Monday, June 24, 2013

“Russian Reset”: Time to Listen to the Critics - Ariel Cohen - June 21, 2013 at 5:00 pm

Obama reaches out to a repressive Putin

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PRESIDENT OBAMA is preparing to reach out once again to Russian ruler Vladi­mir Putin in the hope of striking a new agreement to reduce nuclear arms. The president mentioned the initiative in hisState of the Union address; according to a senior Russian legislator, national security adviser Thomas Donilon will soon travel to Moscow with a letter outlining Mr. Obama’s ideas. The reduction of nuclear stockpiles is a top priority of this president and a worthy one. But what’s striking about Mr. Obama’s strategy is its seeming detachment from the reality of how Mr. Putin has governed Russiasince his return to the presidency last year.
Mr. Obama’s first nuclear-arms agreement with Mr. Putin, in 2010, came about in the context of a warming of U.S.-Russian relations. The new proposal will hit Moscow in the middle of a Putin-directed campaign against both his domestic political opposition and the United States, which in his mind are linked. In recent months Mr. Putin has expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development, placed new restrictions on local nonprofit organizations receiving foreign funds, bumped U.S.-funded Radio Liberty from domestic airwaves and overseen a propaganda campaign that accuses the United States of orchestrating anti-government demonstrations.
The regime, meanwhile, has steadily escalated a campaign against the leaders of the peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrations that erupted in Russia in late 2011. For Russians, the cynical tactics are bone-wearyingly familiar: Transparently trumped-up criminal cases are being brought against the activists, with the promise of lengthy prison terms. Alexei Navalny, the founder of an anti-corruption organization, has himself been charged with corruption. Last week leftist firebrand Sergei Udaltsovwas placed under house arrest ahead of his upcoming trial on charges of organizing an anti-Putin rally in May.
Some Russian analysts believe that the regime is well on its way to crushing the opposition movement, which attracted the support of much of the urban middle class. Others regard the repression as the death spasms of an exhausted autocracy. “There are classical criteria of a dying regime and its key signs are evident in Russia,” Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow office wrote recently, citing “the Kremlin’s inability either to preserve the status quo or begin changes.” Either side might be right, though our bet is with Ms. Shevtsova.
What’s strange is that the Obama administration would seek to undertake a major new piece of business with Mr. Putin without regard for this ugly climate. New U.S.-Russian nuclear warhead reductions, while welcome, are hardly urgent: The big challenges of nuclear weapons lie elsewhere in the world. At the same time, the survival of a pro-democracy movement in Russia is an important and pressing U.S. interest, just as Mr. Putin’s growing hostility to the United States threatens U.S. initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere. Maybe offering Mr. Putin a new nuclear weapons deal is the best way to counter his noxious policies — but it is hard to see how.
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White House should not ignore Russia’s human rights abuses

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Russian officials have opened several spurious investigations into Navalny, designed to publicly discredit him. His family and friends are also being investigated, a guilt-by-association trick of the Soviet era. Since Navalny publicly described the ruling clique as the “party of crooks and thieves,” he has become a key figure in the opposition and a leader in exposing government corruption. He signaled interest in running for president in 2018, and his name recognition among Russians has soared from 6 percent to 37 percent, according to a recent Levada Center poll, leading the Kremlin to view him as a threat. If he is found guilty — Putin’s critics are rarely acquitted — he would be disqualified from public office.
That Navalny’s fate is sealed seems clear from the words of Vladi­mir Markin, a spokesman of the Russian Investigative Committee, which has launched inquiries against Navalny. Markin told the newspaper Izvestia: “The suspect is doing his best to draw attention to himself; one could even say he is teasing the authorities. So interest in his past grew, and the process of bringing him out in the open naturally sped up.”
Essentially, Markin acknowledged that the case is a show trial. Meanwhile, Markin’s boss, Alexander Bastrykin, who last year allegedly threatened to kill a journalist with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has never been investigated.
Since 1992, 54 journalists have been killed in Russia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. And since he returned to the presidency in May, Putin has overseen the worst crackdown on human rights in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In the latest edition of its annual human rights report, the State Department listed numerous examples of infringement of universal human rights, including “laws that impose harsh fines for unsanctioned meetings”; the practice of identifying nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, as “foreign agents” if they engage in “political activity” while receiving foreign funding; suspending the licenses of NGOsthat have U.S. citizens as members or receive U.S. support and “pose a threat to Russian interests”;recriminalizing libel; the blocking of Web sites without a court order; and significantly expanding the definition of treason. “Skewed” elections in Putin’s favor and lack of due process in the courts were also noted.
More than a dozen Russians are in jail or under house arrest, awaiting trial for their alleged roles in the Bolotnaya Square protests last May; two — Konstantin Lebedev and Maksim Luzyanin — have been sentenced to penal colonies for 2½ years and 4½ years, respectively, for their alleged roles. Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has languished in prison for nearly a decade. An opposition activist seeking asylum in Ukraine, Leonid Razvozzhayev, was kidnapped in October by Russian agents and tortured into a confession; he remains in jail on trumped-up charges. Hundreds of NGOs have been raided across Russia in recent weeks; on occasion, a camera crew from Kremlin-friendly NTV was present to capture material used to condemn these groups as foreign agents. One group in Kostroma is being investigated because it hosted a round-table with a representative from the U.S. Embassy. Another, the respected election monitor Golos, has been fined for failing to register as a foreign agent.
Meanwhile, Kremlin officials, including Putin, regularly spew anti-American invective. And the State Duma’s ugly response last year to the Sergei Magnitsky Act, which banned visas for and froze assets of Russian officials involved in gross human rights abuses, was to bar the adoption of Russian orphans by U.S. families.
Aside from a State Department spokeswoman’s appropriate description of the NGO raids last month as a “witch hunt,” the Obama administration has voiced virtually no concerns about the crackdown — even when the victims are U.S. organizations or Russians who openly admire American freedoms. National security adviser Tom Donilon said nothing publicly about the human rights situation during his recent visit to Moscow. Instead, his trip seemed to signal U.S. eagerness to refocus relations on security and economic issues. Donilon delivered a letter from President Obama to the Russian president that Putin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said “is written in a constructive tone and has a number of proposals promoting bilateral dialogue and cooperation.”
This is no time for business as usual. Instead, Washington needs to emphasize the deterioration in Russia’s human rights situation by pushing back against the crackdown and focusing attention on the regime’s corrupt, authoritarian nature while using the Magnitsky Act whenever appropriate. Continued cooperation on Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and counterterrorism is important — but not at the expense of ignoring the internal situation in Russia.
Obama and Putin are scheduled to meet at summits in June and September. By then, Navalny may well be sitting in prison. With repression in Russia deepening by the day, it will become increasingly untenable for Obama to justify looking the other way.
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Jackson Diehl: Russia, a counterterrorism partner the U.S. doesn’t need

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It’s worth exploring this twisted logic. It explains why Russia continues to support and supply Assad even as he systematically uses artillery, Scud missiles and, most likely, deadly sarin gas against his own people, but it also shows why Russia and the United States should never become full partners in counterterrorism, as Putin proposed last week.
Let’s look first at the wars in Syria and Chechnya — which, in fact, have quite a lot in common. In both countries, decades of repression prompted a popular rebellion with democratic goals. In both, the old regime refused to accept a new order. Instead, the predominantly secular independence movement of Chechnya, like the predominantly secular democracy movement of Syria, was subject to a massive military onslaught that made no distinctions among peaceful protesters, militants and innocent bystanders.
Putin oversaw the second Russian invasion of Chechyna in 1999, after the failure of an earlier campaign. The Chechen capital of Grozny, like the Syrian cities of Homs and Aleppo, was targeted indiscriminately by tanks and artillery and reduced to rubble. Thousands of suspected Chechen militants were abducted, tortured and killed. Villages where rebels were suspected to be operating were sealed off and subjected to sweeps in which all men and many boys were taken away. Though an accurate death toll has never been established, tens of thousands were killed.
The first leader of independent Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev , was so secularized that, according to the Economist magazine, he was not sure how many times a day Muslims pray. Another, Aslan Maskhadov, won a democratic election in 1997 with 59 percent of the vote, compared with 23 percent for an Islamist opponent. Both were assassinated by Russia. As the relentless offensive continued, the Chechen resistance, like that of Syria, radicalized. Islamic extremists filtered into the country from elsewhere and began building their own organizations.
Like Assad, Putin from the beginning of the war had claimed that the only resistance was terrorist. His brutality eventually made his propaganda mostly true; since 2002, attacks by extremist Chechens have haunted the North Caucasus as well as Moscow. Putin has responded to those with an equally heavy hand. When Chechens seized a Moscow theater in 2002, security forces killed 130 hostages by flooding the facility with gas. When a middle school in Beslan, North Ossetia, was taken over by another terrorist cell in 2004, security forces stormed it with heavy weapons; more than 330 hostages died, most of them children.

Fred Hiatt: Putin turns back the clock in Russia

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As I drove down highways until recently off-limits, my license plate identifiable as a foreign reporter’s, highway police would pull me over and demand to know who had given me permission.
“Your foreign minister,” I would say, handing them the treaty.
Sometimes they’d puzzle over the document, call a superior and wave me on. Sometimes they’d force me to turn back. Treaty or no, they knew what they knew: no foreigners allowed.
Over the following years, ingrained suspicions and deference to authority began to fade. Russians who had never before met a foreigner ceased to marvel at the novelty. People who would not have dared criticize those in power, at least beyond their kitchen walls, thought nothing of loud griping.
Now, says Tanya Lokshina, fear is returning. “It’s becoming a different country as we speak,” she told me during a recent visit to Washington.
To illustrate the point, Lokshina, deputy director of the Russia office of Human Rights Watch, described a recent trip to a region in Siberia. She was conducting research with a colleague on the paucity of palliative care in Russia, not your usual human rights subject, and her trip was actually a good-news mission: The region is an exception, a pioneer in offering humane care.
“So we weren’t worried,” Lokshina recalled. “It was a positive story, and not politically sensitive.”
Local bureaucrats at the Ministry of Health learned of their visit and summoned them. “Where was our permission to be in Siberia?” they demanded to know, as Lokshina recalled. “Where was our official permit to interview? Who invited us? Was George Soros involved?”
In years of dangerous human rights research in the war-torn Caucasus, Lokshina said, she’d never been questioned more intensively. The doctors they’d still hoped to interview canceled appointments, and those they’d already seen got into trouble. “What were you thinking, talking to foreign agents?” the doctors were asked.
The suddenly chilled atmosphere is precisely what Putin has been seeking since he reclaimed the presidency in May, after a four-year hiatus as prime minister. He has had his compliant parliamentredefine “treason” so vaguely that pretty much anyone who speaks to a foreigner or foreign organization will be nervous. “I’m liable just by job description,” Lokshina said. “I literally don’t have to do anything.”
Putin required any organization that takes foreign funds, which means most human rights groups, to declare itself a “foreign agent,” which to Russian ears sounds synonymous with “spy.” He expelled theU.S. Agency for International Development. Both the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (IRI), which help political parties learn to function in democracies, have had to pull staff out after two decades in Moscow, IRI just last week.
Putin also set out to make examples of those who defy him. An independent-minded legislator was drummed out of the Duma. An opposition leader, Sergei Udaltsov, was charged with plotting mass disorder, and his associate was kidnapped from neighboring Ukraine and tossed into jail. The ludicrous persecution of the Pussy Riot musicians has been well documented, but 17 other protesters are being prosecuted, with one already sentenced to 4 ½ years. A daring opposition blogger, Alexei Navalny, and his brother are threatened with prison on byzantine, far-fetched allegations of bribery and fraud.
The phoniness of the case is the point: No one is beyond Putin’s reach, and no one will be protected by judges, the law — or innocence. Just as in his first term he broke one of the richest industrialists, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to tame every other oligarch, so the prosecution of Russia’s best-known and most daring leaders cows everyone else, down to health-ministry bureaucrats in Siberia (and their brothers).
Putin is seeking to instill this fear because of his own. Large protests a year ago stunned him. “He’s frightened,” said Lokshina. “He wants to go back to 2007, when he was certain of stability and his popularity.”
Lokshina says that she doesn’t believe he will succeed. “It is a different society, and he cannot turn back the clock.”
But she also admits to being struck at how quickly self-censorship can regrow and flower even beyond what’s intended. When high-ranking officials in Moscow learned of her Siberia experience, one said, “This is not what we had in mind,” and Lokshina said she believes that.
“When you create repressive legislation, it acquires a life of its own,” she said. “It is easy to start, and almost impossible to stop.”
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Obama has a misguided faith in Putin

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IN TOURING Europe this week, President Obama has portrayed Russia’s Vladi­mir Putin as a ruler with whom he can build a “constructive, cooperative relationship that moves us out of a Cold War mind-set.” It’s a blinkered view that willfully ignores the Russian president’s behavior.
As Mr. Obama sees it, Mr. Putin is a plausible partner for a major new reduction of nuclear arsenals, including both strategic and tactical weapons; he is ready to “further deepen our economic and commercial relationships.” True, the two presidents have “differing perspectives” on Syria, but the Kremlin leader Mr. Obama describes shares his vision of how the Syrian war should end and over time can probably be persuaded on the tactics.
Most of all, Mr. Obama’s Putin is a leader whose domestic policies are irrelevant to his relations with the United States, his willingness or ability to strike all those deals or the American mission, extolled by Mr. Obama in Berlin on Wednesday, of “advancing the values we believe in.” Neither in that speech nor in his joint public appearance with Mr. Putin on Monday did Mr. Obama make any reference to Russian politics or human rights.
This is a vision entirely at odds with Mr. Putin’s record since he returned to the office of president last year. In an attempt to suppress swelling protests against his rigged reelection and the massively corrupt autocracy he presides over, Mr. Putin has launched what both Russian and Western human rights groups describe as the most intense and pervasive campaign of political repression since the downfall of the Soviet Union. Not just opposition leaders but also former senior Kremlin officials have been prosecuted or driven into exile; independent civic and human rights groups are being systematically stripped of funding and legal protection.
Having lost the support of the urban middle class in cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin has been fortifying his base among Russia’s nationalists and Orthodox Christians. That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children. An intense propaganda campaign is being waged by government-backed media, one of which recently claimed that the Obama administration has secretly allied with al-Qaeda. More substantively, Mr. Putin has devoted himself to thwarting the Western goal of regime change in Syria, a stance that serves his political goals at home as much as it does in the Middle East.
Unless and until President Bashar al-Assad loses Syria’s civil war — something Russia is trying to prevent with massive supplies of weapons — Mr. Putin will not alter this stance. Nor is he likely to seriously engage with Mr. Obama on the proposed reductions of nuclear weapons. Instead, he will use the issue to demand a dismantling of NATO’s missile defense architecture in Europe. Any serious progress on economic and commercial issues would require the Kremlin to purge corrupt bureaucrats and end its shakedowns of foreign firms — yet there, too, Mr. Putin is headed in the opposite direction.
It makes sense to maintain lines of communication with the Russian leader. But a strategy of silence on human rights in hope of cutting deals is neither realistic nor pragmatic. In fact, it is starry-eyed in its stubborn optimism, in spite of all the evidence, that bargains in keeping with U.S. interests remain likely.
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“Russian Reset”: Time to Listen to the Critics

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Newscom
Newscom
In a well-reasoned broadside, The Washington Post’s editorial board blasted President Obama’s Russian policy and his Berlin speech this past Thursday.
The editorial justly criticized the naiveté with which Obama reached out to Russian president Vladimir Putin with a badly thought out proposal to cut a third of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while ignoring Russia’s pointed lack of cooperation on a number of other key issues.
This desire to secure his “legacy” of nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-free world has roots in Obama’s days at Columbia University. There, the undergrad Obama penned a paper on the subject in 1983 calling for “global zero”—total nuclear disarmament.
To obtain this elusive goal, the President has remained mum about Russia’s truculence on Syria, support of Iran, implacable opposition to U.S. missile defense, and unprecedented human rights crackdown at home.
The Post wrote:
In an attempt to suppress swelling protests against his rigged reelection and the massively corrupt autocracy he presides over, Mr. Putin has launched what both Russian and Western human rights groups describe as the most intense and pervasive campaign of political repression since the downfall of the Soviet Union.… [I]ndependent civic and human rights groups are being systematically stripped of funding and legal protection.
Having lost the support of the urban middle class,…Mr. Putin has been fortifying his base among Russia’s nationalists and Orthodox Christians. That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children. An intense propaganda campaign is being waged by the government-backed media.
Having recently returned from a trip to Russia, I can say that for the first time in 25 years, Russians are again living in fear for their freedom and their children’s future.
Outspoken regime critics such as whistleblower Alexei Navalny face criminal prosecution on trumped-up charges. Opposition figure and world chess champion Garry Kasparov recently announced that he is going to emigrate. Overzealous government investigators have hounded Sergey Guriev, a prominent mainstream economist, into self-imposed exile. And no word on any of this from Obama.
As The Heritage Foundation has repeatedly pointed out since 2010, the Russian “reset” policy was doomed to failure from the beginning. It ignored Moscow’s outreach to America’s authoritarian foes from Caracas to Tehran as well as its massive military modernization, neo-imperialist policy, and Soviet-style suppression of dissent.
“See no evil” is bad foreign policy, and so is the abandonment of Russian democrats and America’s friends and allies in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The revival of the czarist, 19th-century ideological trifecta of Russian Orthodoxy, autocracy, and populism—aggravated by rabid anti-Americanism—is bad news for the security interests of the United States and Europe.
It is time for Obama to recognize the facts and listen to critics of his Russia policy.
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“Russian Reset”: Time to Listen to the Critics - Heritage.org (blog)

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Heritage.org (blog)

Russian Reset”: Time to Listen to the Critics
Heritage.org (blog)
Mr. Putin has been fortifying his base among Russia's nationalists and Orthodox Christians. That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children.

Their View: Obama must take more realistic approach in dealings with Putin - Las Cruces Sun-News

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Their View: Obama must take more realistic approach in dealings with Putin
Las Cruces Sun-News
Having lost the support of the urban middle class in cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, Putin has been fortifying his base among Russia's nationalists and Orthodox Christians. That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid...

“Russian Reset”: Time to Listen to the Critics - tom taylor online 

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Mr. Putin has been fortifying his base among Russia's nationalists and Orthodox Christians. That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from ...

From Fugitive to Hostage for Snowden? - Commentary Magazine

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New York Times

From Fugitive to Hostage for Snowden?
Commentary Magazine
Though he was seemingly there only to catch his connecting flight, that would have been a strange development, considering that Vladimir Putin has more to gain from virtually any scenario other than one in which Snowden just passes through Russia on ...
Edward Snowden leaves reporters chasing shadows around an airportThe Guardian

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Obama's starry-eyed view of Putin - Washington Post

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Sydney Morning Herald

Obama's starry-eyed view of Putin
Washington Post
That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children. An intense propaganda campaign is being waged by government-backed media, one of which...
Oppose A Feel-Good Intervention In SyriaRedState
Iran's Slide into Sectarianism: A Wrong Move?PKKH (blog)

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How Russia views nuclear disarmament — and why it may resist - MinnPost.com

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ABC
 News

How Russia views nuclear disarmament — and why it may resist
MinnPost.com
... with much enthusiasm in Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin has made anti-Americanism a central theme of his third presidential term, and the Russian military is extremely dubious about any further cuts in their already-overstretched nuclear ...
Obama loses German hearts and minds ahead of Berlin visitYahoo! News

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Obama holds a warped view of Russia's Putin - Arizona Daily Star

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Obama holds a warped view of Russia's Putin
Arizona Daily Star
That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children. An intense propaganda campaign is being waged by government-backed media, one of which...

Washington Post: Rose-tinted diplomacy - Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

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Washington Post: Rose-tinted diplomacy
Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children. An intense propaganda campaign is being waged by government-backed media, one of which ...

AN EDITORIAL: Obama's starry-eyed view of Putin fails to help interests of U.S. - The Morning Journal

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The Hindu

AN EDITORIAL: Obama's starry-eyed view of Putin fails to help interests of U.S.
The Morning Journal
That means basing his foreign policy on anti-Americanism. U.S. aid programs have been shut down and Americans banned from adopting Russian children. More substantively, Mr. Putin has devoted himself to thwarting the Western goal of regime change in ...
Oppose A Feel-Good Intervention In SyriaRedState
Iran's Slide into Sectarianism: A Wrong Move?PKKH (blog)

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Anti-American Ecuador may be Snowden destination - USA TODAY

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ABC News

Anti-American Ecuador may be Snowden destination
USA TODAY
CARACAS, Venezuela — Edward Snowden's reported escape itinerary through Latin America — from Havana to Caracas to Quito, Ecuador — reads like a list of the last bastions of anti-Americanism in the region. Ecuador is an especially sensible pick for... 
Edward Snowden leaves reporters chasing shadows around an airportThe Guardian

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More must be done to arrest Caribbean drug trade says US

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Russia's Eurasian Union Could Endanger The Neighborhood And ...

» Russia's Eurasian Union Could Endanger The Neighborhood And ...
15/06/13 01:22 from russia's and china's interests in puerto rico and the caribbean - Google Blog Search
[1] While focusing on the post-Soviet erosion of Russian power and the rise of the U.S., NATO, China , and India on the global stage, the Russian leader disregarded the quest of the 14 former Soviet states for independence.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

BP Cuts Estimate of Russian Reserves

» BP Cuts Estimate of Russian Reserves
13/06/13 20:56 from EU-RussiaCentre
BP has steeply cut its estimates of global gas reserves, revising Russian reserves down sharply and putting Iran at the top of the world league table. Russia was responsible for the bulk of the reduction, with its reserves estimate downgra..

Good Governance for Russia: UN Plans After 2015

» Good Governance for Russia: UN Plans After 2015
18/06/13 02:05 from Home
In May, the UN High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda presented a report entitled “ A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development .” IMR Advisor Boris B..

» Vladimir Putin's awkward message in English
13/06/13 14:30 from Russian news, all the latest and breaking Russia news
It is not the first time he has ventured into the English language but Vladimir Putin's latest linguistic jaunt is perhaps the most entertaining.         


» Russia introduces jail terms for 'religious offenders'
12/06/13 04:58 from Russian news, all the latest and breaking Russia news
A controversial law introducing jail sentences for the crime of offending religious believers was approved by Russia's lower house of parliament on Tuesday.       


G20 summit: NSA targeted Russian president Medvedev in London | World news - G

G20 summit: NSA targeted Russian president Medvedev in London | World news

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Barack Obama, Dmitry Medvedev
US spies intercepted communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during a G20 summit in London. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.
The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America's biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered "a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted".
The disclosure underlines the importance of the US spy hub at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where hundreds of NSA analysts are based, working alongside liaison officers from GCHQ.
The document was drafted in August 2009, four months after the visit by Medvedev, who joined other world leaders in London, including the US president, Barack Obama, for the event hosted by the British prime minister, Gordon Brown.
Medvedev arrived in London on Wednesday 1 April and the NSA intercepted communications from his delegation the same day, according to the NSA paper, entitled: "Russian Leadership Communications in support of President Dmitry Medvedev at the G20 summit in London – Intercept at Menwith Hill station."
The document starts with two pictures of Medvedev smiling for the world's media alongside Brown and Obama in bilateral discussions before the main summit.
RAF Menwith Hill RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters
The report says: "This is an analysis of signal activity in support of President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to London. The report details a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted. The signal activity was found to be emanating from the Russian embassy in London and the communications are believed to be in support of the Russian president."
The NSA interception of the Russian leadership at G20 came hours after Obama and Medvedev had met for the first time. Relations between the two leaders had been smoothed in the runup to the summit with a series of phone calls and letters, with both men wanting to establish a trusting relationship to discuss the ongoing banking crisis and nuclear disarmament.
In the aftermath of their discussions on 1 April, the two men issued a joint communique saying they intended to "move further along the path of reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms in accordance with the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons".
A White House official who briefed journalists described the meeting as "a very successful first meeting focused on real issues". The official said it had been important for the men to be open about the issues on which they agreed and disagreed. Obama had stressed the need to be candid, the official noted.
While it has been widely known the two countries spy on each other, it is rare for either to be caught in the act; the latest disclosures will also be deeply embarrassing for the White House as Obama prepares to meet Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Medvedev as president, in the margins of the G8 summit this week.
The two countries have long complained about the extent of each other's espionage activities, and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats are common. A year after Obama met Medvedev, the US claimed it had broken a highly sophisticated spy ring that carried out "deep cover" assignments in the US.
Ten alleged Russian spies living in America were arrested.
Putin was withering of the FBI-led operation: "I see that your police have let themselves go and put some people in jail, but I guess that is their job. I hope the positive trend that we have seen develop in our bilateral relations recently will not be harmed by these events." Last month, the Russians arrested an American in Moscow who they alleged was a CIA agent.
The new revelations underline the significance of RAF Menwith Hill and raise questions about its relationship to the British intelligence agencies, and who is responsible for overseeing it. The 560-acre site was leased to the Americans in 1954 and the NSA has had a large presence there since 1966.
It has often been described as the biggest surveillance and interception facility in the world, and has 33 distinct white "radomes" that house satellite dishes. A US base in all but name, it has British intelligence analysts seconded to work alongside NSA colleagues, though it is unclear how the two agencies obtain and share intelligence – and under whose legal authority they are working under.

Russia's president fidgeted, looked awkward and moved his neck oddly, his body language screaming that he would be rather be anywhere else than at this summit - BBC | The Ring and the Rings: Vladimir Putin's Mafia Olympics | Sport - Guardian.Co.Uk


Finding common ground with Russia

President Obama grinned broadly and nodded encouragingly towards President Putin.

Russia's president fidgeted, looked awkward and moved his neck oddly, his body language screaming that he would be rather be anywhere else than at this summit.President Obama grinned broadly and nodded encouragingly towards President Putin.
That's not surprising. He is the odd man out in this curious club. The G8 is really the biggest of what used to be called the Western powers, plus Russia.

The old enemy was allowed club membership in 1997, in a burst of post-Cold War magnanimity. Now it's all a bit of a nonsense.
Without China, or India and Brazil for that matter, this is not a group of the most powerful economies in the world. Nor, because of Mr Putin's presence, is it a gathering of like-minded allies.
But his resolution over Syria only highlights the lack of a plan from the US and its friends.
The Russian president has made it clear that as far as he is concerned his country is behaving perfectly normally, within the ordinary rules of international behaviour, backing, and arming what he sees as the legitimate government of Syria.
He is willing to sell them the most up-to-date and hi-tech kit. On the other hand America, the UK and France want a particular subset of rebels to win, and believes morally it should be allowed to arm them. But, for fear of the rebels they don't like, they are queasy about providing anything too advanced.
It is likely that rather than be isolated, President Putin will sign up to some sort of plan.
From what I have heard of the five point agreement that's on the table, it is so bland that it risks being dismissed as worthless.
But perhaps it is not quite without merit. Any international agreement that makes a Syrian peace conference more likely has some value.
But the big sticking point remains - is this peace conference post-Assad, as the rebels and the US demand, or is Assad part of the solution as Russia and the Syrian government insist?
President Obama, in a late night interview, has broken his five-day silence on his shift towards giving military help to the rebels.
He said that the US had a legitimate interest and could not allow chaos in Syria, but it was "very easy to slip-slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments", adding: "If it's not working immediately, then what ends up happening is six months from now people say, 'Well, you gave the heavy artillery; now what we really need is X, and now what we really need is Y.' Because until Assad is defeated, in this view, it's never going to be enough, right?"
Right. That is the dilemma of those in the West who want President Assad to go. They have to decide which is worse - living with chaos and potentially the outcome they don't want, or greater entanglement in a region which teaches that such interventions have unexpected and unwelcome consequences.
Mark Mardell, North America editorArticle written by Mark MardellMark MardellNorth America editor

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The Ring and the Rings: Vladimir Putin's Mafia Olympics | Sport

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Putin Super Bowl ring
In this 2005 photograph, Russian president Vladimir Putin holds a diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring belonging to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Josef Stalin famously uttered the demonically cynical maxim that "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic". In other words, he believed that when faced with the choice of focusing on horrors small and tangible or vast and incomprehensible, humanity goes small. It is the political spawn of Stalin's feared security apparatus, Vladimir Putin, who is proving that this applies to scandals in the world of sport. One small theft is the sports story of the moment in the United States, while a heist of epic proportions, is emitting nary a peep.
The sports press is agog with the revelation by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft that in 2005, Putin stole his Super Bowl ring. At the time, Putin's sticky fingers were caught on camera and the scene generated some laughs. There was the leader of Russia trying it on at a press event and then walking out of the room, as a bovine, slack-jawed Kraft looked on. The Patriots organization played it off as an intentional gift. But Kraft revealed this week that it was more of a mugging with the parodically alpha-male Putin icily looking at Kraft and saying, "I can kill someone with this ring," then in Kraft's words, "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."
It's a pulpy, punchy story and it's understandable why sports reporters are flocking to it like a seagull to carrion. It also fits a narrative that has served Vladimir Putin well. He's the Tony Soprano of world leaders: the man who gets what he wants and wants what he gets.
But Putin – not unlike the decaying Mafia itself – isn't nearly as ruthlessly efficient as his legend suggests. For evidence of this, we don't even have to leave the world of sports. I'm referring to the billions in disappeared "spending" for the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held – for reasons that boggle the mind – in the humid, subtropical Russian resort city of Sochi.
Putin has staked his reputation on the smooth hosting of the winter games. Based on the planning, it either speaks to how little he values his reputation, or more likely, that beneath the steely glare and martial arts muscles, he's being exposed as little more than a thuggish front man for a kleptocracy.
According to a detailed report issued by Russian opposition leaders in May, businessmen and various consiglieres of Putin have stolen up to $30bn from funds intended for Olympic preparations. This has pushed the cost of the winter games, historically far less expensive than their summer counterpart to over $50bn, more than four times the original estimate. That $50bn price tag would make them the most expensive games in history, more costly than the previous twenty-one winter games combined. It's a price tag higher than even than the 2008 pre-global recession summer spectacle in Beijing.
As Andrew Jennings, author of Lords of the Rings and the most important Olympic investigative reporter we have, said to me, "The games have always been a money-spinner for the cheerleaders in the shadows. Beijing remains impenetrable but is likely to have been little less corrupt than Putin's mafia state."
"Mafia state" may sound extreme, but these winter games will go down in history as perhaps the most audacious act of embezzlement in human history. As Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and Leonid Martynyuk wrote, "Only oligarchs and companies close to Putin got rich. The absence of fair competition, cronyism … have led to a sharp increase in the costs and to the poor quality of the work to prepare for the Games … The fact is that almost everything that is related to the cost problems and abuses in preparation for the Olympic Games was carefully concealed and continues to be covered up by the authorities."
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