Россия при Путине. Что о режиме рассказало убийство Б.Немцова? | Немецкие СМИ связали убийство Немцова с участием в подготовке санкций :: Политика :: РосБизнесКонсалтинг | Путин отправлял на Донбасс побольше чеченцев, чтобы испортить отношения между нашими народами — Главком | Radical Chechen President Becoming Ticking Time Bomb for Putin | The deadly chaos behind Putin’s mysterious acts - Part 2

Россия при Путине. Что о режиме рассказало убийство Б.Немцова?:

"Все это показывает, что В.Путин на самом деле не подозревал о том, что планируется убийство Б.Немцова, а следователи не ищут "козлов отпущения", поскольку нацелены на ближайшее окружение Р.Кадырова. Как "Новая газета", так и другие представители российских СМИ и оппозиции, сейчас говорят о серьезной борьбе между окружением Р.Кадырова и нежелающими ему уступать российскими спецслужбами, в которой В.Путину, как настоящему крестному отцу мафии, придется выбирать, какую из сторон поддержать."

Немецкие СМИ связали убийство Немцова с участием в подготовке санкций :: Политика :: РосБизнесКонсалтинг:

"По сведениям издания, год назад Немцов встречался с сенаторами Джоном Маккейном и Роном Джонсоном и передал им 13 имен, в том числе людей из ближнего окружения Путина, для включения их в обновленный «список Магнитского». В марте 2015 года сенат принялрезолюцию, в которой призывал президента США Барака Обаму включить в черный список лиц, рекомендованных Борисом Немцовым. По словам представителя Госдепартамента Виктории Нуланд, решение о необходимости расширения этого перечня будет принято до конца года. При этом она, как пишет F.A.S., увязала принятие этого решения с ходом расследования по делу об убийстве Немцова."

Путин отправлял на Донбасс побольше чеченцев, чтобы испортить отношения между нашими народами — Главком: 

"После того, как я на Youtube увидел видео, на котором Борис Немцов очень ярко высказался о Путине, я сразу сказал, что это плохо для Немцова кончится. Нужно знать этих людей(Кадырова и Путина). У них очень сильно развито самолюбие, они не терпят подобных высказываний. Когда Немцов сказал слово на букву «ё» по отношению к Путину, ему нужно было просто бежать из России. Я тогда понял, что для Немцова плохо это кончится."

Radical Chechen President Becoming Ticking Time Bomb for Putin:

“Putin has become a hostage to his own policy of radicalizing supporters so they can spring to action whenever he needs them,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “His authoritarianism is sliding into decentralized terror. His backers think he’s much more radical than he really is and are acting without clear orders.”

The FSB, which used to be the KGB, hate Kadyrov, experts believe.

“The F.S.B. hate Ramzan because they are unable to control him,” claimed Alexey Malashenko, a Caucasus expert. “He does whatever he wants, including in Moscow. Nobody can arrest members of his team if there is no agreement with Putin.”

The deadly chaos behind Putin’s mysterious acts

"At heart is Mr. Putin’s personal and essentially feudal arrangement with Chechen despot Ramzan Kadyrov. There is said to be a tension between the Russian security hierarchies and Mr. Kadyrov, who personally controls some 15,000 to 20,000 armed men (an unprecedented number outside state countrol in Russian history outside of civil war) and has used them to support Mr. Putin’s Ukrainian aggressions. The British war-studies professor Sir Lawrence Freedman calls this relationship a Faustian bargain and it certainly looks like one; the two men have their hands on each others’ throats. Mr. Putin (or someone claiming to act for him) could have Mr. Kadyrov killed at any time (and, quite possibly, vice versa), but Mr. Putin still needs Mr. Kadyrov to control the North Caucasus from his base in Grozny."

Растущая перспектива “России в составе Чечни” напрягает силовиков - "Русский Еврей": 

"Сегодня закрытие проекта “Кадыров” стало бы официальным признанием поражения России во второй чеченской войне и объявлением третьей. Это возвращение в 1999 год в гораздо худшей исходной позиции. Это, кроме того, полная политическая делегитимизация Путина как “спасителя отечества в 1999-м”."

Putin Increasingly Harmed by His Pro-Kadyrov Stance, Piontkovsky Says by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com): 

"In addition, Piontkovsky says, the siloviki are anything but happy about the way in which Kadyrov militants are now getting involved in fights for control of economic and even political assets “far beyond the borders of the Chechen Republic,” something no other regional leader has been permitted to do...

But “the last drop apparently because the provincial version of ‘Triumph of the Will’ at the Grozny stadium,” an action that seemed to presage a situation in which it would not be Chechnya within Russia but “’Russian within Chechnya,’” something anathema not only to the siloviki but to ordinary Russians as well."

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Part 2 | Part 1

A Hateful Sort of Love

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 11:49 AM

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Over the weekend, a group of right-wing extremists from across Europe and the United States met at a Holiday Inn in St. Petersburg. They were there to attend the first convention of the International Russian Conservative Forum—an organization founded by the pro-Vladimir Putin Rodina Party, whose purpose is to create the kind of foreign support for the Russian war in Ukraine that the Communist International mobilized on behalf of the Soviet Union. (Call it the Conintern.) A paramilitary band of Cossacks, armed with leather whips, provided security outside the hall. Inside, fringe political characters from Germany, Italy, Britain, the U.S., and other countries spoke of their devotion to Putin and Europe’s Christian traditions, while expressing contempt for the European Union and denouncing the American way of life, which meant homosexuality, multiculturalism, globalization, and “feminized men.”

The Golden Dawn, a radical right-wing Greek party, was there, but Marine Le Pen’s French National Front, in spite of its coziness with Putin, stayed away, as part of an image makeover. This was, after all, essentially a collection of Fascists, and if most of the participants claimed to reject the label (not all—Italy’s Roberto Fiore, of the Forza Nuova, insisted on the distinction between Fascism and Nazism) it’s only because “Fascist” has become Putin’s fundamental term of abuse for the elected government of Ukraine. According to the International Russian Conservative Forum, the Fascists are in Kiev, and also in Brussels. “The E.U. are Nazis,” Jim Dowson, a Scottish anti-abortion activist, said. With lavish celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of V-E Day just weeks away, Russia was hailed as the Continent’s protector against this new, squishy, mongrelized, morally debased version of the Second World War-era threat. Fascists in St. Petersburg vilified “Fascists.”

What unites this loose tribe of anti-Semites, homophobes, fundamentalists, power worshipers, militarists, and mystics is a hatred of liberalism—a social order based on individual rights, pluralism, tolerance, and international coöperation. They’re marginal figures at best, not without comic potential, and individually they’re probably not worth discussing, if only they didn’t constitute the extreme tip of a global reaction against liberalism. This reaction is the most powerful political force of our time, not just in terms of its electoral success but in its intellectual self-confidence and persuasiveness. And it has little in the way of comic value. It springs from diverse causes in different places and can take widely different forms—far from all of them Fascist, and some of them mutually hostile. We see versions of it in China’s reversion toward Maoism under Xi Jinping; in the rise of the National Front (most recently in Sunday’s local elections) and other European parties on the far right and far left; in the Islamist authoritarianism of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution in his triumphant campaign last week, and in the abandonment, by some of his American supporters, of Israeli democracy as a value; in the Iranian clerical leadership’s doctrinaire hostility to “Western” ideas; and, in this country, in the resurgence of American exceptionalism as a galvanizing force on the Republican right. (Senator Ted Cruz, who just became the first announced Republican Presidential candidate, makes George W. Bush seem like a one-world humanitarian.)

This reaction knows no partisan or national affiliation, and transcends ordinary ideological divides. Its Venezuelan adherents, who call themselves revolutionary leftists, have made common cause with Russian conservatives and Iranian theocrats. No one in American politics resembles Putin more than Cruz, who regularly denounces the Russian leader (along with Barack Obama for not standing up to him). The Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov is an Islamist who organized violent protests againstCharlie Hebdo after the January 7th attack in Paris; he’s also a loyal soldier for Putin, an anti-Islamist who counts support for Bashar al-Assad as necessary in the fight against terrorism. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian Supreme Leader, is an unelected anti-Semite, but he and Netanyahu, the elected leader of the Jewish state, speak a similar language of unquestionable national destiny that overlooks the reality of the millions of people who don’t fit within it.

No single word can quite do justice to the variety and reach of the reaction. The leaders and movements I’ve named above are joined by what they’re against more than by what they’re for. They despise the weakness and moral flabbiness of their liberal opponents. They discount the importance of minority views—criticism is considered illegitimate. They hate the creeping pace, the flawed compromises, and the muddled outcomes of democratic politics. They build their support on the many failures of liberal societies, from crime, social decline, economic stagnation, and political paralysis to terrorism, inconclusive wars, and the impotence of international organizations. They stoke a perpetual sense of grievance rooted in history, which requires an external enemy, and also an internal one. The internal enemy (immigrants, Jews, gays, political dissidents) is, in fact, alien to the nation, and the source of all that ails its essential goodness. To the most complex problems they offer the simplest solutions, promising unity, renewal, regeneration, a return to origins, a purification of the nation through the internal enemy’s expulsion and the external enemy’s defeat. Perhaps the best word for it is nationalism.

Nationalism usually means blind support for one’s country, but it doesn’t require a nation-state. These days, one of the most potent and volatile forms of nationalism is Islamism, which crosses and erases borders. In the broadest sense, it means allegiance to one’s group: allegiance without shades of gray, excluding the claims of other groups; allegiance in the pursuit of power as the group’s right; allegiance regardless of the facts. Nationalism transcends states, and individuals everywhere carry its seeds. We’re all tribal; we all have loyalties and biases; we all harbor an unexamined and indefensible sense of belonging to the chosen group. There’s a little Putin in everyone, forever picking at old scabs, whipping up team spirit, settling scores—us against them, a hateful sort of love. Acknowledging these things is the only antidote to being governed by them.

Nationalism can break out like a fever—just think of this country after the attacks of September 11th, with all the folly and tragedy that resulted. If we now see nationalism on the rise and liberalism in retreat in so many places, it has something to do with those years, when America acted as if it had the wisdom and the power to remake the world in an image of itself. American nationalism, which flared up in the name of liberalism, did lasting damage to that name. The damage weakened America’s ability to speak for the idea of liberal society while emboldening its true enemies.

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· · · ·

U.S. General: West Created ISIS

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 11:47 AM

Comments On: U.S. General: West Created ISIS

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By Pete Papaherakles —

General Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., former Supreme Allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the war against Yugoslavia and presidential candidate, revealed recently on CNN that the Islamic State (ISIS) was “funded by our friends and allies in order to fight Hezbollah.” Although hailed by many as a whistleblower for this revelation, is it really possible that a man of his stature, who led NATO in slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent Serbs under the completely fabricated charges that they were genociding Muslims, really be telling the American people the truth now, or was this “leak” a half-truth designed to mislead?

Clark stated in a recent CNN interview: “ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies. Because as people will tell you in the region that if you want somebody who will fight to the death against Hezbollah, you don’t put out a recruiting poster saying, ‘sign up for us. We’re gonna make a better world.’ You go after zealots and you go after these religious fundamentalists. That’s who fights Hezbollah. It’s like a Frankenstein.”

This is not the first time Clark has revealed inside information about the wars in the Middle East. In a 2007 interview with “Democracy Now” radio talk show host Amy Goodman, Clark made big news by revealing that only days after the 9-11 attacks one of the top generals in the Pentagon had showed him a memo from then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld outlining long-term U.S. war plans even before the invasion of Afghanistan had commenced.

According to Clark, the general had told him, “We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” For many, this was proof that the wars were planned ahead of time earning Clark credibility in the antiwar movement.

So Clark is once again revealing inside information that ISIS is not simply a homegrown terrorist organization but that it “got started through funding from our friends and allies” and its purpose is to fight Hezbollah.

He doesn’t tell us which friends funded it and we are left to guess that he probably means Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the area hostile to Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar al Assad such as Qatar and Turkey. But although the general is telling us part of the truth, he is being somewhat misleading by obscuring both the real source of the funding and the true purpose of ISIS.

These Islamic “zealots” Clark is referring to go back to the creation of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the early 1980s, funded by the United States in order to fight the Soviet Union.

While the U.S. officially condemns ISIS, it has routinely been caught funding them. The Express Tribune, an affiliate of The New York Times, reported in late January, in an article titled, “Startling revelations: IS operative confesses to getting funds via U.S.,” that Pakistani security forces captured an ISIS fighter who has revealed that he and many fighters alongside him received funds that were routed through the U.S.

AMERICAN FREE PRESS published an article in August 2014—“ISIS a CIA-Mossad Creation?”—stating that it was revealed through 1.7 million pages of leaked documents by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that ISIS is a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-Mossad-MI6 [Military Intelligence, Section 6, part of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)] operation and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been reputed to be a Mossad-trained operative whose real name is Elliot Shimon, the son of Jewish parents.

Neocon Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) had repeatedly been photographed in Syria with al-Baghdadi and other terrorists in June 2013, several months before ISIS was officially launched, though this claim has been disputed by mainstream media outlets. It has also been reported that the CIA was involved in training ISIS in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government.

Clark’s claim that ISIS was created simply to fight Hezbollah is also misleading.

The Snowden documents contend that British, American and Israeli intelligence created ISIS as “a terrorist organization capable of centralizing all extremist actions across the world,” using a strategy called Hornet’s Nest, designed to “protect Israel.” According to the documents, “the only solution for the protection of the Jewish state is to create an enemy near its borders.”

Yet even this is misleading, as Israel is not exactly a shrinking violet.

It is Israel’s neighbors who need protection from the Jewish state. The real purpose of ISIS may not be completely understood yet, but it seems to play several roles both locally and globally. Surely it is being used as a backdoor entry into Syria to take down Assad, but its activities are not confined to Iraq and Syria. We recently saw the 21 beheadings in Libya, whether real or staged, and ISIS is urging new attacks on the “infidel West” following the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

It is reputed that ISIS has terrorist cells in many European countries as well as in the U.S. ISIS is also used to cause problems for Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Chechnya with its terrorist “Chechen Legion” as well as supporting Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky’s Dzhokhar’s Dudayev Battalion in Eastern Ukraine against the pro-Russian rebels.

ISIS is poised to become a global political-terrorist force used by the intelligence agencies to destabilize countries, escalate Islamophobia and justify intervention by the Western military-industrial complex. Locally, it will help facilitate the Zionist dream of “Greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Pete Papaherakles is a writer and political cartoonist for AFP.

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Cyberwarfare in Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 11:16 AM

Wikipedia - Recent Changes [En]

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Cyberwarfare in Russia includes allegations of denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation over the internet, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, and persecution of cyber-dissidents. According to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov,[1] some of these activities are coordinated by the Russiansignals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB but has been formerly a part of 16th KGBdepartment, but others are directed by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

§Online presence[edit]

US journalist Pete Earley described his interviews with former senior Russian intelligence officerSergei Tretyakov who defected in the United States in 2000. According to him,

Sergei would send an officer to a branch of New York Public Library where he could get access to the Internet without anyone knowing his identity. The officer would post the propaganda on various websites and send it in emails to US publications and broadcasters. Some propaganda would be disguised as educational or scientific reports. ... The studies had been generated at the Center by Russian experts. The reports would be 99% accurate but would always contain a kernel of disinformation that favored Russian foreign policy. ... "Our goal was to cause dissension and unrest inside the US and anti-American feelings abroad"[2]

Tretyakov did not specify the targeted web sites, but made clear they selected the sites which are most convenient for distributing the specific disinformation. During his work in New York in the end of the 1990s, one of the most frequent disinformation subjects was War in Chechnya.

According to a publication in Russian computer weekly Computerra, "just because it became known that anonymous editors are editing articles in English Wikipedia in the interests of UK and US intelligence and security services, it is also likely that Russian security services are involved in editing Russian Wikipedia, but this is not even interesting to prove it — because everyone knows that security bodies have a special place in structure of our [Russian] state"[3]

§Cyberattacks[edit]

It has been claimed that Russian security services organized a number of denial of service attacks as a part of their Cyber-warfare against other countries,[4] most notably 2007 cyberattacks on Estoniaand 2008 cyberattacks on Russia, South Ossetia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.[5] One of young Russian hackers said that he was paid by the Russian state security services to lead the hacker attacks onNATO computers. He was majoring computer sciences at the Department of the Defense of Information. His tuition was paid by the FSB.[6]

At the same time, speaking of 2007 cyberattacks, Estonia's defence minister Jaak Aaviksoo admitted he does not possess evidence of official Russian government involvement in cyberattacks.[7]

As to the 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia, an independent US-based research institute US Cyber Consequences Unit report stated the attacks had "little or no direct involvement from the Russian government or military". According to the institute's conclusions, some severalattacks were carried from PCs of multiple users, located in Russia, Ukraine and Latvia. These people were willingly participating in cyberwarfare, being Russia supporters during 2008 South Ossetia war. Some attacks also used botnets.[8][9]

According to Soldatov, a hacker attack on his web site Agentura was apparently directed by the secret services in the middle of Moscow theater hostage crisis.[1]

In March 2014, a Russian cyber weapon called Snake or “Ouroboros” is reported creating havoc on Ukrainian government systems.[10]

As reported on October 2014, Russian hackers exploited a bug in Microsoft Windows and other software to spy on computers used by NATO, the European Union, Ukraine and companies in the energy and telecommunications sectors, according to cyber intelligence firm ISight Partners.[11]

§In popular culture[edit]

The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work.[12] He wrote:

"It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".[13]

§References[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to: a b State control over the internet, a talk show by Yevgenia Albats at the Echo of Moscow, January 22, 2006; interview with Andrei Soldatov and others
2. Jump up ^ Pete Earley, "Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War", Penguin Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-399-15439-3, pages 194-195
3. Jump up ^ Is there only one truth? by Kivy Bird, Computerra, 26 November 2008
4. Jump up ^ Cyberspace and the changing nature of warfare. Strategists must be aware that part of every political and military conflict will take place on the internet, says Kenneth Geers.
5. Jump up ^ http://www.axisglobe.com/news.asp?news=14728
6. Jump up ^ Andrew Meier, Black Earth. W. W. Norton & Company, 2003, ISBN 0-393-05178-1, pages 15-16.
7. Jump up ^ [1]
8. Jump up ^ [2]
9. Jump up ^ [3]
10. Jump up ^ http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2014/0312/Russia-s-cyber-weapons-hit-Ukraine-How-to-declare-war-without-declaring-war
11. Jump up ^ [4] by Jim Finkle, Investing.com, 14 October 2014
12. Jump up ^ " Grigory Svirsky Anastasya. A story on-line (Full text in Russian)
13. Jump up ^ (Russian) Eye for an eye

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US Trying to Drive Wedge between Russia, Ukraine for Years

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 11:10 AM

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This article originally appeared at Off Guardian

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The U.S. has long been trying to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks said in an interview published on Monday by the Argentine newspaper Pagina/12, TASS news agency reports.

“The U.S. has long been trying to draw Ukraine into the Western orbit, to pluck it out of Russia’s sphere of influence as a minimum if not to make it a NATO member,” Assange said.

Under the influence of bureaucratic ambitions, Europe has gotten involved in the misadventure, too, he believes.

“The U.S. and Europe have allocated billions of dollars to set up nongovernmental organizations, with the aid of which they promised to help Ukraine curb corruption,” Assange said.

He recalled numerous warnings on the part of Russia that the attempts to bring Ukraine into NATO might trigger a civil war in that country.

Here is an excerpt of Assange’s comments delivered in a live videoconference with journalists from around the world:

— Let’s move on to Ukraine.

— The best analysis comes from a recognized geopolitical analyst, John Mearsheimer, a highly reputed academic whose work has been used even by the State Department. He is not an extremist. His opinion is the same as mine.What we say is documented in the cables.

There is one cable from 2008 showing that Russia drew a line in the sand and set her limits to the United States and NATO. The cable is titled “No means no” and refers to the territorial expansion of NATO. It explains that if there was interference in Ukraine through an attempt to integrate it into NATO, this would not be tolerated by the heavily Russian-speaking regions in Ukraine, who consider themselves Russian for having belonged to the Soviet Union, and Crimea is one of those regions. And Russia warned that the attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO would cause a civil war.

Thus you can see the strategic importance Russia confers to Ukraine as part of the Slavic civilization and to the military-industrial complex in eastern Ukraine, which continues to produce ballistic guided missiles, missile parts, etc. The US has long been trying to bring Ukraine into the West, if not with aNATO membership, at least by Ukraine becoming independent of Moscow’ssphere of influence, in order to reduce the Russian military-industrial complex and reduce its naval bases in Crimea.

They had been trying to do this for a long time and Russia had been complaining and warning about what would happen. Europe, under the influence of the European Union’s bureaucratic expansionism, joined the attempt.

But the Russians are not innocent. Their handling of their most valued and dear strategic ally, of their closest trading partner, was completely incompetent. No country can operate in Ukraine as Russia can. BecauseUkrainians speak Russian and look like Russians due to family and trade relations between the two countries. Russia neglected Ukraine by relating not to its people, but to its oligarchy, to its political elite, to the Ukrainian economy. She spent billions of dollars in subsidies for Ukraine.

At the same time the US and Western Europe spent billions of dollars on the creation of NGOs and of social networks. Through these institutions and these media the West promised to end corruption in Ukraine. The Russians did a lot of wrong things when they could have related to Ukraine in a different fashion. They removed many agents of the FSB (Russian secret service) from Ukraine and transferred them to Chechnya in order to prevent terrorist attacks. Chechnya became Russia’s first priority, and now we see the results of neglecting Ukraine.

— And regarding the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov just feet away from the Kremlin?

— There’s a link to what is happening in Ukraine. It looks like the special forces Russia is using to train and support separatist forces in eastern Ukraine come, or at least initially came from, Chechnya, and there’s a reason for that: Chechen forces are the best trained and more experienced in what they call counterinsurgency operations, which basically means fighting in a civil war, because that is what is happening in Chechnya, a breakaway republic seeking independence from Russia. For this reason Russia used Chechnya regiments in Ukraine, and these regiments are controlled by the president of the Chechen region (Ramzan) Kadyrov. And I do not mean Kadyrov is loyal to Putin, since he has his own agenda, but formally he depends on Putin.

Throughout the Chechen conflict Kadyrov deployed troops and intelligence services that are quite powerful and that have been charged with murder, even in Vienna for example, of Kadyrov opponents. The war in Ukraine made Russia pour much money on Chechen forces and Chechen intelligence services. The result is that they became very powerful and now somehow rival the FSB, which until now was the only intelligence service that operated and gathered intelligence abroad. The material murderers of Nemtsov at the Kremlin’’s entrance were Chechens linked to the secret services of this country.

— And Kadyrov said the murderer was a national hero …

— Exactly. That’s why it is hard to know what is happening, but at some level Chechen services were proving that the FSB does not control Moscow and that they have the power to kill someone at the gates of the Kremlin.

This does not mean that Kadyrov ordered the murder, it is possible that some intermediate command sought to prove its usefulness to Kadyrov or the Russian far right.

Let’s consider now what happened next. A week or two after the murder, Putin honored Kadyrov with a medal for services to Russia. At the same ceremony he also honored the FSB agent who had poisoned with polonium the former spy Litvinenko in a London sushi restaurant (in 2006). In the West’s perspective, the image Putin left at the awards ceremony was horrible. It was as if he had said: “I supported equally the two murders,” the FSB’s and the Chechens’. Putin had shown himself to be angry and confused after the death of Nemstov. So, giving this medal to Kadyrov generates confusion in the Russian population and makes it think that perhaps Putin ordered the killing, that maybe he is happy with the murder because he is a strong leader who controls the situation.

But the reality is that he does not control completely the Chechen forces. They are a very closed group, they have their own language and their own agenda.Putin’s power center is the FSB, who provide his safety, and the relationship with the Chechen services is very delicate, so the situation is very interesting.

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‘The FBI Is Trying to Destroy My Life’

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 11:04 AM

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After a year of being trailed by the FBI for knowing the Boston bombers, Khairullozhon Matanov was arrested. He is now headed to jail. And he’s not alone.

Khairullozhon Matanov deliberated with his lawyers three times before hesitantly pleading guilty yesterday to all four counts of obstructing the 2013 investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing.

This was not an easy decision for him to make. 

“The whole case is mystery,” he wrote to The Daily Beast last fall. “FBI is trying to destroy my life.”

If Judge William Young agrees to the deal, Manatov will get 30 months in prison, including the 10 months he’s already served. If he goes to trial and is found guilty, he could spend the next 20 years behind bars.

Even in pleading guilty, Matanov asserted his innocence.

“You’re afraid if you go to trial you could be found guilty of all four of these charges and the sentence might be longer than the 30 months?” Judge Young asked. “Is that it? That you think you are not a guilty person but given the circumstances you’d rather [not] go to trial?”

Matanov’s dark bowl cut bobbed slightly.

“I signed a deal and I found guilt most fitting for my situation.”

Matanov, a 24-year-old cab driver from Kyrgyzstan, had been living in Quincy, Massachusetts, before he was apprehended by federal agents in the dark early-morning hours last May. Since then, he’s been  behind bars, oftentimes held in a cell by himself.

By all accounts, Matanov’s life in America had been going well up until the marathon bombings. He came to the U.S. in 2010 on a student visa and later received asylum. After attending Quincy College for two years, he dropped out to take a job as a taxi driver. He was well-liked at the the cab company. He made a few friends at his mosque with whom he’d play pickup games of soccer.

“What’s happened is everybody who has spoken [in] the Chechen community in Boston has wound up having legal problems or potential legal problems.”

Then one of his new friends, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, allegedly planted a pressure-cooker bomb at the Boston Marathon finish line with his younger brother, Dzhokhar, and everything in Matanov’s life changed forever.

As Matanov pleaded guilty to charges that he obstructed the investigation into the attack, Dzhokhar was being tried for his life in a courtroom below.

The Tsarnaevs’ terror spree surprised Matanov as much as anyone, and the indictment against him makes that clear. “The government has no evidence that Matanov had foreknowledge or participated in the bombings,” it states.

But if the government has no evidence Matanov participated in the attack, it’s not because the FBI didn’t look hard enough.

For months after the bombing, FBI agents trailed him constantly. In Matanov’s bail hearing, an agent testified that Matanov once got out of the car to talk to an agent he knew was following him.

At one point agents called his lawyer, Paul Glickman, to tell Matanov to stop speeding. He complied.

Federal agents monitored Matanov even as he slept. At night, an aircraft would circle his West Quincy home. The unexplained night flights became a point of local mystery and outcry. At the time, spokespeople for the Federal Aviation Administration refused to say who was piloting the plane and why.

And then, more than a year after the attack—and more than a year after the crimes for which Matanov is charged are alleged to have taken place—he was arrested.

When he wrote to The Daily Beast last November, Matanov said he was innocent, and perplexed at the position he found himself in.

“I don’t understand what on earth I have done to be treated this awful way and prisoned [sic] for such a long time? Now on top of that media made me already guilty even before my trial happen,” he wrote.

The media and the government may have made him look guilty, but not for the crimes he’s charged with committing.

The indictment, written by U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, notes that Matanov and Tamerlan once went “hiking up a New Hampshire mountain in order to train like, and praise, the ‘mujahideen.’”

Matanov allegedly called Tamerlan less than an hour after the bombing. He then allegedly met the Tsarnaevs at a Somerville kebab joint for dinner. Later, he allegedly told his roommate he thought the bombing “could have a just reason, such as being done in the name of Islam, that he would support the bombings if the reason were just or the attack had been done by the Taliban.”

He then allegedly added his own slightly confused interpretation—“that the victims had gone to paradise.” The government also maintains that Matanov possessed videos with “violent content or calls to violence.”

It’s possible that Matanov has some beliefs that many or most find abhorrent. Nothing about that is criminal.

“There is no obligation to turn in your neighbor,” explains Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge and Harvard law professor. “It is a crime not to tell on your neighbors in Soviet countries, but not here.”

On the Friday after the bombing, when Dzhokhar was hiding in a boat in a Watertown backyard, Matanov voluntarily went to the Braintree Police Department to tell law enforcement about his connection to the brothers.

He then agreed to be interviewed by the FBI several times after that.

His charges—and eventual conviction, if Young agrees to the plea deal—all stem from the actions Matanov took next. The government is charging him of one count of destroying documents in a federal terror investigation and three counts of making false statements to the FBI.

The false-statement charges stem from those voluntary interviews with the FBI in which he admitted he ate with the Tsarnaevs, but allegedly lied about inviting them to dinner, lied about the number of times he checked for their photos online before going to police, and lied about ever watching the “violent” videos that had been downloaded to his computer.

The documents he’s accused of destroying are those violent videos.

He’s also charged with clearing his search history on Google Chrome.

Ortiz was able to charge Matanov for clearing his browser history, and deleting his own personal computer files, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Sarbox)—a law Congress enacted in response to the Enron scandal to target business malfeasance. Within Sarbox is a rule to prevent businesses from destroying records that could serve as evidence of their own criminal activity.

Sarbox is a contentious issue in trials of the Tsarnaevs’ other associates, too. Two of Dzhokhar’s college friends were charged under Sarbox for throwing Dzhokhar’s backpack into a dumpster after recognizing their friend’s face on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Dias Kadyrbayev pleaded guilty. If his plea is accepted, he’ll get less than seven years in prison. Azamat Tazhayakov was found guilty and faces 25 years in prison, but is asking for a retrial based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Sarbox.

In Yates v. the U.S., a Florida fisherman took his case to the Supreme Court after he was charged under Sarbox for throwing out undersized fish. Last month, the court ruled in his favor—that Sarbox is only applicable in cases where “objects one can use to record or preserve information” are destroyed.

Not fish, ruled the court. And not backpacks, Tazhayakov’s lawyer argued in a recent motion. (He claims Tazhayakov was unaware that the backpack contained a thumb drive.)

The Yates ruling isn’t applicable to Matanov, because the search browser history he cleared and the files he destroyed are still technically a record. But Gertner says Ortiz’s office is taking Sarbox too far in this case, too.

That’s because Matanov is charged with obstructing an investigation into a non-crime: his own views.

“The notion that you have an obligation to keep your information lest the government look at it is totalitarianism,” she argues.

Think of it another way, outside of the context of terrorism. Imagine your friend, with whom you enjoyed listening to rap music like Notorious B.I.G’s “Ten Crack Commandments,” was arrested in a big crack sting. You don’t sell crack. You didn’t even know your friend sold crack. Maybe he mentioned it, but you thought he was playing around.

But you do know federal investigators will now want to talk to you. And, in fact, you want to help. Songs about crack are one thing, but crack itself is a different story, you figure.

To keep up appearances, you take down your Biggie poster, delete some of your music, and clear your browser history. The Matanov conviction could set up a precedent whereby you could serve federal time for any of those actions.

So what’s a little erosion of liberty in the name of national security? The government doesn’t want to prosecute rap enthusiasts. They’re after the terrorists. Bad guys who kill children and blow up cities. And, after all, Matanov lied.

But whether Matanov knew his statements were a “materially false statement of fact” in the bombing investigation isn’t totally clear. And that’s what Young says the government would have to prove.

One of his lying counts—about whether or not he watched the videos on his computer—is in reference to an investigation into himself, for which the only thing the investigators found to charge him with is his obstruction into that investigation.

He also lied about how soon he went to law enforcement after recognizing Tsarnaev’s photo. But, by law, he wasn’t obligated to go to the authorities at all.

And the government argued that Matanov lied when he said he didn’t plan to have dinner with the Tsarnaevs the night of the bombing. Instead, he said he just ran into them at a Somerville kebab joint. This, the government argues, interfered with the agency’s efforts to pinpoint the Tsarnaevs’ every movement that day. Of all the charges, this one appears to have the most weight.

The way Gertner sees it, Matanov made “a calculation that he cannot have a fair trial here, that any connection to the Tsarnaevs will be unfairly heard.”

But Don Borelli, a former assistant special agent in charge in the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force who is now with the security company the Soufan Group, says that lying to federal agents—no matter how trivial—is dangerous.

“You can’t be collecting a bunch of lies or self-serving information,” he explains. “You waste time, you waste resources, and, in theory, sometimes it can cost lives.”

Pressing charges against people who come forward may cost lives, too.

Michael German, a former FBI agent and terrorism specialist now with the Brennan Center for Justice, says the repercussions of overzealous prosecution can be damning to national-security efforts.

“It creates a chill for any cooperation,” he says.

Cases like the one against Matanov are antithetical to the Department of Homeland Security’s See Something, Say Something effort, he explains.

“It creates a potential for blowback—an atmosphere where no one talks to the FBI at any time about anybody because any crime someone does report opens themselves up to liability.”

Attorney Bernie Grossberg, who represents one of the Tsarnaevs’ friends, says German’s idea is backed up in theory and in practice.

Grossberg’s client requested that his name not be used in this story for fear his connections to the Tsarnaevs might harm his career.

“What’s happened is everybody who has spoken [in] the Chechen community in Boston has wound up having legal problems or potential legal problems,” he explains. “They all knew each other and now they are all deathly afraid of doing anything. And these are all law-abiding citizens.”

Grossberg’s client has been called to a grand jury, and subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He has exercised his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination both times and plans to do so again after being subpoenaed by Dzhokhar’s defense team last week.

“He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t,” explains Grossberg. “He basically takes the position, ‘I don’t know anything, and if I did I’d have my own legal problems.’”

Sarah Wunch, a staff attorney at the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says it isn’t just Grossberg’s client.

“There was a period of months where we were getting a bunch of calls from people who knew the Tsarnaev brothers and [were] getting many visits by the FBI and threatened with grand jury subpoenas,” she said. “It began to feel like they were harassing people who tried to come forward.

“The government was shortsighted in the way they were treating these people. If you want to make people come forward when they see something and say something, you don’t want them to be scared of being ensnared.”

So why is Ortiz’s office pressing charges against Matanov at all?

Some believe it may just be Ortiz’s style to seek the most severe punishment possible at all times. It was Ortiz’s office that filed charges against Internet activist Aaron Swartz that could have sent him to prison for 32 years for the alleged dissemination of the contents of an academic document database, JSTOR. The documents could have otherwise been seen freely with a library card. The looming sentencing is widely credited to have caused the 26-year-old to take his own life.

Matanov says he was being pressured to provide information he didn’t have.

“U.S. Attorney’s Office thru my lawyer offered, to tell them about ‘terrorists,’ which I say I have no connections to any group, and I don’t support any kind of violence at all,” Matanov wrote to The Daily Beast last fall.

German says the government often seeks long sentences from people they suspect of terrorism.

“The reason the sentence in this matter is so severe is in order to compel cooperation,” he explained. “Certainly in other terrorism cases, there is a government assumption that the person may know far more than they actually know, which puts the person in the bind.”

Neither his lawyer nor Ortiz’s office would say if Matanov’s plea agreement entailed any kind of cooperation.

Another possibility is that the government is prosecuting Matanov for obstruction charges out of an abundance of precaution, rather than because they believe he hindered the investigation or because of the statements he made to his roommate and the “violent” videos.

“There may be other things that rise to the surface that don’t rise to charges,” explains Borelli.

German, on the other hand, says there is a problem with what he called the “Al Capone theory”—charging people for one crime because you believe they committed another. Capone was the notorious Prohibition-era gangster who was charged and convicted for tax evasion.

German thinks the bureau uses that method of prosecution against people who haven’t committed a crime but may be interested in extremist criminal ideology. German says the FBI has a theory “that the radical ideas led to the violence,” but he says that’s not always the case.

Not only that, but targeting people who have one “viewpoint as opposed to another,” as the former FBI agent puts it, might have even more serious repercussions in any future efforts to persuade those with information to come forward. The people who may have a superficial interest in radical beliefs—or have relationships with those who do—may have the most information, but they also have the most to fear.

“When you have a national event like that you have a lot of people calling with crazy information,” said German. “If the only people prosecuted are people the government disfavors, that would be a big issue.”

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Suspects Named in Nemtsov’s Murder. Dudayev Battalion Militants suspected in Nemtsov Murder | Global Research

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:59 AM

Global Research

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Isa Munaiev, the late Chechen commander’s long shadow needs to be investigated. The Chechen connection is a major potential piece in the puzzle. (<a href="http://Credit: dunyabulteni.net" rel="nofollow">Credit: dunyabulteni.net</a> / Click images to expand.) 

Translated from Russian by J.Hawk  

The Nemtsov murder investigation has focused on the theory that the crime was organized  by a Chechen militant commander Adam Osmayev, of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, who also was named in the case concerning the attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin. Investigators are allowing for the possibility that the militants, who fought against DPR and LPR, operated at the behest of Ukrainian secret services, since the murder of the opposition leader would have discredited the Russian leadership and destabilize the political situation.

A law enforcement source had told the media that the investigating group has evidence that Ukrainian secret services played a role in Nemtsov’s murder. On the day of the murder the Investigative Committee spokesperson Vladimir Markin announced that the investigators are studying the possibility the murder was intended to destabilize the political situation in the country.

“The murder could have been used as a provocation to destabilize the situation, with Nemtsov becoming a sort of a sacrificial lamb for those who are not overly choosy in their political methods,” Markin told Izvestiya.

The investigators are also working on other versions: political, extremist, business, and personal. However, judging by the quality of preparation and implementation, it was done by professionals. The Izvestiya source said that the killer shot Nemtsov only a few tens of meters from the Kremlin, and it since became known that the murder took place in a spot not covered by a surveillance camera. Moreover, they chose a time during which there are no traffic jams, but there is still heavy traffic in the center which allowed the killers’ car to become lost among other vehicles.

The information that Ukraine’s special services ordered the murder is being verified. The assassins may have performed a mission assigned by Ukrainian secret services, but also avenged the death of their former leader Isa Munaiev. He was killed on February 1 during the battle for Debaltsevo, after which the battalion’s command was taken over by Adam Osmayev.

The so-called Dzhokhar Dudayev international peacekeeping battalion is fighting on Ukraine’s side, and was formed by Munaiev in March 2014. Munaiev fought in the first Chechen campaign against Russian forces, and after 1999 he declared himself the commander of the South-Western sector and participated in organizing acts of terrorism.

Munaiev fled Chechnya in 2006 for Denmark, where he received asylum. He founded the movement “Free Caucaus” which, according to secret services, financed terrorists. When in 2014 the Ukrainian government launched the ATO against LPR and DPR, Munaiev went to Ukraine and declared the formation of his battalion. Russian sources indicate that he was personally invited by (Ukrainian oligarch) Igor Kolomoisky, who financed the battalion. The battalion’s core were Chechen immigrants in Denmark, and citizens of other countries who belonged to terrorist organizations.

Isa Munaiev was one of the individuals, along with the commanders of Azov and Dnepr, who supported terrorism on Russia’s soil and who were ordered delivered to Chechnya by Ramzan Kadyrov.

Russian services are trying to establish how many people participated in the preparation and implementation of Nemtsov’s murder. It cannot be ruled out that, in addition to killers and spotters, there were also “controllers” in Moscow who observed the murder’s aftermath and political effect. One of them may have been the Ukrainian deputy Aleksey Goncharenko. Experts who were questioned by Izvestiya believe the theory of foreign secret service involvement to have merit.

---

J.Hawk’s Comment: If true, that would have been about as big a blow as imaginable that could have been struck by the Ukrainian secret services, because it is aimed at several fissures all at once. It not only creates yet another irritant in Russia’s relations with the West, but also threatens to undermine peace in Chechnya, and to stir-up anti-Chechen sentiment in Russia. Moreover, many members of the “liberal” “opposition” in Russia (especially Aleksey Navalnyy) are stridently anti-Chechen (and anti-minority in general) and lean in the direction of ethnic Russian nationalism.

Finally, Ukrainian nationalists have more than once called for the resumption of the “jihad” against Russia, and applauded when Islamist militants struck in Groznyy a few months ago.

---

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Daghestani Offers How-To Guide For Joining IS In Syria

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:49 AM

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

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A Daghestani militant fighting alongside the Islamic State (IS) group has published the first part of a guide for those wanting to travel from the North Caucasus to join IS in Syria.

Part one of the guide, titled Advice To Those Who Are Relocating, was shared on the Russian social network VKontakte on March 25 by pro-IS accounts and was authored by a militant named Mukhammad Abu Barud al-Daghestani.

The publication of the guide comes in the same week as a message purportedly from Russian-speaking women who have joined IS in Syria published a message calling on other women to join them. The timing of the publication of both the guide and the message from the "Islamic State sisters" suggest that Russian-speaking IS militants are carrying out a deliberate campaign to bring new recruits to join them in Syria.

The guide also sheds light onto the routes to Syria taken by militants in the North Caucasus.

Daghestani gives some practical advice for would-be IS militants seeking to leave the North Caucasus and reach Syria, saying that his suggestions are based on his personal experience.

"The first dilemma faced by Muslim men and women who have made the firm decision to relocate is the question of how to safely leave the country without hindrance. Many people write in and ask about this," Daghestani writes.

There is no easy route, unless you happen to be rich, he admits.

"In all honesty, if you have money, you can get to Europe and cover your tracks, do a couple of laps so to speak and then stop off in Turkey," Daghestani says.

Not Wanted By The FSB? No Problem!

For those who do not have much ready cash, Daghestani has some good news: it is still possible to get out of Russia -- unless, of course, you happen to be wanted by the Federal Security Service (FSB).

"If you are not on the wanted list or under house arrest, then no one can stop you from being able to leave the darned country. You can go to Russia and then to Turkey, for example from Krasnodar or Mineralnye Vody or any other airport in Russia. Or you can go to the border with Azerbaijan, cross it in a taxi and go to the airport, and there no one will monitor your departure to a tourist country," Daghestani says.

According to Daghestani, most of the the time, the Azerbaijani authorities will not question those wishing to fly to Turkey.

If the authorities do ask about the reasons for your departure, Daghestani says this is no big deal.

"Just prepare a plausible tale in advance. Speak confidently, calmly and coolly. They won't believe you. But they won't be able to arrest you, because the law doesn't let them and every infidel who questions you doesn't care a hoot if you stay in Russia or not," Daghestani says.

There is one problem that potential militants from the North Caucasus might face in Azerbaijani airports, though -- the authorities have taken to calling the parents of suspicious individuals and asking them if they know their children are traveling to Turkey.

Daghestani has an answer, though: Have an IS sympathizer, "preferably an adult," agree to take telephone calls from "infidels" at the airport.

"Get them to confirm their consent for you to visit sunny Turkey," Daghestani says.

If all else fails, Daghestani says there is another option.

"You can always leave the country illegally," he says. "The methods are well-known and no secret even to the infidels."

What To Pack When You're Joining A Militant Group

Daghestani also offers advice on what wannabe North Caucasian militants should bring with them when they try to travel to Syria.

"The answer is, travel light. First, it does not attract attention. Second, all you need to live in the Islamic State and for jihad is sold in Turkey," he advises.

Would-be North Caucasian militants are advised to raise the necessary cash by selling their worldly goods before they head off to Syria.

"This is your last journey, so don't skimp!" advises Daghestani, adding that if potential IS recruits don't have enough money "for clothes and stuff" it is not a problem.

"IS will not let you go without. You will be clothed and fed," he explains.

Ideology Of 'Emigration'

Like the message from the Russian-speaking women in IS, ad-Daghestani's guide focuses not only on the practicalities of coming to Syria, but also emphasizes the concept of "hijra" or emigration and its physical and spiritual connotations.

"Hijra does not mean just your physical movement from A to B, it is a blessed journey for your body and soul, abandoning in full everything that was dear to you in this world, all that you accumulated over the years, leaving your parents, your relatives, your friends and your brothers in religion," Daghestani preaches in his guide.

Most people who travel to Syria to join IS do so alone, he adds, saying that "only in exceptional circumstances will you meet those lucky people who moved here with their wives, children and parents all together."

Daghestani stresses the ideological and religious connotations of joining IS in Syria, saying that to do so is to "relocate to God."

Radicalization Fears

The apparent campaign by militants from the North Caucasus to attract new recruits to travel to Syria comes amid a crackdown against extremists in the region, particularly in Daghestan.

Russian security authorities conducted counter-terrorism operations in five districts and three towns in Daghestan on March 15-16, according to Russian media reports.

The March 15 operations were carried out in the Buynaksky district and in Buynaksk town, and on March 16 spread to the Kizilyurtovsky, Khasavyurtovsky, Novolaksky, and Kazbekovsky districts and the towns of Kizilyurt and Khavasyurt.

Rights defenders and experts on the region said that the counterterror operations were likely a result of warnings made by the head of the Kremlin's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, who said earlier this month of concerns regarding links between IS and militants in the North Caucasus.

The head of the FSB, Aleksandr Bortnikov, said last month that as many as 1,700 Russian nationals are fighting in Iraq alongside IS and other extremist groups and that the number of Russian militants there had doubled in the past year.

-- Joanna Paraszczuk

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Book Review: 'Chechnya's Secret Wartime Diplomacy' by Ilyas Akhmadov and Nicholas Daniloff

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:46 AM

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Russia's recent invasion and annexation of Crimea and its instigation of a separatist armed rebellion in eastern and southern Ukraine have overturned the world order established after the Cold War. Most analysts have understandably traced Russia's aggression to the revolutionary upheaval in Ukraine, which ousted a president beholden to Moscow in February and brought to power a new leadership looking to integrate Ukraine into the European Union. In fact, the process that has culminated in the current crisis began 15 years ago, when Vladimir Putin emerged almost out of nowhere, pledging to suppress a separatist rebellion in Chechnya. The small republic had a population of just one million, yet Mr. Putin claimed it posed a grave terrorist threat to all of Russia.

While many aspects of Mr. Putin's rise are cloaked in mystery, its relation to the Chechen conflict is unmistakable: He took over the FSB, Russia's security service, in 1998 in the wake of the First Chechen War, a bloody conflict ending in a stalemate that left the Russian forces weakened and demoralized. The following year, in August, President Boris Yeltsin appointed Mr. Putin acting prime minister, and in September Russia was rocked by four apartment bombings in Moscow and two other cities that killed almost 300 people. Mr. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists for the bombings—but evidence uncovered from a fifth bombing attempt in the city of Ryazan, which was foiled by apartment residents, indicated that the FSB was behind the attacks.

But with Russians swept up in anti-Chechen hysteria thanks to the pro-Kremlin media, they accepted the official version of the incident, and the very next day Mr. Putin launched the Second Chechen War, vowing to "strangle the vermin at the root" and "waste them in the outhouse." This gangster-like language presaged a war of unrestrained brutality: Atrocities included the destruction of entire villages; the use of bunker-busting bombs on civilians; and the blanketing of Chechen valleys with land mines.

Mr. Putin's prime target was Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the resistance in the First Chechen War who had been elected president of Chechnya in January 1997. Mr. Putin insisted he was simply an Islamic terrorist like all Chechens who favored independence. Maskhadov vehemently resisted that characterization—and an important new book confirms that he remained a secular and moderate figure, even as Russia's tactics grew more brutal.

 ENLARGE

Chechnya's Secret Wartime Diplomacy

By Ilyas Akhmadov and Nicholas Daniloff
(Palgrave Macmillan, 274 pages, $95)

"Chechnya's Secret Wartime Diplomacy" consists of edited transcripts of 24 audiotapes that Maskhadov recorded in 2000-03 while he was on the move with a small group of guards. The tapes were secretly transmitted by courier to his foreign minister, Ilyas Akhmadov, who had left Chechnya when the war broke out to provide diplomatic representation abroad.

With phone and other electronic communication too risky because it might reveal Maskhadov's location, the tapes provided a way for him to instruct Mr. Akhmadov. Since the two were unable to speak directly, there were often tensions and misunderstandings. But these transcripts, supplemented by Mr. Akhmadov's own commentary, provide a vivid and hitherto unavailable perspective on the war. They also answer many important questions about Maskhadov and the Chechen struggle.

The book confirms, for example, that the late journalist Anna Politkovskaya was correct in designating Maskhadov a "Westernizer" within the Chechen resistance, meaning that he wanted to adapt European laws and human-rights norms to Chechnya. "We have strongly rejected any Wahhabism, fundamentalism, extremism," Maskhadov said in the very first audio letter, recorded in July 2000. Yet he was also trying to unite his forces against Mr. Putin and prevent a civil war from developing. As Mr. Akhmadov writes, every time Maskhadov succeeded in achieving unity, a terrorist act like the Beslan hostage crisis of 2004, would "drive us into another dead end."

The tapes also show that Maskhadov was constantly seeking a negotiated settlement. "It is necessary to make utmost efforts to stop this war," he says in one of the last tapes, dated April 18, 2002. "At any cost, as soon as possible!" Though a number of peace plans were put forward by outside observers, both Russian and Western, the Putin regime showed no interest whatsoever in negotiations.

Maskhadov's finest moment came at the beginning of 2005, when he announced a unilateral cease-fire that all the Chechen forces observed, and then followed it up with a letter to Javier Solana, the E.U. foreign policy chief, outlining a settlement that would take into account Russia's "legitimate security interests." The initiative was ignored by the international community and welcomed only by Russian democrats from such organizations as Memorial and the Moscow Helsinki Group, who rightly saw the cease-fire as a historic opportunity.

But just 10 days after the letter was sent, Maskhadov was killed by Russian forces in the Chechen village of Tolstoy Yurt. In keeping with the savage way they were conducting the war, the Russians put his half-naked body on public display and ignored requests from his family to return it—probably fearing that his burial place might become a shrine. Mr. Akhmadov writes that Maskhadov's death spelled "the end of our wing of peaceseekers."

Looking back on their correspondence, Mr. Akhmadov writes that "Maskhadov did not fully appreciate the hardening of the Russian position. But who did?" It's true that Maskhadov continued to think that he was dealing with the Russia of the '90s, and that a negotiated settlement might be possible. Yet there are also points in the transcript when he appears to recognize that something fundamental had changed. "This war reveals surprising things now," he says in an early tape. "Everything . . . was different from the way we perceived it." The difference? "Today the FSB rules Russia, the war is being waged by the FSB."

This deeply troubling insight remains relevant, as the West tries to deal with a regime that threatens its neighbors and makes the world a much more dangerous place.

Mr. Gershman is the president of the National Endowment for Democracy.

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New Russian-Language Guide Describes How to Join Islamic State | News

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:37 AM

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Thaier Al-Sudani / ReutersA member of militias known as Hashid Shaabi stands next to a wall painted with the black flag commonly used by Islamic State militants, in the town of al-Alam.

Militants fighting alongside the Islamic State appear to have increased their efforts to recruit Russian speakers by publishing a series of guides on how to travel to Syria to join the terrorist group.

Two parts of a Russian-language guide on “How to Make Hijrah [migration] to the Islamic State” appeared Thursday on a number of pages of Russia's leading social network, VKontakte. The pages have many thousands of followers each.

While part one of the guide describes how to travel unhindered from Russia to Turkey, which is a relay point for crossing the border into Syria, part two provides instructions on how to shop for military gear in Turkey before traveling onwards.

Both parts end with a simple message: Bring as much cash as you can.

“Allah said in the Quran: 'Fight with your property and with your souls,” the guide says, adding that the Islamic State will provide any necessary gear to militants as well as feed them upon their arrival to the unrecognized caliphate.

“It's better to take more money with you, sell unneeded property. Insha'Allah [God willing], this will be your final voyage,” the guide says.

The publications came about a week after Turkish news site Daily Sabah reported that several Russians, a Chechen and a Tajik had been detained and deported earlier this month when trying to cross into Syria.

About 1,500 natives of Russia's predominantly Muslim region of the North Caucasus are currently fighting alongside the Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq, the Kremlin's envoy for the North Caucasus, Sergei Melikov, was cited as saying Thursday by Russian media.

A Militant's Advice

The Russian-language guide, written by a militant who calls himself Mukhammad Abu Barud al-Dagestani, opens with the words: “The first dilemma facing a Muslim man or woman after a firm decision to relocate is the question of how to leave the country safely and without hindrance.”

“If you are not on a wanted list, not under house arrest, and not under a written pledge to stay at your residence [pending trial], nobody can stop you from leaving this damn country,” it reads.

The guide goes on to suggest several ways for wannabe militants to travel to Turkey: Via Europe “if there is money,” via a flight from a southern Russian town, or via neighboring Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic in the North Caucasus. If all else fails, militants can also leave Russia illegally, the guide says, without offering any specific instructions on how to do this.

In order to facilitate the process of crossing into Turkey, the reader is advised to “enlist the help of an [adult] so that if they receive a telephone call from a relentless [border guard] they can … confirm that they have given their blessed consent for your visit to sunny Turkey.” Such advice seems unlikely to be aimed at mature travelers and would therefore indicate that the guide has been written for young militants, possibly teenagers.

The text also addresses the steps that the reader should take upon their arrival to Turkey, which includes “shopping quickly [for military gear] and … crossing the border with the Islamic State as soon as possible because the situation in Turkey is not as calm now as it had been in the past.”

Sporting goods chain Decathlon is named in the guide as a good place to look for items such as a “70-liter backpack,” which would allow the wannabe militants to pack everything into one bag and keep their hands free at all times. It also describes what kinds of footwear and clothes would be useful, including a sleeping bag, a flashlight and thermal underwear.

Al-Dagestani, the militant who authored the guide, has already had one online post blocked as “extremist” by the Russian authorities, according to lists of banned Web pages published by the official government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

The militant appears to take his apparent nom de guerre from Dagestan, a Russian region in the North Caucasus that borders Chechnya and that has seen a rise of Islamic extremism in recent years..

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New Islamic State Propaganda Targets Russian Recruits

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:36 AM

Newsweek

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A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. Stringer/REUTERS

A series of guides published in Cyrillic script offering practical advice on how Russians can travel to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS) have been published on Russia’s leading social network site, according to Russian media.

The guide, titled How to Make Hijrah [migration] to the Islamic State, appeared yesterday on the VKontakte website.

The first part of the guide describes how to travel from Russia to Turkey, in order to cross over the border into Syria, according to The Moscow Times. Part two gives instructions that recruits should shop for military gear in Turkey before traveling into Syria. Both end with a demand that the recruits “brings as much cash as you can”.

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In recent weeks, there have been reports that Islamic State is not as wealthy as it was when it first rose to power last June. Whereas once smokers were flogged for the offence, they are now fined in order for the group to raise more funds, according to Syrian living under Islamic States’s rule and have cut spending on fuel and bread subsidies.

The author of the guides is reportedly Mukhammad Abu Barud al-Daghestani, a Daghestani militant fighting alongside ISIS. The Russian Republic of Dagestan is a region in North Caucasus, which borders Chechnya. It has seen a rise in violent Islamist insurgency in recent years. In 2010, two suicide bombers from the republic carried out attacks on the Moscow metro, that killed 38 people and injured more than 60 and in the same year, 378 Islamist insurgency-related deaths were recorded. This week, it was reported that Russian security forces had killed seven terror suspects there.

“The first dilemma facing a Muslim man or woman after a firm decision to relocate is the question of how to leave the country safely and without hindrance,” the guide begins. “If you are not on a wanted list, not under house arrest, and not under a written pledge to stay at your residence [pending trial], nobody can stop you from leaving this damn country.”

It appears that the guide is partly targeting younger recruits. At one point it advises the reader to “enlist the help of an [adult] so that if they receive a telephone call from a relentless [border guard] they can... confirm that they have given their blessed consent for your visit to sunny Turkey.”

The guide also offers advice to those with property. “It's better to take more money with you, sell unneeded property. Insha'Allah [God willing], this will be your final voyage,” the guide says.

The publication of the guides comes in the same week of reports that Russian-speaking female ISIS recruits have published a message online urging other Russian women to join "your sisters from Islamic State”.

The authors of the message say that they are calling on their "Muslim sisters in the lands of the infidels" to undertake hijra "because the state in which you now find yourselves is a state of humiliation and shame."

The women also encourage wives back in Russia to turn their backs on their husbands, and find new husbands in Syria

"Encourage your husbands, and if they turn away, then dump them without hesitation and move yourselves. Allah will give you, inshallah [God willing] mujahideen [militants] as husbands, who are God-fearing and sincere.”

Four Russian were deported from Turkey last week after illegally attempting to cross the Turkey-Syria border in order to join Islamic State. It is thought that up to 1,700 Russians are fighting on the side of the Islamic State, mainly from Russia’s North Caucasus region.

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New Witness of Nemtsov Murder Casts Doubt Over Key Suspect

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:28 AM

Newsweek

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Zaur Dadayev (L), charged with involvement in the murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, looks out from inside a defendants' cage in a court building in Moscow, March 8, 2015.Tatyana Makeyeva/REUTERS

A new witness of the murder of Kremlin-critic Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in central Moscow last month, has come forward with a testimony which seemingly implicates a different man from the investigation’s main suspect - Zaur Dadaev, according to Russian press reports.

Although it was initially reported that Nemtsov’s Ukrainian girlfriend Anna Duritskaya was the only witness of the killing which took place on Moscow’s Bolshoy Moskvoretsky bridge in February, Russian newspaper Kommersant today said that insider sources have said that  27-year-old, a company manager by the name of Yevgeny, was also a witness. His last name is not given.

According to the paper, Yevgeny was walking behind Duritskaya and Nemtsov, wearing headphones and listening to loud “hard rock” music and did not hear the gunshot. He was reportedly looking at his phone screen at the time of the shooting, but did see the couple in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

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Yevgeny says he saw the fatally wounded Nemtsov lying on the bridge as the suspected perpetrator fled from the scene of the shooting, jumping into a white car.

He describes the shooter as a person of medium height, slim build with dark, possibly wavy hair about four centimeters in length, and says he was wearing a hood and baggy jeans. This description does not match the appearance of the investigation’s prime suspect Zaur Dadaev, Kommersant notes, who is tall with an athletic build. Yevgeny also claims that the white car the gunman got into was a Lada Priora, not a ZAZ Sens car which the investigation had previously identified as the getaway vehicle.

The new testimony also includes several details of the scene of the crime which have not been revealed before. Yevgeny says he saw two women in black coats approach Duritskaya and briefly exchange words with her after the shooting. The witness also says he interacted with Duritskaya and tried to help Nemtsov up, believing he was drunk, before Duritksaya told him Nemtsov had been shot.

So far Duritksya has been the key witness to the case, however after several days under police guard she complained she had suffered serious shock from the incident and said her memory of the event was limited. She said she had not seen the killer’s face and opted to go to her native Ukraine as soon as police let her go on 2 March. She has not commented on this new account of the murder.

CCTV footage of the incident has emerged online which seemingly shows a passer-by briefly joining Duritksaya after the shooting, and two more people approaching her before continuing on their way.

Last month Russian online news source Life News spoke to an anonymous man whom they referred to as Victor M. who gave a similar account to Yevgeny - he too had walked behind Nemtsov and Duritksya but paid more attention to his phone.

A number of explanations for Nemstov’s murder have been suggested, with reasons ranging from the western secret services being responsible, to a power struggle within Nemstov’s own party resulting in his death.

While Dadaev initially confessed to his involvement in the killing, later he and two more of the five Chechen men apprehended for orchestrating the hit retracted their testimonies, saying they were given under duress.

The investigation, which Russian president Vladimir Putin has said he will personally oversee, has so far discussed the possibility that the hit could have been carried out out due to religious, racial, political or personal hatred, but has not provided a conclusive reason for the assassination.

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Russia has ambitious plans to build a superhighway to Alaska | Inhabitat

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:25 AM

Comments On: Russia Has Ambitious Plans To Build A Superhighway To Alaska

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Russia has announced big plans for a superhighway that would effectively connect all the continents in the Northern Hemisphere, making it possible to travel from New York westward through Russia and on to London without the need for an airplane or a boat. The exact route hasn’t been determined yet, but what is clear is that a plan such as this would create the largest, longest superhighway on Earth. Specifically, Russia intends to construct a high-speed railway and highway that spans across Russia and Siberia and over the Bering Strait to Alaska.

Since Alaska is already accessible to the rest of the continent via highways, the addition of Russia’s superhighway would serve as a connector, completing the route between east and west. This would allow visitors from Europe and Asia to travel, by car, to nearly any destination they so desired.

Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russia’s state railways, believes that the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TERP) will be a great financial benefit to the world, allowing opportunities for global economic growth.

Related: California has broken ground on the United States’ first high-speed rail

European Union leaders have been working on a similar plan to construct a high-speed rail corridor to connect the Baltic states to Western Europe’s existing rail network, which runs through the Channel Tunnel to London. If they are able to move forward, the European and Russian superhighways would make it possible to travel by car between London and Alaska.

Although the U.S. can be easily traversed by car, thanks to the vast network of interstate highways, it lacks the high-speed railways being discussed by other world leaders. President Barack Obama has been unable to overcome opposition to proposals for more high-speed rail corridors across the U.S., so it’s uncertain when (or whether) the States will ever be a part of the practically round-the-globe railway network.

So, who’s up for a road trip from New York to London? Pack your bags!

Via The Independent

Images via Shutterstock (1, 2) and The Independent

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Kremlin dismisses Chechen threat to incite separatism in US

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:22 AM

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MOSCOW (AP) — The speaker of Chechnya's regional legislature has called for encouraging separatism in U.S. states near the border with Mexico if Washington provides Ukraine with lethal arms, a statement quickly disavowed by the Kremlin.

Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov's statement comes amid a severe strain in Russia-West ties over Ukraine. The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a resolution urging the administration to send lethal weapons to Ukraine to help it fight Russia-backed rebels, but President Barack Obama has refrained from doing so.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov refuted Abdurakhmanov's comments in a statement carried Friday by the Interfax news agency, saying such move would defy the Russian law

Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov has run Russia's Caucasus region like his personal fiefdom, relying on federal subsidies to stabilize the territory after two separatist wars.

• Ukraine
• Chechnya
• President Barack Obama

Radical Chechen President Becoming Ticking Time Bomb for Putin

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:16 AM

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On February 27, a gunman murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in Moscow just feet away from the Kremlin. Russians and international media immediately suspected it was an inside job, especially when the Kremlin revealed the security cameras were not working due to maintenance.

Eyebrows raised higher when the Kremlin arrested four Chechens for the murder. One man, Zaur Dadayev, confessed to the murder. Dadayev is a “former deputy commander in a Chechen police unit” and close to Kadyrov, who claimed Dadayev was “fully devoted to Russia” on his Instagram account.

“Everyone who knows Zaur says he is deeply religious person and like all Muslims was very shocked by the actions of Charlie [Hebdo] and by comments supporting the printing of the caricatures,” he wrote. “If the court finds Dadayev guilty then by killing a person he has committed a grave crime. But I want to note that he could not do anything that was against Russia, for which he has risked his own life for many years.”

Nemtsov recently noticed a “fray” between Putin and Kadyrov. Putin has continued publicly supporting Kadyrov, despite the numerous human rights violations in Chechnya. Giving Kadyrov the presidency allowed the 38-year-old to “create the Islamic republic that Chechen separatists had dreamed of – albeit one entirely reliant on Moscow for financial support and where Shariah law is selective, not absolute.” But critics believe Kadyrov is now “seeking power and relevance far beyond his base” within Chechnya. Nemtsov was one of the more outspoken critics of this relationship.

“I cannot understand what Putin expects when arming 20,000 Kadyrovtsy gathered today in the stadium in Grozny,” Nemtsov wrote on Facebook. “What will happen next? The country is entering a crisis. There is not enough money for anything, including the support of regions. And the unspoken contract between Putin and Kadyrov — money in exchange for loyalty — ends. And where will 20,000 Kadyrovtsy go? What will they demand? How will they behave? When will they come to Moscow?”

The Chechen security forces are known as “Kadyrovtsy,” even though they are part of the national Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, in private, the soldiers must “swear a personal oath to Kadyrov.” He treats Chechnya the same way. From The Moscow Times:

Of the $30 billion in federal funds spent on the North Caucasus between 2000 and 2010, for example, the lion’s share went to Chechnya. Downtown Grozny has been transformed with whole herds of white elephant prestige projects, from glittering (and largely empty) office blocks to the huge Akhmad Kadyrov mosque (named for Ramzan’s father).

However, behind this apparent renewal lies a reality of massive embezzlement for the new elite and minimal benefit for most ordinary Chechens.

Kadyrov is petulant, willful, vain and unpredictable. When his sports minister aroused his ire, he expressed it by pummeling him in the boxing ring. His collection of supercars includes one of only 20 $1.25 million Lamborghini Reventons ever made — no mean feat for a man whose reported annual income is around a tenth of that.

While fingers pointed at Putin, four people told Bloomberg he was not happy about the murder:

Putin was furious when he learned of the killing, which occurred on a bridge near the Kremlin, four people familiar with the matter said. Putin, who took charge of the probe and then disappeared from public view for a week, became even more alarmed when investigators said they’d traced a hit list of other critics to Chechnya, another person said. Putin has given Kadyrov free rein to kill jihadis and create what even former Chechen officials such as Beslan Gantamirov have called a brutal police state.

“Putin has become a hostage to his own policy of radicalizing supporters so they can spring to action whenever he needs them,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “His authoritarianism is sliding into decentralized terror. His backers think he’s much more radical than he really is and are acting without clear orders.”

The FSB, which used to be the KGB, hate Kadyrov, experts believe.

“The F.S.B. hate Ramzan because they are unable to control him,” claimed Alexey Malashenko, a Caucasus expert. “He does whatever he wants, including in Moscow. Nobody can arrest members of his team if there is no agreement with Putin.”

Kadyrov said he will always be Putin’s “faithful companion, regardless of whether he is president or not. To give one’s life for such a person is not an easy task.” Some analysts believe it is a veiled threat:

If Kadyrov were indeed freelancing into political assassinations in Moscow and were allowed to walk away unpunished, he would be taking Putin and the entire Russian leadership hostage, which might be precisely his plan. This would be a threat to the Russian state that the FSB would be legally obligated to fight.

Kadyrov has been raising his political profile and sought to position himself as Putin’s most trusted lieutenant and even a peer ruler, aiming at a higher federal role. His brazen forays into Russia’s foreign and security policy, and his attempts to speak on behalf of all Russia’s Muslims, unnerved many in Moscow.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said people within the Kremlin took it as a threat. Since Nemtsov died, Putin awarded Kadyrov the “Order of Honour” just a few days after he praised Dadayev and received two more state awards.

Kadyrov just might be Putin’s undoing. From Business Insider:

Either way, an increasing number of Kremlin-watchers are coming to the conclusion that the period beginning on February 27 with Nemtsov’s assassination and continuing through Putin’s odd vanishing act marks the dawn of late Putinism — the twilight of the regime in its current form.

“Has the Russian regime’s agony begun?” asks a recent article by the prominent Russian political analyst Lilia Shevtsova in The American Interest.

Shevtsova notes that Putin’s “steely-eyed resolve” is gone, he “is losing control,” and “can’t give his entourage clear orders.” Nemtsov’s assassination, she adds, has “shattered the mirrored window concealing the Kremlin; now everyone can see the mess within.”

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The deadly chaos behind Putin’s mysterious acts

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 10:14 AM

The Globe And Mail - Globe Debate

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Eric Morse is co-chair of security studies at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.

Two distracting but telling events have occurred in Russia recently. First, President Vladimir Putin disappeared for ten days, then suddenly reappeared. Second was the killing of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, under very murky circumstances, on Feb. 27. Both events showed how utterly dependent on one man Russia, and its nuclear arsenal, have become.

Beneath the dramatic events in Russia recently – the disappearance of President Vladimir Putin for ten days, and the killing under murky circumstances of opposition politician Boris Namtsov – an even more dangerous narrative has emerged involving Mr. Putin’s use of Chechnya.

At heart is Mr. Putin’s personal and essentially feudal arrangement with Chechen despot Ramzan Kadyrov. There is said to be a tension between the Russian security hierarchies and Mr. Kadyrov, who personally controls some 15,000 to 20,000 armed men (an unprecedented number outside state countrol in Russian history outside of civil war) and has used them to support Mr. Putin’s Ukrainian aggressions. The British war-studies professor Sir Lawrence Freedman calls this relationship a Faustian bargain and it certainly looks like one; the two men have their hands on each others’ throats. Mr. Putin (or someone claiming to act for him) could have Mr. Kadyrov killed at any time (and, quite possibly, vice versa), but Mr. Putin still needs Mr. Kadyrov to control the North Caucasus from his base in Grozny.

That might not stop rival elements of the security forces in Moscow who have every reason to hate Mr. Kadyrov. This was in evidence in the immediate arrests of several Chechens close to Mr. Kadyrov in connection with the Nemtsov murder. But if relations are bad they seem to be a long way from hitting the boil. However, in a regime based on faction and management-by-chaos, there can be very unexpected turns.

Two other things have emerged in recent days. One is a ‘documentary’ film bragging about Moscow’s invasion and takeover of Crimea last year, in which Mr. Putin said that he had been prepared to put Russia’s strategic nuclear forces on alert. What a comment like that is worth one year after the event is probably not very much; in any propaganda film talk is cheap, but it does mean Mr. Putin can’t even be bothered to lie about it anymore. The second is more important: a major ‘snap’ exercise (which ended Friday) conducted by about 38,000 troops in the northwest Arctic region of Russia, which if nothing else is one way of sneering at the 5,000 troops that Norway just put into its Exercise Joint Viking, which ended March 18.

Military analyst Pavel Felgengauer, who is not a Putin supporter, is taking the current snap exercises very seriously indeed in the current state of ultra-nationalism that is being stoked in Russia. He commented on March 19: “The massive ‘sudden exercises’ of the Russian military this week carry a clear message: Moscow is not ready to stand down and is threatening the use of force, including nuclear weapons.”

The problem with demonstrative military exercises is they are flamboyant, they show what the enemy may be capable of and training for, but they are still exercises – until they become the real thing. A perfect example is the G20 Brisbane summit of November 2014; Putin sent four warships to the region, everyone ignored them, they steamed in circles and went home. The current exercise is a great deal more serious because it involves major force in an area where classic force projection is a realistic possibility.

The real danger is of an accident occurring, especially since Russia is pushing very hard with its strategic bombers in Baltic airspace. We have no way of knowing whether they are carrying nuclear weapons, but flying in heavily-travelled airspace with transponders off is looking for trouble. What they might do in the event of an incident (besides blaming everyone else and especially NATO) is frankly unknowable, since we have no way of knowing advance intent.

The problem with Mr. Putin’s Russia is: you really do not know anything. The same sense of entitled grievance combined with KGB-rooted addictions to secrecy and misdirection and a penchant for extreme violence characterized the Soviet Union, but were kept under some kind of control by the collective and innately conservative authority of the Communist Party. There is no such moderator in the reactor now, only shifting and virulent power-bloc rivalry.

The unmistakeable impression of chaos lurking beneath the surface, combined with an economy that is manifestly in trouble, makes it even more disturbing that the Russian armed forces also have a long-standing doctrine with the Orwellian term of ‘nuclear de-escalation.’ Basically what that means is that a political objective (a de-escalation) is attainable by the graduated application of nuclear force, in six neat steps, from an attack on a single unpopulated target to a massive continental strike. As often happens in any nation’s war scenarios, the enemy’s vote is not always given its due weight. The scenario simply assumes that the enemy must capitulate at one of the stages. The consequences of its failing to do so seem not to have been seriously weighed.

It remains that an exercise is only an exercise until suddenly it isn’t one. But there is one other point worth bearing in mind: since Mr. Putin’s accession to power in Russia in 2000, he has never yet encountered a problem – excepting the economy – that he could not resolve satisfactorily by force. His world includes ‘military solutions.’

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Растущая перспектива “России в составе Чечни” напрягает силовиков « Русский Еврей

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 9:39 AM

Русский Еврей

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За месяц, прошедший после убийства Немцова, российская власть, совершившая это демонстративное преступление на Красной площади в зоне непосредственной ответственности ФСО, так и не пришла к консенсусу по важнейшему для нее вопросу, кого же из своих представителей назначить официальным убийцей(ами).

Что свидетельствует о продолжающемся серьезном конфликте на самой вершине российской власти.

16 марта в день счастливого возвращения несколько потрепанного Путина (одного из путиных) на телевизионные экраны кремлевские авторитеты, казалось бы, договорились о более менее устраивающей всех версии – непосредственным исполнителем, организатором и заказчиком в одном лице назначается патриот России, героический офицер-орденоносец, доведенный до отчаяния антимусульманскими высказываниями Немцова, заместитель командира элитного кадыровского отряда “Север” Заур Дадаев.

Но почти сразу же обнаружилось, что ФСБ эта легенда как раз не устраивает и через вбросы в сочувствующих им СМИ ( “Новая газета”, “МК”, “Росбалт” ) чекисты упорно продолжают выстраивать в общественном сознании довольно убедительную цепочку злоумышленников, ведущую непосредственно к Кадырову: Дадаев – Геремеев – Делимханов. Не потому что пепел убиенного Немцова стучится в сердце генерала армии Бортникова. Истинные обстоятельства преступления сами по себе не интересуют бульдогов под кремлевским ковром, а о Немцове все они уже забыли. Его убийство для них всего лишь повод для выяснения своих непростых отношений.

Силовики (и в спецслужбах и в армии) никогда не питали добрых чувств к Рамзану Ахматовичу и весьма скептически относились к путинскому проекту “Кадыров”, лишившему их “победы” в их понимании на Кавказе. К этому добавилось регулярное участие оборзевших кадыровских боевиков в спорах хозяйствующих субъектов на территории России далеко за пределами Чеченской республики. Последней каплей, видимо, стал провинциальный “Триумф воли” на грозненском стадионе. Растущая перспектива “России в составе Чечни” как парадоксального результата двухвековых войн за “Чечню в составе России” напрягает силовиков и в своем противостоянии герою России Кадырову они опираются на мнение народное. Что демонстрируют результаты опросов не только на националистических, но и на вполне себе либеральных сайтах, таких как, например. “Эхо Москвы”.

Коллективный Бортников, упрямо не слезающий с Кадырова, не может не понимать, что он не просто ведет со своим Верховным Главнокомандующим академический диалог по отдельным вопросам национальной политики на Северном Кавказе.

Он бросает вызов самим основам его власти, наносит жестокий удар по центральному ядру путинской мифологии.

Сегодня закрытие проекта “Кадыров” стало бы официальным признанием поражения России во второй чеченской войне и объявлением третьей. Это возвращение в 1999 год в гораздо худшей исходной позиции. Это, кроме того, полная политическая делегитимизация Путина как “спасителя отечества в 1999-м”.

То, что демарш силовиков продолжается и остается безнаказанным, свидетельствует об ослаблении режима личной власти.

“Опросы общественного мнения” тут не при чем. Власть диктатора никогда не опирается на опросы. Наоборот, опросы опираются на власть. Если бы в конце февраля 1953 года в СССР существовали бы социологические службы, они зафиксировали бы 99,999%-ый рейтинг вождя. А через несколько дней тот беспомощно лежал на полу Малой дачи в собственной моче.

Власть диктатора – это безусловное подчинение ему нескольких десятков человек: высших военных, гражданских, полицейских, медийных чиновников. Причины, по которым нотабли подчиняются монарху, президенту, вождю племени, пахану различаются в разных культурах: традиция, животный страх, корыстный интерес, верность присяге, искреннее уважение к выдающейся личности лидера, религиозный фанатизм или комбинация нескольких перечисленных.

Перевороты и мятежи происходят тогда, когда критическая масса этих ключевых персонажей утрачивает мотивы подчинения и у самых решительных рука тянется у кого к “табакерке”, а у кого к “шарфику”. Навязываемая силовиками чеченская повестка дня и есть такой мягкий постепенно все туже затягиваемый “шарфик”.

Перезагрузка мифологического обеспечения режима идеологией “Русского мира”, удачно стартовавшая операцией “Крымнаш”, забуксовала уже на стадии “Лугандонии”. Наше спустившееся с Карпатских гор арийское племя с уникальным генетическим кодом реагирует вяло, проблемы нарастают и ближний круг задумывается о перезагрузке уже не мифологем, а физического тела первого лица.

Путинский персоналистский режим вступает в ту неизбежную для любого из них стадию, когда, казалось бы, неожиданно случается Валтасаров пир в узком кругу в ночь на 1 марта 1953 года или на заседании Конвента 9 термидора 1794 года некий Гарнье бросает в лицо Неподкупному знаменитую фразу:

“Кровь Дантона душит тебя, злодей!“

Андрей Пионтковский

http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=551673923B9B4

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Люди Медведева атакуют Путина и его Империю « Русский Еврей

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 9:36 AM

Русский Еврей

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Закулисные войны в Кремле продолжаются.

В последнее время вокруг человека, до сих пор называющегося себя «президентом» Российской Федерации (как бы этого не хотелось миллионам, если ни миллиардам напуганным его сумасшедшими выходками), действительно происходят необычные, не предусмотренные логикой кремлевских протоколов и неписанных мафиозных кодексов события. Некоторые из них заинтересованные лица умышленно выносят на поверхность, пытаясь таким образом воздействовать как на самого Пу, так и на прикованное к нему внимание. Дабы не отталкиваться от зачастую взаимоисключающих интерпретаций, обратимся для начала к неизменному и общеизвестному.

Факт первый. Согласно ч. 3 ст. 92 действующей российской Конституции в случае досрочного прекращения полномочий президента (болезнь, смерть, самоотрешение) его обязанности временно выполняет премьер.

А президент у них болен. И не только душевно.

В таком виде 18 марта он предстал на оккупант-шоу «Вамкрыш» (Москва, Красная площадь) рядом с крымскими уголовными авторитетами «Должником» и «Гоблином». Следы длительной гормональной терапии скрывать все сложнее и сложнее

Премьером там сейчас Медведев Д. А., тоже имперец, тоже великодержавник, но большой приятель Генри Киссинджера и ельцинского пула олигархов, совместными стараниями победившими в командно-штабной игре сверхдержав «Преемник» над Сергеем Ивановым, непосредственным ставленником Лубянки. Точно также как перед этим они обыграли фигуркой Путина В.В. реваншиста-брежневца Евгения Примакова.

Со временем, стоит отметить, фигурка стала слишком самостоятельной и непредсказуемой, причем непредсказуемой настолько, что угрожает самому существованию человеческой цивилизации, не говоря уже о принципиальном пока что для Запада едином государственном устройстве русскоязычных — едином диспетчере природных богатств Северной Евразии.

Итак, Медведев. Снова Медведев… Разве что формальному главе государства удастся в ближайшем будущем нейтрализировать младшего его на 13 лет премьера, найдя ему более подходящую замену.

В Украине же и в большинстве стран Европы «первого» в случае чего подменяет руководитель парламента. В этом и отличие демократии от правопреемницы Советского Союза.

Факт второй. После вызывающе показательной казни Бориса Немцова, безусловно, устроенной силовиками самого высшего ранга, пожизненный президент РФ действительно взял паузу.

Если верить Кадырову, решалась судьба самого Путина, останется ли он президентом.

Президент РФ был недоступен со 5 по 16 марта. Упорно молчал и его пресс-секретарь.

«Не комментируем, тема закрыта», – заявил аж 15 марта Песков. Одновременно была «закрыта» и тема Немцова: единственным организатором и заказчиком выполнения преступления в одном лице стал Дадаев. Да, кадыровцы. Да, «герои России», но исключительно из соображений «религиозной ненависти» к «Шарли Ебдо» и сочувствующему им Борису Ефимовичу.

Факт третий. Кадырова трогать никто не стал.

Во время отсутствия Путина в СМИ стали вбрасываться месседжи о готовящейся смене Рамзана Ахматовича на Магомеда Хожахмедовича Даудова (он же «Лорд»), главу кадыровской Администрации президента, якобы близкого к Володину.

За такими нелепыми вбросами стоял никто иной Асланбек Андарбекович Дудаев, более известный как Владислав Юрьевич Сурков, занимавший перед этим кресло Володина. Почему нелепыми? У «Лорда» никогда не было и не будет собственных вооруженных сил. Для кадыровцев он еще один бюрократ, а для вооруженного подполья — вообще никто и звать его никак.

К слову. Суркова в большую политику привел этнический чеченец Александр Стальевич Волошин, глава Администрации Ельцина и на пару с тогда еще живым Березовским архитектор первого президентства Медведева с российской стороны.

«Ушли» из Администрации президента Суркова по «доносу» о причастности к финансированию оппозиции. У Путина, также как и в ФСБ, никогда не любили близкого к ГРУ (где служил его отец) изворотливого выпускника частного американско-российского «Международного университета в Москве» (МУМ), начинавшего еще с Фридманом и Ходорковским. Считали непредсказуемым и не совсем надежным.

Факт четвертый. Следователи СК по делу о защите «государственной тайны» изъяли документацию «LifeNews». Обещают прийти за серверами.

Это произошло 24 марта.

СК или СКР — созданная при Медведеве альтернативная ФСБ гражданская спецслужба.

Начинавший с ФСБшного эксклюзива «LifeNews» является сейчас круглосуточным новостным телеканалом и главным пропагандистским рупором Путина. Наравне с «прихватизированной» газетой «Известия», доренковским радио «Русская служба новостей» (РСН) и другими ретрансляторами неимоверной лжи, человеконенавистничества и военной пропаганды входит в структуру собственности «Национальной медиа-группы» (НМГ) Путина-Ковальчуков-Тимченко во главе с Алиной Кабаевой.

СК заявил, что действует по сигналу от борцов с насилием над детьми из мало кому известной общественной организации «Сопротивление» Ольги Костиной, супруги сурковской правой руки КонстантинаКостина.

Факт пятый. Десакрализация «Сургутнефтегаза».

Несколькими днями ранее в Якутии местные жители решились на неслыханное расблокирование частной автомагистралии «Сургунефтегаза», также находящегося в фактической личной собственности немолодого спутника Алины Маратовны. Событие для такой огромной страны пустяковое, но в системе неформальных отношений внутри кремлевской верхушки неимоверно симптоматичное. И политтехнологичное.

Транспортантов «Путин должен уйти!» и «Якутские недра — якутам!» замерзшие по вине путинских «смотрящих» в своих руках не держали. Пока что.

Неужели все эти, как говорят в спецслужбах, «активные мероприятия» разрабатывает лично Сурков на пару с супругами Костиными? И Немцова, чтобы подставить Путина, с помощью Федеральной службы безопасности (ФСО), отвечающей за окрестности Кремля, он ликвидировал тоже по собственной инициативе? И СК работает по его приказу?….

Активизация антипутинской «хунты» в лице Медведева-Суркова-Кадырова куда более чем очевидна.

Что стоит за их действиями? Элементарное шкурничество, т. е. желание занять теплое местечко на троне «Русского мира» вместо дряхлеющего подполковника?. Или нечто большее: стремление продолжить войну до «победного конца», игнорируя всех и вся, в т.ч. убийственные для единого российского государства и вообще государства как такового санкции? Желание вернутся к медведевской «модернизации» под эгидой сколковских компрадоров, выйти из войны и вернуться на довоенные круги своя в отношениях со США, Европой и Украиной? …На наш взгляд, наиболее верно последнее утверждение.

Медведев и Ко — это отнюдь не «голуби». Но они партия прекращения войны, отмежевавшаяся от партии продолжения войны. У них тоже есть свои силовики, свои ресурсы, свой Кадыров.

И в отношении теперешнего хозяина Кремля они продолжают выбранную Западом тактику — ДИСКРЕДИТАЦИЯ ЛИЧНО ПУТИНА и УНИЧТОЖЕНИЕ ЕГО СОБСТВЕННЫХ АКТИВОВ.

Они открывают второй, внутрений антипутинский фронт. Надолго ли их хватит, и что из этого выйдет, покажет время.

В любом случае Медведев и медведевщина снова ограничатся косметикой. Россия же тем временем, точнее то ,что принято на протяжении последних трехсот лет называть «Россией», продолжает развиваться согласной вполне понятной исторической логике. Не равен час как из Москвы делить уже будет нечего, а вместо этого придется договариваться с Украиной о реверсе сибирского газа и приглашать китайских миротворцев для ограничения территориальных аппетитов Поволжских Эмиратов.

Степень развития современных немецкой и японской цивилизации прекрасно доказывают, каким успешным может быть экономическое развитие без милитаризма. Без непомерных расходов на военщину и патологической цели поработить весь земной шар. Русские (просьба не путать с несуществующими «россиянами») ничем не лучше и не хуже всех остальных. Нужно только спуститься с «небес» фальшивых «истин» на землю.

Вместо эпилога

Партия продолжения войны. Сечин-Иванов-Володин, пытающиеся обойти Медведева на старте и усадить премьером хорошо зарекомендовавшего себя во время вторжения в Украину министра обороныСергея-оглу Шойгу.

Есть у них и план «Б» – после того как сменивший Путина по состоянию здоровья (или другой причине) технический вр.и.о. президента Медведев объявит досрочные президентские выборы и, безусловно, выставит свою собственную кандидатуру, сыграть на противопоставлении кабинетного Медведева «боевому» Шойгу. Хотя он точно такой же кабинетный, в армии и то не служил.

А еще лучше для партии продолжения войны чтобы Путин нежданно-негаданно никуда без их разрешения не уходил, а публично назначил Шойгу в качестве своего премника на военное время. Мол, слишком мягок для такого неспокойного времени Дмитрий Анатольевич, а Сергей Кужугетович аккурат самый раз будет. Рейтинг ему на совершенно стерильном российском политическом пространстве подконтрольные СМИ накрутят, Чуров оформит «голоса». И, вуаля! Не в первой же, в самом-то деле.

Естественно, что вместе с Путиным кто рублем, а кто словом печатным Шойгу поддержит и его мощная бизнес-империя.

Бить по этой империи и нацелилась при помощи некоторых кругов на Западе медведевская группа.

Даже если братья Роттенберги, Ковальчуки и господин Тимченко от Путина при его жизни никуда не денутся, для Медведева принципиально чтобы они не поддерживали на досрочных выборах кандидатуру Шойгу. Если же учитывать постоянные исходящего из круга перечисленных бизнесменов типичные на данный момент заявления на тему санкций, то смелый расчет Медведева может оправдаться.

Однако, не стоит забывать, что у партии продолжения войны в запасе есть начальник Геншатаба Валерий Герасимов, проверенная креатура Шойгу, но при этом лучше него соответствующий представлениям о типаже «русского» боевого генерала. Прямолинейный, понятный. Харизматичный. И неимоверно похожий на штандартенфюрера СС из «Бесславных ублюдков».

Военный преступник, возглавлявший карательные операции 58-ой армии против народов Кавказа. Ученик еще одного известного палача, генерала Шаманова.

Это он воюет с Украиной, и готовится к войне со всем миром. В то время как Шойгу занимается госзакупками, а Путин скоро вообще уже нечем заниматься не сможет.

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Putin Increasingly Harmed by His Pro-Kadyrov Stance, Piontkovsky Says by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)

Sunday March 29th, 2015 at 9:18 AM

Window On Eurasia -- New Series

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Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 28 – The FSB continues to disseminate its version of the murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, one that links it to Ramzan Kadyrov, not out of any concern for getting at the truth but rather because of growing anger at the Chechen leader and the backing he continues to receive from Vladimir Putin, according to Andrey Piontkovsky.

            The Russian force structures, he writes, “have never had any good feelings for Ramzan Akhmatovich and are extremely skeptical about the Putin ‘Kadyrov’ project which deprived them as they understand it of their ‘victory’ in the Caucasus” by allowing him an autonomy they would never have permitted (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=551673923B9B4).

            In addition, Piontkovsky says, the siloviki are anything but happy about the way in which Kadyrov militants are now getting involved in fights for control of economic and even political assets “far beyond the borders of the Chechen Republic,” something no other regional leader has been permitted to do.

            But “the last drop apparently because the provincial version of ‘Triumph of the Will’ at the Grozny stadium,” an action that seemed to presage a situation in which it would not be Chechnya within Russia but “’Russian within Chechnya,’” something anathema not only to the siloviki but to ordinary Russians as well.

            All this anger poses problems for Putin, Piontkovsky says, but what Kadyrov is doing is posing an even larger one for the Kremlin leader because what the Chechen head has been doing constitutes a direct attack on “the central nucleus of Putin’s mythology,” the notion that Putin is legitimate because he restored order by means of the second Chechen war.

            But at the same time, Putin can’t “close down the ‘Kadyrov’ project” because to do so “would be official recognition of Russia’s defeat in [that] war and at the same time a declaration of a third” Chechen war.” That in turn would represent “a return to 1999” but one in which Moscow’s “starting position” would be “much worse.”

            Caught between the need for the superficial stability in the North Caucasus that Kadyrov provides in exchange for massive infusions of cash and the right to act on his own as he sees fit and an equal need to maintain his own legitimating myth, Piontkovsky says, the Kremlin leader has not yet come down hard against either Kadyrov or his siloviki opponents.

            That “testifies to the weakening of [Putin’s] regime of personal power,” the Russian analyst says, public opinion surveys to the contrary.  Everyone must remember, he suggests, that “the power of a dictator never rests on polls. On the contrary, polls rest on the power” of those who have it.

            “Had a sociological survey existed in the USSR at the end of February 1953, it would have found that 99.999 percent” of the population approved of Stalin.  “But several days later,” after the latter died, that all changed not only in the population but within the elite itself, Piontkovsky points out.

            That is something Putin has to be concerned about because “the power of a dictator rests on the qualified subordination to him of several dozen [senior] people.” They will support him until they don’t, until a critical mass of these critical people decide they would be better off without him.

            By raising questions about the mythology he has used to legitimate his rule, Putin has brought that day closer, leading more people within the elite to question where he is going and more people in the Russian population to wonder how anyone can square the idea of “a Russian world” with one in which “Russia is inside Chechnya.”