RIA Novosti Liquidated

With the liquidation of the RIA Novosti news agency and the formation of a Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) agency headed by a virulently pro-Kremlin, anti-Western propagandist, Russia is signalling that its days of "soft" information and news distribution are over. The pretense, and to all appearances it was only ever a pretense - of objectivity and neutrality is finally being removed. As Leonid Ragozin tweeted: ": imagine a fusion of Fox TV & Berlusconi's entertainment channels run by Goebbels. You get the picture."

Arctic 30: Moscow takes command

Reading Wednesday's intervention by Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin in the case of the  30 environmental activists now facing altered, though still disproportionate, charges of "hooliganism" as a sign that Moscow is now fully in command, an op ed article in Helsingin Sanomat concludes that "the whole incident has now become highly political, and before long a political solution to it will be sought."

From defence to aggression

At Prague Watchdog, Memorial worker Usam Baysayev writes about the Chechen human rights defenders who became supporters of Ramzan Kadyrov.

Unwanted allies

Although it may be some time yet before the true implications of the Obama administration's new foreign policy become unambiguously clear, there are already worrying signs that it is seriously on the wrong track. While some normally critical commentators have been willing to give Obama the benefit of a "wait-and-see" doubt, the aftermath of his European tour has revealed a scenario that is all too familiar. The most glaringly obvious part of it is the attitude towards global security that the Russian leadership is currently taking. As is it usually does, Moscow is talking smooth talk about "encouraging" features of U.S. Russia policy - but this time there are additional, concerning aspects. While it curries favour with the White House, taking advantage of the warm glow that still persists within Western liberal public opinion after the new President's arrival, Moscow continues to ram home points about its own inflexible and implacable position with regard to issues like NATO enlargement (Russia appears to be positioning its forces for a possible new military intervention in Georgia) and pressure on Iran (Russia refuses to exert more pressure). And the Kremlin isn't encountering much resistance from Washington. In the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick doesn't waste time mincing words, and points out:

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama's supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn't be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN's former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, "America's... superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy." 

Glick suggests that in this new highly, insecure situation, the U.S.'s "unwanted allies" - be they Poland, and the Czech Republic, Israel or Japan - will have to build alliances with one another -

covertly if need be - to contain their adversaries in the absence of America. If they do so successfully, then the damage to global security induced by Obama's emasculation of his country will be limited. If on the other hand, they fail, then America's eventual return to its senses will likely come too late for its allies - if not for America itself.

Oligarchs in trouble

In the JC, Yuri Felshtinsky writes about Why the Kremlin wants its oligarchs Jewish. Excerpt:

It is true that Jewish businessmen are crucial for modern Russia in a way Jewish Russians never were under Communism. But that does not mean they are indispensable. The main rule for an oligarch is that you do what the Kremlin tells you. If you cross the line and try to take a piece of pie from Kremlin, you end up like Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Patarkatsishvili, etc. Russia is a free country, so the choice is yours.

The Russian Finans magazine wrote two weeks ago that there are now more than 101 billionaires in Russia. Many of them are not Jewish. That the Kremlin has at last allowed commercial power to be entrusted to Russians rather than to Russian Jews is a sign that they must have found a satisfactory way of stopping businessmen from becoming too powerful without having to resort to assassinations, as in the late nineties. The Kremlin clearly no longer needs Jewish businessmen; so what they once needed to give, they are now taking away again.