A Step At A Time

RFE/RL’s Golnaz Esfandiari points to the dangers facing writers and publishers in Iran. Recently introduced censorship restrictions and guidelines are preventing the issue of new books, and some in the book industry are warning that it could be destroyed by the burdensome and bureaucratic regulations.

Farkhondeh Hajizadeh, an Iranian writer and an award-winning publisher, tells RFE/RL that the licensing process for new titles has become “a monster.”

Over the past year, she claims, many of her books have gone unpublished.

“It would be better for you to ask how many of my books have been given a license these days,” Hajizadeh says when asked about the number of books she has seen held up by censors. “In the past, none of our books were granted permission without modifications. It seems the publishing industry is being devastated, or independent publishers cannot exist anymore. We specialize in art and literature — that’s exactly the area that’s problematic for [officials], not physics and chemistry. Our books have been either banned, or they have faced censorship after a year, or they remain suspended.”

In TimesOnline, Tony Halpin writes about Gifts to Soviet Leaders, a new exhibition of tributes to Kremlin rulers, from Lenin to Gorbachev, which has been compiled by Cambridge anthropologist Nikola Ssorin-Chaikov and Moscow art historian Olga Sosnina. The gifts comprise “tens of thousands of objects presented to Soviet leaders by peasants, workers, foreign sympathisers and heads of state”:

The telephone was among 20,000 gifts marking Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949. One film clip in the exhibition shows Stalin receiving a rifle at a party congress in the 1930s then pointing the weapon towards his audience. By the following year most of those present had been killed in a purge.

Via Prague Watchdog (my tr.)
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Chechens in Astrakhanskaya Oblast receive death threats

By Ruslan Isayev

YANDYKI, Russia – Ethnic Chechens living in the village of Yandyki in the Limansky district of the South Russian province of Astrakhanskaya Oblast, where just over a year ago inter-ethnic riots took place, are still suffering from pressure on the part of local nationalists.

Almost every day the places where Chechens live are subjected to the throwing of stones, bottles and notes containing threats that if they do not leave the district and the Oblast they may expect to be killed.

The authorities do nothing, claiming they are unable to establish the identity of the authors of these notes, but most of the Chechens tend to the view that they are quite simply turning a blind eye to the problem. Because of all this the Chechens, the majority of whom were born and grew up in Yandyki, are living in a virtual state of siege. “They can’t just drop everything and leave, since nearly all of them earn their livelihoods from sheep, cows and horses”, says Leyla Abdulazizova, one of the residents.

The situation in Yandyki became particularly inflamed after events in Karelia’s Kondopoga. Chechens could not go out into the street without encountering jeers and threats by their Russian and Kalmyk neighbours. “It’s not that they refuse to greet us, but rather that we feel something terrible may happen against us. We seek protection from the authorities, but they don’t give us any. We feel a hostile attitude around us,” says Leyla.

It may be useful to recall how these events began. It all happened along the usual lines. In mid-August 2005 an everyday dispute between Chechens and Kalmyks provoked riots and anti-Chechen pogroms in this village. On August 18 almost all the young people and adults armed themselves with baseball bats and pieces of steel gridding and fencing and then marched through the village, beating Chechen men and women within an inch of their lives. Six houses in which Chechens lived were set on fire. As a result they were left more or less homeless, robbed at a single stroke of all they had accumulated and acquired over long years.

It all ended in the much-trumpeted trials of twelve Chechens who were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, while two Kalmyks accused of arson were given short sentences.

Yandyki’s Chechen residents appealed to various official bodies, demanding that the damage inflicted on them in the course of the pogroms be acknowledged and compensated for. They even appealed to President Putin in an open letter, demanding to know once and for all whether they were citizens of Russia like the representatives of other ethnic groups, with all the responsibilities and rights that entailed. If the answer was yes, they asked for compensation, and for a guarantee of safety so they could continue to live in the Oblast. But there has been no reaction.

It should be noted that this is not the first anti-Chechen pogrom in the Limansky district of Astrakhanskaya Oblast. Before the outbreak of the first Chechen war in 1993, on Fisherman’s Day, a holiday that is usually accompanied by the consumption of enormous quantities of alcohol, the residents of one of the villages set fire to several houses and beat up many Chechens. The incident was later investigated and those responsible were punished after the intervention of the oblast authorities and sharp statements by Ichkerian President Dzhokhar Dudayev, with threats to stop deliveries of oil and fuel to the district.

Translated by David McDuff.

Via the FT:

Matthew Bryza, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for the Caucasus and southern Europe, indicated that the €5bn (£3.4bn) Baltic Sea pipeline would deepen Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.

“That project simply raises the question what diversification means when it comes to gas supply,” Mr Bryza said. “If you live in Germany you do not want to go through what happened last winter with Ukraine [when Russia shut off the supply of gas]… I wonder as a US official how much diversification anybody can develop by having more pipelines into the same supplier.”

As a frail and emaciated-looking Fidel Castro stubbornly insists he is still alive, posters at Babalu Blog continue to debate the pros and cons of the U.S. embargo, with the latest discussion focusing on the question of whether a Republican or a Democrat administration is better for the prospects of a liberated Cuba. The posters include one who claims to be posting from Cuba itself, and to be a resident there, but no one has yet succeeded in establishing whether this is actually the case.

An excerpt from a transcript of the October 7 edition of “The Access Code” - Yulia Latynina’s weekly phone-in program on Echo of Moscow (my translation):

I begin, of course, with the most terrible news not only in the last month and week, but in a very long time - the news of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. She was killed just two hours ago in the entrance of her own apartment building. And it can be said that this is a turning-point in Russian journalism. This is not even the murder of Dmitry Kholodov, this is not even the murder of Khlebnikov - this is the murder of a person who was more than a journalist - a defender of human rights who always took the side of the weak and the injured, and of whom it can be said that now and then she was wrong, now and then she exaggerated, but never, not once in her life, wrote a single line in which she did not sincerely believe. A person of quite fanatical conviction and limitless bravery, the kind of bravery I personally do not possess. Hypotheses are already being discussed: some business connected with Osman Boliyev. Here someone has even written: “a birthday present for Putin” - I got it as a text message just now. The only thing is, this was the last present Putin needed. If you look at Politkovskaya’s last publications over the last few months, they are all about Chechnya, and strictly speaking only about Ramzan Kadyrov. Politkovskaya hated him. And two days ago it was Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday, and so really that makes it possible to suggest only one motive for the murder and only two versions of what may have happened.

One is for it to be said that this was a birthday present for Ramzan. Whether Kadyrov wants such a present is also an open question. And the other is that this is a way of telling Moscow that this Kadyrov fellow is out of control, for there is a terrible bitterness towards Kadyrov among the FSB operatives whom he has kicked out of Chechnya, and among those Chechen commanders who were removed from the Chechen leadership. Very many of them are located in Moscow, very many of them also run about the corridors of the Kremlin and the FSB saying Kadyrov is a so-and-so, working for the Americans, and other similar things. In other words, I think this story has a concrete connection with Chechnya, a concrete connection with Kadyrov, but there are two totally different versions of why it may have happened. At all events, I think that Politkovskaya’s killers will not be found.

And really, something else should also be added. It was even mentioned on the news just now: the attempt to poison her when she tried to fly to Beslan. Let me remind you of the context of that poisoning episode. It was all a bit vague, people even laughed about it: there you go, they said, there’s Politkovskaya saying they’ve tried to poison her again, and the poisoning was obviously of a non-lethal kind. But she was taken off the plane, and as a result she didn’t take part in the events at Beslan.

So I didn’t really understand what had taken place until I talked in London to Mr. Akhmed Zakayev, and we had a conversation on the subject of why Maskhadov and Zakayev didn’t take part in the negotiations that started on September 1. Zakayev began by telling me that he didn’t know who had seized the school until September 2. This was a rather strange assertion. And so I naturally asked the question: did no one call you? Politkovskaya called me, Zakayev said, and she promised to call again from Beslan. But as you knpw, she never got to Beslan. But, I asked, did anyone else call you? Babitsky did, Zakayev replied, but then, as is well known, he didn’t get to Beslan either. So then it was clear what had happened. Politkovskaya was removed from the scene not because she was a woman journalist, i.e., not as someone who was capable of describing the events, but because she was a person capable of taking part in them. I.e., not as a journalist, but as a historical figure, who as soon she arrived in Beslan would have instantly asked what had happened and as soon as it was clear that Chechen separatists were involved, would have immediately thrust the telephone under Zakayev’s nose and said, here, you make the call. Exactly the same thing has happened now. I don’t believe that it was because of some journalistic material, investigations that had fallen into her hands, whose publication had to be prevented. I say it again: she was killed because she was a historical figure, she was killed because she was a person who was pointed to as being a personal enemy of Ramzan Kadyrov. And while it’s obvious that this murder is indeed in the interests of very different people and very different groups, its basic and most probably its entire connection can only be with Chechnya.

(Hat tip: ML)

Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt has yielded to pressure from his critics and has sold the controversial shares he owned in the Russian Vostok Nafta concern, Dagens Nyheter reports. As soon as he redeems his options, which cannot happen before December, he will also sell those. The paper says that Bildt owns securities worth 20m kronor (USD 2,760,181) which makes him the richest member of Sweden’s government.

Sveriges Radio International has a report here (hat tip: Marius)

See also: Conflict of Interest

This weekend's programme of readings at the London South Bank's Poetry International Festival includes two appearances by Nordic poets.

This evening Tomas Tranströmer, whose 75th birthday it is today, will attend a reading of his work by Swedish actor Krister Henriksson, with translations by Robin Robertson.

And tomorrow evening Finland-Swedish poet Tua Forsström will read from her poems in Swedish, with translations by myself and Stina Katchadourian.

In the Telegraph, Tom Leonard writes that the BBC's commitment to bias is no laughing matter, and comments that

As it wrestles with the inevitable decline of its audience in the digital age, impartiality is that rare problem for the BBC – it's one that it can actually do something about.

Melanie Phillips has more, including a reader's comment from Biased BBC, which I can certainly endorse, having watched the TV series ("Spooks") in question:

Anti-Zionism may be unremarkable on the Beeb, but this skidded well over into antisemitism. The take-home message was that Al Qaeda are a bunch of amateurs and can be managed as a law-enforcement problem but the real danger are those devious, murderous, all-too-clever Jews. The main plot involves a group of ruthless Mid-East hijackers who take over a London embassy and shoot people every hour. They turn out (of course) to be Jews in disguise. We have a Jewish traitor in high places with dialogue invoking the classic ‘can’t serve two masters’ accusation: ‘I asked which side he would fight on in a war between Britain and Israel. He just gave me his answer.’ The plot also relies on the same argument as the 9/11 conspiracy theory that Mossad blew up the twin towers because Muslims aren’t smart enough: MI5 realise the baddies must be Jewish because they’re too clever for their own good (and merciless and self-serving, naturally). The Jews in this episode may not be drinking the blood of Christian children but they are certainly bloodthirsty. There is even a fat, heavy-featured Mossad officer looking evil and inscrutable as he mouths ’shalom’. Plus the ringleader gets a cathartic booting at the end from the hero which had me in mind of Kristallnacht.

The Jerusalem Post has an item on remarks made by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana after talks with Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv to the effect that "Hamas wants to 'liberate the Palestinians,' not to destroy Israel". LGF comments that "This is the European sickness, encapsulated in one incredibly stupid man."

Yet the sickness has probably spread far beyond Europe. Addressing a gathering of the USIA Alumni Association in Washington D.C. on October 4, former U.S. Ambassador to China and Saudi Arabia Chas. W. Freeman told the assembled audience that

the threat the United States now faces is vastly less grave but much more ill-defined than that we faced during the Cold War. That era, which most here lived through, was one in which decisions by our president and his Soviet counterpart could result in the death, within hours, of over a hundred million Americans and a comparable number of Soviet citizens. That threat was existential. The threat we now face is not. Muslim extremists seek to drive us from their lands by hurting us. They neither seek to destroy nor to convert nor to conquer us. They can in fact do none of these things. The threat we now face does not in any way justify the sacrifice of the civil liberties and related values we defended against the far greater threats posed by fascism or Soviet communism. Terrorists win if they terrorize; to defeat them, we must reject inordinate fear and the self-destructive things it may make us do.

The irony here is that during the Cold War it was often retired U.S. diplomats of the Freeman type who made precisely such remarks in relation to the Soviet threat.

Mart Laar was Estonia’s prime minister in the immediate post-Soviet period, from 1992-1994 (he also held the premiership later on, from 1999 to 2002). A member of the right-of-centre Isamaaliit (Pro Patria Union), he wrote several books on Estonian and Russian history, and his perspective on the recent crisis between Georgia and Russia is tempered and informed not only by his personal experience, but also by his scholarship and knowledge. In TOL, Laar’s views on the crisis are quoted in an article which looks at the possible outcomes. Excerpt:

“The more time I spend in Georgia, the more I’m overcome by a feeling of deja vu,” Laar told Radio Free Europe in June. “A lot of what I see reminds me powerfully of the situation in Estonia round about 1993–1994,” he added.

When Estonia was faced with an aggressive campaign from Moscow in the early 1990s to prevent it from embracing the West, Laar and his colleagues in government apparently decided that the best defense was a good offense.

Estonia didn’t give an inch, even as Moscow egged on its Russian-speaking minority to stir up trouble. The country’s leaders vigorously asserted their sovereignty, continuously demanded that Russian troops leave, and firmly oriented their foreign and economic policy on Europe and the United States.

They also undertook bold economic reforms that raised living standards for the whole society – which took much of the steam out of the grievances Russian speakers initially had.

The approach, which appeared risky at the time, worked better than anybody dared expect. And now Georgia is trying to use the same playbook. Whether or not they can pull it off will help determine what the geopolitical map of the South Caucasus will look like for decades to come.

Shmuel Rosner has a post on a new survey of attitudes to world affairs among U.S. university and academic staff. As he says, the results are either funny or sad. They certainly make for reflection. Excerpt:

Faculty see the United States as a greater threat to world stability than Russia by a ratio of 7-to-1. Nearly half of humanities faculty, 46%, see the United States as a threat to international stability, as do 34% of social science faculty. Faculty attitudes toward America look very similar to the attitudes of Europeans. A recent poll for the Financial Times reported that 36% of Europeans identify the United States as the greatest threat to international stability.

About 12% of faculty see Israel as a great threat to international stability. Looked at another way, 41% of faculty see the United States and Israel combined as the greatest threats, compared to China and Russia combined, with 23%. For humanities faculty, 56% list the United States and Israel, compared to 20% who name China and Russia combined, or 41% who list China, Russia, and Iran combined.

Via RFE/RL Newsline (October 26):

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT SLAMS RUSSIA…

EU parliamentarians passed a nonbinding resolution in Strasbourg on October 25 calling for member states to give “serious thought” to their relations with Russia, which should not be based on economic criteria alone, international media reported (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 23, 2006). In a strongly worded resolution, the parliament called for democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression to be placed at the core of any future agreement between the EU and Russia. The parliamentarians voiced their concerns over what they called the increasing intimidation, harassment, and killing of journalists, and other people critical of the Russian government. The resolution drew attention to the recent slaying of critical journalist Anna Politkovskaya and called on the EU and Council of Europe, to which Russia belongs, to monitor the investigation of the apparent contract killing. The legislators argued that “the only way to truly honor…Politkovskaya’s passionate commitment to truth, justice, and human dignity is to make common efforts to realize [her] dream of a democratic Russia that fully respects the rights and liberties of its citizens.” PM

…BUT FINLAND IS CAUTIOUS.

The debate over the European Parliament’s October 25 resolution on Russia and democracy recalled the recent exchange in Lahti, Finland, between French President Jacques Chirac, who called for separating morality and economics in dealing with Moscow, and Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, who said that “it is totally wrong to pay attention only to [economic] interests,” international media reported (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 23, 2006). Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the EU presidency and has traditionally tread very lightly in dealing with Moscow, warned EU lawmakers that “one shouldn’t go too far. We shouldn’t caricature Russia as some monstrous dictatorship. They want to cooperate, they want to raise their living standards, they want to work with us.” In the run-up to the German EU presidency in the first half of 2007, the German Foreign Ministry, which is run by former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats, seeks to promote German and EU ties to Russia on the basis of an expanding network of  interrelationships (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” August 24 and October 19 and 20, 2006). Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats were not involved in preparing the ministry’s recent position paper and are drafting one of their own, which places more emphasis on trans-Atlantic ties. PM

In EDM, Andrei Smirnov writes that Russian generals are losing hope for a military victory in Chechnya. So bold have the anti-government forces become that they even set up checkpoints on the highways to search for officers from the local law-enforcement agencies. Lidiya Yusupova, a Memorial human rights worker who was nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and who has been threatened in the same way that Anna Politkovskaya was, has commented that “Russian checkpoints are fired on, [and] armed attacks and disappearances happen more and more often.” Smirnov considers that Dokku Umarov has been successful in concentrating guerrilla units under his centralized command. Excerpt:

While the Caucasian insurgency is becoming better organized, cooperation among security bodies in the North Caucasus is still in poor shape. The ANN source gave the impression that the Russian military is worried about recent clashes between Chechen and Ingush policemen, especially about deepening tension between Alu Alkhanov and Ramzan Kadyrov, the two top leaders of the pro-Russian Chechen forces. The source mentioned an October 5 shootout between their bodyguards that took place during the opening ceremony for the Chechen civil airport in Grozny.

“Reality demonstrates that the activity of the rebels does not depend on any personalities but on the current situation and capabilities of the field commanders,” Khasan, a Chechen human rights activist, told Kavkazky Uzel. “Negotiations are needed to end the conflict.”

It seems that the Russian generals have also begun to realize this fact, albeit very slowly. Hopes that the death of Basaev would be the end of the Caucasian insurgency are disappearing, but it appears that Russian officials are clueless about what to do next. Moreover, none of the generals dares to tell Russian President Vladimir Putin that they have no way to end the war militarily and that dialogue with the enemy is really needed.

A Cuban blogger living in Spain has been served with a court summons on a charge of supporting Israel. Alejandro de Liano has the details on his blog (Spanish). LGF has more. A strange story, but apparently a true one.

RIAN reports that Svetlana Bakhmina, the ex-Yukos lawyer sentenced to six and a half years’ penal labour, has been sent to a women’s penal colony in the Central Russian republic of Mordovia. This means that she will lose access to her two young children.

On October 2, the Simonovsky Court in Moscow rejected a request from Svetlana Bakhmina’s defense lawyers, who asked that the former deputy head of the legal department at the embattled oil company’s Yukos Moskva unit be allowed to serve her six-and-a-half-year prison term after her younger child, now aged five, turns 14.

One of Bakhmina’s lawyers, Olga Kozyreva, said the decision to send her defendant to the penal colony was illegal, because the court’s decision had not yet come into force.

(via Jeremy Putley)

See also: Svetlana Bakhmina - New Appeal

Svetlana Bakhmina Requests Deferral of Sentence

In a New Criterion essay written before the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Yale University Press editorial director Jonathan Brent looks at today’s Russia, and finds a society uneasily poised between a crude anarcho-fascism that more resembles the ambience of the Germany of the early 1930s than that of a modern state, and a slide back into the xenophobic anti-capitalism that characterized the Russia of Stalin’s rule. Brent sees the two directions as currently merging into one, in a gradual fading of transparency that presages the rebirth of some very unpleasant historical phenomena indeed:

Many Western and Russian commentators have noted with dismay Putin’s apparent rehabilitation of Josef Stalin, perhaps the greatest murderer in all of Western history. His brutalities and evident sadistic pleasures surpass those of Hitler. Had Stalin, not Hitler, lost World War II, his name would be banned and everything connected to him would be illegal. But today his image and name appear throughout the Russian nation.

(via MAK)

At Prague Watchdog, Dr. Dmitry Shlapentokh writes about The Chechen War and the Russian Public. Excerpt:

The continuous war has affected not only the news—despite the desire of the authorities to present the conflict as solved—but also the mentality of the general public, mostly manifest in the fear of terrorism. A woman I met in a Moscow hotel remembered the terrorist acts in the Metro and the planes that were blown up in the air by groups of suicide terrorists. I reminded her that all these events took place several years ago and there have been no terrorist attacks in Moscow for some time. She said the fact that terrorist acts took place many years ago does not matter–she is still afraid while riding the Metro. This fear seems to exist even in the Urals, in the heartland, thousands of miles from the Caucasus. One of my acquaintances asserted that people are indeed afraid of terrorism. Her son denied this. Still, the fear clearly exists.

While for some Russians the terrorists were not clearly defined individuals, for others they were directly connected with Chechens. In fact, Chechens are primarily associated in the minds of many Russians with terrorists, and those who are too interested in Chechnya are objects of suspicion. One interlocutor who discussed with me practically all subjects—including Putin—became visibly apprehensive when I mentioned that I read Kavkaz-Center, the major Internet site of the Chechen resistance. Staring at me with obvious suspicion, he asked why I read this stuff. I said I did so just for curiosity. He did not believe me and still pressed me on why I was interested in Kavkaz-Center and in Chechnya in general. It seems that at that time he started to question my image as an ordinary Russian he met on the train.

Chechens are not the only source of terrorism, but their image invariably blends with those of other ethnic groups from the Caucasus. One acquaintance conveyed to me the view of the majority that “It was the people of ‘Caucasian nationality’ who brought crime.” This is one major reason landlords prefer to rent apartments to ethnic Russians. This is well understood by potential renters, who emphasize their ethnicity when looking for an apartment. In Ekaterinburg I saw an advertisement that an ethnic Russian—ethnicity underlined––would like to rent an apartment.

While analyzing the fear of terrorism among the Russian populace, one should remember that here—as in other parts of the world, the USA included—the fear of terrorism has sublimated many fears and a general sense of instability that often have no direct relationship to terrorism.

Via AIA:

Lithuania does not spy in Russia, Lithuanian Prime Minister claims

Gediminas Kirkilas, Prime Minister of Lithuania, announced that his country does not conduct intelligence activity in Russia, radio Ekho Moskvy reports. Rejecting charges of Lithuania’ s involvement in spying affair of the arrested Russian officer, Kirkilas told a news conference today that Lithuania does not conduct any espionage activities in Russia, according to Interfax news agency. “Lithuania maintains a friendly attitude toward its neighbors — we are not spying there,” he said, referring to Khitryuk’s arrest. Kirkilas believes that the arrested officer “worked in a storage facility and demonstrated interest about all around” and apparently had Lithuanian citizenship, although he did not specify details. He said all the circumstances should be cleared out.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitekunas, who was also present at the news conference, said Vilnius would provide consulate assistance to the arrested Russian officer, according to the news agency.

In its turn, the State Security Department (VSD) of Lithuania refused to make any comments on detention of the Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officer Vasily Khitryuk in Kaliningrad, Interfax says.

Diplomatic scandals between Moscow and Vilnius over alleged spying intensified after Lithuania’s accession to NATO and the European Union in 2004. In February 2004, Lithuania expelled three Russian diplomats for “illegal gathering of information on the impeachment of Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas.” Russia retaliated with expulsion of three Lithuanian diplomats, claiming their activities in Russia harmed the country’s interests. In August 2004, Russia also pronounced Lithuania’s military attache in Moscow a “persona non grata.” Two weeks ago the First Secretary of the Russian embassy in Vilnius, Oleg Ryabchikov, was expelled from Lithuania on suspicion of espionage and attempting to apply pressure on the members of country’s parliament in relation to its support of Georgia.

See also: New Russia “Spy” Arrest

Reacting to the closure of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society by Russian federal authorities, Stanislav Dmitrievsky said in a recent interview:

In 2003, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was told that if the situation in Chechnya continues, the international community would consider setting up a tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Chechnya. We have started preparing the legal foundations for such a tribunal. This is a serious study, in which abuses in Chechnya will be evaluated from the standpoint of international criminal law as crimes against humanity. Secondly, this will result in a list of individual suspected of committing such crimes. And international law differs from Russian law in that accountability applies to military leaders and commanders, all the way up to the most senior ranks. It’s clear enough who the suspects will be. We discussed this with Anna Politkovskaya two weeks ago. We were talking about specific materials.

See also: Russian-Chechen Friendship Society Closed

Carl Bildt, who recently became Sweden’s foreign minister, has been told by Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt that he can keep his shareholdings in the Russian-owned Vostok Nafta investment concern, 91% of whose shares are in Russia’s Gazprom, Dagens Nyheter reports.

The paper notes that the connection with Gazprom raises problems for Bildt: he could end up in a situation where he has to represent the interests of Sweden and the European Union in relation to Russia at the same time as he has financial interests in a company that is largely owned by the Russian state. It seems probable that he will sell the shares, or otherwise dispose of them. Some of Bildt's critics are, however, doubtful that he will indeed do so.

Update (October 28): Carl Bildt has now announced that he will sell his Vostok Nafta shares and options at the end of this year.

Via AIA:

An official from Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) in Kaliningrad oblast has been detained by Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers on suspicion of spying for Lithuania, online paper Dni.ru reports today, referring to the the FSB Public Relations Centre. As it has become known, Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Khitryuk, deputy chief of the FSIN directorate inspection of Krasnoznamensky district, Kaliningrad oblast, had for a long time collaborated with the Lithuanian secret services and allegedly passed state military secrets to the Baltic country's security services, according to the FSB. "The suspect used his former colleagues and friends who serve in the Russian army and security-related agencies" to obtain confidential information, the service said in a statement, quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency. "Following orders from a Lithuanian intelligence officer, he [Khitryuk] offered them monetary rewards for supplying him with copies of secret documents," the statement said.

According to the FSB Public Relations Centre, during Khitryuk's arrest, security officers seized computer storage devices with files containing top-secret information on the combat readiness of the Baltic Fleet and Russia's military contingent in Kaliningrad. FSB said it had gathered enough evidence to launch a criminal investigation. Commenting on Khitryuk's arrest, the Federal Penitentiary Service said that the suspect, born in 1967, has been working for the agency for three years, RIA Novosti reports. "Khitryuk has been arrested on charges of espionage and state treason," the agency spokesman told the news agency, adding that the circumstances surrounding the case are still not clear. The Embassy of Lithuania in Moscow refused to comment on the arrest.

Diplomatic scandals between Moscow and Vilnius over alleged spying intensified after Lithuania's accession to NATO and the European Union in 2004.

Biased BBC links to notes taken at a New Culture Forum event held in London in September at which Robin Aitken - a former BBC reporter of some 25 years’ experience and author of the forthcoming book Can We Trust the BBC? - was interviewed by Peter Whittle. The account of Aitken’s remarks that is given on the New Culture Forum blog quotes him as saying that

…given the institutional leftism’ of the BBC, news coverage in the UK would benefit from the existence of its own version of America’s Fox News.

‘If we did have a British Fox it would be tailored to the expectations of a British audience and so quite different from the American version,’ he said. ‘I do think an explicitly right of centre broadcasting organisation in the UK is long overdue.’

Aitken, who was a BBC reporter for twenty-five years and covered such issues as Northern Ireland, the Chernobyl disaster and the Monica Lewinsky affair, made the call during a talk to the recently formed New Culture Forum about his experiences of left-wing bias at the corporation.

Although he asserted that there was little deliberate intention to slant the news agenda, and that most reporters acted in good faith, it was nevertheless true that the whole culture of the BBC took a certain world view for granted, and anything which challenged the collective political assumptions and instincts was either ignored or treated as suspect.

The notes taken by the Croydonian blog are not verbatim, but give a more detailed idea of what Aitken said at the meeting. Excerpt:

RA: I felt that the BBC was showing a consistent bias and had reported that to senior figures in the BBC, up to and including the governors. The McPherson Inquiry termed the Metropolitan Police ‘institutionally racist’, meaning that the Met is not explicitly racist, but was inadvertently so owing to its institutions and culture. Likewise, I believe the BBC and its people act in good faith, but they cannot see the elephant in the living room. The institutional leftism shows up in its instinctive mistrust of capitalism, and it should be remembered that it is a pre-war corporation set up along with similar institutions like the Forestry Commission. The BBC model was not the only possibility, and it can be compared to the US model of a free market broadcasting model. Similarly, the presumption of the BBC is that public spending is automatically a good thing. It does not challenge that idea. Why not?

See also: BBC Admits Left-Wing Bias

Via Reuters:

I am here because we have to fight this government, we have to destroy them,” said Laszlo Toth, aged 76, who attended a rally at Korvin Square at which veterans of 1956 were present.

“Aged 19 I was arrested and taken to (secret police headquarters in) Andrassy Street, I confessed to everything so they would stop beating me. I am here for the younger generation,” he said.

Fidesz leader Viktor Orban urged protesters to refrain from violence but told the rally estimated by state news agency MTI at 100,000 people the nation was facing an “illegitimate” government and demanded a referendum on its economic reforms.

RFE/RL’s Roman Kupchinsky asks: Will Moscow Face A Cold, Dark Winter?

Even in its darkest years, Russia produced writers, poets and scientists brave enough to speak the truth. The biggest problem the country had was getting people to hear it. The Kremlin worked hard to shelter the Russian public from Politkovskaya’s work and to render her life irrelevant: she was barred from appearing on Russian television and quoting from her articles could land a reporter or a publication in trouble.

But the Russian media also bears enormous responsibility for making people deaf to Politkovskaya’s voice, just as it bears responsibility for fanning the xenophobia and intolerance which makes the Kremlin’s cold war against Georgia so accepted.

Arkady Ostrovsky, in the FT

Today is the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

Writing in EJ ("The Hedgehog"), political and military analyst Alexander Goltz reflects on Putin's remarkable outburst of tacky male-chauvinist rhetoric in the presence of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and comments that with such speech and behaviour - always presented with the jesting innuendo of a true poshlyak (the nearest translation here is perhaps "slob") - Putin is only displaying to the Russian public what is in his mind: the sort of sentiments a majority of them can agree with and sympathize with. Crucially, the message is also directed towards the outside world. Indeed, from now on, wherever he goes, the president can be assured of a hostile reception from a picket of feminists. This also is intentional - the medium and the message both say that the Russian government and its head will not be deflected from their natural character by considerations of political correctness or common decency. And this, Goltz suggests, was the real meaning of Putin's words and behaviour in Moscow and Lahti last week. If you want Russian gas and oil, or want Russia to help you (as in preventing Russian missiles being sent to Hizballah by Syria), you will accept any kind of humiliation that Russia wishes to throw at you, and say thank you.

At the same time as Putin was conducting his Gogolian dinner-seminar in Lahti, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was delivering a contribution to a more conventional seminar in Moscow devoted to the theme "For the Future of Democracy". Goltz gives a quotation from this homily:

The head of Russia's foreign ministry addressed the question of the the danger of "party-political apathy", which in his opinion had enveloped Europe: "We should all reflect that it is possible to resist this challenge. After all, nature abhors a vacuum. And a political vacuum immediately starts to be filled with ideas, which are occasionally not harmless and are indeed harmful, preventing healthy social development. Nationalism and populism, xenophobia and intolerance, the various manifestations of misanthropy - all these are completely real threats ."

"It's as if," Goltz observes, "he had sketched this picture from nature, looking at the Kremlin from the window of his office on Smolenskaya Street."

The Lahti EU dinner must have been a fairly mind-boggling experience for those taking part, especially when the guest of honour rose to say a few words. George Parker in the FT has an account of the Gogolian proceedings. Excerpt:

Mr Putin occasionally had his hosts staring in disbelief into their artichoke soup or choking on the rosemary grilled goose, as he made it clear he would not take lectures from Europe on issues such as human rights and corruption.

His fellow diners even smiled politely (some perhaps agreed) when he reportedly announced that the EU’s most important challenge was to “safeguard Christianity in Europe”.

From Daily Mail Online:

A leaked account of an ‘impartiality summit’ called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: ‘There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

Biased BBC has more here
The Evening Standard also covers the story
Captain's Quarters has some Stateside commentary

See also: Information Block

Carl Gershman, NED President, in the Washington Post:

By treating all Chechens as terrorists and Islamic militants, and by silencing all criticism of its policies, the Russian government is helping to bring about what it most fears, which is the spread of Islamic radicalism throughout the seven republics of the North Caucasus region. Saner heads among the Russian leadership are aware of this danger, as evidenced by two reports prepared by the office of Dmitri Kozak, Putin’s plenipotentiary representative in the Southern Federal District. The reports link the spread of Islamic extremism in the region to official corruption and impunity, pervasive crime, and abnormally high levels (even by Russian standards) of poverty and unemployment.

Most worrisome to the authorities is the possibility that the radicalization of the Muslim population could spread from the North Caucasus to the Volga Muslim republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, bringing to the Russian interior the growing polarization between Islamic militancy and rising Russian nationalism. Russian anxieties are being fed not just by the widening war in the Caucasus but by the declining population of ethnic Russians, whose birth-rate is far below that of Russian Muslims. Such conditions will only increase the appeal of Russian fascism, which now looms realistically in Russia’s future.

In this context, the idea that the Russian authorities would be targeting liberal journalists and human rights activists as enemies who need to be silenced should be of the utmost concern to the United States and Europe, which still seem to regard Russia as a responsible partner. With Anna Politkovskaya’s killing a light went out, and with the rising crackdown on dissidents that is reminiscent of the Soviet period, a darkness is now spreading over Russia. Politkovskaya spoke of Chechnya as “a small corner of hell” and gave her life trying to expose evil deeds there. Despite growing repression, there are still people in Russia who are trying to avert a looming disaster. We would be kidding ourselves to think that we don’t have a stake in their survival.

Via The Parliament of Estonia (Riigikogu):

STATEMENT OF THE RIIGIKOGU

ON THE STATE OF GEORGIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS

The Riigikogu expresses its concern for the state of Georgian-Russian
relations.

During the past weeks, the Russian Federation has unjustifiably implemented an extensive economic and social blockade against the state of Georgia and its citizens:

- issue of visas has been stopped;
- transport and postal services between
the two countries have been discontinued;
- Georgian products continue to be
blocked;
- Georgian citizens are ostracised in Russia; among other things the
repressions are directed against the children of Georgian citizens;
- different levels of Russian state powers and the media instigate anti-Georgian attitudes;
- high officials of the Russian Federation have repeatedly
vilified the state of Georgia and have challenged the legitimacy of its state powers.

The Riigikogu considers these steps taken by Russia to be in sharp conflict with the principles of international relations. Continued presence of foreign armed forces on the Georgian territory inhibits the development of the state and does nothing to foster the resolution of latent conflicts.

The Riigikogu stands for democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms in Georgia and in Russia, and condemns all manifestations of xenophobia and racism.

The Riigikogu condemns the sanctions applied by the Russian Federation against Georgia and its citizens and calls on Russia to discontinue the anti-Georgian sanctions and reinstate the normal diplomatic relations.

The Riigikogu supports the path towards democracy and freedom chosen by Georgia, its strivings in regard to NATO and the European Union, and acknowledges the success achieved in this direction.

The Riigikogu calls on Georgia to ignore provocations and avoid taking steps that might be interpreted as provocative.

The Riigikogu calls on the parliaments of the Member States of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly and other international parliamentary organisations to pay immediate attention to this critical phase in Georgian-Russian relations.

The Riigikogu calls on the Government of the Republic and citizens’
organisations to make all possible efforts in order to assist the state of
Georgia and its citizens in overcoming the consequences of the blockade and in strengthening the young democracy in Georgia.

President of the Riigikogu Toomas Varek

Tallinn, 17 October 2006

(hat tip: MAK, Leopoldo)

In the aftermath of Lahti, the FT's Washington correspondent examines Georgia's fears of "diplomatic horse-trading", as Moscow continues to reinforce a linkage between Washington's policy on Georgia and its own policy on Iran and North Korea. Quoting Dmitry Simes, the article suggests that the White House is well aware of the linkage:

Mr Simes believes that if Mr Saakashvili attempts to use force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia - the two separatist regions backed by Moscow - then Russia is likely to respond on the ground and with air strikes against Georgia proper. "That could lead to a cycle of confrontation between Russia and the west which would make any kind of co-operation on North Korea, and particularly Iran, hard to imagine."

The Bush administration rejects any suggestions of horse-trading. "We will not sell out Georgia," declared Matt Bryza, a State Department official who took part in negotiating resolution 1716 on Abkhazia. Explaining the US concessions last week, he told a conference hosted by the Hudson Institute think-tank: "We were isolated, frankly, at the UN."

"It's flat out wrong," commented Kurt Volker, senior official in the State Department's Europe bureau. "They know we are not in the trade-off business," he said of Russia. Zeyno Baran, director of Eurasian studies at the Hudson Institute, says Russia is "playing all sorts of games" over North Korea and Iran and seeks to gain a free hand in putting pressure on Georgia in exchange. But she doubted the Bush administration would yield. "It would be so against Bush's policy on freedom and democracy," she said.

Caught in the midst of a crisis he cannot influence, Georgia's president, who has strong popular support for his pro-western orientation, is assuring the US he will avoid "rash acts" that might give Russia the pretext to "smite the success story to its south". However, writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, he urged Georgia's allies to stand by it. "If any one of us gives in to bullying or tolerates the politics of ethnic hatred, we are all at risk," he said.

Nicholas Watt in the Guardian reports a clash between Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel at Lahti yesterday - Watt's account of what took place at the summit contradicts the Finnish government's version in several respects, by covering aspects of the meeting that did not figure in the Finnish press and media.

Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel clashed yesterday on how to deal with Vladimir Putin as European leaders tried to hammer out a common approach on the EU's relations with Russia

Hours before President Putin took centre stage at an EU summit in Lahti the leaders of France and Germany disagreed on the strength of a warning to Russia after gas supplies were cut last winter.

European divisions over Russia were highlighted when the French president told the Finland summit that the EU had no choice but to deal with Mr Putin. Mr Chirac said the EU needed to recognise the pressures on Mr Putin.

via Civil Georgia:

Officials in Tbilisi responded to Putin’s remarks in Lahti immediately.

“This is an attempt to misinform international community,” Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said.

He said that Tbilisi considers peaceful means as the sole way to solve secessionist conflicts.

Bezhuashvili also said that Georgia was extensively discussed during the EU-Russia summit which is in itself already a huge success.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that unlike on energy issues, the EU leaders failed to speak with Putin with one voice when Georgia was raised at the summit.

“The energy discussion was fine, because Europe spoke with a united voice. When it came to Georgia there were different views, with the Baltic States speaking out. Putin turned very sarcastic," the Guardian quoted unnamed observer of the summit.

Finland's Helsingin Sanomat claims that "The EU's Front Held Before Putin" in a report published this morning, in the aftermath of last night's Lahti dinner. Putin is seen with Finland's President Tarja Halonen, leaving the meeting.

The paper leads with a statement by Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen that Putin replied to him in private to questions about Anna Politkovskaya's murder, calling it "shocking", and promising that a full investigation would be made, and that those guilty of the murder would be brought to justice. Putin did not,however, take any questions on this subject from the floor of the press conference.

Regarding the rest of the meeting, Helsingin Sanomat talks of a "frank and open exchange of ideas", and reiterates Vanhanen's claims that the EU leaders presented a united front to Putin on energy questions. "Putin explained at the press conference that Russia accepts the basic principles of the Energy Charter Treaty, but cannot accept certain aspects of its wording. Vanhanen also said it was an open question wether energy will be included in the partnership agreement, or whether Russia will ratify the treaty." Angel Merkel was reported to be less pessimistic, saying that she "has not given up yet". According to Putin, 44% of Europe's gas comes from Russia. The newspaper notes that "the need for co-operation became apparent last January, when gas imports from Ukraine were interrupted because of action by Russia."

The EU's foreign minister Javier Solana said that in the next few weeks Russia and Ukraine would sign an agreement which should improve the reliability of gas deliveries. "That's because we can't allow what happened this year to happen again," he said.

In addition to energy, relations between Georgia and Russia were covered at the dinner. At the press conference, Putin said very emphatically that the deterioration in relations was caused by Georgia, not by Russia.

(my tr.)

Finland's EU Presidency web pages are here.

From RFE/RL Newsline:

KREMLIN MOVES TO CHECK DAMAGE OVER PUTIN RAPE REMARKS…
After initially declining to comment on remarks President Vladimir Putin reportedly made on October 18 to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in which Putin praised the sexual prowess of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Kremlin press spokesman Dmitry Paskov admitted to the BBC on October 20 that Putin made such comments. The daily “Kommersant” on October 19 reported of the Putin-Olmert meeting that “after the press was ushered out, and [Putin] apparently thought the microphones had been turned off,” he told Olmert: “Say hi to your president. He turned out to be quite a powerful guy! Raped 10 women! We’re all surprised. We all envy him!” (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 19, 2006). The “International Herald Tribune” quoted Paskov as saying the same day (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 19, 2006) that he was not present when the remarks were reportedly made about Katsav, who may face criminal charges for rape and sexual harassment of several women over a longer period of time. However, when pressed by the BBC in an October 20 interview, Paskov at first argued that “Russian is a very complicated language. Sometimes it is very sensitive from the point of view of phrasing.” He sought to question whether the BBC’s translation of “rape” was accurate but finally admitted that “these words were pronounced” by the president. The spokesman then said that “these remarks are not to be commented on” because they were “personal remarks for his counterpart and not for journalists’ ears.” He added that Putin “in no way welcomes rape.” PM

…AS OTHER QUESTIONS REMAIN
It is not clear how President Putin’s remarks will impact on his role at the EU-Russia summit on October 20 in Lahti, Finland, international media reported. It will be hosted by a woman, namely Finnish President Tarja Halonen, and Putin’s most important opposite number will be another woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Kommersant” noted on October 19 that Putin displays little sense of humor in public except when others are the butt of it. Symbols and verbal imagery reflecting power and virility have been part of the trappings of the Putin regime, as they were in Soviet times. After Putin called earlier in 2006 for increasing the birthrate, critical journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov dubbed the president “Russia’s phallic symbol.” Rakhmankov is now on trial for “insulting a representative of the state” (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” May 24, June 1, and September 22, 2006). PM

Putin’s words:

«Привет передайте своему президенту! Оказался очень мощный мужик! Десять женщин изнасиловал! Я никогда не ожидал от него! Он нас всех удивил! Мы все ему завидуем!»

To:
President of the Federation of Russia
Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin
President of the European Council
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen
October 20, 2006

APPEAL FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

Two weeks ago the highly respected and awarded journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in the centre of Moscow. This brutal act of violence was yet another setback to freedom of speech, democracy and the respect for human rights in Russia.
In addition to the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, dozens of human rights activists are regularly faced by threats and acts of oppression. They are threatened by physical violence, by loss of job, by threats to their families, by politically motivated law suits and by shaming in the non-independent media.
Travel by individual activists abroad is prevented. Non-governmental organisations are increasingly facing official obstruction of their work and threats of non-registration under the new law. All the mentioned acts above are happening everyday somewhere in Russia.
*
The murder of Anna Politkovskaya should serve as a final opening of the eyes of those who have repeatedly denied that human rights are eroding in today's Russia. It should serve as a final opening of the eyes for us in the European Union to see what really is going on under the surface in Russia.
*
Anna Politkovskaya spoke loudly for the rights of those who did not have any and those who were losing their rights in the midst of the war, i.e. “fight against terrorism”, as the government has described it.
She spoke for the need for rule of law in her home country. In her last article she wrote:
[In Chechnya and in Russia] prosecutors and judges are not acting on behalf of the law and they are not interested in punishing the guilty. Instead, they work to political order to make the Kremlin's nice anti-terrorist score sheet look good and cases are cooked up like blinys. ...
This is what a group of mothers of convicted young Chechens wrote to me: 'In essence, these
correctional facilities (where terrorist suspects are held) have been turned into concentration camps for Chechen convicts. They are subjected to discrimination on an ethnic basis. The majority, or almost all of them, have been convicted on trumped-up evidence.
* We appeal to you, President Vladimir Putin, that
• The Russian army and courts of law should respect the European Convention for Human Rights. The culture of impunity should not be allowed to live a day longer.
• The Russian authorities should immediately intensify ongoing investigations and start new ones into the disappearances and deaths of Chechen civilians.
• Independent observers should be allowed to visit prisons and refugee camps all over the territory of the Russian Federation to ensure that torture is not taking place.
• Urgent measures need to be put in place to stop the intimidation and to guarantee the protection of human rights defenders working in Russia.
• The full investigation into the murder of Anna Politkovskaya including finding out who possibly ordered the killing should be pursued vigorously and the perpetrators should be prosecuted and tried in a open and fair manner.
*
In 2004 Anna Politkovskaya was asked whether she believed it might take generations for her country to become truly free. She answered: "I wouldn't ever want to say it would take generations. I want to be able to live the life of a human being, where every individual is respected, in my lifetime."
Unfortunately it is too late for her, but not too late for you, President Putin.
*
Prime Minister Vanhanen, we urge and encourage the European Union and especially the Finnish Government now holding the Presidency of the EU to raise these serious and urgent human rights concerns with the Russian Federation. The EU would be betraying its own core values if it failed now, when there is a momentum to take up these serious questions, to demand immediate action from the Russian government to uphold freedom of speech and to guarantee the protection of human rights defenders.
This autumn you, as the President of the European Council, have several opportunities to directly address these problems with President Putin.
We therefore appeal to you that these issues be prominently on the agenda at these meetings, in particular and in depth, at the EU-Russia summit in Helsinki on the 24th of November.

Amnesty International, Finnish Section
Finnish Helsinki Committee
Finnish Peace Committee
Finnish PEN
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights

Joachim Frank, Project Coordinator
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
Wickenburggasse 14/7
A-1080 Vienna
Tel. +43-1-408 88 22 ext. 22
Fax: +43-1-408 88 22 ext. 50
Web: http://www.ihf-hr.org

From Inner City Press at the UN

UNITED NATIONS, October 19 — In South Lebanon there are only Lebanese and UN troops, said Major-General Alain Pellegrini, Force Commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Thursday. While reporters questioned him about still-alleged weapons smuggling, incursions by Israel and possible anti-aircraft responses by UNIFIL, another question arose. Inner City Press asked, do the soldiers who Russian army engineers brought with them to Lebanon as security comply with Resolution 1701?

No, said Maj.-Gen. Pellegrini, not if they are in South Lebanon.

(via chechnya-sl)

Just as in the years of the Cold War, many Russian authors and writers continue to make their home in the West - whether in Europe or in North America. The fall of the Communist system does not seem to have had much effect in this regard. An essay in Haaretz examines the new wave of Russian literary talent, and notes how in many cases Russian authors choose to abandon their own language in favour of the language of the country or countries they have moved to. Examples include the Berlin-based Vladimir Kaminer, the slightly older André Makine, who writes in French and has been awarded the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis, and U.S. and Canada-resident authors such as Lara Vapnyar and the Russian-Latvian David Bezmozgis. In addition to the writers mentioned in the essay, one could also list the Finland-based Zinaida Lindén, who writes in Swedish (though she also continues to publish work in Russian). As the essay makes clear, the Russian literary scene in Israel constitutes something of an exception to the rule, as there most Russian-speaking authors still choose to write and publish their work almost exclusively in Russian.

A Russian-Israeli literary critic quoted in the essay notes that both the "exiles" and those authors who still remain in Russia share a preoccupation with fantasy and post-modern styles of writing, perhaps, she suggests, because "in Russia, the reality is so fantastical...that realist literature can't quite capture it anymore."

"...Russian writers are absolutely up to date on what's happening in the world. They're not nostalgic at all. The fondness for science fiction that always existed in the Soviet era has only grown since then. Back then, it was the only way to do satire, and it still exists today, because satires about the Soviet government are still successful. This happens because Russia has not been truly freed from dictatorial government. Vladimir Putin is still thought of today as a dictator in disguise."

Via Prague Watchdog (my tr.)

Nazran picketers intend to sue for justice

By Umalt Chadayev

NAZRAN, Ingushetia - On October 16 a picket was held in the city of Nazran in honour of the slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. However, the picket was broken up, and several of its participants were arrested by Ingush police. As the participants were being dispersed, a Memorial Human Rights Centre worker, Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya, was severely beaten. Physicians later confirmed that she had suffered cerebral concussion and a fracture of the nose.

The picket’s organizer, Magomed Mutsolgov, who is chairman of the NGO Mashr (the Association of the Relatives of Missing Persons), together with representatives of Memorial, the Chechen National Salvation Committee, and the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Displaced Persons delivered statements to the Ingushetian Procurator, the Russian Procurator-General and the Russian Federal Human Rights Ombudsman with a request that those who are guilty should be identified and brought to justice. In the opinion of the human rights activists, the actions of the Ingush police were illegal.

"The picket in honour of Anna Politkovskaya which was due to take place in Nazran at 4pm on October 16 did not pursue any political aims. By holding it, the representatives of the human rights organizations and NGOs wanted to pay a tribute of respect to this courageous woman and honest journalist, who was one of the few who wrote the truth about what is happening in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Similar events have taken place in many cities of the world, in other countries. Moreover, on the afternoon of October 16 a picket in honour of Politkovskaya was also held in Grozny, and there were no excesses there at all," says Aslambek Apayev, who is an expert of the Moscow Helsinki Group on the North Caucasus and head of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Displaced Persons.

"There is only one word to describe what took place in Nazran on October 16, and that is lawlessness. In spite of what the Ingushetian police authorities claim, there was absolutely no dispersal of the picket, as the action had not yet even had time to begin. A large number of police officers and a ’backup group’ composed of local youth who had previously been involved in provoking conflicts at refugee settlements, were moved to the site of the proposed picket in advance," he says.

"In my view, this was a provocation that had been devised and planned in advance. The picket in honour of Politkovskaya was broken up before it had even started. Police officers and men in plain clothes surrounded our colleagues and the representatives of other organizations who arrived at the site of the picket near Bazorkina Street. They shouted insults at the participants, beat them, pushed them, tore the photograph of Anna Politkovskaya out of their hands and stamped on them," says a Memorial member.

"Several men in plain clothes began to beat our colleague Shamsutdin Tangiyev, and when Katya Sokiryanskaya (also a Memorial worker) tried to intercede for him, one of them punched her in the face, breaking her nose. The police officials took no measures to stop these rampaging thugs."

"There are two points of interest concerning what took place in Nazran on October 16. One is that the guardians of law and order declared that the picket was not sanctioned by the authorities, though the law only says that the organizers of an action only have to notify the city authorities of it in advance (which, by the way, was done). In the case of unforeseen circumstances they, in their turn, can recommend that it be held elsewhere, but they certainly have no legal authority to disperse it by force," says Shakhman Akbulatov, director of Memorial’s Nazran office.

"The other point is that the Ingushetian police authorities stated that this was a rally and that a fight allegedly broke out among the participants, so that the police had no option but to intervene and pacify those who were doing the fighting. But for some reason it was only the representatives of human rights organizations who were arrested: four of our colleagues and the chairman of the Mashr human rights organization, Magomed Mutsolgov. They were held until late at night at the police station building, and three young female Memorial workers had their fingerprints taken, as if they were suspected of some criminal offence."

"We have video film of what took place in Nazran on October 16, and it clearly shows everything that happened. There is footage of Tangiyev and Sokiryanskaya being beaten, and of the police, including a high-ranking officer, taking no action to stop it. Soon we plan to make this material public. We also intend to take legal action for the beating of our colleagues and demand that those who are guilty are punished," he says.

Translated by David McDuff.

(MD/T)

“…Take the British policy. England’s need to secure the Indian glacis is legitimate. But what will be the consequences of it? Edward knows as well as you and I that Russia has to make good her losses in Manchuria, and that internal peace is as necessary to her as daily bread. Yet—he probably can’t help himself—he forces her to look westward for expansion, stirs up slumbering rivalries between St. Petersburg and Vienna—”

“Oh, Vienna! Your interest in that ancient obstruction is due, I presume, to the fact that her decaying empire is a sort of mummy, as it were, of the Holy Roman Empire of the German people.”

“While you, I suppose, are Russophil out of humanistic affinity with Cæsaro-papism.

“Democracy, my friend, has more to hope from the Kremlin than she has from the Hofburg; and it is disgraceful for the country of Luther and Gutenberg—”

“It is probably not only disgraceful, but stupid into the bargain. But even this stupidity is an instrument of fate—”

“Oh, spare me your talk about fate! Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate!”

“One always wills one’s fate. Capitalistic Europe is willing hers.”

“One believes in the coming of war if one does not sufficiently abhor it.”

“Your abhorrence of war is logically disjointed if you do not make the state itself your point of departure.”

“The national state is the temporal principle, which you would like to ascribe to the evil one. But when nations are free and equal, when the small and weak are safe-guarded from aggression, when there is justice in the world, and national boundaries—”

“Yes, I know, the Brenner frontier. The liquidation of Austria. If I only knew how you expect to bring that about without war!”

“And I should like to know when I ever condemned a war for the purpose of realizing national aspirations!”

“But you say—”

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924), tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter

More anti-Israel hatred from Iran’s Mahmud Ahmadinejad:

October 20, 2006 (RFE/RL) — Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said today that Israel no longer has any reason to exist and predicted it will soon disappear.

“I say it with a loud voice — the [Israeli] regime has, with the grace of God, lost the [reason] for its existence,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Tehran marking Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), when anti-Israeli demonstrations are held in Iran.

He also said any government that stands by Israel will feel the “hatred of the people” in the region.

Iranian media report that tens of thousands of people attended today’s demonstrations throughout the country and shouted slogans against Israel.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Iran on October 19 that there will be “a price to pay” if Tehran doesn’t back down from its nuclear ambitions.

(IRNA, ISNA, Radio Farda)

In spite of the chilly weather, thousands of people gathered on Tallinn’s Raekoja (Town Hall) Square this morning to greet Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh on their state visit to Estonia, Postimees reports. The crowd waved British and Estonian flags. The proceedings began with a song specially written in the Queen’s honour, conducted by choral director Aarne Saluveeri, and this was followed by a greeting from Tallinn’s mayor, Jüri Ratas. Accompanied by Mayor Ratas and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (pictured left, above), the Queen then went among the crowd and talked to people, who regaled her with large quantities of flowers and cards. A choral concert is taking place on the square, given by some of Estonia’s leading singing groups.

Via RFE/RL:

October 19, 2006 — Russia has forced at least 96 foreign nongovernmental organizations to suspend their operations.

The reason given is that authorities were unable to process their registration papers before the October 18 deadline set in a new law.

And as Ehud Olmert flies home from Moscow, CFR, not normally noted for a stance supportive of Israel, is backing up the reports that have recently appeared in the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere to the effect that Hizballah is steadily rebuilding the infrastructure that was destroyed in the Lebanon war, and is replenishing and refurbishing its stock of missiles and other weaponry. The Lebanese government is likewise making preparations that look like the preliminaries to war:

Experts say reverberations from the current dispute could undermine the UN’s authority in the region. The UN mission in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, had stationed more than 5,700 troops as of October 13, under the control of a French force commander, Gen. Alain Pellegrini. The force has come under increasing criticism from within Lebanon in recent days. On October 17, Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon’s most senior Shiite cleric, said Lebanese were right to be wary (Daily Star) of UNIFIL’s authority, saying the force had “come here to protect Israel, not Lebanon.” Nasrallah’s remarks are blunter. At a recent rally, he warned the UN not to spy (LAT) on “the resistance,” and declared, “No army in the world is capable of forcing us to give up our weapons.” As UN troops work to stabilize one of the most fragile regions of the world, these are unwelcome signs indeed.

Lebanon, for its part, is not banking on the UN to defend it, and reportedly has struck a deal with Italy (DEBKAfile) to obtain sophisticated air defense missiles capable of bringing down Israeli warplanes in a future conflict. For deeper reading, CFR offers backgrounders on the troubled history of multilateral operations in the Middle East, on the fractured loyalties of Lebanon’s army, and on key UN resolutions in the Middle East conflict. Globalsecurity.org offers this guide to Lebanon’s military.

As tomorrow's EU Lahti summit approaches, President Putin may be feeling he would rather not attend this event and dinner, which promise to be acutely embarrassing for him. The FT gives a foretaste of what will be on the menu, quoting part of the contents of an open letter from the Liberal group in the European Parliament, which will be published in Novaya Gazeta (the paper Anna Politkovskaya worked for) and the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, among others:

Excerpts include: "We are deeply concerned that political opposition is being slowly but surely eliminated and that those who dare to finance it, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are being silenced and incarcerated.

"We therefore challenge you to reverse those policies which are strangling your country and its private citizens, conduct an open and independent inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Anna Politkovskaya and others and bring the perpetrators of this and other murders to justice." Otherwise, it says, they will be agitating against a new EU deal with Moscow.

It's enough to make Putin choke on his herrings.

See also: The Invited Guest

In the Moscow Times, Richard Lourie is another observer who notes that a turning-point is being reached in Russia:

...some sort of gigantic struggle is afoot in Russia, a new "divvying up." Most of it takes place behind the scenes, but its violent reverberations are felt everywhere: When Georgia arrests four Russians on charges of espionage, the response is overkill -- all transportation and postal links severed. Shell Oil's project on Sakhalin Island is charged with serious environmental violations. All the foreign companies bidding for a part in the development of the Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea are summarily rejected. A senior official at TNK-BP, Enver Ziganshin, is shot dead.

Yukos and its former CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, may well have breached the understanding reached with Putin, but in the post-Yukos era the same contempt felt for journalism, justice and politics has infected the rules of the game in business as well.

The murders of Kozlov the banker, Ziganshin the oilman and Politkovskaya the journalist all no doubt had their specific causes about which we will probably never know any more than we will know who pulled the trigger or paid the killer. But what they all have in common is that they emerge from the context created in Russia over the last few years. Putin's chickens have come home to roost. And they're not chickens, they're vultures.

(Hat tip: CH)

See also: Russia and the Future of Democracy

Via Prague Watchdog (my tr.):

Around 80 houses in Serzhen-Yurt damaged by artillery fire

By Ruslan Isayev

CHECHNYA – Around 80 private houses in the village of Serzhen-Yurt have suffered damage of various kinds as a result of artillery fire by Russian soldiers located in the outskirts of the city of Shali, about 25 kilometres southeast of Grozny. Cracks have appeared in the walls of all the houses, some in the foundations. This was recently reported to Prague Watchdog by Imran Ezhiyev, director of the North Caucasus section of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.

Throughout the entire summer the residents of Serzhen-Yurt have been subjected to a very high level of stress caused by the firing. “Each shell flew across the whole village, so we could even hear the sound as it went, and then exploded in the forested area close by. Sometimes this went on all night. No one in the village could get any sleep, and some people went down to their basements until the shelling stopped,” Imran Ezhiyev says.

Only after lengthy negotiations was it possible to make the soldiers halt these sporadic firings. The village residents now plan to create a commission, and to take legal action against the soldiers for the damage that has been caused.

Imran Ezhiyev says that the authorities don’t welcome his activity. “They have told me many times that we – the human rights workers – are the same kind of people as Anna Politkovskaya. We don’t understand what they’re accusing us of. I mean, by asking that the law be observed, I’m helping the authorities in their primary task – the observance of laws and human rights,” the human rights worker says in perplexity. He is approached almost daily by people complaining about all kinds of violations of their rights.

Translated by David McDuff.

Via Prague Watchdog (my tr.):

Practice of extortion returns to “Kavkaz” checkpoint

By Umalt Chadayev

CHECHNYA – At the “Kavkaz” pass control checkpoint (KPP) located on the administrative border between the Chechen Republic and Ingushetia, Russian police are again collecting tribute from drivers and their passengers.

The “Kavkaz” checkpoint (or “block-post” as local residents call it) has not enjoyed a favourable reputation in the last few years. The Russian Interior Ministry police officials on duty here are posted from different regions of Russia. They used to collect tribute – with and without pretext - from residents of both republics travelling in both directions. They even developed a unique “price list”.

Thus, each minibus driver had to pay the officials 20-30 rubles. And almost every young male who passed through this checkpoint usually put a folded 10-ruble note into his passport, which was to be checked by the officials. This was done “just in case”, to avoid unwanted excesses.

The absence of a military registration stamp in a passport “cost” 50 rubles. There were numerous other “violations” for which ordinary citizens had to pay tribute. If they refused to pay there could be serious trouble, ranging from an increase in the sum of the “fine” all the way to detention.

Local residents repeatedly filed complaints about the arbitrariness of the law enforcement officials who staffed the “Kavkaz” post. And then a few months ago it seemed that the situation had been resolved. A new contingent of Russian police arrived at the post, and they didn’t take bribes. On principle. They simply carried out their work – inspecting motor vehicles, checking passengers’ documents and all the rest of it. The ten, twenty and fifty ruble “fees” were no more.

“We were so relieved. We thought, well, thank God, at long last order is being established. All the extortion, even of a minor kind, ceased, and there were no further problems at all. Everyone – us , the passengers, even the police officers themselves seemed contented,” says Nurdi, a 45-year-old Grozny minibus driver. But it turns out that we rejoiced too soon.”

“On October 4 a new lot of police arrived at the post. They were the same guys who had worked here right at the beginning of the war. Naturally, in those days they were involved in open extortion. And they started the old practices again. They openly said: “Everything here is going to be like it was before. You have to pay fees.” Naturally, everyone got angry. Then they quite simply blocked off the road, creating a traffic jam many kilometres long. With the special purpose of making people more willing to obey,” Nurdi claims. “You had to wait two or three hours in the queue. That’s the kind of establishment of order there is here.”

“I don’t know what the Russian Iinterior Ministry, their direct superiors, are thinking of,” he says. “I mean, these officers will disgrace the entire Russian police force. Are their wages really not enough for them, with all their perks, per diem and combat bonuses? Why do they have to treat people in such a brutish manner? Hundreds if not thousands of cars pass through this checkpoint every day. Can you imagine what the local people’s attitude to this bribe-takers in police uniform is going to be?”

Representatives of human rights organizations consider that the whole affair is being caused by widespread ignorance of the law on the part of the local population. “In the years of the so-called ‘counter-terrorist operation’ the populace was subjected to mass terror. People were actually made to believe that they don’t have any rights, and that the law enforcers can so anything they like. Detaining people without any reason, searching them, beating them and even killing them. All attempts at protest were cut short in a most merciless and often brutal manner,” says a member of one of the human rights organizations operating in the republic.

“People are forced to put up with this arbitrary treatment, because they have no alternative. They are simply afraid, and one can understand why. But this extortion must be fought, nevertheless. It would be a good thing if citizens were to make written statements to the public prosecutor’s office, or perhaps present them to human rights organizations, so that later on they could later make representations based on those statements to the official government agencies and attain a resolution of this problem,” the respondent believes.

But it transpires that there is another way out of this situation. Nurdi says that since bribes are being demanded at the “Kavkaz” checkpoint again, he doesn’t drive along this highway. “There’s an alternate route through the village of Sernovodsk. There’s also a Russian checkpoint on the border there, but the guys work normally. There’s no picking on people, and no one demands money. If there’s a violation, they’ll explain, and advise you not to do it again. Now I only ever take that route.”

A few weeks ago, Dmitry Kozak, President Putin’s plenipotentiary representative to the Southern Federal Region, said in one of his interviews that passage through the administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia must be made easier for the residents of the two republics. And he announced that a concrete package of measures aimed at the solution of this problem is already being worked out.

Kozak made his public statement shortly after an armed clash between members of the Chechen OMON and the Ingush police which took place on the “Kavkaz” federal highway in the region of the Chechen-Ingush border on September 13. There were more than twenty casualties, involving deaths and injuries on both sides. However, an impression is growing that the Russian police officers working at the “Kavkaz” checkpoint don’t entirely agree with the high-ranking government official’s opinion, and don’t intend to make life easier for the citizens of Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Translated by David McDuff.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh arrive in Riga, Latvia, today, on the second leg of their historic Baltic visit, AFP reports.

On Tuesday a Russian Emergency Ministries plane carrying 150 Georgian citizens who were being deported from Russia arrived at Tbilisi airport. In Moscow one of the Georgians, a man named Tengiz Togonidze, who was an asthmatic, died on the way to the flight. More than half of the deportees had valid Russian visas, though some had let their documents expire. In Kommersant, Olga Allenova describes the tumultous welcome the deported Georgians received in their home country:

When the people from the MChS plane cleared passport control and began to trickle into the arrival hall, they were surrounded by a wall of journalists so solid that it was difficult to push through it. Those who arrived did not want to comment. Someone shielded his face with his hands, and another covered his head with his coat as he pushed through the throng. The men, frowning, haphazardly attired and with unshaven cheeks, were irritated and embittered, and the women were distraught. One of them, who was carrying a child in her arms, stopped as a microphone was thrust at her. "Why did they arrest you?" she was asked. "My visa was not in order," said the woman. "What will you do now?" "I don't know! I have no idea what to do!" The following dialogue was had with another man:

"How long did they hold you in the isolation unit?"
"Ten days."
"Ten days?!! How did they treat you?"
"Badly."
"Why did they arrest you?"
"Because I'm a Georgian."

On October 12 John Hall, Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service, published an article on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya called Russia’s anti-Putin Voice Silenced, which was syndicated in a number of mainstream media. In it, he discussed Politkovskaya’s book Putin’s Russia. A few excerpts from Hall’s comments:

Her book should have been more widely heralded in the United States, but the diplomatic and journalistic book review establishment here sniffed at it. Foreign Affairs magazine called it “stridently indignant.” Other reviewers said she was too provocative in claiming Russia was on its way back to Stalinism. One even suggested she was a “Cassandra.” Perhaps we all needed to be a little more indignant and provocative about Putin’s Russia after his election to a second term. The pity is that Politkovskaya didn’t get as much attention when she was alive as she’s getting now that her voice has been silenced.

Her book - written in Russian and translated into English - was for sale in St. Petersburg, the hometown of Putin. But it was not available in a Russian language edition.

————–

Politkovskaya compared Putin to Stalin and Lenin in his ruthlessness, but she was an equal opportunity critic. She didn’t have much good to say about western leaders, either.

Russia’s slide back to the Soviet system, she said, “happened to choruses of encouragement from the West, primarily from (Italy’s) Silvio Berlusconi, who appears to have fallen in love with Putin. He is Putin’s main European champion, but Putin also enjoys the support of (Britain’s) Blair, (Germany’s) Schroeder and (France’s) Chirac, and receives no discouragement from the transatlantic junior Bush.”

For President Bush, indeed, having a steady partner in the war on terrorism has been the steering current of his relationship with Putin. Corruption and even intimidation of its neighbors, such as is occurring right now in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, is being overlooked.

It’s also noticeable, one might add, how quiet large sections of the U.S. blogosphere have been with regard to the murder. Sites which are normally among the first to respond to terrorist outrages around the world have had nothing to say on this subject at all. Michelle Malkin was one of the few to write a post on the assassination - many other high-profile bloggers have remained unreassuringly silent.

(Hat tip: MAK)

Via Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com

North Korea and the Limits of Multilateralism

By George Friedman

One of the main criticisms of the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq has been that the United States undertook the war unilaterally, without consulting or working with allies and the international community. The criticism always overstated the United States’ isolation among traditional allies: France and Germany opposed the 2003 invasion, but the United States had more support in NATO than did Paris and Berlin. Nevertheless, there was a principle embedded in U.S. policy that was real and could be challenged. George W. Bush took the view that the United States had to craft its own strategy after the 9/11 attacks — and that, while it welcomed support, its actions would not be constrained by such considerations. The justification for a coalition was that it would enable U.S. policy; U.S. policy did not have to be justified by recourse to a coalition.

This was a conceptual shift in U.S. foreign policy.

Alliance as Solution

A generation ago, there was a consensus about why World War II had happened, why the United States and Allied powers had won and how the Cold War should be prosecuted. In this reading, World War II was caused by the unwillingness of the international community to take action against Hitler early enough to prevent a war. The British and French, pursuing their own separate policies — unwilling to join with the Soviet Union against the greater threat of a Nazi Germany and unable to use the moribund mechanism of the League of Nations — failed to lead a decisive coalition against Hitler.

With war impossible to prevent, a coalition was created to fight Hitler and the Japanese. The coalition, under the rubric of the United Nations, involved a range of nations that were prepared to subordinate their particular national interests to the broader interest of defeating the Axis powers. Military success in the war rested on the ability of the coalition to hold together. And reading backward, had this coalition existed prior to the rise of Munich, World War II likely never would have happened. Maintaining global stability required a coalition of states that shared a mutual interest in stability and would suppress, as soon as possible, nations that would want to upset that stability.

The Cold War was fought on the same basis. Having accepted that the Soviets were a destabilizing power, the United States focused on creating a system of alliances to contain them. The Americans saw the rapid creation of an alliance against the Soviet Union as the foundation of a successful foreign policy; without it, the Soviets would be victorious.

Rhetoric aside, this made a great deal of sense. The Soviet Union emerged from World War II as the pre-eminent land power in Eurasia. The United States, by size and geography, could not unilaterally contain the Soviets. At best, it could engage in a catastrophic nuclear war with them. In order to have an effective conventional option, the United States had to have allies on the periphery of the Soviet Union. The alliance system made superb geopolitical sense.

Alliance as Stability

But the United States emerged from all of this with an obsession for alliance systems independent of purpose. The World War II coalition had a clear purpose: the defeat of the Axis powers. The Cold War coalition had a clear purpose as well: the defeat of the Soviet Union. However, what emerged in the 1990s was the idea of alliances as ends in themselves. The basic idea was that the system of alliances over which the United States presided during the Cold War would continue to exist — not with the purpose of opposing the Soviets, but to maintain global stability. The only challenge this system would face, it was presumed, would be rogue powers — which would be dealt with by an international community (a term extended to include Russia and China) that shared an equal interest in stability. Instead of opposing an enemy, the goal was in the positive: maintaining stability. If the goal was stability, and if everyone shared that goal, then simply having a coalition became the solution rather than the means to a solution.
The central assumption behind this approach was that all significant powers now shared a common interest — stability — and that the only destabilizing powers would be rogues, against which the international community would pool its forces. Desert Storm was the model: A broad coalition re-conquered Kuwait, with even nonparticipants in the war giving at least tacit approval. This principle was maintained until Kosovo.

Bush’s policy on Iraq, therefore, became a battleground for those who argued that maintaining the alliance system had to take precedence over the unilateral pursuit of national interests. Leaving aside the important question of whether the invasion of Iraq made sense from the American point of view, one argument was that anything that alienates the coalition — regardless of whether it is a good or bad idea — is extremely dangerous because this alienation undermines international stability. More to the point, it undermines the foundations of what has been U.S. foreign policy since 1941 — a foreign policy that was successful.

North Korea and Multilateralism

The counterargument, of course, is provided by history: Successful alliances are built for the purpose of dealing with threats. Alliances built around principles such as stability are doomed to fail, for a number of reasons. First, over time, the status quo appeals to some powers and not to others. Stability is another way of arguing that the international order should be maintained as it is, ignoring the fact that some powers are thereby placed at a great disadvantage. Apart from any moral argument, it follows that, with a universal commitment to stability, subordinate powers will permanently accept their positions, or leading powers will give up their positions quietly, without destabilizing the system. Thus, the idea of maintaining alliances for purposes of stability is built on an unlikely assumption: Stability is in the universal interest of the international community.

Which brings us to North Korea. The U.S. approach to North Korea — and this includes that of the Bush administration — consistently has been the polar opposite of its approach to Iraq. North Korea has provided the classic example of multilateralism in pursuit of stability as an end in itself.

The United States does not want North Korea to get nuclear weapons because this could destabilize the international system. Whatever its rhetoric, however, Washington has taken no steps to try to destabilize North Korea, focusing instead on changing its behavior through a multilateral approach.

On North Korea, then, the United States has scrupulously followed traditional U.S. foreign policy. First, Washington has consistently accepted the idea that it has a primary responsibility to deal with North Korea, even if there are regional powers that are in a position to do so. The United States has followed the principle that, as the world’s leading power, it has unique obligations and rights in dealing with destabilizing powers. Second, the United States has used its position not for unilateral action, but for multilateral action. Washington has been pressured by North Korea for talks, and criticized by others for refusing to engage Pyongyang directly. Rather, the United States has insisted on the principle of shared authority and responsibility, working within the framework of regional powers that have an interest in North Korea: South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. Finally, the United States has made clear that it will not take unilateral military action against North Korea.

However, the multilateral approach pursued under both the Clinton and Bush administrations has failed, if we regard the detonation of a small nuclear device as constituting a failure. This is an important event because it is the complete counterpoint to Iraq, where it has been argued that failure resulted from the Bush administration’s unilateral approach. In one case, we wind up with an unmanageable war; in the other, with the potential for a regional nuclear threat.

Shared Responsibility and Inaction

The driving assumption in the case of North Korea was that all of the powers involved were committed to regional stability, understood the risks of inaction and were prepared to take risks to maintain stability and the status quo. But that just wasn’t true. There were very different, competing ideas of stability; the idea of inaction seemed attractive and the assumption of risks did not. There was no multilateral action because the coalition was an illusion.

Let’s go down the list:

South Korea: Seoul does not want Pyongyang to have a nuclear device, but it also does not want the slightest chance of a war with North Korea — South Korea’s industrial heartland is too close to the border. Nor does Seoul want the regime in Pyongyang to fall; the idea of the South taking responsibility for rebuilding a shattered North Korea is not attractive. The South Koreans didn’t want the North to acquire nuclear weapons, but they were not prepared to act to stop Pyongyang, or to destabilize the regime.

Japan: Japan does not want North Korea to have a nuclear device, but it is prepared neither to take military action on its own nor to endorse U.S. military action in this regard. Japan has major domestic issues with waging war that would have to be worked out before it could make a move, and it is no hurry to solve those problems. Moreover, Tokyo has little interest in posing such an overt threat that the Koreas, its traditional enemy, would reunify (as an industrial giant) against Japan. The Japanese don’t mind imposing sanctions, but they hope they won’t work.

Russia: Russia is about as worried about the prospect of a North Korean nuclear strike on its territory as the United States is about a French strike. The two countries may not like each other, but it isn’t going to happen. Russia would smash North Korea and not worry about the fallout. But at the same time, Moscow wants to keep the United States tied up in knots. It has serious issues with the United States encroaching on the Russian sphere of influence in former Soviet territory. Russia is delighted to see the United States tied down in Iraq and struggling with Iran, and it is quite happy to have the Americans appear helpless over North Korea. The Russians will agree to some meaningless sanctions for show, but they are not going to make the United States appear statesmanlike.

China: China has major internal problems, both economic and political. The Chinese do not want to anger the United States, but they do want the Americans to be dependent on them for something. The North Korea test blast gave China an opportunity to appear enormously helpful without actually doing anything meaningful. Put another way, if China actually wanted to stop the detonation, it clearly has no influence on North Korea. And if it does have influence — which we suspect it does — it managed to play a complex double game, appearing to oppose the blast while taking advantage of its ability to “help” the United States. China, along with Russia, has no interest in serious sanctions.

The issue here is not the fine points of the foreign policies of these nations, but the fact that none has an overarching interest in “doing something” about North Korea. Each of these states has internal and external problems that take precedence, in their eyes, over a North Korean nuclear capability. None of them is pursuing stability, in the sense of being prepared to subordinate national interests to the stabilization of the region. The result is that the diplomatic process has failed.

Multilateralism: Promise and Limitations

In this case, multilateralism was the problem. By bringing together a coalition of nations with enormously diverse natures and interests, the United States was guaranteed paralysis. There was no commitment to any overarching principle, and the particular national interests precluded decisive action both before and after the nuclear test. Multilateralism provided an illusion of effective action in a situation where inaction — including inaction by the United States — was the intent. No one did anything because no one wanted to do anything, and this was covered up with the busywork of multilateral diplomacy.

It is not that multilateral action is useless. To the contrary, it was the foundation of U.S. success in World War II and the Cold War. When a clear and overwhelming interest or fear is present, multilateral action is essential. But invoking multilateralism as a solution in and of itself misses the point that there must be a more pressing issue at stake than the abstract notion of stability. Neither unilateralism nor multilateralism are moral principles. Each is a means of attaining the national interest. The U.S. disaster in Iraq derived less from pursuing unilateral ends than from catastrophic mismanagement of a war. The emergence of a nuclear North Korea results not from inherent weakness in a multilateral approach, but from using multilateralism as a substitute for a common interest.

If, for some, Iraq made the case against unilateralism, North Korea should raise serious questions about the limits of multilateralism.

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The British naval warship HMS Liverpool has arrived in Tallinn harbour, where she will remain throughout the Queen’s state visit to Estonia, Postimees reports. The Liverpool’s captain, Commander Henry Duffy, met with representatives of Tallinn City Council today. On October 20 there will be a joint British-Estonian military concert, and also a parade in honour of the Queen with the participation of British and Estonian military personnel.

Via BBC Monitoring, the transcript and translation of an Ekho Moskvy interview with Kremlin ex-adviser Andrei Illarionov:

Ex-adviser decries Kremlin “terror”

Source: Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 1508 gmt 15 Oct 06

Kremlin ex-adviser Andrey Illarionov has warned of an “atmosphere of terror” reminiscent of Nazi Germany in a radio interview prompted by news of his appointment to the Washington think-tank Cato Institute.

“One can see those who attempt to dissent or protest end up either sewing mittens in Krasnokamensk or being struck dead by a bullet in her own lift,” Illarionov, who resigned in December 2005 after criticizing the Kremlin for dismantling oil major Yukos and imprisoning its ex-boss Mikhail Khodorkovskiy in the remote Siberian town, told Ekho Moskvy radio on 15 October. His remarks came after the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was fiercely critical of the Kremlin and its war in Chechnya.

“People of different sorts”

While declining to comment directly on President Vladimir Putin’s pronouncements, Illarionov said the Politkovskaya murder highlighted an us vs. them mentality in the Kremlin. By way of further proof, he mentioned recent harassment of ethnic Georgians following a spying row between Russia and its ex-Soviet neighbour.

“I cannot fail to comment, because this relates to the socially relevant agenda for the country, on the consequences of the actions that have been taken, including the consequences of certain statements that have been made lately. Comments that related to our relations with ethnic Georgians and comments on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya highlight, in my view, the position of at least part of the government, which was hidden or maybe not so well hidden but which has become completely apparent now, concerning the existence of people of different sorts,” he
said.

“It has been promoted to official policy that there are people of different sorts in the country. For instance, there are journalists. It has been said that all journalists are critical and they are ranked because of this attitude. Then it turned out that particularly those journalists who are well known among human rights campaigners or in the West rank even lower. Human rights campaigners, apparently, are on an even lower rung.

“It turns out that people of certain ethnic origin are also ranked. If it turns out that someone is influential, they are treated one way, while if they are not influential in someone’s view, then they are treated differently,” he said.

He pointed to a contrast between how promptly “official reaction” came to the attempt on the life of Russian electricity boss Anatoliy Chubays and how it was delayed in the case of Politkovskaya. Putin was reported to have telephoned Chubays - Illarionov’s long-time opponent - the same day his motorcade came under attack in Moscow Region in March 2005. Putin did not make any public statements on Politkovskaya until days later.

Illarionov denounced this as a regression from a modern state to a medieval type of state which is “the property of a narrow group of people who use the instruments of state against the rest of society”. He said this “cannot be called anything other than civil war”. “By inflaming a civil war in the country on whatever pretext - ethnicity, political views, vote, whatever - this government is committing the most heinous crime against the country,” he said.

“Atmosphere of fear”

He said political developments in Russia reminded him of accounts of Holocaust survivors he had once read. “Those memoirs recount how continuously, week after week, month after month, rights and liberties are destroyed, human dignity is destroyed and people are broken, and what comes out of that,” he said.

“That’s the first thing that naturally comes to my mind. The second thing, which is provided by our own experience of recent years - difficult, bitter and tragic experience - is the example of terrorist seizures of the theatre and the school,” he added, referring to the Moscow theatre siege in 2002 and the Beslan school siege in 2004.

Asked by interviewer Yevgeniya Albats to clarify his analogy between the Russian government and the captor holding hostages, Illarionov said: “I’m not saying who is doing this because we don’t know who killed Anna Politkovskaya. There are different views about this and different suspicions. However, I’d like to say the government definitely is creating an atmosphere of fear. It created it not just yesterday or the day before yesterday. This atmosphere of fear has been created for several years now. And I have to say that it is being done by gifted, successful and professional people. It is no accident that many people who would speak out a few years ago choose to keep quiet, do something else or emigrate today.”

Call for parliamentary rule

He repeated his earlier comments that his move to Washington did not amount to emigration. He said he was not interested in “power struggle” but would continue to speak on Russian current affairs in future. One reason for this, he said, is his belief that a strong presidency is unsuitable for Russia.

“I’m not going to run for president and, as I said earlier, I’m not going to take part in political struggle defined as the struggle for political power. I can explain or maybe give one reason of very many, which is probably the most important one. I don’t consider the institution of presidency to be suitable for Russia. I think enormous problems in the country stem from its presidential form of government. No matter who gets that post, the logic of political development and state development will, or probably will, reproduce very similar outcomes,” he said.

“I am convinced that something good can come out in Russia only when truly parliamentary rule is instituted in the country such that it best reflects the diversity of political views, world views and interests of our large and diverse nation,” he said.

Via The Epoch Times

Stories of “Made in China” (1)

In this issue, we continue our discussion of slave labor in China.

The Chinese communist regime has one primary goal: to maintain power at all cost.

Those who insist on their beliefs and place their conscience above the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) face the full weight of the Chinese regime. For having such courage, they may be charged with “betraying” their homeland or “revealing state secrets.” They risk loss of reputation, long-term imprisonment, torture, and even death.

A primary method of suppression is punishment by “re-education through labor.” Skilled at propaganda that twists logic and common sense, the CCP claims that such punishment gives people a chance to “reform” themselves. Crushed by methods perfected over the ages, they give up their conscience and “reform” into “patriotic” beings that never question the CCP.

The low cost of products made with slave labor has attracted great demand for them around the world. For corrupt officials, the forced labor camps are such a profitable business that they care little that the millions of inmates in the estimated 1,200 camps nationwide have never had a trial or a chance to defend their innocence.

We bring you the stories of two such souls - Falun Gong practitioners who were imprisoned for their beliefs and forced to endure “re-education” through grueling forced labor for refusing to betray their conscience, making goods for export to western countries.

— Story 1 —

I Hope Children Don’t Put Them in Their Mouths

By Wang Bin, Ph.D.

During the years 2000 and 2001, the Chinese National Security Division of the Beijing Police Department arrested a large group of intellectuals who practiced Falun Gong, including university professors. They were tortured until they accepted the Party’s “reeducation.” This was proclaimed to the outside world as being done gently as “a breeze and rainfall in spring.” I was one of them.

I was kept in a gloomy prison cell on death row with about 30 prisoners who were waiting to be executed. The cell was only about 30 square meters (about 323 square feet). When I was first imprisoned in this cell, I could smell all kinds of stinky odors from feces, urine, mold, rotten flesh and materials. After a few months, I could no longer smell anything. I was used to the smell that permeated the cell all day.

It was so quiet in the cell that one could even hear a needle drop. Everyone took advantage of this short silence to ponder over his past. One day after another, quite a few people were getting closer and closer to execution day.

Doors

The prison cell had two doors, the front and the back. The front door was a thick iron door and an iron fence. The back door was also an iron door, as big as the front door. The front door was an entrance-exit where prisoners were escorted in and out, or dragged out for execution.

Ten armed-policemen guarded the door against potential runaways. Every time the front door was opened, it could mean someone was to die soon.

Air and Sun

“Open the cage!” the loud shout came from a policeman standing on the top. It broke into my thinking and the stillness of the cell. The pale, unkempt prisoners started to show a hint of happiness on their faces. One by one, prisoners walked outside of the back door. They nodded and bowed to show their gratitude to the policeman. Then they quickly occupied a place with more sunlight.

The first time I was let out, I was shocked by what I saw. The first thing the prisoners did was get naked. The scabies, sores and psoriasis on their bodies were fully exposed. I was not too surprised by this.

Survivors and Labor

If they were not sentenced to death, the inmates surviving the detention center were sent to prisons to vomplete their sentence and do slave labor. They brought their infections and sexually transmitted diseases with them to the prisons, while they provided a vast cheap work force. An amazing number of products made in China are produced in prisons and forced labor camps.

In May 2002, I was sent to the Beijing Repatriation Division of Provincial Criminals with several other Falun Gong practitioners. We were waiting to be repatriated to other prisons to serve our sentence. From this experience I gained a real understanding of the forced labor in prisons.

We were expected to labor tirelessly. The routine was to labor for 15 or 16 hours a day. If anyone had trouble finishing the assigned work, he was punished by having to “sing until the dawn,” which meant he had to keep working and could not sleep. Since the cells were more than full, the prisoners had no time to take care of personal hygiene. They counted the days, with their diseases worsening day by day.

I was arrested for practicing Falun Gong. I had committed no crimes. So I just considered myself as a “correspondent” sent there to seriously observe what was happening around me. I hoped that one day my observations would enable the world to have a better understanding of what goes on in Chinese prisons.

From Christmas to Underwear

Our tasks included packing women’s underwear, making copies of audio and video materials, attaching trademarks to various products, processing books, binding books, and making fishing floats, colored Christmas bulbs and accessories to be exported. I participated in all of the manual labor and had a good understanding of each work procedure.

During one hot summer, the prison authorities ordered us to make packages for Gracewell underwear. It was really hot and yet the prisoners hadn’t showered for a very long time. They scratched all over their bodies, while being engaged in manual labor. Some of the prisoners scratched their private parts every now and again. When they took out their hands, I saw blood on their fingernails. I was not sure if women would really look graceful in that underwear.

Another time, the prisoners processed a kind of packaged food called “Orchid Beans” for some small business owners.

This snack was made from broad beans. They kept trucking broad beans into the prison. In the prison there were barrels in which the broad beans were soaked in water until they were swollen. To spare themselves some trouble when changing water in the barrels, sometimes the prisoners would dump a whole barrel of beans into a dirty urinal and then pour water into the barrel putting the beans inside. When the beans became swollen in the water, the prisoners would start to peel the beans. In front of each person there was a set of parallel knives. The prisoner picked up a bean, rolling it over the knife and removing the bean skin on either side leaving a “golden belt” in the middle. In this way the beans looked good, though they were dirty and muddy. Then, the last step was to throw the beans back into the basket.

At least 10,000 beans had to be peeled in one day to finish the assignment. As the prisoners bustled around peeling the beans, their mucus and sputum mixed with the beans. Then the processed beans were put into a big bag to be taken to the stores where they would be fried. The fried broad beans looked golden and shining. They packed them in beautiful packages and sold them to customers.

The broad beans are in demand in the market and thus provide a high profit to sellers. Consumers enjoy the beans.

In a U.S. supermarket, I saw fried broad beans imported from China. I wondered if our prison had made those beans.

Annually, a large number of Christmas items and clothing for western countries are made in Chinese prisons. Once the prison was assigned to make light bulbs. Every day prisoners were supposed to tie copper wires tightly around a plastic tank in a fixed shape and then connect all the light bulbs together. The prisoners’ hands were usually bleeding. Needless to say, that stuff from their skin and sexually transmitted diseases were left on the light bulbs.

Once the prison I was in made strings of beads as jewelry accessories. The prisoners used needles and thread to string colored beads and then connected the two ends to make a string of beads. The strings of beads looked beautiful. But, I hope that women don’t put them around their necks and that children will not put them in their mouths.

– Story 2:

My Experience in a Chinese Labor Camp, Ms. Chen Ying, currently residing in France

Stories of “Made in China” (2)

France resident: My Experience in a Chinese Labor Camp

I was imprisoned between November 2000 and November 2001 for refusing to give up practicing Falun Gong. During that period of time, I was held in servitude at the Tuanhe Prisoner Dispatch Center and the Xin’an Forced Labor Camp in Beijing.

Products Made

Beijing Tuanhe Prisoner Dispatch Center

Packaged large quantities of disposable chopsticks. Most of them were for use in restaurants and hotels, while some were exported.

Made “Florence Gift Packages”

Beijing Xin’an Labor Camp

Packaged large quantities of disposable chopsticks.Most of them were for use in restaurants and hotels, while some were exported.

Knit sweaters.

Knit woolen gloves (exported to Europe).

Crocheted cushions for tea sets.

Crocheted hats for a company in Qinghe Township, Beijing.

Knit seat cushions.

Re-processed sweaters; removed sundries from yarn.

Made large quantities of slippers. The job was mainly gluing the sole and the instep together, and the labor camp demanded a high-quality product. When I was there, it was the hottest time of the summer.

Many practitioners and I were working in our prison cells. Working in a humid prison cell full of irritating glue odors was suffocating. We worked until midnight or one o’clock in the morning every time there was a shipment.

Made stuffed animals, such as rabbits, bears, dolphins, penguins, etc. Major steps included putting the stuffing material inside, stitching the doll together, sewing the eyes, stitching the mouth, etc.

The Sanitation and Living Conditions of the Forced Labor Camp

(1) Beijing Tuanhe Prisoner Dispatch Center

I was locked up with over a dozen other Falun Gong practitioners in a cell that was about twelve square meters (130 square feet) in size. There were only eight bunk beds in the room; thus, some of us had to sleep on the floor. We did everything in this cell, including working, eating, drinking, and using the toilet; therefore, there were many flies and mosquitoes. We were allowed to eat only at certain times. Water was rationed, and drinking water was limited. The prison guards never allowed us to wash our hands before meals. After a meal, we had to get back to work immediately. Twice a day, we were given five minutes for personal hygiene. When the time was up, we were forced to stop and not allowed to take any water back to our cell. If we could not finish the work assigned to us, we were not allowed to clean ourselves. When there was a rush to get products out, we had to work late and go to sleep without washing. There were fixed times for the whole group of practitioners to go and use the toilet. Even then, we still had to ask the guards for permission. We were allowed two minutes to use the toilet each time; thus, many people did not even have enough time to have a bowel movement. We could go to bed only at the specified time; otherwise, we would be scolded and not allowed to sleep. At night, the guards locked up all the cells. A small bucket in each cell was used for a toilet. We were watched even during sleep.

We were allowed very little sleep each day, and forced to start working the moment we opened our eyes. My hands had blisters and thick calluses from working long hours to finish the assigned quota of packaging disposable chopsticks. I often worked until midnight. We were not allowed to sleep unless we finished the quota. We were forced to work over 16 hours every day, and everything was done in our cells. The sanitation conditions were extremely poor. Even though we were packaging disposable chopsticks and the label said the chopsticks were disinfected at a high temperature, the entire process was unhygienic. We could not wash our hands, and we had to package those chopsticks that had fallen on the floor. In order to seek a huge profit, Tuanhe Prisoner Dispatch Center and Tuanhe Labor Cam disregarded the health of the general public and knowingly committed such wrongdoings.

Many restaurants in Beijing are currently using these chopsticks. I heard they are even being exported to other countries.

Female practitioners are forced to perform excessive physical labor. We were forced to unload trucks full of bagged materials that weighed over 100 pounds each. We had to carry the bags on our shoulders from the truck to our cells.

Other physical labors included digging pits, planting trees, and transporting fertilizers. The police exploited our labor to create illegal income for themselves. The dispatch center did not compensate us for any of our work. In fact, we were forced to do long and hard labor without any compensation.

(2) Beijing Xin’an Labor Camp

Both our bodies and minds were imprisoned and severely persecuted under the excessive workload. The police often prevented us from sleeping at regular hours. When there were work orders, we had to work day and night to produce the best product in the shortest amount of time.

All the work in the labor camp is labor-intensive. Falun Gong practitioners are forced to work until midnight under dim lights, and everyone has a quota to meet. If a practitioner cannot finish the quota, he/she is not allowed to sleep. One time we were making gift items for Nestlé; these items included knitted products and crocheted cushions.

In order to meet the shipping deadline, we were forced to work in the hallway or lavatories until one or two o’clock in the morning; sometimes we worked through the whole night. The police used this method to control our thoughts. They would not let us have a single moment of idle time to think calmly, and we were not allowed to talk to each other. They had drug addicts and “transformed” practitioners monitoring us. They wanted us to do nothing but work.

During summer time, our cells were so hot that people sometimes collapsed from heat exhaustion. Many practitioners developed symptoms of hypertension and heart disease from overwork. Their entire bodies twitched.

—

Ms. Chen Ying was detained three times for practicing Falun Gong. She had been sent to a forced labor camp for one year while she was visiting her family in China. Prison guards forcefully injected her with toxic drugs, resulting in damage to the nerves on the left side of her body, spasms, and partial memory loss. Ms. Chen is currently residing in France.

On October 20, 25 European heads of state will gather in Lahti, just north of Helsinki, Finland, for an informal summit meeting and dinner which is intended in part to pave the way for the EU-Russia summit that is to be held in Helsinki on November 24.

Putin’s Lahti invitation came from Finland’s President Tarja Halonen. Coming directly in the aftermath of the brutal murder of Anna Politkovskaya, this invitation looks distinctly like a diplomatic error. Moreover, a number of European countries are concerned about how Putin will exploit the meeting, which is likely to reveal splits and differences among the members.

On October 15, the FT published a report by George Parker in Brussels, underscoring the uneasiness felt by many at the prospect of Putin’s presence at the event. An excerpt:

Mr Putin’s visit is expected to dominate the Lahti summit in Finland and has left some European leaders fearing the event could become a toe-curling exhibition of EU disunity in its relations with Moscow.

The Finnish EU presidency hopes Mr Putin’s visit will help to prepare the ground for next month’s EU-Russia summit, which will herald the start of talks on a new “strategic partnership” between the two neighbours, particularly in the energy field.

But some diplomats fear the Friday night dinner will see Europe’s 25 leaders promoting their own national interests, giving Mr Putin first-hand proof that the EU cannot act as a single powerful negotiating partner.

“You can easily imagine him saying with a smile at the end of the dinner that he has heard lots of different voices around the table,” said one EU diplomat. “That would be a disaster for the EU.”

Russia has proved adept at exploiting European divisions in the past, striking bilateral gas deals with several countries including Germany, and building warm relations with Paris. New member states such as Poland favour a much tougher relationship with Moscow.

The EU has many issues to raise, including the recent clash between Moscow and Royal Dutch Shell over the oil company’s alleged environmental breaches in the Sakhalin field and the decision of Gazprom, Russia’s gas monopoly, to reject foreign partners in the Shtokman project.

Matti Vanhanen, Finland’s prime minister, is also likely to raise concerns about tensions between Russia and Georgia and over the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

“The timing of this is awful,” admitted another diplomat. “We are making Putin the guest of honour and giving him a platform to give us a lecture on Gazprom and environmental policy.”

The Queen is on an official visit to the Baltic States:

The Queen has paid tribute to the Baltic states during the keynote speech of her tour of the region.

The monarch addressed the Lithuanian parliament in the capital, Vilnius, on the first full day of her visit.

She said Baltic nations had "emerged from the shadow of the Soviet Union and blossomed as sovereign states".

At Estland, as part of a continuing discussion on how far the Baltic States can be considered part of Scandinavia, and on where the cultural and geopolitical limits of Scandinavia actually life, Jens-Olaf looks forward to the Queen’s visit to Tallinn later this week (October 19-20), and considers some of the traditional commercial and trading connections between Britain and Estonia. He also links to an interesting article on Estonia’s role and position in Europe.

Via Prague Watchdog:

THE WEEK IN BRIEF (October 9 - 15)
October 10 - Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Moscow on October 7, was buried at the Troyekurovskoye cemetery in the Russian capital.

October 11 - Referring to a report by the Russian-Chechen Information Agency, Kavkazsky uzel reported that Rita Ersenoyeva, the mother of the abducted Chechen journalist Elina Ersenoyeva had recently been kidnapped as well.

October 12 - The European Court of Human Rights announced that it had held Russia responsible for the summary execution of five members of the Estamirov family in Chechnya in February 2000. Stichting Russian Justice Initiative said that at least eleven other incidents of summary executions committed on the same day in the same region of Chechnya are pending before the Court.

October 13 - Residents of the Kabardino-Balkarian capital of Nalchik commemorated the events that took place one year ago when mostly local young men carried out armed raids on law enformement agencies, which resulted in dozens of casualties.

October 13 - The Nizhny Novgorod regional court dismantled the NGO Russian-Chechen Society Friendship (ORChD). ORChD head Stanislav Dmitriyevsky said the organization would appeal the verdict.

October 14 - A Chechen branch of the political party “Russian Party of Life” was established in Grozny. Muslim Khuchiyev, first deputy head of the administration of the Moscow-backed Chechen president and premier, became its chairman.

Rallies and other events in memory of the slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya took place throughout the week in various places in Russia and abroad.

In EDM, Vladimir Socor writes about how Moscow and Germany are working together to keep Ukraine’s President Yushchenko “out of the loop” on a new deal that involves control by Moscow of Ukraine’s single largest economic and strategic asset:

Moscow seems set to move to claim control over Ukraine’s gas transit system, in association with Germany as a minority partner. Politically, it will try to sell its move in Ukraine as a comprehensive settlement of past debts and evidence of restraint on future prices. It will try to sell it politically in the West as a major investment project to modernize Ukraine’s system in the interest of Western consumers. And it will portray it both in Ukraine and in the West as an “international” consortium with Germany in tow, obscuring Berlin’s actual role in an energy partnership that Russia is shaping on its own terms.

Sweden’s Office of the Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern, or JK) has rejected a request by the Russian government to close down the Kavkaz Center website, Dagens Nyheter reported on October 10.

A statement by Kavkaz Center reads as follows:

The Russian efforts to stop the freedom of expression and maintain a news blockade on independent reporting from Caucasus have experienced a new setback. The Chancellor of Justice in Sweden has denied a Russian request to stop Kavkaz Center, which today operates also in Sweden.

In May this year, the prosecutor Håkan Roswall seized the Kavkaz Center’s servers, in order to start investigations about instigation of violence. The prosecutor’s measures were caused by a request from the Russian Embassy in Stockholm. However, Kavkaz Center maintained to reopen the web site within a few days on new server hardware, and brought the case into court. The first result of these court proceedings came a couple of week ago, when the Stockholm city court allowed Kavkaz Center’s representative 1250 Euro as compensation for costs. Also, the prosecutor has given the confiscated servers back to Kavkaz Center.

“This money will be used to invest in even more robust server equipment”, tells Mikael Storsjö who has maintained Kavkaz-Center’s servers. “Our new server may thus be regarded as a gift to Kavkaz Center from the government of Sweden.”

“Anyway, we are going to continue the court proceedings in the Court of Appeal. Seizing our servers was a crime, and obvious reasons related to common order demands us to get the guilty persons convicted.”

The Chancellor of Justice is the sole authority in Sweden who may concern himself with matters regarding freedom of expression. In June, Kavkaz-Center was granted a certificate stating that the web site has so-called constitutional protection under the Constitutional Law of Freedom of Speech. Hence, ordinary prosecutors or any police have no right to concern themselves with any measures against the web site.

Then the Russian Embassy in Stockholm recently filed a new request to the Chancellor of Justice, asking him to stop the web site. The request was accompanied by translations into Swedish of many web pages in Kavkaz-Center.

Last week the Chancellor made his decision not to start any kind of
preliminary investigations in this case. The Chancellor Göran Lambertz stated in his decision, that “the content of these texts cannot, according to my opinion, be regarded as instigation of violence or racial agitation”.

Further, the Chancellor states that crime stipulations in the Constitutional Law of Freedom of Speech, even if such crimes were present, would have the aim to protect the common order in Sweden. Thus Lambertz states, that “instigations [in the press] of crimes in Russia or racial agitation directed against people living there is consequently not punishable here”.

The Russian efforts to stop Kavkaz Center have led to a blind alley in Sweden. This is a true victory for the Freedom of Expression, and obliges us to continue our independent news service in order to cover events in the Islamic world, Caucasus and Russia, with a special focus upon events in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (C.R.I.).

Kavkaz Center
Department of International Information

(via chechnya-sl)

Germany’s SignAndSight Magazine has two notable items in its latest issue. One is an interview with the Russian philosopher Mikhail Ryklin, who talks to Caroline Fletscher about the new level of fear and apprehension in Russia after Anna Politkovskaya’s murder. The interview probes the new degree of hatred being whipped up by the Russian government against those who are perceived to be standing in its way. Antisemitism and xenophobia are compounded with a new drive to cast off restraints that may once have been observed out of a concern for Russia’s image in the world. The Kremlin practitioners of the new policy simply don’t care about that. Politkovskaya seemed to be protected, the interviewer says. And, in this excerpt, Ryklin replies:

Yes. We assumed that Vladimir Putin and his system valued Politkovskaya as a democratic symbol and that her newspaper, the independent Novaya Gazeta, like the broadcaster Echo of Moscow represented a democratic showcase for the Kremlin elite that they wouldn’t want to do away with - or couldn’t. Even papers of less significance like the government-critical magazine of the chess champion Garry Kasparov seemed a guarantor that this niche would survive in some form. What is happening now is something like a paradigm change.

And what is it exactly?

Until now, we, the critical voices, believed in a civilisational minimum at the least, that society stood on a more or less solid base. Now the message is: none of you are safe any more. Notability, Western friends, respect and awards can no longer protect us against violent attacks on the freedom of expression. If someone like Politkovskaya can be murdered in broad daylight in such an beastly way, any of us could be next. That is a shock. All the more so because in today’s Russia, most political murders are never solved.

What made Anna Politkovskaya so dangerous in the regime’s eyes? On Tuesday in Dresden, Putin called her a journalist with “extreme views.” Was it that she named corrupt functionaries or torturers in the Chechen war? Are journalists safe as long as they don’t name names?

That alone is not enough. “Putin” is just a synonym for an entire system. The vertical power structure on top of which Putin sits includes the army, the justice system, the Duma, the state-run media, the secret service, the police – and the orthodox church. Although the principle of secularism – the separation of church and state - is anchored in the Russian constitution, the Kremlin does not abide by it. At Christmas, for example, Putin and his functionaries receive the blessing of the patriarchs in what amounts to a VIP lounge of the church. He says they should “save Russia” and anyone who counters the “state religion” has to reckon with reprisals.

The same issue of the magazine has the translated text of Anna Politkovskaya’s last published article, which appeared in Novaya Gazeta in September. It’s about a Chechen “warlord” who worked for the pro-Moscow authorities, an OMON commander, Buvadi Dakhiev - The man who gave second chances.

Buvadi was an extraordinary personality, he was full of contradictions, consisted of two halves. If there is any association to be made, it would be with Nikita Khrushchev’s tombstone in the Novodevichiy graveyard in Moscow: one half entirely black, the other entirely white.

On the one hand, Buvadi was a military type through and through, one of many in Chechnya, an officer in the Chechen forces allied with Moscow; but he was one of the new breed that came into being when criminals and terrorists from Kadyrov’s contingent took over power. He was a representative of the Dudaev opposition, which since 1995 had been serving in faithful obedience to the Chechen OMON; an absolutely pro-Russian and unswerving position – Chechnya was simply part of Russia. For this he received medals and badges of courage and was made colonel. When Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev came to power, Buvadi was living in Chechnya, without principles. Then came the second war and he began to fight in the front row against Maskhadov and Basayev.

Hat tip: CH

Via Postimees [my tr]:

Pärt Compares Politkovskaya’s Murder with Death of Martin Luther King

16.10.2006 11:34

PM Online

To honour the memory of Anna Politkovskaya, the well-known Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has made a “commemorative gesture” and has decided to dedicate the performance of all his works in the 2006/2007 concert season, “no matter where they are performed”, to the murdered Russian woman journalist.

“I call on all performers of my works to announce this wish of mine to the listeners,” Pärt said in a statement distributed by the composer.

Pärt says that Anna Politkovskaya gave the whole of her talent and energy, and ultimately her life, so that people should know and be aware of what brutal crimes are taking place in Russia.

“Her death is reminiscent of the death of Martin Luther King, which in its day became the last drop in a cup that was filled to overflowing. Now in the same way we must hope that this murder which has to all intents and purposes been legalized by the Russian authorities will make more people think about what is really going on in Russia,” Pärt said.

The composer says that Politkovskaya’s murder must free the world from dangerous illusions with regard to Russia.

Text in Estonian here.

Via chechnya-sl:

Objet: Elena Bonner’s remarks on Politkovskaya
Date : Thu, 12 Oct 2006 09:18:24 +0400

The responsibility for the death of Anna Politkovskaya rests on Russian society, power structures, and President’s administration, on their cold indifference and cynicism.

It also rests on the international community, all European institutions, and the UN who have forgotten that in 1975 Helsinki Agreement pronounced that human rights violations cannot be an exclusively internal affair of any country. Today this community pretends it believes Russian official lie of the war against international terrorism, while helping terrorists diplomatically and by the arms sales.

Having said that Politkovskaya’s publications have harmed Russia, President Putin has insulted the honest, selfless, and humane position of one of Russia’s best journalists.

By this statement, President Putin confessed that honesty and integrity harms Russia. He is concerned what to say to George Bush, to Angela Merkel, he knows he has to say something, and his every word gives him away. He promises there will be an investigation of Politkovskaya’s murder to George Bush – not to Politkovskaya’s mother, her children, or her colleagues at Novaya gazeta. A promise of investigation to George Bush is a slap in the face of entire Russia.

Our time shows two faces: One of a person of high mind, integrity, compassion and empathy for the country, its people, every human being – this is the face of Anna Politkovskaya; The other face is beastly, cruel, and selfish – this is the face of the country whose citizens we are. Those in power hope we are cattle which is unable to understand all this.

Tragic death of Anna Politkovskaya – Russia’s loss, and it serves those who create life for themselves only, at the expense of Russia.

Elena Bonner October 10, 2006

[Taken from the groups.yahoo.com French language short-list]

The BBC is trying to block the publication of the Balen Report, which is believed to contain harsh criticism of its Middle East coverage, particularly in its treatment of Israel. From the Telegraph:

Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

The High Court action is the latest stage of a lengthy and expensive battle by Steven Sugar, a lawyer, to get access to the document, which was compiled by Malcolm Balen, a senior editorial adviser, in 2004.

Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for the workings of the Act, agreed with the BBC that the document, which examines hundreds of hours of its radio and television broadcasts, could be held back. However, Mr Sugar appealed and, after a two-day hearing at which the BBC was represented by two barristers, the Information Tribunal found in his favour.

Mr Sugar said: “This is a serious report about a serious issue and has been compiled with public money. I lodged the request because I was concerned that the BBC’s reporting of the second intifada was seriously unbalanced against Israel, but I think there are other issues at stake now in the light of the BBC’s reaction.”

Volume 6, Number 35
Friday, October 13, 2006

BIGOTRY MONITOR

A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union
__________________________________________________________

PUTIN MAKES STATEMENT WITH A RACIST EDGE. On October 5, President Vladimir Putin made “an astounding statement for the leader of a multi-ethnic federative state,” “The St. Petersburg Times” wrote on its opinion page on October 10. In a speech addressing regional authorities, Putin called on them to “protect the interests of Russian manufacturers and Russia’s native population” in the country’s outdoor markets. He blamed recent ethnic violence in Kondopoga on poor regulation and law enforcement in the area and called for tough new migration laws. “Putin did not name any particular ethnic group,” the newspaper noted, “but it is no secret that natives of the Caucasus, particularly Azeris, are responsible for the majority of trade in Russian outdoor markets.”

Until the statement, Putin and other officials “trod a careful line, supporting nationalist parties such as Rodina but refraining from making inflammatory statements about Russia’s ethnic groups,” “The Moscow Times” pointed out and then quoted Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst who tracks Kremlin politics at the Panorama think tank, as saying: “I did not believe my ears when I first heard this. There has been a lot of nationalism, but there has not been any ethnic nationalism until now. … This is a very dangerous game.”

But which native population did Putin have in mind when he called for the protection of the population’s interest, asked “The St. Petersburg Times.” Kondopoga’s native population is Karelian and the town is in the Republic of Karelia that first became part of Russia in 1721 and belonged to Finland between the two world wars. “Even if he was thinking primarily of Azeris, Chechens, and Karelians when he made his speech to the council for national projects, that is not necessarily the way it will be heard,” the newspaper continued. “Recent events are more likely to conjure up thoughts of protecting Russia’s native population from the Georgians. This is the clear impression state television is giving as it reports about raids on businesses that police say are owned by Georgian criminal groups and shows the apprehension and deportation of illegal Georgian migrants.” Putin’s use of the term “native population” gives a green light for the radicalization of nationalist groups, commented Galina Kozhevnikova of Sova Information-Analytical Center, an independent group that monitors xenophobia.

“The St. Petersburg Times” called attention to “unprecedented harassment of individuals whose only crime was being a Georgian citizen or being born in Georgia.” The “current campaign of racial profiling” and a selective application of the migration law – the deportation on October 6 of 132 Georgians out of an estimated 10 million illegal migrants is a case in point — reminded the newspaper’s editorial writer of ethnic cleansing. The writer called for a condemnation of this latest campaign and urged all citizens, even if they are from the “right” ethnicity, to remember anti-Nazi theologian Pastor Niemoller’s famous remark that began with “First they came for …” and ended with the chilling line: “When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

Tunne Kelam’s speech on the murder of independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya at the European Parliament’s Plenary session, Brussels, October 11, 2006.

I would like to pay tribute to Anna Politkovskaya, the highly respected investigative reporter, known as symbol of honest journalism in Russia, who bravely stood up in defense of human life and dignity and who objectively disclosed different forms of crimes and lies, especially in Chechnya. The best way for each and every one of us to truly honour Anna Politkovskaya’s work is to read her book Putin’s Russia and draw our own conclusions.

While condemning in strongest terms this murder, we need also to be aware that systematic intimidation, harassment and murdering of independent journalists as well as other persons critical of the Government - with the subsequent investigations producing no results - has created a climate of impunity in which killers seem not to fear the law. Russia has become one of the deadliest countries for journalists.

This is damaging to Russia’s credibility as the Council of Europe’ presidency state. It also raises grave doubts about whether the EU and Russia share common values. Therefore, I ask the Presidency of the EU Council to raise this issue at the forthcoming Lahti summit.

On behalf of the EPP-ED group I also call on the Commission and the EU member states to take a principled stand in insisting on the restoration of freedom of press and respect for independent journalism as one of the main prerequisites for renewing the EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 2007. Only when the EU sends a clear signal that we value the life and message of this courageous woman not less than oil and gas will things start to change in Russia.

I am convinced that the only means to honour Anna Politkovskaya’s passionate commitment to truth, justice and human dignity is to launch a common effort to make real her dream of a democratic Russia, where citizens will not have to pay with their lives for telling the truth.

Tunne Kelam, a MEP from Estonia, has initiated a draft resolution on the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and suppression of free media in Russia. The resolution will be discussed during the European Parliament’s next plenary session in Strasbourg at the end of October.

(Via MAK)

Toby Eades, Anna Politkovskaya’s London literary agent, talks to the Sunday Times about her murder.

In July, when I last saw Anna Politkovskaya, I told her she had to leave Russia. I told her I really thought Vladimir Putin, the president, would kill her. “I would only leave after Putin’s gone,” she said, obstinate as ever. “If I am killed, would my children have to pay back my publishing advance?”

"... But I don’t wish to know the Russian pair, do you hear? I expressly don’t wish it. They are a very ill-behaved lot. If I must live for three weeks next door to them, and nothing else could be arranged, at least I needn’t know them. I am justified in that, and I simply and explicitly decline.”

“Very good,” Joachim said. “Did they disturb you? Yes, they are barbarians, more or less; uncivilized, I told you so before. He comes to the table in a leather jacket, very shabby, I always wonder Behrens doesn’t make a row. And she isn’t the cleanest in this world, with her feather hat. You may make yourself quite easy, they sit at the ‘bad’ Russian table, a long way off us—there is a ‘good’ Russian table, too, you see, where the nicer Russians sit—and there is not much chance of you coming into contact with them, even if you wanted to. It is not very easy to make acquaintance here, partly from the fact that there are so many foreigners. Personally, as long as I’ve been here, I know very few.”

“Which of the two is ill?” Hans Castorp asked. “He or she?”

“The man I think. Yes, only the man,” Joachim answered, absently. They passed among the hat- and coat-racks and entered the light, low-vaulted hall, where there was a buzzing of voices, a clattering of dishes, and a running to and fro of waitresses with steaming jugs.

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924), tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter

Via VOA:

Voice of America
U.S. On Politkovskaya Murder
12 October 2006

President George W. Bush has condemned the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. An investigative reporter and author, she was shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. According to her editor at the weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, in the days before her death, Ms. Politkovskaya was working on a story about torture and abductions in Chechnya.

“Born in the United States to Soviet diplomats, Anna Politkovskaya cared deeply about her country,” President Bush said in a written statement. “Through her efforts to shine a light on human rights abuses and corruption, especially in Chechnya, she challenged her fellow Russians - and, indeed, all of us - to summon the courage and will, as individuals and societies, to struggle against evil and rectify injustices.”

Personally courageous, committed to reporting the truth even in the face of death threats, Ms. Politkovskaya received numerous awards. They include the Golden Pen Award from the Russian Union of Journalists and the Prize for Journalism and Democracy from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Anna Politkovskaya was one of twelve journalists murdered in Russia in the  last six years, including American journalist Paul Klebnikov in 2004. None of the perpetrators of those crimes has been brought to justice. Over that period, the Russian government has exerted increasing control over the media. According to the U.S. State Department, the Russian government has used its controlling ownership interest in all national television and radio stations, as well as the majority of influential regional stations, to restrict access to information about issues deemed sensitive. The government has severely restricted coverage by all media of events in Chechnya.

This was the intimidating context in which Anna Politkovskaya was killed. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called her “a real heroine. She was somebody who was in the best tradition of journalist, who went to the most difficult issues and tried to find out the truth. And it was a sign of a new Russia that she was doing that.” State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. “urges the Russian government to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation in order to find, prosecute, and bring to justice all those responsible for this heinous murder.”

As Ambassador William Burns said at Anna Politkovskaya’s funeral: “For the sake of Russia, I hope that Anna’s tragic death will inspire respect for freedom of expression and the rule of law. For the sake of Russia, I hope that Anna’s death will remind people of the importance of telling the truth, and seeking justice. For the sake of Russia, I hope that her death will not be in vain.”

The preceding was an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government.

Alexander Goltz, writing in EJ, discusses The Price of a Human Life (excerpt, my tr.):

When it went to war with the separatists, the Kremlin was confident that all methods were valid for victory. In war, as in war - it was even possible to turn a blind eye to torture, and to the fact that perfectly innocent people fall to the hand of the Kadyrovites and the Federals. Just think, for every hundred they abducted, they killed a hundred more. You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. And by the same logic, those who, like Politkovskaya, make these crimes public must certainly be pursuing their own, anti-State interests. And by the same logic, the reason the journalist’s death caused such a resonance all over the world was not at all because it was seen as an act of political repression, but because certain external enemies wanted to damage V. V. Putin’s prestige, that is to say the prestige of Russia.

Indeed, the same logic guides the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il, which sees national interest not in its people, but in the production of the atom bomb. Because national interests and national pride are far more important than the North Koreans, who are dying from hunger. Moreover, Kim Jong Il and Putin are both solidly confident that they and only they possess the right to decide how national interests should be guarded.

There is, however, one difference: while the “beloved leader” obtained this right as an inheritance from his father, it looks as though Putin has had the right to do as he wishes entrusted to him by the Russian people itself. True, the President has brought this system of authority to such a level of perfection that there is no longer anyone to contend that right with him…

From RFE/RL:

October 13, 2006 — The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution to extend the mandate of the UN observer mission in Georgia by six months.

The resolution also urged Georgia to refrain from provocative actions toward its breakaway region of Abkhazia.

The resolution reaffirms a commitment to Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but also “urges the Georgian side to address seriously legitimate Abkhaz security concerns, to avoid steps which could be seen as threatening and to refrain from militant rhetoric and provocative actions.”  

Meanwhile, the European Union is preparing to voice “grave concern” over Russia’s economic blockade of Georgia and its recent mass expulsions of Georgians, in a declaration to be adopted at the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on October 17 - the declaration is likely to be “sharply critical” of Russia:

The current text with its sharp criticism of Russian measures was backed by the EU’s Nordic, Baltic, and some Central European member states. While the Czech Republic was said to be its formal initiator, a major influence behind the draft declaration appears to have been Sweden’s new Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. Bildt served as Swedish Prime Minister in the 1990s and afterwards became active in conflict resolution issues in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. The draft declaration was opposed by Italy, Greece, and Portugal — countries traditionally friendly towards Russia. Significantly, however, both Germany and France — usually also advocates of a softer EU line towards Russia — remained outside the fray.

Via Postimees (my tr.):

European Commission Vice President Siim Kallas called the murder of the well-known Russian woman journalist Anna Politkovskaya “a great shock”, and compared the position in Russia with that of the 1930s.

“This (Politkovskaya’s murder - ed.) was a very great shock. This is an infamous event ,” Kallas said a press conference yesterday.

He says that the murder of the well-known woman journalist will affect relations between the countries of the West and Russia.

Kallas said that the actions of the Russian leadership in strengthening state control did not remain unnoticed in the West. At the same time, the question at the same time arises, Kallas noted, of the fact that this strengthening of state control seems to be connected with the regular killing of people who are inconvenient to the ruling circles. As examples, he cited not only the murder of Politkovskaya, but also the murder of the editor of the Russian-language edition of Forbes magazine Paul Khlebnikov and deputy chief of Tsentrobank Andrey Kozlov.

Kallas also noted that in Russia there is a law that permits the murder of people beyond the country’s borders of the country. Recalling the murder of Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, whom Moscow did not recognize, in Qatar, and also mentioning Pavel Sudoplatov [the notorious KGB-NKVD lieutenant general], Kallas found a sad similarity between the situation in present-day Russia and Russia of the 1930s. [Sudoplatov directed the NKVD operation that resulted in the murder of Leon Trotsky].

Caucasian Knot/Memorial
12/10/2006

USA prepared to investigate murder of Politkovskaya

The US State Department does not rule out the possibility of the Russian party inviting American experts for the investigation of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, stated Sean McCormack, official US State Department representative on October 11. It also became known yesterday that the American embassy in Moscow is now considering the possibility of such cooperation. Anna Politkovskaya was born in the USA and, apart from being a Russian subject, was also an American citizen.

The press-service of the US embassy in Moscow informed the “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” newspaper correspondent that “in conformance with American legislation, the embassy is prepared to provide the necessary consular services to Politkovskaya’s relatives.” They noted that the Russian authorities, so far, “have not applied to the Russian party for assistance in the investigation.”

Anna Politkovskaya, “Novaya Gazeta” newspaper correspondent, was killed on Saturday, October 7, in Moscow. Politkovskaya was primarily known by her materials related with Chechnya and North Caucasus. The last interview in her life, given almost an hour before the murder to the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent, was also devoted to the Chechen problems.

http://eng.kavkaz.memo.ru/newstext/engnews/id/1078060.html

Via Jeremy Putley:

11 October 2006

The Editor
Financial Times
London

Sir

Putin admits journalist’s murder has hurt image of Russia, page 7 today

Whatever the motive for the assassination of the greatly respected Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, her death silences the bravest of the voices reporting on Chechnya in our times.

Your correspondent reporting today from Dresden quotes President Vladimir Putin as saying that Ms Politkovskaya had been well-known outside Russia, but that her influence in Russia itself had been small. That is a telling statement.

Anna Politkovskaya was a true Russian hero. In a decent country her stature would have been recognised. But in the Russian Federation the Hero of Russia medal is notably awarded to generals guilty of war crimes in Chechnya and to people like the brutal thug Ramzan Kadyrov, Mr Putin’s hand-picked prime minister in Chechnya.

Ms Politkovskaya’s memory is honoured abroad but barely acknowledged by her country’s leaders. Her funeral was well attended by representatives of foreign countries, including the British and US ambassadors, but no one of any rank from the Kremlin found it possible to attend.

Remarkably, none of her three books has been published in her own country, and the truth about the atrocities carried out, under the orders of the Russian leadership, by the armed forces in Chechnya, and the political repression there, is not widely known.

Russia truly needed a hero like Anna Politkovskaya.

Jeremy Putley

The Economist, on Russian fascism.

Via Prague Watchdog

Forum 2000 Honours Anna Politkovskaya

By Tomáš Vršovský

PRAGUE - A group of prominent intellectual leaders attending a conference in Prague held a moment of silence for the slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Monday.

The participants in the Forum 2000, an annual meeting of world renowned intellectuals, politicians, religious leaders and activists organized by former Czech President Václav Havel, did not ignore Saturday's contract murder of Politkovskaya in Moscow. The panel discussion "Human Rights Revisited" opened with French philosopher Andre Glucksman's harsh condemnation of the killing. "People who defend human rights in Russia are lone figures."

Russian economist and politician Grigory Yavlinsky said, "I wanted to speak about the developments in Russia, but after this incident I actually don't need to. We live in an authoritarian and corrupt system." He then added that Russia has entered a new stage in which "political opponents are murdered in the middle of Moscow in broad daylight." At his request the forum participants held a minute of silence to honor Politkovskaya.

Václav Havel welcomed the Forum’s mentioning Politkovskaya during the discussion. "We want friendship with Russia, but that requires openness, otherwise it would be a false friendship. Therefore, we should clearly remind the Russian leadership that there is no longer a Soviet Union; it's impossible to blackmail Georgia, wage war in Chechnya and exploit the Ukraine."

Forum 2000 was founded in 1996 as a joint initiative of Václav Havel, Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. Its aim is to identify the key issues facing civilization and to explore ways in which to prevent escalation of conflicts that have religion, culture or ethnicity as their primary components. It wants to provide a platform to discuss these topics openly and to enhance global dialogue. It also intends to promote democracy in non-democratic countries, support civil societies, respect human rights and allow for religious, cultural and ethnic tolerance in young democracies.

There are details of the Estamirov vs. Russia case at the Russian Justice Initiative website:

On 5 February 2000, five members of the Estamirov family were killed by Russian federal forces in a suburb of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, during a sweep operation several days after the federal forces had established control over the capital. The bodies were discovered the same day, burnt and with several gunshots, in the backyard of their own house by a relative. Toita Estamirova, eight months pregnant at the time, had several gunshots to her chest and abdomen. Toita’s one-year old child, Khasan, had gunshots to his head and leg.

Investigators at the scene of the crime collected numerous empty cartridges and observered tracks on the ground made by armed personnel carriers only used by Russian military forces. The investigation has established that the sweep operation was conducted by special police force units (OMON) from St. Petersburg and Ryazan. In spite of this, however, the Russian authorities have failed to hold anyone accountable for the crime.

The case was brought to the European Court by several members of the Estamirov family together with the British barrister Gareth Peirce and the organization Stichting Russian Justice Initiative. The applicants argue that their relatives’ right to life, guaranteed by Articles 2 of the European Convention for Human Rights, was violated. They also complain that they had no effective domestic remedies in respect of the above violations, contrary to Article 13.

Russian federal forces summarily executed at least sixty civilians in the suburbs of Grozny on 5 February 2000. Human rights organizations do not have any information indicating that anyone has been charged for these crimes.

The judgment in the case is expected on 12 October 2006.

Prague Watchdog has more on today's judgement and the outcome of the case.

There is an HRW account of the February 5 massacre in Novye Aldi here.

Via BBC:

A European court [the ECHR in Strasbourg] has ordered Russia to pay 277,000 euros (£150,000) in compensation to relatives of a Chechen family shot dead by Russian troops.

Human rights groups say they were innocent civilians executed by a paramilitary police unit.

The court found Russia guilty of violating the European Convention on Human Rights.

It said five members of the Estamirov family had been the victims of unlawful killing by the Russian state.

They had been found shot dead outside their home in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in February 2000, at the height of the second Chechen war.

Amongst the dead were a baby and a heavily pregnant woman.

RFE/RL also has a report.

On October 2, A Moscow district court refused to suspend the six-and-a-half year prison sentence imposed on former Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, who has two young children. Bakhmina's lawyers had asked for the sentenced to be deferred until her youngest child (now 5) reaches the age of 14.

Now Svetlana Bakhmina's lawyers have again appealed, gazeta.ru reports, citing legal irregularities in the case documents.

Svetlana Bakhmina herself denies all wrongdoing. The tax fraud charges against her are widely seen as politically motivated, like those against former Yukos executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who dared to challenge the Kremlin's authority.

On October 2, she said:

"I am innocent, but a question of even greater importance to me is when I will be able to see my children again," Bakhmina said. "I think the time I have spent at a detention center has already covered what can be qualified as guilt."

From Prague Watchdog (my tr.):

Grozny celebration in honour of Putin was “voluntary-compulsory”

By Umalt Chadayev

GROZNY, Chechnya – On October 7 a large rally took place in the centre of the Chechen capital involving the participation of thousands of people. The official authorities announced that those who took part were celebrating the Russian President’s birthday.

On Akhmat Kadyrov Prospect (formerly Victory Prospect) the rally participants, dressed in white, dark-blue and red T-shirts bearing an image of Putin’s face and the inscription “Happy Birthday”, performed the Russian national anthem. The words of the anthem were printed on the backs of the T-shirts.

The press service of the Moscow-backed Chechen government stated that the rally was arranged by the republic’s youth organizations. Representatives of the youth of neighbouring regions -– Daghestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Krasnodarsky Kray – were invited for the event.

In order to provide security for the young people taking part in the rally a large number of law-enforcement officers were mobilized. The central section of Grozny was cordoned off, and people had to pass through metal detectors in case anyone was carrying weapons or dangerous explosive objects. Here and there soldiers patrolled with dogs.

This event was given wide coverage in many media outlets. “On Saturday more than 60,000 people linked hands on Grozny’s Akhmat Kadyrov Square and sang the Russian national anthem,” the Internet publication Newsru.com reported. However, many of the rally participants say that their attendance at the event in honour of the Russian President was “voluntary but compulsory”.

“On Saturday I was in lectures at the university when they told us that the lectures were being postponed, and that we were not to go home. Then they made a list of our whole group and gave us all T-shirts with Putin’s face on them. Some students were given Russian flags. After that, we were taken in buses to Grozny, where this rally began. They warned us that if anyone left the rally they would be punished. Precisely how, no one explained,” says Zhabrail, a 20-year-old student at Chechen State University.

Other young people who took part in the rally say more or less the same thing. “We were taken to the rally straight from school. Also on specially chartered buses. We were given free T-shirts with Putin on them. Then we were formed up into a column and sent to Kadyrov Square. There we sang the national anthem, listened to some officials from the Committee on Youth Affairs and some other organizations, and then we went home. Many thought there would at least be a concert, but there was nothing. There was just a big public show, and that was it,” says Said, an 11th-grade student at one of the schools in Grozny’s Staropromyslovsky district.

“The leader kept shouting some kind of slogans, like ‘Putin is our President!’, then the microphone was turned our way for us to repeat these words, but there was no general response. Practically everyone preferred to keep silent. I personally can’t consider him my President, since my close family – my mother and two brothers – were killed by the war he unleashed here. And there are thousands like me here,” he said.

The young people also say that far fewer than the officially reported 60,000 or even 20,000 took part. “There were probably 5,000 or possibly 8-10,000, but no more. I mean, they were even bringing young folk to Grozny from the distant mountain villages. All this was put on in order to demonstrate the love of Chechen youth for the Russian President, but we know what Putin and his circle have done here,” Zhabrail considers.

“After the rally was over a lot of us just took off the Putin T-shirts and threw them away. It’s the officials who gather round the government feeding trough who love him and constantly demonstrate their devotion to him so they can keep their cosy armchairs. For the ordinary residents of Chechnya Putin is first and foremost the man who began the second bloody war here, who called for Chechens to be “wasted in the outhouse.” He is to blame for the fact that tens of thousands of our women, children and old people have perished. Putin is to blame for “Nord-Ost” and Beslan. We have nothing to thank him for. I regret that our local authorities have simply used us as extras in their show called “The Chechen People’s Love for Putin”, says the respondent.

Translated by David McDuff

The International Herald Tribune has an AP report on nationalist Internet hate sites in Russia. The 64-year-old human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina is top on a list of 89 targets who have been sentenced to death by a nationalist group which is “calling upon ‘patriots’ to take up arms and execute her and other friends of ‘alien’ peoples.”

Aaron Rhodes, the head of the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation for Human rights, is quoted as saying:

The climate is starting to resemble a fascist society where there is freedom to make money by friends of the rulers but critics and independent thinking are persecuted.

From the grins of Russian President Putin and German Chancellor Merkel at their meeting in the eastern German city of Dresden yesterday - the day of Anna Politkovskaya’s funeral at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow - one wouldn’t think they were much concerned about the journalist’s brutal murder. And certainly, where Putin is concerned, at least, one would probably be right. He spoke of the murder being “an abominable crime” - but the forced manner in which he altered his otherwise beaming facial expression in order to utter the words, suggested he though otherwise. He also made a revealing remark about how “[Politkovskaya’s] killing has damaged Russia’s reputation much more than her articles”, thereby showing that he does consider that her “articles” damaged Russia’s reputation, in spite of all his talk about how Politkovskaya’s influence on the country’s political life… was minimal.”

The Putin-Merkel talks were mostly about “economic ties” between Russian and Germany, with Merkel saying that she “trusted Russia as a reliable business partner”:

“It is important for me to have realized that we are acting on the same business principles as the Russian government in this cooperation,” Merkel said.

“We are currently working out a joint charter in which these principles will be enshrined. As a matter of fact, I’m not reluctant either to accept Russia’s increasing importance in the business world which is being reflected in the fact that Russian companies are buying themselves into European firms.”

The West’s muted response to Politkovskaya’s murder can in general be traced to the same concerns over security, energy and commerce, which were also evidenced by a similar lack of focused criticism of Russia’s outrageous behaviour during the Georgian crisis last week. In relation to Politkovskaya, only Finland’s prime minister Erkki Tuomioja had the courage to make a strong public statement which in addition to expressing profound sorrow and regret also called Putin’s role into question: “The fact that this kind of murder is possible challenges the credibility of the country’s government,” Tuomioja is quoted as saying. “Let’s see how willing and able Russian officials are to solve it … wherever the track leads.” Such forthrightness contrasts with Tuomioja’s performance during the recent Lebanon war - perhaps he feels the need to make amends at least on this issue.

Meanwhile, RFE/RL has been uncovering some of the layers of Putin’s psychological response to crises and disasters in Russia, which always seems to involve a long delay in making any public response at all. This contrasts, however, with his alacrity in responding to trouble elsewhere:

Putin has proven to be quick to react to crises in other countries. He was the first world leader to contact Bush after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

At home, however, he has frequently come under criticism for his inaction in the face of tragedy.

In August 2000, when the Kursk submarine sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea with 118 men on broad, Putin waited for five days before he broke a holiday on the Black Sea to comment publicly on the disaster.

In the meantime, he had found time to send birthday greetings to a well-known actress.

He was also criticized for his slow response to the seizure of a Moscow theater in October 2002 and the Beslan school siege in September 2004.

See also: (RFE/RL) Putin's Comments on Politkovskaya Anger Activists

Dear All,

A vigil for Anna Politkovskaya is to take place this evening between 6.30 and 7.30 pm outside the Russian embassy.

Participants are to gather opposite the Embassy on Notting Hill Gate and to move to the other side of Ossington Road, which is directly opposite the Embassy if numbers are significant. The nearest tube station is Notting Hill Gate.

The organisers have stressed that this is to be a quiet and dignified event and not intended as a protest or to any promote particular political or ideological agendas.

*Save Chechnya Campaign*

http://www.savechechnya.org

The Russian text of the long interview with Anna Politkovskaya by the Israeli journalist Natalya Mozgovaya - the original interview was made last winter - has been published on the InoPressa website. Veronica Khokhlova at Neeka's Backlog has already linked to the Live Journal text of Mozgovaya's interview, which appears to be identical. Excerpts from such a discursive, deeply personal, but at the same time absolutely relevant and topical text may be unsatisfactory. Yet there is one passage where Politkovskaya steps out beyond her role as a chronicler and historian of the Chechen conflict to talk about the Russian people as a whole. And this, I think, can be excerpted without loss (though this only my translation):

They say that the Russians have exactly the government they deserve.

Certainly. Because if tomorrow millions of Russians were to take to the streets with a protest against that same Fradkov, who doesn’t do anything – he wouldn’t be there. But there’s none of that. Yes, a part of people understands that this is Putin, and that it’s a path [put' = path in Russian] to nowhere, to a catastrophic degradation of the habits and the few rudiments of democracy that existed under Yeltsin, who was also a contradictory figure – but in those days the people spoke. But now I walk into some store, and without fail someone will approach: "Oh, Anya, we support you so much, we so understand what you’re doing" - but they always speak softly, almost in my ear. One could discuss for a long time why this has happened. But I think it’s because KGB officials have been placed in all the key positions. And the genetic memory of people is such that THIS can't be resisted. Unfortunately, the only people we have with the ability to resist and raise their voices are the National Bolsheviks. Not as Limonov supporters, but in principle – the glaringly nationalistic movements. The Russian fascists. They can get people together, and they possess this fearlessness... And that creates big problems for the democrats, because if the people are made to rise up - who will we get? It’s these folk that we’ll get. It’s not impossible that if people are made to rise up on some pretext, the result of that rising will the accession to power of such a type, that...

That it would be easier for you to reconcile yourself to what you consider to be the lesser evil?

Better the evil we know than the evil we don’t know? No, I don’t see it that way. But we must be honest. We mustn’t reconcile ourselves to the lesser evil, fearing that a greater evil may come. One must fight to the end.

RFE/RL has a transcript of Anna Politkovskaya’s last interview, given to RFE/RL just two days before her murder in Moscow by an unknown gunman. In it, she talks about Chechnya’s Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whose 30th birthday fell on the same date as the interview, October 5. Her remarks give the lie to the official Moscow line that life in Chechnya is returning to normal, that torture, abductions and kidnappings by Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen forces are a thing of the past. An excerpt:

I want to say here that there were more abductions in the first half of this year than in the first half of last year… And those are figures just of those people whose relatives reported abductions and whose bodies were never found. I’d like to call attention to the fact that we talk about “individual cases” only because these people aren’t our loved ones — it’s not my son, my brother, my husband. The photographs that I’m telling you about, these were bodies that had been horribly tortured. You can’t reduce this to a small percentage — it’s an enormous percentage.

Kadyrov is a Stalin of our times. This is true for the Chechen people. Many of our colleagues have gone out of their way to make us believe that this is a small percentage, that absolute evil can triumph today so that in some hypothetical future this evil can become good. This is absolutely not true.

As for the admiration felt for Kadyrov, you know, the situation is as it was under Stalin. If you [hear someone] speaking officially, publicly, openly, there is admiration. As soon as you [hear someone] speak secretly, softly, confidentially, you’re told: ‘We hate him intensely.’ This split is absolute in people’s souls. This is a very dangerous thing.

Read all of it.

Having for a time attempted (somewhat half-heartedly) to suggest to world opinion a twisted parallel between Russia's bloody suppression of Chechnya and Israel's fight to defend itself against Arab and Muslim aggression, President Putin has now switched to a different tack - he has sent pro-Moscow Chechen troops to Lebanon, to repair bridges and related infrastructure destroyed in the bombing. In the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick has an extended and perceptive analysis of the whole thing. (hat tip: grayp at lgf)

The Russian bear has awakened after 15 years of hibernation. Under the leadership of former KGB commander President Vladimir Putin, Russia is reasserting its traditional hostility towards Israel.

On Tuesday, Russian military engineers landed in Beirut. Their arrival signaled the first time that Russian forces have openly deployed in the Middle East. In the past Soviet forces in Syria and Egypt operated under the official cover of "military advisers." Today those "advisers" are "engineers." The Russian forces, which will officially number some 550 troops, are tasked with rebuilding a number of bridges that the IDF destroyed during the recent war. They will operate outside the command of UNIFIL.

Mosnews news service reported on Wednesday that the engineers will be protected by commando platoons from Russia's 42nd motorized rifle division permanently deployed in Chechnya. According to the report, these commando platoons are part of the Vostok and Zapad Battalions, both of which are commanded by Muslim officers who report directly to the main intelligence department of the Russian Army's General Staff in Moscow. The Vostok Battalion is commanded by Maj. Sulim Yamadayev, who Mosnews refers to as a "former rebel commander."

With the deployment of former Chechen rebels as Russian military commandos in Lebanon, the report this week exposing Russia's intelligence support for Hizbullah during the recent war takes on disturbing strategic significance. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, the Russian listening post on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights provided Hizbullah with a continuous supply of intelligence throughout the conflict.

Much still remains to be reported about the impressive intelligence capabilities that Hizbullah demonstrated this summer. But from what has already been made public, we know that Hizbullah's high degree of competence in electronic intelligence caused significant damage to IDF operations. Now we learn that Moscow stood behind at least one layer of Hizbullah's intelligence prowess.

Moscow's assistance to Hizbullah was not limited to intelligence sharing. The majority of IDF casualties in the fighting were caused by Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles that made their way to Hizbullah fighters through Syria. Indeed, as we learn more about Russia's role, it appears that Russia's support for Hizbullah may well have been as significant as Syria's support for the terror organization. And now we have Chechens in Lebanon.

Read it all.

Lithuanian prime minster Gediminas Kirkilas has confirmed that Lithuania has expelled a highly-placed Russian diplomat for espionage, gazeta.ru reports. The diplomat was accused of having “tried to influence the position of Lithuania’s representatives in the matter of the resolution of the Russian-Georgian conflict”.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has announced that Georgia will not accept more cargo planes of deportees from Russia. Another cargo planeload of 100 people is expected to leave Moscow for Tbilisi today:

“If the Russian authorities do not provide normal, passenger planes for our citizens, Georgia will not receive their cargo planes any more,” he added.

But spokesman of the Russian migration service Konstantin Poltoranin told Interfax news agency on October 9 that transportation of deportees with cargo plane Il-76 is not a violation of their rights.

(Civil Georgia)

Via Stratfor:

Reports spread Oct. 9 that North Korea tested a nuclear device in the eastern part of North Hamgyong province at 10:35 a.m. local time. China has indicated it did detect a small underground test, although the South Korean military has not raised its alert level. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government has confirmed there has been seismic activity from North Korea, although he has not received reports on its magnitude.

The U.S. Geological Survey detected a 4.2 tremor in North Korea, which is smaller than expected and not big enough to make North Korea an unequivocal nuclear power.

If a test did occur, the most immediate U.S. response will likely be a strong condemnation and a call for a U.N. mandate for sanctions. If there is no U.S. military response, Pyongyang will see that as an acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power.

Many questions remain, however. Even if this were a nuclear test, it is not clear that it was a weapon rather than a device. A nuclear device produces an in-place blast from a mechanism of indeterminate size and structure. A weapon can be fitted on a missile or on an aircraft, and is therefore highly compact and ruggedized.

China's response will be hesitant. China does not seem ready to cut off food or fuel to North Korea, particularly before winter sets in. Beijing has deployed additional troops to the border, but that is to seal the frontier. Beijing will be angry, but its primary concern is to keep the North Korean people from spilling across the border into northeast China.

South Korea will, of course, suspend cooperation in Kaesong and Kumkang and will probably put its forces on alert. With the drawdown of U.S. troops in South Korea, the South Korean army is now the border patrol. U.S. military units remaining will have to go on heightened alert and rush Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries to the peninsula. South Korea could deploy high-level officials to North Korea

Japan will work for U.N. for sanctions and Chapter 7 invocation. Japan also will heighten its military posture and increase diplomacy with China and South Korea in an attempt to show a united front against North Korea

North Korea will go on high alert nationwide. The military will assume a high-readiness posture, and the North Koreans will proclaim their entry into the nuclear club, using sanctions to tighten control and rally domestic backing. Pyongyang might quickly invite the International Atomic Energy Agency in to make its nuclear status "legitimate." It will petition international bodies to accept the new reality.

In any event, North Korea will view the test as a victory. It will mark the acceptance of the government as a nuclear state. Further negotiations will have to take place under this new reality. North Korea cannot be isolated forever. North Korea has bet that anything less than a complete military invasion is a capitulation. Pyongyang will press for acceptance, similar to Pakistan. China and South Korea will be key; both desperately want to avoid any military action. They will end up negotiating with North Korea, finding a way to make the North comply with international regulations.

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Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.

By Tomáš Vršovský

via Prague Watchdog

October 8, 2006



PRAGUE - I was with a British academician and human rights practitioner yesterday afternoon, discussing the price that human rights activists pay for their vocation when a friend of mine called to announce, "They killed Politkovskaya".

The contract murder of a top Russian investigative journalist, who covered the Chechnya conflict and developments in the Northern Caucasus, took place on President Putin’s 54th birthday. This is rather symbolic in that it was Putin who at the turn of the century launched, along with the war in Chechnya, a campaign against the free media.

Anna, however, was not afraid of him. Last month I happened to talk with her about the threats she faced in the past, asking whether they had stopped. "Not at all. I'm still being threatened. I've just stopped talking publicly about them." As to where did they come from, she said, "Chechnya," adding that they come from Ramzan Kadyrov and his people. "It’s best that I not think about them, otherwise I would go crazy."

In the past couple of years, Anna devoted her life to bring at least a bit of justice to the victims of murders, abductions, and torture - areas where the state not only fails to protect its citizens, but itself becomes the implementer of terror.

"Every day I receive three to five letters from Chechnya from people asking me for help. And I have to dispassionately select which are to be used in my reports and which must be ignored. It's terrible, but it's something I can't do anything about."

Sadly, Anna has paid the ultimate price for her job. This courageous woman, by telling the truth, induced fear in the powers-that-be. It’s a lesson that especially Russian journalists should take to heart.

In the sadness and shock of Anna Politkovskaya's terrible murder, it may be timely to remember something she wrote in one of her Chechnya war dispatches, first published in 2002:

"We are a nation of outcasts. And whoever is with us is an outcast," says Dr. Khajiev as a farewell.
----
Because Chechnya is a zone where some people can do what they want, and the others have to accept it.

Russia continues to nurture an enclave where citizens' rights don't exist. It's a very dangerous business. If only the world could see the eyes of Aishat Suleimanova's son! The gaze of a hunted outcast. His father was killed only because he was an outcast, and whose mother was disfigured for the same reason. At the beginning of the war, most Chechens were still surprised by their new situation and yelled, "We're people just like you! We demand respect!" But now no one yells. Because everyone agrees: they are a nation of outcasts.

(A Small Corner of Hell. Dispatches from Chechnya, translated by Alexander Burry and Tatiana Tulchinsky, p. 88)

One or two recent notable press items on events in Georgia and Russia:

In the International Herald Tribune on Thursday, Georgia’s prime minister Zurab Nogaideli gave an account of her government’s approach to the spying crisis, and had this to say about his reaction to it:

Viewed from Tbilisi, Russia’s strategy is to depress and disembody a small nation that seeks to be free, that desires justice for its forcibly displaced citizens and that wants to instill democracy in a country that was for too long subjugated to another state and another ideology. We are a European nation that seeks to end our process of decolonization and become fully democratic. We remain mystified as to why Russia seems to perceive a threat from a small democracy on its border.

Georgia remains a work in progress. In three years, we have put an end to the rampant corruption and gangster politics that bedeviled our citizens for over a decade. Last month, the World Bank praised Georgia as the least corrupt transitional democracy. We are improving our system of justice. We are in a rush to make our prisons more European and less Soviet. We have cut through the bureaucracy that stifled private initiative and encouraged the black market, introducing reforms that have fueled economic growth. We are appealing for help to make our frontiers more secure so that people and weapons never pass illegally through our territory to other European destinations.

We are all too aware of what we still need to achieve. Our task is made harder by the fact that Russia’s leaders do not seem to share our aspirations for our citizens - or for their own. We regret this because what we wish for all Georgians, we also wish for all Russians. It is in our common interest. It is a necessity for the region and it is vital for a European Union whose security is now contingent on peace in our region.

We can no longer allow the global challenges of terrorism, energy insecurity and poverty to be reduced to pawns in a diplomatic game.

We have chosen a European path for our country. We seek European and international help to consolidate our democracy, secure our borders and foster peaceful conflict resolution that will benefit Georgia, Russia and our European partners.

The Guardian Weekly looks at Russia’s New Racism. An excerpt:

Few people [in Russia] express much concern about racist murders or the neo-Nazi craze. If we are to believe the Russian press, “fascism is in vogue”. The celebrity magazine Caravan recently put a picture of singer Irina Allegrova in SS uniform on its front page and apparently no one objected. In August Russian Newsweek ran a feature on “underground fascist culture”, embodied among others by Tesak (a nickname that means big knife), who produces sickeningly violent video-clips. Newsweek described him as the “Leni Riefenstahl of Russian Nazis”.

Among the videos on Tesak’s website is one showing the (fictitious) hanging of a “Tajik drug dealer” by hooded thugs, who then cut up the corpse and burn it. Under the heading “Do something practical” the site offers a pro-forma letter for budding informers, encouraging those spotting an illegal on their block to tell the police.

Dmitri Demushkin is one of Russia’s neo-Nazi ideologists. His own movement, the Slavic Union, has almost 5,000 members in the Moscow area alone. Thirtyish, with frizzy hair, suit and tie, he does not fit the skinhead stereotype, presenting himself as a “consultant for the presidential administration”. However, his flat has been raided twice in recent months and he has been denied a permit to organise concerts. Otherwise he is unruffled, claiming that “instructions have been issued at the highest level that I should not be disturbed”. He adds that he has “sympathisers all over the place, at the Kremlin and the Central Bank, at Rosoboronexport [which handles arms sales] and the FSB [the KGB’s successor], with the public prosecutor and the police”. He even has supporters in the Russian Orthodox church.

He is sure “national-socialist ideas will triumph in Russia”. He likens Russia now to the Weimar Republic. Demushkin maintains that “increasing numbers of young people think highly of Adolf Hitler”. Events such as the Kondopoga pogrom “are certain to recur. Lots of groups are working on it”, adding: “We were the ones that started it. Ordinary people support us. The authorities will have to accept our ideas or go.”

Nevertheless it seems ironic that far-right ideas should enjoy such widespread success in a country that paid so high a price - 27 million dead - in the war against fascism. “Many people do not connect these ideas with the Nazis and there are plenty more who don’t think Hitler did anything wrong, apart from attacking Russia,” says Alexander Verkhovski of the Sova NGO, which studies xenophobia. Nor is the craze for Nazi symbols a recent thing, he points out. A popular TV drama at the end of the 1970s, 17 Moments of Spring, told the story of a Soviet spy, Stirlitz, working undercover for the Nazis. His Waffen-SS uniform looked so smart it started a craze. Verkhovski recalls: “In school playgrounds all the kids would play at being Stirlitz, doing Nazi salutes.”

In Eurasia Daily Monitor, Igor Torbakov examines the international implications of the Georgia crisis, and comments:

…the significance of the Russian-Georgian spat goes far beyond the limits of the South Caucasus, thus making it a truly international problem.

First, it is widely accepted in Moscow that the United States sees Georgia as a geopolitically pivotal state and strategic partner. Thus the Kremlin believes that Tbilisi would never risk antagonizing its powerful northern neighbor without an encouraging nod from Washington. As a result, U.S.-Russian relations, already fragile, have deteriorated even further at a time when Washington badly needs Russian support in dealing with the nuclear defiance of North Korea and Iran as well as in the fight against the global jihadist networks.

“It is time to put aside the traditional hypocrisy and accept that what has developed around Georgia is a sort of mini Cold War,” one Russian liberal commentator asserts. Some Russian and international analysts warn about the danger of using Georgia as a playground in a zero-sum game between the world’s great powers. The problem is, they say, the big-time international actors risk ending up hostage to the weaker players. The latter are usually seen as the great powers’ proxies, but in fact they are sometimes quite good at playing the “big guys” off one another to pursue their own strategic ends.

Second, it is clear that Tbilisi’s urge to break up the Russia-supported status quo regarding the “frozen conflicts” is prompted by the approaching deadline to determine the status of Kosovo. As the likely outcome for the Serbian province is some sort of independence, the Saakashvili government is racing against time, fearing that Georgia’s breakaway regions may be lost forever following the international contact group’s decision.

While the West has always argued that Kosovo is a unique case, Russia has been pressing for the universality of the Kosovo model. But on October 4, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, acknowledged that Kosovo’s quest for independence could have a negative effect on Georgia’s territorial integrity, conceding it would set a “precedent.” He also said that, during a recent phone conversation, the Georgian president had confessed to “tremendous worry” about the possible consequences that the ongoing UN-sponsored Kosovo status talks could have for Georgia. “We are trapped here,” Solana told the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “President Saakashvili is trapped, all of us are trapped in a double mechanism that may have good consequences for one, but not for the other.”

The way this tricky knot is untied will seriously affect Russia-West relations. “The simultaneous exacerbation of the situation in Kosovo and the unrecognized regions in Georgia,” one Russian commentary argues, “will have reciprocal effects, threatening to destabilize the situation in both cases.”

Although not all the votes have yet been counted, it’s by now clear that President Saakashvili has won a resounding victory in the Georgian local elections, which have in general been hailed as free and fair by international observers. In Tbilisi his National Movement took 66 per cent of the votes, and predictions nationwide are for a similar margin of victory. RFE/RL’s Robert Parsons has an analysis of the significance of the result, commenting

For Saakashvili, it’s a satisfying response to the attempts of the Russian government this week to drive a wedge between his government and the Georgian people.

Via Civil Georgia:

Mikhail Kasyanov, leader of Russia's Peoples Democratic Union and former Prime Minister who has publicly stated his presidential ambitions, has condemned the actions of the Russian authorities regarding Georgia.

A statement issued by Kasyanov reads:

"The actions of the Russian leadership, which called upon the UN Security Council for the resolution of an incident that occurred in relation to Georgia and which made the decision to implement informal sanctions against the Georgian people, are unworthy of the status of a Great Power. This policy can not be justified by the incorrect, and at times provocative, actions of the Georgian leadership.

The ongoing campaign of discrimination not only against the people of the neighboring state, but also against [Russian] citizens of Geogian nationality, have led to the violation of the Constitution, which directly forbids the limitation of citizens' rights based on ethnicity. We have to admit that Russia's first presidency in the G-8 would be marked not only by gas scandals, but also by chauvinist hysteria."

In the Georgian municipal elections, President Saakashvili’s ruling National Movement party has done well in the capital,Tbilisi. Via Civil Georgia:

With all votes already counted in Tbilisi, official results give President Saakashvili’s National Movement party 34 seats out of 37 in the capital city’s council (Sakrebulo).

The remaining seats will be distributed among parties that received at least 4% of the total votes;however, in practice this provision might be invalid. According to the rule on the distribution of seats among the parties, garnering more than 4% does not automatically guarantee that the party will have a seat in the Sakrebulo.

The ruling National Movement party got a total of 66,42% of votes in Tbilisi’s ten constituencies, followed by a coalition of the Republican and Conservative opposition parties with 12% of votes.

More signs that the Russian government under Vladimir Putin is increasingly moving towards social policies that involve repression of a kind not seen in Europe since the Nazi era. Kommersant reports that the Russian authorities are now asking schools to compile lists of children with Georgian names, so that “checks” can be carried out on the status of their parents.

Regional police departments sent telephonograms to some of Moscow schools, asking to provide a list of pupils with Georgian last names. After receiving the list, police officers are to check the parents of these children – whether they are registered in Moscow, where they live in fact, what they do, and whether they pay taxes. According to the law “About general education in the city of Moscow”, children without registration in Moscow have the right for education in Moscow’s schools as well. Thus, the easiest way to find Georgians is through their children.

“The initiative is coming from the Internal Affairs Ministry,” a high-placed source in law-enforcement bodies told Kommersant. “Last week, every regional police department received a code telegram demanding to discover illegal migrants from Georgia living in Russia.” The source added that “the easiest way to do it is through the children who go to school no matter if their parents are registered in Moscow or pay taxes.” Several ways to discover illegal migrants were prepared. “Police officers were supposed to come to schools and talk to principals. However, minor police departments flaked on and only sent telephonograms to schools, due to which the story became public,” the source said. Thus, police officers might be expected soon to those schools which received no telephonogram.

School principals try to keep back the fact that they have received some instructions from police departments. Kommersant correspondents telephoned nearly 50 schools of Moscow. However, only a few confirmed that the check is going on. When school #658 was asked about the telephonogram from the police, they replied “there was something like that”.

RFE/RL commentator Ahto Lobjakas notes that “Officials in Brussels are taking a markedly critical line toward Georgia in their analyses of the country’s most recent flare-up of tensions with Russia.”

Although the EU has urged Russia to lift its blockade of Georgia, the EU’s special representative for the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, said the current crisis is the “culmination” of a long process of escalation.

At the root of the troubles between Georgia and Russia lie the “frozen conflicts” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And while the EU is critical of Russia’s lack of constructive engagement, Georgia’s role is coming under sharper scrutiny.

Today, Semneby told the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that while the EU “keeps sending messages” to Georgia that the conflicts can only be resolved peacefully, Tbilisi appears to be paying little heed when it comes to creating the necessary conditions for moving forward.

“In addition to that, in order to create the conditions for resolving the conflicts by peaceful means, the rhetoric that has been at some points fairly sharp on the part of some Georgian officials will have to be toned down and will have instead to be replaced by confidence-building measures of various kinds to create the conditions for a real dialogue between Georgians and Ossetians and [the] Abkhaz,” Semneby said.

As an illustration of the rhetoric he has in mind, Semneby said massive international pressure headed by EU foreign-policy coordinator Javier Solana was needed to “moderate” the speech Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili gave to the UN General Assembly in New York in September. As a result of the pressure, Saakashvili decided against publicly laying down “timelines” for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Semneby today acknowledged as “legitimate” Georgia’s attempts to replace Russian peacekeepers in the separatist regions with international forces, and to change the format of peace talks — which are perceived by some to be tilted against Tbilisi.

But, Semneby said, the Georgian approach contains “serious weaknesses.” He said it has been presented in ways that are “unnecessarily provocative” toward Russia. The Georgian plans also do not address the need to “build confidence,” nor has there been a commitment to withhold from using force, nor any clear indications as to how Tbilisi would deal with the “security vacuum” that would result from a sudden withdrawal of peacekeepers.

Semneby noted that Georgia’s peace plans for both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, unveiled last year and early this year, respectively, have stalled. The reason, according to Semneby, is the removal of the “relatively moderate” Georgian chief negotiators.

The EU special representative also warned of further dangers.

“It has to be said that the conflict potential in the Caucasus is far from exhausted,” Semneby said. “Indeed, there are several other large minorities in Georgia, which means that as long as prosperity has not been more evenly distributed within Georgia, the country contains potential for further conflicts.”

Semneby noted that a greater focus on minority issues within Georgia itself would also send a strong and useful “message of reassurance” to the populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Semneby warned today that what he called a “critical juncture” is fast approaching with the scheduled renewal of the UNOMIG peacekeeping force in Abkhazia. He said the force is dependent on a Russian-dominated local operation for security, which Russia may choose to discontinue. Semneby said both Russia and Georgia appear to have difficult demands. Russia wants Georgia to remove its forces from the upper Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia presently controlled by the Georgian government. Georgia, in turn, wants the UN mission to include a police component and human rights monitors in Georgian-populated southern Abkhazia.

Semneby today reiterated that the EU rejects attempts to link the future of the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo with those of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He said the circumstances differed to make the cases “unique.” However, Semneby also confirmed the EU would not send peacekeepers to either breakaway Georgian region, nor press for observer status during their peace talks. He said EU assistance is going to remain limited to assisting “confidence building,” rehabilitation of areas that have suffered from conflict, and refugee return and aid to internally displaced persons.

The relative absence of any criticism of Russia in Semneby’s remarks today may be explained by the fact that his remit only covers the South Caucasus.

Most European deputies in Semneby’s audience, on the other hand, where not as reticent. Charles Tannock, speaking for the right-wing European People’s Party faction, attacked Russia’s practice of handing out its citizenship to Abkhaz and South Ossetian populations. He noted that as the EU has agreed to ease its visa rules for Russians, this could result in a “paradox” in which Georgians could find it more difficult to visit the EU than Abkhaz or South Ossetians carrying Russian passports.

Accordingly, Tannock said, the EU should withhold recognition of such Russian passports.

“I am suggesting that one way forward might be that we would not recognize those passports as having the same validity as those Russian passport holders who are resident in the territory of the Russian Federation,” Tannock said. “Somehow we need to prevent these Russian citizens, or these so-called Russian citizens living on the ‘frozen conflict’ territories from enjoying privileges which werenot intended for them but were intended for the Russians who actually reside in Russia proper.”

Reuters reports that Russia has deported 143 ethnic Georgians, who were put aboard a plane bound for Tbilisi today by federal police after being rounded up in raids and accused of illegal immigration.

The Jerusalem Post reports on a plot to kidnap and murder dozens of Czech Jews in Prague which has now been foiled by Czech intelligence. The revelations came in the newspaper Mladá Fronta Dnes.

Muslim extremists affiliated with an unnamed group planned to abduct Jewish residents of Prague and hold them hostage in one of the city's synagogues and stage negotiations with local authorities.

However, the group never intended to release the hostages. Rather, the kidnappers planned to make unrealistic demands, and then, when their demands went unmet, blow up the building and its occupants.

The report did not mention whether any suspects in the plot had been arrested.

Two weeks ago, the Czech government raised the level of alert and increased security at a number of locations, but did not specify why.

See also: Terror Alert in Prague
Terror Alert in Prague - II
Oslo-Prague Link
Oslo-Prague Link - II

Update: It seems that the terror plot is global. Mark Regev, Israel's foreign minister, has issued a statement (JP):

"The Foreign Ministry is aware of attempts by Muslim extremist groups to carry out attacks on Israeli representatives and Jewish communities throughout the world and is taking all the necessary steps in order to prevent them," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told Army Radio on Friday.

Reuters has more here.

Carl Bildt, who was leader of Sweden’s centre-right Moderaterna party from 1986-1999 and Swedish prime minister from 1991-1994, is to be the new foreign minister in the recently elected centre-right government of Fredrik Reinfeldt, Dagens Nyheter reports.

As the DN article states, “over the years Bildt has built up a solid international network of contacts and has held several top international posts, including that of chief EU negotiator in the Balkans during the 1990s. He has extensive contacts with leading politicians in Europe, the US and the Former Soviet Union.”

Other appointments in Fredrik Reinfeldt’s government include Beatrice Ask (Justice Minister), Sven Otto Littorin (Labour Minister), and Anders Borg (Finance Minister).

Carl Bildt’s weblog is here.

Items in today’s AIA Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review:

Russia urges Belarus to end visa-free travel for Georgians

Georgia protests against FSB-backed gangs vandalizing its Moscow Embassy

Russian President fires Karelian FSB and police chiefs

Former chief of district department of Ichkeria’s security service surrendered in Chechnya

FSB active in stepping up efforts to persuade militants to surrender in Ingushetia

United States Secret Service, Russian federal agencies join forces against financial crimes

Russia’s FSB chief interviewed by Moscow weekly

Russian Federal Security Service employee killed in Dagestan

Moscow court extends arrest of research centre head for one more month

Belarus KGB overlooks local fascists

The SIS agent and the KGB: a book on clandestine meetings in dead of night

Three presidential runners in Bulgaria with secret service past

New Romanian intelligence chiefs officially sworn in

Deal with Romania’s Hungarian party allegedly helped to achieve approval of intelligence agencies heads

By June of this year, the Sova Information and Analysis Centre in Moscow estimated that 18 people had been killed and over 100 injured as a result of racially motivated crimes in the Russian Federation, many of which involved nationalist-organized attacks on foreigners.

In September, Russian nationalist race riots directed against Caucasus migrants in the Karelian locality of Kondopoga led to widespread destruction of property and businesses.

Now the Moscow Times writes about the effects of the Russian government’s anti-Georgian policy, which targets ethnic Georgians and makes them liable to arrest and officially authorized harassment.

Georgians working at marketplaces and construction sites have been subjected to increased harassment by police in the past few days, national newspapers reported.

Those reports were backed up by a Georgian florist near Belorussky Station. The florist, who would only give her first name, Nino, said she had heard from friends and relatives who work at open-air markets of police harassment. She added that she expected police to raid vendors’ stalls near Belorussky in the near future.

And two Georgian women selling tea and coffee at Timiryazevsky market said they had heard of other raids and detentions of Georgians working at the Cherkizovsky and Lianozovsky markets. The women, who would only give their first names, Marina and Yekaterina, for fear of being deported, added that they had not been harassed themselves.

Also on Wednesday, the Georgian professional arm wrestler Georgy Kvichiani was killed by skinheads in Moscow, Georgian media reported. The reports remain unconfirmed.

“The state is legitimizing xenophobia and discrimination,” said Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the Sova Center, which monitors hate crimes. Kozhevnikova predicted an eruption in the number of assaults on natives of the Caucasus.

The European Union’s indecision in the face of Russian pressure on the Kosovo independence issue is plainly showing itself, now that the Georgian crisis has come to a head. Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy,  has now acknowledged that Kosovo’s campaign for independence could set a precedent for Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, RFE/RL reports.

The tone and manner of Solana’s comments do not give much ground for optimism:

“We are trapped here,” he said. “President Saakashvili is trapped, all of us are trapped in a double mechanism that may have good consequences for one, but not for the other. It may not be a win-win situation — although we should be able to look [for] and find a win-win solution. But it will not be easy.”

Estonian president-elect Toomas Hendrik Ilves has backed up the Georgian government’s request for EU peacekeepers to be sent to Georgia, but a number of other European states, mainly France, Italy and Germany, are afraid of antagonizing Russia. Solana’s further remarks are again not encouraging:

Solana noted that sending EU peacekeepers might not be “the best solution” for Georgia in any case. “I mean, for the moment, we have to see what is the best solution for the security of Georgia,” he said. “[It] may not be peacekeepers, [it] may be something different. But I think to begin committing European peacekeepers there is something that I would not do at this moment. I said what I told you, I told him [Saakashvili].”

The EU foreign-policy chief did not specify what alternative solutions he might have in mind. He did say the EU would continue talking to both Moscow and Tbilisi about the crisis, in a bid to restore confidence.

Meanwhile, Moscow will continue to take maximum advantage of the EU’s hesitation and confusion with regard to this crucial issue.

A conflict we urgently need to resolve.

Via Prague Watchdog (October 4, my tr.):

Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday to be celebrated in Chechnya under tightened security

By Umalt Chadayev

CHECHNYA – On October 5 the 30th birthday of Chechen Premier Ramzan Kadyrov will be celebrated. Various mass events and a festive concert, which will be held in Gudermes, the republic’s second largest city, are planned for the occasion.

An officer in the Chechen law enforcement agencies says that the Chechen Interior Ministry police have been placed on high alert in preparation for the day. According to him there is a high probability that guerrillas may attempt to carry out a number of attacks during the events.

“The plans for October 5 include the opening of Grozny’s ‘Severnyy’ airport, the inauguration of the House of the Press, the holding of a large concert in the city of Gudermes and other special events in honour of Ramzan Kadyrov’s 30th birthday. It’s highly probable that the leaders of bandit formations will try to carry out some attacks and acts of terrorism and sabotage in order to destabilize the situation,” he says.

“So the police have been placed on high alert. Additional security is being provided at locations of strategic importance. Tomorrow there will be restrictions on the movement of motor traffic in Grozny, and other measures aimed at protecting the safety of the public have also been taken,” the police officer said.

According to the Chechen constitution adopted in 2003 during the presidency of Ramzan’s father, Akhmat Kadyrov (who was killed in an explosion at Grozny’s Dinamo Stadium on May 9 2004), on reaching the age of 30 a citizen of the republic becomes eligible to be chosen president of Chechnya.

Today there are few in Chechnya who doubt that sooner or later Ramzan Kadyrov will assume the republic’s presidency – if not in the immediate, then in the foreseeable future. But for the time being it is his 30th birthday that is about to be celebrated on a lavish scale.

Translated by David McDuff.

More, this time from MosNews, on the Haaretz and Jane’s Defence Weekly reports on Russo-Syrian aid to Hizballah during the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict:

Syria’s centrality to the collection and transfer of intelligence to Hezbollah is based on separate agreements Damascus signed with Moscow and Tehran on intelligence cooperation.

The agreement with Russia is much older than the one with Iran, which was signed earlier this year.

As happened with the significant numbers of advanced Russian anti-tank missiles procured by Syria and transferred to Hezbollah, Russia found itself operating indirectly in favor of the Lebanese Shi’ite organization in matters of intelligence.

In addition to the profits from arms sales to Syria, the Russo-Syrian intelligence cooperation benefits Moscow in terms of the actual first-hand data collected by the listening posts.

Russia is also involved in assisting Syria to enlarge two of its ports on the Mediterranean, Latakia and Tartus. Reports of this development have emerged only recently.

See also: Russia May Relocate Warships to Syria

Russia and Syria

Russian Intelligence Helped Hizballah

In EDM, defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer considers that Moscow is so desperate for regime change in Tbilisi that it will resort to almost any measures in order to achieve this:

After 9/11 Putin declared himself an ally of the United States and the West in the “War on Terror.” In return, the Kremlin had expected that the post-Soviet space encompassing the Commonwealth of Independent States would be recognized as its undisputed sphere of influence, where Russia could do anything it wishes without any “third party” interfering. The West has never formally or informally recognized such a “sphere” and the Kremlin, together with the Russian military/security/foreign policy elite, has interpreted this as a clear sign of ill intent.

The mirage of a new Russian-led union to replace the old Soviet one has obsessed the Kremlin since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The ruling elite in Moscow today is split between those who want to recreate the Soviet Union per se and “reformers” who want a new, remodeled Soviet Union (or “Imperial Russia”) with a thriving market economy and a newly armed, professional military imposing itself on its neighbors. As Putin told the country in August 2000, after the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine, “We will overcome it all and restore it all, the military and the navy and the state” (RTR TV, AP, August 24, 2000).

Today the Kremlin seems to feel itself strong enough, thanks to billions of petro-dollars, to enforce its sovereignty on former Soviet republics. Georgia, a small, impoverished country, riddled with separatist problems, may seem to be a good showcase to install a pro-Moscow regime and at the same time kick out the United States, the West, and NATO.

Moscow’s blockade of Georgia will continue and may get worse. Russian officials have threatened to begin mass repatriation of Georgians living in Russia. Hopes have been expressed that the thousands of refugees ethnically cleansed from Russia will, when arriving in Tbilisi, be “more well-disposed toward Moscow” and will overthrow Saakashvili (Strana.ru, October 3).

If the noose of sanctions and pressure fails to achieve regime change, direct military action is possible. The first sortie could be by proxy, using armed separatists supported by “North Caucasian volunteers.” If the proxy forces fail, the regular Russian military could become involved.

From Civil Georgia:

Activists and leaders from the opposition political parties Republicans, Conservatives and Industrialists, joined by some of the local civil society groups held a protest rally outside the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi on October 4.

Protesters said that the rally was a demonstration of “the Georgian society’s unity” against the background of Russia’s mounting pressure on Georgia.

From RFE/RL:

Russia Puts Pressure On Georgia In UN

October 4, 2006 — Russia’s UN ambassador has submitted a draft resolution to the Security Council linking the future of a UN observer mission in Georgia with demands that Tbilisi stop “provocative actions” over the breakaway Abkhazia region.

The UN has had observers in Georgia since 1993 monitoring a cease-fire between Georgia and Abkhazia.

The mission’s mandate expires on October 15.

The move comes amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi, triggered when Georgia arrested four Russian officers last week and accused them of spying.

Georgia released the four on October 3, but Russia has severed all travel links with Georgia in retaliation.

(AFP, AP)

Russia Carrying Out Sweeping Checks On Georgians

October 4, 2006 — Russian authorities are carrying out sweeping checks on Georgian-linked businesses and Georgians living in Russia, according to local media.

The checks came as Russia severed all transport and postal links with Georgia amid a spying row.

On October 2, Georgia handed back four Russian soldiers accused of spying, but Russia is nevertheless proceeding with the sanctions.

MORE: Coverage in Georgian from RFE/RL’s Georgian Service and in Russian from RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Andrei Kokoshin, the head of the Duma’s CIS Relations Committee, said the lower house of parliament today will pass a statement denouncing the Georgian government’s “anti-Russian” policies.

“[The statement] expresses concern over [Georgia’s] policy of violating human rights and basic democratic freedoms and, of course, the provocative actions against Russian peacekeepers and military personnel,” Kokoshin said.

The Russian parliament is also expected to pass a bill that could ban Georgians working in Russia from wiring money home.

Russia says hundreds of millions of dollars are transferred from Russia to Georgia each year.

(compiled from agency reports)

Russia Warns Georgia Against Blackmail

October 4, 2006 — President Vladimir Putin said today no country, specifically Georgia, should be allowed to use the “language of provocations and blackmail” against Russia.

Putin discussed with lawmakers the arrest last week of four Russian soldiers on spying charges.

The lower house of parliament is expected later today to pass a tough-worded statement denouncing the Georgian government’s policies.

Despite the soldiers’ release on October 2, Russia severed all transport and postal links with Georgia.

Police, meanwhile began sweeping checks on Georgian-linked businesses and Georgians living in Russia.

Authorities closed a Georgian-owned casino in Moscow and raided several other businesses, and said they uncovered a large number of fake visas for Georgian immigrants.

Also, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said today the Russian Navy will continue a training exercise in the Black Sea, ignoring complaints from Georgia.

Ivanov, on a visit to Kyrgyzstan, said Russia would not change its plans “every time [President Mikheil] Saakashvili’s regime sneezes.”

Georgia has called the Russian exercises a threat to security and a breach of the United Nations charter.

(compiled from agency reports)

Observing the development of the crisis in relations between Moscow and Tbilisi, it’s possible to come to the conclusion that this was a crisis deliberately sparked by the Russian government for two main reasons: in order to create a diversion from the negative global publicity it has received in connection with its energy policy and the Sakhalin 2 project, and in order to demonstrate the new “independent” foreign policy recently outlined by foreign minister Lavrov - a policy principally aimed at challenging U.S. and Western interests around the world.

It has been instructive to watch the cynicism with which Russian government spokesmen and policymakers have formulated and packaged the Georgia crisis, in their attempts to present it as a kind of “mirror-image” of the Israel-Lebanon conflict, complete with captured soldiers, closing of borders, accusations of state terrorism, statements at the United Nations, and more - there is also a dash of mockery of the U.S. position on Iran, with "sanctions" wrapped up in self-righteous rhetoric, to make these crude collective punishments look respectable. Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin’s chief adviser on matters of state propaganda, made it clear that Moscow was not going to expose itself to the kind of criticism experienced by Israel for its use of force against Hizballah in Lebanon, remarking that “Moscow will not go into the Caucasus…like a mousetrap.” The cynicism in the comparison, as in the accusations of “Stalinism”, “banditry” and “state terrorism” levelled at the Georgian government by Putin, lies of course in the fact that in this situation, as usual, Moscow is the aggressor, and also the purveyor of state terror.

In fact, the Israel-Lebanon analogy Russia so keenly seeks to establish may, if inverted from its original form, be useful as an aid to understanding exactly where Moscow has set its sights for the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century, and beyond. As Paul Goble recently pointed out, Russia is at a turning-point, and with the Georgian crisis the point may already have been turned: Moscow is aligning itself once again with the world’s despots and aggressors, forming alliances with forces that seek to destabilize the world economy and global security: Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and even North Korea. This path of realignment really began quite a long time ago, with the supposed ending of the Cold War and the deliberate decision by the Soviet elites to dissolve the Soviet Union. That decision, with its release of forces that had previously been contained by the mechanisms of Soviet power and influence, in particular the forces of radical Islam, led directly to September 11.

It’s in the continuation of this new form of the anti-Western, anti-U.S. axis once represented by the Soviet Union that Russia seeks its future goals and orientation. It might be as well for the West to realize this before too long. And indeed, Vice President Cheney’s remarks at the 2006 Vilnius Conference, with their invocation of the spirit of the Baltic States, of Sakharov, Mindszenty, Walesa, Havel and other resisters of Soviet oppression, presented Russia with a choice between a reversion to the ways and thinking of the past, or an alignment with the West in its struggle to bring democracy to the rest of the world - and in particular, to Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries of the Middle East, It seems that Russia has made its choice - and it has chosen the path of the tyrants, those who, in Cheney’s words “may, for a time, deny the hopes of others, violate the rights of others, and even take the lives of others.” Yet, Cheney went on, “they have no power to inspire hope or to raise the sights of a nation.” Sadly, it is that path of authoritarian nihilism that Russia has chosen, led by people who have betrayed and sold out what was great in that nation’s contribution to the world’s culture.

Via AIA:

Jane's: Russian intelligence indirectly helped Hezbollah

During military operation of Israel in the South Lebanon which proceeded from July 12 till August 14 this year, Hezbollah received intelligence data from the radio interception points that are served by the joint Russian-Syrian personnel, Israeli daily Ha’aretz writes, referring to a report by the Jane's Defense Weekly. According to the magazine, participation of the Russian side in transfer of the intelligence information to Hezbollah was indirect. The data received by secret services of Russia, first were transferred to Syria, as there is an agreement signed between Moscow and Damascus on cooperation of intelligences services and exchange of mutually interesting information.

Besides it is marked that the Lebanese insurgents received the information on the Israeli troops from the surveillance centre, located in the Syrian part of the Golan heights and jointly supervised by the Syrian intelligence and Iranian experts. Unlike secret services of Russia with which the Syrian side does cooperate for a long time, arrangement with Iran has been reached only in the past year, adds Ha’aretz.

Detailed information on the Russian secret services' ties with the Hezbollah was first published by AIA already in May 2005. Besides that, in July 2006, AIA prepared a broad analysis on the Russian-Syrian strategic cooperation, in the context of the Lebanon crisis.

From Civil Georgia:

A group of Russian civil society activists called on the Russian authorities to stop “anti-Georgian hysteria” and “creation of war atmosphere,” the Russian on-line magazine Grani.Ru reported on October 3.

An open letter by number of prominent Russian human rights activists, including Lyudmila Alekseeva, chairperson of Moscow Helsinki Group; Lev Ponomaryov of the For Human Rights (FHR) movement and Elena Bonner reads that Russia’s decision to impose embargo on Georgia will hit the most vulnerable part of the population and the move is a clear sign of “collective punishment.”

“We call on the Russian civil society to announce a moral boycott of those politicians who sow hatred towards Georgia and the Georgian people. We call on politicians and society to openly denounce the blockade against Georgia and preparations for war,” the open letter reads.

RFE/RL Newsline items (October 3):

RUSSIA IMPLEMENTS TRANSPORT AND MAIL BLOCKADE AGAINST GEORGIA… Russia escalated its dispute with Georgia on October 2, despite the latter’s release of four Russian military officers accused of espionage to the OSCE (see Georgia items below). Moscow’s Transportation Ministry ordered air, road, rail and sea links to be closed as of midnight, RIA-Novosti reported. The Communications Ministry said mail services will also be suspended, the agency reported. Aeroflot announced that it has halted all flights to Georgia. On October 3, Ekho Moskvy radio and Russian news agencies reported that the blockade was being implemented and Georgian citizens traveling to Russia will have to reach Moscow via a third country. Moscow has not cut off natural gas to Georgia, which could be catastrophic for an economy still heavily dependent on Russian imports, according to the “Financial Times.” The newspaper added that the transport blockade, if it proves lengthy and if the State Duma follows through with threats to pass legislation suspending bank transfers, could create significant hardship. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said on October 2 that the lower house will soon draft a bill that will allow the government to ban the wiring of money to certain countries, ITAR-TASS reported. Aleksei Malashenko, a Caucasus expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center, told “The Moscow Times” that Russia would be unwise to retaliate with sanctions. “Average Georgians, who will feel the brunt of the sanctions, will regard us as an evil empire,” Malashenko said. FF

…BUT RUSSIAN OFFICIALS AVOID LINKING BLOCKADE TO POLITICAL ROW.  Announcing the decision to start a transport and communications blockade with Georgia on October 2, Russian officials avoided making references to the political crisis sparked by the arrests, “The Moscow Times” reported. All Russian ministers instead alleged violations of various agreements by Georgia and declined to say how long the measures would last. Deputy Transportation Minister Sergei Aristov, interviewed by Channel One television, said Georgian air carriers owe $3.6 million for services provided at Russian airports. Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin said he will cancel a planned order worth some $3.75 million for spare parts for electric locomotives from Georgia, ITAR-TASS reported. He also said all rail traffic will be cut off. Information Technology and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said postal links will be severed. The payment of postal money transfers sent from Russia has often been delayed in Georgia, Reiman was quoted by Interfax as saying. Russia has already banned the import of Georgian wine and mineral water, citing high concentrations of pesticides and the large amount of counterfeit products on the market. FF

DUMA SPEAKER, MIGRATION SERVICE CRITICIZE GEORGIAN IMMIGRANTS TO RUSSIA. State Duma Speaker Gryzlov said on October 2 that “it is also a provocation that some 300,000 illegal immigrants from Georgia work in Russia without official permission, and earn money without paying taxes,” “The Moscow Times” reported. The Federal Migration Service said the same day that more illegal immigrants have entered Russia from Georgia than from any other country, the newspaper reported. “Of the roughly 1 million Georgians who have crossed the border into Russia, just 1 percent are working here legally,” the migration service said in a statement. More than 300,000 Georgians work in Russia, many of them sending money home to relatives on a regular basis. FF

RUSSIAN, U.S. PRESIDENTS DISCUSS STANDOFF… President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush on October 2 discussed the situation surrounding the row between Russia and Georgia, the presidential website kremlin.ru reported. The conversation took place at Bush’s request, the Kremlin said. According to the website, Putin told Bush that any action by a third country could be interpreted by Georgia as encouraging its “destructive” policy. Putin also told Bush that such a situation would be “unacceptable and dangerous for peace and stability in the region,” kremlin.ru reported. Relations between Moscow and Tbilisi have soured since Saakashvili came to power in the Rose Revolution of November 2003 and moved Georgia out of Moscow’s orbit, pursuing EU and NATO membership. Russia has recalled its ambassador from Tbilisi and has evacuated dozens of its diplomats since the beginning of the crisis. Other issues, including Iran and Russia’s efforts to join the World Trade Organization, were also discussed during the presidents’ telephone conversation, according to kremlin.ru. FF

…AS EU URGES RUSSIA TO LIFT BLOCKADE. The European Union urged Russia on October 3 to lift its economic blockade on Georgia or risk deepening the crisis, Reuters reported. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told Reuters in an interview that the EU hopes “that Russia very, very soon lifts these sanctions because sanctions do not, particularly in this case, lead anywhere. There are so many irritants again on either side and therefore it is very important not to provoke and not to be provoked.” OSCE Chairman in Office Karel De Gucht, speaking the previous day in Tbilisi after his talks with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, called on Russia not to carry through what was at that stage a threat to sever transport links with Georgia. FF

GEORGIA TURNS OVER DETAINED RUSSIAN OFFICERS TO OSCE…  Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili confirmed on October 2 that Georgia has turned over to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE) four Russian military officers recently arrested on espionage charges, Caucasus Press reported. In comments to reporters following a meeting with Belgian Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairman in Office Karel De Gucht, Saakashvili explained that “after intensive negotiations,” a decision was  adopted to “transfer the arrested Russian officers to the OSCE” as a “goodwill gesture.” A group of five Russian officers were arrested by Georgian security forces on September 27, with one later released, and a Tbilisi court recently sentenced the other four to a two-month term of pretrial detention (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” September 29 and October 2, 2006). In a televised handover, the Russian officers were escorted by Georgian police to an area outside the Prosecutor-General’s Office, where a statement was read aloud informing them that they have been “accused of the crime of espionage against Georgia” and explaining that they “are being deported from Georgia” and “forbidden to enter Georgian territory,” according to Imedi television. The Russians were then led away to OSCE vehicles parked nearby and soon thereafter departed Georgia via a Russian Emergency Situations Ministry aircraft, ITAR-TASS reported. RG

…BUT WARNS RUSSIA THAT ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.’ In comments during the Tbilisi press conference with OSCE Chairman in Office De Gucht, President Saakashvili warned on October 2 that despite his “goodwill gesture” in turning over the detailed Russians to the OSCE, “the message of Georgia to our great neighbor Russia is, ‘enough is enough,’” Caucasus Press and Georgian Public Television reported.  Saakashvili also noted that “we want to have good relations” with Russia but stressed that “we cannot be treated as a second-rate backyard of some kind of, in the minds of some politicians, reemerging empire.” RG

Lajos Kosa, a senior figure in the Hungarian opposition party Fidesz, has warned that Hungarians may rise up and overthrow the government if Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany does not step down, Reuters reports.

Civil Georgia has a roundup of press reaction in Georgia and Russia to the latest developments in the crisis between the two countries.

From Georgia’s 24 Saati:

Spy scandal between Russia and Georgia is now over, but relations between the two countries are further deteriorating. Russian officers have returned back to their homeland after the international pressure, but Russia has not given up plan to punish Georgia and decided to impose a total blockade on Georgia…. For Russia any kind of compromise, especially from a small country, means sign of weakness and they push weak to the end. Demonstration of a mentality of a street hooligan has brought little positive to Russia, but this way of thinking by the society and elite inside Russia makes Moscow to act this way.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has told journalists that he sees no need for mediators to be brought in in order to “normalize” relations between Russia and Georgia in the present crisis. “Quite honestly, I see no need for that,” gazeta.ru quotes him as saying.

Via BBC:

The EU has urged Russia to lift economic sanctions it imposed on Georgia in a continuing spying row between the two former Soviet states.

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said “sanctions… do not lead anywhere”.

Russia has cut off all transport and postal links with Georgia, despite the release of four Russian officers accused by Tbilisi of spying.

Moscow denies the spying charge while Georgia accuses Russia of bullying.

“We do hope that Russia very, very soon lifts these sanctions,” Ms Ferrero-Waldner told Reuters news agency during a visit to Georgia.

“There are so many irritants again on either side and therefore it is very important not to provoke and not to be provoked,” she said.

Via AIA:

02.10.200620:08 (GMT)
President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili said today that although the Georgian government has “neutralized” one network of the Russian intelligence in Georgia, similar groups are operating in breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia, online magazine Civil Georgia reports.

Saakashvili reportedly said that Tbilisi still had this kind of networks on the territories, that the Georgian authorities still did not control, a very small part of mountainous region of South Ossetia and also 70 per cent of territory of Abkhazia. He added that lately Tbilisi restored control over 30 per cent of Abkhazia [referring to upper Kodori Gorge]. So on these territories there still are this kind of intelligence networks, according to Saakashvili. Civil Georgia writes that the President vowed “to find them, get them and held them responsible”. He also denied allegations of the Abkhaz authorities that Georgia was mobilizing its troops on the Senaki military base in western Georgia, online magazine says.

AP notes that Russia has started to airlift a military engineering unit to Lebanon:

RIA-Novosti quoted Russian air force commander Vladimir Mikhailov as saying that the first flight carrying 17 soldiers and 80 tons of equipment left Tuesday morning and a second plane was scheduled to leave with 130 troops aboard.

In the next 3 days, Russia will send about 300 soldiers and some 130 tons of equipment. The primary task of the soldiers will be to repair bridges damaged during the recent conflict.

The force is not part of the 5,000 strong peacekeeping contingent in South Lebanon, to which Russia has not contributed.

In its report on the Georgia crisis, Finland's main Swedish-language newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet includes a short interview with Dr. Svante Cornell of the Central Asia- Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program in Uppsala, Sweden. In the interview, Cornell says (my tr.) that

it's not a foregone conclusion that the release of the Russian officers will thaw the now extremely frosty relations between the two countries, or that the sanctions imposed by the Russian side will immediately be lifted.

"Implicitly the Russians are threatening a war. They've recalled their ambassador, their staff, they're cutting the lines of communication. What has to be realized is that the Russians see this whole episode as a big provocation.

- - - - - - -

"I am not sure that this is going to blow over. Their positions are extremely locked. For President Vladimir Putin Saakashvili is like a red rag to a bull. This is a good excuse for Russia to tighten the thumbscrews on Georgia," says Cornell.

Vladimir Putin has warned President Bush against supporting the Georgian government in the present crisis between Russia and Georgia, lenta.ru reports.

Victor Yasmann, writing for RFE/RL, considers that Moscow is unlikely to take military action against Georgia, as it would only rally international support from President Saakashvili. However, Yasmann thinks, a number of retaliatory options are open to Moscow, and some will probably be taken. He lists the following:

Diplomatic measures could include continuing to halt visas issued to Georgian citizens (this began shortly after the crisis began), the arrest of Georgian intelligence officials in Moscow, and the expulsion of diplomatic and military staff from Russia. Russia has already withdrawn its ambassador and evacuated Russian civilians and diplomats from Georgia. Moscow, however, is wary of completely cutting off relations with Tbilisi as this would set a dangerous precedent for other CIS countries and could lead to a further breakdown in commonwealth relations.

Political measures could include pressure on Georgia through the European Union, the United Nations, or the United States. But this could be problematic as the United States and Britain have already blocked in the UN Security Council the draft of a resolution critical of Georgia introduced by the Russian delegation on September 30. And perhaps Moscow has also been discouraged by the recent introduction of a bill in the U.S. Senate supporting Georgia’s accession to NATO. The bill is being spearheaded by Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist and has bipartisan support.

In terms of possible military pressure, the “shoot-to-kill” order, given to Russian troops based in Georgia, still remains. But Russia’s Defense Ministry has also announced its Black Sea Fleet will carry out naval games off the Georgian coast. Russia is also pushing for nonporous borders. On September 28, Putin visited a Federal Security Service (FSB) border-troops station in the Abkhazian sector of the Russian-Georgian border. Putin demanded that the border be sealed from the “Black to the Caspian seas.” Russia, however, is cautious of overplaying its military hand. The Kremlin is wary of rallying world opinion against it as in the case of Israel’s use of force against Hizballah in Lebanon, which was criticized by many as excessive. As one Kremlin adviser, Gleb Pavlovsky, said, “Moscow will not go into the Caucasus…like a mousetrap.”

Estimates vary, but it’s possible up to 1.5 million ethnic Georgians, both Russian and Georgian citizens, live and work in Russia. They send remittances home that Russia says could be worth up to $2 billion every year, up to 20 percent of Georgia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Georgia says the figure is much lower, with the National Bank of Georgia estimating that in the first eight months of this year Georgians transferred $219 million back home. In comparison, the export of wine — which was banned by Russia earlier this year — contributes only 3 percent of Georgian GDP. According to Viktor Militarev from the Moscow-based National Strategy Institute, in order to disrupt money transactions, Russia could use the pretext of an “anti-money-laundering operation.” Russia could also disrupt labor migration by refusing to issue Georgians visas and by deporting those Georgians that already live in Russia. According to the head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, last year 321,000 Georgians entered Russia on tourist and nonworking private visas and only 4,500 of them received work permits, TV-Tsentr reported on September 28. Romodanovsky proposed visa restrictions and sending home those “who are working or staying on our territory illegally.” He also complained “about the disproportionately high percentage of criminals among Georgian migrants.” On September 29, Moscow police began Operation Terek in which 1,500 people from the Caucasus, many of them Georgians, were detained.

Russia has already begun to sever transport links with Georgia. The country’s Transport and Communications ministries today ordered all postal, air, rail, road, and sea links with Georgia suspended.It is unlikely that the Kremlin will target Georgia’s energy infrastructure, as much of it is used to transport oil, gas, and electricity to Moscow-friendly Armenia.

As this report from Civil Georgia makes clear, the release of the Russian officers is, in President Saakashvili’s words, ‘a gesture towards [Georgia’s] western friends’ and no way a response to threats voiced by the Russia leadership.”

However, some uncertainty remains concerning Russia’s response, and the further outcome of the crisis:

Meanwhile in Moscow, the Russian authorities announced on October 2 about intentions to cut air link[s] with Tbilisi starting from October 3. The announcement came shortly before the release of Russian officers and it was not immediately clear whether the measure will be enforced anyway after the release of the officers.

Russian Deputy Transport Minister said that non-payment of USD 3,6 million by Georgian air companies for air traffic service by Russia since 2001 is a reason behind the decision.

Also earlier on October 2, Russian Duma Council Chairman Boris Grizlov said that Russian MPs from the lower house of the Parliament will develop a law authorizing the government to ban money transfers from Russia into “certain countries” in “cases of emergency.”

Also,  according to gazeta.ru, GRVZ commander Andrei Popov told journalists this evening that Russian forces will remain on high alert for the time being.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer will make a one-day official visit to Moscow on October 26, gazeta.ru reports.

Via Xinhua (Oct. 2):

Russia cannot rule out military action in dealing with mounting tensions with neighboring Georgia, the daily Kommersant reported on Monday.

"All diplomatic steps that are usually taken in such strained relations have been exhausted ... The next action could be the breaking of diplomatic relations and a military operation," the report warned, quoting an unnamed source with Russia's Defense Ministry.

Via Civil Georgia:

Russian news agencies reported that the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation has announced the suspension of air, sea, railway and land traffic with Georgia.

Officials from the Russian Transport Ministry cited the debts of Georgian air companies for air traffic service as a reason behind the decision.

“Because of the numerous cases of bankruptcy of the Georgian air companies the total debt of the Georgian air companies towards the Russian side for air traffic service has reached USD 3,6 million since 2001. We also have serious questions in respect to sea, land and railway traffic,” Sergey Aristov, the Russian Transport Ministry’s official representative, said in remarks broadcasted on Russian television.

Officials in Tbilisi say that no official notification about the decision has been received from the Russian side.

Via BBC:

Georgia has said it will hand over to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe four Russian military officers charged with spying.

A spokesman for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said the transfer "ceremony" would take place on Monday.

* OSCE head Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht has flown to Tbilisi to help to moderate the conflict.

* Russia has destroyed more than 70,000 litres of Georgian-produced alcohol, officially due to concerns about its quality. Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief health inspector, used the term "terrorial-national formation" when describing Georgia.

* Georgian TV channel Rustavi-2 reports that 13 Georgian citizens have been detained in Moscow for "visa irregularities".

* Russian State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov has reiterated Putin's charge of "state terrorism" in relation to the arrests of the GRU officers.

* Russia has protested about an attempt by European parliamentarians at PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, of which it is a member) to bring up the subject of the Georgia-Russia crisis there. Russia's representative Konstantin Kosachev is quoted as saying:

"Taking into account the existing moods in the assembly, known by the fact that traditionally europarliamentarians, regardless of the essence of the problem, always support the "weak "state, the Russian delegation has come out against this initiative, noting that it does not considered the platform of the Assembly to be a suitable place for explaining the current conflict situation between member states of the Council of Europe".

From RFE/RL:

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the arrests as “an act of state terrorism with hostage taking.” Putin also described Georgia’s action as reminiscent of the police state of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Late the same day, Saakashvili dismissed the harsh reaction. He said “it is an overreaction caused by nervousness that they have created themselves.”

“Now, President Putin, I heard him calling the demise of the Soviet Union the greatest tragedy of the 20th century,” Saakashvili said. “Well, it was the happiest day of my life, certainly, so this is something on which we cannot agree, as well I cannot agree on making some connection between us and any legacy of KGB type of Stalin’s past.”

Saakashvili also rejected a suggestion by Putin that Washington was “creating” crises to worsen ties between Russia and Georgia.

“We’ve been hearing statements lately: ‘Oh this has been decided in Washington,’” Saakashvili said. “Well, I think [the U.S.] State Department made it very clear — this is a bilateral issue between Georgia and Russia.”

Russia recalled its ambassador from Tbilisi, evacuated most of its diplomatic and military staff from Georgia following the detention on September 27 of four of its army officers.

It looks as though Moscow may be preparing to make a strong response to the arrest of its intelligence officers in Tbilisi. Putin has begun to use extremely unguarded language, accusing the Georgian government of "terrorism", employing inverted Stalinist metaphors, and threatening unspecified measures.

This does not look good for the further outcome of the crisis.

At the same time, however, in a typical move, Putin has called for the withdrawal of Russian federal troops from Georgia to continue (gazeta.ru).

There is a BBC report to be found here.

Less is now being heard of the UN initiative pressed by Moscow a few days ago, mainly aimed at securing a condemnation of Georgia in favour of the Russian side.

The Reuters report includes an official Georgian response to Putin's remarks:

Georgian parliamentarian Giga Bokeria, a close ally of President Mikhail Saakashvili, called Putin's statement "an act of open aggression and hysteria".

"Russia just cannot stand the fact that Georgia is an independent country," he told Reuters.

Via Civil Georgia / 2006-10-01 15:04:10:

International efforts are underway to help defuse increasing tension between Russia and Georgia, after the latter arrested and charged four Russian officers with espionage.

On October 1, OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht said he is in contact with the Russian and Georgian leadership and even expressed readiness to travel to the region to mediate in solving the problem.

"I appeal to all concerned parties to abide by the principles of international law, to abstain from provocations, to establish direct dialogue and to find a quick solution. I will remain in contact with all the relevant parties and work towards this end," the Chairman-in-Office said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana phoned President Saakashvili late on September 30 and urged for caution “against the risk of further escalation,” Solana’s press office said on Sunday.

“High Representative Solana encouraged President Saakashvili to find an early solution to the dispute with Russia and expressed his support for efforts underway… He also confirmed his readiness to facilitate contacts between the sides.”

On September 29, President Saakashvili also talked via phone with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili hinted on September 29 that Georgia may extradite arrested Russian officers only in case of request by the Georgia’s western partners.

“They [the Russian authorities] have only one resource at their disposal: to convince our foreign friends to [recommend] us to show a good will and expel these people [spy suspects] out of the country,” Okruashvili said.

Meanwhile in Tbilisi, the Headquarters of the Russian Troops in Trans-Caucasus remains sealed off by the unarmed Georgian policemen. Tbilisi alleges that one more Russian officer, also suspected of espionage, is sheltering in the Headquarters.

Also on Sunday, the opposition Republican and Conservative parties announced about their plans to hold a protest rally outside the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi on October 4 in an effort “to show unity” among the political forces in Georgia, amid tensions with Russia. They have called all the political parties to put aside election campaigning ahead of the October 5 and to join the protest rally.

Reportedly only two diplomats and security guard remain in the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi, as rest of the staff and their family members have already left for Russia as part of “the partial evacuation” announced by Moscow after four officers were arrested.

Lenta.ru quotes RIAN in a report that the siege of the GRVZ (Group of Russian Troops in Transcaucasia) headquarters building in Tbilisi has been lifted, and that only a few military police are now checking the documents of those who enter and leave the premises.  The building had been ringed by Georgian interior ministry troops and military police since September 27, and the Georgian government had demanded the surrender of Russian GRU (military intelligence) serviceman Lt.-Col. Konstantin Pichugin, who was believed to be hiding inside.

RIAN has an English-language report here.