January 2009 Archives

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights made its contribution to practical reason and global politics in four distinct ways. First, the Declaration took the firm view that human rights do not depend on legislation for recognition. People have these rights simply by virtue of being human. The contention here was that the acknowledgment of a human right is best seen not as a putative legal instrument, but as an important ethical demand--a demand that everyone should have certain freedoms irrespective of citizenship, nationality, and location. Such a recognition would lead to fresh legislation rather than await it. The Declaration championed the priority of morality to law. It constituted an open invitation to all to re-organize the world in such a way that the basic freedoms recognized as rights would actually be realized.

So nice to hear high-placed Russian officials such as Sergey Lavrov using the language of democracy and international law. It would be even nicer if it meant something. From his article in the Guardian.

Plans to expand Nato seem aimed at tackling problems of the past, rather than building confidence now. So, too, do unilateral decisions over anti-ballistic missile defence systems. We must recognise that it is not possible to enhance the security of individual countries by ignoring the security implications for their neighbours.

Many of the institutions already in place are primarily concerned with the security of their own members; the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe, as the summer crisis in the Caucasus demonstrated, lacks the rules and accountability to be effective. And it was seeking a way to plug this damaging gap that prompted President Medvedev to propose a new treaty on European security: we believe it would establish a truly united area of collective security in the Euro-Atlantic region and put right what we together so far failed to manage.

The new system would have to be based on supremacy of international law and adherence to the UN charter. It is intended to provide the forum through which we could resolve security problems for many years to come. A treaty could only arise from a democratic negotiating process involving all states of the region, as well as multilateral security bodies already working in this area.

The following is a translation of an interview by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborzca with Robert Amsterdam:

The lawlessness built in Russia by Vladimir Putin is to be blamed for Stanislav Markelov's death. A system where you can't count on police and prosecutors to conduct an honest inquiry and track down the killers.

Interview with Robert Amsterdam

Tomasz Bielecki: Did you know Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer killed last week in the centre of Moscow together with Anastasia Baburova, the journalist from "Novaya Gazeta"?

Matthew Olsen, acting assistant attorney general for national security, said: "Today's indictment alleges that an imprisoned spy recruited and trained his own 24-year-old son to travel the globe to collect on past spying debts and channel information to foreign agents.

"These charges underscore the continuing threat posed by foreign intelligence services and should send a clear message to others who would consider selling out their country for money."

The previous posting by Grigory Pasko, which reported that Moscow spends more on housing its stray dogs than its homeless people, has prompted another related story (thanks to our translator) which we've seen going around in the Russian press.  Some time ago, Komsomolskaya pravda had a very hard-hitting expose about the financial scams which hide behind these dog shelter projects.

Essentially, the story is the following: The city pays the dog shelter per head to care for stray dogs, which naturally motivates them to pack in as many animals in as possible. But then these same facilities operate in a private, for-profit function, renting themselves out as private kennels for rich people going away to Courchevel for the month or whatever, and even as breeders of pedigree animals. The strays are kept in overcrowded primitive pens reminiscent of an investigative isolator and fed rotten slop thrown on the floor, while the nice warm compartments and the real food are allocated to the "paying customers".

While much of this blog's content deals with the repeated human rights abuses experienced by those unfortunate Russians made victim of political cases, perhaps some animal rights folks might have a bone to pick here too.  The newspaper has published an abridged English translation of the expose here.

One would hope that Vladimir Putin's black lab Koni, made famous for his GPS tracking collar and for sniffing foreign foreign leaders, receives somewhat better treatment. We don't even have to ask about the other dog, Tosya (credit to FP's Passport blog for owning the Putin dog stories).

Living well isn't against the law...

Moscow's budget in the epoch of crisis

Grigory Pasko, journalist

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A friend of mine works in the administration of one of the rayons [administrative districts, like New York's boroughs or Paris's arrondissements--Trans.] of Moscow. We meet with him rarely, but enough to understand from his stories how the administrative world of the capital of the largest state in the world is set up. It's set up strangely. Judge for yourselves.

Once, in January of this year, my friend drove off around his rayon to form... brigades for catching stray dogs. It's done like this. An official comes (my friend is an official not of the lowest echelon by Muscovite measures) to the housing-exploitation office (they're now called directorates or administrations) and randomly chooses two surnames from a list provided. These could be Tajik streetsweepers or Russian plumbers Having written down these surnames on a separate list of members of the dog-catching brigade, he leaves. What happens next is already completely irrelevant to this exercise.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that a case brought against Russia by shareholders in collapsed oil firm YUKOS is admissible and will be examined, a spokesman said on Thursday. (...)

The company's former chief financial officer, Bruce Misamore, welcomed the decision in which he said the court had ruled that "aspects of the complaint" were admissible.

"The decision by the European Court of Human Rights to investigate elements of our claim is excellent news for all of YUKOS Oil Company's stakeholders," he said.

"This is an important step towards the vindication of the company's belief in the rule of law -- something it never secured in Russia," he said.

RFE/RL: And what did Medvedev tell you?

Muratov: Mr. Medvedev said he absolutely did not want to make any statements [on the killing of Markelov and Baburova] because he knew very well how things work in the administration -- he worked as chief of the presidential administration for many years. And he said he understood perfectly well that investigators could interpret the words of the head of state as a directive to pursue a certain line of investigation. As a lawyer he felt strongly against that as a matter or principle.

The murders of these Kremlin foes - journalists, lawyers and critics of Russia's security services - all have a common theme. Nobody is ever caught and punished. The trial of four men accused of involvement in Politkovskaya's murder is ongoing, but is regarded by human rights activists as a farce. Investigators have failed to catch her assassin and have also apparently been unable to work out who ordered her death. "We can't even call it a trial. The people being convicted aren't the ones who carried it out," Natalia Estemirova of the human rights group Memorial says. After Markelov's slaying last week, the offices of Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and the country's president, Dmitry Medvedev, were strangely silent. Instead, authorities sent in riot police to break up spontaneous protests in several Russian cities.

This failure to condemn looks like a sign of tacit approval to whatever dark, reactionary and well-organised forces plotted Markelov's death, his friends believe. They say that it comes against a backdrop of officially blessed harassment and persecution in Russia against human rights organisations - against anyone, in fact, who challenges the Kremlin's monopoly on power. State TV has largely ignored Markelov's death. (The snub is reminiscent of Putin's description of Politkovskaya after her murder as an "extremely insignificant figure well known only in the west".)

a high-ranking source in the defence ministry later dismissed the report as "rubbish".

"The implementation of these plans has been halted in connection with the fact that the new US administration is not rushing through plans to deploy" elements of its missile defence shield in eastern Europe.

'The first cracks in the formidable edifice of Mr Putin's popularity are beginning to appear. Recent protests in Vladivostok over increased car import tariffs were suppressed by interior ministry troops flown to the Far East across eight time zones because local police could not be trusted. Anticipating further unrest as increases in living costs outstrip those of incomes for the first time in nearly a decade, Moscow has suspended jury trials for accused ringleaders.'

The Russian people have spoken loudly in condemnation of these murders. Ordinary citizens have taken to the streets to demand justice for Baburova and Markelov. The Public Chamber, some Duma members, and other Russian officials have joined these calls, and the Russian Prosecutor General's Office has set up an investigative committee and special task force to find and prosecute those responsible for this crime.  

The United States believes that these calls are critical in order to stem the climate of fear and bolster the rule of law and freedom of expression that are undermined by continued assassinations of journalists and human rights defenders without justice.  

Putin and his closest allies revered Andropov (most of them joined the KGB in the mid-1970s when he ran the spy agency) and tried to establish a new version of his "authoritarian modernization" over the past decade. It all looked successful when oil prices were soaring. But now, the lack of diversification in Russia's economy is exposing Putin's economic miracle as a mirage.

But history isn't exactly repeating itself (it never does). Unlike in the 1980s, there is nobody with the clout and political will to pick up the reform mantle and seize the moment. Despite his recent friskiness, Medvedev doesn't appear to fit the bill.

So for the time being at least, the choice appears to be one between Putin's teetering authoritarianism and chaos. And as long as that is the choice, most Russians will choose the former.

Some Russians seem to think that clandestine, byzantine networks of Republican elites control Washington like the siloviki run Russia.  From Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post:

Yet there was another, more negative category of foreign response to Obama's inauguration that is worth noting, not so much because of what it tells us about our new president but because of what it reveals about those making the comments. A number of international observers eschewed the general adulation and concluded, simply, that the entire event -- the election, the inauguration -- was a hoax.

Look, for a typical example, at Pravda.ru, the Russian Web site that succeeded the organ of the Soviet Communist Party. Writing in the spirit of times past, one of its authors informed readers last week that Obama's presidency was a sham. After all, he "became the president because one needed a scapegoat during hard times of the crisis," and he will not last: "If Obama does not manage to extricate the nation from the crisis in two or three years, the Republicans will unveil their real candidate, and Obama's presidency will finish earlier than expected." The U.S. president, in other words, is merely a placeholder -- a description that makes him sound remarkably similar to the president of Russia.

Benedict Mander at the Financial Times points out that the crash in oil prices is causing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to abandon some of the more expensive diplomatic activities that the government has been using to up its influence in the region.  How long before we see similar cuts in Russia?  It seems that in times of low prices, petrostates like to concentrate their resources where it matters the most - propaganda.  But the most important question for Venezuela, as the FT points out, is whether they can count on Russia for loans if the economy gets really bad.

His government has responded to falling oil prices, and export revenues, by restricting the amount of dollars allotted to importers and Venezuelans travelling abroad. PDVSA, the state oil company, is reviewing its operations. Caracas has also dipped into the central bank's $50bn in foreign exchange reserves with $12bn in "excess" reserves being handed over for use by the government. (...)

However, Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Centre for Economic Policy and Research think-tank in Washington argued that there was no imminent danger for Venezuela's economy, thanks to ample reserves, low foreign debt and a comfortable, if reduced, current account surplus. "There's no pressure on the government to devalue," said Mr Weisbrot, arguing that in the worst-case scenario the government could borrow from China and Russia. "The question is whether the government does enough, fast enough, to prevent the economy slowing down," he said.

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with upholding press freedom condemned the killings of journalists and a lawyer in Russia and Venezuela, underscoring that these murders are a contravention of human rights. (...)

"These killings represent a tragic blow to the basic human right of freedom of expression and to all other human rights, which are essential if good governance and the rule of law are to be upheld," said UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. (...)

The "deliberate targeting" of media professionals such as Mr. Sambrano is a setback to "democracy and rule of law which depend on the ability of the members of any society to hold free debates about issues of general concern and make informed decisions," said Mr. Matsuura.

Novaya Gazeta columnist Yulia Latynina leans to the theory that right wing radicals, connected with Budanov, killed Markelov.  "This is a case where everything is immediately clear," she told me, reminding me that "fascists" had already attacked Stanislav for his part in the case against the former colonel.  "Budanov's heroism consisted in that he raped a young Chechen girl, and the heroism of Markelov and Baburova's killer in that he shot at defenseless people in the back of the head," Yulia added.

The double murder of Markelov and Baburina comes as yet another dreadful confirmation that to be a human rights advocate, or an investigative journalist without Kremlin sanction, is equivalent to a death sentence in today's Russia.

Any unsanctioned move rouses the ire of the various forces in and around the Kremlin that prize, above all else, control over "sensitive" information they consider an obstacle to the brainwashing of the population. If the defense of human rights and the exposure of crimes committed by members of the security service is at issue, as it was with Markelov, the stakes are even higher.

Yesterday El Nuevo Herald published an article about an evening mass held in Key Biscayne, Florida by the Venezuelan expatriate to draw attention to the plight of political prisoners in the country.  Below is a flyer from the event followed by our own exclusive translation.  Today Robert Amsterdam's Washington Post article comparing Russia and Venezuela was published in Spanish in the leading Caracas daily, El Nacional.

It's been suggested by some people that the severe drop in oil prices, from 146 dollars a barrel to 40 dollars a barrel, has deeply hurt Russia's economy and will have the effect of reducing the sort of confrontational nature of recent Russian policy. Do you agree?

It cuts both ways. On the positive side of the ledger there will be fewer resources around for building up the military or pursuing policies that are expensive and ambitious. Or sending fleets and aircraft on global surveillance missions.

Like the highly publicized flights by Russian bombers to Venezuela?

Yes. You know, a lot of this stuff is bluster, but it does require resources, and it requires a certain level of self-confidence. So from that perspective, Russia will be pulling in its horns. But the less positive interpretation would be that countries which experience economic distress tend to move in a nationalist and populist direction. And so it may be that if the Kremlin finds itself strapped and there is discontent among the Russian electorate, Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and others are more prone to rely on external ambition and nationalism to rally domestic support.

Despite enormous variations in their traditions and beliefs, all the Eurasians he encounters seem uniformly disgusted with their governments. At the same time, they are disillusioned with the alternatives that Western capitalism has offered them. As one acquaintance in the Caucasus exclaimed vehemently, "What has the West given us, what? Pornography and sex . . . Nobody believes in liberals anymore. They just want to create problems and get rich off other people's grief." (...)

The intensity of his interest also leads to amusing insights. "In Russia," Tayler notes, "rules abound and they must be publicly posted, even if only to be flagrantly violated." Eurasians have difficulty refusing a drink, he explains, because their companions will suspect they are staying sober so they can remember what is said and report it to the authorities in the morning. "Russia's Hobbesian human jungles hone ruthless talents of survival," he writes, "and its poverty anneals the masses to discomfort; whereas Westerners, or so Russians think, are spoiled, fragile, and spineless."

Brussels is currently going through some revisions on their lobbying regulations, seeking to establish a higher standard for transparency - coincidentally losing Gazprom one of its most expensive levers of influence.  No problem, they still have Schröder and Scaroni.  From the Financial Times:

Gazprom's Brussels lobbying firm has been suspended from the European Union's lobbying register for failing to disclose the identity of three clients.

GPlus Europe, one of Brussels' most influential lobbying firms, is the first to be suspended from the voluntary registry, which was established in June to promote greater transparency about the role of lobbyists in EU decision making.

The commission's decision, communicated in a letter last week, does not imply any wrongdoing by GPlus or restrict its ability to operate.

Why was the Soviet economy in ruins by 1991? Partly because planned economies don't work (blame Lenin and Stalin for that). Partly because the gerontocratic leadership of Leonid Brezhnev failed to start reforms in the early 1970s, when gradualism might have had a chance of succeeding. By the time Mikhail Gorbachev initiated perestroika and glasnost in the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was all but bust. Worse, by running the printing presses red-hot, his government created a colossal monetary overhang. Russians may have thought that their savings evaporated when prices were liberalised at the start of 1992; in truth, their cash was already worthless.

One problem for translators was the list of American values Obama called upon Americans to return to -- "hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism." They were variously rendered as: трудолюбие и честность, отвага и справедливость, терпимость и интерес к миру, преданность и патриотизм (diligence and honesty, courage and justice, tolerance and interest in the world, devotion and patriotism); and работа и честность, смелость, ответственность, лояльность и патриотизм (work and honesty, courage, responsibility, loyalty and patriotism). Not quite a perfect match.

In another passage, one translator had some problems with English verb forms and may not have known American society very well. Obama said, "A man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant," which came out in Russian: человек, отец которого приехал в эту страну и которому ещё 60 лет назад не разрешили бы работать в ресторане (a man whose father came to this country and who even 60 years ago would not have been allowed to work in a restaurant). Americans know that he could have gotten a job there; he just couldn't have sat at the counter.

From Irina Filatova on the Guardian's Comment is Free:

Many in Russia compare Budanov's case with that of Svetlana Bakhmina, a legal executive in the firm of the former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and mother of three children. She also applied for release on the grounds of good behaviour, but her requests were denied.

For the Russian goddess of justice is choosy: she usually bestows mercy only on those who are popular with the Russian authorities. Budanov is. He is very popular among Russia's military and he has a huge following in the broader society. Bakhmina has none of the above.

Minutes before his death, Markelov told reporters that he planned to challenge Budanov's release, which has prompted street protests in Chechnya attended by both sides of the political divide - human rights activists and representatives of the Chechen pro-Moscow party. There is hardly any doubt that Budanov's assurances that he has nothing to do with the murder are sincere. But whatever the future official verdict, Markelov's assassination is seen both in Russia and Chechnya as a message from Budanov's supporters to the whole of Russian society: don't count on the law. We are the law in this country. We define who lives and who dies.

Callous people
21 Jan, 2009 at 7:41 PM
The "Live journal" of Vladimir Varfolomeyev

We probably really have started getting used to the regular murders - of journalists, lawyers, politicians... - all those who on the strength of their calling, professional duty or civic conscience are found on the forward flank. Or maybe the point here is that we always were callous people, indifferent to the pain of others.

"The need to diversify routes of supplying gas from my country to EU member states has been underlined by this crisis," Russian ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told the EU Observer, referring to recent disruptions caused by a dispute between Russia and Ukraine. (...)

Russia also believes the recent supply crisis will boost support for a South Stream project designed to deliver gas to Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. the Observer said.

South Stream and Nord Stream "will provide a circle ... of energy security," Chizhov said.

"If the circle is broken at one point for whatever reason ... the rest of the circle will work," he said.

Partners In Crime
Why Lawlessness Works For Chávez and Putin

By Robert R. Amsterdam
Thursday, January 22, 2009; A17

The administrations of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia are enjoying a robust, burgeoning friendship. Though they are separated by 6,000 miles, the two leaders' bond is sealed not only by their similar tastes for repressive authoritarianism, oil expropriations and large arms deals but also by parallel trends of increasing violence and murder on the streets of their cities.

"It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds and millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse, not better, and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international," he said.

The recruitment drive highlights [...] the need for a new generation of managers to replace the Soviet-era nomenklatura, and Kremlin watchers say the initiative is an attempt to lessen the influence of civil servants directly loyal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Today Robert Amsterdam gave an interview on Echo Moskvy about the murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov.  Below is a small excerpt adapted from his on-air comments.

"Russia's vertical of power does not bring law and order. Rather, it has brought chaos and nihilism. These murders show that the Power is incapable of defending the people and their constitutional rights. We must ask ourselves whether the authorities, too many of whom are predators against Russia's citizens and businesses, even truly care. I will not call upon the Russian authorities to investigate these murders because we know they have no true interest in doing so, and will not do so properly. They have lost my trust. We can only mourn and commit even more strongly to defending the principles that Markelov and Baburova died for.

I extend to their families and friends my deepest sympathies and my hopes that they may be among the last heroes of Russia to die in such circumstances."

If you know you can't do it - promise you will anyway...

Grigory Pasko, journalist

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The January Russian newspapers and websites are full of headlines: «Published are the most complete predictions of Vanga...» (the key word here is "most", because last year there already was such a headline, only without this word).

The next headline - «Who killed Vlad Listev...» (I will remind readers of the blog that the producer of the first telechannel of Russia, the journalist Listev, was shot to death in the entryway to his own building in the year 1995).

The next headline - «Who killed Anna Politkovskaya» (The journalist Anna Politkovskaya, as you will recall, they shot in the entryway to her own building in the year 2006).

The next headline - «Who poisoned Viktor Yushchenko ...» Well, here everybody knows who Yushchenko is and why they wanted to poison him. This was several years ago.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, criticised Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday for their conduct in negotiations to end a two-week natural gas crisis, saying he had never witnessed such "really incredible" behaviour before.

As Russian gas flows resumed across Europe, Mr Barroso vented his frustration over the ordeal, accusing both countries of failing to live up to their promises as the European Union worked to broker a truce.

"Let me tell you, frankly, I was very disappointed during these discussions about the way the leadership in these two countries negotiated," Mr Barroso said. "I will not forget that, and I think European citizens should know that."

Markelov had received death threats because of his efforts to keep the murderer of the strangled Chechen woman in prison. In the past, he had defended the assassinated reporter Anna Politkovskaya as well as labor unions, human rights groups, and other journalists. He knew his life was at risk because of his legal work, as are the lives of many of the most admirable people in Russia - the lawyers, reporters, environmentalists, and human rights defenders who try to make the Kremlin live up to its claim of presiding over a law-based democratic state.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken of his determination to improve Russia's attractiveness to investors, both foreign and domestic, by strengthening the rule of law. But as long as powerful, hidden bosses can have people like Markelov, Baburova, or Politkovskaya murdered with impunity, Russia will deserve its reputation as a Mafia petrostate crouching behind a Potemkin democracy.

Neither Markelov nor Baburova will protest any longer. Nor will they take any more holidays, read any more books, or live to be old. For standing up against cruelty in the Armed Forces, in the North Caucasus and in Russia as a whole, they had the full force of that cruelty turned upon themselves. More than one person languishing in Russia's moral vacuum will be relieved today that they are dead. We can reasonably imagine that toasts will have been raised in celebration.

Grigory Pasko, journalist

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I like Germany and the Germans. True, not all Germans. Those who at times forget about the rules of decency in their headlong efforts to do what would please Putin and his regime - these don't impress me.

On 16 January, prime-minister of the RF Vladimir Putin in Dresden in a solemn atmosphere received the "Saxon order of gratitude" of the Dresden Semperoper in the nomination of a "Politician". The order represents a figure of Saint George mounted on a horse, striking with a lance a dragon personifying evil. It is fabricated in the Dresden jewellers' workshop as a precise copy of one of the most precious masterpieces of the "Grüne Gewölbe" museum - a statuette of Saint George - against the background of a panel with the motto "Adverso Flumine" ("Against the flow"). In the number of former laureates of this order - actor Maximilian Schell, footballer Franz Beckenbauer and ex-minister of foreign affairs of Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

We've all heard the stories about Igor Panarin, the "academic" who has become extremely popular in the Russian state media for his prediction that the United States will dissolve into five separate countries within a year, but this one about a prophetess is really stretching one's suspension of disbelief. Desperate times call for desperate illusions... From James Marson on the Guardian:

Another story of a similar ilk has sat at the top of the state-backed Moscow News's most-read list for the past few months: a "prophetess" called Vanga has predicted that Russia will dominate the world. Economists' assessments of Russia, a country that currently accounts for about 3% of global GDP (comparable with the UK) and with per capita GDP at a quarter of the US level, are somewhat more sobering. Its economy is in serious trouble after years of neglected reforms, over-reliance on commodities and a failure to tackle rampant corruption. (...)

As the crisis increasingly reveals the gulf between Russia's self-image and its real possibilities, the time of Panarin and Vanga could be coming to an end. Talk will surely move from fantasies about Russia challenging the US to the country's very real internal problems and how to solve them. Previously deaf ears will begin to listen as the failures of the current leadership become clear in everyday life. The question that will then be raised is one that has been asked of Russian leaders for centuries: liberalisation, or crack down?

Yuri Budanov has been released from prison, while Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his accomplices remain incarcerated. No matter how one feels about these individuals personally, one thing is clear: there are criminal cases that somehow, on their own accord, turn into cases that are political and emblematic.

From the editorial page of the Washington Post:

The larger story here is of serial murders of Mr. Putin's opponents, at home and abroad. Ms. Baburova, 25, is at least the 15th journalist to be slain since Mr. Putin took power. No one has been held accountable in any of the cases -- including that of Anna Politkovskaya, a former client of Mr. Markelov who also was murdered execution-style in broad daylight, on Mr. Putin's birthday in 2006. In London, dissident former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned; so was Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who survived. Karina Moskalenko, another opposition lawyer who has represented Ms. Politkovkaya's family, fell ill from mercury poisoning in Strasbourg, France, in October, just before a hearing in the case. Last week in Vienna, a Chechen dissident who had received political asylum was murdered on the street -- shot twice in the head.

It is possible that Mr. Putin and his security services had nothing to do with any of these murders. But it is a fact that the Russian leader has not pressed for justice; on the contrary, he has protected the suspects identified by Scotland Yard in the Litvinenko case. What is indisputable is that Russians live in a political climate in which those who criticize Mr. Putin or the human rights violations of his government can be murdered with impunity. Although some of the killings have occurred in their cities, Western governments have made no attempt to hold Mr. Putin or the Russian government accountable. Their silence helps keep brazen murder a part of Russia's politics.

Mourners left a mound of red roses and yellow carnations in the snow at the spot where Markelov was shot. Candles burnt below pictures of the two and a small Russian flag with the words "They died for Russia's freedom" hung above the flowers.

"I came today as I am deeply sorry and disgusted for Russia: how can you just shoot people down in broad daylight in the centre of Moscow," said Alexandra Fomina, a prominent artist.

"Can we tolerate this much longer? And will they catch anyone for this murder - or will it be business as usual?" (...)

"Markelov was a lawyer foremost but in his heart he was also a human rights activist - he fought for the underdog against some powerful people," said Lyudmilla Alexeyeva, one of Russia's most famous human rights activists.

Yet another human rights advocate killed in the capital of Russia. Lawyer Stanislav Markelov was shot on Prechistenka street in the center of Moscow. Stanislav was only 34 years old, but he was well known not only in the milieu of human rights advocates, but in wider circles as well. First and foremost, he was known as the Moscow lawyer who was not afraid to conduct cases in Chechnya, defending Chechen citizens. In recent days, his name was never off the pages of the mass information media, because he was striving to get the conditional early release of Yuri Budanov, a former colonel who killed the young Chechen woman Elza Kungayeva, declared unlawful.

And it was right after a press conference dedicated to this unlawful release that Stanislav was killed.

Svetlana Gannushkina of Russia's Memorial human rights center told RFE/RL's Russian Service that Markelov's murder bore the signs of a hired killing.

"This could not have been accidental, and there was certainly no criminal motive behind it," Gannushkina said. "Unfortunately, we cannot conduct our own investigation. We can only demand that the law enforcement bodies do it. But our capabilities, our mechanisms, so to speak, of making such demands are unfortunately very, very weak. All we can do is express our indignation and try to find out who threatened Stanislav, when, why, and how." (...)

In an interview with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service, Kungayev -- who now lives in Norway with this four remaining children -- said he believed Budanov was behind the slaying.

In light of the slaying of lawyer Stanislav Markelov, we are digging into the archives of older news reports to inform our readers of the story of former colonel Yury Budanov, whose release on parole Markelov spent his final days fighting.  It is important to understand how the trial and imprisonment of Budanov became a rallying point for ultra-nationalists in support of the campaign in Chechnya.

"Rape and Murder Trial Puts Russia in Dock over Chechnya," by Andrew Jack, Financial Times, (June 22, 2002, pp. 16)

In most countries, a soldier accused of raping and murdering an 18-year old girl would be heavily stigmatised. In Russia, where nearly three years of fighting has poisoned relations with its breakaway republic of Chechnya, Colonel Yuri Budanov has become a strange kind of hero.

Lawyer Stanislav Markelov killed and «Novaya gazeta» employee seriously wounded in center of Moscow

The murder of Stanislav Markelov took place in the day in the area of the «Kropotkinskaya» metro station. In the words of eyewitnesses, the criminal shot the lawyer in the head from a pistol with a silencer. «Novaya gazeta» employee Anastasia Baburova, being found at that moment alongside Markelov, attempted to detain the killer, however was wounded likewise by a shot to the head. In serious condition they hospitalized her in the 1st City hospital. She is found in intensive care, doctors are fighting for her life.

I usually don't publish Russia Today clips, but this one contains some good details.

"In his turn, Budanov's lawyer Alexey Dulimov considers that the former colonel of the Russian army does not have [anything] to do with the death of Stanislav Markelov.  "I am deeply convinced that Budanov can not have anything to do with this", - said Dulimov on the air of the radio station "Russkaya sluzhba novostei" [«Russian news service»] on Monday.  "He (Budanov - IF) never had thoughts about taking revenge on Markelov, he doesn't even know the guy and has never even seen him", - said Dulimov.

"For the fulfillment by a lawyer of professional duties encroachment on his life - sheer madness.  That way all people in our country will remain defenseless, if such events will be taking place", said the lawyer of Budanov.  In his words, "no one of the military" can be involved in the murder of Markelov."

With oil prices well below what the Russians can afford, but Putin's (& Medvedev's) popularity still high, the initial moves have been to consolidate power. Yet despite no organized political opposition to speak of, we're still starting to see social unrest. For the first time in years, there have been widespread demonstrations in Russia--in 30 cities, following the imposition of import duties on used cars. We're likely to see much more turbulence in 2009, as factories providing employment for entire cities are shuttered. That's a sort of suffering that Russians are certainly used to, but only in the context of a very different kind of political system.

Where could this go? There will be near-zero state tolerance for dissent. And the strongest level of anti-Americanism (and, in many quarters, of broader xenophobia) of any significant emerging market in the world, creates the potential to make security a serious concern--and possibly lead to unrest that disrupts supply chains. The Obama administration is unlikely to quietly tolerate a crackdown, and will put plenty of focus on human rights and democracy. So American and some European nations' relations with Russia will continue to deteriorate over the course of 2009 (with the Germans, who are more dependent on the Russians economically and, to some extent, politically, playing the role of wild card).

(Editor's note: RA drafted this piece on Friday, before the murder of Stanislav Markelov, the lawyer representing the family of Budanov's victim)

To describe the Russian justice system as flawed and dysfunctional would be an extremely generous understatement, yet however arcane and unfair the system has become, judicial decisions are still made. Charges are filed, hearings held, trials convened, and convictions and even the occasional acquittals are parsed out. And as we have seen lately, certain individuals are even granted parole once in a while - though the process by which these small acts of compassion are distributed is quite far from clear.

The latest news makes the parole issue even more confusing. Last Thursday, the former army colonel Yury Budanov, who was convicted in 2005 for the brutal murder by strangling of eighteen-year-old Elza Kungayeva, walked out of prison after being granted a swift parole. The fact that Budanov was even convicted and spent some time behind bars represented a major victory for human rights in Russia at the time, as he attained a martyr status for extreme nationalists. Lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who has written for this blog, represents the family of Kungayeva and was instrumental in bringing the case to prosecution. Markelov's appeals against Budanov's parole have been essentially ignored by the Russian courts.

It's sure been a long time since I last visited Moscow's courts. But, having visited one today, I saw for myself: nothing's changed there. A whole bunch of people. One judge over a brief period of time examines several cases. This is called tekuchka in Russian [meaning something like "churning them out" or "assembly-line"--Trans.]. How can you even talk about the quality of the meting out of courts here!

Already at 9 o'clock in the morning beside the courtroom in the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow there were five journalists. By the start of the court session on the lawsuit of the convict A. Kuchma against Mikhail Khodorkovsky on compensation of moral damage for supposedly sexual solicitations on the part of Khodorkovsky there were already 20 journalists. Soon the court bailiff appeared - a pretty young woman - and reported that only seven scribes would be able to enter the courtroom. (I hasten to report that the correspondent of the blog www.robertamsterdam.com was in the number of these seven).

The following is a translation from Khodorkovsky.ru:

Yuri Schmidt: "Kuchma, this is not a plaintiff, it is a dummy figure"

Meshchansky District Court of Moscow postpones session to 25 February.

On Friday, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow was supposed to examine a lawsuit about compensation of moral damage, filed by the inmate Kuchma against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but because the court did not have at its disposal information that the plaintiff had been duly notified of the process, they postponed the session to 25 February. Lawyer Yuri Schmidt, who has accumulated 50 questions for Kuchma, considers that the "dummy figure" of the plaintiff is being directed by official persons of the Chita UFSIN and FSIN, aspiring to create "intolerable conditions of the serving of punishment" for Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

It's obvious that Moscow is using Ukraine's dependence on Russian natural gas as a diplomatic weapon -- no surprise there -- but it's equally clear that Moscow's leverage is reduced by the EU's reliance on gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines. Whenever Moscow tries to squeeze Kiev, Europe hollers and jumps in, and then the Russians have to lighten up in order to avoid a major fight with the Europeans (an important trading partner). But this problem will ease as soon as EU-Russian pipelines bypassing Ukraine are completed and Russia's ability to pressure Ukraine will perforce increase. As long as the rest of the EU is toasty warm in winter, they aren't going to care much about conditions in Kiev. So if I were Ukrainian, I'd think long and hard about where this one was headed.

About 30 activists of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi (Ours) on Friday brought firewood for Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to the Kiev's embassy in Moscow. (...)

The group said they intended to show Yushchenko that he should "stop using fuel received by illegal means to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of Russian and European people, and begin heating his home and presidential administration building with firewood."

"Yushchenko has brought Ukrainians to a situation when they prepare to heat their houses with firewood," a group leader, Maria Drokova, said in a speech outside the embassy.

Members of Russia's ultranationalist LDPR party, led by the outspoken deputy speaker of parliament's lower house, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also held a rally in front of the Ukrainian Embassy on Friday.

The party's slogans included "Stealing is a sin, Gazprom will punish you," "Yushchenko has frozen relations, don't freeze Europe!" and "Gas stealing earns a real beating!"

Vladimir Putin's efforts to convene a summit with European political and corporate energy leaders in Moscow to settle the natural gas dispute with Ukraine has hit a few speed bumps.  French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who is not unfamiliar with broken promises, has balked over the conditions and is refusing to send a delegation.  From the Associated Press:

"The conditions for a summit are insufficient," the French Embassy in Moscow said. In a foreign policy speech, Sarkozy said the credibility of Ukraine and Russia were at stake.

"I know and understand political rivalries. They must not hold hostage an energy dispute which concerns millions of Europeans, who expect better. Ukraine's credibility is at stake," he said.

Turning to Russia, he added: "When one supplies two-thirds of the gas that Europe needs, you respect your clients, as the clients must respect the supplier."

The political structure Putin built over the past decade was based on a vast system of patronage that, thanks to high oil and gas prices, allowed the Kremlin to purchase the loyalty of Russia's sprawling bureaucracy and at least the tacit consent of a critical mass of the population.

Here's how Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin put it when I spoke to him about the emerging political crisis:

The vertical is not as strong as it seemed. It is based on buying the loyalty of officials with the help of oil funds. The bureaucratic class gives its loyalty to the center and the center closes its eyes to their corruption...When oil and gas prices were high and when the economy was growing, it worked well. Bureaucrats were afraid to show disloyalty to their bosses because if they were fired they would be outsiders. But when gas and oil prices are low and the economy falters, it is not possible to buy everybody's loyalty.

Petrodollars, in short, were the lubricant that kept the system functioning. And now that these are drying up, the arrangement is breaking down with unpredictable consequences.

The gas war appears to be doing for Vladimir Putin what the invasion of Iraq did for George W. Bush - a boon of popularity during a difficult time.  Unfortunately, the longer term outlook of freezing Ukraine, Bulgaria, and the rest of Europe is unlikely to play to Russia's favor.

From Bloomberg:

In turning off gas supplies to Ukraine and Europe, Putin showed Russians that he is in charge as a recession looms, and that the West must treat him as a key player in global energy. He also is pushing for higher long-term revenue for state-controlled OAO Gazprom, and has damaged West-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

"The more they criticize Putin abroad and the more they fight with Russia, the greater his political weight grows," said Mikhail Delyagin, an economic adviser to former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and director of the Institute for Globalization Studies in Moscow. (...)

"Putin has again shown to the domestic Russian audience that he is a strong leader," said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib Financial Corp. in Moscow. "His message to the people is that nobody should mess with Russia when he is around."

So what can be done? The EU has attributes that, wielded intelligently, could give it some influence over the countries that supply its energy. Europe is a big market, a source of commercial finance and development aid and, more subtly, a source of legitimacy for governments abroad that often rest on shaky political foundations.

Losing foreign income is catastrophic for Gazprom: It exports a third of its production and reaps much higher profits abroad than at home, where prices are capped.

Saddled with net debt of roughly $45 billion, the protracted dispute with Ukraine is one Gazprom can ill afford. And considering the company's central importance to Russia's prosperity, its mounting woes may hold the key out of the deadlock with Ukraine -- which is also losing millions a day in the pipeline freeze.

One of its journalists, columnist Yulia Latynina, told the Observer newspaper that Mr Lebedev was the genuine article - a tycoon intellectual with a social conscience.

"Most Russian oligarchs seem to settle into, 'We can do nothing'," she said.

"They spend their days in Courchevel (ski resort), drinking wine, eating caviar and watching girls dance on the table.

"Lebedev is trying to do something so the country will be better. But he knows that if he does anything to offend people in power there will be punishment."

Mr Adamkus was speaking on the eve of a security conference in Lithuania attended by officials from the US and EU states. His views reflect criticism of Russia that is often aired in the EU but seldom voiced so strongly for fear of offending Moscow. Now ending his second presidential term, he is a popular leader who spent much of his life in exile in the US, where he served as a senior government official before returning to his native country in the 1990s.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Kyle Wingfield compares Gazprom to Airbus - pointing out that what could be an eminently great company is ruined by political intervention and abuses.

That said, the Russian energy sector is emblematic of the emerging era of "capitolism" -- with an "o" -- in which governments are reclaiming ground previously ceded to the private sector. So it's useful to note what happens to a company when a government exploits it with the aim of producing national power or pride rather than simply taking pride in what the company produces.

In Airbus's case, the British, French, German and Spanish governments that created Airbus's corporate parent, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., also poured billions of dollars in subsidies into the firm. One consequence was that these governments often tried to pull the company's strings: Make these parts here, balance the final assembly lines between this city in Country A and that one in Country B -- and definitely no layoffs. It was only after an insider-trading scandal and mounting financial problems that Airbus was free to hire a CEO, Louis Gallois, who understood that the firm needed some separation between C-suite and state if it was to take off again. Before the global financial and economic crisis hit, it was doing just that.

Dear Mr Amsterdam,

I think you should be aware that the "editorial" by Dr Gary K Busch that you quote here contains unattributed material copy-pasted from other sources.

Vladimir Putin has gone from Macho Man to Renaissance Man as he displays his art skills for a Russian audience getting used to being told of his many and varied talents. (...)

While it is signed in his name, V Putin, at the top left of the picture, it is clear that the work in acrylic paint was 'touched up' by Nadezhda Anfalova, a noted Russian artist who is coordinating the auction on Saturday to raise funds for a local hospital, a cancer unit and a church restoration project in St Petersburg, his home city.

She is said to have 'improved' the curtains, which, perhaps embarrassingly given the current conflict, are decorated with a red Ukrainian pattern.

"From my perspective, and I know everyone will be horrified now, particularly my conservative friends - but I do think we bear some responsibility for the less friendly relationship we now have with them," said Former Secretary of State [1992] Lawrence Eagleburger. "If you are going to bring about alliances along Russia's border and you end up putting anti-ballistic missile launchers and so forth, it seems to me what the Russians have to take away from that is that we intend to isolate them. And our eastern European friends and allies, which used to be puppets to the Soviet Union - they are happy to go along with this as well because they see this as protection from the monster that governed them for so long. But the Russians have to, I think, look at that as an attempt at isolation."

A few months ago, the Russian government came up with a proposal to negotiate a new European order within the framework of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Kremlin considers the agreements from the 1990s unjust, based as they were on its weakness at the time, and it wants to revise them. Moscow's main strategic objective is the weakening or even rollback of NATO on the grounds that it is essentially an anti-Russian military alliance and the re-establishment of its East European and Central Asian zones of influence.

But Putin is making a big mistake here, because all these aims are unacceptable for the West, and the Kremlin still doesn't seem to understand that the best and most effective guarantee of NATO's existence was, is and will continue to be an aggressive Russian foreign policy.

In the former mother country of Marxism-Leninism, the leaders still don't seem to understand dialectics. After all, if the Kremlin really wanted to achieve a change in the country's post-Soviet status quo, it should, first and foremost, pursue a policy vis-a-vis its neighbors that reduces rather than increases fears.

I caught this one in the FT today:

"I would like to convey a very clear message to Moscow and Kiev: If the agreement sponsored by the EU is not honoured as a matter of urgency, the Commission will advise EU companies to take this matter to the courts," Jose Manuel Barroso, the commission president, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

"If the agreement is not honoured, it means that Russia and Ukraine can no longer be considered reliable energy suppliers to the EU," Mr Barroso added.

Isn't the "reliability question" really is beyond dispute at this point?  It's also hard to picture the Kremlin respecting any decisions from a rule of law court - besides, Gazprom was the first to come up with the lawsuit idea early on (and the Hungarians are getting in on this litigation bonanza).  For as much as this disaster is "a purely commercial" dispute or "a fight between oligarchs," its resolution seems overwhelmingly political.

And they accuse Ukraine's feuding leaders of exacerbating the current gas crisis with Moscow by undermining each other's negotiations, breaking undertakings to the EU on the smooth transit of gas and dealing with murky intermediaries.

Some charge neo-conservatives in the United States, who have campaigned actively to get both countries into the NATO military alliance, with goading them into conflict with the Kremlin.

"The neo-con agenda in that region has been a disaster for Europe," said an EU foreign policy official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

As our regular readers know, correspondent Grigory Pasko spent much of last year touring the length of the planned route for the Nord Stream pipeline, writing articles, interviewing communities which would be affected, and even making a short documentary film.  .  Below is a translation of a review about the film, Buried at Sea, published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.  If you visit the paper's site, you can watch two clips from the film.

Film about the Baltic Sea Pipeline
"Buried At Sea"
By Viktor Funk

Oleg Tishin seems tired, depleted, exhausted - he is the head of government at Rayon Babayevo in northern Russia, where the first section of the Baltic Sea pipeline North Stream was opened amidst fanfare in December 2005. When the Russian journalist Grigory Pasko interviewed him for his film "Buried at Sea" in June 2007 there was nothing left of the joy surrounding the gas lines. Tishin explains that at the beginning there was a lot of engagement for the project, because it promised jobs and the people of the village hoped to finally get a gas connection. Disillusionment quickly replaced their hopes, as the gas was destined for the west and the villagers of Babayevo had to continue to use their forest for their energy needs.

So the question for Western leaders is whether they doubt Mr. Putin would hesitate to provoke a war in the Middle East. If his regime falls, he and his cronies will face the loss of their immense fortunes and criminal prosecution when their looting is exposed. What are thousands of lives in the Middle East to a Kremlin mob that is openly preparing for the day when they will have to open fire on their own citizens to stay in power?

This "mad bear" theory is even more plausible when you consider how tolerant the current cohort of Western leaders has been regarding the destruction of democratic rights around the world. There appears to be no line the world's despots -- and would-be despots -- cannot cross with impunity.

It is time to bury the failed model of dealing with the world's antidemocratic and bloodthirsty regimes. The real change we must effect in 2009 is toward a new global emphasis on the value of human life. Anything less confirms to the enemies of democratic civilization that everything is negotiable. For Mr. Putin that means democracy; for Hamas it means Israel's existence. The Free World must take those chips off the table.

The discussion, which centres on the shut-off of Russian gas deliveries to the European Union via Ukraine, turns at one point to the possible deployment of EU monitors along the pipeline route through Ukrainian territory. "We hope that the issue will be resolved expeditiously. We don't want a group of men and women to come to Kiev and just sit in a hotel and sip horilka [Ukrainian vodka]," Putin says. (...)

Instead of sending their best and brightest to create a genuinely secure system -- through expanded use of liquid natural gas, more nuclear plants, clean coal -- most European countries have settled for makeshift arrangements. Instead of using their collective bargaining power, they behave as though they are dependent on Gazprom, when the reverse is equally true: The Russians need the money they get from European sales, after all, almost as much as the Europeans need their gas. Instead of sending in crisis negotiators every Jan. 1, Europe's leaders could focus on this problem and solve it. I would love to describe this past week's events as a "wake-up call," but there have been so many "wake-up calls" already. When will Europe heed them?