Death of Novorossia: Why Kremlin Abandoned Ukraine Separatist Project: "Putin has offered the Americans a draw: They close their eyes to the Crimea issue, while Russia freezes the conflict in Ukraine's east. This is a lucrative option for the West, but Ukraine cannot like it," Piontkovsky said... As a result, analysts say, Russia and the West have reached a situation in which the crisis has been defused — at least for a while — with neither side losing face. What remains unclear, however, is how the Ukrainian government will react if Russia and the U.S. really have reached a deal behind its back.
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"Putin has offered the Americans a draw: They close their eyes to the Crimea issue, while Russia freezes the conflict in Ukraine's east. This is a lucrative option for the West, but Ukraine cannot like it," Piontkovsky said...
Germany protested Monday after Russia denied entry to a political ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel the day before.
For links to individual updates click on the timestamps.
As a result, analysts say, Russia and the West have reached a situation in which the crisis has been defused — at least for a while — with neither side losing face.
What remains unclear, however, is how the Ukrainian government will react if Russia and the U.S. really have reached a deal behind its back.
Standing in front of a small Moscow church last September, President Vladimir Putin told journalists that he had lit candles inside for people who had been injured or given up their lives defending Novorossia.
Staunton, May 25 — Dmitry Bukovsky of Kyiv’s “Delovaya stolitsa” continues his series, “The Top 5 Propaganda Myths, Fakes and Stupidities of the Kremlin for the Week.” And this week, Russia has really outdone itself with the very top item being a claim that Vladimir Putin was either Prince Vladimir who baptized Kievan Rus or the Apostle Paul in a past life.
The five Bukovsky has selected out of the Kremlin’s news feed this week include the following:
1. How Many Past Lives has Putin Had? Russians have a long history of portraying their current leaders as wonder-working icons. In recent months, some have portrayed Stalin as a saint in this way. But now, a certain Mother Fotinya, the head of a sectarian group in Nizhny Novgorod, has taken the next step: She says that in “one of his past lives, Putin was Prince Vladimir and baptized Russia” and that he has returned to “baptize anew our pagan land.” Earlier she declared that Putin in another past life had been the Apostle Paul.
2. Soviet Pioneer Movement Reborn in Occupied Territories. On May 19, the occupation authorities in Makeyevka solemnly revived the Pioneers, the Soviet youth movement, with Soviet, Russian and Donetsk Peoples Republic flags flying, a monument to Putin standing by, and with speakers proclaiming that these children “unlike in Ukraine are not fighting their own history”.
3. Not a Week without a Crucifixion. Devotees of Moscow propaganda would undoubtedly be disappointed if their media sources did not report on yet more horrific killings by “Ukrainian punitive detachments.” This week for their delectation, Moscow offered a picture of the supposed killing of a militant and his “’pregnant wife.’” But even Russian commentators recognized that the whole thing had been staged and had never occurred.
4. Everyone Can Speak with Russian POWs in Ukraine — Except Of Course Moscow. The same dayMoscow complained Ukrainian officials had failed to give Russian diplomats access to Russian soldiers held by Kyiv, one of these soldiers, Yevgeny Yerofeyev told Russian journalists that everyone has come to see him: representatives of the UN, the Red Cross, and the OSCE. “All have asked whether I am alive and well and whether I’m being given treatment. All have come,” he said, “except the embassy of Russia” .
5. There Must Be American Soldiers in Ukraine. Although Moscow continues to deny that there are any Russian soldiers in Ukraine, its media have gone out of their way to point to what they say is evidence of an American military presence there. This week, Vladimir Putin’s favorite news source, Lifenews.ru, reported that a group of more than 40 Americans from a private security firm had arrived in Ukraine as the first wave of a veritable invasion. There was no truth to the story but that didn’t prevent Moscow from putting it out with imaginary details or from using this report to muddy the waters.
Read the whole story
· ·
Staunton, May 25 — Given the recrudescence of Soviet institutions in the Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbass, ever more people are playing the game of “what if” – “what if” the August 1991 putsch or October 1993 clash in Moscow had ended another way or “what if” the anti-Bolshevik White Russians had defeated Lenin and returned to power.
In a commentary today, Boris Pastukhov, a Russian historian at St. Antony’s College in Oxford, says that such an approach to history is not very profitable most of the time but that if one engages in it now, it is far more useful to think about “what ifs” in the case of Moscow than in the case of the Donbass.
That is because, he suggests, a kind of alternative history has “already been partially realized” under Vladimir Putin, allowing one to suggest that in certain respects at least, Putinism can be understood as “the victory of the White Movement,” more than 90 years after it suffered what seemed to all intents and purposes its complete loss.
So much ink has been spilled on what Russia might have looked like had the Whites won, Pastukhov says, first among emigres and then among Russians at home after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But now there are some real reasons for taking seriously the idea that we can now see the outlines in life itself of what that victory might have meant.
Imagine for a minute, the historian says, that “in October 1919, Yudenich had taken Petrograd. His victory would have allowed the consolidation of the actions of the White Armies and the formation of a White government which would have finally taken under its full control the territory of the former Empire (except some of its border parts).”
With that achievement, however, “the first – ‘heroic’ – part of history would have come to an end.” And the new government would have been forced to confront the fact that its victory over Bolshevism had “solved only one of many problems.” Pastukhov suggests that there would have been at least five:
First, with the empire dead and a lack of desire for the generals to remain in power, there would be the question of just what kind of a political system should and even could be erected in place of the old order.
Second, there would have emerged enormous administrative problems: “all organs of power would have been just as corrupt as before, workers would have been just as dissatisfied, the national minorities would have been just as oppressed, and inequality as before would have been enormous. There would have been too much centralism and too few skilled cadres.
Third, “the majority of the leaders of the movement who would have seized power earlier were not administrators of the first rank: many went from colonel to army general in only a few years” and few of them had any real understanding of how to rule a civilian population.
Fourth, “support from abroad would have stopped,” with both victors and vanquished focusing on their own problems rather than on Russia. Consequently, the new regime would have been largely on its own.
And fifth, that regime would have been lacked the forces necessary to recover the Baltic states “and certain other of its territories ‘from time immemorial,’ including possibly Ukraine. And there would have begun active democratic transformations,” changes that would have echoed in Russia itself.
“Under recently, it would have been possible only to guess how the counterrevolutionary government of ‘the victors’ would have responded to all these challenges.” But now, observing what Putin is doing, one can very likely see the outlines of what it would have done as well, the historian suggests.
According to Pastukhov, “the flag of Putin’s Russia should be not the white-blue-red” it has adopted “but simply red and white because its ideological foundation is a combination of two counterrevolutions, the Bolshevik and the anti-Bolshevik,” a pattern that goes a long way to explain “the paradoxical quality of contemporary Russian policies.”
One can debate for a long time why the Soviet system failed, but there can be now doubt that at least for some decades, “the red movement successfully realized its counterrevolutionary plan,” first by sacrificing to others what it did not have the strength to hold and then rebuilding that strength and taking most of what it wanted back.
Would the White Movement have been similarly able to do so remains a mystery, Pastukhov says. But now there may be a test of that: “the hypothetic ‘white counterrevolution’ has found its embodiment in ‘the red counterrevolution,’ and the alternative scenario which lost a century ago has become a real political scenario for Russia of the 21st century.”
“One needn’t waste time on reconstruction,” Pastukhov says. “turn on the television and study the course of alternative history.”
That development, he suggests, raises “the curious question” about what is likely to be the fate of today’s Russian political emigres: will they be future “’Lenins’” who will return and take power, or will they be “a second edition of ‘the white emigration,’ whose nostalgic dreams remained just that?”
Read the whole story
· · ·
Staunton, May 24 — Since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its continuing subversion of other parts of Ukraine, many have asked whether one or another of the Baltic countries might be Vladimir Putin’s next target, given that his strategic goal is clearly the breaking apart of Europe and the United States and discrediting or even destroying NATO.
That lies behind the question, “Are you prepared to die for Narva?” a reference to the predominantly ethnic Russian city on Estonia’s eastern border, a city some have suggested Putin might seek to occupy temporarily or permanently and thus a possible flashpoint in a post-Ukraine world.
And Andres Kasekamp, a political scientist at the University of Tartu, argues in an essay for the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute that there are compelling reasons to think that Narva will not be Putin’s next target, reasons that reflect how different Estonia is from Ukraine.
Although Russia has engaged in expanded military activity in three Baltic Sea region and although “at first glance there might be some superficial similarities” between Ukraine and NATO, Kasekamp points out, there are a large number of “clearly more significant” differences between the two.
Estonia, like her two Baltic neighbors, is a member of NATO and the EU, thus any action against them would have “immeasurably graver consequences. Moreover, “the success of the Crimean operation depended on surprise, the existence of Russian bases on Ukrainian territory and the defection of Ukrainian officers, and “a unique post-revolutionary situation” in Ukraine.
Moreover, Moscow was able to exploit a situation in which “the border with Russia in eastern Ukraine was lengthy, porous, and weakly guarded.” None of those things is true in the Estonian case, Kasekamp says. And Estonia not only has “a state capacity to respond immediately” to any Russian challenge but a commitment based on experiences that it must “always offer military resistance.”
Additionally and importantly, the Estonian political analyst argues, “Hybrid war is not something new for the Baltic states. They have already experienced elements of hybrid war – cyberattacks, economic pressure, disinformation campaigns. Even the Soviet-sponsored failed Communist insurrection of 1924 in Estonia had many common features with events in 2014, as did the Soviet annexation in 1940.”
No Russian move against Estonia would allow Russia “the deniability of direct military involvement” it has exploited in the case of Ukraine. And “there is no historical territorial bone of contention” like Crimea. “Narva has always indisputably belonged to Estonia,” Kasekamp points out. And “even Putin understands that Estonia … is a completely distinct nation,” something he does not believe Ukraine to be.
But the crux of arguments that Putin might move against Estonia or her Baltic neighbors, especially Latvia, involves the ethnic factor. “Putin has justified aggression against Ukraine with the need to ‘protect’ Russian speakers” and pointed to the better economic conditions in Russia as compared to Ukraine.
Neither of these factors works for Moscow in the Estonian case, Kasekamp points out. Few Russian speakers in Estonia, even those who support Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, have any interest in becoming part of Russia themselves. They know how much better off they are in an EU country than are the Russians in Ivangorod and Pskov, two extremely poor areas.
Instead of asking the Russian speakers of Estonia about how they feel about Crimea, it would be far more instructive, Kasekamp says, to ask “whether they would prefer rubes to euros, the Russian health care system to the Estonian one … [or giving up] the right to freely travel and work within the EU.”
“There is a sharp contrast between Estonian and Russian-speakers on support for NATO and perception of a threat from Moscow,” he acknowledges, but he points out that “there is little difference” between the two groups “regarding the will to defend their country.”
After Estonia recovered its independence in 1991, many believed that the ethnic Russian minority there would be integrated over time, that “Soviet nostalgia would fade with the passing of the older generation.” That has not happened as quickly and thoroughly as such people had expected.
In part, that is because “Russia has instrumentalized its ‘compatriots’ in order to under societal integration and to maintain a sense of grievance and marginalization,” an effort that reflects Moscow’s use of Russian television in order to ensure that “most Estonians and Russophones live in separate information spaces.”
But that is not the irresistible force that many assume, Kasekamp says, noting that “the Baltic states were among those who proposed that the EU take countermeasures” And Estonia itself has “decided to fund a new Russian language TV channel – not to provide counter-propaganda but to strengthen the identity of the local community.”
For all these reasons, he concludes, Narva is not next.
Read the whole story
· · ·
Смена власти в Варшаве by SvobodaRadio
Как повлияет изменение политического вектора в Польше на ситуацию в регионе? – спорят журналист Анджей Зауха (Польша), политик Олесь Доний (Украина), дипломат Андрей Федоров (Россия).
Ведущий – Владимир Кара-Мурза – старший.
Ведущий – Владимир Кара-Мурза – старший.
 BBC News |
Russia begins massive air force exercise
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 Breitbart News |
Budget cuts impact US ability to fight the enemy, Air Force general warns
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 The Interpreter |
Canadians take part in NATO war games aimed at sending message to Russia ...
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Who Killed Prizrak Commander Aleksei Mozgovoy?by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
On Saturday, May 23, as we reported on our Ukraine Live blog, Aleksei Mozgovoy, commander of the Prizrak (Ghost) brigade, a Russian-backed separatist leader was assassinated along with those traveling in three cars with him — his bodyguards, driver, and press secretary, Anna Avseyeva, the mother of three children — were all killed in Mozgovoy’s car, a Toyota Sequoia with a “Novorossiya” license plate.
According to Lenta.ru , the Independent, and other media, in the other cars traveling with Mozgovoy, a Volkswagen Transporter and a VAZ-2101, there were civilians; two of these civilians, Yakov Tarakai, 37, and his pregnant wife died at the scene after being shot, and the driver of one of the vehicles died after being brought to the city hospital. Thus there were a total of 7 people killed including Mozgovoy; there have been some reports that one other person survived with wounds. The prosecutor of the self-proclaimed “Lugansk People’s Republic” confirmed the 7 deaths.
Mozgovoy, a colorful maverick figure among the LNR fightershad long been at odds with the LNR leadership, Igor Plotnitsky and his appointees and had only in April reluctantly agreed to incorporate his independent Prizrak (Ghost) Brigade into the LNR’s 4th Territorial Battalion. His supportersimmediately speculated that the LNR leadership had ordered the hit on him and a Russian ultranationalist who supported the Russian-backed separatists expressed great fear that the “Novorossiya” movement was being removed in order that a more compliant LNR could agree to concessions for the sake of the Minsk peace agreement.
Mozgovoy and his party were struck at the same place where he had been attacked in March, and had walked away with only shrapnel wounds.
The following is an analysis of possible motivations for his killing and the various perpetrators who might have wished to remove him.
Germany protested Monday after Russia denied entry to a political ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel the day before.
 Yahoo News |
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Germany has described as ‘incomprehensible and unacceptable’ Russia’s refusal to let a conservative lawmaker with links to Ukraine into the country
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 Washington Times |
Russia recovery talk premature as sanctions threaten to cripple economy ...
Washington Times Despite a small rebound in world oil prices, “Russia is not out of the woods yet because the sanctions are going to continue to have an impact,” said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a former State Department official who ... Russia and Western nations staging rival air combat exercisesLos Angeles Times UK and Russia to resume talks over Syria conflictBBC News Russia's Putin Signs New Law Against 'Undesirable' NGOsWall Street Journal RT- euronews-Washington Post all 408 Wall Street Journal all 398 news articles » |
Staunton, May 24 — The Russian government cannot afford to maintain its current levels of military spending for long because its shift of resources to the military sector is threatening the rest of the Russian economy and because its reserve fund will be insufficient to pay for this spending for more than another year or two, according to Sergey Guriyev.
Guriyev, currently an economics professor at the Sciences Po in Paris and earlier the rector of the Russian School of Economics in Moscow, says that experts have known this for some time but that the Kremlin has gone ahead anyway, something that opens the way for radical shocks ahead.
The Russian government’s original budget for 2015 was based on the assumption that oil would be 100 US dollars a barrel, that Russia’s GDP would grow two percent, and that inflation would not exceed five percent, he notes. None of those things has proven to be the case; and the government has cut overall spending by approximately eight percent.
“Nevertheless,” he continues, that has not prevented the government deficit from ballooning from 0.5 percent of GDP to 3.7 percent, “a serious problem” even though Russia’s sovereign debt forms “only 13 percent of GDP” because the Ukrainian war has increased spending and Western sanctions have made it harder to borrow.
As a result, Moscow has been forced to dip into its reserve fund. That fund currently amounts to six percent of GDP. Consequently, if the deficit continues at 3.7 percent, the Russian government will run out of money in about two years, forcing it either to withdraw from Ukraine in order to end the sanctions regime or change its budgets in fundamental ways.
Both steps would entail “major political risks for Putin,” Guriyev says.
But in fact, the economist continues, that kind of train wreck may happen far sooner. During the first three months of this year, he point out, Russia’s military spending exceeded nine percent of GDP – or “twice more than planned.” If that level of spending continues, Russia’s reserve fund will be “exhausted before the end of the year.”
That military spending is eating up the reserve fund is the result of Russian decisions made four years ago, Guriyev says. At that time, the government proposed increasing defense spending from three to more than four percent of GDP, something Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin suggested was impossible. He was summarily fired and that is what the Kremlin seeks.
According to Guriyev, “the goal of the Kremlin turned out to be unbelievably ambitious both by Russian and by word standards.” Most European countries are not spending more than two percent of GDP on defense; the US spends 3.5 percent, and only nine countries in the entire world are now spending more than four percent.
Russia “simply is not in a position” to spend that way for long, the economist says. Moreover, its defense industry isn’t capable of modernizing that quickly. And that suggests that the Kremlin is less interested in that than in supplying its forces in Ukraine, something that could set the stage for a new attack in the coming months.
Or alternatively, Guriyev continues, it could simply be an indication that the Ukrainian war is costing Putin far more than he counted on and that he will have to find a way out.
Whatever proves to be the case, he concludes, “Kudrin’s economic logic today is even more just than it was on the day he was fired. If Russia in favorable times couldn’t allow itself to spend up to four percent of GDP on defense,” then it certainly can’t at a time when oil prices have collapsed and Western sanctions have been imposed.
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· ·
Staunton, May 25 — “The Ukrainian-Russian conflict is to a significant degree a conflict between the heirs of Kievan Rus [Ukraine] and the heirs of the Golden Horde” [Moscow], according to Andrey Piontkovsky, and one of its key results will be “an intensification of the swallowing of Russia by China.”
In the course of a wide-ranging interview yesterday with Artem Dekhtyarenko of Ukraine’s Apostrophe news agency, the Russian commentator argues that it is a mistake to see what is taking place in Moscow as “a strengthening of the ties of Russia and China”.
Instead, he argues, it is part of a long ongoing process that has accelerated in the course of the Ukrainian crisis of “the swallowing of Russia by China.” At the recent Victory Day parade in Moscow, something “symbolic” happened that had never occurred “in the thousand year history of Russia:” three units of the Chinese military took part.
“For the Chinese who devote enormous importance to symbols,” Piontkovsky says, “this was as it were a parade of their victory” because it represented “a foretaste of their complete victory over Russia.”
A year ago, the Chinese clearly signaled that this is how they view things: Beijing’s prime minister told a gathering in St. Petersburg that “you have big territories, and we have many Chinese workers. Let’s unite these resources for the strengthening of our common economic potential.”
The Chinese had never permitted themselves to express such notions so boldly, the Russian analyst continues; but it is clear that they now have “complete confidence that having cut itself off from Western civilization, Putin’s Russia will become an easy catch” for Beijing.
That is all the more so, Piontkovsky continues, because there are influential people in Russia itself who “welcome this process” because they “consider the Golden Horde to have been the golden age of Russian history.” Thus, “the swallowing of Russia by China is a return to its deepest historical roots.”
Those who think in this way have a certain measure of truth on their side, the Russian commentator concludes, and that in turn means that the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia is “to a significant degree” a conflict between the two states these two countries emerged from, Kievan Rus in the case of Ukraine and the Golden Horde in the case of Russia.
Staunton, May 24 – Vladimir Putin insists that the unity of the Russian nation and the basis of what he calls “the Russian world” depends on the Russian language, but there are “various Russian languages,” Oleg Panfilov points out, thus prompting the question: which of these can Putin in fact use to define his nation and the world?
Panfilov, a professor at Tbilisi’s Ilya State University and the former director of the Moscow Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, says that the reason there are so many Russian languages is that the one used “depends on the moral situation of society, or part of society, or on the authorities”.
“Thirty years ago, Soviet people spoke in public in the language of Marxism-Leninism and among themselves with curses. Now, they speak publicly largely in a jargon and among themselves in a strange mix of the language of Soviet offices and jargon,” Panfilov suggests. But that doesn’t answer the question as to which Russian Putin’s “Russian world” will speak.
According to the Russian professor, “there were always several languages,” reflecting the different circumstances people found themselves in, their position in society, their geography and their background. He notes that he learned to speak classical Russian because he grew up in Tajikistan to which so many educated Russians had been exiled.
“The quality of contemporary Russian resembles the quality of the production of Russian industry,” he continues. It isn’t high, and many people prefer to use something else especially given that today “it is the language of the lies of Putin, Medvedev, Duma deputies, bureaucrats and journalists,” and “has become a unique argot of ‘the Russian world.’”
Panfilov notes that he has met many Russian speakers in various countries, some of whom have never lived in Russia or done so only long ago. The Russian they speak is “an entirely different Russian, one in which there is no place for curses” despite the frequency of the use of such words among Russians in Russia.
Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine in particular avoid the language of curses, even in the east where Putin is trying to create his “’Russian world.’” They see the use of such words which Russians in Putin’s Russia view as completely normal as totally unacceptable, the same attitude of most peoples in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
In the Kremlin, Panfilov continues, “they have considered Russian for a long time as an ideological weapon” and have sought to impose their Russian on others not only without success but at the cost of alienating those who speak another Russian language from them but who do not want the world that Putin’s Russian reflects.
In Soviet times, Moscow attempted to destroy many of the non-Russian languages of the country. The attitude behind that approach continues, Panfilov argues. But neither what the Soviets did nor what Putin is doing has made Russian competitive with English or French. Indeed, this approach has had exactly the opposite effect.
“As long as Russia remains the language of aggression and conquest, its prospects to become popular will become ever less,” Panfilov says, noting that “in Georgia young people already almost do not speak Russian: there is no desire to speak the language of the occupiers of Abkhazia and ‘South Ossetia’ just as in Ukraine ever more ethnic Russians speak Ukrainian for the same reason.”
In the case of other countries and languages, there is a very different pattern. In Pakistan and India, there is respect for the language of the former colonial powers, as there is in Africa for French, he notes. But that is because there “language is simply a mechanism of communication and not a political lever.”
Today, it remains unclear “why in the Kremlin they simply cannot understand that to impose Russia with the help of arms is impossible and contradicts good sense.” Moreover, the language that Putin and company are imposing in this way is not classical Russian but rather “a parody on Russian” that few will want to learn or use.
Read the whole story
· · ·
Finland: Fighter Jet Exercises Beginby By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
One of Europe’s largest fighter jet exercises began Monday amid increasing military tensions in the Nordic and Baltic region.
Germany: Government Protests as Russia Bars Critic of Ukraine Policy by By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Germany protested Monday after Russia denied entry to a political ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel the day before.
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Россия отгородилась от Донбасса рвами
Утро.Ru Российско-украинская граница в Ростовской области укреплена. Всего вдоль границы, часть из которой, со стороны Донбасса, находится под контролем ополчения, возведено более 40 км ограждений и прорыто около 100 км рвов. Об этом сообщает региональное пограничное ... Россия отгородилась от Донбасса 100-километровым рвомМосковский комсомолец На границе России и Украины вырыли 100-километровый ровНТВ.ru На границе с Украиной в Ростовской области прорыт 100-километровый ровВзгляд Полит.ру -Ура-Информ -Российская Газета Все похожие статьи: 113 » |
Award-winning actor Gerard Depardieu has said he is ready to "die" for Russia, the country whose citizenship he adopted in 2013 to avoid paying higher taxes in his native France, a report said.
 УНИАН |
Столтенберг: У НАТО есть много доказательств военного присутствия РФ на Донбассе
УНИАН Генсек НАТО Йенс Столтенберг заявляет, что у альянса есть большой объем информации, которая доказывает присутствие российских войск на Донбассе. REUTERS. Об этом он заявил в интервью "Новой газете". "Доказательства следуют одно за другим, в том числе основанные на ... У НАТО есть много доказательств военного присутствия РФ на Донбассе, - СтолтенбергРБК Украина НАТО собрало много доказательств присутствия войск РФ в Украине - генсекЗеркало недели Все похожие статьи: 86 » |
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 РИА "VistaNews" |
Time: экс-кандидат в президенты США предлагает скидку на спасение во время нападения России
Газета.Ru С электронного адреса бывшего кандидата в президенты США от Республиканской партии Хермана Кейна отправлено письмо, в котором говорится о «заговоре» нынешнего американского президента Барака Обамы и лидеров церкви. Об этом сообщает Time. В послании утверждается ... Для войны против России в США "вооружились" БиблиейРоссийская Газета СМИ: американцев напугали "библейским пророчеством" о нападении РоссииРИА Новости Американцев напугали “библейским пророчеством” о нападении России на США в 2017 годуsovsekretno РИА "VistaNews" (пресс-релиз) Все похожие статьи: 21 » |
Russia and Nato launch rival war games by Roland Oliphant
Russia launches 'mass surprise drill' war games in response to Nato exercise after deputy PM jokes that 'our tanks don't need visas'
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 ИА REGNUM |
Грузию оставили без подарка
Росбалт.RU В Риге состоялся саммит Восточного партнерства (ВП) Евросоюза, в котором участвуют Армения, Азербайджан, Грузия, Белоруссия, Украина и Молдова. Грузия на Рижский саммит возлагала большие надежды – в своем стремлении в "единую Европу" она, как минимум, ожидала ... «Восточное партнерство» наткнулось на скалу Крыма: что дальше?ИА REGNUM «Восточное партнерство» наткнулось на скалу Крыма: что дальше? Дмитрий СемушинNews Front - новости Новороссии, ЛНР, ДНР ЕС охладевает к «Восточному партнёрству» под нажимом РоссииРИА Свежий Ветер 1news.az -DELFI.lv Все похожие статьи: 64 » |
 The Guardian |
What's it like to be hated by the Russian internet?
The Guardian Trolling and internet abuse is a global problem, but each of these stories reveals how for some people working in Russia the digital sphere has become increasingly pernicious, with some saying it has become particularly bad since the annexation of Crimea. Chechen leader stars in action filmBBC News Chechen Leader Kadyrov Becomes Russia's Newest Film StarThe Moscow Times all 28 news articles » |
We lack inspiring symbols and leaders: our Martin Luther Kings, our Rosa Parkses, our Obamas.
Russia's military defence has taken to the skies for a massive - and unexpected - air force exercise.
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‘In the Donbas, There is a War, But in Crimea, There is Terror,’ Residents Say by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 26 – Many believe that the situation in Russian-occupied Crimea is “not so terrible” because there is no war going on there, Abmezhit Suleymanov says. But in many ways, the situation in Crimea is even worse: in the Donbas, “you know who your enemy is;” in Crimea, there are enemies “all around you” and residents live in a state of terror.
Suleymanov, who is a representative of the Mejlis committee for the defense of the rights of Crimean Tatars, made these comments to Glavred.info in an article today which also features other reports from people in the occupied peninsula who ask that no one forget what is taking place there (glavred.info/politika/krym-v-okkupacii-kak-zhizn-v-usloviyah-terrora-319569.html).
Some high-profile cases of this terror have attracted international attention, but activists in Crimea and in Kyiv say that there are far more lower-level ones that pass unnoticed and that even they are not able to register and thus provide documentation to national and international bodies.
It appears, they say, that “Russia needs Ukrainian ‘spies,’ ‘snipers,’ and ‘terrorists’” and has a variety of charges officials may use or actions some of them or ordinary pro-Moscow people may employ to repress anyone who is not enthusiastically on the side of the new order following the Anschluss.
Aleksandra Matviichuk, president of the Kyiv-based Center for Civic Freedoms, says that “such ‘a menu’ is used by the occupation authorities for suppressing the initiatives of representatives of civil society” and that “their victims are people of the most varied professions, ages, and activities. But they are all united by the fact that they are publicly active and not under the control of the occupation authorities.”
Tamila Tasheva, coordinator of the Crimea SOS organization, says that “the international community is devoting more attention to what is taking place in [the Donbas than in Crimea]. And this is logical, but in Crimea we see a kind of undeclared war when every day there are violations of human rights. And there are hundreds of them.”
Rights activists in Kyiv say that in the last three months alone, there have been 94 interrogations in Crimea, 22 searches, 78 detentions and arrests, 13 trials, as well as cases of torture and beatings. And that enumeration, they say, is far from complete given that many of these crimes are not reported.
What is especially worrisome is that the occupation officials increasingly coordinate their work with the criminal grouping known as “the Crimean Self-Defense Force,” whose members employ extra-legal means to repress the population, including beatings, denunciations and other actions characteristic of a terror regime.
She continues that there are some things that can be done: Crimeans need to arrange in advance with lawyers so that when something is done, they will be in a better position to get the word out and defend themselves. And both Ukrainian and international organizations need to get involved in this horrific situation.
“We know,” another activist says, “that the Russian side does not allow a UN mission on human rights onto the territory of the peninsula.” But that doesn’t mean that individual countries can’t send their own missions or at least try to and thus spread the word about what is happening and thereby encourage Crimeans to defend their rights.
Suleymanov adds that “the repressive regime is doing everything it can to take under control the representative organ of the Crimean Tatars, the Mejlis and Kurultay,” including attacks, arrests, and the creation of alternative bodies that the occupiers seek to present as genuine.
“Today it is very difficult to live in Crimea,” he says, but “to live in occupation and to feel that no one supports you is doubly difficult. People must understand that there is no law or organization which now works in Crimea to defend the rights of these people” – and they are numerous.
Moscow claims and many outsiders believe that many in Crimea support the occupation, but this is not the case, Suleymanov says. “In Crimea live and struggle those who believe to this day that Crimea is Ukraine and must be.” What matters now is that they not be left to face the occupiers “one on one.”
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Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here. An archive of our liveblogs can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast.
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 Telegraph.co.uk |
Russia and Nato launch rival war games
Telegraph.co.uk Russian exercises in its Western and Central military districts have been denounced as “sabre rattling” in the West, which accuses Russia of effectively invading Ukraine by stealth. Moscow, in turn, has hit out at a series of Nato land, air, and sea ... Russia begins massive air force exerciseBBC News Russia begins huge surprise air force drill on same day as Nato start Arctic ...The Independent Russia and Western nations staging rival air combat exercisesLos Angeles Times U.S. News & World Report -The Seattle Times -Reuters all 100 news articles » |
Repression in Russia Intensifying Outside of Moscowby paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 26 – As it has done so often, the Russian government is increasing repression outside the capital and thus outside the field of view of Western journalists and diplomats at a rapid pace, something it may be able to do even more effectively if Moscow media outlets follow the advice of some not to cover the plight of the victims of such actions.
The past few days have produced two reports about this pattern: one about the increasing repression in Karelia in recent months (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/1554528-echo/) and the second about a new round of repression against Circassians in the North Caucasus (caucasreview.com/2015/05/v-rf-nachalis-repressii-protiv-cherkesskih-aktivstov/).
With regard to Karelia, Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko deputy in St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly, says that the authorities in that republic have launched criminal cases, searches and arrests in the wake of the success opposition groups have had in winning elections and calling attention to illegal actions by the head of the republic.
Five Yabloko leaders in Karelia have had criminal charges brought against them, even though there is no evidence supporting these cases. What there is, Vishnevsky says, is a political movement in the republic which seeks the ouster of the republic head. It has been holding meetings to make that demand – the most recent took place on May 20 – and has collected more than 7,000 signatures on a petition to that effect.
What adds a certain piquancy to the situation, Vishnevsky continues, is that Governor Khudilaynen appears to have been guilty while occupying an earlier job of exactly the things he is charging his opponents. He denies all wrongdoing, of course, but he gets angry whenever anyone raises the issue.
“It is difficult to say what will happen next in Karelia,” he says. “A great deal depends on how much coverage these events get.” Unfortunately, he says, because these cases do not involve high profile opposition figures and are taking place “beyond the borders of the two capitals, the situation has attracted little attention from the federal media with rare exceptions.”
A similar problem exists in the North Caucasus. There, officials have detained a Circassian activist whose only crime was that he wanted to meet other Circassians and mark the 151stanniversary of the genocide of the Circassians by tsarist forces on May 21and searched the house of those he hoped to meet with (caucasreview.com/2015/05/v-rf-nachalis-repressii-protiv-cherkesskih-aktivstov/).
That kind of illegal and heavy-handed authoritarianism when directed at relatively low-ranking people outside of Moscow rarely gets much attention, and it will get less if Russian and western journalists follow the advice of those like Valery Tishkov, the outgoing director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology.
In response to a question from Nazaccent.ru about the Circassian situation, Academician Tishkov “advised the media not to inflate the theme of the Circassian genocide but to treat other more immediate issues” (nazaccent.ru/content/16095-valerij-tishkov-sovetuyu-smi-ne-razduvat.html).
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