A Step At A Time

Via Ynet

The Estonian government on Thursday approved a change to the penal code that would ban the display of Soviet and Nazi symbols and flags, saying the hammer and sickle and swastika both incite hatred.

Both the Nazi and Soviet regimes occupied Estonia at various times from 1941 to 1991, leaving bitter memories behind.

Mark Pettifor has sent the text of the following open letter:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

National Review more or less has asked the question recently “What has happened to the conservative movement?” American Spectator has yet to mention (to my knowledge) anything of the Litvinenko murder, which could play out to be a far-reaching event regarding our policy toward Russia. I mention these two magazines because they are probably viewed by most as central publications of the modern conservative movement. (I am sending this to many who work at each of those magazines.)

While domestic policy and politics is covered in these magazines with the same degree of detail as can be seen on the latest HDTV screen, discussions of foreign policy and geopolitical analysis of what is going on in places other than the Middle East is somewhat lacking. Arguably, events in Russia and China and other “non-Western” regions will have more profound effects on America and the West in the near future than anything coming from Islam, Al Qaeda, or even Iran (who would not have legs to stand on were it not for Russia). These effects will not be good ones.

One reason why the conservative movement ignores such things is that it has its own “utopian vision” of the world, which does not make it conservative in the sense that Russell Kirk and others like him defined it. It has become an ideology - one of spreading democracy and free market capitalism everywhere, in the hopes that peace and security will follow, and that all future wars will be won or lost on the battlefield of ideas, and not on real battlefields of blood and guns and sacrifice.

Almost all conservatives believe that Communism has already lost on the battlefield of ideas, and that freedom and capitalism have won. While that is obviously not true (just look at Central and South America for starters), even worse is the assumption that because of this supposed victory, a real war on a real battlefield with those who still cling to such “outdated” and “discredited” ideas will never again happen. This is starting to become an indefensible position, as not only are countries still dropping like dominoes to Communism and Marxism, but ones thought “immunized” from such ideas are seemingly rising from the dead and going back to their old ways (Russia).

To see the trouble ahead (which conservatives are obligated to do, if trouble does indeed exist), we must admit some errors of judgment. I am hoping that the following two articles will help you ponder what those errors of judgment may be.

Here are the links:

Why Poisoned Kremlin Can’t Be Trusted - by Caspar Weinberger
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18231

A New Methodology For Wet Affairs - by J. R. Nyquist
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2006/1127.html

It’s time for conservatives to take a hard look at their presumptions regarding the Cold War and the “End of History.” If we keep going on as if the only enemy is Islamism, and that past enemies are dead and gone, we will be ill-prepared to defend the West against what may possibly be the greatest onslaught it has ever faced.

With highest regards,

Mark Pettifor

Via whitehouse.gov

National Bank of Estonia
Tallinn, Estonia

November 28, 2006

11:00 A.M. (Local)

PRESIDENT ILVES: (As translated.) Again, I’m very happy to greet the President of the United States, George W. Bush, in our fall weather here in Tallinn. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t better than it is, but that’s how it happens. This visit and these very open meetings that we have had, President Bush has had with me, as well as with the Prime Minister, Andrus Ansip, truly prove that Estonia and the United States are close allies.

One of the main messages today was the message of freedom to those states who, like us, have chosen the way to democracy and freedom and will not bow to pressure from any of their neighbors, and by these countries we mean Georgia, Ukraine, the Balkan States. We should not hesitate to support these states. And we should not falter when any of our allies are losing hope or faith, and we will help them in every way we can.

We will also not falter in making Afghanistan more secure, where Estonia soldiers are helping to protect the welfare of Afghan citizens, again, together, hand in hand with the United States. NATO’s greatest foreign operation in the post-Cold War period, it is the greatest challenge of the postwar period. It is a challenge not only for the neighbors of these countries, but also for the whole world, as was proved by September the 11th.

We are hoping to strengthen the ties between European countries and the United States. Conflicts between us are minor or nonexistent, and any issues will be easy to resolve. President Bush’s visit to Tallinn is taking place at a time immediately before the summit of NATO in Riga. This summit shows how far the Baltic States have developed and how strong the support of our allies is for us. We want to give a strong message at the summit, and that is that the doors to NATO are not closed and this is becoming a very mature, good organization.

And I want to tell Mr. Bush, welcome to Estonia.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I’m proud to be the first sitting American President to visit Estonia. I’m really glad I came. Yours is a beautiful country and a strong friend and ally of the United States. I appreciate the warm welcome I’ve received. My only regret is that Laura is not with me. She’s receiving the Christmas tree at the White House. She sends her very best, Mr. President.

We had a lot — we had a really good discussion. The President and I spent a lot of time talking about the issue of freedom and liberty and peace. I appreciate very much the leadership Estonia is providing inside NATO.

We talked about how our nations can cooperate to achieve common objectives and promote common values, values such as human dignity and human rights and the freedom to speak and worship the way one sees fit.

Estonia is a strong ally in this war on terror. I appreciate so very much the President’s understanding of the need to resist tyranny. Of all the people in the world who understand what tyranny can do it’s the Estonian people. I appreciate very much the fact that Estonia is helping others resist tyranny and realize their dreams of living in a free society. In Afghanistan, Estonians are serving as a part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in a dangerous province that the extremists, the Taliban, seeks to control. I appreciate the fact that your forces are serving bravely, Mr. President. The people of Estonia need to be proud of their military. It’s a fine military. And the commitment of your people is important to helping secure the peace.

I appreciate the troops that you have sent to Iraq. I also understand Estonian soldiers have been wounded and two soldiers have given their lives. We hold their families in our hearts. We lift them up in prayer. And Americans are grateful to be serving alongside such brave allies.

Estonia is sharing its democratic experience with other nations. You have made a very successful transition to democracy, and you’re helping other nations do the same, and that is a vital contribution to world peace. I appreciate the fact that you’re training leaders from Georgia to Moldova to the Ukraine. I appreciate the assistance programs you’re providing to the Afghan people. I also appreciate the fact that you work with your neighbors and through the European Union to promote freedom in this region and around the globe.

This morning the Prime Minister and I had a chance to meet, as well, and he introduced me to some of your citizens who are helping to build democracies, and I thanked them for their work.

We also discussed how Estonia has built a strong economy and raised the standard of living for the people. I appreciate the fact that you got a flat tax, you got a tax system that’s transparent and simple. I also am amazed by the e-governance you have here in your country. You really are on the leading edge of change, and you’re setting a really strong example.

We talked about the fact that Estonians want to be able to travel to America visa-free. Both the President and the Prime Minister made this a important part of our discussions. They made it clear to me that if we’re an ally in NATO, people ought to be able to come to our country in a much easier fashion. It is clear to me that this is an important issue for the Estonian people, as well. I appreciate their leaders being straightforward and very frank. There’s no question where they stand.

I am pleased to announce that I’m going to work with our Congress and our international partners to modify our visa waiver program. It’s a way to make sure that nations like Estonia qualify more quickly for the program and, at the same time, strengthen the program’s security components.

The new security component of the visa waiver program would use modern technology to improve the security regime for international travelers to and from the United States. In other words, we need to know who is coming, and when they’re leaving. And the more we share — can share information, the easier it will be for me to get Congress to make it easier for Estonians to travel to the United States.

We want people to come to our country. We understand a lot of Estonians have relatives in America. It’s in our nation’s interest that people be able to come and visit, and it’s important, at the same time, to make sure that those who want to continue to kill Americans aren’t able to exploit the system.

I’m going to go to Riga right after our lunch. We have an ambitious agenda there. More than 50,000 NATO soldiers are providing security in six missions on three continents. These deployments have shown that our alliance remains as relevant today as it was during the height of the Cold War. Our alliance defends freedom, and so doing helps make us all more secure. We will discuss NATO’s largest deployment, and that is Afghanistan. We’re partnering with Afghan security forces to defeat the Taliban and strengthen that young democracy. To succeed in Afghanistan, NATO allies must provide the forces NATO military commanders require. I appreciate Estonia’s commitment. Like Estonia, member nations must accept difficult assignments if we expect to be successful.

In Riga, we’ll discuss how our alliance must build on what we have learned in Afghanistan. We will continue to transform NATO forces and improve NATO capabilities so that our alliance can complete 21st century missions successfully. The threat has changed. Our capabilities must change with the threats if NATO is to remain relevant. The President understands that, and I appreciate our discussion along those lines today.

We’re also going to discuss NATO’s further enlargement. By inviting qualifying democracies to join our alliance at the next NATO summit in 2008, we’ll continue to build a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.

I want to thank you for your hospitality again. I know the people of this country are proud of their accomplishments. The American people would be amazed at what your country has done, and I’m proud for you. And I’m proud to call you friend. Thank you, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT ILVES: Thank you, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Any questions?

Q I have a question for both Presidents. Mr. Bush, you said that you really appreciate everything that Estonia has done, and that the U.S. is very interested in seeing Estonians visit your country. But you, as President, when will you be proposing to Congress this change in the visa laws to give us visa-free travel? And the second part of the question is, what should Estonia do in order to help you resolve this issue more quickly?

PRESIDENT BUSH: — to work on our 3 percent requirement, and, at the same time, assure members of Congress that in loosening the visa waiver issue, or changing the visa waiver issue, that we’ll still be able to protect our country form people who would exploit the visa waiver program to come to our country to do harm. And that process is beginning shortly.

PRESIDENT ILVES: And I may add that Estonia is constantly — has been raising this question. I had a very long discussion, even back when I was a delegate in the European parliament. I would say that we have come quite a long way from the time we started these discussions two years ago with Nick Burns, and we are prepared when the security requirements have been clarified, have been explained, then we will be able to implement them in our passports. And that is simply a technical problem, but it is resolvable.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Are you going to call on anybody?

Q First, my respect to both of you, Mr. Bush, Mr. Ilves. A question for Mr. Bush. You said that you discussed with Mr. Ilves the situation in Georgia. Estonia and the United States have helped in the development of this country of Georgia, and we are hoping to see some progress in this country. But the conflict between Russia and Georgia is putting a stop to this. What do you think we should do to help resolve this conflict between Russia and Georgia?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Precisely what we ought to do is help resolve the conflict and use our diplomats to convince people there is a better way forward than through violence. We haven’t seen violence yet. The idea is to head it off in the first place. I spoke to Vladimir Putin about this very subject when I saw him in the Far East last week. I know that the President has spoken with President Saakashvili, as well. The tenor of the conversation appears to be improving to me, that people understand that the best way to resolve their differences is to sit down at the table and solve them diplomatically. And so we’ll continue to work along those lines.

I don’t know if you want to add anything to that.

PRESIDENT ILVES: Briefly, just that we sincerely hope that Russia will understand that a democratic state on its borders is not a danger to Russian security. And we hope Russia will understand that authoritarian states at its borders will not guarantee its own stability.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Deb, AP. Yes, Deb.

Q Mr. President, thank you, sir. What is the difference between what we’re seeing now in Iraq and civil war? And do you worry that calling it a civil war would make it difficult to argue that we’re fighting the central front of the war on terror there?

PRESIDENT BUSH: You know, the plans of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence. That’s what he said he wanted to do. The Samarra bombing that took place last winter was intended to create sectarian violence, and it has. The recent bombings were to perpetuate the sectarian violence. In other words, we’ve been in this phase for a while. And the fundamental objective is to work with the Iraqis to create conditions so that the vast majority of the people will be able to see that there’s a peaceful way forward.

The bombings that took place recently was a part of a pattern that has been going on for about nine months. I’m going to bring this subject up, of course, with Prime Minister Maliki when I visit with him in Jordan on Thursday. My questions to him will be: What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence? I will assure him that we will continue to pursue al Qaeda to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.

I will ask him: What is required and what is your strategy to be a country which can govern itself and sustain itself? And it’s going to be an important meeting, and I’m looking forward to it.

Q — are saying that we’re moving forward to full –

PRESIDENT BUSH: Deb, there’s all kinds of speculation about what may be or not happening. What you’re seeing on TV has started last February. It was an attempt by people to foment sectarian violence, and no — no question it’s dangerous there, and violent. And the Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence, and we want to help them do so. It’s in our interest that we succeed. A democracy in the heart of the Middle East is an important part of defeating the radicals and totalitarians that can’t stand the emergence of a democracy.

One of the interesting things that’s taking place — and people have got to understand what’s happening — is when you see a young democracy beginning to emerge in the Middle East, the extremists try to defeat its emergence.

That’s why you see violence in Lebanon. There’s a young democracy in Lebanon, run by Prime Minister Siniora. And that government is being undermined, in my opinion, by extremist forces encouraged out of Syria and Iran. Why? Because a democracy will be a major defeat for those who articulate extremist points of view.

We’re trying to help get a democracy started in the Palestinian Territory. Prime Minister Olmert has reached out at one point to Prime Minister Abbas — President Abbas. And you know what happens as soon as he does that? Extremists attack, because they can’t stand the thought of a democracy. And the same thing is happening in Iraq. And it’s in our mutual interest that we help this government succeed.

And no question it’s tough, Deb. No question about it. There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of these attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal. And we will work with the Maliki government to defeat these elements.

By far, the vast majority of the people want to live in peace. Twelve million people voted. They said, we want to live under a constitution which we approved. And our objective must be to help them realize their dreams. This is the — this is an important part of an ideological struggle that is taking place here in the beginning of the 21st century. And the interesting contribution that a country like Estonia is making is that, people shouldn’t have to live under tyranny. We just did that; we don’t like it. They understand that democracies yield peace. This President is a strong advocate for democracies, because he understands. He understands what it means to live under subjugation, and he understands the hope that democracy brings to regions of the world. And I appreciate your steadfast leadership.

Toby. Last question? I’ll follow your instructions.

Q Mr. President, would direct talks between the United States and Iran and Syria help stem the violence in Iraq? And would you agree to such a step?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I think that, first of all, Iraq is a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy. They’re having talks with their neighbors. And if that’s what they think they ought to do, that’s fine. I hope their talks yield results. One result that Iraq would like to see is for the Iranians to leave them alone. If Iran is going to be involved in their country, they ought to be involved in a constructive way, encouraging peace. That is the message that the Iranians — that the Iraqis have delivered to the Iranians. That’s the message that Prime Minister Maliki has made clear, that he expects the neighbors to encourage peaceful development of the country.

As far as the United States goes, Iran knows how to get to the table with us, and that is to do that which they said they would do, which is verifiably suspend their enrichment programs. One of the concerns that I have about the Iranian regime is their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, and you ought to be concerned about it, too. The idea of this regime having a nuclear weapon by which they could blackmail the world is unacceptable to free nations. And that’s why we’re working through the United Nations to send a clear message that the EU3 and the United States, Russia and China do not accept their desires to have a nuclear weapon.

There is a better way forward for the Iranian people, and if they would like to be at the table discussing this issue with the United States, I have made it abundantly clear how they can do so, and that is verifiably suspend the enrichment program. And then we’ll be happy to have a dialogue with them.

But as far as Iraq goes, the Iraqi government is a sovereign government that is capable of handling its own foreign policies, and is in the process of doing so. And they have made it abundantly clear, and I agree with them, that the Iranians and the Syrians should help, not destabilize this young democracy.

Thank you.

PRESIDENT ILVES: Thank you very much.

END 11:20 A.M. (Local)

From RFE/RL Newsline (November 28 2006):

DEFENSE MINISTER SAYS NATO SUMMIT NEAR ST. PETERSBURG MIGHT BE ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in Moscow that the upcoming NATO Riga summit is not a matter of serious concern for Russia, the German weekly “Der Spiegel” reported on November 28. Ivanov added that “the Baltic countries are sovereign nations. They have the right to decide which military and political bloc they want to be a part of. Of course, some Russians feel uneasy about the fact that a NATO summit is taking place so close to St. Petersburg. But I take a more relaxed view. If NATO had staged a major military maneuver in Latvia, with tanks and aircraft, it would certainly have triggered concern within the Russian military. But that is not the case.” He nonetheless added that “the Baltic states…are small countries in a region that is especially free of conflict and tension, militarily speaking. We do not understand why NATO needs its own military infrastructure in this region. Does it intend to wage war against terrorism or influence operations in Afghanistan from there?” Ivanov also said that the closure of a U.S. military base in Khanabad was Uzbekistan’s own decision “because it suspected the government of the United States of trying to destabilize the situation in the country.” Ivanov argued that some people call “the forces active there fighters for human rights, while the Uzbek people themselves call them terrorists who are killing people. I am aware of the real state of affairs…not propaganda. I have read reports describing how these so-called fighters for human rights received instructions from abroad to kill people.” Asked about Russian sanctions against Georgia, Ivanov replied that “these are not sanctions. We no longer operate direct flights to Tbilisi because Georgian airlines owe us money. You were the ones who introduced us to the market economy in the 1990s. Now we are sticking to it and you come to us with accusations. We cannot accept the fact that Georgia continues to insult us. It is clear to us that the Georgian leadership is dragging NATO and the EU into its efforts to solve its internal problems.” On November 28, Britain’s “The Times” wrote to mark the opening of the Riga summit that “much of the corridor talk during this first NATO summit on former Soviet soil will be of the renewed threat from Russia. Moscow’s aggressive use of energy as a political weapon is the most obvious cause for concern…. NATO leaders will be asked to look at possible action to avert potential threats to energy sources by patrolling key shipping lines, or resupplying a victim of an energy suspension.” PM

From The Times (UK):

Yelena Bonner, one of the most famous dissidents from the Soviet era, said yesterday that modern Russia had returned to the practices used by the former
Soviet KGB.

“I think the KGB, or the FSB as it is known, killed him,” said Mrs Bonner, the widow of Andrei Sakharov the most famous Soviet dissident of his time.

“The present Russian power structure draws on the experiences it learned from Soviet operations in the past,” she told The Times.

She said that she had met Litvinenko in London two years and was planning to meet his widow Marina.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Robert Amsterdam has written a defence of Vladimir Putin in the Litvinenko poisoning case:

All those suspected for responsibility behind this attack in London will face the full onslaught of a Scotland Yard investigation. Hasty assertions about Vladimir Putin’s guilt are not only inappropriate, but may well backfire. These statements give great play to the arguments of Kremlin hardliners who have been telling Vladimir Putin that he cannot trust his European neighbors; that Europeans are deeply Russophobic; that he must stand apart as an independent center of power in the world. Mr. Putin may well be convinced that he has nothing left to lose in terms of his reputation in the West – and then matters will certainly take a turn for the worse.

See also: Nevzlin: Yukos Connection in Litvinenko's Murder

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised a full probe of the death of Alexander Litvinenko. Reuters reports Blair as saying that "no diplomatic or political barrier" would be allowed to hinder the investigation, and that he will raise the matter with Vladimir Putin if necessary.

President Bush has arrived in Tallinn, Estonia, on Air Force One, at the start of an official visit in preparation for the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, which begins tomorrow, Tuesday. He is accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a large delegation of White House officials, who arrived on a separate flight.

The guests were greeted by Estonia’s foreign minister, Urmas Paet, and by Estonia’s ambassador to the USA, Jüri Luik.

Tomorrow, President Bush will meet with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Prime Minister Andrus Ansipp, and will fly on to Riga after dinner.

At Counterterrorism Blog, Douglas Farah asks: What is Russia’s Real Game (Again, with Viktor Bout?):

What is Russia’s real role in the efforts to combat terrorism? While the Bush administration seems to cling to the notion that Russia is an ally, there are several developments that point in the opposite direction.

The first, of course, is the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, where the foul play of the Russian security apparatus, closely tied to Mr. Putin, is the prime suspect. The fact that the murder was committed in London and dismissed out of hand as unimportant by Mr. Putin show both a new boldness and the lack of any pretense
of accountability by the Russians.

There is also the arming of Iran and help with the Iranian nuclear program, and the close intelligence ties to Hezbollah.

But there is another, barely noticed development in the United States that should be extremely worrisome.

Read the rest, here. And, for the LA Times material by Stephen Braun - here.

At Marginalia, Peteris Cedrins has two excellent and informative posts - here and here - about the Kremlin’s latest propaganda assault on the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - an assault which turns out not to be a new development at all, but to have a history stretching all the way back to the 1920s…

Neil Mackay in the Sunday Herald writes that MI5 has been warning the Blair government that Russian intelligence has been operating at high levels in Britain for at least three years now, but that the warnings seem to have fallen on deaf ears:

The apparent murder of Litvinenko - which has been blamed by many on the Kremlin - has also raised serious concerns about British national security. Tomorrow, the Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis is to demand answers about how polonium-210, the substance believed to have killed Litvinenko, was brought into Britain.

Friends of Litvinenko last night told the Sunday Herald that if the UK and US did not act against Russia they should be considered culpable in the deaths of dissidents.

Oleg Gordievsky, the most famous KGB defector to Britain and friend of Litvinenko, said: "Blair and Bush were happy to kiss and embrace Putin while he was killing in Chechnya, killing in Russia and now killing abroad."

In the Times (UK), Edward Lucas asks: How was Alexander Litvinenko murdered?

We don’t know yet; we may never find out, but what is clear is his death marks the start of a new Cold War. The question is how to win it.

In the international edition of the Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, Alexander Litvinenko’s friend, the documentary film director Andrei Nekrasov, has published a Letter from Russia, written from Litvinenko’s bedside as he lay dying of nuclear poisoning.

Two excerpts:

The communist paradox of servility in the name of freedom has been replaced by materialistic freedom in the name of servility; a profoundly misunderstood freedom, that is.

A lot of it may be ascribed to the general condition of modern man, but it takes one attentive look to see behind the thin mesh of international brand names and well-groomed appearances of the “New Russian” women and men an amazingly outdated bigotry, boorishness, and xenophobia in the contemporary mainstream Russian culture.

“Foreigners from the South are coming here for the easy gains and with criminal intentions”. That is not a political slogan of a right-wing party, but a tagline of a prime time “information” programme, and you can bet with reasonable safety that none of those slick young people filling that fancy overpriced café would find such televised prejudice in any way questionable.

It’s cool, it’s fashionable to be nationalistic, to be anti-Asian, anti-Orange” (Ukrainian revolution), and it is, actually, even more fashionable to be anti-West.

The West is the past, we are the future.

Never mind that the brand names are Western, never mind that the statistics say that the Russian population is on course to a demographic crunch. We have rediscovered faith in ourselves, in our state and our president, and our faith is stronger than your logic.

Logic says that the rediscovery of faith coincided with or followed the surge in oil prices and the war crimes in Chechnya; logic also says that the monstrous corruption (clearly on the increase under Putin) and persisting gangster rule is wrecking the country as a whole, its prospects, its strategy, even that somewhat cryptic mission we Russians believe our country has in history.

But for the visible minority cultivated by the present regime such logic has no validity. Logic in general is not in vogue here at the moment, just as human rights are not recognized as a value by some humans who are very protective of their own rights.

—————————

… the far right wants more than merely being tolerated, it wants Russia for itself.

Its only weapon is murder. Political murder.

Not murder to prevent an information leak or to get rid of an awkward witness. Murder to shock, to provoke, to frighten, to denigrate. Both in Russia and the West.

With murder’s help the West shall be shown its place – that of impotence in the face of new Russian power and old Russian values. The more universally respected the victim the better.

International recognition used to be a protection for Soviet dissenters; it has since become a liability for Russian defenders of human rights.

And while Putin’s very own balancing act - which some call “stability” - goes on, while humanist democracy has no following, support and the passion that nationalism seems to have, one thing is certain: innocent people, courageous and honest people will continue to be murdered.

People like Anna Politkovskaya. Because she was murdered in a tug of love between Putin and the far right. Fascists vying for power kill to claim - with the spectacular impunity of their crimes - Putin as their ally.

They kill to watch him go through the exercise of refusing to feel shame. They kill to test a comrade before taking the field in earnest.

All signs are that Putin has passed that test.

On September 8 2004, shortly after the Beslan hostage tragedy, Alexander Litvinenko gave a long interview to the Chechenpress news agency. I published part of it in this blog five days later, in an English translation, and I want to republish it now, as I think it gives some idea of why Litvinenko was so dangerous to Russia’s security services, and why he posed such a threat to them.

Representatives of the Russian FSB (KGB) are currently making assertions to the Western press and media that Litvinenko was “small fry” and “not worth killing”. On the contrary, he possessed much knowledge, even a small part of which would have been enough to cause severe damage to the international reputation of the Russian federal government.

In connection with the extremely intricate and incomprehensible situation with the personalities of the people who participated in the hostage-taking in Beslan, the correspondent of the “Chechenpress” agency turned to a specialist for an explanation. The questions are answered by former Lieutenant Colonel of the FSB, Aleksandr Litvinenko.

Question: Aleksandr, could you please explain to our readers how it could happen that the persons who seized the hostages had previously been in the hands of the FSB, and how all of them managed to be freed simultaneously and to organize and conduct such an action?

Answer: According to the internal orders which regulate the operational secret service activity of the organs of the FSB of the Russian Federation, for persons who have been arrested on suspicion of their participation in illegal armed units, organized criminal associations which repeatedly used dangerous forms of violence and terrorism, a file of operative work progress is opened (a so-called file of operational control or development, and if more than two people are suspected of criminal activity, a file is opened for the group). During the work on the mentioned case, measures are taken for the operational tracking of the criminal cases, and secret measures are taken with regard to the prisoners. I.e., they are being followed, and in this connection they are constantly under the control of the special services.

If the persons involved in these cases are sentenced, the cases are transferred to be dealt with by the subdivisions of the FSB in whose area the object is serving his sentence in the form of prison. The operational files are continued during his stay in the prison colony, and after he has finished the prison period and is released, they are sent to the FSB organs at his place of residence. When the object is released and reliable, and checked information has been acquired that he has completely stopped carrying out criminal activity, the operational file is reassessed into a file of operational observation, and continued for about five years, as a rule.

If the criminal case is abandoned because there is no criminal issue, or it cannot be proved, as well as on other rehabilitation grounds (though this is extremely rare), the operative subdivision, as a rule, continues for some time with the control or observation of the object while he is free, and it isn’t stopped until confirmation is obtained that he has completely ended his criminal activity.

Additionally, there are frequent cases when people who are arrested for insignificant crimes are controlled or dealt with like persons suspected of more serious crimes. The operational measures of the FSB with respect to the objects are stopped in the following cases: no confirmation that the person has been engaged in criminal activity; the person foregoes criminal activity; death; reaching the age of 70 for men and 65 for women, and also in connection with their recruiting into the secret service apparatus of the RF FSB (then agency files are opened on them).

If we examine the case of those who have been tracked down in the hostage-taking in Beslan town, and the fact that they proved to have been free after their arrest by FSB organs and that they committed the hostage-taking after that, then I am absolutely sure that they couldn’t have left their prisons under any circumstances, without having come into the view of the FSB. Especially if we consider the fact that they were categorized in their criminal cases as active participants in bandit formations, persons who were close to the leaders of the Resistance, terrorists. I don’t have any doubts that after their detention and arrest, in the places where they were kept under guard by the FSB organs, active operational measures were conducted with regard to them, and first of all, measures directed at turning them to secret collaboration with the FSB. And only after they had been recruited, after all the operational information known to them about people the FSB is interested in had been obtained, and an additional check as newly recruited FSB agents, they were released in order to fulfill assignments for the special services.

This is the only possible way to explain the fact that these people who had previously been sitting in prisons under active surveillance by the FSB, suddenly all together turned out to be free and then under one command planned and carried out this action. Moreover, none of them allegedly reported the planned hostage-taking to the FSB. It is possible that some of them might have kept the FSB “in the dark”, and when it became known, they were already in the school building. But it’s 100% sure that Chechens who are arrested for terrorism and participation in bandit formations don’t have other ways to freedom than to flee or to be recruited. And most likely, Khodov, who was wanted for terrorism, wasn’t arrested by the militia organs at his homeplace, because he was a secret agent of the FSB, and he wasn’t removed from the arrest warrant in order not to reveal him to his operational environment, just as they did back in the old days at the Moscow UFSB with their known agent, the terrorist Maksim Lozovsky, nicknamed “The Colonel”.

(translation by N.S., with my minor editing)

At chechnya-sl, Jeremy Putley has posted a link to the complete English text (.doc file) of the book by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky

BLOWING UP RUSSIA: Terror from Within

Acts of terror, abductions, and contract killings organized by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation

The Times (UK) is reporting that British intelligence now suspects “a foreign state” of being implicated in Litvinenko’s murder:

A senior Whitehall official told The Times that confirmation that the former Russian spy, who had become a British citizen, had been poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 and other evidence so far not released pointed to the murder being carried out by foreign agents.

Last night the Foreign Office said that officials had met with the Russian ambassador in London and had asked the Kremlin to hand over any information that it had which could help the Scotland Yard investigation.

…although mortally wounded, communism has not been eradicated from the face of the Earth. Its remains persist in several major forms:

- as a barely breathing but still ruling political system in China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba;

- as political structures left by communism such as the KGB and party apparatus in Russia and many other former Soviet countries which either control or share power;

- as power structures propped up or created by the Soviet Union in its extended empire in places such as Palestine, Iraq, Angola, etc.;

- as the world terrorist network created mainly by the KGB in its fight against democracy;

- and finally, as an ideology not completely disavowed which still spoils cultural academic and political life in our country and the entire Western world.

Yuri Yarim-Agaev (2006)

From Ha’aretz:

Russian-born businessman Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the Yukos oil company and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, said Friday that he had met in Israel with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died Thursday in London from poisoning.

During the meeting, Litvinenko allegedly passed Nevzlin documents containing classified information possibly damaging to the current leadership in Russia.

In Nevzlin’s estimation, Litvinenko’s murder was tied to the information relating to Yukos contained in the documents. Nevzlin has turned the documents over to the London Metropolitan Police, who are investigating the murder.

Yesterday, as Mr Putin sat in Helsinki with EU top officials, the Russian government announced that it has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air defence missile systems to Iran.

Examining the implications of Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning for the rest of the world in an article written before Litvinenko’s death, J.R. Nyquist expresses little surprise about Russia’s global strategy, which be believes has altered little since Cold War days [hat tip: Marko]:

A man brave enough to risk his life to warn others, to lay an accusation against the most dangerous criminals in the world, deserves to be taken seriously. But the fact that his message has been systematically ignored, that no newspaper or politician will discuss his testimony concerning Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a sociological artifact of great significance. The Kremlin’s grand deception strategy has been effective, and there is no danger that the West will figure it out, because the truth is economically inconvenient for politicians and businessmen alike. Things have advanced so far that the Kremlin sees no danger in murdering people outright, as in the days of Stalin. In this way a message is sent to all writers, and all those with bits and pieces of the great puzzle.

The Russian strategy should be obvious by now. We know that China and Iran are being armed with Russian weapons – including Russian nuclear technology. Such moves deserve an explanation, but nobody wants an honest discussion of the problem. Given the economic logic of U.S. statesmanship, a confrontation with Russia is to be avoided. The Left/Right political divide paralyzes any and all realistic analysis because one side of this political divide is incapable of acknowledging a Russian threat while the other has attached itself to claims of victory and the prospect of “open” markets in “former” communist lands. We know that Russia is working to form various alliances with countries like Brazil, India, Venezuela, etc. We know that Russia and China have formed an intimate partnership, that they have conducted joint military exercises, and that China has been cultivating Mexico as a strategic partner. The balance of power is shifting, perhaps decisively, and the results of that shift may soon become apparent to everyone. The Iranian nuclear crisis serves to dramatize this shift. Three years ago President Bush would have bombed Iran. Today he is timid, hesitant and beleaguered. Many of the president’s supporters have turned against him. Perhaps President Bush realizes that a preemptive attack on Iran will divide the United States politically, with further consequences to the Republican Party.

Looking back at the long row of fallen dominoes, from South Africa and the Congo to Venezuela and Germany, the fall of the Israeli domino stands in prospect. The Israelis believe the neutralization of Iran’s nuclear project is essential to Israel’s security. Israeli analysts are already warning that Iran could destroy Israel without launching a single nuclear weapon, because many Israelis will leave Israel if Iran becomes a nuclear power. The morale of the Jewish state would suffer a crippling blow. But the plight of Israel does not move the American public. Just as the American consumer abandoned Vietnam to the Communists, some believe that Israel will be abandoned to the Islamists. Many observers expect that the Americans will not remain loyal to their allies, choosing instead to “cut and run” when things become difficult. After all, it was the Americans who abandoned Southeast Asia. It was the Americans who pushed for the Communist takeover of Rhodesia, and the Communist-ANC takeover of South Africa; and who allowed the Communist victories in Angola and Congo. The African Communists have won the long war for the mineral rich sub-Saharan region. And the Americans don’t care in the least. In fact, we are about to watch the United States Congress cut the legs out from under the government of Colombia as it struggles to contain a growing Communist insurgency.

I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me; the British Police who are pursuing my case with vigor and professionalism and are watching over me and my family.

I would like to thank the British Government for taking me under their care. I am honored to be a British citizen. I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.

I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.

But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like.

I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.

You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.

You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.

You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.

May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

A poster has commented:

The cause of the poisoning is Po-210, see

http://glasstone.blogspot.com

Russian ex-spy murdered with alpha radiation with Po-210 in food in London

Incompetent medics failed to diagnose acute radiation poisoning from internal exposure to the heavy element polonium-210, the most deadly radioactive material on earth due to its short half-life of 140 days (plutonium-239 has a 24,400 years half life so each atom of that emits only one alpha particle per 35,100 years, which is a comparatively low dose rate - the average life is always 1.44 times the half-life with simply one-stage decay chain exponentially decaying radionuclides).

Notice Po-210 has a half-life of 140 days, and is a high-energy alpha emitter. Plutonium-239 for contrast has a half-life of 24,400 years so the specific activity of Po-210 (decays per second or Becquerels, per gram) is way higher. The shorter the half life, the more decays per second!Po-210 was used with beryllium as the neutron source (initiator) in the early 1945 nuclear weapons. Alpha particles hitting beryllium fission it, releasing neutrons. This was responsible for most of the deaths after the Windscale nuclear reactor fire in England in 1957. The pile was producing Po-210 for British nuclear bomb tests in Maralinga, but the government kept that secret, claiming that only iodine-131 had been released. (They didn’t want the Americans to know Britain was still using obsolete 1945 nuclear initiator technology!)

I'd like to remind readers of this blog that comments here are moderated, and should be confined to the subject of the post concerned. Requests for information won't usually be answered.

The UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) has released a statement in which it confirms that Alexander Litvinenko “had a significant quantity of the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 (Po-210) in his body.”

Additionally, Reuters reports that police have found levels of radiation in the London sushi bar where he ate just before he became sick.

Via Sky News:

A large quantity of radiation, probably from a substance called Polonium 210, has been found in the body of dead ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

The “major dose” of alpha radiation was detected in his urine, said Government experts, who added that Polonium 210 is only dangerous if ingested.

Via BBC:

[..] Poland has vetoed the partnership talks and is refusing to lift its objections unless Russia ends a ban on Polish meat and vegetables.

Most EU members have tried to get Poland to change its mind, to no avail.

The BBC’s Jonny Dymond in Helsinki said the summit appeared to be doomed to failure before it had even begun.

From Prague Watchdog (my tr.):

Compensation payments to Chechen citizens: problems still not solved

By Umalt Chadayev

CHECHNYA – On November 14, Sultan Isakov, a high-ranking official of the Chechen government’s Compensation Committee, was detained on suspicion of extorting a large bribe, law enforcement representatives said.

Two days after this, in an interview for the Interfax news agency, Yuri Rosinsky, head of the FSB’s press service in the Chechen Republic, announced that FSB officials and the Chechen prosecutor’s office had implemented “a package of measures for the struggle against corruption in the institutions of authority and control.”

“Within the framework of these measures we have detained an organized criminal group which was extorting money that had been paid to Chechen residents as compensation for lost housing and property,” he said. “One of the group’s members, Emidin Khamatkhanov, was arrested while receiving 175,000 rubles from a resident of the city of Urus-Martan.”

According to Rosinsky, the evidence given by Khamatkhanov was used to detain Sultan Isakov, head of the secretariat of the Compensation Committee. The high-ranking official was accused of fulfilling the role of mediator and extortionist in the group. He allegedly dealt with the blocking of the bank accounts of uncooperative citizens who refused to pay a bribe, which could amount to as much as 50 per cent of the compensation sum (Chechen citizens are entitled to compensation payments of 350,000 rubles for housing and property lost in the course of military operations).

Names of other members of the criminal group were mentioned, in particular those of Ruslan Magomadov and Luiza Azimova, head of Rosselkhozbank’s operational department. This case of corruption among high-ranking officials threatened to become something of a national scandal. But only a few days after his detention, Sultan Isakov, who was one of the main suspects in the bribery and extortion racket, was set free. The Grozny district law court refused to issue a warrant for his arrest.

In addition, Isakov received the support of his immediate superior, Chechen prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov, who has personally headed the Committee in recent years. In Kadyrov’s opinion, Isakov was detained “without a proper basis of evidence.”

“An impression is being created that this arrest was a political act intended to discredit the republic’s authorities,” Kadyrov said in a statement distributed by his press service on November 17. “The detention of Isakov without any substantiating evidence is meant to create a negative opinion in the media and among the public about the situation in the country, and these actions are directed against the executive authority of the Chechen Republic.”

Isakov himself also claimed that his arrest had political implications. In his opinion, the main target of the action was Ramzan Kadyrov. “Kadyrov authorized an active operation to expose unlawful compensation deals. The ‘black hole’ that had come into being in the republic thereby disappeared, and now this is not to someone’s liking. My arrest was an attempt to discredit the executive branch in the Chechen Republic. What’s more, I’m certain that they wanted directly to blacken the name of the Compensation Committee’s chairman and present him in a negative light,” the official said at a press conference that was held in the building of the Grozny-Inform agency in the Chechen capital on November 20.

Nevertheless, the prosecutor’s office has announced that it intends to launch an appeal in the Chechen Supreme Court against Isakov’s release. Chechnya’s public prosecutor Valery Kuznetsov has stressed that the investigation of this matter will continue.

But many observers in the republic believe that the corruption case has little likelihood of success. “The Committee’s chairman is Ramzan Kadyrov. Isakov is his subordinate. It looks as though the prosecutor’s office is using the extortion case in order to get at the head of the government. But no one will allow that to happen,” a Chechen law enforcement officer believes.

“It’s no secret in the republic that ever since the payouts of compensation began in 2003 there has been corruption and open extortion. Officials have been taking 15,000 rubles as payment for preparing the necessary package of documents from people who weren’t actually eligible for compensation. After they got their compensation money from the bank those people also had to part with half of it, to the tune of 175,000 rubles. That’s the system that’s been in operation all these years, and it continues to operate. No official will turn down a ‘feeding trough’ of that kind,” he is convinced.

According to the officer, “big guys” and “big money” are involved. “Remember the arrest and trial of Baybatyrov (the former chairman of the Compensation Committee, who headed it in 2003-2004). He was accused of misappropriating more than 18 million rubles. But in the end he only got one-and-a-half years! That tells you something.”

Abubakir Baybatyrov was indeed arrested in November 2005 on charges of fraud and the misappropriation of a large sum of money. In June this year he was sentenced to
one-and-a-half years of imprisonment – not for embezzlement, however, but for exceeding his official authority.

A source in the Chechen presidential office says that from 2003 to the present day more than 46,000 of the republic’s citizens have obtained compensation for housing and property lost in the course of military operations. The Compensation Committee has received a total of 142,000 applications.

Three months ago the compensation payments were halted on the order of Ramzan Kadyrov. It was announced that this step had been taken because of the need for checks to be made on the legality of documents filed by Chechen subjects. Eli Isayev, the republic’s finance minister, recently announced that the payments will soon be resumed, and will be completed by the end of 2007.

Translated by David McDuff.

Announcement: Alexander Litvinenko

http://www.uclh.nhs.uk/News/2006/Announcement+Alexander+Litvinenko.htm

Press update: 11.00pm Thursday 23 November 2006

ALEXANDER LITVINENKO ANNOUNCEMENT

We are sorry to announce that Alexander Litvinenko died at University College Hospital at 9.21pm on 23.11.06.

He was seriously ill when he was admitted to UCH on Friday, November 17, and the medical team at the hospital did everything possible to save his life.

On Sunday evening he was transferred to the intensive care unit where he could be closely monitored and receive any critical support he needed.

Every avenue was explored to establish the cause of his condition and the matter is now an ongoing investigation being dealt with by detectives from New Scotland Yard.

Because of this we will not be commenting any further on this matter.

Our thoughts are with Mr Litvinenko’s family.

From Sobesednik (November 13, 2006) [my translation]

http://www.sobesednik.ru/issues/139/rubr/1400/tolko/?5131

Anzor Maskhadov: I feel sorry for Kadyrov. He may be killed

Author: Rimma Akhmirova

My meeting with Anzor Maskhadov took place in one of the countries of Europe - on condition that its name should not appear in the newspaper.

“Don’t touch your phone. I’ll call you when you’re outside Russia.”

He called again from a number which, he said, “will soon change anyway”. And when I arrived for the meeting, Anzor was already waiting for me with a person who was either his friend or his bodyguard. We drove in his BMW 5-series to a café in the centre of town.

——————————————————

How did you end up here?

They’re trying to make out that I ran away from the war. But I left before the second war, in early 1999. I went to Malaysia, to study. Then the war began. Father tried to get me to come back, but I couldn’t. How could I go home, through all those checkpoints, with this passport which has the name Maskhadov on it?

Where did you study?

I wanted to enrol at the Islamic University. But for that one had to have a good knowledge of English, so I studied the language. But then I left Malaysia and travelled to the Emirates, Turkey, and then Baku.

Such a lot of moving about - was it because of safety considerations?

Yes. I still get strange phone calls - with threats, provocations. A strange young man called me recently, and said: “Hey, Anzor, how can I get over to our guys, I have my own weapon with me.” I said: “You’ve got the wrong number,” and hung up. But that call was from Moscow. Quite recently I had a call from Chechnya asking our family to return home. They even promised to meet us on the Daghestan border. But it was obvious what would happen next, I know those methods.

Why Europe? Wouldn’t the Arab countries and Turkey be more convenient?

No, there are more Chechens in Europe now than there are in the Arab countries. Though some European states are also making their rules stricter now. Anyway, it was in the Arab state of Qatar that Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated with a bomb.

You are the head of the family now. Are you working?

No. For me right now the main thing is to recover my father’s body and to bury him. We have even appealed to Pariarch Aleksy II to help us - all religions say that a deceased person must be buried, after all. We shall continue to pursue legal action for the return of my father’s body to the end. Though we realize that most likely it won’t be returned. They’ve told us it’s because he’s a symbol of the resistance, and people would gather round his grave. But it’s not a custom of ours for people to gather in crowds around graves - only relatives go there. If I could bury him I wouldn’t even tell anyone where it was. I’d be afraid they would dig him up. There have been a lot of cases like that. My uncle was killed - and we’re the only people who know where he’s buried. But the Russian side are still searching for his body.

Is your family a large one?

My mother, sister, wife and children are living in Baku at present. My case is being examined there just now.

Don’t you plan to return to Chechnya? You’re not under investigation and you aren’t on any wanted lists.

When we corresponded with the Procurator General’s Office about my father’s body, Ustinov said that he personally had no complaints about me. But I’m certain that as soon I go back they’ll pin something on me. They’d make a big show trial out of it.

Did you keep in touch with your father all those years?

Always. At first by phone, and later by email. Then he began sending me video messages by courier to any country where I happened to be.

You must have assembled a large archive in all that time.

Yes. But I don’t plan to make it public for the time being. All in good time.

Many Chechens are marching under Kadyrov’s flag now.

I’ll tell you a story: Shara Tulayev is often shown on television, because they sat he went over to Kadyrov’s side. What actually happened was that Tulayev went at night to recover the body of Aslan Maskhadov’s brother, my uncle, who was killed in combat, but the body was booby-trapped with a bomb. Tulayev got blown up, and when he came to in hospital, Kadyrov’s men were sitting at his bedside. They also amputated his injured foot higher than they should have. So he wouldn’t go off and fight again.

Are you and Kadyrov personal enemies?

I don’t want to talk about it. I feel sorry for him, for having chosen this path. God is the judge of all men. He may be killed, just as Kadyrov senior was killed. Possibly even by his own people.

But it was Basayev who took responsibility for Akhmat Kadyrov’s murder. and Basayev is no longer alive.

Basayev took responsibility for a lot of things. Even for things he didn’t do. That’s the kind of man he was.

People are saying it’s all over now. All the main leaders have been killed - Maskhadov, Basayev, Sadulayev, Yandarbiyev…

There is Doku Umarov (Ichkerian President - Ed.). The man the Kremlin deserves. He is also prepared to make peace if the Kremlin wants it, but Umarov is not as soft as my father or Sadulayev, his successor.

What about Basayev?

Umarov is even bolder than Shamil. The Kremlin has earned this enemy for itself. My father was murdered precisely at the moment when he had stopped the war for a month and had then extended that cease-fire for another month. But Russia didn’t want Maskhadov as the man who ended the war. In 2004 Maskhadov had a meeting with Basayev at which Shamil swore to him that he wouldn’t wage war against innocent civilians.

But your father made unacceptable conditions.

We are ready to yield, we don’t say: “Independence and freedom for Chechnya.” The main thing is not to give Russia the chance to start another war in 50 years’ time. We want guarantees of security for our people, and that is all. For many this is a purely commercial war. People have made very good money out of it. Men like former defence minister Pavel Grachev, Kazantsev and the rest of them. One day it will all become known.

People on your side also make money.

That money they talk of doesn’t exist.

What about the arms purchases?

I remember that in the first war, which I took part in, we could get a lot of ammunition in exchange for a bottle of vodka. Sometimes we were even offered armoured personnel carriers - BTRs and BMPs.

Things like that don’t happen now.

No, things like that don’t. But where did Basayev get the ammunition he was transporting when it exploded? He probably bought it somewhere in Chechnya or Ingushetia.

Only a small number of people are fighting now, and the war is practically over.

That was also said in 2002-2003. But then came the special operation in Achkhoy-Martanovsky district, villages were surrounded, the buildings of the FSB. The operation in Ingushetia was the same. Two or three thousand active soldiers are fighting. But today’s politicians and generals are indifferent to losses on the Russian side. The guerrilla war goes on. And it’s a hard war to win.

I’ve spoken to people in Chechnya, and they say they are tired of the war.

You’re from Russia, and they won’t tell you everything. So many things have happened… Kurchaloy, Shali, Atagi. I have it all on videotape. Some people were buried alive, some were blown up after they’d been tied together.

How did Aslan Maskhadov manage to stay hidden for so long?

In 2003 my father was living in Gudermes, not far from Kadyrov’s house. I even have a photograph. When it became known, Kadyrov was furious. Father wrote me: “Anzor, if you only knew where I’m staying… the personnel carriers pass only 2 or 3 metres away.”. He also wrote: “If a situation develops, I won’t let myself be taken alive.” It’s said they found a suicide belt on him. He mined every house he came to with explosives, so as not to be taken alive.

Why didn’t he blow that place up?

It was a different situation, there was a battle. The investigation said that one of his relatives fired at him. But that’s not true. I know what happened. They wanted to make it look as though someone from the resistance killed Maskhadov.

Is it true that there are training camps for guerrillas and female suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Azerbaijan, and now also in other countries?

Why go somewhere else to train, if it can all be done in Chechnya, under actual fighting conditions? What better training could we get than the fighting we’ve been doing for dozens of years? The war has even taught our children how to handle sub-machine-guns. And that is the most terrible thing.

(Hat tip: Marius)

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*** EDITOR-COORDINATOR ***

The Czech civic association Prague Watchdog has been covering the conflict in Chechnya since 2000 via its online project http://www.watchdog.cz, focusing on human rights, media access and coverage, and the local humanitarian and political situation.

Currently we are accepting applications for the job of Editor-Coordinator of this project.

Responsibilities:

- managing the http://www.watchdog.cz website
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Requirements:

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Deadline for applications: December 22, 2006.

Contact: mail@watchdog.cz or tel.: +420-602-565-074 (Tomas Vrsovsky).

Published at http://www.watchdog.cz/job on November 22, 2006.

As President Putin arrives in Helsinki today, he may just be aware of the fact that a large collection of photographs relating to the Russian-Finnish wars of 1939-40 and 1941-44 has this week finally been released to public view by the Finnish Defence Forces’ picture archive.

Many of the photographs are grisly and harrowing, but that is not the main reason why they have been withheld from open scrutiny for so long - some 45 years. The ban on the photos, first instituted in 1962, was last renewed in 1981, and the validity of that decision expired on November 19, giving the FDF the opportunity to break with the political self-censorship which had branded the archive collection as “unsuitable for use”. An extensive report in the international edition of Helsingin Sanomat explores the background:

…the first photographs put on the classified-items list were of Russian prisoners of war. It was not thought overly smart to annoy the Soviet Union. The same running order is found in the 1981 decision.

Within the Finnish Defence Forces, some have speculated that the publication of images of POWs and captured spies may also have been frowned on because of the potential propaganda weapon it would have offered to pro-Soviet elements within Finnish society.

When Helsingin Sanomat wrote about the locked-up pictures in 1998, the then Head of the FDF Picture Archives Lt. Col. Juha Myyryläinen described the 1981 decision as political. He said candidly that the statute reflected the Finnlandisierung [Finlandisation] era. Even so, that decision has remained in force until today.

The paper also notes that the release of the pictures has implications for the development of Finnish society as a whole in the post-Cold War era:

The relatives have had a personal need to see the gruesome images. But they are also important to others.

The pictures are a part of the secret history of Finland and the Finns.

They contain the seeds of a special kind of trauma associated with their enforced secrecy. Speaking of the mass killings of Finnish civilians by enemy forces has been forbidden, and the subject is not easy to grasp or to deal with - neither the facts of what happened nor the cover-up that followed.

Images of murdered civilians laid out on the grass and of bodies heaped on the back of trucks bring to mind the pictures seen in the media of mass killings of civilians in trouble-spots around the world.

From these partisan pictures it is possible to see that Finland has not been immune: these things really happened here sixty years ago.

During the Vietnam War, one image in particular became famous around the globe - a screaming 9-year-old girl running burned and naked down a highway, fleeing her napalmed village.

It would feel bad to publish a similar picture of a Finnish child from which he or she could be recognised.

Pictures of courts-martial in the field and of executions also exist. Images of judgements carried out on Finnish soldiers have been transferred into the closed files in order not to cause further distress to relatives.

The sequences of pictures of the executions of Russian infiltrators, dropped into Finland to spy and cause sabotage, tell us something of the insanity of war.

One set, marked as “Hanko Sector 1941″ sees a group of Finnish soldiers having a cigarette with a captured Russian spy.

The mood looks relaxed, even cordial: the men appear to be sharing a joke. On the back of the photo is the hand-written text: Finnish officers chatting with a Russian infiltrator. He is laughing at the ‘condemned man’s last request’.

In the next image the man is standing at the side of a mown hayfield, facing a firing squad of half a dozen men with rifles, and in a third - marked Infiltrator’s death-sentence - his body is shown slumped on the ground.

(Hat tip: Marius)

Pavel K. Baev, on the day the Chechen execution squad came to Moscow:

On Saturday evening, November 18, machine-gun fire erupted on Leninsky Prospect in downtown Moscow. Special police forces and a bomb squad quickly arrived at the scene and discovered one fatality. They had no problem identifying the victim, despite his multiple head wounds: Movladi Baisarov, the former commander of the “Gorets” (Highlander) special detachment.

Read the rest, here.

In its current issue, the Australia-based journal Lithuanian Papers has published a fascinating essay by the Swedish translator and journalist Jonas Öhman, who has made a special study of the Lithuanian armed resistance against the Soviet Union, and is presently visiting locations in preparation to making a documentary film on the subject.

Öhman examines the bloody Lithuanian guerrilla war of 1944-1953, a conflict which mostly took place behind the rigidly imposed Iron Curtain of those years, received almost no coverage or publicity in Western media, and is still little discussed even today:

When addressing the anti-Soviet guerilla war it must be noted that one is talking about a war that has never been officially acknowledged elsewhere. As the Soviet security forces were intensifying their manhunt in the Lithuanian forests, looking for the deeply dug-in guerillas with mine sweepers and dogs in the end of the 1940s, the resistance fighters desperately increased their efforts to get some public attention in the West.

Couriers literally shot themselves through the Iron Curtain carrying backpacks with photos, documents and even pleas written in the languages of the leaders and decision makers they were aimed at. Alas, they soon found that the risks taken were in vain. Silence, disbelief and indifference were the West's reply.

The Lithuanian conflict has its parallel today in the war in Chechnya, a war that still continues, despite the Russian government's insistence to the contrary. Öhman has some interesting reflections on this subject:

Remnants of the experience of resistance in Lithuania would be felt until independence was achieved in the beginning of the 1990s. One could mention the incident on July 31, 1990 when a number of young border guards of the newly independent state were surrounded at night in their barracks at Medininkai and seven of them were executed with shots to the head. This was probably done by the special interior forces of the Soviet Union, the so-called OMON, which still exists under the same name in Russia. One of the border guards, a certain Tomas Šernas, miraculously survived (the bullet passed between the halves of his brain) and he could tell the story. It might further be added that these kinds of tactics are among the standard measures still used by the Russian security forces in Chechnya, for instance.

When studying the counter-guerilla techniques developed in Ukraine and Lithuania it becomes clear that the tactics from the 40s and 50s are still being used to discredit and destabilize the resistance. One could mention several incidents in recent years in the Caucasus, by which several thousand of people have been abducted and/or executed by unidentified units for unclear reasons or no reasons at all; and with no one being able to tell who had actually performed the deed. In a number of cases it has been established that the abductions and killings have been performed by Russian-controlled units in order to create uncertainty and fear, and so silence anyone who considered joining the opposition. Further, every Chechen fighter has a personal FSB security officer attached to his file: a similar system previously used against the anti-Soviet resistance participants.

Sometimes, however, not even fear among one's opponents is good enough. The blowing up of a number of multistory residences in Moscow in 1999 remains to a large extent a mystery, not the least since some available evidence pointš to the Russian Secret Service (FSB) as a probable initiator of the bombings. Yet the Chechens were blamed, and this was used as a reason to initiate renewed military action on Chechen territory.

Here one could mention another circumstance connected to the theme of this essay. A part of the very same NKVD forces, the 25th NKVD regiment, used to deport literally all the Chechens in 1944 to Siberia and Central Asia - an act which in the long term paved the way for the ruthless acts of war in the last decade in the Caucasus - was soon thereafter despatched to Lithuania, where it suffered heavy casualties in 1945-46.

Lithuanian Papers:
Post Office Box 777, Sandy Bay, Tas. 7006 (Australia).
Phone (03) 6225 2505. E-mail: a.taskunas@utas.edu.au
Subscriptions: Australia, single issue, $7 posted.
All other countries, single issue by air mail, US$8.
Please direct subscription requests to:
Post Office Box 777, Sandy Bay, Tas. 7006 (Australia).

Ahead of Friday’s EU meeting in Helsinki, Vladimir Putin is trying to reassure the nations of Europe that they have “nothing to fear” from his government.

At the same time, he is issuing veiled warnings.

Via openDemocracy

Alexander Litvinenko: the poison of power
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski
20 - 11 - 2006
A poisoned Russian defector in London is only the latest official enemy to be targeted, reports Zygmunt Dzieciolowski.
——————————————

Their dream was a poison which would kill a man instantly but which could not be found in a corpse’s blood during the post-mortem examination. For years, the secret poison laboratory of the Soviet-era biologist Grigory M Mairanovski, founded on the orders of Lavrenti Beria in 1938, researched deadly substances. The moment came when Mairanovski and his team felt that, by deceiving even experienced medical experts, they had achieved their dream.

It happened when German prisoners-of war who had been killed with Mairanovski’s poison were immediately transferred to the Sklifasovskii emergency clinic in the heart of Moscow. The Sklifasovskii medics were unable to find the poison - and concluded that the German POWs had in fact died of natural causes.

The Mairanovski laboratory was closed in 1946 following the replacement of Lavrenti Beria by Vsevolod Merkulov as head of the NKVD. But poisons continued to be used intermittently throughout modern Soviet and post-Soviet history, indicating that the tradition of toxicological assassination was never completely abandoned.

The poisoned body politic

It was some times pursued via proxies. Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist with the BBC World Service, died in London in September 1978 after apparently being injected with poison from the tip of an umbrella.

Yuri Shchekochikhin, a Russian journalist (deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta) and member of the Duma (parliament), died on the night of 2-3 June 2003 after returning from a business trip to the city of Ryazan where he had sought to investigate a furniture-store corruption scandal involving high-ranking intelligence officials.

His illness was first described by Moscow doctors as allergy but when he lost his hair, and the skin on his face changed its structure, it became obvious that his body was reacting to a strong, unidentifiable poison. Doctors were unable to save him; he died within a few days.

For a few years, Shchekochikhin’s Novaya Gazeta colleagues tried to discover the real reasons for his death, and sent tissue-samples to London for further investigation. In the event it was not possible to identify the poison which killed Shchekochikhin, though his editor-in-chief Dmitri Muratov has no doubts that this was the cause of death.

Another poisoning attempt affected journalist Anna Politkovskaya (later shot dead by an unknown assassin on 7 October 2006). At the first news of the Beslan school siege in September 2004 she rushed to the airport to seek a seat on flight in the direction of the north Caucasus. In the end she got a ticket for a flight to Rostov-on-Don. Aware of all possible dangers she refused to eat and drink on board. Only at the end of the flight did she request a glass of water. She fainted after the plane landed, and for days doctors struggled to save her. She had been poisoned, perhaps by two secret-service agents who had followed her onto the plane.

The most famous poisoning case involved the Ukrainian opposition leader (now president) Viktor Yushchenko. A few months before the presidential election in 2004 he was hospitalised suffering stomach pains. Soon his face began to change, and a mask of lesions and blisters disfigured the Ukrainian politician’s previously youthful looks. Numerous examinations held by laboratories in the Britain, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany confirmed that Yushchenko was poisoned purposely by a poisonous substance called dioxine.

In April 2002 the Russian secret services used a poison in order to liquidate one of the most dangerous Chechen warlords, Omar ibn-Khattab. He died within five minutes after opening a letter said to be written by his mother. It was delivered by a Chechen fighter recruited by the Russian secret services as their agent.

Events in Moscow’s Dubrovka theatre in October 2002, when 900 spectators were taken hostage by Chechen fighters, further demonstrate how much the Russian secret services are fond of employing poison-gas substances. After getting inside the building, members of the special forces used an unidentified narcotic gas to subdue the terrorists. But it affected hostages too. 129 of them died, all but two from the adverse effects of the gas.

The toxic trail

The case of Alexander Litvinenko, the former secret service (FSB) agent now in a London hospital after being poisoned in a restaurant with a dose of the metal thallium, is no different. Before and after his flight to London, the colonel had made enemies in the Russian government and intelligence services.

At first he accused his bosses of organising an attempt to kill émigré businessman Boris Berezovsky, himself a strong critic of president Putin. Litvinenko’s book on the mysterious explosions of apartment blocks in Moscow and other cities in September 1999 which killed more than 300 people angered his enemies even more. Litvinenko had no doubts that the explosions - which helped propel Russia into its second Chechen war, and were followed a year later by the election of Vladimir Putin to the presidency - were organised by the FSB to convince public opinion that war was essential to curb Chechen terrorism.

The Kremlin’s allies in Moscow deny that the FSB could be involved in an attempt to poison Litvinenko with thalium. In their view the incident helps Boris Berezovsky, who will now use it in his propaganda campaign against the Kremlin. Gennadi Gudkov, a Duma member and retired KGB colonel, acidly praised Berezovsky’s talent as a director of theatrical spectaculars.

But Kremlin critics such as Sergei Kovalev, or former Yukos executive and KGB general Alexei Kondaurov, do not exclude anothrer possibility: that former colleagues of Alexander Litvinenko had themselves had enough of his criticism and activities.

As with so many elements in the melancholy trail of Russian deaths in the last sixteen years, the truth will be hard to find. But the method, the symptoms, and the mysterious circumstances in which a poison was used in London all indicate that the tradition of Dr Mairanovski’s laboratory has not been forgotten.

This article by Zygmunt Dzieciolowski was originally published on openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons Licence. If you enjoyed this article, visit openDemocracy.net for more.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/poison_power_4111.jsp

MosNews reports that Robert Amsterdam, attorney to Mikhail Khodorkovsky,

has criticized a recent remark by former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and said that it was a part of a “well funded campaign of lies and distortion aimed at undermining Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s integrity”.

“Mr. Schroeder’s attempts to introduce humor to the plight of a man who is illegally imprisoned in the Russian gulag represents the most obscene of insults,” Amsterdam was quoted as saying by PR Newswire.

According to press reports in Germany this month, Mr. Schroeder made the following comments in regards to Russia and Mr. Khodorkovsky: “We nick tax evaders as well. However, we do not have Siberia at our disposal.”

Update: The complete PR Newswire press release can be read here. The report includes an interesting statement from Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger of Germany's FDP (Free Democrat Party), who was formerly German Minister of Justice:

"I explicitly appreciate the strong criticism of the attorney of Mr. Khodorkovsky, Robert Amsterdam, concerning the behavior of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In the past Mr. Schroeder had closed his eyes regarding the massive lack of rule of law and human rights in contemporary Russia. Now he damages the democratic development of Russia by mocking and twitting victims of the insufficient rule of law such as Mr. Khodorkovsky."

Via Reuters UK:

Britain’s anti-terrorism police are investigating the case, which could have far-reaching consequences for diplomatic relations at a time of mounting concern in the West over Moscow’s human rights record.

Yesterday’s Cato Institute seminar on Russia’s energy policy was an informative event, which set off the views and personalities of two contrasting discussants who none the less share a common perspective on the issues concerned. Robert Amsterdam’s contribution was an impassioned appeal to Western political and economic forces for a realistic and ethical appraisal of the processes now underway in the Russian Federation with regard to the limiting and eradication of democracy and democratic freedoms, while Andrei Illarionov presented a drier, sardonic and more analytical approach to the same issues, revealing the ways in which the Kremlin has begun to use economic and energy leverage to influence Western policy-making. One got the overall impression that while the Soviet Union may no longer formally exist, the Soviet approach to global politics is still very much alive in the thinking and practices of the Russian federal government.

One of the most interesting and compelling statements came not in the talks themselves, enlightening though those were, but in Robert Amsterdam’s reply to a questioner who wanted to know about the current state of U.S.-Russia relations. As a Canadian citizen resident in Europe, Amsterdam is able to offer a North American perspective that comprehends, but doesn’t necessarily endorse, the position in which the United States and Europe now find themselves where Russia is concerned [my transcription]:

As far as I’m concerned, of the big-picture items geopolitically between the US and Russia there is nothing actually bigger than rule of law, the WTO, the entire transnational system of international laws and treaties and for Russia and Europe and the US to obtain a common grammar in respect to those. That’s the most important thing. Because Russia cannot mobilize its resources without it. Russia cannot continue its disaggregation policy with it. And once Russia signs the Energy Charter, and Russia has to agree to transit gas, we’re going to be in an entirely different energy world, where something called competition may actually evolve in some of these markets, and that is going to help in terms of liberating people, and it is going to help in terms of, in fact, putting Russia back on a better road in terms of democratic freedoms.

I think what we’re seeing right now has been many American politicians attempting to close their eyes to the reality of Russia because they think, in respect to Iran or North Korea that Russia somehow geopolitically is on their side. And as I said when I spoke, they’re wrong - the concepts that are coming out of Moscow, and there’s a recent paper that’s just come out called The Likely Scenario of Action of the United States towards Russia - there’s a tremendous well of hostility towards the US among the siloviki who have become very powerful in Russia. And there’s a false game in terms of many of these American politicians who believe, somehow, that by the President and Mr Putin getting along, all of a sudden the world is going to be light - it’s not going to be how it’s going to happen. We’ve got to deal with fundamentals. We can’t deal with isolated issues. And we have to have a negotiating table with Russia where the hard issues or and about Russia are addressed. They can’t be obfuscated. And that’s why I’m saying the way to do that is to begin today to focus on those Western banks that are the complicit players in this geopolitical game. Because as far as I’m concerned, these banks have become political actors. And they are unsupervised, and their goals are short-term profit maximization at the expense of rule of law, and that doesn’t work in a market economy. You can’t have what I call “constitutional dumping”.

Update: It's now possible to download a podcast of the entire event from the Cato website. The video of the discussion can also be watched there.

BBC Monitoring reports that in Russia, coverage of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko has been confined to “a small number of outlets”.

On reasons for the silence, which has particularly affected Russia’s three main television networks, the journalist and political commentator Yulia Latynina expressed the view that “This is a fairly key milestone, which undoubtedly alters the image of Russia in the outside world."

The lack of television coverage came as no shock to Ekho Moskvy’s editor-in-chief, Alexei Venediktov.

“It’s not at all surprising that there’s silence on television, it’s understandable,” he told listeners to his phone-in programme on Sunday.

The launch of an investigation by British police had led to “confusion” in the Russian authorities, he said.

(Hat tip: LN)

At 5pm London time today (12pm EST), it will be possible to watch a live webcast of Robert Amsterdam (Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s attorney) and Andrei Illarionov at the Cato Institute, Washington D.C.

From the brochure:

Russian energy policy is reflecting a change in the conduct of the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign affairs. Robert Amsterdam, a partner at Amsterdam and Peroff, will explain how the treatment of private energy companies in Russia is part of a broader pattern of political centralization and will describe what he believes are the global goals of Russia’s more aggressive, energy-driven foreign policy. Andrei Illarionov, the newest senior fellow at the Cato Institute, will describe the accelerated pace of change in Russia and new ways in which political, economic and civil liberties are being eliminated.

From Prague Watchdog (November 19, my tr.):

Grave human rights situation in Chechnya

By Umalt Chadayev

CHECHNYA - Chechen human rights defenders agree with the conclusions of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) briefing paper on the continuing torture and abduction of relatives of alleged members of armed units.

The paper, which was published by the international organization last week and which documents the presence in Chechnya of secret prisons, the use of torture on detainees, and hostage-taking involving the abduction of separatists’ relatives, met with a negative response from the Moscow-backed Chechen government. In an interview for the Kommersant newspaper, Chechen deputy prime minister Ziyad Sabsabi said that there is no torture in Chechnya. “If cases of torture really took place, we would speak about this problem, and so would prisoners’ relatives,” the deputy prime minister claimed.

However, HRW workers who conducted research missions in April and September of the present year documented 82 cases in which Chechen security forces detained and tortured people, most of them in unlawful detention facilities. According to HRW, the researchers obtained detailed descriptions at least 10 such facilities, most of which are private houses owned or used by commanders loyal to Premier Ramzan Kadyrov.

In addition, the report says that the torture of detainees is carried out by law enforcement personnel, in particular the Second Operational Investigative Bureau (ORB-2), which is sadly all too familiar in Chechnya. Moreover, Chechen Public Prosecutor Valery Kuznetsov said in an interview with Kommersant that “cases occur in which representatives of power structures use unlawful methods during questioning.” He also said that ten torture-related criminal cases are being processed by his prosecutor’s office now. He saw fit to comment, however, that “very often these complaints are made with an eye to receiving leniency.”

A few days after the publication of the HRW report, representatives of the Russian delegation to the United Nations announced that the number of people abducted in Chechnya from year to year is decreasing. According to Russian data, in 2005 108 people were abducted on Chechen territory, while in 2004 and 2003 the figures were 218 and 567 respectively.

However, representatives of the human rights organizations working in Chechnya agree with the Human Rights Watch report’s conclusion that the situation concerning violations of human rights and freedoms remains rather complicated, and that abductions and torture still continue to occur. Moreover, according to one human rights worker, almost all the abductions have been carried out by members of the Russian and local law enforcement bodies.

“All these statements that hostage-taking in the Chechen Republic has grown less frequent, and that the kidnapping is done by guerrillas dressed as law enforcement personnel, are a rather cynical ploy. In the seven years that we’ve been monitoring the situation in the republic, I don’t remember more than five or six cases of disappearance-related crimes being committed by members of ‘illegal armed formations’, as they’re called nowadays,” says Usam Baysayev, a Memorial human rights centre worker.

“Some 3,000 cases of disappearance have been registered since the year 2000. Almost all of these crimes were committed by members of the law enforcement authorities. The use of torture and secret prisons is an integral part of the current system of hostage-taking,” he considers. “ It goes without saying that a person who has been unlawfully abducted will not be put in an IVS (temporary confinement centre). For that there are secret prisons.”

“At the beginning of the war these were the so-called zindany, which were located at Russian military bases. Now they are illegal prisons which exist in the places where Chechen units are deployed. A person detained there for several days is ‘processed’, i.e., subjected to severe torture and ill-treatment. After that, if he ‘confesses’ some crime or another (with which he often has no connection), he is transferred to an ‘official’ IVS. There he is held as a suspect in some specific criminal case, and the matter is handled retrospectively,” the rights worker says.

“There are cases when people die, unable to endure the terrible tortures in these secret prisons. Sometimes the relatives of detainees manage to buy them out of prison by paying a bribe, but that is really an exception to the rule. The problem of abductions, unlawful detention and torture exists in the republic, no matter what the official authorities say.”

Translated by David McDuff.

The MSM have finally caught up with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko - more than a week after the event. The story is covered today by at least five British newspapers:

Sunday Times

Independent on Sunday

Mail on Sunday

Sunday Telegraph

Observer

The BBC, CNN and Reuters UK have reports here, here and here.

An article in Nigeria’s Saturday Sun has some background on thallium, the rare toxic metal that was evidently used to poison Mr Litvinenko:

Another political refugee was Nikolai Khokhlov who was haunted by the Russian government for listening to his conscience not to eliminate an innocent man. Though he had no unusual encounter with any person, Khokhlov, while participating in a convention at Frankfurt, Germany, became ill and later collapsed. Regaining consciousness, he suffered violent nausea that doctors treated as acute gastritis. But the treatment was unavailing. On Khokhlov’s fifth morning in a Frankfurt’s hospital, a nurse entered his room and stared at him in transfixed horror. “What is it?” Khokhlov demanded. Then he looked in a mirror with a horror of his own.

Hideous brown stripes, dark splotches and black and blue swellings disfigured his face and body. A sticky secretion oozed from his eyelids, and blood seeped through his pores; his skin felt dry, shrunken and aflame. At the mere touch of his hand, a shock of his hair fell out. An eminent professor of medicine suspected that he had been poisoned with thallium, a rare toxic metal. However, treatment with thallium antidotes had no effect. Tests showed that Khokhlov’s white corpuscles were being swiftly and fatally destroyed, his bones decaying, his blood turning to plasma, and his saliva glands drying up. That night doctors said his case was hopeless and death imminent.

Following pleas from the man whose life he had saved, Khokhlov was transferred to a US military hospital in Frankfurt. Protected constantly by armed guards, a team of six American physicians now began a duel with some unknown death specialists. Around the clock, they gave him massive injections of cortisone, vitamins, steroids, ACTH, and experimental medications, while keeping him alive with intravenous feeding and almost continous blood transfusions.

An anesthesiologist stood by, preparing solutions for Khokhlov’s mouth which was devoid of saliva, and otherwise trying to ease his agony. More specialists arrived for consultation and analysis and still newer drugs were rushed to Frankfurt. For a week, the supreme resources of American medicine barely kept Khokhlov alive.

Subsequently, a famous American toxicologist, who studied the medical records in consultation with colleagues, found the answer. Khokhlov was poisoned with thallium that had been subjected to intense atomic radiation, which causes the metal to disintegrate into tiny particles. Introduced into his body through food or drink, the radioactive particle disintegrated completely and permeated his system with deadly radiation.

From chechnya-sl:

Doctors have established the substance that poisoned A.Litvinenko
Sayhan Umarov, London

[translated by Norbert Strade]

For CHECHENPRESS, 17.11.06

We learned from London that the doctors have established after another examination that Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned with thallium. Thallium is a highly toxic substance, and a thallium poisoning often has a lethal outcome. Moreover, it is difficult to identify the presence of the heavy metal in the organism without tests in a special laboratory. Thallium first of all attacks the nervous system, the liver and the kidneys. It is hard to remove from the organism, and the poisoning is difficult to treat.

The doctors have already started to use a treatment with a special antidote, and they hope that Aleksandr Litvinenko's organism, which is hardy from regular sports exercises, will survive the poisoning with the help of intensive application of the necessary drugs. However, they don't exclude that it might become necessary to carry out a bone marrow transplant, which is a complicated operation for the patient.

Litvinenko's state at the moment is called grave but stable by the doctors.

The doctor in attendance officially stated to the English police that the poisoning of Aleksandr Litvinenko was intentional, and Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation into the attempted murder of a citizen of Great Britain (Litvinenko obtained British citizenship a couple of weeks ago). Aleksandr Litvinenko is under constant protection by the police, which so far hasn't given the press any information about the state of the investigation.

http://chechenpress.net/events/2006/11/17/08.shtml

See also Litvinenko Poisoned

Litvinenko Interview

In the context of the Georgia-Russia conflict Dmitry Shlapentokh at Prague Watchdog examines some of the wider implications of the crisis. Looking round at Russia today, he finds that although the "Red-Brown" opposition to President Yeltsin's regime is no longer evident on the streets of Russian cities in the conspicuous way it was then, it nonetheless survives in the policies of Putin's government. The "Red" element, Shlapentokh argues, has been reborn in Putin's attempt to create a ""Eurasian" identity - the "Rossiyanin" - which mimics the multi-ethnic, "homo sovieticus" identity of Soviet days. This, in its turn, has spawned a xenophobic reaction in the form of the nationalist movement, heir to the "Brown" element of the Yeltsin era, which sees "Russian-ness" in terms of a "blood and soil" paradigm.

But the Russian state has been getting in on the nationalist act, too:

The assumption that a number of European states will disintegrate in the future was expressed in a Russian TV summer 2006 show, intermingled with news broadcasting.

The news quoted the angry statement of the Georgian president that Georgia would not give up Abkhazia or South Ossetia, indeed, not one meter of Georgian territory. The commentators discarded the statement and implied that Saakashvili plainly did not understand the global trend. The point, at least in Europe, one commentator asserted, is not integration but disintegration of existing states. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and independence of Kosovo from Serbia could lead to the disintegration of other European countries. The UK and Italy could follow their example, and Georgia would hardly be an exception.

This certainly sheds new light on Moscow's strategy in the Georgia crisis, which is obviously intended as a lesson to other European states and countries - a lesson which, Shlapentokh suggests, Europe will not ignore, in spite of its dependence on gas and oil.

Read the whole thing.

From Chechnya Weekly:

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DOCUMENTS TORTURE IN CHECHNYA

Human Rights Watch on November 13 published a briefing paper on torture in Chechnya that it had prepared for the 37th session of the United Nations Committee against Torture. The paper covered torture by personnel of the Second Operational Investigative Bureau (ORB-2), torture by units under the effective command of Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, torture in secret detention and continuing “disappearances.” According to Human Rights Watch, torture “in both official and secret detention facilities is widespread and systematic in Chechnya.”

One of the cases detailed in the briefing paper involved the illegal arrest and torture of two brothers, Sulim S. and Salambek S., in mid-March 2006. Sulim S., who was incarcerated in what he later found out was the ORB-2’s premises, described being suffocated by a gas mask through which the airflow was cut, subjected to electric shocks, severely beaten, threatened with rape and told his brother would be “ripped apart.” He said that when he was unable to come up with a crime to confess to, he was given a choice of three crimes to confess to – bombing of a bus, killing of two policemen or killing of one woman – but that he refused to do so. His brother was detained and taken to the ORB-2’s premises about a week later, where he was subjected to similar abuse. “Sulim said that upon transfer to the remand facility in Grozny, he was examined by a doctor who documented his injuries, including broken ribs, bruises on his legs and inner thighs, swollen hands and tongue, and burned ears,” Human Rights Watch wrote. “Most of the charges against the two brothers were dropped, and both stood trial for ‘membership in illegal armed formations.’ In August 2006, a court released both men under the applicable statute of limitations. Although the brothers told the judge that they had been tortured in detention and their medical reports were entered into the case record, the court took no action to investigate the torture allegations” (Chechnya Weekly, August 10, April 20).

Human Rights Watch also detailed several cases of alleged detention and torture by forces loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov. Magomed M., a 24-year-old resident of a village in central-eastern Chechnya, told the group he was among five young males detained by kadyrovtsy in early June 2006 and taken to one of Kadyrov’s bases on the outskirts of the village of Tsentoroi. “There were three or four personnel there - the same ones who brought us to the base,” Magomed M. said. “They kept asking about a rebel fighter from our area - they said we should know him since we are the same age. I knew nothing about the man, but they wouldn’t believe me. They kept kicking me and beating me with sticks; it lasted for five or six hours.” He was released after several days and warned that if he talked about his detention he would be taken into custody again and “disappear.” According to Human Rights Watch, after his release, Magomed M. spent more than three weeks in a hospital, where he said doctors documented his injuries, including multiple hematomas on his body, kidney damage and a concussion.

Another case documented by Human Rights Watch involved Khamid Kh., who was detained in April by kadyrovtsy who accused him of providing food and weapons to rebels. He was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks during interrogation, and while he was released the next day, he spent the following two weeks in a hospital with serious heart problems that he believed resulted from the electric shock torture. “Although Khamid Kh. said he remembered and would have recognized his torturers, he had no intention to seek justice as he was warned that only ‘keeping his mouth shut’ would guarantee his safety,” Human Rights Watch wrote.

The report further noted: “Continued enforced disappearances in Chechnya are of interest to the committee [United Nations Committee against Torture] because they place civilians outside the protection of the law, making them particularly vulnerable to torture. In a number of cases documented by Human Rights Watch during its recent missions and earlier, relatives of the ‘disappeared’ later found the bodies of their loved ones in unmarked graves or other locations. In most cases, the bodies bore marks of torture. Some of those detained by Kadyrov’s forces later ‘disappear’ without a trace. Based on extensive research, Human Rights Watch concluded in 2005 that enforced disappearances in Chechnya are so widespread and systematic that they constitute crimes against humanity.”

According to Human Rights Watch, such crimes are being carried out with virtual impunity. “One of the main factors contributing to the widespread pattern of illegal detention and torture in Chechnya is the total lack of accountability for perpetrators,” the briefing paper stated. “The perpetrators themselves - be they ORB-2 personnel or Kadyrov’s forces - try to ensure that their abuses do not come to light by threatening their victims into silence. Indeed, few victims or witnesses dare to report instances of torture to the authorities, such as the prosecutor’s office, and in many cases refuse to speak to human rights organizations…In many cases, Human Rights Watch found that the perpetrators were so confident that there would be no consequences for their abuses that they did not wear masks or otherwise attempt to conceal their identity. In fact, a number of witnesses told Human Rights Watch that they knew their tormentors by name, or at least would be able to identify them. These witnesses, however, did not dare to report this information to prosecutorial authorities, and were, in some cases, considering personal revenge against the perpetrators.”

The briefing paper added: “The climate of impunity is worsened by the persistent efforts by Chechen and Russian authorities to close Chechnya to outside scrutiny. Most unlawful places of detention run by Kadyrov’s forces are off limits to journalists or international experts visiting the region. Moreover, in several instances when outside observers were allowed to visit these facilities, such as the Tsentoroi bases, the authorities removed the detainees from the premises prior to the visit. A number of witnesses told Human Rights Watch about being moved to another base or simply driven away and kept in cars for several hours when a ‘delegation’ was expected to visit the base where they were being detained.”

On November 13, the day that Human Rights Watch released its report on torture in Chechnya, Chechen Deputy Prime Minister and Ambassador Plenipotentiary in Moscow Ziad Sabsabi told Interfax: “This information is untrue. If torture really took place, we would speak about this problem, and so would prisoners’ relatives.” He accused Human Rights Watch of assessing “the condition of prisoners” while “being far away from Chechnya.”

Kavkazky Uzel on November 14 quoted Chechnya’s chief prosecutor, Valery Kuznetsov, as admitting to Kommersant that “cases occur in which representatives of power structures use unlawful methods during questioning” and that his office has launched ten criminal cases involving torture. He insisted, however, that it is “unfair to assert that torture is purely a Chechen phenomenon,” adding, “You can find cases of police beating detainees in any region of Russia. And even in the West you can find just as many cases of torture.”

Kavkazky Uzel also quoted the deputy director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, Aleksandr Petrov, as saying that Chechnya’s main problem remains, as before, unnatural death. “People perish through the inadvertence of the state, and one can say that people are murdered by the arms of the state,” he said. “Progress is not evident for this year. Every day I receive information from independent sources that soldiers or civilians are perishing. People in Chechnya with whom I have occasionally spoken to aren’t thinking about social problems or politics. They have one thought – how to survive.”

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper has published an article claiming that before the recent attempt to poison him ex-FSB colonel Alexander Litvinenko visited Moscow where he was secretly interrogated by Russian intelligence officials. The article appears to be another step in the attempts by Putin's government to link Litvinenko with Anna Politkovskaya's murder. Now Chechenpress has released an interview with Litvinenko, in which he makes clear that no such Moscow visit took place. Norbert Strade of chechnya-sl has translated the interview:

CP: Aleksandr, the Russian media assert that not long before your poisoning, you were in Moscow in order to give evidence in the case of the murder of Politkovskaya. Is that true?

AL: That's a lie. I haven't been in Moscow, or in Russia in general,since I left that country in 2000.

CP: Could it be that you gave some evidence in the Politkovskaya case to Russian investigators here in London?

AL: Since my departure from Russia, I haven't kept any contacts with Russian investigators, not on a single question.

CP: There were also reports in the Russian media that the English police doesn't investigate the attempt on your life. What do you say about this?

AL: This assertion is of the same kind as the first one, which means a plain lie. In spite of my grave condition, I gave evidence several times to the inspectors from the British police who investigate this case. They have no doubts about the criminal nature of this act against me.

CP: Can you at least briefly describe the content of the documentsgiven to you by Mario Scaramella?

AL: I can only repeat what I have said earlier: Judging by thesedocuments, the tracks of the murder of Politkovskaya are leading to the Russian FSB. These documents are now evidence material and I can't reveal any more of their content.

CP: Do you suspect that it was exactly Mario Scaramella who poisoned you?

AL: I prefer not to speak about my suspicions for the time being. I'm sure that the investigation will do all that is possible to find thepoisoners.

CP: I have a final question: What do your doctors say, what diagnosis did they make?

AL: The doctors conducted many analyses, but they weren't able, until now, to establish which exact substance I was poisoned with. Today they moved me to the oncologic department for further analysis; there they have more advanced diagnostic equipment; they are going to make an analysis of a probe from the spinal cord. Then, maybe, the picture will become clear.

CP: Aleksandr, on behalf of the readers of Chechenpress, we would like to wish you a quick recovery!

AL. Thanks a lot! I feel your support; it greatly helps me.

(via chechnya-sl)

Via chechnya-sl:

From: Céline Francis
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 7:06 PM
Subject: Transcript conference 7 November 2006

Dear all,

On November 7, ten leading Russian human rights defenders (see below) took part in a conference on the human rights situation in Russia at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels. During two hours, they tackled various issues: the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, the current situation of human rights in Chechnya, the presence of extreme right groups in Russia, the (im)partiality of Russian courts, etc. You will find enclosed the transcript of the conference.

Yours, Céline

07 November 2006

Université libre de bruxelles – ULB

Organisation

Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH), International Helsinki Federation (IHF), Human Rights Watch, Groupe Tchétchénie

Speakers

Lev Ponomarov, For Human Rights
Iouri Djibladze, Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights
Svetlana Gannushkina, Civic Assistance
Tatiana Lokchina, Demos
Natalia Estemirova, Memorial Grozny
Stas Dimitrievski, Russo-Chechen Friendship Society
Oksana Tchelycheva, Russo-Chechen Friendship Society
Igor Kaliapin, Center against torture
Galina Kojevnikova, Center SOVA
Oleg Orlov, Memorial

Moderation

Antoine Madelin, FIDH.

On Anna Politkovskaïa

Svetlana Gannushkina (Civic Assistance) explained her first encounter with Anna Politkovskaïa. It was in August 1996, when the journalist wanted to cover the arrival of a Chechen student with a bunch of flowers in a Russian school. Svetlana had to explain that most of the time Chechen students were unable to go to school in Russia because of their
lack of status. Anna was then a kind of ‘paparazzi’ journalist, a little snobbish. But then on, she began to be totally involved in a more pragmatic journalism and became a real human rights defender. During those years, she had lost weight and became hypersensitive.

Signs, not laws, govern Russia today. Everybody must guess and interpret them: this was for instance the case with Putin’s statement on the protection of natives signaling the beginning of the hunting of Georgians in Russia.

Oksana Tchelycheva (Russo-Chechen Friendship Society) added that Anna Politkovskaïa was on the list of threatened people in Russia, like Svetlana Gannushkina. Anna thought her international reputation would protect her, which was not the case. And since her death, repression followed. The Russo-Chechen Friendship Society was sued and doomed to liquidation. Meanwhile on a national channel, a documentary accused the High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) of spying, the Danish Refugee Council of helping terrorists and Timur Aliev (Chechen Society Newspaper) of being related to Bassaev.

On the issue of the extreme right groups in Russia

Answering to the question about extreme right groups, Galina Kojevnikova (center SOVA) explained that it was not a new phenomenon. These groups existed already in the USSR. But skinheads’ groups appeared with the birth of the Russian Federation. The phenomenon has been dynamic: many little and scattered groups have been created, without links between them. Some years ago, they were mainly instable and closed (and present in small areas like courtyards). But they soon became extremely numerous, recruiting mainly among teenagers. During the two last years, there has been a radical change in these groups thanks to the official support. They became more stable and solid. Even after being sentenced, people keep coming back to these groups, in search of security. An extremely concerning fact is that membership is not restricted to one social layer of the society like before. Today, even wealthy young people, students, youth whose parents are working in law enforcement agencies are taking part to these groups.

For the last three years, political parties or movements have recruited them in order to create operational groups able to act during demonstrations or pogroms,like in Kondopoga. The late movement “we walk together” used to have links with skinheads. It gave birth to the new movement “Nachi” (Us), that must thus still have those connections. What is interesting is that those young people are not opposed to the incumbent power. Their discourse is rather taken up by the parties themselves. This is thus becoming a self-feeding discourse.

On the power of the FSB in contemporary Russia

(Lev Ponomarov, For Human Rights) During the Soviet period, the intelligence service sought to control the State, but the Communist party was strong enough to control it. Years after the USSR’s breakdown, when Yeltsin was searching for a solution to retire in peace, the only provider of stability was the FSB. He then decided to appoint an unknown under colonel, V. Putin. Today, banks, media and even academic or dance institutes are under the FSB’s control. But how can we explain that there is any dictatorship or tyranny in Russia today? According to Lev Ponomarov, corruption is the main impediment: the ‘siloviki’ are too busy fighting each other in order to acquire parts in the market. Adding to this point, Stas Dimitrievski (Russo-Chechen Friendship Society) mentioned that Russia’s democratic revolution was mainly due to the absence of law of lustration in Russia.

Question about the soldiers coming back from Chechnya

Galina Kojevnikova did not know a lot of cases where former soldiers became skinheads. But what is undeniable is the trauma (Chechen syndrome) suffered by those soldiers. After their Chechen experience, a lot of them are just addicted to violence. They enter in the police or enlist in the army where they express their xenophobia. She said that the sentence “You the black, I killed a lot like you in Chechnya, and I’ll kill you too” has been heard from policemen meeting people in the streets.

Lev Ponomarov said that a lot of OMONs (special units of the Ministry of Interior) are in Chechnya. And because of the impunity they enjoyed there, they easily use violence when they come back (during demonstration for instance). An example: in Daghestan, they killed one person and maimed many others in April 2006. For Oleg Orlov (Memorial), there is an even more serious issue. In Chechnya there are death squadrons responsible for disappearances and torture. Convincing evidences show that they are directly under the control of the FSB. These people, when they come back to their city, often receive important posts. And they inoculate the idea that violence can resolve everything.

Iouri Djibladze (Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights) added that the SOM (svodnyj otrjad milicii, joint police detachment) is also present in Chechnya, for 6-month period now (3-month period before). Thus the whole law enforcement system in Russia has been contaminated. He does not speak about metastasis of the Chechen conflict in Russia, but of an infected wound.

On disappearances in Chechnya

(Natalia Estemirova, Memorial Grozny) There are fewer disappearances today in Chechnya. But there are presently many law enforcement structures there that must justify their existence. Their aim is searching for, and finding, terrorists. The great majority of the members of these structures are uneducated. They think that their gun represents the law. They abduct, torture people to make them confess crimes. We speak a lot about Abu Graib, but there are dozens of them in Chechnya: torture is widespread there. Igor Kaliapin added later that if they are uneducated, they know nevertheless perfectly what they do when they torture and forward the ‘confessions’ to the judge. Natalia gave some examples. There is one special structure in charge of the protection of the pipeline. Even the members of this structure are allowed to detain people for days. There is simply no other structure able to control their deeds. Another example: she received the map of a place where one person has been detained for more than one year and a half. A concurrent structure forwarded it to her. So these structures are also fighting each other, sometimes literally speaking.

How can we help this prisoner? There is nobody in Chechnya who is presently able to help him. The only hope of Memorial Grozny lies in an external intervention, especially the Committee for the prevention of torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe. The last visit of the CPT in Chechnya in 2006 had real positive outcomes: dozens of people were released. The organization hoped a similar outcome with the arrival of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak. But he eventually could not come in October 2006 because of the conditions imposed by the Russian authorities.

The young males in Chechnya today sleep with their clothes, because they are afraid of being kidnapped during the night. Some are resigned and believe that being member of those Chechen structures is the only way to be secure. Once they enter within these structures, they take directly part to torture. Therefore they feel responsible.

About the risks of being a human rights defender in Chechnya, Natalia Estemirova told that they risk their life, but like every inhabitant of Chechnya today. During this spring, a collaborator of Civic Assistance (Svetlana Gannushkina’s organization) was kidnapped. And a witness of this disappearance died in suspicious circumstances. Everywhere in Russia, the human rights defenders are threatened (Svetlana Gannushkina is the first on the list of national-socialist groups edited on the web). But Natalia Estemirova thinks that their notoriety is their protection.

She added one precision: there are new NGOs regularly created in Chechnya, whose goal is to send the message of the normalization of the Republic to the West.

What can Europe do?

Natalia Estemirova is waiting for more activities, more interest from Europe. Chechnya is not only the problem of Russia. Everywhere in the world authorities diminish democracy in their struggle against terrorism. The first step, according to Stas Dimitrievski, is to call things by their names. The concept of violations of human rights is extremely elastic and defines situations of varying seriousness. We thus have to call war crimes and crimes against humanity when there are. Nowadays Russia is not a democracy. The EU and the Council of Europe must understand this fact when they are discussing with Russia. When we talk with a crocodile as it was a cat, it can bite our hand or head. The EU does not have a ‘dialogue’ with China, but only of relationships. If Europe speaks about a dialogue with Russia, let it be a real dialogue. The EU knows exactly what is going on in Russia. If Europe needs gas and oil, Russia needs to sell it.

He advised the European citizens not to let their governments barter human rights for gas or oil. The EU and the Council of Europe are two unique phenomena, but they lack a real determination to defend their goals.

The question of the (im)partiality of the Russia courts

According to Igor Kaliapin (Center against torture), there is no independence of the courts in Russia. There are two reasons for this: the historical tradition and the corruption of the judges. In Soviet times, judges had substantial prerogatives. But justice was effectively
a mise-en-scene. Some of these judges are still working today and they forwarded their practices. They are still contacting the FSB or the prosecutor to ask which sentence must be given. The second reason is the easy corruptibility of the judges. Judges are easily corruptible: accepting goods, the repainting of the court paid by the administration, etc. Besides, the judge is dependent of the regional authorities. Thus if the governor contacts him and asks for a particular sentence, the judge will obey. For instance, we can cite the trial of Stas Dimitrievskij: He was condemned, even if the witnesses kept repeating that he could not be accused of ‘ethnic hatred’. Despite this, the plenipotentiary representative to the Volga Federal District dictated the sentence.

Justice in Russia uses the criteria of efficiency. Each court must conduct a certain number of cases each month. This is translated by a wide use of extortion means in order to obtain confessions. For instance, a man confessed two crimes perpetrated at the same time 10 kilometers of each other. The lawyer explained that the man succeeded in splitting himself in order to commit those murders. The man was condemned. The prosecutor keeps the statistics about the sentences: the elucidation rate of serious criminal cases is 90%. This outcome is totally unrealistic with such a poorly equipped police.

What are the solutions to the Chechen conflict?

(Oleg Orlov) If he had to give a short answer, he would say: there is no solution. And unfortunately, this is a little bit true. If we had asked him this question some years ago, he would have been able to provide some paths where the EU could help. But the situation today is deadlocked with the implicit support of the EU. The creature designed by the Kremlin - Ramzan Kadyrov - has become a threat for Russia itself.

The idea of negotiating with separatists is no more possible. The only one which whom this was an option - Aslan Maskhadov - was killed. If an exit exists, it must be far away, and he does not see it. We can presently decrease the evil, but not erase it. The human rights defenders can impede a worsening of the situation, but not substantially. He does not believe in an improvement of the human rights situation in Russia with the incumbent regime.

We must continue speaking about violations of human rights. The EU must ask for proceedings of the Russian penal cases. But the EU cannot change the regime in Russia. It is up to the Russians to change it, and up to the human rights defenders to find a common language with Russian citizens. But for now the majority of Russians do not support them.

Svetlana Gannushkina concluded that if we, European citizens, cannot act against Putin, we can do one thing. We must grant refugee status to the asylum seekers. Because in Chechnya there are only two alternatives for the young people: either going with the Kadyrovtsy, or being unable to sleep at night.

Céline Francis

Maidan has published an extensive study of the present situation in Ukraine by Alex Bogomolov of the Maidan Alliance, originally prepared for the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), for presentation at a CEPS-IISS-DCAF seminar in Brussels held on November 6, 2006. Among the topics covered are the political scene in Ukraine, the NATO debate, business and politics, regional challenges, and the security sector.

From the paper’s conclusion:

…the major internal and external threats that the nation is faced with now include:
1. Backsliding into an authoritarian mode – i.e. adopting a model that takes its inspiration in Putin’s Russia or, much worse becoming its satellite. Formation of a PRU-led oligarchic monopoly could be entry to this mode. So far PRU shows many sings of heading there. To avoid that, Ukraine needs to preserve at least the current level or political and economic competition.

2. Political isolation and hence arrested democratic development. If the country continues to follow an ambiguous and indecisive political course toward two major actors – Russia and the West, sugar-coating it with outdated political concepts such as neutrality or multi-vector policies, or openly joins any of the Russia-led integrationist initiatives such as the Unified Economic Space, Ukraine risks a de-facto international isolation. Meanwhile, democracy, open society can only live in an open world. It seems that to ensure a stable solution to this problem, Ukraine needs to put the final dots on its energy dilemma, or strive as hard as possible to divide these two issues, which will be impossible without European partnership.

3. Social division, regional instability, separatism and loss of sovereignty over parts of the territory. This challenge most seriously concerns Crimea. It calls for upgrading the institutional capacity of the security sector, but even more for a serious open public discussion and a new inclusive national project, able to overcome the constraints of ethnic nationalism. Without a new Ukrainian-European national project Ukraine will hardly be capable to address either of these two aspects.

4. Becoming part of a larger unstable region, which might include the continuously destabilized Northern Caucasus, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria. This sad perspective seems possible and presents a security concern for both Ukraine and the EU in medium to longer term perspective. The processes in the neighboring Russian Federation likely to contribute to it include: the ongoing civil war in Chechnya and militant re-islamization of the Northern Caucasus, the growing xenophobia, state-sponsored persecution on ethnic and religious grounds, proliferation of radical Russian nationalism. All this comes against the backdrop of policies effectively reducing the nation’s immunity to these negative processes – such as restrictions of democratic freedoms, police harassments, censorship of media and persecutions of free journalists, restrictions on civil society organizations.

From Dagens Nyheter (November 14, my tr.):

The Russian gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea involves an obvious security problem for Sweden. This is admitted by defence minister Mikael Odenberg.

The pipeline has environmental, energy and security policy implications, Mikael Odenberg tells DN.

The defence minister says that he himself could have signed an op-ed article in DN written by Ulrica Messing, social democratic leader of the Swedish parliamentary defence committee. Messing describes the gas pipeline - and the maintenance platform that is to be placed off the island of Gotska Sandön - as “very problematic for Sweden’s defence interests”.

“We’re getting a pipeline which motivates a Russian naval presence, a pipeline which if the Russians want can be used as platform for intelligence activity. It’s clear that this is a problem,” the defence minister admits.

Some energy-related items from the RFE/RL Newsline (November 13):

WILL POLAND BLOCK EU-RUSSIA ENERGY SUMMIT? Polish Economy Minister Piotr Wozniak said in Warsaw on November 10 that his country insists that Russia ratify the transit protocol of the EU-Russia Energy Charter, which Russia signed in 1994 but never ratified, as a precondition to Poland’s backing for any talks on a new EU-Russia partnership agreement, European dailies reported on November 11 and 13 (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 30 and 31, 2006). The Energy Charter would require Moscow to open up access to its pipelines. Wozniak and other Polish officials said that Poland will veto any proposal to start talks on a new EU-Russia comprehensive cooperation agreement to replace the current Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which runs out in 2007, unless Brussels agrees to pressure Moscow to grant greater access to its pipelines. The state-run monopoly Gazprom currently controls Russia’s pipeline system and effectively blocks access to independent gas projects. EU foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in Brussels on November 13 to discuss a possible EU-Russia energy summit. Some news agency reports suggest that Lithuania backs the Polish position. Wozniak also criticized on November 10 the projected Russo-German Nord Stream gas pipeline (formerly the North European Gas Pipeline) on the grounds that it will increase European dependency on Russian gas supplies. He said that Polish suspicions about the deal persist despite efforts by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to reassure Warsaw. He added that Germany should “forget” the project. PM

SPANISH MEDIA REVEAL DETAILS OF EU LEADERS’ VIEWS OF RUSSIA. Minutes of the October 20 working lunch in Lahti, Finland, during which EU leaders outlined their ideas for that same evening’s dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin, found their way into a wastebasket at the Spanish Foreign Ministry and have been analyzed in depth in the Madrid press in recent days, Germany’s “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” reported on November 11 and Russia’s news.ru on November 13 (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 23, 24, and 26, 2006). According to those reports, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that it is necessary “to keep cool” in dealing with Putin. He argued, however, that Russia and the EU “are interdependent. We need their energy and they need our markets.” Europe must nonetheless seek out other energy suppliers, such as Norway, Algeria, and Turkey, he added. French President Jacques Chirac reportedly agreed with Barroso’s remark about “keeping cool” and said that “Europe’s security and stability depend to a good extent on Russia. Russia has obligations and interests, and so do we. We must demonstrate mutual understanding and concentrate on the most important [things]: the security and stability of Europe.” German Chancellor Merkel is said to have stressed the importance of diversifying Europe’s sources of energy supplies. She said that “one must bring Russia around to more constructive positions. The EU’s negotiating position is sufficiently solid [to do so].” PM

EUROPEANS STRESS THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES IN DEALING WITH RUSSIA. According to the minutes of the EU summit in Lahti, Finland, Polish President Lech Kaczynski agreed with Chancellor Merkel about the importance of energy diversification, Germany’s “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” reported on November 11. He also stressed the importance of “stabilizing the situation in Georgia.” Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is said to have argued that the EU leaders should bring up Georgia and Chechnya with President Putin. The leaders of the three Baltic states reportedly noted their concerns about possible environmental disasters and reductions in energy supplies as a result of eventual accidents at refineries or along pipelines in Russia. Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus is said to have called attention to the extent to which the Baltic states are geographically “isolated” from the EU’s internal market. He thanked Germany and other EU partners for their help in overcoming this obstacle. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany reportedly stressed that Russia’s relations with its EU partners are “asymmetrical” and that Russia “could cut off [energy] supplies for a month and cause us damage without suffering themselves.” Czech President Vaclav Klaus is said to have noted that the underlying reason for the diversity of views around the table is that the respective countries have different geographical situations and different historical experiences. EU foreign- and security-policy chief Javier Solana reportedly argued that all potential energy suppliers are unstable, with the exception of Norway. He urged EU member states to reconsider their positions on nuclear energy with that in mind. PM

Gerhard Schroeder has been making known his views on Britain and the European Union:

PARIS, Nov 13, 2006 (AFP) - The idea of trying to expand the European Union’s core axis of France and Germany to include Britain “was a mistake and will remain so,” former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Monday.

“At the beginning of my mandate, I believed the Franco-German axis could be enlarged to become a triangle with Great Britain. That was a mistake and will remain so,” he told France’s Le Figaro newspaper.

“The Britons think only in terms of the Commonwealth and of being a bridge between the continent and the United States. What’s more, they tend to bring their internal political fights onto the European field.

“Really, there’s no alternative to the Franco-German axis if we want to see European integration move forward,” he said. (via MAK)

It might also be commented that the idea of trying to form a European Union with Germany as a leading partner is still in some respects as problematic now as it was sixty years ago, in spite of all the politicking and assemblying that has passed under the bridge since then. Writing even earlier than that, the German novelist Thomas Mann was certainly not mistaken when in 1918, invoking Dostoyevsky, he characterized Germany as “the battlefield of Europe”, on which the continent’s inner disunities are enacted and made visible. Dostoyevsky also characterized Germany as, like Russia, standing outside the mainstream of European political thought and discourse. In Putin, Schroeder has met a soul-mate, for Germany is no more “truly European” in the political, civilisational sense than contemporary Russia. The “Franco-German axis” is a contradiction in terms, just as it ever was.

Arutz Sheva notes that anti-semitic activity is on the increase, not only in countries such as Norway, Mexico and the United Kingdom, but also in the United States:

Anti-Semitic activities in the Big Apple, home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel, are on the rise, up by eight percent according to a report in the daily New York Post quoting New York City police department (NYPD) officials.

The number of attacks against Jews in New York City rose by 20 percent since 2005, from 39 to 47 in the period from January 1 to November 5.

Anti-Semitism in Europe is also rising, according to a report presented Sunday at the conference of the World Jewish Congress in Paris. It was the first time in 50 years that the WJC used Paris as a venue for its conference. Representatives from some 80 countries attended the event.

"An attempt to take stock of the 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union can fill a committed democrat with frustration if he looks at Russia, but with restrained optimism if he turns his gaze to Ukraine,” writes Ivan Ampilogov, at Maidan.

Read his analysis, with its saddened but clear-eyed appraisal of the “post-Soviet space”, here.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, David Satter considers the facts of the Beslan hostage crisis of Sepember 2004, and concludes:

The evidence that is now available makes it clear that, despite Putin’s promise to protect the hostages, Russian forces attacked the school in Beslan according to classic military doctrine for destroying reinforced objects without the slightest regard for innocent life. This was done although agreement had been reached between the former Chechen president and local Russian political authorities on negotiations that would have ended the crisis. It is also possible that the ease with which the terrorists took over the school was not solely the result of official incompetence. The Russian authorities may have deliberately allowed the terrorists to take over the school in order to have an excuse to destroy them.

The sad reality is that 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the role of the individual in Russia has not changed. He is seen as a means to an end, not an end in himself. This is why the lives of the children of Beslan were written off the moment the school was seized, a fact to keep in mind lest we agree to give Russia carte blanche in its own “neighborhood” or look again into Putin’s eyes and see something we think resembles a soul.

Read the whole thing.

Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB intelligence officer who defected to Britain and has worked as a defender of human rights in Russia, has been poisoned after meeting in London with an Italian citizen who had promised to pass on information relating to the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Lenta.ru reports.

Sources say that “for several days he hung between life and death”, and is still in a serious condition.

Interviewed by the radio station Ekho Moskvy, Litvinenko says he will hand over information about Politkovskaya’s murderers to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper as soon as he is released from the hospital in London where he is at present (Lenta.ru).

On Wednesday, RIAN had a report on the visit by Russia’s President Putin to inspect the new headquarters of of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff in Moscow. A short paragraph tucked away at the end of the report makes interesting reading:

The building houses special shooting ranges, which can even be used for firing from grenade launchers. Putin, along with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, practiced firing from the 9-mm Makarov pistol widely used in the Russian army. The president also tried the Stechkin high-accuracy semiautomatic pistol.

(via chechnya-sl)

Daniel Schaer of the International Staff Policy Division at the Estonian Foreign Ministry writes to say that links to the presentations from the recent e-Voting Conference that was held in Tallinn on October 27-28 have now been published on the e-Governance Academy website.

The presentations include the following:

“Study of e-voting in the 2005 local elections in Estonia”, Alexander H. Trechsel

“Eesti e-hääletamise kogemus”, Ivar Tallo

“Comparative aspects of e-voting… “, Fernando Mendez

“A constitutional framework for Internet voting projects”, Jordi Barrat i Esteve

“e-voting in Europe - standards, policy practice and perspectives”, Michael Remmert

Ülle Madise

“Election observation and new technologies”, Jonathan Stonestreet

“Usaldusest ja läbipaistvusest”, Epp Maaten

“The use of Internet in political campaigns”, Thad Hall

Man ist nicht ein “demokratischer” oder etwa ein “konservativer” Politiker. Man ist Politiker oder man ist es nicht. Und ist man es, so ist man Demokrat. Die politische Geisteseinstellung ist die demokratische; der Glaube an die Politik der an die Demokratie, den contrat socíal. Seit mehr als anderthalb Jahrhunderten geht alles, was man in geistigerem Sinn unter Politik versteht, auf Jean Jacques Rousseau zurück: und er ist der Vater der Demokratie, indem er der Vater des politischen Geistes selbst, der politischen Menschlichkeit ist.

One is not a “democratic” or, let us say, a “conservative” politician. One is a politician or one is not. And if one is, then one is a democrat. The political mode of thought is a democratic one; the faith in politics a faith in democracy, in the contrat social. For more than one and a half centuries now, all that is understood by “politics” in a more intellectual sense goes back to Jean Jacques Rousseau: and he is the father of democracy, while at the same time he is the father of the political spirit itself, of political humanity.

Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Reflections of an Unpolitical Man), 1918.[my tr.]

From RFE/RL’s Newsline (November 9 2006):

PUTIN HINTS TO GRU THAT U.S. IS THREAT

President Vladimir Putin visited the new headquarters of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Armed Forces General Staff in Moscow on November 8, news.ru reported. The daily “Nezavisimaya gazeta” noted ironically the following day that the event was “shrouded in…secrecy…in the best traditions of the intelligence department.” Putin suggested to GRU staff that the United States poses a threat to Russia, saying that “the practice by a number of states of taking unilateral illegitimate action seriously undermines [international] stability.” He added that “this also goes for their attempts to push their positions unceremoniously, fully ignoring the lawful interests of other partners.” Lest there be any doubts as to which country he had in mind, he noted that “a number of states are striving to free their hands so they can deploy weapons in space, including the nuclear weapon.” He told GRU department heads that “it is important to define correctly the development of the military-political situation, to follow in detail trends of technological, economic competition.” For his part, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov praised the new GRU headquarters as using the most up-to-date equipment in a way that is unique in Russia. PM

RUSSIAN MEDIA FORESEE MORE ‘COMPLEX’ RELATIONSHIP AFTER U.S. ELECTIONS

Konstantin Kosachyov, who heads the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said on November 8 in Moscow that the U.S. mid-term elections the previous day amounted to a “no-confidence vote” in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush, Russian news agencies reported. Kosachyov added that the United States “will enter…a new stage in its development…from cooperation between the administration and the Republican majority in Congress to rivalry” between the White House and a Congress controlled by the Democrats. He also suggested that U.S.-Russian trade relations might become more difficult, the daily “Vremya novostei” reported on November 9. For its part, the daily “Izvestia” wrote that U.S. voters sent Bush the message that they have become disillusioned with the war in Iraq and regard it as “senseless.” The daily “Vedomosti” predicted that the impact of the vote on U.S.-Russian relations will be minimal. The paper argued that the two countries are not significant trading partners, so there is no important economic relationship to affect one way or another. It suggested, however, that negotiations leading to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) could now become more “complex” unless Bush and President Putin reach a deal soon (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” October 31, 2006). On a broader level, the paper suggested that the Democrats might bring about unspecified changes in U.S. policies in the Middle East that could lead to a change in the price of oil, which is currently very advantageous to Russia. PM

WILL HUMAN RIGHTS PLAY GREATER ROLE IN BILATERAL RELATIONS?

The daily “Vedomosti” argued on November 9 that the Democrats are more likely than the Republicans to take a tough line with Moscow over human rights. “Novye izvestia” wrote that U.S. voters would not have turned against the Republicans had they not been convinced by their media that the war in Iraq is going very badly. The paper also noted that the new chairman of the House International Relations Committee will be Congressman Tom Lantos (Democrat, California), who is “one of the strongest critics of Russia” in that body. The daily “Kommersant” also drew attention to Lantos, whom it called “one of the American establishment’s harshest and most irreconcilable critics of the Kremlin.” The paper pointed out that Lantos is a staunch defender of human rights and has referred to imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a “political prisoner.” Elsewhere, Sergei Rogov, who heads the U.S. and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti on November 9 that there will be no fundamental change in relations because both the Democrats and Republicans have an “extremely negative” view of Russian foreign and domestic policies. PM

Via Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.):

Back to Iraq

By George Friedman

The midterm congressional elections have given the Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives. It is possible — as of this writing, on Wednesday afternoon — that the Senate could also go to the Democrats, depending on the outcome of one extremely close race in Virginia. However it finally turns out, it is quite certain that this midterm was a national election, in the sense that the dominant issue was not a matter of the local concerns in congressional districts, but the question of U.S. policy in Iraq. What is clear is that the U.S. electorate has shifted away from supporting the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. What is not clear at all is what they have shifted toward. It is impossible to discern any consensus in the country as to what ought to be done.

Far more startling than the election outcome was the sudden resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld had become the lightning rod for critics of the war, including many people who had supported the war but opposed the way it was executed. Extraordinarily, President George W. Bush had said last week that Rumsfeld would stay on as secretary of defense until the end of his presidential term. It is possible that Rumsfeld surprised Bush by resigning in the immediate wake of the election — but if that were the case, Bush would not have had a replacement already lined up by the afternoon of Nov. 8. The appointment of Robert Gates as secretary of defense means two things: One is that Rumsfeld’s resignation was in the works for at least a while (which makes Bush’s statement last week puzzling, to say the least); the other is that a shift is under way in White House policy on the war.

Gates is close to the foreign policy team that surrounded former President George H. W. Bush. Many of those people have been critical of, or at least uneasy with, the current president’s Iraq policy. Moving a man like Gates into the secretary of defense position indicates that Bush is shifting away from his administration’s original team and back toward an older cadre that was not always held in high esteem by this White House.

The appointment of Gates is of particular significance because he was a member of the Iraq Study Group (ISG). The ISG has been led by another member of the Bush 41 team, former Secretary of State James Baker. The current president created the ISG as a bipartisan group whose job was to come up with new Iraq policy options for the White House. The panel consisted of people who have deep experience in foreign policy and no pressing personal political ambitions. The members included former House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, who co-chairs the group with Baker; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican; former Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan; Leon Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration; former Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Perry; former Sen. Chuck Robb, a Democrat; Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming; and Edwin Meese, who served as attorney general under the Reagan administration.

Before Rumsfeld’s resignation, it had not been entirely clear what significance the ISG report would have. For the Democrats — controlling at least one chamber of Congress, and lacking any consensus themselves as to what to do about Iraq — it had been expected that the ISG report would provide at least some platform from which to work, particularly if Bush did not embrace the panel’s recommendations. And there had, in fact, been some indications from Bush that he would listen to the group’s recommendations, but not necessarily implement them. Given the results of the Nov. 7 elections, it also could be surmised that the commission’s report would become an internal issue for the Republican Party as well, as it looked ahead to the 2008 presidential campaign. With consensus that something must change, and no consensus as to what must change, the ISG report would be treated as a life raft for both Democrats and Republicans seeking a new strategy in the war. The resulting pressure would be difficult to resist, even for Bush. If he simply ignored the recommendations, he could lose a large part of his Republican base in Congress.

At this point, however, the question mark as to the president’s response seems to have been erased, and the forthcoming ISG report soars in significance. For the administration, it would be politically unworkable to appoint a member of the panel as secretary of defense and then ignore the policies recommended.

Situation Review

It is, of course, not yet clear precisely what policy the administration will be adopting in Iraq. But to envision what sort of recommendations the ISG might deliver, we must first consider the current strategy.

Essentially, U.S. strategy in Iraq is to create an effective coalition government, consisting of all the major ethnic and sectarian groups. In order to do that, the United States has to create a security environment in which the government can function. Once this has been achieved, the Iraqi government would take over responsibility for security. The problem, however, is twofold. First, U.S. forces have not been able to create a sufficiently secure environment for the government to function. Second, there are significant elements within the coalition that the United States is trying to create who either do not want such a government to work — and are allied with insurgents to bring about its failure — or who want to improve their position within the coalition, using the insurgency as leverage. In other words, U.S. forces are trying to create a secure environment for a coalition whose members are actively working to undermine the effort.

The core issue is that no consensus exists among Iraqi factions as to what kind of country they want. This is not only a disagreement among Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, but also deep disagreements within these separate groups as to what a national government (or even a regional government, should Iraq be divided) should look like. It is not that the Iraqi government in Baghdad is not doing a good job, or that it is corrupt, or that it is not motivated. The problem is that there is no Iraqi government as we normally define the term: The “government” is an arena for political maneuvering by mutually incompatible groups.

Until the summer of 2006, the U.S. strategy had been to try to forge some sort of understanding among the Iraqi groups, using American military power as a goad and guarantor of any understandings. But the decision by the Shia, propelled by Iran, to intensify operations against the Sunnis represented a deliberate decision to abandon the political process. More precisely, in our view, the Iranians decided that the political weakness of George W. Bush, the military weakness of U.S. forces in Iraq, and the general international environment gave them room to reopen the question of the nature of the coalition, the type of regime that would be created and the role that Iran could play in Iraq. In other words, the balanced coalition government that the United States wanted was no longer attractive to the Iranians and Iraqi Shia. They wanted more.

The political foundation for U.S. military strategy dissolved. The possibility of creating an environment sufficiently stable for an Iraqi government to operate — when elements of the Iraqi government were combined with Iranian influence to raise the level of instability — obviously didn’t work. The United States might have had enough force in place to support a coalition government that was actively seeking and engaged in stabilization. It did not have enough force to impose its will on multiple insurgencies that were supported by factions of the government the United States was trying to stabilize.

By the summer of 2006, the core strategy had ceased to function.

The Options

It is in this context that the ISG will issue its report. There have been hints as to what the group might recommend, but the broad options boil down to these:

1. Recommend that the United States continue with the current strategy: military operations designed to create a security environment in which an Iraqi government can function.

2. Recommend the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and allow the Iraqis to sort out their political problems.

3. Recommend a redeployment of forces in Iraq, based around a redefinition of the mission.

4. Recommend a redefinition of the political mission in Iraq.

We are confident that the ISG will not recommend a continuation of the first policy. James Baker has already hinted at the need for change, since it is self-evident at this point that the existing strategy isn’t working. It is possible that the strategy could work eventually, but there is no logical reason to believe that this will happen anytime soon, particularly as the president has now been politically weakened. The Shia and Iranians, at this point, are even less likely to be concerned about Washington’s military capability in Iraq than they were before the election. And at any rate, Baker and Hamilton didn’t travel personally to Iraq only to come back and recommend the status quo.

Nor will they recommend an immediate withdrawal of troops. Apart from the personalities involved, the ISG participants are painfully aware that a unilateral withdrawal at this point, without a prior political settlement, would leave Iran as the dominant power in the region — potentially capable of projecting military force throughout the Persian Gulf, as well as exerting political pressure through Shiite communities in Gulf states. Only the United States has enough force to limit the Iranians at this point, and an immediate withdrawal from Iraq would leave a huge power vacuum.

We do believe that the ISG will recommend a fundamental shift in the way U.S. forces are used. The troops currently are absorbing casualties without moving closer to their goal, and it is not clear that they can attain it. If U.S. forces remain in Iraq — which will be recommended — there will be a shift in their primary mission. Rather than trying to create a secure environment for the Iraqi government, their mission will shift to guaranteeing that Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria, do not gain further power and influence in Iraq. Nothing can be done about the influence they wield among Iraqi Shia, but the United States will oppose anything that would allow them to move from a covert to an overt presence in Iraq. U.S. forces will remain in-country but shift their focus to deterring overt foreign intrusion. That means a redeployment and a change in day-to-day responsibility. U.S. forces will be present in Iraq but not conducting continual security operations.

Two things follow from this. First, the Iraqis will be forced to reach a political accommodation with each other or engage in civil war. The United States will concede that it does not have the power to force them to agree or to prevent them from fighting. Second, the issue of Iran — its enormous influence in Iraq — will have to be faced directly, or else U.S. troops will be tied up there indefinitely.

It has been hinted that the ISG is thinking of recommending that Washington engage in negotiations with Iran over the future of Iraq. Tehran offered such negotiations last weekend, and this has been the Iranian position for a while. There have been numerous back-channel discussions, and some open conversations, between Washington and Tehran. The stumbling block has been that the United States has linked the possibility of these talks to discussions of Iran’s nuclear policy; Iran has rejected that, always seeking talks on Iraq without linkages. If the rumors are true, and logic says they are, the ISG will suggest that Washington should delink the nuclear issue and hold talks with Iran about a political settlement over Iraq.

This is going to be the hard part for Bush. The last thing he wants is to enhance Iranian power. But the fact is that Iranian power already has been enhanced by the ability of Iraqi Shia to act with indifference to U.S. wishes. By complying with this recommendation, Washington would not be conceding much. It would be acknowledging reality. Of course, publicly acknowledging what has happened is difficult, but the alternative is a continuation of the current strategy — also difficult. Bush has few painless choices.

What a settlement with Iran would look like is, of course, a major question. We have discussed that elsewhere. For the moment, the key issue is not what a settlement would look like but whether there can be a settlement at all with Iran — or even direct discussions. In a sense, that is a more difficult problem than the final shape of an agreement.

We expect the ISG, therefore, to make a military and political recommendation. Militarily, the panel will argue for a halt in aggressive U.S. security operations and a redeployment of forces in Iraq, away from areas of unrest. Security will have to be worked out by the Iraqis — or not. Politically, the ISG will argue that Washington will have to talk directly to the other major stakeholder, and power broker, in Iraq: Tehran.

In short, the group will recommend a radical change in the U.S. approach not only to Iraq, but to the Muslim world in general.

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Via Prague Watchdog (my tr.):

Residents of Chechnya’s mountain districts worried by actions of Russian soldiers

By Umalt Chadayev

CHECHNYA – The situation in the southern districts of the Chechen Republic has significantly deteriorated recently. Local residents report that Russian soldiers are actively shelling forested areas and mountain gorges with long-range guns, and in a number of cases using combat helicopters and attack aircraft.

“In our district, and also in the adjoining Vedensky and Shalinsky districts, the situation is pretty nerve-racking. Soldiers once again actively firing cannon and conducting aerial bombings of the outskirts of the villages, as well as the forests and gorges. Fortunately there haven’t yet been any deaths or injuries among the population, but even so, people are very worried by what is going on,” says Abuyazid Alkhazurov, a 40-year-old resident of the mountainous Shatoysky district.

“Work started on rebuilding a bridge up here near our village of Zumsoy, so now the soldiers have declared open season on it,” Alkhazurov says. “On October 30 and 31 the district around the bridge was fired on from helicopters. A day earlier (on October 29), this locality came under fire from long-range guns. None of the workers was killed or injured, thank God. Now work on the bridge has stopped, since after two missile strikes and an artillery bombardment the workmen are simply unwilling to do the job. The machinery and construction materials are lying there unsupervised.”

The situation in Shalinsky district is not much better. Russian soldiers regularly subject the forested areas there to artillery strikes and aerial bombardments. Those who suffer most from the soldiers’ actions are the residents of the large settlement of Serzhen-Yurt. At the end of last week a picket was even organized in Grozny demanding an end to artillery attacks and air-strikes in the mountain districts of the republic.

The situation in the south of Chechnya has become so complicated that it is now even a subject of debate at the current session of the Chechen Parliament. The deputies of the National Assembly (Chechnya’s House of Commons) have passed a resolution for the creation of a parliamentary commission. This body will attend to the tasks of liaison with federal law enforcement command centres and the prevention of similar incidents in future. An ex-military officer, General Ibragim Suleymenov, has been appointed chairman of the commission.

Meanwhile in Grozny on November 3, General Yevgeny Baryayev, deputy commander of the United Group of Russian Troops in the North Caucasus, attempted to justify the deployment of aviation and heavy artillery in the mountainous part of the republic.

“The guerrillas in the mountains are trying to equip bases. In order to prevent them from restocking their supplies of ammunition and foodstuffs and penetrating into the villages, it’s necessary to employ artillery and open fire on areas of mountain and forest periodically,” the General said.

However, the republic’s residents take a rather different view of the matter. “The war has being going on here for seven years now. For seven years they’ve been bombing and shelling here. Russia’s highest leadership, including the military, has already announced several times that that there’s no war in Chechnya, that the ‘counter-terrorist operation’ is complete, that the guerrillas don’t present any serious threat, but for some reason there is no real confirmation of this,’ said a lecturer at Chechen State University who is a native of the Vedensky district. ‘The incessant bombardments and shelling of the mountainous part of the republic are the obvious evidence. I don’t know how many more thousands and millions of tons of projectiles and bombs the generals plan to bring down on our mountains and forests in order to ‘finally’ beat the guerrillas. It’s all plainly absurd.”

“At the very beginning of this war, these mountain districts were subjected to the most brutal air-strikes and shelling. Then hundreds and even thousands of people who weren’t guilty of anything were killed or became cripples. Very gradually, people have begun to move away from what they went through, they want to live, build houses for themselves, raise their children, but the military still refuses to be pacified. What’s the point of their indiscriminate bombardments and air-strikes on the forests and mountains? They ought to go there and fight, if that’s where the guerrillas are hiding as they say they are. And they should give the civilian population a chance to get on with a normal life,” he considers.

Translated by David McDuff.

The Finnish online journal Voima has released a recording (mp3) of In the Beginning of a New Era: a Song for Anna Politkokvskaya. The song was written in Finnish and translated into Russian and English by Terhi Koskinen, a song writer and former singer with the popular Finnish group Ultra Bra. It was composed by well-known Finnish composer Kerkko Koskinen. More about Zhima Ditt, and the recording, here.

Proceeds from sales and donations will go to the Finland-based NGO Zhima Ditt, which works in support of human rights in Chechnya. Payments (for any amount) can be made to
Voima Kustannus Oy:800013-70732654

Please include reference number 71.

In the beginning of a new era
there will be bruises

in the beginning of a new era
there will be bodies

she who speaks the truth
who feels compelled to act
will be shot in a lift

they don’t know about me yet
they don’t know about you yet

the gunshots will be heard far away
(gunshots will be heard far away)
the bruises will be seen from afar
(bruises will be seen from afar)
but eventually the bruises will heal
and in the heart of the graveyard
ten new trees will grow

in the beginning of a new era
there will be bruises

in the beginning of a new era
there will be bodies

when the land turns ugly and dark
those murdered will be remembered
not those who paid for the kills

they don’t know about me yet
they don’t know about you yet

the gunshots will be heard far away
(gunshots will be heard far away)
the bruises will be seen from afar
(bruises will be seen from afar)
but eventually the bruises will heal
and in the heart of the graveyard
ten new trees will grow

At the weekend Liam Halligan, the Telegraph’s economics editor, took a critical look at Britain’s currently muddled and opaque energy situation, and came out with some dire warnings:

Britain is now the third biggest consumer of gas in the world, after the US and Russia. The fuel accounts for 30 per cent of our total energy use, compared with an EU average of 18 per cent.

Yes, Langeled, a sub-sea gas link between Norway and Yorkshire, opened recently. And over the coming years it will be crucially important. But Norway’s gas reserves amount to one 20th of those held by Russia.

In the long term it is Moscow that holds all the cards. As the most gas-dependent economy in Europe, Britain is sitting at the end of a pipeline network at the mercy of strategic games we can do little to control.

Writing at military.com, international legal specialist and political thriller writer Allan Topol discusses the new era that has dawned in Russian-American relations. “This one,” he says, “promises to be no better than the Cold War”:

Those who dare to challenge Putin end up being arrested and put on trial if they’re lucky. If not, they are summarily executed and their killing is dressed up as a robbery attempt. This isn’t to say that there isn’t serious street crime in Russia — there is. This crime provides a useful cover for those whom the Putin regime wishes to execute.

Notions of a free press or free elections have vanished in the cold Siberian wind of last winter. One difference is that the Russian military has not been restored to anything like its previous power. Putin is a clever man. He doesn’t want to run the risk of having a powerful military which could wrest control of the Kremlin from him.
While the new autocracy is assuming control, Russia as a nation is ailing. It seems absolutely inconceivable that the life expectancy for men in Russia today is only 59 years. Life is so wonderful in post-Soviet Russia that deaths from alcohol are sweeping the country. Those who study population trends love to draw graphs with straight lines through data. Doing that with the Russian male population would lead to the conclusion that within fifty years there won’t be any men left in Russia.

It would be bad enough if the Putin were simply destroying Russian society and its population. However, the damage is not merely domestic. A new threat has emerged to the United States.

I wondered long ago why it was that the bad people are the ones who end up having all the oil and natural gas. Well, here we go again. The Russians have huge reservoirs of both oil and gas. With the high price of energy, petro dollars have been flowing into Russia like water over Niagara Falls.

Those petro dollars are being recycled into arms. In 2005 Russia surpassed the United States as the leader in weapons deals with the developing world. Russia’s weapons deals totaled seven billion dollars in 2005, surpassing the United States for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even more troublesome, Russia sold $700,000 in surface-to-air missiles to Iran and eight new aerial refueling tankers to China, according to a new congressional study.

(via MAK)

As Dmitri Gorbatov has pointed out in the guest book at myaskovsky.ru, the correspondence between Sergei Prokofiev and Nikolai Myaskovsky was published in Russian in 1977 as a volume of some 700 pages, under the editorship of Dmitry Kabalevsky. Although a selected correspondence of Prokofiev appeared in 1998, edited and translated by Harlow Robinson, it contains only a few of Prokofiev’s letters to Myaskovsky, and none by Myaskovsky himself.

It would indeed be useful to have the 1977 volume in English translation. But as Mr Gorbatov suggests, such a project is unlikely to awaken the interest of English and American publishers any time soon. While the music and biography of Shostakovich appear to be enjoying something of a publicity “boom”, if such a word can be used in such a context, other 20th century Russian composers are suffering from an undeserved neglect.

Incidentally, the Russian text of the Myaskovsky-Prokofiev correspondence has been scanned and uploaded to this URL.

I’ve been looking for information about the availability of sheet editions of the piano music of the Russian composer Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950), in particular the 9 piano sonatas. The scores of two of the sonatas - Nos.7 and 8 (op. 82 and 83) - are available for download on the Web, but I’m trying to find a complete edition of all 9, preferably as hard copy. If anyone has some pointers to such material, I’d be most grateful to receive them.

I’m pleased to see that FILI - Finland’s literature information centre - has published a presentation on the translator Hildi Hawkins, who won this year’s Finnish Government Translation Prize. Many of Hawkins’ translations have been published in the literary journal Books from Finland:

Now in its 40th year of publication, Books has published translations of more than 300 literary authors and an untold number of prose and non-fiction writers. Over the years, Hildi Hawkins has translated thousands of pages for the magazine. Many Finnish writers were presented in English for the first time through Hawkins’ work for Books from Finland. Her English translations include works by Umayya Abu-Hanna, Kristina Carlson, Ranya Paasonen, Pirjo Hassinen, Olli Jalonen, Väinö Kirstinä, Leena Krohn, Rakel Liehu, Markus Nummi, Markku Paasonen, Irja Rane, Pirkko Saisio, Asko Sahlberg, Raija Siekkinen, Anja Snellman, Katri Tapola, Jari Tervo, Eeva Tikka, Maarit Verronen, and Hannu Väisänen.

In Haaretz, an article analysing the history and role of the little-known Israeli security organization Nativ. As the authors of the article show, Israel is threatened not only from outside, but also by elements within its own security services. These allies of the ultra-rightist Avigdor Lieberman, who recently became Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, seek to exploit the connections between Israel and Russia which originally came into being during the Soviet period, but are now being used for geopolitical ends by the Kremlin and its allies within Israel itself. Under Lieberman’s influence, there is pressure from some intelligence officials for the expansion and revitalization of Nativ.

The article focuses on the person and biography of one of these:

Zvi Magen was born in the Soviet Union in 1945 to parents of Polish extraction. He immigrated to Israel in 1960, living in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel as an “external child.” He did his army service in the Armored Corps and then joined a settlement group in Kibbutz Eyal. In 1970, he returned to the IDF, serving in the Intelligence Corps, initially in the central collection unit, 8200, then in the research section, where he was occupied with several sectors, including the eastern and the northern. He left the IDF in 1978 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Magen’s knowledge of Russian and his experience as an intelligence officer caught the eye of David Bar-Tov, then head of Nativ. Magen joined the organization, holding posts in the research and intelligence section and then the staff branch, eventually reaching the position of deputy chief of Nativ.

He was part of the second Nativ team that was sent to the Soviet Union, in 1988. Until the opening of the Israeli embassy, the Nativ personnel and the Foreign Ministry operated from the Netherlands embassy, which represented Israel’s interests. In 1993, Magen moved to the Foreign Ministry and was appointed ambassador to Ukraine and, in 1998, to Moscow. He held the latter post for about a year and a half until the prime minister asked him to return to Nativ, this time as its chief.

Particularly noteworthy is Magen’s attitude towards Vladimir Putin, which - the article suggests - “borders on admiration”, and is expressed in his assessment of the Russian leader:

“In the KGB Putin was the director of a cultural center in Dresden, in East Germany. Effectively, he was Nativ. He is very professional and I have only positive things to say about him. We met a few times when I was ambassador and he was in the presidential apparatus, and afterward head of the FSB. In all the meetings with me he displayed extraordinary friendship for Israel. My impression was that he has esteem for Israel and for your faithful servant. In 1999, when I concluded my term as ambassador to Moscow, he came to my farewell reception, which took place the day before he was appointed prime minister. It was very unusual for a person like him to come to the farewell reception for an ambassador.”

However, there are obvious problems. The authors comment:

The relationship between Putin and Israel is currently being put to the test. About a month ago, Israel sent a delegation to Moscow headed by the director of the Euro-Asia Department, Mark Sofer. The delegation showed the Russians evidence of how Russian weapons found their way to Hezbollah - photographs of 39 antitank weapons and of packages that were seized by Israeli soldiers, original shipping documents and more. The arms sales will not stop, but the Russians are promising that they will take more care to ensure that they get only to the “end C user” for whom they are intended.

According to Magen, the Israeli revelations “quite embarrassed the Russians.” However, he believes that Israel has very limited ability to change the Russians’ arms sales policy in the Middle East.

On 30-31 October Russian Federal vice premier and defence minister Sergei Ivanov visited Sweden and Norway. Ivanov attended the ongoing “Sammarin-2006″ military and naval exercises currently being held in Swedish waters. Nezavisimaya Gazeta carried a report on Ivanov’s remarks at the press conference which took place in conjunction with the visit. The paper noted that “the aquatoria of the Baltic and the northern seas of Europe are becoming a zone of serious strategic interest to Russia”, and pointed out that

hydrographic vessels of the Baltic fleet will be actively used in the laying of the north European gas pipeline. Their task will be to determine the coordinates of the pipelaying with an accuracy to the metre and to check the quality of the laying with the aid of deep water apparatus…

There can be no doubt that even after the construction of the pipeline is completed, the military and naval forces of the Russian Federation will continue to check it and maintain it. Therefore great importance is attached to military collaboration with the countries of the Baltic, especially as it is planned to create marine outlets to Sweden, Finland, Great Britain and other countries. And the collaboration is being developed. Sergei Ivanov said: “At the beginning of this year bilateral exercises of special forces (spetsnaz) units took place in Sweden - the ‘Snowflake 2006′ operation. Next year similar exercises are planned to take place on Russian territory.”

(hat tip: ML)

Theories about the identity of Anna Politkovskaya’s killers continue to circulate in the Russian press. A report in today’s issue of Tvoy den’ (Your Day) focuses on an analysis of the weapon that was used. It has provided some fresh angles of inquiry [my tr.]:

Law enforcement agencies say that the new twist in the investigation of Politkovskaya’s murder began after the appearance of the results of the ballistic examination of the Makarov pistol which was left at the scene of the crime.

“It looks as though the killer wasn’t a professional,” the detectives say. “There was no grouping in his shots. Plus he managed to miss at a distance of one or two metres and one of the bullets hit the wall of the elevator.”

Tvoy den’ has learned that the results of the ballistic examination show that the pistol with which Anna Politkovskaya was shot previously belonged to a fighter from one of Moscow’s ethnic criminal gangs, and has a “rich history”.

“During the exchange of fire between the members of this group and bandits from the north of Moscow who divided one of the city’s markets between them in the 1990s, this pistol was used to kill one of the 'northerners ', say the guardians of order. “Now they’re checking the entire card index of past years, and it’s quite possible that this not is the only episode connected with this pistol. The bandits don’t usually leave their weapon at the scene of the crime - that only happens in exceptional cases. Such as the widely publicized murder of a well-known woman journalist, for example.”

The detectives think that the Makarov pistol that was left at the scene may be able to put them on the trail of the person who carried out the murder.

“There is information that the pistol which was used to shoot Anna Politkovskaya, belonged to a ’subordinate’ of one of the leaders of the ethnic diaspora,” the law-enforcers explain. “Now personnel at Moscow CID, where the headquarters of the inquiry into Politkovskaya’s murder has been set up, are trying to trace the person through whom the Makarov pistol might have fallen into the killer’s hands.”

According to the guardians of order, the basic version of Politkovskaya’s remains, as earlier, that it was a political contract killing. Some data suggests that the trail of whoever ordered the killing leads abroad.

Together with this version and the so-called “Chechen trace”, the guardians of order have yet another. “The murder may possibly have been committed for mercenary reasons,” say the guardians of order. “According to some data, Politkovskaya’s income last year was about 500, 000 dollars “.

(Hat tip: ML)

As so many of the political and ethical problems of the present day have their roots in what took place in Europe during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, I’ve been thinking it would be instructive to go back and look at the life and work of one of the European writers who in a sense encapsulates the whole of that era. The writings of the great German novelist and philosopher Thomas Mann are nowadays relatively neglected - though Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain can be obtained without too much trouble, the English paperback translation of his great Joseph tetralogy is currently out of print, while the English version of his 600-page essay Reflections of an Unpolitical Man (Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen) is nowadays available only in libraries or very special second-hand bookstores. While the German text of the latter is available, it has to be ordered not directly from Mann’s publisher, S. Fischer, but from scattered bookstores across Germany.

What makes Mann such a rewarding figure for study in the present world situation is the fact that within his personality and sensibility he confronted the two major political movements of his time - Nazism and Communism - in terms which reveal their naked, all-too-human content, casting aside the ideology for the sake of the immediate, existential significance of these two contemporary pseudo-religions. Of Nazism, Thomas Mann knew the very roots, being acquainted with the work of fascist contemporaries like Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, who applied the nationalist and mystical doctrines of Dostoyevsky and Solovyov to German realities. On the other hand, the process of going straight to the heart of the matter was made easier for Mann by the ironic circumstance that his own brother, the novelist Heinrich, eventually became an adherent of Stalinism.

In his biography of Mann, Anthony Heilbut shows how the German author navigated between these two apparently opposing but inwardly related modes of demagogic irrationalism, in a kind of crabwise movement that outmaneuvered the similar navigations of contemporaries such as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence and Bertolt Brecht. While Mann’s work and preoccupations show affinities with all five, Mann avoided the traps into which he might otherwise have fallen by maintaining throughout his lifetime an inner conversation between different and often clashing elements in German history and culture, never opting for one side or the other in an endless debate on the meaning and nature of democracy. In his resistance to Nazism - and to Stalinism - he showed the way towards a new Germany and a new Europe. Though his vision has not been realized, and the problems that face Europe and America remain in many respects unchanged, despite all the illusions of the postwar hubris, his work still retains indications as to what might be achieved if the lessons of the past were to be truly assimilated and learned. In his fiction, Mann did not preach, but showed and told:

“In the final analysis, the novel is not historical, but I myself am.” His roots were romantic, bourgeois, Goethean, and Wagnerian. His great link to modernity was “my experience of romanticism’s self-transcendence in Nietzsche.” What Fischer found provocative or “fascinating (in the bad sense)” was the irony of “parodistic conservatism by means of which I as an artist hold myself suspended between eras.” An artist’s “vocation, his nature, consists not in teaching, judging, and pointing directions, but in being, doing, expressing stages of the soul.”

Via the BBC:

The United States has said there is "mounting evidence" that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are planning to topple the Lebanese government.

The White House said Syria hoped to stop the formation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.

Spokesman Tony Snow said any attempt to destabilise the Lebanese government would violate UN resolutions.

A UN team has been investigating who was behind Mr Hariri's death in 2005.

Hezbollah demand

The BBC News website's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds says the White House statement appears to result from the tense situation in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is demanding one third of cabinet seats, thereby giving it a veto over decisions.

Such a veto would enable it to block approval of the international tribunal to try suspects in Mr Hariri's assassination, our correspondent says.

The Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has threatened street demonstrations in support of his demand.

The US is concerned that this instability could result in the fall of the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

The statement also casts doubt on any willingness by the Bush administration to consider Syria and Iran as potential partners over the future of Iraq, an idea that the Baker commission on Iraq is expected to suggest, our correspondent adds.

My translations of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot are among five titles chosen for recovering by design artists to celebrate Penguin’s 60th anniversary. The others in the series are Geoffrey Wall’s translation of Madame Bovary, Tender Is The Night, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Crime and Punishment is designed by Fuel, and The Idiot by Ron Arad.

Madame Bovary is designed by Manolo Blahnik, Tender Is The Night by Sam Taylor-Wood, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Paul Smith.

The books are published in limited editions of 1000 copies each, and come in a hard perspex case.

The Jerusalem Post notes that Moscow has not backed down on the issue of missile sales to Iran, with foreign minister Lavrov insisting that the systems are “purely defensive”:

Moscow has refused to bow to Western pressure and cancel its US $700 million contract to sell 29 Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran which was signed last December.

A Russian Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that Moscow would fulfill the contract unless international sanctions against Iran make it illegal.