December 2008 Archives

The man from the magazine cover and the country in ruins

Grigory Pasko, journalist

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Now it's a different person - Barack Obama. It's doubtful that Putin likes this.

The young oppositioneer Roman Dobrokhotov after he with his outcries had interrupted an appearance of president Medvedev and security had led him out of the hall wrote in livejournal: «They dragged me off to the office of the FSO [federal protection service--GP] and started to interrogate, finding out about my zhzh [«ЖЖ», the Russian abbreviation for "LiveJournal", by which the portal is known in the country--Trans.] and the movement "My" Some kind of gray-haired general-chekist came in, conversed, went out and when he closed the door (slamming it just a tiny bit) the ceiling came crashing down in the office. The general got frightened, opened the door back a crack, looked at the collapsed ceiling: "Did I just do that?", - asked. No-no, not you, they waved him off and he left».

Whole regions - the Urals and Mordovia, for example - are stagnant. Moscow, which used to rain gold on the economy, is also suffering, because it, too, depends on natural resources, and its biggest taxpayers - Gazprom, Lukoil, Transneft - are now in bad shape. Indeed, Moscow's budget has lost about a quarter of its revenues. But, given the tastes and appetites of Moscow's mayor, you can assume that he will continue to pour what money remains into the city's building boom. What does not bring in money - roads, schools, hospitals, and kindergartens - will suffer.

NYT television critic Virginia Heffernan had a great blog post yesterday taking a look at the bizzaro commercials being played inside New York City taxis advertising the 24/7 cable news Kremlin propaganda channel Russia Today.  I've also seen the ads on the Washington DC Metro and all over several U.S. airports.  Heffernan writes: "The newest enigmatic Russia TV ad, which is in heavy rotation in many NYC cabs, is graphically fascinating--and completely disconcerting. I can't get that mistaken-pill thing--the trucker with the blister pack--out of my head."

What would we think if Germans voted Adolf Hitler one of the most popular leaders in its history? We might wonder about its implications; a German move to the extreme Right, and the failure of all the educational efforts made since the end of World War II to educate the current generation about Germany's dismal past. We would despair over what it might mean for minorities in Germany, especially the many new Jewish residents from the former Soviet Union who migrated to Germany in hopes of starting a new life.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Leon Aron sees two trends emerging in Russia that the West should play close attention to:

The first will be a growing dissatisfaction with the government, which may lead to a political crisis. The second will be a reactionary retrenchment: increased internal repression and more of its already troubling foreign policy. Managing the relationship with Moscow in the face of these trends is something President-elect Barack Obama and his administration should start thinking about now.

King & Wood, China's largest law firm, is set to announce the first merger between a mainland Chinese and a foreign law firm, underlining the growing international ambitions of Chinese legal practices.

King & Wood plans to integrate SG Fafalen, a Swiss law firm registered in Hong Kong.

The Swiss firm's founder and owner, Serge Fafalen, could facilitate access to "petrodollar" clients, particularly in Russia, where he has spent much of his professional life, King & Wood believes.

It was an innocuous sounding comment in what appeared to be a routine television interview. But in the six days since Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, described his feelings about taking the oath of office in May, the corridors of power have been buzzing.

"The final responsibility for what happens in the country and for the important decisions taken would rest on my shoulders alone and I would not be able to share this responsibility with anyone," Mr Medvedev told an interviewer. (...)

More than ten years have passed. All this time they're telling us: stability, development, democracy...But you can't fool people's moods. And you won't fool the facts. All around in Russia - those same signs of uncertainly that had been in the years of postperestroika: the economy at zero (the oil price has fallen drastically), the laws aren't working, everybody's thinking only about money and about how to survive...

And those same calls by the leaders of the state: everything's fine, be calm, attune yourself to the pozitiv...

We're not suggesting the mullahs, Putinocracy or the Chávez regime are at death's door. None will give up power easily. Suffice to appreciate the consequences of lower oil for America's enemies. Mr. Chávez can't prop up Castro or Colombia terrorists as before. Iran will have a harder time buying off its restive middle class, and perhaps less money to finance Hezbollah or its terrorist proxies abroad -- though we assume its nuclear program will continue as ever. And Mr. Putin looks his size, less able to wield the energy club against a Ukraine or European Union.

How nice it would be if oil stayed low long enough for a democratic Iran, Venezuela or Russia to emerge from this crisis. Odds are that won't happen. But American policy makers can ensure these rogues won't be inflated in another crude bender. How? It won't be with wind farms or tougher emissions standards. The main culprit in this decade's oil boom has been the Federal Reserve's excessively easy monetary policy and the decline in the dollar. Oil prices rose as fast as the greenback fell. It's a mistake American interests can't afford for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, or his successor, to repeat.

As the financial crisis deadens the exuberance of Putin's leadership, there also has been an increase in dissension between the military/security factions on one side and the economic/business elements on the other. Each is pushing for ascendancy in the Putin-Medvedev bipolar leadership system. There may be no real division between the two men personally, but among the political classes there is a constant effort to test any nascent differences.

For Vladimir Putin's part the forthcoming year carries severe tests. He was very unhappy with command and control during the Georgia conflict. This has been one of the reasons for the military shuffle. The economic crisis is well beyond his ken and he is counting on Medvedev to keep in line the politically liberal but fiscally conservative finance minister, Aleksei Kudrin.

In strict political terms Putin must rule Russia for the first time with a diminishing economic hand. He is unable to reward his favored supporters with the economically related political favors of the past.

The question exists for the forthcoming Obama administration whether an economically weakened Russia is more or less of a danger.

Bragin's article was posted on December 29 on the website of the Russian Popular Democratic Union, an opposition party led by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, whose regional Ulyanovsk branch is headed by Bragin.

Yelena Dikun, a Kasyanov aide, told RFE/RL's Russian Service that law enforcement agencies are accusing Bragin of tarnishing the region's image.

The Georgian eruption had wide-ranging consequences. It embarrassingly exposed the disunity, rivalry and weakness that characterises an energy-dependent European Union in its dealings with Russia. And it placed on full display the emptiness of western security assurances to Georgia as Russian tanks rolled towards Tbilisi.

The war threw the already stalling process of Nato (and EU) eastwards enlargement into disarray, not just in Georgia but also in Ukraine, and left the Bush administration floundering for retaliatory options against Moscow.

But most of all it revealed the bellicosity and insecurity of a Kremlin leadership still apparently controlled by prime minister and former president Vladimir Putin.

The lengths that Russians go to avoid the Army hint at other problems--notably dedovshchina, or rule of the grandfathers, an informal and widespread discipline system in which draftees can be subject to degrading, sometimes violent hazing by their seniors.

In a famous case, conscript Andrei Sychyov had his legs and genitals amputated after being beaten by senior officers on New Year's Day 2005. Another conscript, at the Plesetsk cosmodrome near the Arctic city of Arkhangelsk, was beaten by drunk officers, locked in a dog cage, and died later. More recently, investigators in Novosibirsk said a private slit his wrists in March after suffering abuse.

Draft dodgers in turn fuel corruption, as they bribe officials to give them deferments and certificates saying they served, which they need when applying for jobs.

"It's a giant, corrupt system that includes workers in the conscription offices, medical institutions, and institutions of higher education; because a lot of institutions only exist to give out draft deferments, they don't teach anything," says Golts. In 2005, Georgiy Satarov, a researcher at Indem, a Moscow nonprofit group that tracks corruption, reported that there were around $350 million in bribes related to the draft annually. An Army spokesman was not available for comment.

"If only we had one centimeter" of border, said Alyona Arshinova, 23, an activist with the Kremlin-funded youth group Proryv or Breakthrough, who has a small Russian flag hanging from her key chain. "For me Russia is everything, for me Russia is knowing who I am. Who am I? I am Russia."

The group leader, Dmitry Soin, is no less fervent, praising Russia's commitment to democracy at a time when the West is criticizing it for rolling back democratic reforms. "The winds that are blowing in Russia must start blowing in Transnistria," Soin tells the  group.

Deng Xiao Pu and his team

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Recently in the Russian mass information media there appeared a publication, the main theme of which was - the rating of the broadcast "A Talk with Vladimir Putin", which had been demonstrated to Russians on 5 December of this year. According to this rating, the teleconversation with the premier of the RF was watched by nearly half of the televiewers of Moscow. I don't know how much this is when calculated as human individuals. But , in the opinion of the mass information media, these indicators bear witness that the popularity of mister Putin among the people remains high, while the significance of the format of his teleperformance is incomparably higher than for president Dmitry Medvedev.

Personally, I'm convinced: the ratings of both Putin, and of his protégé Medvedev - are purely a television phenomenon. Were there no television and newspapers, there would be no popularity for these television personalities.

For instance, what are we to make of a legal system that gives a defendant a couple of hours (literally) to find a solicitor, a translator (since she could speak no English), and prepare and present a defence in court to a procedure about which she had literally no understanding? Or where a judge sits in judgement on a case where he himself is implicated as a recipient of one of the real estate discounts that started the whole procedure, and who had previously worked for the family law firm of the primary litigant (Lee Kuan Yew)? Or where a judge (not the same judge) can receive many sets of documents, each hundreds of pages thick and so badly copied and paginated as to substantially illegible and unreadable, and yet two and a half hours later bring down a legal judgement based on his considered legal interpretation of the implications of their contents? Or where a summons to chambers is issued by an appellant's lawyers rather than by the court, but the court upholds it? Or where evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt the innocence of the defendant is not only refused admission in court, but all record of its existence is expunged from the record?

Singapore's authorities already enjoy a reputation as the world's most litigation prone, but even by local standards this year has been exceptional. Not only was the REVIEW in September found to have defamed Prime Minister Lee and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, with an appeal now pending, but The Wall Street Journal Asia was also fined a record amount for contempt of court in a finding last month.

By the time you read this exclusive translation, the original article will probably have been pulled from the net by censors. We found this remarkable posting in the "Forum" section of the official website of the MVD RF - the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation - the siloviki agency responsible for, among other things, the country's police force. The author is apparently a policeman himself, addressing his colleagues. He posted his message on Friday evening, quite likely because, as one of the many people who have already commented on the article explains, "there usually aren't moderators on the site weekends." By the way, the overwhelming majority of the incredible number of readers who have left comments have chosen to remain anonymous, while the bulk of those who do provide a name give a pseudonym and don't provide their email address, no doubt in the naïve belief that this will make it less likely their true identity can be traced by the organs.

Subject: WE ARE THE REGIME'S DOGS ON A CHAIN
Author:
Date: 19.12.2008 20:48

Dear colleagues. Russia is found at a critical boundary. Economic catastrophe is drawing near. Hundreds of thousands of our compatriots, our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters will be thrown out on the street. This crisis has opened the eyes of the people, has shown who is who in our country. The soap bubble of the stabilization fund has burst and has not brought us benefit. Billions of petrodollars flowed as a river to us, but our rulers did not even think of putting this money into the development of the economy, science, agriculture, many sectors. And now they are rendering assistance to bankers, allocating them 5 trillion rubles at 5 percent, so those would give out loans to our enterprises at 20 percent per year.

Now, the Kremlin has thrown down a new challenge to Sarkozy, to the EU, and to the OSCE (one of the most important examples of successful US diplomacy) at a time when Washington preferred jaw-jaw to war-war. In the six-point agreement Medvedev signed with Sarkozy pride of place went to a clause which stated "the international observation team of the OSCE will continue to exercise their mandate" as defined before the conflict.

The OSCE mission with the duty to observe and report on what was happening in the disputed territories has been in place since 1991. Now the Kremlin has ordered its expulsion in clear violation of the Sarkozy-Medvedev agreement. The mission was never more than 200 strong. It could not stop Russian ethnic cleansing of Georgians or prevent Georgian president Saakashvili's attack. But the contempt and cynicism with which the Kremlin has expelled the OSCE mission shows that a solemn agreement signed by the Russian president is worthless. Pacta non sunt servanda is Putin's new contribution to the lexicon of 21st century diplomacy.

"The younger generation is fed with myths about Stalin. It knows nothing about the millions who died in Gulag camps but well knows he was a strong leader who defeated (Nazi) Germany," human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov told Reuters.

He said a whiff of Stalinism was felt in Russia's harsh tone with the West which has criticized Moscow of backtracking on democratic reforms and keeping a tight lid on dissent.

"Again, foreign enemies are to blame for all internal problems, so you need to rule with an iron fist -- it's a purely Stalinist method."

A British diplomat in Moscow knocked over a pedestrian who turned out to be a senior Russian spy.

The accident threatens to reopen a simmering diplomatic row between London and Moscow which has seen British officials intimidated and institutions closed.

Andrew Sheridan, 35, told police he was driving his official Ford Mondeo on General Dorokhov Street in western Moscow when the pedestrian walked out from behind a parked car, giving him no time to stop. (...)

The Russians later revealed that the man he hit, causing head injuries and a broken leg, was a colonel in the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

He was named as Alexander T, 38, apparently to help to hide his identity. He works for an elite academy training agents for frontline duties, including securing borders.

This fall, as I was preparing to travel to the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia, one of the cafeteria ladies in the journalism school where I teach stepped out from behind the pastry counter and asked a favor.

"Go talk to my neighbors," she said, writing down an address in Abkhazia's capital, Sukhumi. "Find out what happened to my husband."

Mr. Obama does have a few advantages in dealing with Russia: He is new, and the Russians are no less intrigued by him than the rest of the world. Neither he nor his foreign-policy team can have any illusions about Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. And Russia is deep in economic crisis. Mr. Putin's popularity and power have been based largely on Russia's windfall profits from soaring energy prices. Now the Russian stock market is in free fall and factories are closing, while Mr. Putin's ratings slip.

Mr. Obama should signal to the Russians that he wants better relations. That would mean cutting back on belligerent talk and inviting the Russians to high-level consultations on areas in which the two countries can quickly achieve cooperation -- say, on combating piracy. Mr. Obama should consider renewing the Start 1 treaty on reducing strategic nuclear forces, which expires in December 2009. He could tone down demands for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, especially since neither is ready, and review plans to station defensive missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic.

For every gesture, the United States would make clear that it expects a tangible response, starting with help in ending Iran's nuclear program and continuing with cooperation against international terrorism and a withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia.

However for those of us involved in highly public legal cases in Russia, we long ago became accustomed to this condition of "suspended animation." Whenever I attempt to explain to colleagues what it is like to fight a truly political case, I often say that the first thing to understand is that this genre often resides completely outside of the law. For so many of these cases, every "legal" outcome is in fact a decision handed down from the highest levels of the Russian Federation.

The involvement of law enforcement officers in contract killings should be a momentous scandal, but the elimination of independent centers of power in Russia under Prime Minister (and former president) Vladimir Putin has created a situation in which the organs of law enforcement are integrated into the corrupt oligarchies that run the country. When the interests of those oligarchies are threatened by independent reporting, law enforcement is unable to restrain corrupt interests and is often in league with them. As a result, contract killers function as the ultimate censors.

"There are no representatives of the state on the board," Voloshin said after his appointment, but added that "the successful development of Norilsk Nickel will benefit my dear country."

Voloshin brings to the post a wealth of government experience and connections. He served as former President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff, a job he retained for several years under Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin. One of his deputies under Putin was Dmitry Medvedev, the current president. (...)

That, of course, seems highly unlikely. Less than five months after the August war, the West is gradually returning to business as usual with Moscow. In November, the EU decided to resume talks on a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Russia. NATO, after refusing to offer membership road maps to Georgia and Ukraine earlier this month, last week resumed high-level meeting with Moscow after a four-month hiatus in response to the war. That informal meeting between NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Moscow's NATO Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin was intended to explore ways of restarting formal contacts.

In short, Russia's military muscle-flexing in August seems to be paying off, as David Smith, director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center, argues in "Jane's Defense Weekly." Nikolas Busse wrote in "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" that the August war seems to have had little downside for the tandem of Prime Minister Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. (...)

The other day I was reading an interesting article over The Power Vertical, which was published last week, about an open letter signed by the eminently respected former Moscow City Court judge Sergei Pashin to President Dmitry Medvedev urging him to reject the resolution passing through the Duma to eliminate jury trials for terrorism cases (a subject we have reported on also).  The Power Vertical article referred to an interview given by Pashin to Novye izvestia which we offer in full exclusive translation below, which brings to light all the problems of corruption and opportunism of the judicial process by members of the FSB and Kremlin - which is essentially the cornerstone of everything that has gone wrong in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

16 December 2008
Merited jurist of the RF, judge (ret.) Sergey Pashin:
«The article about espionage - rubber»
NADEZHDA KRASILOVA

Yesterday a group of representatives of the intelligentsia, jurists and human rights advocates directed an open letter to the president with a request to lay a veto on the draft law adopted by the State Duma that limits the activity of jurors. We will remind that they now will not be able to decide the fate of persons accused of terrorism, the taking of hostages, mass disorders, as well as of treason and espionage. Practically concurrently the government introduced in the State Duma a new draft law, which significantly expands the content of the understanding «state treason». This initiative likewise evoked the protest of human rights advocates. One of the authors of the letter to the president merited jurist of the RF Sergey PASHIN recounted to«NI» what such laws can lead to.

Russian authorities told commercial banks not to increase their foreign currency positions or risk losing their access to the central bank's liquidity through collateral-free auctions.

Instead, the central bank gave banks a possibility to park their foreign currency in interest-free accounts with the central bank. Ulyukayev said "several billion" were currently held in these accounts.

Commercial banks' accounts in the central bank are matched by corresponding foreign currency positions in the central bank's assets, which count as part of the international reserves.

We have oftentimes pointed out the similarities between Vladimir Putin's Russia and Hugo Chávez's Venezuela on this blog, arguing that these symbiotic developments go far beyond joint naval exercises, illegal expropriations of oil companies, and constitutional destruction.  In fact, it's often hard to tell who is copying who.  Now we see that Venezuela also has their own political prisoners - as below an exclusive translation from El Nacional tells the story of Eligio Cedeño, an innocent businessman who has spent 22 months behind bars without any sentence from any court.  Download the original Spanish here.

The Government uses the courts to punish "prisoners of the state"

The lawyer Gonzalo Himiob assured that the victims are not only political, but also personal.

By Vanessa Gomez Quiroz
El Nacional, Dec. 23, 2008, pp. 5

"There's no difference between political prisoners and the prisoners of the state," said Gonzalo Himiob, a lawyer specialized in human rights, who now has become one of the legal representatives of the businessman Eligio Cedeño, who has been imprisoned for 22 months.

Himiob explains that after studying the case against Cedeño, he determined that there aren't any legal variations between what happened to this banker and other individuals, for example such as the police chiefs Henry Vivas, Lázaro Forero, and Iván Simonovis, who are already icons of judicial rights and due process violations.

Gazprom has also been hit. Last summer, Mr. Miller boasted it would be the world's biggest company by market value within seven to ten years, with a capitalization of $1 trillion. At the time, Gazprom's market cap was $360 billion. Now it's around a quarter of that.

Worse lies ahead. Natural gas prices tend to follow oil prices with a six- to nine-month lag: With crude down more than $100 since reaching a record high of $147 a barrel in July, gas prices are expected to fall steeply next year. That will mean a sharp decline in Gazprom's export revenues from mid-2009.

Still, Mr. Putin, addressing the gas exporters' forum, warned that the price of gas would inevitably rise again in coming years. Producing gas fields are in decline, he said, and most untapped resources are in remote areas. Russia will need to invest billions of dollars to develop new fields in places like the Yamal Peninsula and the Barents Sea, which lack basic infrastructure and will need to be connected by pipeline to areas where gas is consumed.

Gazprom said Tuesday its board had approved investments for 2009 of $32.5 billion, up 12% from this year's levels.

"That means that despite the global financial crisis...the era of cheap energy, including cheap gas, is ending," Mr. Putin said.

By late morning on Christmas Eve, WTI was down 51 cents at $38.49 a barrel, while Brent crude was 60 cents lower at $39.76 a barrel.

The latest price falls came as bickering between oil producing nations intensified. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries suggested it may hold a meeting in January to discuss further production cuts after those announced in previous meetings failed to halt the slide in prices.

Apart from Russia's excellent fiscal policy, just about everything has been wrong with the country's economic policy since authorities arrested former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October 2003. Shortly after this, Yukos was confiscated. The only significant short-term relief is to free the ruble so it can depreciate. Apart from the very fall in oil and other commodity prices and the international liquidity squeeze, Putin has caused the lion's share of the country's current economic problems.

Phillip Pan of the Washington Post offers some ideas about the meaning of Nikita Belykh's appointment as governor of Kirov province - a move which destroyed the Union of Right Forces in one swipe, but inserted an unexpectedly fresh face into the governing coalition.  Wouldn't it be nice if the governors could just freely compete in elections?

The appointment, which prompted accusations of betrayal by some of Belykh's colleagues, is a sign of the uncertainty surrounding Russian politics as Putin confronts the country's worst economic crisis in a decade and the fractured opposition tries to tap into rising public discontent and mount a new challenge. (...)

Although more than three-quarters of Russians continue to approve of Putin and Medvedev, 40 percent now say the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 24 percent in September, according to a recent poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center. About 43 percent said the country was moving in the right direction, and 18 percent declined to answer.

We've posted several articles already about the recent mass demonstrations in Vladivostok and other Russian cities against the recent steep increase in import duties on foreign cars - Vladimir Putin's version of the recent Detroit "bailout" in the US. Today, our own Russia correspondent Grigory Pasko, who spent a significant portion of his adult life in Vladivostok as a reporter for the Pacific Fleet newspaper, weighs in on the subject as well. But a few points of explanation are in order before he does:

Pasko does not refer to these demonstrations as "demonstrations" in his article. He calls them "mitingi" in Russian, which is a word derived from the English "meeting" but which actually means something more akin to "rally". In Russian, a "demonstration" means a government-sponsored event with lots of red flags and happy proletarians "voluntarily" expressing their support of (or outrage at) whatever they've been told to express it about.

Russia Profile is carrying the following opinion article by Alexander Arkhangelsky.

December 22, 2008
Mercy for the Fallen
Comment by Alexander Arkhangelsky
Special to RIA Novosti

Acts of compassion should be the rule, not the exception

In the past month small, unconnected and apparently spontaneous steps forward have been made on several humanitarian issues. Alexander Arkhangelsky argues that these could be a reason for optimism, if the state allows these small steps of compassion to become the rule, rather than the exception. The alternative - continuing to resist opening up the political system - means denying any outlet for popular sentiment to let off steam. The results of that could be disastrous.

Are hangmen sad at night?

Grigory Pasko, journalist

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President of the RF Dmitry Medvedev, appearing at the beginning of December at the All-Russian Congress of Judges, made a series of important declarations. In part, he declared about the necessity of adopting a law consolidating various forms of promulgating information about the work of courts. He likewise said about the necessity of creating a unitary disciplinary organ, which would be able to control the application of disciplinary measures of influence on judges.

"If there arise substantive questions toward a judge, he needs to be kicked out not during the course of three years, but right away, when this has taken place", - said the president.

There is probably nobody in the world already who could have been deceived by these words of the Russian president. The fact of the matter is that the leadership of Russia already has a reputation: this is people who nearly always say the right words, and these words nearly always diverge with the real deeds.

Russian state bank VEB may launch a last-ditch attempt to improve the Russian stock market's dismal 2008 performance with stepped-up cash interventions in thin holiday trade, analysts and traders said on Monday.

"VEB is expected to take advantage of quieter international markets to push the price of state enterprise shares higher into the year-end," Uralsib equity strategist Chris Weafer said in a weekly stock market comment.

VEB, the clearinghouse for hundreds of billions of roubles in government bailout funds, said late last month it had received 115 billion roubles ($4.15 billion) out of a promised 175 billion roubles for direct intervention on the stock market.

"We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance," Politkovskaya wrote in The Guardian two years before her death. "All we have left is the Internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit."

More broadly, the Russian government is facing a serious economic crisis on several fronts. Just six months ago, its huge pile of almost $600 billion in foreign reserves seemed a symbol of the country's new-found strength. But they have got through roughly a quarter of that in just three months - mainly through supporting the rouble. At this rate, it will all be gone well before the end of 2009. That is not an entirely implausible scenario, because the fiscal pressures on the Russian government are only likely to grow over the next year. Official projections are still that the economy will grow by about 3%; but private-sector economists in Moscow are talking about a deep recession. With oil down at just over $40 a barrel, the cash-spigot has been turned off.

There is a danger that, as the government comes under increasing fiscal pressure, it will be tempted to raid the foreign reserves for ordinary budget spending - espescially if the alternative involves cutting social spending and risking further popular unrest.

European Court of Human Rights orders Russia to release AIDS prisoner

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held in a judgment issued today, 22nd December 2008, that the continued detention of Vasily Aleksanyan by the Russian authorities is 'unacceptable'.

STRASBOURG, 22nd December 2008: The ECHR, in a judgement issued this morning, ordered the release of Mr Vasily Aleksanyan, a 37 year old lawyer who has been held in detention by the Russian authorities since April 6th 2006 (991 days). Mr Aleksanyan suffers from AIDS and a number of concomitant diseases, including AIDS-related lymphatic cancer, and is nearly blind.

The following is an exclusive translation from today's edition of El Nacional, a leading daily newspaper in Venezuela - an interview with an expert on Russia-Venezuela relations.

EL NACIONAL - Domingo 21 de Diciembre de 2008Mundo/14

Carlos Romero - an academic disapproves ideologization

Chavez operates with Russia like the Cold War

The UCV and Unimet professor argues that the government is looking to get into the international game through the rivalry between Washington and Moscow

BY ARMANDO AVELLANEDA

Politicization and ideologization are, for Carlos Romero, professor of international relations at the Central University of Venezuela and the Metropolitan, the words that best sum up in his judgment the management of Hugo Chavez's diplomatic relations with Russia in 2008.

He does not think it is entirely negative that relations have been getting closer with Moscow. He regrets, however, that the president is using these relations to attack the United States and attempt to play "international poker."

People form a human chain outside the regional government building during a rally of motorists protesting against car import duties in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk December 21, 2008. Russian riot police detained at least 100 people on Sunday protesting against government measures linked to the economic crisis, a crackdown that highlighted official sensitivity to growing hardship. Protests took place across Russia against car import tariffs, which are being raised to prop up car producers and discourage Russians from buying second-hand vehicles.REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin (RUSSIA)

Although it's not exactly clear who he is talking to, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is sending an aggressive warning for the holiday season:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned Russia's foes on Friday against trying to destabilize a country facing broadening economic crisis, Russian news agencies reported.

Putin did not specify who might pose a threat to Russia's stability. But in the past, he has often blamed Western security services of trying to destabilize the country using opposition groups and non-governmental organizations as their instruments.

"Any attempts to weaken or destabilize Russia, harm the interests of the country will be toughly suppressed," they quoted ex-KGB spy Putin as telling an annual meeting of top spies and security officers ahead of their professional holiday.

Moreover, without the Soviet Union, European socialists have few foreign causes to take to heart: few understand Putin's Russia, and today's totalitarian-capitalist China is too far and too strange. And, since Barack Obama's election, anti-Americanism is no longer a viable way to garner support. The good old days when Trotskyites and socialists found common ground in bashing the United States are over.

The ideological weakness and division of the left will not, of course, exclude them from power. Leaders can cling to office, as José Zapatero is doing in Spain and Gordon Brown is doing in the UK. The left may ultimately win general elections elsewhere if the new Keynesian right proves unable to end the crisis. But whether in opposition or in power, the socialists have no distinct agenda.

The lesson from Greece, however, is that what European socialists should fear most is the far left's taste and talent for disruption. For the hollowing out of socialism has a consequence. To paraphrase Marx, a spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of chaos.

An outspoken Kremlin critic could face the loss of a 25 per cent stake in Aeroflot, Russia's national airline, if his bank is refused a bail-out loan by the Russian state.

Aleksander Lebedev, chairman of Russia's National Reserve Bank, confirmed yesterday that he was in talks with VEB, the Russian state bank, for a $130m loan to stave off a margin call on a stake of about 25 per cent of Russia's national airline, which fell due last night.

"We've been trying, but I'm not sure if we've been successful, because the procedure is not very clear," he said in an interview with the Financial Times. "But we haven't been told no." (...)

By sending its warships to the Western hemisphere, Moscow aims to show that it too can flex its muscles in an adversary's backyard.

But its cruise through Venezuelan and Panamanian waters have ruffled frustratingly few feathers in Washington.

Asked how it felt to watch the first Russian warship since the Second World War to transit the Panama Canal, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said: "I guess they're on R&R. It's fine".

Writing in the Moscow Times, Yevgeny Kiselyov points out that the latest changes to the criminal code on treason present some frightening possibilities.

Human rights advocates are in shock. The definition of an "act" of treason is so loosely defined that prosecutors and law enforcement agencies can interpret it any way they see fit. Moreover, even inactivity could qualify as an "act" of treason. Imagine that a journalist or political commentator submits to the foreign press an article that criticizes the constitutional amendment to extend the presidential term from four to six years or expresses the same idea to a foreign diplomat during an embassy reception. That could easily qualify under the new law as consulting a foreign organization on a subject directed against Russia's "constitutional order."

And what if a person, after finding out that his fellow citizen has established a "suspicious contact" with a foreigner or foreign organization, fails to inform the police or Federal Security Service in a timely manner about the suspected traitor? His failure to act would also make him guilty of high treason under the new legislation.

Gao dressed and acted like a Silicon Valley moneyman rather than one from Wall Street--open-necked tattersall shirt, muted plaid jacket, dark slacks, scuffed walking shoes. Rimless glasses. His father was a Red Army officer who was on the Long March with Mao. As a teenager during the Cultural Revolution, Gao worked on a railroad-building gang and in an ammunition factory. He is 55, fit-looking, with crew-cut hair and a jokey demeanor rather than an air of sternness.

His comments below are from our one on-the-record discussion, two weeks before the U.S. elections. As I transcribed his words, I realized that many will look more astringent on the page than they sounded when coming from him. In person, he seemed to be relying on shared experience in the United States--that is, his and mine--to entitle him to criticize the country the way its own people might. The conversation was entirely in English. Because Gao's answers tended to be long, I am not presenting them in straight Q&A form but instead grouping his comments about his main recurring themes.

Does America wonder who its new Chinese banking overlords might be? This is what one of the very most influential of them had to say about the world financial crisis, what is wrong with Wall Street, whether one still-poor country with tremendous internal needs could continue subsidizing a still-rich one, and how he thought America could adjust to its "realistic" place in the world. My point for the moment is to convey what it is like to hear from such a man, rather than to expand upon, challenge, or agree with his stated views.

Continue reading here.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece today on a very influential former British Army captain, Ryan Grist, who was serving as an OSCE war monitor in Georgia before he went AWOL across the Russian line on his own improvised fact-finding mission.  Grist's comments to the media on the start of the war have been twisted and turned by both parties, and it's clear in this article that he's eager to clear up confusion.  (RA also had a post yesterday on the war debate)

Mr. Grist was in charge on the ground for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe when fighting erupted in Georgia's separatist enclave of South Ossetia on the night of Aug. 7. Last month, he caused a stir when he told interviewers that his ceasefire monitors never heard Russian-backed provocations that Georgia says triggered the war.

He also says he repeatedly warned OSCE diplomats that Georgia might attack, but was ignored. Since giving his reports on the war, "I've been accused of working for MI6 and the KGB and I have been called a liar," says Mr. Grist. "I just wanted to find out what was going on." (...)

Marcel H. Van Herpen, who heads up the Cicero Foundation, has released a new paper entitled "Russia, Georgia and the European Union: The Creeping Finlandization of Europe."  As one can observe from the opening allegory in the paper about Europe's soft post-invasion response to Russia's military actions in Georgia, Van Herpen intends to pull no punches in his condemnation of European sycophancy:

It is as if suddenly a wolf had broken into a henhouse and the chickens run in all directions in a desperate sauve qui peut. After the first shock the chickens start to accuse each other: whose fault was it that the wolf came in? And they come up with different reasons. Maybe we spoke too loud, or the wolf has been humiliated. Maybe we provoked the wolf or did not treat him with the necessary respect. Thereupon they decide not to provoke him, to treat him gently and with more respect than ever. The wolf, however, knows very well why he came: he simply had hunger...

This has nothing directly to do with Russia, but the news clip below contains a short discussion on this week's 30th anniversary of China's economic political reform - a time for us to take a look at what has changed (and what hasn't), what's been accomplished (and failed), and measure the strengths of this emerging competitor with its weaknesses. This blog is of the opinion that too many of us overestimate China in future projections, and fail to address the size and scope of its many systemic problems.

The problem with China is that, in the Russian Far East, people are living in the 21st century on the Chinese side of the Amur River, while on the Russian side they are still stuck in the 19th century. On the Chinese side is the prosperous boom town of Heihe. On this side is the dilapidated and run-down city of Blagoveschensk. Russia ships train cars filled with raw timber and oil south into China, while on the opposite tracks, trains bring in manufactured goods and laborers from China.

In contrast to the United States, China has territorial claims on Russia. And in contrast to our officials, the Chinese think in terms of millenniums, not dollars. But we do not discuss our "China problem" at all because Russia's government is in about the same condition as those buildings in Blagoveschensk -- and that makes it too frightening to even bring up the subject. It is easier to discuss problems that don't really exist, such as the issue of collective security in Europe.

Defining treason in legal terms is an inherently political process, fraught with bitter contention, weight of history, suspicions of abuse, and no shortage of nationalist grandstanding.  But probably not for Russia, which this week introduced a new bill to the Duma asking for modifications to the legislation to make the criteria more open and arbitrary - which critics see as a naked weapon of repression for the executive to prosecute any national acting against their political interests.

We shouldn't expect any kind of vigorous public debate.  It's difficult to imagine that the new legislation will awaken any more public concern or conscience among citizens as the changes to extremism legislation a few years ago.  Beyond just a handful of can-you-believe-this-latest-Russian-outrage type articles in the Western media, the matter will quickly be forgotten and buried until the authorities choose to deploy the legislation.

The very introduction of theme of treason, for any country, carries a difficult implication for the judiciary, which includes a definition of the national interest and an splitting of sovereignty between the state, the people, and the individual.

The following is an exclusive translation from RBK Daily on the preparations being made by the Russian security forces to handle an uprising or unrest over the economic crisis.

In expectation of uprisings

The powers have rethought reducing interior troops

Yesterday, the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] decided not to reduce the interior troops (VV), called upon, in part, to disperse demonstrators. The command of the troops justifies this by «tasks that have been set», without specifying them. In the opinion of experts, the siloviki seriously fear unrest among the unemployed, automobilists, discharged military, those dissatisfied with the growth of housing-and-public-utilities tariffs and other victims of the crisis and of the decisions of government officials.

«Reduction of the internal troops of the MVD of Russia will be suspended», -- reported, citing a decision of the leadership of the country, commander in chief of the VV general of the army Nikolai Rogozhkin. He in no way connects the decision to maintain the numbers of the VV with the financial crisis, citing the «necessity of fulfilling all tasks that have been set», but which ones specifically, Mr. Rogozhkin does not specify.

Yesterday we blogged that Russia had a number of reasons to stay outside the sway of OPEC, not least because they wouldn't want to risk their hard-earned international standing in groups such as the G8 and the succession effort to the WTO, but rather because this government in particular is very sensitive about committing to legal or political interdependence with other groups (the Kremlin has ignored the European Court on Human Rights for many years now, and is not likely to allow a Saudi oil minister to call in their production quotas).

Today, the gap between Russia's rhetoric and reality in participating in the oil cartel became clearer:

Russia proved only a half-hearted helper to OPEC at a key meeting Wednesday aimed at boosting oil prices, and distanced itself from talk of a closer union with the oil producers' club. (...)

Russian Deputy Premier Igor Sechin said his country's oil companies could slash output next year to help bolster tumbling crude prices, but stopped short of solid commitments beyond cuts the struggling producers have already made.

Neither OPEC nor Russia announced any decisions Wednesday on closer ties between the two, despite recent talk from Russian officials about possible cooperation.

Sechin said Russia had proposed "permanent observer status" but said the group still has to determine what that means.

Sechin did not rule out full membership eventually, but said, "We are not rushing."

We've done a fair amount of blogging about the case of the terminally ill former Yukos general counsel Vasily Alexanyan, who after spending years in prison under no charges and subjected to essentially fatal medical blackmail, was recently given an opportunity to be released on bail - but only by paying the Russian government a staggering $1.78 million bond.  Today the Associated Press reports that he is understandably not too happy about that:

Ill former Yukos executive denounces bail request

The gravely ill former executive of the dismantled Russian oil giant Yukos says the $1.8 million bail for his release from jail is "cynical."

Vasily Aleksanian, who suffers from AIDS and tuberculosis and has almost lost his eyesight, has been jailed since 2006 on embezzlement and money-laundering charges.

The 36-year old U.S.-trained lawyer said in Wednesday's statement that the bail granted by the Moscow City Court earlier this month was a "cynical derision of law and common sense."

Yukos, once Russia's largest oil producer, was broken up and sold off in auctions ordered by the state.

Criminal cases against jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his executives are widely regarded as Kremlin revenge for Khodorkovsky's political ambitions.

Contract with the devil

Grigory Pasko, journalist

The regional congress of non-commercial (human rights and civic) organzations (NCOs) took place from 4 through 7 December in Penza. In the year 2005, the congress took place in Poland, while in 2007 -- in the Ukraine. Then the co-organizers were the Council of Europe and representatives of the NCOs. This time, for the first time ever, appearing as co-organizer of the event was the Commission of the Federation Council of the RF for Questions of the Development of Institutions of Civil Society. This circumstance aroused the indignation of Russian human rights advocates, because there exists a long-standing understanding - the state must not participate in such an event in the capacity of an organizer, inasmuch as in this case it itself forms the agenda, the participants... In short, it functions according to the principle: whoever pays the piper gets to call the tune. The «tune» for the Russian power is just one and it's rather old: to incorporate Russian NCOs into the infamous vertical of power.

As if right on cue to accompany the news that Russia's industrial output has slumped by more than 10% for the month of November - far exceeding even the worst expectations - the Financial Times is running a piece which asks how long the political leadership will be able to weather the storm.  Although Masha Lipman says mass protests aren't likely to spring up immediately, one should never underestimate the cohesive, organizational power of suddenly having a common grievance to fight for.  The article also mentions the swelling rumors of Vladimir Putin's increasing discomfort in the role of prime minister, and the possibility of a shift in office to make someone else carry out the deeply unpopular devaluation of the ruble.

Pavel Teplukhin, president of Troika Dialog Asset Management, points to a 20 per cent drop in railway freight traffic between October 2007 and October 2008, and a drop in electricity consumption of between 3 and 5 per cent over the same period. The iron and steel sector has been hard hit, with the big steel plant at Magnitogorsk, in the Urals, cutting production by up to 30 per cent.

There are two big dangers for Mr Putin. One is a substantial forced devaluation of the rouble. The other is a sharp increase in unemployment.  (...)

From a book review of History's Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks by Sean McMeekin.

'The knell of private property sounds', wrote Karl Marx. 'The expropriators are being expropriated.' Nothing could have been more true. From the beginning, the Bolsheviks had embraced violence and terror: 'A revolution without firing squads is meaningless,' said Lenin. But he had also, since the early years of the twentieth century, used 'expropriation' - the Marxist-Bolshevist euphemism for bank robbery - to raise party funds: the planning and execution of a run of violent but daring heists was how the young Stalin had first won Lenin's approval. When a worthy and prim comrade criticised this style of banditry, Lenin just laughed and said, 'That's precisely the type of man we need.'

"There were two people in the bus who were throwing them out," said delegate Ella Polyakova, who witnessed the incident. "We started to yell at them, and they shouted back saying the same fate awaits us." (...)

Irina Novozhilova, head of the animal rights group Vita, said her organization along with several others will ask the Prosecutor General's Office to open a criminal case in connection with animal cruelty.

"This is shocking to torture animals to achieve political goals," Novozhilova said. "Those who organized this disgusting act must be found and punished."

Below we've got another exclusive translation from RBK Daily, which our regular readers understand is almost amusingly pro-government news source from Russia which at times can help glean insights into Kremlin thinking.  According to this latest piece, it seems like we should brace ourselves for a full-on assault of what's left of the besieged constitution of the Russian Federation.  Original source link here.

A tsarist attribute

Russians do not consider that the Constitution plays a particular role

A mere one fifth of Russians consider that the current Russian Constitution guarantees the rights and freedoms of citizens. A third of citizens assert that the Constitution does not play a significant role in the life of the country, «inasmuch as few reckon with it». Such are the results of a survey timed by the Levada-Center to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the Fundamental Law of the country.

Recently, my German acquaintance phoned and asked how people in Russia are weathering the crisis. I replied: they tell each other jokes. He, apparently, did not understand. I will explain in this article. Inasmuch as there aren't so many owners of steamships and factories and stocks in Russia, then the quantity of jokes about those who do own them, naturally, has increased.

The statistics, for example, on the new website www.sokratili.ru [the word "sokratili" means "they laid me off" in this case--Trans.], of course, are not happy. But the people rejoice. Probably this is a kind of way to get oneself out of a state of depression and to avoid a lousy mood from getting lousy news.

Specialists assert that humor in Russia since Soviet times, when strict censorship reigned, is the revenge of the little person, a safety valve with the help of which he or she makes the often unbearable reality bearable and with the help of laughter becomes its master. I don't know if this is so. For example, I like my humor without all those socio-political inferences. When the people laugh - that means they're alive and are going to keep on living.

The general dynamics of the LNG market suggest a cartel may be much more difficult to put together than is feared. Russia, dominant in Europe, may benefit from a short-term respite in competition over European market share, yet with over a quarter of the world's gas reserves it is bound, in due time, to seek a larger presence there and in other regions. Iran currently plays a negligible role on the international gas market, while Qatar, at 9.2% of world's gas reserves, accounts for less than 2% of international gas production. OGEC would therefore need to be structured in a way that reflects not only current production but also allows for Iran and Qatar to capitalize on their reserve base by ratcheting-up production and market-share over time. Otherwise, any cooperation on price or production levels would at most be a "cessation of competition," quickly recognized by smaller members as an attempt to throttle their revenues and ambitions.

Related to the earlier post, here is the news clip of Russia's alleged spy, Lira Tskhovrebova, sent to pitch the invasion of Georgia in Washington DC.

File this one under "caught red handed."  The Kremlin might take note that they shouldn't have their spies posing as "independent South Ossetian activists" hiring elite public relations firms.  From the Associated Press:

Georgia's interior minister, Vano Merabishvili, told the AP on Monday that Tskhovrebova was spying for Russia's security services. Tskhovrebova ridiculed the idea and said she is the victim of a smear campaign. But U.S. officials said they have become wary of her - questioning who paid for her Washington tour - and regret providing U.S. government money to pay for the event this week at George Mason University where Tskhovrebova was expected to speak.

Tskhovrebova's trip reflects the high-stakes campaign between Georgia and Russia, each eager to blame the other for their August war and to influence U.S. policy as Barack Obama assumes the presidency.

Tskhovrebova said she did not know Georgian intelligence had been intercepting her calls until the AP showed her transcripts of the conversations. The wiretaps make clear her conversations have been routinely intercepted since at least 2005. There is no evidence Tskhovrebova had access to secret information, but Guliev appeared interested in her frequent contact with Western organizations.

Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting on Siemens $528.3 million bribery settlement with German authorities, while the claim with U.S. under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is now underway.  Anyone still curious where the majority of the bribes went?

There's been a lot coverage recently of these outbreaks of violence from Russian nationalists directed toward migrants and foreigners - a trend that some say is passively tolerated by the state.  Though the loss of jobs caused by the economic crisis appears to worsening the situation, most acknowledge that Russia's future economic growth is heavily dependent on migrant labor given the demographic situation.

From the New York Times article "Migrant Worker Decapitated in Russia"

In 2008, 85 people have been reported killed and 367 injured in attacks
by violent nationalists, said Ms. Kozhevnikova, though she said that
the numbers were likely far higher since many attacks go unrecorded or
are reported months after they occur. Most of the victims tend to be
dark-skinned men from Central Asia or the Caucasus region, though
tourists and foreign students have also been attacked.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has condemned racist violence but also called for new limits on the number of work permits given to migrant laborers -- a position critics say is impractical and inflames xenophobic sentiment. Last month, a Kremlin-controlled youth group staged a rally calling on officials to close the borders to migrants so more jobs would be available for Russians during the economic crisis.

A police spokesman said detectives are examining "various theories" in Azizov's killing and had "no proof of the suggestion that skinheads might have been involved."

But Rykova said the authorities were denying the obvious. She warned that violence could get worse if the economic crisis intensifies and politicians continue to use xenophobic rhetoric. "We're sitting on a mine that can blow up at any moment," she said.

Back in the days when I was studying the lost science of Sovietology, every year the Soviet newspapers would boast of record harvests that had overfulfilled the plan, while the reality was much grimmer. Even if the numbers weren't doctored, the sad fact was that a very large part of this grain never made it far past the collective farm. In these days of the extenuated economic crisis and low oil prices, I think we are seeing the return of this kind of official hyperbole and Stakhanovite ambition, as an article we have translated after the jump reports on the curious combination of a "record" grain harvest yet continually higher prices for bread.

In the past, it wasn't hard to see through the ruse on the grain harvests.  First, there was always a shortage of hands to harvest it, and college students would be forced to leave their studies to go help the peasants; not that there were any living facilities for them in the middle of the steppe. Second, there was always a shortage of working farm equipment, so some of the grain was never even harvested, and was simply left to rot on the stalk, while what had been harvested would be piled uncovered in the open fields due to a shortage of storage elevators and trucks to transport it to them, and would spoil at the first autumn rain. Finally, much of the grain that did manage to get put on trucks would spill out of holes in the rusty vehicles as they bounced their way along Russia's notoriously horrible roads.

Don't Read this Book
By Stanislav Markelov

There are books that are an element of ritual irrespective of their content. Earlier, as they say under the tsar Gorokh [in times immemorial--Trans.], every peasant always had a Psalter in his hut, although the greater part of them did not know how to read.

Today the same kind of ritual character is had by citing the Constitution. But even ritual has a tendency to break down when it starts to impede real life. And so they have easily changed the Russian Constitution with one wave of the magic wand, or more precisely one presidential speech. For some reason, everybody paid attention to why this was done, and least of all thought about the degree of significance of that document, which it is so easy to change. After all, it was not long ago at all that the head of the ruling party in the St. Duma, Gryzlov, had declared that «United Russia» will never allow for any changes in the Constitution. Apparently the time has come to break down the ritual formulas of fidelity to the Fundamental Law and to cast the idol into the dirt, as impeding real life and the ruling course.

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov and other prominent liberals launched a new anti-Kremlin movement in Russia on Saturday.

The organization, called Solidarity after the victorious Polish anti-communist movement, aims to unite the country's dysfunctional liberal forces and encourage a popular revolution similar to that seen in other ex-Soviet countries.

"We are fighting for victory because we have something to say to our people and something to offer them," Kasparov said at the founding congress Saturday in a Moscow-region hotel. "On this very day, we are in a position to take stock of past mistakes and act differently," he said. (...)

"One of the tasks of the Solidarity movement is to rehabilitate those basic principles that, unfortunately, for a significant or even overwhelming portion of our fellow citizens, have become associated with failure, misery or reduction of freedom," Kasparov said.

"Newspeak" in Russian is "novoyaz."

This handy glossary of politically correct journalistic vocabulary in times of crisis comes to us courtesy of the "Open Electronic Newspaper" Forum.msk.ru, whose slogan is "Who owns information, owns the world". The article remains tantalizingly silent about whether or not this is an actual list handed down from above or merely the work of a humorist.

...real assessments of the situation somehow pass by the domestic media. On the blogs there has even appeared a "Handbook for Socially Responsible Journalists, Bloggers and PRasts" [sic], how to correctly describe what is going on in officialise:

I am not ashamed that the president of my country - is the smallest president in the world - barely 160 cm [5'3''] tall. Not by height is the greatness of a person determined. I was, of course, ashamed for those journalists who in a fit of sleazy sycophancy compared Putin with Peter I. (Lord! How can the oh-so mediocre Putin possibly compare with Peter the Great!). I'm not even ashamed when Putin demonstratively displays his Patek Philippe watch for 60 or 70 thousand euros - let him! After all, there are people who pay more attention to expensive toys than to acts and deeds.

But I am terribly ashamed for the top leadership of Russia, when it behaves itself on the international arena insolently, stupidly, short-sightedly, and to the detriment of my country. Over the past 8 years of the rule of this leadership Russia has, it seems, not a single friend left. All around along the perimeter - nothing but enemies. The putino-medvedevs rail particularly loudly in relation in the countries of the former socialist camp. The recent manifestation of the stupid policy of Russia - Medvedev's letter to the president of Ukraine with respect to, as Medvedev writes, «the so-called holodomor» [the artificial famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, caused by forced requisitions of food by the Soviet authorities, which led to millions of deaths in peacetime and is regarded by some as a planned genocide of the Ukrainian peasantry--Trans.]

It used to be all about not saying the C-word, but now, you can get in big trouble if you dare to utter the R-word. This one comes from Reuters:

Russia's chief macroeconomic planner ran into trouble with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday, after saying Russia was already in a recession.

'It (recession) has started already. I'm afraid it will not be over in the next two quarters,' Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters.

The comments, the first official acknowledgement the economy was shrinking, came at the end of a week of bad numbers: third quarter GDP growth was the slowest in three years and the October trade surplus hit a 13-month low.

A conference on the theme "Ecology and politics" took place at the end of November of this year in the Institute named after N.Vavilov in Mosco. There weren't many speakers: chairman of the committee for ecology of the Public Chamber V.Zakharov, former minister of ecology of Russia V.Danilov-Danilyan, correspondent-member of the academy of sciences of the RF A.Yablokov and politician G.Yavlinsky. We offer our readers a part of the latter's speech.

From a speech by Grigory Yavlinsky at the "Ecology and politics" conference:

"...An authoritarian state... is not very interested in the opinion of citizens. When it was interested, then in every pre-election program there was [something] about ecology...Now about the crisis. From the middle of the 90s our state - this is a state of businessmen. The state machine represents the interests of clearly defined business- groups. These interests are perpendicular to the interests to the interests of the people. The task of business - to consume nature. That's how business works. While society's interest - is to protect nature. In this compromise - the guarantee of forward movement... We do not have a state that represents the interests of citizens.

The Associated Press press reports that trials by jury are on the way out in Russia, which is obviously very bad for rule of law.

The lower house of Russia's parliament approved a bill Friday that would end jury trials on charges of terrorism and treason. Critics denounced it as a retreat from democratic freedoms.

The Kremlin-controlled State Duma approved the bill in its final reading by a 355-85 vote. It will now go the upper house, where swift approval is expected.

The bill would strip defendants charged with crimes that include involvement in illegal armed units, violent seizure of power, armed rebellion and mass riots of the right to jury trials. Instead they would face judges.

"It's another blow to democratic principles of justice," Communist lawmaker Viktor Ilyukhin said.