, saying, “Russia’s threatened actions are illegal. The British Council’s presence in Russia is entirely consistent with international law, including the Vienna conventions.”

Check it out - a new video segment from Victoria Gamburg reporting from the streets of St. Petersburg around the time of the parliamentary elections. These videos are a teaser from a longer feature which will run on TV on February 26 before the presidential elections. More info following the cut.

Blogging about the life-threatening transactions behind LiveJournal over at the Other Russia blog, Sergei Petrunin observes: If in the West the majority of blogs are something like electronic diaries along the lines of “I woke up at seven in the morning, walked the dog, fed my parrot,” then in Russia, LiveJournal became in its own way the sole uncensored and practically free platform for the expression of political views and debates between opponents. Since the “Duma isn’t a place for discussion,” [As Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov recently announced] the once legible newspapers turned into “Putin and boobs,” and the television into “bleak dreck,” then only the internet remains. That’s why blogs were set up by not only the jeering “authors” and “low-lifes,” but by the best Russian journalists, opposition politicians, and leaders of youth-movements that don’t fit into the procrustean “us or them” stock. Incidentally, since such a racket was started, soon the Kremlin youth and their brains – the Kremlin propagandists, just had to start their own electronic journals. For some years now, they have tried to gather a high relative weight in cyberspace, but so far to no avail!"

While reviewing some of the coverage announcing Garry Kasparov's withdrawal from the presidential race, I noticed the following paragraph in the AP story, which left me speechless:

David Satter has a great opinion column in the Wall Street Journal today: "Sharing power with another leader is not in Russia's tradition, however, and given the conditions that exist in the country today, the lack of clear lines of authority could be a recipe for disaster."

From Michael McFaul in the Moscow Times: By committing to stepping down as president by naming a successor, Putin has taken a small but important step toward democratization. Since December 1993, political forces of all ideological persuasions have acquiesced to the political rules of the game spelled out in the Constitution. Putin's decision to continue to adhere to these rules will make it more costly for future leaders to transgress them.

Of course, the reason Putin can feel secure in anointing Dmitry Medvedev as his successor is that Putin and his team have so weakened all other centers of political power. Could Medvedev win a competitive election campaign against candidates with financial resources, access to national television and the ability to win support from regional leaders? We will never know. And this changing of the guard is more like the strange 1999-2000 transition from Yeltsin to Putin than a genuine change of government through the electoral process. U.S. political scientist Adam Przeworski once defined democracy as a system of government in which incumbents lose elections. That is unlikely to be the case in March. Finally, the fact that everyone is already convinced that Medvedev will be the next president -- four months before any votes have been cast -- underscores just how undemocratic the Russian political system has become.

From the Asia Times:

Apropos the "correlation of forces" (to use Marxian idiom) in the international arena, Putin has made a big statement. He has shrewdly estimated that Washington is doing all it can to mend fences with Beijing so as to put Moscow at a disadvantage in the highly sensitive triangular equations involving the three powers; that equilibrium must be found through improving Russia's relations with Europe; that a thaw in chilly Russian-American relations remained unlikely in the short term.

The author also has some good analysis on Russia's relationship with its key BRIC competitor, India, after the cut.

Today: Lavrov clarifies British Council move; Kasparov steps down from presidential race; Poland could lift EU-Russia veto; news that Russia and Belarus are in talks to unite is met by protests; hopes of re-writing the CFE Treaty; Rostov bird flu investigation; could President Putin be assassinated next year? A new report thinks so.

Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has defended the foreign ministry’s move to shut down the British Council’s regional offices in Yekaterinburg and St Petersburg next year, admitting that it is being made in retaliation for Britain’s expulsion of Russian diplomats in July of this year. “The British government undertook some actions which inflicted systemic damage to our relations so we have to retaliate. This is nothing to do with anti-British sentiments. It’s the law of the genre, if you wish.” One newspaper called it “diplomatic vindictiveness”.

Question: how does one cautiously express praise and approval, while at the same time scolding and criticizing? Answer: Condi Rice. Here's an excerpt about Russia from the transcript her talk with a USA Today Editorial Board Roundtable:

QUESTION: Can you talk a little bit about Mr. Medvedev, the -- not just your view of his prospects of what sort of a leader he'd be, but the process by which he was elevated and what that tells you about what's going on in Russia?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I guess, they're still going to have an election in March. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: They used to have elections in Communist Russia.

Today Anders Aslund has an interesting piece in the Washington Post looking into Geneva-based billionaire Gennady Timchenko, Igor Sechin, Oleg Shvartsman, and the rumors behind Vladimir Putin's $40 billion of shares in companies Surgutneftegaz, Gazprom, and Gunvor

Today: Medvedev offers Putin a new job; Russia wants almost all operations of the British Council to be shut down; the OSCE urges Russia to reconsider its freezing of the CFE Treaty; Putin says “no state capitalism”.

The biggest story in the UK today is that Russia has ordered the British Council, a non-governmental organization that acts as the cultural department of the British Embassy, to shut down all operations outside Moscow - “virtually its entire operation in the country” - by the start of next year. The order came after the Russian foreign ministry said the council, which promotes British culture, was operating illegally. The marketing director for the British Council's main Moscow office was quoted as saying: "We have no plans to shut down [the regional offices]." The debate will “fuel tensions between the two countries sparked by last year's murder in London of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.”

An editorial in today's New York Times makes the familiar point that Dmitri Medvedev is relatively weak within the administration, and does not possess an independent base of power outside of Putin's favor. The newspaper argues that one unconventional way for Medvedev to show his mettle and prove that "he is his own man" would be to insist "that the Kremlin lift restrictions on the press, nongovernmental organizations and opposition political parties so that there can be a real presidential race."

Isn't it much much too late for this line of thought?

Below is the full documentary film "Disbelief" by Andrei Nekrasov, who below penned a column for this blog. The film, which debuted in 2004, presents a theory of the 1999 apartment bombings.

[We are pleased to feature this exclusive special guest column from the Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, the director and producer of "Rebellion, The Litvinenko Case" (which premiered at this year's Cannes film festival), "Disbelief" (2004), and many other films. Here Nekrasov takes a look at the dialectic of Vladislav Surkov's "sovereign democracy," and a critique of the "institutions of latter-day ideological eclectics." - Robert Amsterdam]

The Ideology of the Sole Party (or «Not Our Ideology»)

By Andrei Nekrasov

The fact that a one-party system is being re-established in one form or another in Russia can be seen with an unaided eye. But I am not in agreement with the idea that the party that has set its sights on the leading role in the new historical tragedy does not have a political face and an ideology from where the legs grow. The opposition, on the other hand, today does not have that comfort and leisure which, apparently, allow for Mr. Surkov's flights into near-philosophical empyreans; his ideological texts now are worthy of attention not because one ought to respond to them - after all, he himself, it seems, is from that cohort which does not conduct either negotiations or discussions with those who are not with them. But now, when society again finds itself behind the bars of one-partiness, one can and should come to several interesting conclusions from the way this modern-day classicist-careerist implemented the theoretical preparation of this campaign.

Out of all the various British businesses and institutions that the Russian government could harass and expel from the country, isn't it odd that they have chosen a harmless group of English teachers? We first reported on the attempts to expel this non-profit organization from its offices in Yekaterinaburg last June, and today there is news that the authorities have banned the group from operating outside of Moscow, as the government has claimed that three offices have failed to properly register.

You have to admire the ongoing efforts to produce the reasoning of counterfeit legalism on the matter. According to the Foreign Ministry statement, "In the absence of a legal basis regulating the activities of the British Council in the Russian Federation, the British side has been informed about the suspension of the activities of all regional branches of the Council in Russia from January 1, 2008. ... At issue is the suspension of their activities, including current projects, until an agreement between the Russian and British sides can be reached."

Of course not everyone is buying into this explanation, and many are pointing to the poor state of relations between the two countries over the Litvinenko affair. "We are going back to the Iron Curtain ... This is a return to a policy of isolation,'' said Lyudmilla Alexeyeva from the Moscow Helsinki Group.

For one, I really don't see the point of pretending that there is actually a substantive legal basis behind Russia's banning of the British Council - why not just tell the truth, and say the teachers can go back to work when relations with the UK improve? And two, isn't it the Russian students who receive these subsidized English lessons the ones who are really being punished?

This is one of several opinion pieces I've seen about Operation Successor remarking on the economic difficulties expected ahead. David Hearst writes in the Guardian's Comment is Free: What is brushed aside by such sweeping calculations is the state the country is actually in. Money from the oil and gas boom is still flying out of the country, just as it was in the bad old days of Yeltsin. Investment in infrastructure and industry is a fraction of what is needed. Electricity generating stations are being privatised, but the transmission lines are crumbling. Look at the daily gridlock of traffic in Moscow, and you will today be hard put to spot a Russian car. Great for the sales of Mercedes and Volvo, but assembling foreign cars does little for the economy. Russia does not even supply the spare parts. Nor is the oil or gas industry wonderfully efficient. Economists in Moscow say that if the price of oil fell to $50 a barrel, Russia's balance of payments would quickly start looking pale and sick. Yeltsin-like in fact.

There will be no democratic restoration until Russia stands on its own two feet again, in every sense. The fear of collapse or disintegration or another war in the Caucasus still lingers, despite the energy boom (or possibly because of it). For the very few, personal wealth - and usually obscene amounts of it - provides the only reliable insulation from the chaos of daily life. Inflation is running at a healthy gallop, and most people are hard put to afford the rising cost of staple foods, rents, electricity and heating. And as for buying the right surgeon, official or judge when they need one, forget it. Law is a service for the rich. It is a telling fact that while Putin enjoys consistently high levels of public support, no other level of government is trusted. A former government official told me he reckoned that 35% of the money for any government contract would disappear through corruption.

Below is an animated short film telling the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's illegal arrest and imprisonment. It's part of a campaign to gather signatures for a petition for his release. Please visit asiberiantale.com to show your support.

Two interesting articles on Russia were just posted to the FT, the first from Paul Betts, the second from Neil Buckley and Catherine Belton excerpted after the jump.

From Paul Betts:

A large part of the problem is Russia’s continued poor reputation in business.

Justifiably or not, the World Bank still places Russia near the bottom of its governance pile. According to this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer, Russian companies are the least trusted in the world. This reputation undermines the chances of Russian multinationals pulling off mega foreign takeovers.

Just a trifle, but still unpleasant

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

I’ve got the compulsory medical insurance policy of a citizen of the Russian Federation. According to this piece of paper, I have guarantees of receiving medical aid at medical institutions under the compulsory medical insurance program. At any rate, that’s what the paper says: “have guarantees”. And I had always thought that I had these guarantees. Until today.

Today (I’m almost embarrassed to say!), I cut my finger. At home. In the kitchen. It can happens to anyone. Unfortunately, I cut it in such a way that it didn’t stop bleeding for a long time. No matter what I tried, the blood just kept gushing out like a river.

I had to go seek medical attention. Good thing there was a «Family medical center» right next to my home. I had never been there before, and figured this was probably as good a time as any to pay them a visit. With my finger.

File this one under arts & culture. From the New York Times: Let us consider Daniil Kharms, the Russian writer often described as an absurdist, largely unpublished in his lifetime except for his children’s books, who starved to death in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet hospital during the siege of Leningrad, having been put there by the Stalinist government for, among other reasons, his general strangeness. Kharms gave flamboyant poetry readings from the top of an armoire, did performance art on the Nevsky Prospect — by, for example, lying down on it, sometimes dressed as Sherlock Holmes — and was a founder of the Union of Real Art, an avant-garde group also known as Oberiu. His brilliant, hilarious, violent little stories, written “for the drawer,” are now being discovered in the West through translations by Neil Cornwell (collected in “Incidences”) and by Matvei Yankelevich, whose anthology “Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms” (Overlook, $29.95) has just been published.

Kharms’s stories are truly odd, as in: at first you think they’re defective. They seem to cower at the suggestion of rising action, to blush at the heightened causality that makes a story a story. They sometimes end, you feel, before they’ve even begun.

Click here to read a pair of analytical papers prepared from the Strategic Studies Institute by R. Craig Nation and Dmitri Trenin about Russian and American perceptions of regional security policy. Below is an excerpt of the introduction:

Just a few things we've been reading in response to Vladimir Putin's nomination of Dmitri Medvedev to run for the presidency in March.

Best known for his flamboyant all-female bodyguard corps and newly discovered sense of regret over the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing, now General Muammar al-Gadhafi can add "global energy player" to his resume.

This weekend it was announced that the Libyan government has granted major exploration licenses to Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell, Sonatrach, and PGNiG. According to Vedomosti, the Russians were given the sweetest slice, with an estimated 20 million tonnes of oil in blocks 1, 2 and 3 in contract area 64 in the Ghadames Basin, and significant natural gas reserves.

While Gadhafi spent yesterday basking in warmth of French diplomacy during a Paris visit (which can be purchased for $14.7 billion in contracts for armaments and nuclear deals), others have noted that Libya's bid to become an energy superpower and its continuing human rights record makes for a troubling combination.

The new presence of Gazprom and Sonatrach in this important new, under-explored market has also raised eyebrows, yet for the moment, Moscow's political leverage looks somewhat weak.

The New York Times has compiled a selection of excerpts from an interview held by Dmitri Medvedev, Vladimir Putin's personally approved successor, with a group of foreign journalists last month. He spoke on state-owned corporations, Kremlin factions, corruption, and the "National Leader" role that some propose for Putin after his presidential term is over.

Speaking about the advance of a two-party system in Russia, Medvedev said:

"I wish we would not thoughtlessly introduce even the most advanced models of political administration, such as a two-party system, for instance, which exists quite well in the United States. Though we clearly understand that there is practically no difference between these two parties. These are just huge election machines, powerful, well made, with good traditions. We are still far away from it."

Today: The world press gives its opinions on Dmitri Medvedev; excerpts from comments made by Medvedev at the World Economic Forum earlier this year; Russia will create an atomic power giant, Atomenergoprom, which is to be the nuclear equivalent of Gazprom; markets respond well to Putin’s endorsement of Medvedev; US refuses to comment; General Motors in talks to tie up with Gaz.

Response to President Vladimir Putin’s naming of Dmitri Medvedev as his preferred presidential candidate has been mixed. The British press see him as “more liberal and less hawkish towards the west than Sergei Ivanov,” whilst observing that “you do not need an election to know the name of the next president.” Others hope that Medvedev’s liberalism would help Russia to move away from the “strident nationalism of the Putin era and exercise a more responsible role on the global stage.”

Disclaimer: the video below contains scenes of real violence committed against prison inmates by OMON (Russian police forces). It is not recommended for sensitive viewers.

In commemoration of Human Rights Day, I wish I could share good news from my colleagues in Russia - some kind of encouraging developments, a heartening or compelling story, or even a slight improvement or an uncharacteristic gesture of bravery or morality.

Instead I've been in contact with the human rights activist Lev Ponomarev, who when not writing for this blog or getting arrested during pro-democracy rallies, is one of Russia's leading defenders of the rights of prisoners. Lev and his organization, "Foundation for the Defence of Prisoners," only very recently obtained possession of a secret video made in 2006 by a prison guard of a "Preventative Actions" exercise by the OMON (special police squad) performed at a prison camp in Yekaterinaburg.

The appalling instances of beatings, torture, inhumane treatment and excessive and arbitrary violence shown in this recording inarguably represent a fundamental violation of human rights.

Lev was dramatically successful in using the video to raise awareness of this atrocity - against all odds he was able to get a tiny portion of the tape shown on REN-TV very late night, which is a total anomaly for state-run television. Lev then provided the footage to us so that we could offer an unedited view into the horrendous reality that is the Russian penal system to the general public.

Such images should compell both Russians and the wider world to react with vocal outrage and denounce these abuses, yet I fear that we can rest assured that under today's government, no one will be doing anything about this. We are dealing with an institutional cynicism and near total lack of humanitarian inclination among today's Kremlin leadership, whose established patterns of lawlessness and impunity put the basic rights of all citizens at great risk.

In light of only this small sample of the state's abuses, it is time for the international community to change the terms of the debate over human rights in Russia. Stay tuned here for more footage, interviews and information on these cases.

First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who Vladimir Putin is now backing in his run for the presidency, is a rock and roll aficionado. From RIA Novosti:

In a recent interview with the Russian magazine Itogi, Medvedev revealed his passion for rock music, saying that, "vinyl really sounds better than CDs."

"Not reissues, but the original albums," he added, concluding that, "If you set yourself a goal you can achieve it."

[Our correspondent in Russia recently discovered that the border town of Vyborg near St. Petersburg was going to hold discreet (practically secret) public hearings on Gazprom's mega-project, the Nord Stream pipeline, to discuss the social and environmental impact of the initiative. Below is the third and final installment - read Part 1 and Part 2.]

We’ve got gas in Lubmin. How about you?

On certain peculiarities of the gasification of Russia

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

The inhabitants of the small German town of Lubmin, of course, are happy that Russian gas through the Nord Stream gas pipeline will come to their homes. But they are just as concerned by the impact of this pipeline on the ecological situation in their region. And the Germans are certainly not in the least bit worried about whether or not the Russians themselves have gas – because they are absolutely sure a priori that they do.

I must say, how naïve these Germans are!

Today is recognized by the United Nations as Human Rights Day, beginning a year long celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A large event was held Geneva today to inaugurate this observance, featuring speeches from Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, and many other esteemed speakers (watch videos of each presentation here).

The statement from the General Assembly President declares: "In calling for a new culture of international relations, based on full respect of human rights, human security, the responsibility to protect and sustainable development, I wish to emphasize that we must not and cannot forget those who are denied these rights. It is incumbent upon us to champion their cause."

On our behalf, to help commemorate Human Rights Day, this week we will have several new features on this blog, including an animated film with a renewed call to free Mikhail Khodorkovsky from prison at once, as well as a new highly sensitive covert video which exposes human rights violations at a Yekaterinaburg prison camp which was to brought to us by a colleague.

And of course we always welcome your thoughts and positive contributions to help us commemorate this important year in human rights.

With regard to the news I posted earlier about Algeria's crumbling deal with Gazprom, I wanted make note of some additional thoughts.

In many respects, it really doesn't matter that much to the Kremlin whether or not they are able to establish a concrete joint venture with Sonatrach - simply just raising the possibility of the alliance was sufficient to produce the desired outcome in Italy, so the MoU has arguably already served its purpose. Like a bait-and-switch technique of a used car salesman, Gazprom successfully muscled both PM Romano Prodi and Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni into commitments and agreements. I imagine that Gazprom was as surprised as anyone else by how quickly they collapsed before the Algerian gambit.

Foreign governments need to understand that this strategy of announcing pending deals, massive contracts or MoUs, and then then later dissolving or abandoning them as the political or economic winds shift, puts Russia in a category all its own.

We will hence forth describe this process as "premature contractualization," and apply it when we talk about Russia's energy acquisition activity in all directions. Before taking news from Gazprom directly, we should bear this lesson in mind.

It's been more than one year now since the historic memorandum of understanding was signed between Gazprom and Algeria's state-owned exporter Sonatrach, an agreement which in theory put 69% of Italy's natural gas under the control of a sole distributor.

On this blog we identified it as one of the more pivotal energy security events in recent memory, and the first formative move to create a creeping natural gas cartel. At the time, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said that "Our worries are the development of the contacts between Russia and Algeria," which he believed would create a type of cartel. The Gazprom-Sonatrach agreement also made a visible impact on Paolo Scaroni of Eni, who went from warning about the cartel to becoming one of Gazprom's proxies in Europe shortly following this deal. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" seems to be the Italian wildcat's strategy. Now he's the proud owner of stolen Yukos assets, which can be held over the company's head like kompromat.

However there's a lot more at stake with the Algeria arrangement, and it is possible that the executives at Sonatrach may be weary that they are getting a bad deal. Algerian officials have made great efforts to play down this alarming energy alliance with the Russians, and point out that the MoU still has not produced anything concrete. Is the marriage with Gazprom on the rocks? Or is Europe only being told what it hopes to hear?

I came across an interesting Russian perspective on the missile shield issue from the Moscow Defense Brief: "The decision to deploy the “front lines” of the missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic is completely in tune with US foreign policy and should be viewed as a successful political move. By establishing the system on the borders of Russia, the US has signalled a complete rejection of Russian influence in Eastern Europe, or anywhere else, and confirmed that America’s sphere of influence covers the entire globe.

In fact, it is precisely its potentially anti-Russian flavour that makes missile defence so appealing to the Polish and Czech elites. Their governments have made their cold-blooded calculations and concluded that American payments for their role as anti-Russian springboards will more than compensate for the losses they incur as a result of worsening relations with Russia. Accordingly, it would only make sense for Russia to respond to this policy by demonstrating the error of such calculations, and to show precisely how and the degree to which the security of Eastern Europe will suffer should they continue to lend their polities to such aggressive designs."

Following today's news of Medvedev's nomination to run for president, Reuters has published some extracts from his January World Economic Forum speech, which is viewed by some analysts as his most official "keynote" address:

Today: Medvedev to run for President; Renault buys Avtovaz stake; more failed talks between Russia and the United States; European Court of Human Rights rules against Russia in activist case.

President Vladimir Putin has backed First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the chairman of Gazprom, as presidential candidate in the next elections after he was nominated by United Russia and three other parties (Fair Russia, the Agrarian Party and Civil Force). “I have known him very closely for more than 17 years and I completely and fully support this proposal,” Putin said.

"The international community should not let itself being blinded by the Russian leadership and should resist of getting drawn into Russia’s narrative of democracy and rule of law - a story of “double standards”, an outdated conception of sovereignty, and posing as a victim of unfair suspicions," argues Robert Amsterdam in a new op/ed article published today in Germany's leading Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag. A full translation of the text follows below - original source article here.

Today the AFP is reporting on the flurry of mega-deals hastily going down in Russia as businesses and investors, large and small, look to grab what they can, while they can. This near panic is contributing to a greater sense of instability and political risk, not least to mention the exacerbating effect on the Kremlin's internal power struggles. The analyst Denis Maslov told AFP that "We do know this rivalry is intensifying, there is definitely some change of assets taking place, there is a realignment. ... Now that the succession is very close, some people are in more of a hurry."

Today the human rights watchdog Amnesty International issued an important statement calling upon authorities of the Russian Federation to meet international fair trial standards in the new processes against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. (link, PDF).

The statement notes: "In April 2005, Amnesty International called on the Russian authorities to ensure that Mikhail Khodorkovskii and his associates receive a fair trial which complies with Russia’s obligations under the international human rights treaties to which it is a party. Two and a half years later, the organization is repeating its call, with increased urgency, as no visible steps have been taken to address concerns which were raised by Amnesty International as well as many other human rights organizations and lawyers. Amnesty International will continue to urge the authorities to ensure a fair trial for the two men."

In what was initially called an apparent suicide, a senior level banker of the powerful state-owned financial group VTB was found dead in a pool outside his luxury country home in the Odintsovo District. Oleg Zhukovsky, who held the title of corporate managing director at VTB and was in charge of considerably large timber leasing deals, reportedly had his home broken into by unknown individuals, was tortured, possibly suffocated with a plastic bag, and left behind a suicide note which read "I am very tired of life. It is nobody's fault."

Despite having been found drowned with both his hands and feet bound, VTB board member Vasily Titov surprisingly commented "Police officials are doing their work. We have no evidence of murder." (though it's unlikely this quote was taken in context).

For years we have been arguing (as have many others) that the mastermind behind the fraudulent legal campaign against Mikhail Khodorkovsky is one Mr. Igor Ivanovich Sechin, the government's head of administration and chairman of the board of oil company Rosneft. Today, with all the difficulties surrounding the criminal case against Sergei Storchak, as prosecutors publicly clash over a refusal to press new charges, Sechin's influence over certain legal authorities is once again abundantly evident. As pointed out by the Moscow Times, Alexander Bastrykin, who heads the investigative committee and who has publicly complained about the refusal to press additional charges against Storchak, is seen as acting under the direct orders of Sechin. Yuri Chaika, who heads up the procuracy, is said to be under the control of a rival siloviki clan under Viktor Cherkesov, who needs no introduction. (read more after the cut).

In light of this blatantly clear example of the clan domination of the legal system, how can anyone not endorse Platon Lebedev's repeated proposals to commence a criminal investigation against those who have propounded charges against both him and Mikhail Khodorkovsky?

“If a person is weeping – leave…”

Poet and human rights colossus Alexander Tkachenko dies in Russia

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

The phoned me from the radio station «Liberty» and told me that Alexander Petrovich Tkachenko had died. Director-General of the Russian PEN-centre, poet, novelist, human rights advocate. He had died in the 63rd year of life.

In one of his last books of poems, there are the following lines: “Do not go out of a house if a bird is crying. If a person is weeping – leave.”

The following is an exclusive translation of an interview with Lilia Shevtsova by the German newspaper Die Welt.

Russia is committing suicide ...
... claims political analyst Lilia Shevtsova, because Putin is destroying state institutions

DIE WELT: After European observers branded the Duma elections as unfair, they were accused of using their opinion to carry out a “mission from overseas”. What is your view on this?

Lilia Shevtsova: The elections were anything but fair, because the election campaign itself was already unfair. The Kremlin’s United Russia party refused to take part in TV debates. Instead, President Putin and United Russia took over 97 percent of airtime in information programmes shown on national state television. The elections were illegally transformed into a referendum on Putin; the president remained in office even though he was running for the Duma. That is also illegal.

Russian observers also complained of numerous violations of electoral law on polling day...

There were thousands of violations, including the fact that voting by workers was monitored by their bosses. The Golos institute also recorded violations, as did observers from all parties, including those from the Communist Party, which were represented at 70 percent of the polling stations.

From the Economist:

Indeed, it is widely believed that some, including Igor Sechin, the deputy chief of staff in the Kremlin and the informal leader of the siloviki, the clan of former KGB men, urged him to make such a change. With little prodding, parliament would have amended the constitution and two-thirds of the country would have supported it. The West, after some grumbling, would have come to terms with it.

Deciphering Mr Putin's real motives is a murky business, as much a matter of psychoanalysis as of political interpretation. It is possible that until recently Mr Putin genuinely wanted to leave the Kremlin and become an international figure bathing in luxury and respect. Staying on might have turned him into a hostage to those seeking to protect their financial interests. As one Yeltsin-era oligarch put it: “You stay for the third term—you may never leave.”

It is the consensus of the experts who contribute to this blog that Valentina Matviyenko, the mayor of St. Petersburg, will be the individual selected by Vladimir Putin to become the next president of the Russian Federation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands in his office in the presidential residence at Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow December 6, 2007. Putin's United Russia party will name its candidate for next year's presidential election at a congress on December 17, party leader Boris Gryzlov said on Friday. (Photo: REUTERS/RIA-Novosti/Kremlin)

Today: The Communist Party refuse to recognize the election result; the BBC express concern over staff attacks in Moscow; the Russia-NATO Council meets in Brussels; and a leading banker at VTB is found dead at his home.

Newsweek writes about Viktor Cherkesov, Igor Sechin, and all the fighting going on in Vladimir Putin's inner circle: Putin needs a new political niche. One possibility: leader of the United Russia Party, whose candidate list he headed in this week's Duma races. As a substitute for an actual campaign, the Kremlin turned the election runup into a frenzy of Putin-worship. The focus on him helped keep people's minds off the clans' feuds—and averted any discussion of Russia's very real problems. The oil-powered economy may be soaring, but so is inflation, and labor unrest is breaking out. A pay strike recently shut down the Ford Motor Co. plant in Vsevolozhsk, near St. Petersburg, and roughly 1,500 teachers and nurses staged a protest outside Astrakhan's regional Parliament to demand better public-sector salaries. Resolving problems like these is likely to be a full-time job for the next president. That is, if he's not too busy breaking up fights among his bureaucrats and their private armies.

Their Name is Legion (or How awards lose their value)

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Don’t tell me you’re still not a Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor! Lately I’ve been getting the impression that they seem to be giving it out to just about anybody over there in France.

Recently, French president Nicolas Sarkozy personally pinned the Order of the Legion of Honor – France’s highest decoration – on the vice-premier of the Russian government – the head of the apparat of the government, Sergey Naryshkin.

Many people already know who Sarkozy is, but who has ever heard of Naryshkin? The fact is that he became deputy chairman of the government of Russia a mere 9 months ago. Before this, his career had followed the usual trajectory for a Soviet bureaucrat – an ordinary chinovnik: from assistant to the pro-rector of an institute to head of the government apparat. Absolutely nothing noteworthy whatsoever about this personality. Apparently, during the award ceremony, Sarkozy did make some sort of a vague allusion to Naryshkin’s achievements at his post as a member of the international committee of the Eurasian Economic Community. But Naryshkin has been at this post only a few months – since April 2007! They say he’s a good swimmer. He even heads the swimming federation in Russia. So then maybe it’s for swimming that Sarkozy awarded him the Order of the Legion of Honor?

Eldad Tamir of the Israeli financial group Tamir Fishman was one of the first foreign investors to announce his withdrawl from a major deal in Russia following the "velvet reprivatization" interview with Oleg Shvartsman. VentureBeat has a new interview with Mr. Tamir, who although remains undeterred from doing future business in Russia, remarks that Shvartsman's role was to initiate the deal with the venture capitalists, and that it's "very important to stay as far away as possible from politics."

Online journalist Andrei Novikov of Chechenpress was arrested on Dec. 5, 2006 on charges of "publicly inciting constitutional change by means of force", which carries a sentence of three years. Novikov was subsequently committed to a psychiatric facility against his will since last Feb. 14. Today a court has finally ordered his release. Read the Reporters without Borders press release about him after the jump, and see Novaya Gazeta for more information.

I'm very concerned for the staff at the BBC in Moscow, who have experienced a spate of individual violent attacks outside of work in recent weeks. First native Russian reporter Davlat Qudrat was assaulted on the Moscow metro after work, and subjected to racial abuses. The very next day Mikhail Denisov was attacked in his home and robbed by two men. Later Yevgeny Demchenko was jumped while walking home from work, receiving a head injury which required stitches.

Proposition: Is the internet a positive force for democratisation? Opposition: Or is it simply another platform instrumentalised by its detractors? Robert Amsterdam participated in an Oxford-style debate on the subject last May, advocating the opposition. His side ended up winning the debate by a narrow margin, over the impressive performance of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. (click here to see videos of all the participants). We are only posting up this debate now because (a) we finally are using YouTube and (b) there is going to be a lot more debate about the new owners of LiveJournal in Russia.

In the 1967 popular American film "Cool Hand Luke," the prison guard captain threatens the incorrigible prisoner played by Paul Newman, telling him that he's got to "get his mind right." By "right", of course, he means that the prisoner will stop acting out and start behaving like he should.

Such was the comparison drawn by the Streetwise Professor (economist Craig Pirrong) in two posts with regard to the comments shared by Oleg Shvartsman in the Kommersant interview, which described his role under state direction to "bend" and "torment" the business sector toward the right kind of social activeness.

Pirrong notes that Mikhail Khodorkovsky's social activism, which included civil society initiatives, orphanages, schools, and computer training courses - making him Russia's most generous philanthropist at the time of his arrest, was apparently not the right kind of social activism. The very fact that Shvartsman admitted that Igor Sechin had ordered him to form a committee to police businesses on their CSR activities underscores the political nature of the charges against Khodorkovsky.

[Our correspondent in Russia recently discovered that the border town of Vyborg near St. Petersburg was going to hold discreet (practically secret) public hearings on Gazprom's mega-project, the Nord Stream pipeline, to discuss the social and environmental impact of the initiative. Read the first article in the series here.]

If you’ve heard, does that mean you approve? - Part 2

A report from the public hearings in Vyborg on the Nord Stream pipeline construction project

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

The hearings were opened by the chairman of the administration, Oleg Likhovidov. He reminded that an event of such a kind is taking place already for the fourth time. Moreover, he reminded in such a tone that it seemed like what he really wanted to say was: How I wish all these formalities were over with already.

Irina Vasilieva very ably – evidently for the hundredth time already – clarified for those gathered the significance of the gas pipeline for the toilers of western countries in need of Russian gas. She also mentioned the prospects for the development of the Shtokman field, and about the usefulness of the project for Russia (tax receipts). “We are striving to be the most open project”, the company’s advisor for community relations said sincerely.

We were surprised to see a tremendous amount of interest in our recent post about the acquisition of LiveJournal, the most popular blogging platform in Russia, by a Kremlin loyalist. While we focused on the privacy and censorship concerns posed by a government that is increasingly hostile toward free speech, most other outlets seem dramatically less concerned over these issues. Take for example the new CMSWire interview with Edward Shenderovich of SUP. The reporter asks only a few softball questions, and doesn't really get into any specifics of what SUP would do if the security services asked for personal information about certain bloggers. Mr. Shenderovich expresses his confusion and surprise at "where these concerns are coming from" - which seems unusual given what that the new owners of the platform are closely aligned with an authoritarian government and an established pattern of censorship. Surely it is easy for SUP to at least understand why people are concerned, and let us know how they plan to vigorously protect privacy and freedom of expression?

Cuts from the interview after the jump.

In yesterday's WSJ, Michael McFaul writes about Putin's plan: "The weakening of these three political institutions follows a strategy of deinstitutionalization that Vladimir Putin has implemented since the very beginning of his presidency. State governors, the Duma and the Federation Council (the lower and upper houses of the Russian parliament), the prime minister and his cabinet, the Supreme Court, the media, political parties, and civil society are all much weaker and less independent today than they were eight years ago. The absence of real institutions other than the presidency creates a real dilemma for Mr. Putin today: Where does he go next?

During the campaign, Mr. Putin made clear his intention to stay involved in Russian politics and called upon his supporters to demonstrate their trust in him as a means to guarantee his continued influence in Russian politics. But translating his personal electoral victory on Sunday into some institutionalized form of political power after he steps down as president next spring will be hard to do. As a result of Mr. Putin's weakening of checks and balance on presidential power, the possible positions for him being discussed in Moscow -- prime minister, speaker, chief justice of the Supreme Court, secretary of the Security Council, general secretary of United Russia -- have almost no power compared to the Kremlin. In searching for a place to park his tremendous popular mandate, Mr. Putin looks now like the victim of his own earlier successes. Only a radical change of the constitution might create a new formal institutional role for Mr. Putin, even if that is exactly the kind of change he has adamantly opposed."

Today: the Nashi have fun with the British ambassador again, Tymoshenko looks willing to fight over gas price hikes, the Russian Navy has begun patrolling the Mediterranean, and Khodorkovsky could go back to court in February.

Although this information from Stanislav Belkovsky is not new, I did not want to let it slip through the cracks. Anders Aslund picked up the quote from the German press: "In a sensational interview in Germany’s Die Welt on Nov. 12, Stanislav Belkovsky, the well-connected insider who initiated the Kremlin campaign against Yukos in 2003, made specific claims about Putin’s wealth. He alleged that Putin owned 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz (worth $18 billion), 4.5 percent of Gazprom ($13 billion) and half of Timchenko’s company, Gunvor (possibly $10 billion). If this information is true, Putin’s total personal fortune would amount to no less than $41 billion, placing him among the 10 richest in the world."

Here's a general backgrounder news clip on the Russian (s)elections by France 24. There's nothing in here any regular reader of this blog wouldn't already know, but some of the footage and interviews are interesting.

Edward Hugh has a very interesting and informative blog post over at FoE entitled "Too Much Money Chasing Too Few People, Or Russia’s Current Inflation Problem" which argues that the sudden acceleration in inflation in the region is neither coincidence nor lousy institutions - it's rather the peculiar mixture of third-world income levels and first-world demographics.

He writes "As can be seen in this chart here, the value of the rouble has been rising slowly but steadily over the last couple of years, the big problem which could face the Russian authorities would be if any move they made to ease currency management procedures currently in place were to lead to a large and rapid appreciation in the rouble, and if this were then to be associated with an equally sudden inward surge of funds, funds which would in all probability generate a further surge in domestic demand, domestic demand which, given the critical state of Russia’s workforce and labour market, could not be met internally: hence my cryptic adaptation of the standard inflation definition in the title of this post, since what we would actually have would be too much money chasing too few people."

[See Part 1 of Pasko's interview with the former FSB officer and newly freed political prisoner, Mikhail Trepashkin.]

Mikhail Trepashkin Freed - Part 2

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

In an exclusive interview with Grigory Pasko, former political prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin talks about the purpose behind Patrushev and Putin's spy-mania campaigns, his relationship with Alexander Litvinenko, and his view on the Khodorkovsky case. (Photo: Grigory Pasko)

Was the election of Andrei Lugovoi to the Duma on the LDPR ticket a spit in the face of the United Kingdom, which has been seeking his extradition for the murder the Alexander Litvinenko? In response to this question, the plucky (and newly immune to prosecution) lawmaker quipped "I would advise them to wipe it off."

The ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky must be thrilled to have such a quotable media darling on the party ticket. LDPR hasn't had this much attention since Zhirinovsky blamed Condoleezza Rice's policy choices on sexuality - just one crass highlight of many. I wonder when Lugovoi will join in with Zhirinovsky to denounce electoral fraud - making the two of them Russia's most unlikely democratic advocates...

In other news, the lawyer for widow Marina Litvinenko has an op/ed on the Guardian's website which states "We owe it to her as citizens of a world in which nobody and no state should be above the law, not to let what happened become forgotten or ignored, and not to let any form of diplomatic or other expediency or calculation overcome justice."

Oleg Shvartsman's now infamous interview with Kommersant (full translation here), in which he pulled back the curtain on the functioning of the Russian government's velvet reprivatization, is causing some major blowback. Today the Moscow Times reports that several investors, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Israeli bank Tamir Fishman, have suddenly pulled out of their plans to launch an investment venture after hearing this news of the siloviki campaign to carry out soft, partial ("velvet") thefts of companies and assets by driving down their value via tax, regulatory, and other state authorities - a more skillful implementation of the Yukos methodology. Welcome to the world of business with today's Kremlin - at least we finally know what "Putin's Plan" consists of.

However losing his partners on an $81 million venture is the least of Shvartsman's problems.

David R. Cameron, a professor of political science at Yale University, has a letter published in the FT today about the easiest way for Vladimir Putin to stay in power: amend Article 81 of the constitution. Thanks to Sunday's victory at the polls, United Russia certainly controls enough seats to do so, and Cameron points out that an initiative for constitutional amendment could easily be organized to appear as though it were a grassroots political project from the regions, and Putin, the reluctant and law-abiding head of state who is simply responding to the overwhelming will of the people. The theater of it all is remarkable.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said that a pillar of the arms control system could fall if Washington and Moscow replace the landmark START nuclear arms reduction treaty with a less formal pact. On the majority won in the State Duma elections, Gorbachev commented that President Vladimir Putin had “really rescued” United Russia. A video of ballot stuffing, claimed to be recorded during the State Duma elections, has been posted on the Internet, prompting further allegations of electoral fraud from opposition activists. The regions that failed to meet United Russia’s voting target at the parliamentary elections will face repercussions - the mayor of Udmurtia's Glazov-town, where United Russia got no more than 41%, has stepped down after the chief of republic, Alexander Volkov, expressed his disappointment over the outcome. The Fifth State Duma won’t differ from its predecessor.

Putin said the government and the Central Bank would make cautious efforts to help the banking sector deal with the liquidity shortage. A state fund, an Israeli merchant bank and the EBRD have pulled the plug on a Russian investment venture after Oleg Shvartsman, a minority shareholder, said in an interview that Kremlin siloviki had given him the go-ahead to conduct "velvet reprivatization" in strategic industries. Shvartsman has since discredited the interview, which will, as a result, be heard in court. Igor Sechin, Putin's powerful deputy chief of staff and chairman of Rosneft's board, has lost three vice presidents from the company, sparking speculation that he too is "on the way out". Vladimir Potanin's chances of buying his business partner Mikhail Prokhorov's stake in Norilsk Nickel are looking increasingly remote after it was reported that rival bidder RusAl had been offered the stake for $3 billion less. Unified Energy System has set the price of its new TGK-12 shares. Sistema has been permitted by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board in India to increase its share in Shyam Telelink to 74%, the maximum a foreign company is allowed to own in an Indian Telecommunications company. Russia's tax authorities have demanded over $6m dollars worth of back taxes from the local operations of the fast-food giant McDonald's, amid fears that this could spark a new wave of other claims. General Motors is pursuing a “significant” stake in Russia’s biggest automaker, AvtoVAZ. Gazprom saw profits fall 20% in the second quarter of 2007 after operating costs rose and warmer weather caused a drop in demand.

Russia and the US have signed a memorandum on bilateral military cooperation and the interoperability of their respective Armed Forces for 2008. Following the release of a new US intelligence report which said that Iran had stopped work to develop nuclear weapons four years ago, Putin has pushed for transparency, telling Iran's top nuclear negotiator that Tehran's nuclear program should stay under the control of the United Nations atomic watchdog. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iran would quickly answer all outstanding questions of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi will start this week in-flight tests of a new engine for its SuperJet 100 regional aircraft. Roman Abramovich's investment in Highland Gold Mining “underlines that the precious metal is becoming more precious by the month.”

“It is rather easy for foreigners to get into trouble in Russia, even if they are not interested in torpedo blueprints.”

Mikhail Trepashkin freed, Part 1

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

On 30 November, former FSB RF officer Mikhail Trepashkin was released from a general regime penal colony in Nizhny Tagil. He had been sentenced on 19 May 2004 by the Moscow District Military Court for divulging a state secret and sentenced to four years of deprivation of liberty with the serving of punishment in a colony-settlement [Russia’s version of “minimum security”—Trans.]. Immediately after his release, Trepashkin declared that he intends to strive for the reconsideration of his case. “I want specifically to reconsider the verdict, and not to dismiss the case. When there will be a repeat consideration, it will become immediately understandable that the criminal case has been fabricated”, he clarified.

Aside from Moscow's willingness to recognize it as a sovereign state, it is difficult to imagine many parallels between Russia and California beyond an occasional disregard for personal hygiene and a fondness for fine vodka. In the coming months, however, this may radically change, as one of the most popular and accessible blogging/social networking platforms, San Francisco-based LiveJournal, has been sold to the Russian media firm SUP, headed up by Kremlin loyalist Alexander Mamut, for reportedly $30 million. In a strange twist of events, the future of Russia's online freedom of expression may lie in the hands of the twenty-something "hacker and drinker" Brad Fitzpatrick (pictured), the founding designer of LJ, who now will head up a new advisory board to help determine the platform's future.

Naturally there is enormous concern and widespread speculation that this transaction will impact the privacy of LiveJournal users, who have come to recognize LJ as one of the few remaining pressure valves where independent political views can be discussed. The very idea of increased monitoring, tracking, and censorship the Russian blogosphere by state security agencies is a terrifying Orwellian prospect - yet the Kremlin's current treatment of the mainstream media certainly encourages this line of thinking. Are these concerns nothing more than paranoid conspiracy theories (which is how it is being pitched by the new owners), or will the LJ community need to look to Mr. Fitzpatrick for protection? (read an informative open letter from the LJ community to Fitzpatrick here).

Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, held a press conference today to announce that the Russian government's efforts to defend freedom of the press fell far short of their commitments. His report, which can be downloaded here, was delivered to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, detailing a long list of cases of harassment, intimidation, violence, and monopolization of the news media by the ruling party. The case of Oleg Orlov was of primary concern to Haraszti.

He said: "Unfortunately, the OSCE commitment to sustain a diversity of news sources was violated during the campaign for the State Duma. Television coverage was monopolized by the ruling party. ... The monitoring by the Central Electoral Commission and the NGO Russian Union of Journalists showed a clear bias in favour of the ruling party candidates on the main television channels. Combined coverage of the President, Government and the ruling party approximated 80% of the total political time on the nation-wide channels. ... The President's party chose to ignore the TV debates, and was instead given extra time. While this was done in conformity with the electoral law, the TV debates for the rest of the political parties were downgraded and broadcast in the early morning and late night. This was a breach of the electoral law."

See an excerpt from the report after the jump.

[Our correspondent in Russia recently discovered that the border town of Vyborg near St. Petersburg was going to hold discreet (practically secret) public hearings on Gazprom's mega-project, the Nord Stream pipeline, to discuss the social and environmental impact of the initiative. Below is the first of three reports from the hearings, which Pasko attended at the end of November.]

If you’ve heard, does that mean you approve?

A report from the public hearings in Vyborg on the Nord Stream pipeline construction project, Part 1

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

After late November’s freezing temperatures in Moscow, Vyborg greeted me with rain. It was dirty and damp, and there were hardly any people around. I bought the local newspapers in a kiosk. It turned out that there were only two of them. I went into the city library in order to read these newspapers and leaf through older issues in binders. The local newspapers had calls to vote for «the party of Putin» and «Putin’s Plan». But reports about how public hearings were supposed to be taking place that day about a burning issue for the residents of Vyborg Rayon – the impact of the Nord Stream gas pipeline on the environment – were totally absent in all the newspapers. Later I found an archive of announcements for the mass media from the press service of the administration of Vyborg Rayon. Here’s the information bulleting for 23 November 2007.

In his speech yesterday before his cabinet, Vladimir Putin expressed a surprising amount of reticence that now that one campaign is over, another is beginning: It is a pity, of course, that we have one election campaign coming straight after another, with the presidential campaign now underway. People are no doubt tired of campaign tactics and political promotion, but, unfortunately, we now have to enter this next campaign, the presidential election campaign. Perhaps the new Duma could think about how to space these two election campaigns further apart in the future. But that is a matter for the members of the new parliament themselves, of course. It would be good to space the campaigns further apart so as not to burden the country with one campaign straight after another, but this is a technical matter and something that can be looked into later.

It is peculiar to hear about campaign exhaustion from the president, whose enthusiastic promotion efforts seemed to totally saturate the public conscience over the last number of weeks.

Here's a video clip of some apparent ballot stuffing under pressure in Russia from smena.info. If anyone knows more about this, or if it is just a hoax, let us know.

UPDATE: Dutch journalist and blogger Remco Reiding has provided additional information about this video in a comment. Apparently, the woman in the video is L.V. Maksimova, committee member at polling station 730 in Otradnoye, Moscow, who is allegedly submitting all the ballots of people who did not show up vote.
Incredible.

Andrei Illarionov, a former top economic adviser to Vladimir Putin, recently penned a column in Yezhednevniy Zhurnal entitled "The Beginnings of a Catastrophe." Below, a translation provided by La Russophobe:

The Beginnings of a Catastrophe

Andrei Illarionov

Yezhednevniy Zhurnal

November 30, 2007

A year and a half ago, it was a question of premonitions of a catastrophe. One and a half months ago - prologue to a catastrophe. And now - its beginning. A year and a half ago, applying the word “catastrophe” to the near future of Russia might still have been called an exaggeration. But current events have proven, unfortunately, that this is the right word for it.

Supporters of the pro-Kremlin Young Russia movement hold pictures of opposition leaders inside a makeshift pigsty in central Moscow supposed to represent mercenary politicians serving US national interests, 03 December 2007. (AFP/Dmitry Kostyukov)

Vladimir Putin has thanked the Russian population for turning out to vote, and thanked United Russia supporters in particular, saying of the victory, “I headed the slate of this party and it is naturally the sign of confidence.” The implication here is that support for the party was, as Boris Gryzlov said, “a referendum” on the president. In line with Gryzlov’s comment, the elections are being widely touted as a referendum on Putin's rule. The speed with which the president commented on the election results “caused some wonder [as] the count was not even completed.” The election results “represent a huge -- perhaps fatal -- setback for Russia's liberal-democratic opposition.” The president of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly has announced that the weekend’s elections “failed to meet many of the commitments and standards that we have”, and the head of a delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe commented, “if Russia is a managed democracy, then these were managed elections.” One Central Elections Commission member said the observers' conclusions contained "flat-out lies." The Kremlin called the observers’ “scathing” report, which has dominated this morning's news, "biased, groundless and unbalanced". One Kremlin spokesman said, “In general what we saw yesterday is just and fair democratic elections.”

“Despite the rigging, this election showed that Russia wants Mr Putin and the authoritarian, paternalistic leadership he represents.” Given this, “why did the Kremlin resort to such extraordinary measures to harass the opposition, intimidate voters and manipulate the elections, given that the president and his programme are genuinely popular?” Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group, are meanwhile drumming up patriotic feeling, having accused the United States of planning to incite "thieves and traitors" to seize key public buildings and squares, overturning United Russia’s victory. One activist from Moscow, said at the rally that she had been told that the United States and Britain had mustered "military squads" to occupy Russia's main cities,

Prosecutors have opened a new criminal investigation into the activities of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, separate to the charges of embezzlement that he is already facing. Russia’s government has cut the number of Norwegian producers allowed to import herring into Russia from about forty to just seven. The election outcome “has failed to inspire the local stock market.” The Canadian industrial company Bombardier Inc. has confirmed that its rail division is in "very preliminary" talks with Transmashholding, Russia's leading rail technology manufacturer. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel, Russia's third-largest steelmaker, said profit advanced 30% in the first nine months of the year due to increased prices and production. A BBC special report on Russia’s methods of doing business can be found here. Yesterday’s creation of Rosatom, the state-run nuclear company, is being welcomed by analysts as it should help to increase regulation of the country's diverse nuclear sector. VimpelCom, Russia’s second-largest cellphone company, has offered to buy rival Golden Telecom for about $4.2 billion, which would create Russia’s first integrated mobile and fixed-line provider. Roman Abramovich is to pay $400 million for new shares in Highland Gold Mining, giving him a total share of 40%.

The chief of India’s navy has said that demanding more money from Moscow should make the country think about where its relations with Russia are headed, urging that there should be no renegotiation on the price or delay on the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier. Putin has announced that Russia might one day return to the CFE Treaty, but only if NATO members ratify an updated version of the pact. A Moscow court has sentenced Igor Reshetin, the head of TsNIIMash-Export, a leading rocket and space research center, to 11 years in prison for illegally selling weapons technology to China.

“Whichever method Putin uses, the result will be the same as the results of the Duma elections: Power will be preserved with the help of a popular president, a complacent population and the combined power of the government's huge administrative resources.”

Vote and dance – thinking is optional, part 2

The elections in the Russian backwoods

Grigory Pasko, journalist

The time was 10:00 AM. People weren’t exactly arriving in droves: by 10 in the morning, 15 people had voted out of the 446 voters assigned to precinct No. 70. Galina Tyulyayeva clarified that it’s always like this: by the time they wake up, by the time they get here…

With the help of two canes came a little old lady from Gagarin Street and announced that she wanted to vote in this particular precinct and no other, inasmuch as she’d never be able to get to her designated polling station. They wrote her in on a separate list, and she voted. (I later asked whom she had voted for. She replied: “For the party «A Just Russia», because this party promised to raise pensions”).

A few weeks ago my blog offered a Kremlin insider's account of the spy wars and the campaign against Sergei Storchak and Alexei Kudrin. Our contributor, who must remain anonymous for clear reasons, has again sent in the following excellent dispatch, which takes a look at these byzantine power struggles currently roiling the Russian government in the context of the elections. - Robert Amsterdam

Russia's New Revolution

The arrest of the vice minister of finance Mr. Storchak is more important for how Russia will be ruled in the immediate future than the dubious parliamentary elections that took place on December 2, 2007. The elections at best constitute a cover operation that give a legalistic appearance to a result predetermined to the smallest detail by the Kremlin. The arrest of Mr. Storchak is manifestation of a fight between the real parties that vie for political power. And political power in contemporary Russia is concomitant with economic might.

The Tried Pattern

One cannot understand what is happening in the contemporary Russia if one does not keep going back to the two seminal events of the Putin presidency – destruction of independent media, exemplified by destruction of NTV, and destruction of YUKOS.

Opposition leaders like Garry Kasparov drew a big cross on their ballot papers during the State Duma elections on December 2nd, 2007- their verdict on what they call a rigged election. (AFP/BBC)

It has been recorded that United Russia has received over 60% of the vote from Russia’s 108 million registered voters (a 60% turnout). The Communist party currently stands at 11.4%; the LDPR at 9.5%; and 7.5% for A Just Russia. The liberal Yabloko party and the Union of Right Forces, the parties that faced the greatest obstacles in their election campaigns, both received “XX percent”. The official results will be given December 7 or 8. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said he had hoped to win 30% of the vote. “We do not trust this data,” he said. “These elections are seen as undemocratic, unfair and not free in many regions.” There were many reported violations of election laws. At one polling station in the town of Pestovo, in the Novgorod region, dozens of ballots were already marked with a check next to United Russia, according to a local voter. Golos, the only independent Russian monitoring group, said it received more than 3,500 calls on its complaints hotline. Monitors say the result was “inflated by up to 20% through a campaign of intimidation and negative PR.”

The Kremlin are hoping that a crushing win for United Russia will act as “an endorsement for Vladimir Putin to stay on as leader of the country next year”, despite having to give up the presidency in the spring. Boris Gryzlov, the United Russia leader and speaker of the parliament, said: "The vote affirmed the main idea: that Vladimir Putin is the national leader, that the people support his course, and this course will continue." The new rules introduced for the elections by the government are listed here, and “Five Myths” about the “election” can be found here. Russia's Chechnya region, “once the Kremlin's biggest headache,” emerged as Putin's most enthusiastic supporter, with 99.4% reportedly voting for United Russia.

The Russian Central Election Commission says it has not received a single complaint from its 299 international observers. The general daily crime rate in Russia reportedly halved on election day. “The sad truth is that United Russia could have won this election on its record alone, without bending or breaking rules.” Garry Kasparov has accused Russian authorities of "raping the whole electoral system".

"Thank God the election campaign is over." (President Putin)

The US has called for an investigation into claims of vote-rigging. A joint observer team from Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe have made a statement saying that the election was “not fair”. The Partnership Cooperation Agreement between Russia and the European Union has just expired.

The government has authorized the Federal Treasury to conduct foreign exchange transactions - power previously only held by the cabinet, the Central Bank of Russia, the RF Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry and Foreign Intelligence Service - in the belief that a shift of interests will allow the CBR to concentrate on fighting inflation. The Kremlin and an Israeli investment fund sought to distance themselves from Oleg Shvartsman, an unknown Russian fund manager who claimed in an interview that he was a key money manager for the siloviki clan. The interview, which discussed presidential power bloc investments, will negatively affect Shvartsman’s political career and could damage his business. Head of Unified Energy Systems, Anatoly Chubais, said, “Intentionally or not, Mr. Shvartsman told the truth. It is the truth about unavoidable diseases of such type of social and political systems as ‘sovereign democracy’ [...] the fact that Mr. Shvartsman’s confessions were published in Kommersant shows that everything is not lost.” LiveJournal, a blogging and social-networking site, will be sold to SUP, a Russian online media company. Severstal, Russia's largest steelmaker, said profit rose 61% in the first nine months of the year as prices rose amid growing demand in construction and car making. According to Alfa Bank, Gazprom is “seriously undervalued”, and investors should buy into the company because, they say, it is worth $521 billion. Investors are hoping that improved visibility on the next presidential campaign, following the elections, will have a tangible impact on a currently uncertain market. Telecoms investment vehicle Altimo has resolved a long-running dispute over its stake in MegaFon, the mobile operator. Diamond miner Alrosa could be worth $10bn in an IPO. The Russian government plans to raise its Alrosa stake to 50%. Putin, “an admirer of Stalin,” has signed into law a bill on the formation of a Russian state nuclear energy corporation, to be named Rosatom.

Despite his election as a member of parliament, UK prosecutors will not drop charges against Andrei Lugovoi for the radiation murder of Alexander Litvinenko. A parliamentary seat will grant him immunity from prosecution and extradition. A profile of Alexander Mamut, the “online oligarch”, can be found here. Why have relations between Russia and Qatar improved so markedly in the last three years?

An op/ed in the Times of London argues that Putin is in danger of believing his own publicity: If he is sincere in ruling out the constitutional amendment that would allow him a third term, he has two options: to install a puppet such as his current Prime Minister as president when his term expires next March, then return to the presidency himself in four years’ time (or earlier, should the prime minister “fall ill”); or to emasculate the presidency and transfer its powers to another post created for him.

Either scenario presents an immediate danger to the wider world. Mr Putin is already at the centre of a depressingly Soviet personality cult that allows no parliamentary oversight and little private criticism of his judgment on vital international questions, such as the future of Kosovo and how to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. The longer he remains in power in such circumstances, the more isolated and ill-advised he his likely to become. In the meantime, what remains of Russia’s political culture will continue to atrophy, so that when the need for change becomes acute the chances of a smooth transition will be remote. That moment could come sooner than most people think. Mr Putin must use his popularity to change the country for the better, not to indulge his personal tastes or his personnel. Power will flow to his anointed successor, but whether the Putinites are more than just a strange phase or lead Russia into the 21st century will be determined in the next few years.

From a great article in WSJ today: As liberty recedes in Russia, Mr. Gorbachev's stance raises a question: Is the former Soviet president a savvy politician who sees democratic instincts in Mr. Putin that his critics have missed? Or has he been seduced by the Kremlin's attentions into becoming an apologist for the former KGB agent who is undoing the revolution Mr. Gorbachev began?

Mr. Gorbachev's support of Mr. Putin may surprise many in the West. But that cognitive dissonance reflects the gap between how Russia's past 20 years are viewed at home and abroad. Many outside Russia see the 1990s as a time of democratic promise for Moscow. Inside Russia, it was seen as a decade of deprivation and chaos. Like millions of Russians, Mr. Gorbachev wanted the end of communist totalitarian rule, not of the Soviet Union itself. He believes the West took advantage of Russia's weakness in the 1990s and is now uncomfortable with Mr. Putin, who has returned it to strength.

Interview excerpts after the cut.

This weekend RA was interviewed by CBS on the Russian elections. Watch the video here.

When I was growing up in the Bronx, when somebody cheated during one of our many street games, they were in no way declared a legitimate winner. This apparently is not the case in the majority of the English-language media's coverage of the Russian election, which has declared Putin's "landslide" victory with the gullibility of a swindled rube.

The real news about the kleptocratic feud going on in Moscow appears to have missed the newsroom deadline. The contrast is further underscored by the openly hostile headlines we saw all week leading up to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's referendum, who, while facing intense opposition and free media, today was dealt a narrow defeat. Putin could learn a lot from Chavez about how to participate in a real democratic process.

We do no favor to Russia by allowing Putin to engage in this special brand of self-glorification, promoting the view that might is right. We are once again looking at Russia through a looking glass, and granting the Kremlin a dangerous presumption of regularity in this process. It seems to me that the disconnect between reality and fiction in Russia today is as high as it was in Soviet times - and that's not good for anybody.

Vote and dance – thinking is optional

The elections in the Russian backwoods, part I

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Kirzhach is a small town in Vladimir Oblast, 130 kilometers southeast of Moscow. Historians note that Kirzhach arose as a sloboda [settlement] alongside the Kirzhach Trinity Monastery of the Annunciation or Presentation, founded in the 1300s. After the closure of the monastery in 1764, the sloboda became the village of Kirzhach, which was transformed into a town in 1778.

The official website of the town in the section “Economy” indicates that there are a silk works, a canning plant, a furniture and sewing factories, as well as the plant «Avtosvet» in Kirzhach. Recently, the Turks have built the «Beko» plant alongside the town, where they produce dishwashing machines and refrigerators.

From today's Observer comment section: And yet Mr Putin has his defenders in the West, including business people in Britain who want to invest in Russia. Mr Putin, they argue, has at least brought stability after the kleptocratic chaos of the Nineties. He is managing a transition to democracy, Putin apologists say, that, in a country the size of Russia, can only be done cautiously and with a firm hand. We must hope that is true. But there is no evidence for it. Observer Business today carries a bleak assessment of Russia's media landscape, where free speech is ruthlessly curtailed. Far from nurturing a fledgling democracy, Mr Putin is pulling up its roots.

More after the cut.

Here's Reuters news clip of today's (s)elections in Russia.

Robert Coalson at RFE/RL writes about the five myths of Russia's elections: 1) President Vladimir Putin is popular, 2) Parties matter, 3) Issues matter, 4) Election rules matter, and 5) Election results will reflect the public will.

Coalson writes "The Russian legislative elections will produce a "landslide," but it will be no more meaningful than similar landslides that are produced in other controlled political systems, such as those in most Central Asian countries. Unified Russia's victory will be a victory for Putin and his circle. But it won't be anything more than that."

A by-lined opinion article by Robert Amsterdam was published in today's Toronto Star.

A vote that insults democracy

Canada has an interest in resisting dangerous anti-democratic trends afflicting Putin's Russia

Robert Amsterdam

President Vladimir Putin is looking to Canada for legitimacy and approval of his administration's conduct in today's elections in Russia, and we should all think twice about whether or not he deserves it.

There are several emerging trends in Russia in terms of security, business relations and the rule of law that pose significant risk to Canadian interests – and now is the time for us to make our position clear.

Below is part 3 of the Lyudmila Alexeyeva interviews from Grigory Pasko's Faces of the Opposition interview series features. See the entire series on our YouTube channel.

From Grigory Pasko's series of interviews, Faces of the Opposition, here is the coordinator of the Oborona youth movement, Oleg Kozlovsky. The impressive Mr. Kozlovsky also published a manifesto on our blog back in July. See all the Faces of the Opposition series on our YouTube channel.

The next installment of Grigory Pasko's Faces of the Opposition interview series features Lyudmila Alexeyeva talking about the various indications that Russia is headed toward becoming a police state. See the first Alexeyeva interview here, as well as the interview with Anastasiya Udaltsova here. The entire Faces of the Opposition series can be found on our YouTube channel.

This one dates from April 19, 2006, but is nevertheless still relevant.

An important quote from Jane Armstrong's dispatch from Moscow in the Globe and Mail:

Presidential candidate Boris Nemstov remembers the exact day Mr. Putin abandoned all pretense of being a democrat. It was Oct. 23, 2003, when police arrested Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky for fraud. One of Russia's richest businessmen, Mr. Khodorkovsky used his wealth to fund opposition parties in Russia.

Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest was seen as a sign that Mr. Putin would tolerate no dissent in Russia. Mr. Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in a Siberian jail in what many describe as a show trial.

"After this case, [Mr. Putin] changed completely," said Mr. Nemstov, himself a former Kremlin insider who was a deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin. He said Mr. Putin became "the bronze Putin," a ruler who jailed oligarchs, harassed journalists, criticized the West and seized control of television stations.

"He destroyed the legal system. He established absolute control. He forgot about the constitution, human rights, everything," Mr. Nemstov said.