Milosevic to Moscow

And this, from AP (January 18):

Russia has provided the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague,Netherlands, with supporting documents for former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to travel to Moscow for medical treatment, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Hypocrisy

Via Jeremy Putley at global geopolitics:



Interfax: Patrushev slams U.S., UK for harboring "Chechen separatists"

MOSCOW. Jan 17 (Interfax) - Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)Director Nikolai Patrushev has criticized the United Kingdom and the U.S. for providing asylum to people seen by Moscow as Chechen separatists and for their refusal to extradite them to Russia.

"Providing terrorists and their accomplices and sponsors with shelter and support justifies and encourages their crimes. Such steps undermine unity and mutual trust between the members of the antiterrorist coalition," Patrushev said in an interview due to be published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Wednesday.



War Crimes Suspect Ratko Mladic In Russia - Report

BELGRADE (AP)--A Belgrade newspaper Wednesday said Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic is in Russia and negotiations are under way on how to extradite him to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

The report, citing an unnamed source, said Mladic left Serbia in May as Western pressure intensified on the Balkan republic to hand over the fugitive, indicted for atrocities during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.

"Secret talks and visits are under way between Belgrade and Moscow officials on whether Mladic should be handed over to the (U.N.) tribunal from Moscow or if he should be discretely transferred to Serbia first" and then sent to the U.N. court in The Hague, the source was quoted as saying.

Officials in Belgrade said they couldn't immediately comment on the report.

Serbia's bid to join the European Union could be in jeopardy if it fails to bring Serbs indicted by the U.N. war crimes court face justice.

The Serbian government claims Mladic's whereabouts are unknown and several attempts to locate him were futile. The chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has accused Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of deliberately stalling Mladic's extradition.


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Back

I'm back from New York and IAJE - but it's going to be a day or two before I can get round to the task of writing up my notes on the convention, which was an amazingly diverse and seminal event this year, and had particular resonances and points of focus for string players.

Note

Well, I'm off now - back in roughly a week's time, if not before.

Pigs and Humans

Again, Edward Lucas on Putin and pipeline politics:

The problem is that Jacques Chirac in France, like Mr Berlusconi in Italy, understands Mr Putin all too well. Russia's grubby political milieu, where politicians, tycoons, bureaucrats, gangsters and spooks rub shoulders (and blur roles) is only a more exaggerated version of the sleaziest side of the old democracies. Compared to Silvio Berlusconi's monopoly of Italian television, for example, the Russian state's policy on broadcast media looks positively pluralistic.

Russia`s G-8 presidency will be a long waffle about "energy security" while the Kremlin uses its gas transit monopoly to wreak revenge on countries (not just Ukraine, but Moldova and Georgia too) that dare to challenge its post-imperial hegemony. Does anyone remember that nice feeling that the cold war in Europe was a struggle between good and evil? As at the end of George Orwell's Animal Farm, pigs and humans now look pretty much the same. At the photo of this July's G8 summit in St Petersburg, look at the smug faces of Berlusconi, Putin and Chirac, and ask yourself: is this the free world that the captive nations of the evil empire longed to join, and for which we in the west struggled to liberate them?

Like a political Chernobyl, the Kremlin is contaminating the neighbourhood with its unquenchable mischief-making and meddling. Meanwhile the West is financing a restored Soviet-style empire, albeit one based on money and pipelines, rather than tanks and the Gulag. Happy New Year.

Aiming the Weapon

Edward Lucas and his colleagues at the Economist have some thoughts about the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute in the wider context of global energy politics:

On the face of it, dangers galore. But look closer. The oil market is tight, but price is a wondrous mechanism, and rising prices have spurred investment. Oil production may increase in 2006, and start to reflate that missing cushion. Though high prices may persist for several more years, the danger of disruption will recede. As for using energy as a weapon, this week's Ukrainian affair is a reminder of an old lesson: that sellers depend on buyers just as much as buyers on sellers. With oil, as Mr Chávez well knows for all his huffing and puffing, aiming this "weapon" is especially difficult, since oil, unlike gas, can be loaded on tankers and sold into a single world market. As ever, the Middle East is volatile. But as we report in a survey, Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer, has for now seen off an al-Qaeda insurgency and looks poised for a period of prosperity and reform under a new king.

China's growth is sucking in energy. In 2003 it overtook Japan to become the world's second-biggest consumer of oil after America. Energy security therefore plays a growing part in China's foreign policy. China is making alliances with oil producers regardless of the democratic or human-rights credentials of these regimes. That has already brought conflict with America. The Chinese are helping to prevent Sudan and Iran from being held to account by the UN Security Council for suspected genocide in the one case and nuclear cheating in the other. With two-thirds of the Gulf's oil exports already flowing to Asia, America will face more such challenges. But though this will be a source of friction, it need not be the catastrophe some think inevitable as the established superpower and the rising one fight it out for a dwindling resource.

In fact, oil independence is a chimera for America and China alike. Both have an interest in the security of the Gulf—but also in depending less on its oil. If the Ukraine story has a moral, it is that energy security depends on the existence of a global market free from political interference, plus maximum diversity of supply. But where energy is concerned, China distrusts the market, putting greater store on state-to-state deals and the direct control of foreign supplies. By scaring off CNOOC, a state-owned Chinese oil firm that wanted to buy America's Unocal last year, America foolishly strengthened this mercantilist instinct. Meanwhile, by failing to impose the carbon tax that would present consumers with the real cost of energy, America rejects the best way to kick its own addiction to oil and make greater use of alternatives. What a pity.

Winners and Losers

In Maidan, Mykola Malukha considers the winners and losers in the Gas War, and concludes:

In the final analysis, as a result of the resolution of the conflict and conclusion of a new agreement on the transportation of gas to Ukraine, Russia has won, if at all, in the financial sense (though with certain reservations). However in the geo-political and geo-strategic plan Moscow has come out the loser, not merely because it didn’t achieve its own objectives, but it also spoiled its reputation and once and for all “convinced” Ukraine that its European-Atlantic course is right on track.

The details of his arguments are well worth reading.

Future-gazing

Carl Bildt, on the future of Russia:

Looking ahead, one can perhaps discuss two scenarios, although in the short run they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The one – let us call it the IKEA scenario – is more optimistic. While sceptical of the possibility of reversing the present trend of de-democratisation of the country, it sees hope in the retail revolution now sweeping the vast Russian area.

With IKEA stores going up everywhere, attracting crowds as nowhere else in the world, there are signs of the gradual emergence of a broader middle class, caring about their homes, their property, perhaps even their freedom and most certainly their future.

Consumers have arrived in Russia, but citizens are not yet in place. But over time, consumers evolving into citizens could provide the base for a more open society, and more responsive state and a more broadly-based and dynamic economy.

The other – the Venezuela scenario – is more pessimistic. It notes the present clear trend of the state – centred on what’s inside the walls of the Moscow Kremlin – to take back control of key sectors of the economy, but notes that on present price levels even a profoundly mismanaged energy sector will provide enough of resources to sustain an increasingly populist, authoritarian and nationalist petrostate.

It’s not difficult to find support for either scenario in the Russia of today.

I remember the days in the past when it was sometimes said that while the United States had a military-industrial complex, the Soviet Union as a whole was one.

Today, we might be entering into a new situation.

We might well see a Russia dominated by an energy-political complex where political and economic powers are brought together beyond what any transparent political process is meant to reach.

The conflict with the Ukraine can certainly be viewed in this light.

(Excerpted from Bildt's remarks on "New Europe and the High North" at the Annual Conference of the Confederation of Norwegian Industries in Oslo on Wednesday.)

IAJE

I'll be in New York City for most of the coming week, attending the annual IAJE conference and on family business. Posting on this blog will be light to non-existent during that time, and I'll hope to resume normal service by the evening of Tuesday January 17.

The Quiet Americans

Perhaps predictably, the official U.S. response to the Ukraine-Russia gas scandal has been rather muted. Apart from Sean McCormack's New Year's Day press statement from the State Department, there hasn't been much comment from Washington. On Thursday, however, the Secretary of State stepped in (RFE/RL "Newsline", January 6):

U.S. CRITICIZES RUSSIA OVER GAS DISPUTE WITH UKRAINE... U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Washington on 5 January that Russia was wrong to launch its recent "politically motivated" natural-gas dispute with Ukraine and warned Moscow to stick to international rules, Reuters reported. "The game just can't be played [by making arbitrary changes]," she said, adding that "when you say you want to be a part of the international economy and you want to be a responsible actor in the international economy, then you play by its rules." Rice feels that international attention will be paid to the "distance between Russia's behavior on something like this and what would be expected by a leader of the G-8," whose rotating chair Russia now holds (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 4 January 2006). She pointed out that Moscow launched the gas dispute "with an obvious political motive" and noted that "it was ironic and not good that they [cut back supplies on 1 January], the day they became G-8 chairman." PM

This drew the inevitable response from the Russian side:

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement called Rice's comments "baseless" and said her remarks were "met with surprise" in Moscow.

With few exceptions, The U.S. blogosphere has also remained noticeably quiet about the gas war. It's possible to speculate on reasons for this, and they include the usual lingering reluctance of many centre-right and right-wing U.S. political commentators to criticize the Federal Russian "ally", who is still supposed to be of value in the global fight against terror. There is also the traditional conservative respect for the "free market", and the suspicion held by some U.S. conservatives that Ukraine was trying to get out of paying its gas bill. All the pointers in the world that there's little sign of a free market in Putin's bullying tactics, and every sign of a return to Soviet-style pressure politics, will not be enough to convince those observers in the United States who still sincerely believe that their country "won the Cold War".

Of those U.S. blogs that have covered the crisis in some depth - though after the event - Publius Pundit has perhaps the most interesting and in-depth analysis.

The Gas Attack: Counting the Losses

In EDM, Vladimir Socor has an analysis of the controversial aspects of the Russia-Ukraine gas agreement - details which have been officially disclosed in Kyiv:

First, this is not just a bilateral interstate agreement, but has a third, co-equal signatory: RosUkrEnergo, an ostensibly private though shadowy offshoot of Gazprom. Second, Ukraine forfeits any possibility to import gas from Turkmenistan -- an option that Kyiv had pursued up to the last day in 2005. And, third, Naftohaz Ukrainy -- hitherto solely responsible for marketing all imported gas in Ukraine -- yields one half of that business to RosUkrEnergo.

And, in the same issue, Igor Torbakov looks at the unwieldy combination of strategic objectives and private interests which comprise the Kremlin's energy policy. In addition, Torbakov notes that the "gas attack" on Ukraine has not exactly been an unqualified success for the Kremlin:

Russia did not succeed in splitting the Ukrainian population ahead of the country's parliamentary elections in March. It equally failed to force Kyiv to cede control over the national gas transportation system to Gazprom

The achieved result -- the relatively moderate revision of prices for the gas Russia supplies to Ukraine -- is too modest an outcome after the weeks of vitriolic anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaign waged by Moscow, personal involvement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and, ultimately, the brief disruption of gas supplies to Russia's European customers.

Russia's national interests likely suffered a blow in this affair, a number of independent analysts suggest. But not the interests of several very influential Russian individuals associated with Gazprom. At the heart of the Russian-Ukrainian deal is the role of the shady intermediary, RosUkrEnergo, whose significance has been tremendously enhanced: under the terms of the agreement, the Swiss-based Gazprom joint venture will become the "exclusive distributor" for all gas imports to Ukraine. This company, like a number of its predecessors, has been created with the sole purpose of skimming off profits from Gazprom. As one knowledgeable Moscow source notes, it is a "more or less private business" operating in the interests of the Gazprom senior management and in those of the Kremlin leadership.

If anything, the latest episode of the Russian-Ukrainian gas war lays bare the thorough blurring of the line dividing private and public interests at the top of Russian power structures as well as the completely opaque nature of "strategic" decision-making.

Standing Or Falling

Maidan has the transcription of a BBC World Service interview with former European Commissioner Chris Patten. Interestingly, the transcription failed to appear on the World Service's website, and Maidan have decided to "fill the gap". From the interview:

Chris Patten: I think that Russia has on the whole behaved a bit like a bully with its energy pricing and attitude to sphere of influence in those former members of the Soviet Union which are now independent nation states, like Moldova, like Georgia, and of course, most recently, Ukraine. Because the European Union hasn’t been firm with Russia, because rather pathetically people have taken the view that the fact that we purchase so much energy from Russia, about 25 percent of our natural gas, that gives Russia the upper hand. Actually the Russians have to sell their energy to someone, and they haven’t got anything else to sell the world other than their energy, and we should have been much tougher and firmer with the Russians on political issues. It’s extraordinary, of course, that they’ve taken over the chairmanship of the G8, even when they’re going backwards on democracy and have an economy which certainly wouldn’t qualify them for membership of the G8 in terms of GDP. So there are a lot of political things that we could have done in relation to Russia which we haven’t done, instead Mr Schröder has gone off to be chairman of the new “Gazprom” pipeline to Germany.

BBC: Yet as a counter-argument to this the suggestion is often made that good relations with Russia are in keeping with the long-term interests of Europe itself, as are promoting the building of democracy in Russia and ensuring that its political and commercial interests are closely connected with those of its western neighbours. Surely if we use the more hard-line measures you are suggesting, this will be impossible to achieve?

Chris Patten: Well, what is actually happening is we say all this about wanting Russia as a strategic partner, and in the meantime Russia behaves badly over democratic issues, it’s gone backwards on democracy, it’s been responsible for some terrible swindles in relation to Yukos and other private enterprise companies, so the fact that we’ve been very warm and cordial to Russia hasn’t exactly meant that Russia has moved in the right direction. I’m not in favour of trying to restart the Cold War. What I am in favour of is standing up for what we believe is right in relation to Russia, and being much more cordial to Ukraine which has the aspiration to become a member of the European Union. At present what is happening is that partly because of that, Mr Putin is putting pressure on Ukraine and he’s able to show the Ukraine that the European Union’s been pretty pathetic in standing alongside the Ukraine.

Macbeth And The Irrational

In response to Quentin Peel's Wednesday column in the FT about the "puzzling" nature of Putin's "gas logic" in the Gazprom-Ukraine crisis, one reader had a perceptive comment to make:

Putin’s gas logic is in short supply, Quentin Peel, today

As regards the general puzzlement at Mr Putin’s irrational policy towards Ukraine, there is an explanation in addition to the two adumbrated by Mr Peel. Irrational behaviour can sometimes be explained by deeply-felt guilt.

The dioxin that poisoned Mr Yushchenko and nearly caused his death just prior to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution is believed by experts to have come from the laboratories of the FSB, Russia’s “security” service. Analysts who have studied the matter are convinced that the use of such a poison for a political assassination would have had to be authorised at a senior level.

Does the story of Macbeth offer a clue to the observed irrationality of recent events?

Jeremy Putley

Maskhadov as Mediator at Beslan

At the trial of Nurpashi Kulayev in Vladikavkaz, new details are emerging about Maskhadov's bid to mediate in the Beslan crisis (via Chechnya Weekly):

Testifying in the trial of Nurpashi Kulayev, officially the only surviving terrorist involved in the Beslan school seizure, Izrail Totoonti, secretary for the North Ossetian parliament's vice-speaker, told the North Ossetian Supreme Court on December 22 that Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov was ready to come to Beslan an hour before the first explosion ripped through the school seized by terrorists in early September 2004. "On April 7, 2005, as a member of a parliamentary commission, I phoned Akhmed Zakaev," Interfax quoted Totoonti as testifying, referring to Maskhadov's London-based emissary. "In this talk I learnt that in the early hours of September 2, 2004, Zakaev got in touch with Maskhadov through third persons to discuss Maskhadov's possible arrival in Beslan to help free the hostages." According to Totoonti, Maskhadov agreed to come to Beslan, and Zakaev informed North Ossetian President Aleksandr Dzasokhov of this decision. "This happened on September 3, 2004, at 9 a.m. British summer time, meaning it was already noon here in North Ossetia and the hostage release operation began an hour later," he said, adding that Maskhadov's sole demand was his unhindered passage to the school. "Both Maskhadov and Zakaev were ready to fly to Beslan, to any North Ossetian airport, to negotiate with the militants but, unfortunately, they failed due to the time difference."

On December 28, the Russian parliamentary commission investigating the circumstances surrounding the Beslan tragedy released its preliminary report. The commission's head, Deputy Federation Council Speaker Aleksandr Torshin, put most of the blame on local authorities, saying they committed a number of mistakes during the crisis and that the high death toll—330 hostages killed, more than half of them children—could have been avoided. Torshin also claimed during questioning by members of parliament on December 28 that Maskhadov "never spoke with anyone at all," Ekho Moskvy reported. "Yes, efforts were made to contact him, through mediators and through Zakaev," the radio station quoted the commission head as saying. "If you don't believe us, then you can believe [journalist] Anna Politkovskaya, who contacted Zakaev three times. She came to talk to our commission…Politkovskaya contacted Zakaev three times—you know, some time we will have to publish the words the journalist used to try to persuade Zakaev to make Maskhadov drop everything and, without any preconditions, come to get the children out. The replies were evasive—along the lines that the communications were only one-way, and so on—so there was nothing to stop, because there was absolutely no contact with him."

Akhmed Zakaev, however, offered a different version of events: he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's North Caucasus Service on December 28 that Dzasokhov and former Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev had tried to negotiate the hostages' release and that Aslan Maskhadov was ready to assist in negotiations with the hostage-takers. RFE/RL on December 29 quoted Zakaev as saying Dzasokhov and Aushev had called him on the morning of September 2, 2004, and that they had discussed just "one issue." "They told me that the people who had seized the children had a demand—to end the war [in Chechnya]," Zakaev said. "And that's why [Aushev and Dzasokhov] had contacted me. They discussed the possibility of Aslan Maskhadov or someone from our government intervening in order to determine what was going on." Zakaev said he managed to contact Maskhadov that night and told him about their request. "He told me to do everything possible to get there [to Beslan]," Zakaev told RFE/RL. "He also asked me to tell Dzasokhov that he [Maskhadov] was ready to personally participate in saving the children, keeping anything bad from happening to them."

Zakaev said he reported back to Dzasokhov on September 3: "[Dzasokhov] thanked me and said that he had not expected us to act any differently, and that he needed two hours in order to the arrange how I would get [to Beslan]." Zakaev recounted. "He said he needed to hold some discussions in order to get that done. But before half an hour had passed, the storming of the school began. And everything that happened, happened." According to Zakaev, Maskhadov also decided to go to Beslan. "We didn't demand any kind of guarantees; we just wanted them to help him get there," Zakaev told RFE/RL. "So that we didn't have to organize it ourselves. They say that special security services contacted me. But there were no security forces. There was only Dzasokhov and Aushev. But I have no doubt the security services were standing behind them. I also have no doubt that the security services that were behind them were there to obstruct the negotiations that Dzasokhov was involved in. Their main task was to prevent us from coming there, and to do that they began that spontaneous storm [of the school]."

Among other things, Aleksandr Torshin reported on December 28 that his commission had concluded that the use of flamethrowers by Federal Security Service special forces in charge in Beslan could not have caused the fire on the roof of School No. 1. The roof subsequently collapsed, claiming the lives of many of the Beslan victims. As the Associated Press reported on December 28, Torshin also said that federal Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev and his deputy had sent telegrams less than two weeks before the hostage seizure instructing the North Ossetian police to beef up security on the first day of school, but that only a single policewoman was posted outside the Beslan school the day of the siege, and she was taken hostage. On December 27, federal Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel said in a statement that an expert committee set up by federal prosecutors to investigate the tragedy had not discovered any mistakes by the federal authorities in dealing with the siege. Mothers of the children killed in the crisis dismissed these conclusions as a "ruse," Agence France-Presse reported on December 28. "We believe the work of this committee was not objective...The main aim was to cover up for top officials," Susanna Dudieva, head of the Beslan Mothers victim support group, told AFP.

Torshin also said that the gunmen who seized Beslan's School No. 1 had a back-up target - a school in the village of Nesterovskaya in Ingushetia—and that 11 terrorists were held in reserve, four of whom were arrested.

The Hard Right

It's interesting, and instructive, to observe how the British conservative political establishment tends to align itself with some of the world's most illiberal and authoritarian regimes - in this case that of Russia's Vladimir Putin. Take, for example, the recent schoolmasterish homily in the Telegraph from former Thatcher adviser Norman Stone:

If Ukraine attempts to join the Germano-Polish west, which exploited her people cruelly up to the 17th century, then the Moskale (Ukrainian for Russians) will show who is boss. And maybe - maybe - it is for the good of us all. Europe needs a functioning Russia much more than a semi-functioning Ukraine.

Stone is perhaps an extreme example, with his references to the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as "pimples on Russia's back", and his blandly outrageous references to them as countries where "the Russians are meant to learn Baltic languages that, with the best will in the world, Russians cannot take seriously as cultural vehicles (and the Euro Parliament is strangely silent as to the linguistic oppression that results, whereas there is jumping up and down about Kurdish in Turkey)." But there is also Paul Robinson, in this week's Spectator:

We Brits love an underdog. As Robert Baden-Powell harrumphed in his classic Scouting for Boys, ‘If you see a big bully going for a small weak boy, you stop him because it is not “fair play”.’ Gazprom’s price hike provoked great howls of indignation in some circles of the British press, particularly as Russia has this week taken over the rotating chairmanship of the G8, and the issue will certainly embarrass Western leaders. According to the Daily Telegraph, ‘The methods of gangsterism and blackmail now being used by Gazprom are reminiscent of the Soviet era.... The West has to tell Russia that, plainly and simply, its conduct is unacceptable if it wishes to remain part of the club of civilised nations.’ Unfortunately for those spinning this simplistic tale of bully and bullied, Gazprom’s ‘unacceptable conduct’ is actually something we have been requiring of it. For in raising the prices they charge for gas in Eastern Europe, the Russians are merely going part way towards meeting demands made by the European Union over several years.

These articles are another sign of the increasing convergence of hard right and hard left, not only in British politics, but also on an international scale.

The Energy Lever and Ukraine - IV

Anne Applebaum, on playing politics with pipelines:

Last month, when Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, accepted a seat on the board of a consortium led by Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly -- a consortium that will build a Russian-German pipeline that Schroeder approved during his final days in office -- we learned that Russian gas money has already been used to garner political influence. This week's events are further proof that the Russian government is willing to use its gas pipelines for political purposes as well. Today, Ukraine -- next year, why not Germany?

Europe can still avert future blackmail. European governments could invest in alternative infrastructure, such as marine terminals for receiving and storing liquefied natural gas -- more of which would make gas easier to trade internationally -- or a pipeline from the Caspian Sea, under the Black Sea and through Ukraine. Theoretically, the Europeans could also fight back diplomatically, in concert with the United States. Take that presidency of the G-8, for example: Is everybody still absolutely sure that Russia should remain a G-8 member? Is everybody absolutely positive that they want Putin to act as the G-8 president?

But before Western leaders can even contemplate asking such impolitic questions, they'll have to recognize Putin's new year's celebration as the warning signal it was. Manipulation of television stations, harassment of human rights activists, imprisonment of the president's political rivals -- none of that has so far excluded Russia from the club of civilized nations. Like the war in Chechnya, Russia's bitter dispute with Ukraine over gas prices was, until now, largely dismissed as a regional spat. That has to change. Perhaps if the Russians want to talk about "energy security" in 2006, we should take them up on it.

G-8 Crasher

G-8 Crasher

by David Satter

With Sunday's accession of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of the G-8, post-Soviet Russia has achieved a new level of recognition and prestige as a democratic state. The recognition is undeserved. Instead of being democratic or even becoming democratic, Russia is daily sinking deeper into authoritarianism and lawlessness.

Last week Andrei Illarionov, who since 2000 handled Russia's negotiations with the G-8, resigned on the grounds that Russia is no longer politically or economically free. "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free," he said. "It is another thing when the political system has changed and the country has stopped being free and democratic."

Russian officials insist that Russia is democratic but that democracy looks different in Russia than it does in the West. Sergei Markov, a political analyst and Kremlin adviser, said that "Russia has as much democracy as it can have at this stage of its development." The Russian system is described as "managed democracy," a term reminiscent of the old Soviet insistence that the U.S.S.R. was a "genuine democracy."

In fact, there is nothing democratic about Russia beyond the façade of elections that are regularly fixed. The country lacks three of the fundamental requirements of democracy -- political pluralism, the rule of law and respect for human life.

There is no political pluralism in Russia because the Russian regime has worked systematically to eliminate all independent sources of power. The tendency was well illustrated by the recent adoption of a new law limiting NGOs. The law places a government body, the Federal Registration Service, in charge of NGOs with the power to shut them down on the basis of vague guidelines. Foreign NGOs can be closed if they threaten Russia's "national interests," domestic NGOs for two minor violations of the constitution or other laws.

This law was important because it marked the end of a process. In 1993, Boris Yeltsin abolished the former parliament, the Supreme Soviet, by force, and introduced a new constitution that provided for a new parliament, the State Duma, which had little real power.

Under Mr. Putin, new parliamentary elections were held during the early, successful stages of the Second Chechen War. In the war atmosphere, supporters of Mr. Putin were swept into office, destroying the previous opposition majority. Mr. Putin then launched campaigns against independent media outlets, eventually placing all TV stations with a national reach in the hands of the government. With the help of a more compliant Duma, he then removed governors from the upper house of parliament. Finally, after the Beslan tragedy, he eliminated the direct election of governors altogether.

Under these circumstances, NGOs were one of the last outposts of civil society. The new law, however, means that they have passed under the effective control of the state.

The effects of the destruction of political pluralism are magnified by the lack of the rule of law. In the absence of checks and balances and a separation of powers, the executive is free to rule alone and neither the courts nor the prosecutor can uphold the law. In this situation, two of the most serious examples of the absence of the rule of law are the hunt for "spies" and the murder of journalists.

The hunt for spies is the work of the federal police, or FSB. One of the most celebrated cases is that of Igor Sutyagin, a former researcher at the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada who was sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp for giving supposedly secret information to Alternative Futures, an English consulting firm. Yet Mr. Sutyagin, a specialist on the American Navy, provided reports based on open sources. He had no access to secret information. More recently, Valentin Danilov, a researcher in Krasnoyarsk, was sentenced to 13 years for giving state secrets to China. He also provided information from open sources, a fact that was barred from mention at his trial. The effect of these cases and several others like them has been to stifle exchanges between Russian and foreign scholars on anything even remotely resembling a secret topic.

The murder of journalists, at the same time, is possible because of the impunity of business and local political elites. At least 12 journalists have been murdered in Russia since Mr. Putin took office, making Russia the fifth most dangerous country for journalists in the world. Not a single one of these cases has been solved.

The best-known is that of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, who was murdered in July 2004. Under intense pressure from the U.S. Embassy, the Russians charged a group of Chechens with the crime and a closed trial began last month in the Moscow city court. Unfortunately, the case is highly improbable.

The prosecutor says that the killing was planned by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, the leader of a Chechen criminal group, who was interviewed by Klebnikov for a book but did not like the way he was depicted. He is still at large. Two of the arrested Chechens, Musa Vakhayev and Kazbek Dukuzov, are accused of carrying out the killing at Mr. Nukhaev's behest. However, according to Alexander Gordeev, the editor of the Russian edition of Newsweek, who spoke to him before he died, Klebnikov said twice, with his last breath, that his attacker was a Russian.

Throughout Russia, relatives of journalist-victims insist that the killings are not investigated because the people who ordered them have connections to the police.

Finally, Russia is unable to qualify as a democracy because the government bureaucracy, unconstrained by law, shows a disregard for human life. Just how serious the problem is was demonstrated during the Moscow theater and Beslan hostage crises, the details of which have only recently been revealed. In the case of the theater siege, it is now known that the theater was flooded with toxic gas and stormed even though the FSB was aware that virtually all of the hostage-takers' most powerful bombs were incapable of detonating.

Perhaps the most shocking example of the Russian authorities' disregard for human life, however, was their behavior during the Beslan school tragedy. A report by a parliamentary commission of the republic of Northern Osetia, released Nov. 29, states that the military operation in Beslan began an hour after Alexander Dzasokhov, the president of North Osetia, agreed with a representative of Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen resistance, that Mr. Maskhadov would come to Beslan to try to resolve the crisis. The report also said that the first explosion was produced by either a flame-thrower or grenade-launcher fired from outside the building -- i.e., by the Russian forces. The inescapable conclusion is that the Russians opened fire on a building filled with hostages, including hundreds of children, in order to head off negotiations.

Witnesses at the trial in North Osetia of the only surviving member of the terrorist band testified that Russian forces also fired repeatedly on the school with flame-throwers and grenade-launchers 30 to 50 minutes after the start of the attack. This could have caused the fire on the roof of the athletic hall that led to the majority of deaths. In response to these conclusions, "Voice of Beslan," a group of survivors of the terrorist act, appealed to Western organizations, including the U.S. Congress, for help in investigating the tragedy. "With horror," they wrote, "we should recognize that terrorist acts are the authorities' most effective tool for resolving "their political and commercial problems. We accuse the current Russian regime of aiding and abetting Russian and world terrorism."

As Russia takes the helm of the G-8, but there will inevitably be questions about its right to such a role. The situation is aggravated by Moscow's most recent actions. On Sunday, Russia cut off gas to Ukraine, in response to Kiev's refusal to accept a fourfold price increase imposed in violation of an existing contract.

Under the circumstances, Russia needs to be held to the standards of the G-8, which is an organization of free-market democracies. Russia's internal situation -- which is so menacing to Russia itself -- is the proper business of the other members of the G-8. And if Russia's lawlessness continues unabated, it should put an end to Russia's chairmanship and, ultimately, to Russian membership in the group itself.

The Putin regime cannot ignore the views of G-8 colleagues. This is why the West needs to use all its influence to counteract Russia's self-destructive behavior.



This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 3, 2006.



David Satter, a senior fellow with Hudson Institute and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale).

(Via Jeremy Putley and this link.)

The New Russia

An article in Kommersant discusses what is currently taking in place in Russia - namely, "the largest wave of industrial nationalization since the October Revolution."

(via Bildt Comments)

Learning the Lessons

Via BBC:

Austrian Energy Minister Martin Bartenstein told journalists in Brussels that Russian gas would remain the backbone of the European energy supply mix.

But he said: "We have to think about energy supply security in general, gas supply security... and we have to learn the lessons."

He added that a planned pipeline to deliver Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey could help to diversify the EU's sources of gas.

Gas Blockade: Russia Backs Down

Via BBC:

Russian and Ukrainian officials have reached an agreement in their dispute over the price of gas.

Under the deal, it appears Russian gas will be mixed with cheaper supplies from Central Asia and Ukraine will buy gas for US$95 for 1,000 cubic metres.

Via CNN:

Though Russia rescinded its demand Sunday for a price hike from Ukraine and restored the flow, several countries were reassessing whether they wanted to continue to be beholden to Russia to meet their energy needs.

"We must not get fully relaxed, since the original reason of conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not resolved yet," said Janos Koka, Hungary's minister of economy and transportation.

He called for alternative energy sources to be explored and for the creation of a strategic storage supply.

The security of the gas supply "needs to be on the forefront of our perspectives," he said.

Reuters has a report on the deal here.

At Neeka's Backlog, Veronica Khokhlova discusses the complexity of the deal, which she suggests may not be all that it seems at first glance.

Ukraine - Oh My! has more.