Notebook

Take That!

Putin underlines regional

gas hegemony

In May, President Vladimir Putin traveled to Central Asia, where his personal diplomacy secured Russia’s gas future for the next two decades, while dealing a body blow to U.S. efforts in the region. 

After five days in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, Putin inked a deal with those two countries and Uzbekistan to build a new Caspian Pipeline System that will transport gas from Turkmenistan, along the Caspian coast via Kazakhstan, and connect up to the Russian pipeline system. This deal all but dooms EU plans for an alternate pipeline across the Caspian (i.e. bypassing Russia) that has been strongly backed by the U.S.

The agreement reinforces Russia’s hold on Central Asia’s gas supplies, ensuring a gas transport monopoly on one of the world’s largest natural gas stockpiles. What is more, Gazprom has secured a contract on all Turkmen gas for the next 25 years. These moves are important, because they mean that Russia does not have to offset future domestic gas consumption to meet its growing export commitments to Europe.

 

eClausewitz

Estonia subjected to massive

cyber-attack; accuses Russia

Russia’s springtime spat with Estonia over the latter’s decision to move a Soviet-era monument from downtown Tallinn to a graveyard outside the city center quickly became a war on all fronts. The Nashi youth group led provocative marches, trade was stopped, rail and air traffic were interrupted and borders were sealed, all in an eery repeat of last year’s row with Georgia and Ukraine.

And then there was the alleged cyberwar. Estonian government websites, as well as the sites of newspapers, banks and political parties, were subjected to massive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The Kremlin denied any involvement in the attacks which, if traced to the government, would be the first known case of a cyber-attack of one state on another. 

The DDoS attacks came in from all around the world, but Estonian officials said that, in the earliest stages of the attack, many Internet addresses were traced to Russian state institutions and one of the attack’s masterminds was connected with Russian security services.  

Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo said “NATO does not define cyber-attacks as clear military actions... however, this matter needs to be resolved in the near future.” Estonia has been a member of NATO since March 2004.

This dispute is but the latest in a series of fracases which Russia has had in recent years with countries on its borders.  

 

On Your Marks

Is the 2008 horse race

already over?

The beauty contest for 2008 continues, and speculation grows over when and if President Putin will pick a successor. 

Recent polling showed First Deputy Prime Ministers Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov to be running neck-and-neck in public opinion polls. But press speculation is that Ivanov has gained the inside track. This is rooted in the evaluation of a marathon two-and-a-half-hour “coming out” press conference Ivanov held in May, where he spoke out on various policy issues and showed his “human side.” For all intents, it positioned Ivanov as the solid, reliable, Putinesque candidate. Media analyst and insider Konstantin Remchukov told Ekho Moskvy in May that analysis of speeches and interviews makes clear that “the choice has been made” in Ivanov’s favor.

Meanwhile, Medvedev is positioning himself along more populist lines, on May 23 unveiling a broad-ranging program to take on Russia’s debilitating demographic problem through managed immigration and improved health care.

In related news, former Russian Central Bank Chair Viktor Gerashchenko (above), nicknamed “Hercules,” declared his willingness to run “as the sole representative of the opposition.” Known for his entertaining wit and canny turns of phrase, Gerashchenko could well unite many factions, perhaps, at 70, posing as a stabilizing, experienced, grandfather figure. Yet, when all parties are well-convinced that no-one will pose a serious threat to whomever is anointed by the Party of Putin, few seem eager to toss aside their fractiousness and unify behind Gerashchenko or any other candidate. 

 

Full Court Press

Media association ousted

for lease violations 

On the eve of a major international conference in Moscow devoted to media and press freedoms, Russia’s Union of Journalists was served an eviction notice for its premises in the RIA Novosti building – home of the government press service.

The move raised a hue and cry among domestic and international observers, many of whom saw this as yet another clamp-down on Russia’s besieged media. Rumors flew that the RUJ was being pushed out by RIAN’s new English language service, Russia Today. But, when the turgid waters cleared, more mundane facts floated to the surface.

The RUJ has been in the RIAN building for nine years and has not had to pay any rent that entire time. But a government audit of the massive RIAN building apparently turned up irregularities throughout the building. Among them were sublessor arrangements by RUJ and RUJ’s unauthorized keeping of wild animals in its premises.  The RUJ was ordered to evacuate 929 square meters, or about a third of the space it occupies in the building. The Foreign Ministry, which was also leasing space from RIAN, has been ordered out of 3000 square meters of space. The new use of vacated space will be determined at a later date by the Agency for Management of Federal Property.

One month prior to this, two respected media watchdogs, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Freedom House, both gave Russia abysmal ratings on press freedom. At the same time, the U.S. State Department issued a report that branded Russia as one of the world’s worst violators of media freedom and one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist.

 

Revising History

Historian says Stalin’s son

never went to Nazi camps

It was long thought that Stalin’s son, Jacob Dzhugashvili, was taken prisoner in WWII during fighting near Vitebsk in July 1941, and died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1943, shot when trying to escape. But new evidence, compiled by historian Sergei Devyatov, suggests that Jacob was never captured alive.

The 10 photos reputedly of Jacob in Nazi camps, Devyatov said, appear to be forgeries, photomontages based on photos the Germans found on Jacob’s body. The photo artists also erred, Devyatov alleges, by making one photo too many – one showed the buttons on Jacob’s tunic reversed, proving it was a fabrication.

Yet even more telling may be handwriting analyses that compared Jacob’s writing as a student and as a captive. “In some places, the handwriting in the camp diaries looks similar or quite identical with [the student writings],” Devyatov said. “Obviously, they were made by skillful impostors. But in other places it doesn’t resemble Jacob’s handwriting at all.”

Devyatov said that repeated investigations have turned up no confirmation of Jacob’s presence in any known POW camp.

 

The Mighty Ruble

Search begins for a new

currency symbol

The search for a National Idea will have to wait. President Putin has tasked the Central Bank with devising a unique and memorable symbol for Russia’s currency, the ruble. The dollar has the $, the pound the £, the yen ¥, and the euro the €, so must Russia have its own symbol. The current, commonly used shorthand is simply RR.

The Central Bank has set up a working group to accept submissions from citizens and artists and create a short list from which the sign will be chosen by year’s end. A Russian R with two lines across its stem is an early favorite, however some may find it is somewhat similar to the symbol for the peso: ₱.

The ruble – made fully convertible in July 2006 – has gone from limp to rock solid in the last year, with the resurgence of the Russian economy. A dollar bought 32 rubles in 2001; today it buys just 26 and falling. Russia also has the world’s third largest foreign currency reserves ($356 billion) and, thanks to high oil prices, has filled a stabilization fund with $108 billion. 

 

 

Widening Russia

Charting Russia’s icy

economic zone

Russian geologists set off in May on a high-stakes expedition to map Russia’s continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, ITAR-TASS reported. Some 50 geologists spent a month and a half aboard a nuclear-powered icebreaker, charting the outer boundaries of the shelf.

The measurement is important for economic reasons. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea sets a country’s state border at 12 miles beyond its physical border, and extends its economic zone to 200 miles beyond its physical border. Yet, if the continental shelf is found to extend beyond the 200 mile line, then the economic zone is enlarged. This is of particular importance for issues of offshore resource mining. Russia must prove that the shelf which entails the Arctic Ocean is a “continuation of the Siberian continental platform.”

The surveying work is expected to be completed before the end of 2009.

 

 

Red Flag

In one of the last votes before the 2007 Duma elections, Communist Roman Grebennikov won the mayoral post in Volgograd, defeating the pro-Kremlin Just Russia and Unified Russia party candidates, previously held to be all but unbeatable. Grebennikov received 32.47% of the vote.

 

Bad Art

Russian customs in May banned the export to Germany of six works of art for an exhibition in Dresden. Among the works were two mocking President Putin that the authorities said “had the potential to cause international discord,” as well as works depicting Osama bin Laden, Hitler and the Pope.

 

What Cost History?

Yekaterinburg authorities are considering four different renamings – of a metro station, the airport, a quay and a city square – in honor of recently deceased President Boris Yeltsin, who studied and began his political career in the city, then known as Sverdlovsk. Problem is, they don’t want to pay the costs for the renaming. Meanwhile, plans for a $10-15 million Yeltsin Library in Moscow’s Fili District have stalled, despite a planned 2008 opening.

 

Nuclear Moves

As described in our March/April 2006 issue, Russia is actively pursuing a nuclear export strategy, selling turnkey nuclear plants to non-nuclear states. In October of last year, Bulgaria agreed to take two units. In May, Myanmar signed on for a 10 megawatt light-water reactor. Rosatom, the Russian agency overseeing the move, is pursuing similar deals in South Africa, Namibia, Chile and Morocco, and is said to have two plants already planned for China. In a related move, as predicted in the above issue of Russian Life, President Putin announced that 65 companies of Russia’s atomic energy sector will be unified into a single state-controlled corporation – Atomenergoprom.

 

Arms Bear

On May 29, Russia successfully tested a new RS-24 missile, a new ICBM which is capable of carrying multiple warheads and, in the words of First Deputy Prime Minister and likely 2008 presidential candidate Sergei Ivanov, “capable of overcoming any existing or future missile-defense systems.” The reference (and test) was clearly aimed at the U.S. missile defense system being placed in Poland.

 

Endless Jeopardy

In a stunning legal decision with far-reaching implications for the Russian justice system, on May 16 the Russian Constitutional Court ruled that the State’s criminal cases against convicted criminals can be reviewed and revised in light of new post-trial evidence, allowing the imposition of stricter and longer sentences. The court gave the Duma six months to amend procedural codes to comply with its ruling.

 

Out Gunned

In March’s now infamous March of the Dissenters in Moscow, some 2,000 protesters took to the streets. And about 9,000 OMON troops assembled to “keep order,” which translated into beatings of peaceful demonstrators and journalists covering the event. As a result, the Russian Interior Ministry began running special courses for media covering work “in emergency situations,” which is apparently how opposition demonstrations will now be classified.

 

Asylum Digger

Yelena Tregubova, 33, a former Kremlin correspondent whose sensational book, Tales of a Kremlin Digger, was a bestseller, offering a look inside Russia’s power structures, is now seeking political asylum in the UK, saying she fears returning to Russia.

 

Yeltsin Art

Collector Igor Markin has announced an open competition for a Yeltsin monument. Competing designs are to go on display on Markin’s weblog (art4.ru), where visitors will be able to vote for their favorite design.

 

Russians Who

 

would vote for Dmitry Medvedev for president 34%

... for Sergei Ivanov   31%

... for Vladimir Zhirinovsky    13%

... for Gennady Zyuganov    12%

 

feel U.S. human rights criticisms of Russia are groundless 47%

   feel human rights abuses take place in the Russian military   73%

 

say there are ethnic tensions in their community 22%

...say there are not   63%

 

favor unification of Russia and Ukraine    48%

...do not   29%

are poor in Ust-Orda region   80%

... in Tyumen region   10%

 

were below the poverty line in 2000 29%

... in 2004    17.6%

 

feel Boris Yeltsin was an outstanding political leader   36%

...disagree    52%

 

feel the Yeltsin era brought mainly good 29%

... mainly bad   40%

 

feel the Soviet Union could have won WWII without help from the Allies   64%

 

want Putin to be president for life   35% ...do not   54%

 

live in Moscow and say they are “happy”   65%

feel men and women have equal rights in Russia 59%

own their own apartment 66%

did not celebrate Easter 88%

 

feel it is better to call Russian citizens:

russkiye   40%

rossiyane   54%

something else   0.3%

 

“The novices in the EU are the countries the Western media previously called the Soviet Union’s vassals. Self-conscious elites, infected with an anti-Russian virus, have come to power in those countries. Curing them will take time.”

Russian envoy to the EU, Sergei Yastrzhembsky (Kommersant)

 

“These days we feel a bit like someone confined to a madhouse, where we’re allowed to shout some truths. The doctors nod, say ‘thank you,’ then escort us back to our cells.”

Victor Shenderovich, on waning press freedoms (Christian Science Monitor)

 

“Let’s not talk about having such immaculate, white fluffy partners on one side, and a monster who has just come out of a forest with claws and horns growing instead of legs on the other.” 

President Vladimir Putin, at a Moscow press conference,
after talks with the Portuguese prime minister (Interfax)

 

“A more efficient sword can be found for every shield.”

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, on Russia’s response
to a U.S. missile defense deployment in Europe (RFE/RL)

 

“They are repeating an old tale about two enemies: there is an internal enemy, who must be destroyed, arrested, and put into prison – and an external enemy, who is trying to destroy Russia from within with the hands of the internal enemy... Under Stalin, there were Trotskyites, Bukharinites, saboteurs, and Japanese-British spies. Now there are Orangists, puppet-masters from Maydan, spies, Berezovsky’s hirelings, extremists, and terrorists.”

Independent Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov (Ekho Moskvy)

 

“There is still this ancient Russian pastime: the search for a National Idea.”

President Vladimir Putin (Itogi)

 

“None of Putin’s speeches has ever exhibited such blatantly expressed anti-Western rhetoric. If this is not a resumption of the Cold War, then it is a clear cooling.”

Marianna Maksimovskaya, RenTV host, on Putin’s speech in Munich,
which obliquely compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany (Nedelya)

 

“Russia has existed for many centuries. It doesn’t have to look for a new identity.”

Georgy V. Velenbakhov, chief heraldry master of the Heraldry Council of Russia (New York Times)

 

“It is imperative to use diplomatic channels to make ‘Russia’ sound like ‘Rossiya’ in English, not like ‘Rasha.’ In other words, the English letter ‘u’ needs to be changed to the English letter ‘o’.”

Ethnography and Anthropology Institute director Valery Tishkov, to President Putin,
at a meeting of the Public Chamber (Kommersant)

 

“Russia never lost the Cold War. The USSR lost it. Russia was initially established as a denial of the USSR, so it’s entirely inappropriate to regard it as the loser. Alas, no one in Moscow or Washington understands this.”

Alexander Khramchikhin, chief analyst, Political and
Military Analysis Institute (Nezavisimaya Gazeta)

$84.27 million

amount USAID spent in Russia in 2006

$60.97 million

amount to be spent in 2007

65

average Russian’s life expectancy

56

life expectancy in Tyva Republic

R10,900

average monthly income, nationwide

10.2%

growth in real disposable income last year

15

factor by which the gap between high- and low-income Russians grew in 2006

54%

Tyumen region’s share of all Russian natural resources extracted

43 of 55

Russia’s rank in annual survey of world’s competitive economies

8.5%

forecast state debt as a percent of GDP in 2008 (vs. 60% in the U.S.)

$16.7 billion

capital raised by Russian companies in 2007 through sales of shares, the most in any European country

8,860,400

new estimate for number of Soviet troops killed in WWII

7 million

Stalin’s 1946 estimate of total civilian and military dead

26.6 million

government’s 1989 estimate of total civilian and military dead

100

Russian satellites in orbit around Earth

 

8,600

Number of security cameras installed in Moscow’s municipal apartment buildings in the central district. 

45%

portion of government budget revenue from oil and gas sectors

70,000

number of skinheads (shorthand for fascistic, racist youth) in Russia

1.3 million

population of Estonia

27%

of which are ethnic Russian

22 million

number of cars in Russia
(7th greatest in the world)

123.9

cost of living index for Moscow
(New York = 100)

$35 million

turnover in Russian online dating services in 2006

413 billion

number of cigarettes produced in Russia in 2006

 

Bronze Consolation

After a brilliant 4-0 win over the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals (on Victory Day, May 9) the Russian squad, coached by Vyacheslav Bykov, lost to Finland 1-2 in the IIHF World Hockey Championship semifinals. Goalie Alexander Yeremenko, who conceded what many called a “stupid” goal in overtime, crushed his stick in despair after the match. But his self-deprecating gesture did not stop the local leading sports daily, Sport-Express, from publishing an acrimonious front-page account of the match, titled “Samoubiystvo” (“Suicide”). 

At the last Hockey World Championship held in Moscow in 1986, the Soviet team won gold by defeating Sweden 3-2 at Moscow’s Luzhniki Sports Palace. Twenty-one years later, Russia again beat Sweden – this time 3-1, at the newly-built Khodynka Arena – but this time the victory secured third place in the tournament. The bronze was Russia’s third medal in the last six years, including silver in 2002 and bronze in 2005. Russia has not won the tourney since 1993.

The gold went to Canada, which won their third IIHF World Cham-pionship in five years and 24th ever, defeating Finland 4-2 in Moscow’s May 13 finale. The bronze pill was sweetened a bit for Russia, however: Andrei Markov was named best defenseman and Alexei Moro-zov best forward. Markov, Morozov and teammate Yevgeny Malkin were also named to the All-Star team. 

Sharapova Backs Sochi 

Tennis megastar Maria Sharapova spoke in support of her Russian hometown’s bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. Sharapova was born in Belarus in 1987. Later her family moved to Nyagan (Siberia), then to Sochi, spending the next six years in the city. “Sochi is the city where my love of tennis began when I was just four years old, watching my father on the local courts,” the U.S. Open champion said in a written statement. 

“The changes Sochi 2014 will bring to this region, including state-of-the-art, custom-built winter training facilities,” Sharapova said, “will mean that youngsters will not have to travel to the other side of the world to realize their potential... Sochi is an incredibly beautiful place... with miles of beaches in front of the city and snow-covered mountains soaring behind. I’m very happy to support Sochi’s bid.” 

Sharapova promised to lobby for Sochi at June’s Rolland Garros tournament in France. Sochi’s rivals for the 2014 Winter Games are Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea. The IOC will decide on the site at a meeting in Guatemala on July 4th. 

 

 Vermont Tennis Clash

The Federation Cup is the world’s most important women’s team tennis tournament. In April’s quarterfinal, Russia crushed Spain 5-0, setting up a July 15-16 match with the United States, to be held in Stowe, Vermont.

Nadia Petrova and Svetlana Kuz-nets-ova led the Russian squad to victory over Spain, with Anna and Yelena Vesnina playing key supporting roles. Coach Shamil Tarpishchev says world number two Maria Sharapova may join the Russian team in July. It would be her debut in the Fed Cup tourney and an important appearance to secure a 2008 Olympic berth – only players who play for their country in team competitions can enter the Olympic tennis tourney. 

The U.S. has an impressive 4-1 record against Russia in Fed Cup play. But in their last match – a semifinal at Moscow’s Olympic Stadium in 2005 – Russia defeated the U.S., despite the presence of Venus Williams, who had won Wimbledon the weekend before. This year, Serena Williams is expected to headline for the U.S. 

Ukraine Steals Show

Ukraine has been chosen, along with Poland, to host the European Football Championship in 2012. This means that Russia has little chance of winning its bid to host the 2016 UEFA championships. Prior to the UEFA vote, Italy and the Croatia/ Hungary pairing were felt to be the frontrunners, while Poland/Ukraine was the underdog choice. “Com-menting is difficult. Italy was the clear favorite, and I don’t understand why the Executive Com-mittee voted against it,” said Vitaly Mutko, president of the Russian Football Union. The silver lining of the UEFA choice is that Ukraine’s proximity will bring tournament play closer than ever for Russia’s soccer fans.