Robert Amsterdam

Dan Rather has a new column this weekend expressing his disappointment with the level of debate on Russia policy among U.S. presidential candidates.

He writes: "As for the past, both Clinton and Obama criticized what they perceived as the drift and disarray in U.S. policy toward Russia under President Bush. Certainly, with the Iraq War and the war on terrorism in the foreground, relations with the one-time (and now resurgent) superpower have been on the back burner. But if last Tuesday's exchange about Russia represented a long-overdue re-engagement with Russia policy, it was a less-than-auspicious start for these two candidates, either of whom could soon be in the Oval Office."

Rather's conclusion, like many other opinion articles we shall read this weekend, is rather inconclusive, simply calling for more engagement and smarter statecraft.

Robert Amsterdam is briefly quoted in the election coverage by Canada's CTV:

Russia's election outcome hardly in doubt

Josh Visser, CTV.ca News

The votes in the Russian presidential election this Sunday have yet to be tallied, but it's a straight-up guarantee that Dmitry Medvedev is the nation's next president.

To many outside Russia, a pre-determined election seems like the antithesis to the wave of democracy that was supposed to flow over the former Soviet Union.

But like Russia itself, the issue at stake is large and diverse, muddled and mysterious and just plain bewildering to the casual observer.

Among the dozens of opinion articles and editorials on the Russian elections this weekend, I would say that the Times of London takes home the prize for capturing the story with the best headline: "Putinocracy: Russia has thrived despite its leader, and because of him."

Really no need to read further...

I'm proud to report that this blog is the very first source to report the results of Russia's 2008 presidential election a full day before the polls even open. The victor of this heated contest: Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, taking home his very first elective position by a landslide.*

Thanks to our international network of informants in regional government administrations, at the electoral authorities, among the media, and within the FSB, we have been fortunate to obtain the results of the election 24 hours ahead of everyone else, including the voters themselves. In our exclusive interviews with some of the bureaucrats responsible for rigging the elections, we were informed that all is proceeding according to plan. "We were worried whether or not we could get enough people to show up at the polls for the cameras in order to fake the vote," one bureaucrat told us, "but thanks to the free haircuts and medical check-ups to draw people in, we were able to pull it off!"

The results: an astonishing 84% of the vote for Medvedev, with Communist Gennady Zyuganov trailing with 10%, and Ultra-Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky coming in last with 4%. There was a remarkably low 2% abstention rate, and the electoral authorities decided at the last minute not to include the liberal Andrei Bogdanov on the ballot. "The orders came from above last night that we no longer needed the legitimacy puppet," our source in the FSB vote monitoring department told us.

While most regional governments were ordered by the Kremlin to secure at least a 68%-70% voter turnout, other regional governments went above an beyond the call of duty: The overachieving regional authorities in Ingushtia and Dagestan were boasting of 112% turnout for Medvedev, while one confused mayor from Sakhalin Island accidentally sent in the actual turnout figures (15%). He was swiftly whisked away to the gulag and replaced by a more energetic young FSB officer - who quickly tabulated an 85% turnout all the way from his office in London.

The media was also busy preparing for the big day tomorrow, and reporters informed us that they just received their approved copy from the government censors, as well as convenient b-roll footage from the Kremlin depicting lines of people waiting for either the soup kitchen or their driver's license. "It isn't clear which bureaucratic incompetence these people are waiting for on the TV reel, but it looks like democracy," said one anchor to our correspondents.

Calls for Medvedev to give his victory speech on the same morning as the polls open have so far gone unanswered.

*If you even have to ask whether or not this is serious, you need to work on your sense of tragic political satire.

Constant updates of fresh news on the Russian elections throughout the day over at Siberian Light. Very well done - thanks, Andy!

Last night I read a very interesting translation by Lyndon Allin of a censored article originally drafted for publication in Bolshoi Gorod, describing the author's personal disenchantment with his great country's diminishing freedoms in Nizhny Novgorod, and the mental burden of living under a managed democracy. It is a remarkably evocative and well written piece, capturing an oft-ignored side of today's political reality in Russia - the humanist perspective. I'm grateful to Lyndon for continuing to demonstrate how to properly add value to the blogosphere.

Original Source:

An Echo of Moscow
by Roman Gruzov
c. December 3, 2007

The city before the elections

In late November it was cold in [Nizhny Novgorod], and the people handing out United Russia fliers on the streets were bundled up in scarves against the chill. Nizhny covered in snow feels oppressive to a person unused to the Russian provinces. The industrial areas which die out towards the evening and the touching wooden downtown, restored in some places and lop-sided and half-abandoned in others, seemed like some sort of different, unknown, incomprehensible and thus not entirely safe country. There were campaign banners on every corner, so the word “Putin” was always visible from several angles at once.

Following the reinstatement of our Lev Ponomarev video posted on YouTube after certain members of the community conspired to have it removed, the Russian press has reacted. The following exclusive translation come from News.ru:

Video confirms human rights advocate’s words about beatings in colony IK-2. They open case against Ponomarev, but fail to remove video from YouTube.

Yet another scandal is blazing in the domestic prison system: video evidence of the barbarities of the OMON in one of the Sverdlovsk colonies have been obtained, and namely “prophylactic beatings” of inmates, supposedly in colony IK-2. Abroad, the video clip, removed from the site YouTube due to “doubts about the context of what is taking place”, has been put back, because there are no longer doubts about its authenticity. But in Russia, a case has been opened against human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev, who has written about torture and into whose hands this video first found its way, while the chief of the Sverdlovsk UFSIN has been fired – although they do insist that it is for something else.

As we have already covered the outcome of Russia's presidential elections a day before they were held, we are dedicating the day to human rights leader, colleague and friend, Lev Ponomarev, whose efforts to raise awareness about torture and abuse within Russia's prison system has garnered extraordinary attention in recent weeks - so much so that the authorities have filed charges against him as punishment for his advocacy.

The following exclusive interview was conducted by the editor of my blog with Ponomarev a few days before the remarkable article by Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal was published.

Q: In the past you have commented on the need to separate human rights work from politics – that in Russia there are times in which it is important to maintain this gap in order to achieve progress…

I have just spoken by telephone with my good friend and leading Russian human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev, founder of the All-Russia Movement «For human rights» (see my earlier interview and translation).

As you have probably heard, Lev has been having quite a month. Some time back, he began telling the world about the re-emergence of “torture colonies” within the revived Russian GULag. These colonies, many of which seem to be centered in the Republic of Mordovia, have a special regime that involves unconstrained violence against inmates by prison staff and a bizarre and illegal form of violent “policing” by “grass-roots initiative groups” of privileged prisoners known as “Sections of Discipline and Order”. Naturally, all the wielders of truncheons, be they guards or prisoners, are fully confident that they act with total impunity. Prisoners who refuse to “confess” to “crimes” are brought to these camps from isolators in other regions, and within a week or two they’re singing like canaries.

TODAY: “Boring” and “stage-managed” elections see landslide for Medvedev. Other Russia to protest today. Russia and China re-evaluating arms trade, UK Prime Minister to offer Russia a “fresh start”. Barroso fears economic Cold War.

The elections were “boring” and “carefully stage-managed by the Kremlin”, with polling stations hosting various spectacles to draw voters - in one, “six young women clad in small white bikinis danced and cavorted for an audience of all ages in front of a Russian flag made out of red, white and blue balloons.” One district in the North Caucasus is reporting 100% voter turnout. The Election Commission measures overall voter turnout at 69.65%. With 99.45% of the votes counted, Dmitry Medvedev had 70.23% of the vote, and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov had 17.76%. Western election monitors are expected to give the elections a “harsh poll verdict.” The White House has avoided commenting on the result thus far. United Russia won landslide victories in elections for legislative assemblies in 11 regions over the weekend.

Barclays has unveiled a $745 million deal to buy Expobank, a retail and commercial bank concentrated in Moscow and St Petersburg, saying it planned to rebrand the company over time. Russia has been “hoarding gold”, and together with Qatari demands for the precious metal, has contributed to the 240% rise in its price. Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov's iron and steel firm Metalloinvest has bought 3-4% of shares in metals giant Norilsk Nickel, which could help it avoid a hostile takeover by Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal. Both companies are preparing rival bids this week. Russian miner and steel maker Mechel is in talks to acquire Oriel Resources, a London-listed miner with chrome assets in Russia and Kazakhstan. Russian investment bank KIT Finance may drop plans for an initial public offering this year and instead opt to sell shares to private investors due to a slump in demand. Finnish company Fortum says it will pay up to €2.7 billion ($4.1 billion) for west Siberian power generator TGK-10, should it gain full ownership of the utility.

Speaking two days before the deadline set by Gazprom, Yulia Tymoshenko said she was certain that “there will be no cutoff of gas [...] no one is going to cut off anything.” But a deal has not yet been reached, and it was announced today that Gazprom has indeed cut supplies to Ukraine by 25% after talks failed. One research analyst from Renaissance Capital Ukraine commented, “This still doesn't represent a crisis, just a greater degree of brinkmanship. The weather is warm and forecast to stay so, and storage both in Ukraine and further west is unlikely to be depleted after another mild winter.''

Gazprom has told the European Commission that gas supplies to the European Union will not be affected by its row with Ukraine.

London-listed Russian explorer Timan Oil & Gas will almost triple the amount of wells it has this year, taking its well count to 214 and bringing it closer to a production phase.

Extremely few people, even Moscow's strongest supporters and defenders in the West, would attempt to argue that yesterday's elections were remotely legitimate. Even the leadership seems satisfied to absorb the criticism of the deeply flawed contest - so long as we continue to describe the proceedings yesterday as something resembling democracy. But why? Why does the Russian government even bother to go through the motions?

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post puts forward the following theory:

Only one question remains unanswered: Why did anyone bother holding an election at all? Given that the inner circle of ex-KGB officers that controls the Kremlin also controls the country's media, its legal system, its parliament, and its major companies, why do they need elections? Why didn't Vladimir Putin just appoint Medvedev, or keep the presidency himself? The answer, I think, can lie only in the ruling clique's fundamental insecurity, odd as that sounds. Though the denizens of the Kremlin do not, cannot, seriously fear Western military attack, they do still seem to fear Western-inspired popular discontent: public questioning of their personal wealth, public opposition to their power, political demonstrations of the sort that created the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. To stave off these things, they maintain the democratic rituals that give them a semblance of legitimacy.

Michael Idov of the New Republic had a hard time finding anyone who had actually voted in the Russian presidential election, apart from those who attended the polls for free food and prizes. Others he spoke with voted for Zyuganov simply because they wanted to vote for someone who was not "rammed down their throats." Idov also remarks on the sad state of the opposition, left huddling and hiding in "smoky rooms", making "hopeless jokes" like dissidents of the Khrushchev era.

Perhaps the worst part of the complacency with which the world has tolerated the Russia's election farce is that many other authoritarian nations will take this as precedent - an understanding that skillful manipulation of democratic processes is perfectly OK with international partners. China, for one, seems ideally poised to copy Russia's brand of sovereign democracy as though it were a counterfeit Prada handbag.

This one comes from Time Magazine's China Blog:

Anyone who is wondering what the future holds for China might take a close look at what happened in Russia over the weekend. As was widely predicted President Valdimir Putin's choice for a successor Dimitri Medvedev handily won presidential elections and will make Putin his prime minister. According to the New York Times,"The election of Mr. Medvedev, 42, a first deputy prime minister, is the culmination of Mr. Putin’s efforts to consolidate control over the government, business and the news media since taking office eight years ago. Vowing to restore stability to Russia after the upheavals of the 1990s, Mr. Putin has increasingly used his authority and popularity to create what is in many respects a one-party state".

It is a sorry state of affairs when only one of the three leading U.S. presidential candidates issues a statement on the controversial Russian elections. After the jump is Sen. Hillary Clinton's press release. Sen. Barack Obama has only briefly commented on the elections, while Sen. John McCain has not yet said anything about Medvedev's victory - though the new president-elect has certainly said plenty about him. I don't expect this silence to last much longer...

Peter Finn of the Washington Post was answering questions from readers online earlier today, and fielded this one on the new administration's policy toward the Khodorkovsky case:

Harrogate, U.K.: The British Sunday Times reports that president-elect Medvedev strongly has criticized the Russian judiciary, saying it must be reformed to put an end to "legal nihilism." As a conscientious lawyer, is there a chance that as president he will call for a review of contentious cases? I am thinking particularly of the manipulation of the judicial system which led to the imprisonment, following a show trial, of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, and the new unreal charges now being cynically brought against them.

Peter Finn: This is one of a number of broadly similar questions about Mikhail Khodorokovsky and Platon Lebedev, the Yukos Oil Co. executives who are now serving prison terms after trials that critics charged were politically motivated. It's worth remembering that Aleksandr Voloshin, former head of the presidential administration, resigned when Khodorkovsky was arrested. Medvedev replaced him. And to date Medvedev has shown no willingness to question the prosecution. Whether he might harbor private doubts and act on them, I frankly don't know. But I doubt he will do anything quickly as his first priority, if it is to be a genuinely Medvedev presidency, as distinct from Putin ruling from the prime minister's office, he will take some time before making any controversial decisions that break with the Putin era. And reexamining the Khodorkovsky case or releasing them would certainly be that. There are reports here that Voloshin has been advising Medvedev and might take a position in the new presidential administration. We'll see. But that might augur well for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

Charlie Rose has a discussion on Russia with some of the heavy hitters. Feels like 1985, no?

TODAY: Opposition protesters detained; pro-Medvedev march permitted. Monitors concede that Medvedev would have “won anyway.” World leaders comment on the result.

Moscow authorities have “repeatedly refused to authorize opposition marches on the grounds that they would snarl traffic and inconvenience people.” But thousands of pro-Kremlin youths were permitted to march across central Moscow to celebrate the election of Dmitry Medvedev as president, “paralyzing” the traffic. Riot police “roughly detained” dozens of opposition protesters, including Union of Right Forces leader Nikita Belykh, for marching in central Moscow. And in St Petersburg, an opposition march was given authorisation after the organizers agreed to change the route.

Monitors of the weekend’s elections felt that Medvedev “would have won the election anyway.” Andreas Gross, the head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) observer mission, which was one of the few international monitoring groups on hand for the March 2 vote, has questioned the nature of the election process and called the vote a “plebiscite”. Watch the video here.

Plans by Rostekhnologii to consolidate state-controlled stakes in nearly 250 enterprises have been opposed by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Norilsk Nickel, the Russian nickel producer at the centre of a takeover battle, is the first target of Environmental Investor Services, a new activist investor group which aims to put pressure on polluting companies and industries. Russian power producer OGK-6 has sold some €4.5 million ($6.83 million) of emissions reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocol to the UK-based Clean Planet Group. A Vietnamese legislator has called on Russia to increase its investment in oil and gas, energy and machinery manufacturing in the country. France's Société Générale, which holds a controlling stake in Russia's bank Rosbank, has offered to buy the stakes of minority shareholders. "I ask you to prepare proposals on optimization of the management of the country's financial reserves, taking into account what is happening in the world economy," said President Vladimir Putin, calling for better management of the country's $484 billion gold and foreign exchange reserves.

Gazprom promised western European countries they would not be affected by the latest escalation in its ongoing row with Ukraine, as it cut supplies to the country by 25%. The company RosUkrEnergo said Gazprom’s decision to reduce gas supplies by 25% would only affect Naftogaz Ukrainy. Gazprom now says it will halve gas supplies to Ukraine from 1700 GMT on Tuesday, and that no progress has been made in talks thus far.

Total will make an initial estimate of the cost of developing Russia's giant Shtokman gas field in the coming months and make an investment decision before the end of 2009.

Russia's envoy to the UN said after a UN Security Council meeting that new sanctions imposed against Iran would give Tehran a chance to review its controversial nuclear program.

Jeffrey Mankoff of the Council on Foreign Relations has published an op/ed in the Boston Globe outlining how the United States can take advantage of the transition to Dmitri Medvedev to improve relations with Moscow - an argument that I expect to see echoed among many different influential sources, leading to an eventual upcoming change in Russia policy.

Mankoff lists some of the available carrots: "Washington can send a signal that it is open to renewing the relationship by abandoning the outdated Jackson-Vanik Amendment, adopted in 1974 to pressure Moscow into allowing Soviet Jews to leave for Israel. It can announce that it is willing to open negotiations about its placement of missile interceptor stations in Poland and the Czech Republic. It can signal its long-term commitment to preserving the existing arms control regime, which includes extending the START-I agreement and negotiating new rounds of verifiable mutual reductions. Each of these developments would be desirable in any case; announcing them now would allow the United States to signal its interest in improved relations while putting the ball in Moscow's court."

I largely agree with much of what Mankoff argues, however while it is important that Russia feels respected and treated normally without prejudice, the burden for improving relations cannot solely lie on the shoulders of Washington. Let's not start the Medvedev era with yet another Russia-as-victim narrative. A discussion of some of the "sticks" must accompany all the talk of these carrots.

Matt Stone at The Global Buzz lists several reasons why an eventual rupture between Vladimir Putin and president-elect Dmitri Medvedev could lead to a genuine shift of power in Moscow:

1. Constitutionally and traditionally, the office of president confers more power to its holder than the office of prime minister.

2. Medvedev commands a lot of respect and loyalty inside Gazprom, the state-owned gas giant for which he has served as chairman. Because Gazprom is a very powerful state entity unto itself - the tail that sometimes wags the dog - Medvedev has a built-in support base to counter the former KBG cadres (the siloviki) that have remained loyal to Putin.

3. Loyalty to power and authority are very Russian qualities, stemming (probably) from a historical legacy of very powerful individual rulers. Insofar as the office of president confers status and power to Medvedev over a Prime Minister Putin, how loyal will the elite remain to Putin over Medvedev?

Gary Shteyngart, the Russian-American author of the comic novels "The Russian Debuntante's Handbook" and "Absurdistan" (and a personal favorite of mine) was recently interviewed about current events in Russia by La Vanguardia's Antonio Lozano. The translated extract comes courtesy of Courrier:

"Today Russia is nothing but a gigantic natural gas and oil supplier. It is a dead country. It has a very low birth rate for one thing. And yet in terms of culture, it has the best prose of the19th century, without which contemporary literature cannot be understood. ... When Absurdistan was published in Russia, I was called a traitor to the nation, on the Untied States' pay-roll, but at the same time, several critics said, 'We live in Absurdistan!' ... [Satire] has always been the best political weapon, since Jonathan Swift, and then Gogol, my reference. And it continues to be, with Vladimir Sorokin in Russia and George Saunders and others in the United States."

CNN's special series on "Ruling Russia" by Matthew Chance. See more after the jump. DAXUREvcKREMLIN has a real treasure trove of Russia-related videos.

TODAY: World responses to the Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. Angela Merkel to be Medvedev’s first foreign meeting. Yabloko head on hunger strike in jail.

Maxim Reznik, a Russian opposition activist and member of the Yabloko party, jailed for two months for taking part in anti-Kremlin protests, has gone on a hunger strike. An investigator in Moscow’s police's tax crime department has been arrested on suspicion of trying to extort more than $3 million from a local businessman. An article in the Russian press focuses on freedom of the press under Vladimir Putin. More speculation on who will be invited to join Dmitry Medvedev's "inner circle".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to be the first foreign leader to meet with President-elect Dmitry Medvedev following his election victory.

NYMEX could ultimately be crossed off the list of international oil exchange arrangers in St. Petersburg, following a meeting convened by Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, which focused on creating an oil exchange fully owned by Russia. The head of Russia's largest lender Sberbank said it had raised its net profit by 34% to $790.3 million in January-February 2008. Russia's largest rail container operator, Transcontainer, placed in full its debut five-year bond worth $124.8 million. Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov has come into conflict with First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov over the state corporation's plans to incorporate the government's defense-industry assets. Russia plans to sell up 100 passenger jets to Iran in what would be the largest deal of its kind for Russia's aviation industry.

Germany and central Europe were “bracing themselves” for cuts in gas supplies after Gazprom halved gas supplies to Ukraine. President Dmitry Medvedev has personally asked Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko to settle the country’s gas debt to Moscow, saying “Russia is expecting Kiev to intensify efforts in solving its gas debt problem." Yushchenko, in turn, told Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to restart talks with Moscow urgently. Meanwhile the International Energy Agency said Russia's use of supply cuts to resolve a gas payments row with Ukraine was "excessively harsh" and urged the two countries to settle the dispute in a more commercial way. The US State Department has called for the countries to resolve the dispute “transparently”.

Russia’s UN Ambassador is advising Iran that it suspend its nuclear enrichment program, and that it study the incentives to do so offered by the West. Iran labeled the latest round of UN sanctions “worthless”.

As expected, Opec rolled over its oil-production quotas at its meeting in Vienna today.

With oil futures trading at over $100 a barrel, consuming countries such as the US had lobbied the producer group to release more oil onto the market.

That, though, was always unlikely: oil demand experiences a seasonal dip going into the second quarter and Opec is usually inclined to cut production to shore up prices at this time of year. The cartel has also repeatedly underlined its fears that wobbles in the US economy will soon feed through into lower oil demand.

Writing in the New Republic, Alvaro Vargas Llosa of the Independent Institute points out the irony in the fact that the only way for Dmitri Medvedev to break free of Vladimir Putin's grip in order to implement his liberal reforms would be to wield illiberal "ruthless power" to set up an internal coup:

Eternal Putin

by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

The Kremlin is just as stifling now as it was 20 years ago. Can Dmitry Medvedev help? Does he want to?

The following it an exclusive translation from News.ru:

OMON in Moscow did not let “Dissenters’ March” unfold. Politicians and human rights advocates detained

Several dozen persons were detained during the course of the opposition action “Dissenter’s March”, which they wanted to conduct in Moscow, in the vicinity of Chistye prudy. According to the data of "Echo Moskvy", detained without particular pretext were leader of the SPS Nikita Belykh and leader of the movement “For human rights” Lev Ponomarev. Their lot was shared by members of the OGF [United Civic Front] Alexander Ryklin, Alexander Osovtsov, Kasparov’s advisor Marina Litvinovich. More than 50 persons were detained. Officially it is said that this is the most active participants in the action. The entire vicinity of Chistye prudy is encircled by employees of the OMON and the police.

Below is a translation from Echo Moskvy on the state's crackdown on protests following the presidential elections.

Nothing but Pig Snouts All Around

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Let me say right from the start: that title isn’t mine. It’s not even Russian author Nikolai Gogol’s: in his «The Inspector-General», this is but a phrase by police chief in the final scene. In the given instance – this is a headline from the newspaper «Yaroslavskaya nedelya», which came out on the eve of the elections of the president of Russia.

Front page of a Yaroslavl newspaper before the elections (photo by Grigory Pasko)

TODAY: Aleksanyan will not be released from custody. Foreign investment in internet and mass media restricted. Moscow billionaires. Russia “sacrifices growth to curb inflation”.

The Kremlin is reportedly spending “tens of millions of dollars” on various forms of public diplomacy, including new media ventures to target international audiences and boost its image. A Russian draft law on