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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
THE BALTICS
The US State Secretary Colin Powell promised to the Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga that Russia would not have any veto against NATO enlargement. Mrs Vike-Freiberga repeated that more than ever, Latvia now wants to get out of Russia’s interest sphere. (Reuters, 23rd April.)
The Latvian Centre for Human Rights and Ethnic Research (member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights) has published a report "Human Rights in Latvia 2001", according to which Latvia’s human rights are all right and the Russians have no troubles in the country. (RFE, 24th April.) Despite the plausible reports proving that the Baltic countries are treating their Russian minorities extremely well, various Western groupings still seize Russian disinformation claiming that Russians in the Baltics would be oppressed. According to Radio Free Europe, as many as 60 % of Latvia’s ethnic Russians can already speak Latvian. (RFE, 24th April.)
The Baltic prime ministers together opposed Germany’s demands to prevent free movement of people in Europe. (RFE, 24th April.)
Russia presented a long list of demands and threats to the EU, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, concerning the status of the Königsberg region (in Russian Kaliningrad, in Polish Królewiec, in Lithuanian Kraloviauciaus). Among other things, Russia demands visa-free movement for Russians (without accepting similar rights to others in Russia), free passage and transit rights, free movement of its army, fishing rights in the EU’s waters etc…. (RFE, 24th April.) The European Union has pressured the Baltic countries to agree with Russia’s demands. It is absolutely clear that Lithuania and Latvia cannot accept free and uncontrollable military transit rights for Russia, since this would lead in a situation that there could be a railroad length of potential Russian occupation within territory that aims at becoming part of the EU and NATO.
ROMANIA
Former Securitate officer Ristea Priboi quitted on 19th April from the leadership of the parliament’s committee monitoring foreign intelligence service. Iliescu said this was a wise solution. Priboi commented that he did not want to be a hindrance in the forthcoming months of Romania’s NATO negotiations. He denied participation in the Securitate operations against Radio Free Europe in 1980 and 1983, and said he worked in the group monitoring radio channels broadcasting in Romanian only in 1988-1989. (RFE Newsline, 20th April.)
Iliescu accused the EU of endangering stability, when the EU countries are isolating Romanians and preventing their free movement. He also said this would deepen the rift between Europe’s rich and poor countries. At the same time Iliescu also complained about the anti-Romanian disinformation which has been spread especially by the EU chairman state Sweden, playing hypocrite on the situation of Gypsies. There are also many rich Gypsies and they are not persecuted anyway. Iliescu invited the Swedes to bother to come to Romania and see how things actually are. (RFE Newsline, 20th April.)
The Romanian Constitutional Court univocally rejected the complaint of Tudor’s România Mare Party against the regional administration reform. (RFE Newsline, 20th April.)
THE BALKANS
Montenegro’s independence is looming in the horizon, although Moscow as well as the Western powers seem to be even more fanatically against the idea than Belgrade that seems to take the issue surprisingly calmly. Cetinje, the former capital of Montenegro up until 1918, has planned to celebrate a referendum on Montenegro’s status. Dragan Soc, the leader of Montenegro’s pro-Belgrad bloc, said that he trusted that Russia, France and Italy would prevent Montenegro from gaining independence. (The Economist, 21st April.)
An official representative of the Yugoslav army, Svetozar Radisic, admitted war crimes in Kosova. This was the first time that the Yugoslav army officially confessed its guilt to war crimes in Kosova. (RFE, 20th April.)
UKRAINE
Ukraine demanded the US to extradict the exiled former bodyguard of Leonid Kuchma and officer of the Ukrainian secret police, Mykola Melnichenko, who taped Kuchma’s phonecalls, in which the latter apparently gave the order to murder the opposition journalist Georgi Gongadze. Melnichenko is accused by Kiev of espionage and libel. (RFE, 20th April.)
SOUTHERN CAUCASUS
Once again it seems as if there would be some progress in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Mountainous Karabagh. In negotiations held in Florida’s Key West, the Azerbaijani President Haidar Aliyev and the Armenian President Robert Kocharian seemed to be getting closer to some kind of a contract. The Armenian-Azerbaijani talks have been hosted by the US, together with Russia and France. Besides, Iran is being informed of the results. (The Economist, 21st April.)
It is a conspicuous fact that the US and France are those Western countries where the Armenian lobby is strongest. Russia and Iran are traditional supporters of Armenia against Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s friends like Turkey and Georgia were not included in the peace talks over the Armenian-occupied Karabagh area. According to the most recent contract (which Russia will probably reject, as it lies in her interest to prolong the Karabagh conflict), Armenia would return six of the seven regions she has conquered, back to Azerbaijan, but Karabagh as well as the Lachin corridor connecting Karabagh to Armenia proper would get autonomy. That would mean they would be also de iure transferred into Armenian control, although map could show them as legal parts of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijanis would only get an internationally protected road from Azerbaijan proper to her exclave Naxçivan (Nakhichevan). (The Economist, 21st April.)
NORTHERN CAUCASUS
The Independent (24th April) writes that the Chechens, desperate of their international isolation, take up acts of terror to raise attention towards their struggle. According to the British newspaper more of similar incidents as the aircraft hijacked from Istanbul to Saudi Arabia, and the Istanbul hotel crisis can be expected in the future. This war, however, has not witnessed similar operations outside Chechen territory like the strikes that groups in Shamil Basayev’s and Salman Raduyev’s leadership made to Russian territory at the late stage of the last war (1994-1996). In the present war (1999-…) the Chechens have been disciplined to limit their strikes only to Chechen territory, and even there the Chechen fighters have only attacked against military and police targets and authorities of the occupation regime. There are no proven incidents that Chechen fighters would have attacked civilians.
Instead, single individuals and groups supporting the Chechen struggle abroad have committed operations that could have become acts of terrorism if not both the cases – the hijacking led by Arsayev brothers and the hotel drama led by the Turk Muhammed Tokcan – would have ended in a relatively bloodless way (in the plane hijacking three people were killed by the Saudi special forces). The bombs of Mineralniye Vody and other explosions have not been connected to Chechens in any plausible way, however hard the Russian authorities have tried to blame Chechens on them. There is no reason to automatically assume that these explosions, or the autumn 1999 bomb blasts in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buinaksk, would anyway have anything to do with Chechens. Bomb blasts connected to conflicts between criminal groupings are common throughout Russia, even though the war propaganda, now headed by Sergei Yastrzhembsky, would like to routinely blame Chechens on everything even lightly smelling like terrorism.
An authority in the Ingush capital Nazran commented on the issue: "Of course I disapprove acts of terror, but that is the traditional weapon of the weaker against the stronger. It is something totally expectable, as there seems to be no end to this war. The Chechens know that the rest of world has forgotten them, and they have to do something about it." (The Independent, 24th April.)
In her book "Chienne de Guerre", which has now been published also in English, the French reporter Anne Nivat told about her experiences in Chechnya and Ingushetia. She talked about her book in a seminar of the Freedom Forum. Ms. Nivat was able to move freely in the region for years by playing a Chechen woman and by speaking fluent Russian. So, Russians did not disturb her in any special way, and she could live unnoticed with Chechen families. She transmitted her reports to France by dictating them into a satellite phone that she had taped on her stomach. (Freedomforum.org)
Maura Reynolds has written about an incident, in which the Russian troops recently shot a shephard to his paddock together with the three children of 10 to 14 years, who were helping him. The killing took place near the Chechen village of Alleroi. Although the villagers and witnesses told that Russian soldiers killed these civilians, the Russian propaganda chief Sergei Yastrzhembsky immediately blamed "Chechen rebels" for the act, and the whole Russian media was mobilised to manifest the case as a "proof" of the cruelties of the "rebels". Also everywhere else in Chechnya Russians continue murders and atrocities against civilian population. (Los Angeles Times, 24th April.)
In the Chechen town of Novogroznensky the Russians killed six Chechen civilians in the same day. Again Kadyrov and Yastrzhembsky blamed "Chechen rebels". (New York Times, 24th April.) The truth has no meaning any more, as even the last free channels of information in Russia, which used to belong to Gusinsky’s media concerns (NTV, Itogi, Novaya Gazeta…) have been captured by the Kremlin. Now the whole Russian media has been mobilised to produce propaganda and to agitate hatred against Muslims and Caucasians.
Kabarda-Balkaria accepted a return immigration law, which allows those expelled or escaped in the 1800s wars, communist era deportations, world wars, and other historical conflicts to return and to gain a compensation from the republic’s budget. (Glasnost, 24th April.)
The Independent’s correspondent Patrick Cockburn reported in Nazran, how the demoralised and impoverished Russian troops are terrorising Chechen villagers. A middle-aged Chechen woman Aminat Musayeva bought a map from a Russian soldier with 200 USD, showing the location of the mass-grave where also her sons Ali and Omar were buried. The Russian police had kidnapped them from their home in Gikhi for revenge, because Chechen troops had earlier destroyed a Russian mobilised infantry vehicle. The mass-grave was situated near the notorious 245th Infantry Regiment’s base. (The Independent, 25th April.)
A representative of the Memorial Foundation, Usam Basayev (Usan Asayev?) told that hatred between the Russian occupiers and local inhabitants has all the time grown deeper. Russia has got no control over the situation, war continues and gets worse. The Russians have also started to kidnap Chechen schoolkids from their classrooms, after which the children are being beaten, tortured and kept as prisoners in the concentration camps. Some of the children have been returned after protests and demands by the inhabitants, but others have disappeared. A worsening problem is that ever since the NTV was captured by the Kremlin, the all-Russian propaganda and agitation against Chechens is now gapless. There is no chance for correct information in Russia any more. (The Independent, 25th April.)
In the Ingush capital Nazran 5’000-10’000 Ingush demonstrated in solidarity for the Ingush population of the Prigorodnie rayon of North Ossetia (Republic of Alania). Ossetians have terrorised the Ingush in Prigorodnie with the backing of Russia. (RFE, 20th April.)
The leader of Karachay-Cherkessia, Vladimir Semyonov, prohibited public meetings in the area of the republic. (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 24th April.)
The FSB has again stated claim that "400-500 Chechens" is getting training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan. (Interfax, 24th April.) It is very implausible that Chechens could afford sending even that many men to such a distant place as Afghanistan – where the fundamentalist Taliban regime by no means accepts the Sufi Islam of Chechens. As if there would not be enough of "training" for warrior skills in Chechnya?
IDEL-URAL
A Tatar politician Fanis Shaikhutdinov was arrested in Tatarstan by the FSB for spreading "pro-Chechen" literature. He was accused of "Islamic extremism". (RFE, 24th April.)
THE REST OF RUSSIA
Putin’s support party, "Unity", which is formally led by Sergei Shoigu, has swallowed up the Otetchestvo party led by Yuri Luzhkov. This means there are no longer any serious counterweight parties to the Kremlin in Russia. (RFE, Russian Political Weekly, 23rd April.)
Vladimir Gusinsky, who was in exile in Spain, left from Gibraltar to Israel. At the airport he still gave a statement where he seriously warned Europe of an emerging totalitarian Russia. "Putin is a serious threat to Europe", he said, and demanded the Europeans, as their civil duty, to see the truth. Putin wants absolute power and he will be most direct danger to all Europe. "What is the difference between Milosevic and Putin? Only the number of their dead victims: In Chechnya there are far more dead than in Kosova, and Putin is much more responsible. Europe has to face these facts." (Reuters, 24th April.)
Gusinsky also said that Russia is becoming a big concentration camp. "Journalists no longer ask about Kursk or not even about Chechnya – only about their TV station that disappeared. And even then they get nothing." Gusinsky wondered why only independent media is being destroyed with vague economic charges, while Gazprom and Itera are not even touched. He also remarked that massive money-laundering is an old tradition in the Russian secret service. (Reuters, 24th April.) For example, Pavel Borodin, charged by Switzerland for huge money-laundering and organised crime is again, thank to Putin’s demands, a free man.
The energy giants Gazprom and Itera are, besides being in the FSB’s tight control, also bound to each other. Russia is trying to gain control over strategically important energy markets in all CIS states, but also in East Europe and the Balkans, by using these Kremlin-bound companies. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is considering a 250 million USD support package to Gazprom, but Gazprom’s bondages with Itera seem suspicious, tells the EBRD’s Russian representative Richard Wallis. Namely, 87 % of the ownership of Itera is secret! Still EBRD increases its loans to Russia, South-East Europe, Ukraine and Transcaucasia. (RFE, 24th April.)
It is downright shameful that this support goes to such tentacles of ugly Russian expansionism as Gazprom and Itera. This would mean direct subvention to the FSB’s power throughout this region – which happens to coincide with what Huntington promised for Russian interest sphere in his division of world. EBRD, however, announces, that it no longer concentrates in the EU candidate countries. The EBRD’s director Jean Lémière said that the EBRD would nevertheless concentrate in the "backbone of economy", that is, the small and middle-sized enterprises. (RFE, 24th April.) Regarding this kind of objectives, supporting Gazprom or Itera would be absolutely absurd.
Also Yulia Latynina writes in an article of the Moscow Times, how the FSB is taking large companies into its control all over the area of former USSR, especially those with strategic importance. (Moscow Times, 25th April.) [See also Vladimir Ivanidze’s article in this issue.]
The former liberal prime minister Yegor Gaidar has after all claimed that Putin in fact wants democracy. [It might explain a bit the former devoted democrat’s surprising statement that also Gaidar was very high in the KGB hierarchy.] In the same situation Gaidar, however, defended the freedom of media in Russia, which was about to be destroyed totally. (Strana.ru, 24th April.)
A study published by Izvestiya on 24th April shows how bomb explosions have been used to improve Putin’s popularity time after time during the recent years. Last time Putin’s support got a peak by the bomb blasts of Mineralniye Vody. Izvestiya moreover says that now new "action" is urgently needed so that the present decrease of Putin’s popularity could be turned the other way round. Now only 37 % of the Russian population and 25 % of Moscow’s population supports Putin. (Izvestiya, 24th April.)
Researcher Dmitry Furman thinks that Putin is going to adopt same kind of role that Leonid Brezhnev once had after Nikita Khrushchev’s "easy times". After the "easy times" Brezhnev tried to "save" the Soviet Empire from the state of weakness and excessive freedom. According to Furman, Putin is now, after Yeltsin’s time, aiming at the same. (Obshchaya Gazeta, 12th April.) It is, however, necessary to remember that Brezhnev, with his stagnation, started the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Does Putin’s extremely rapid centralisation of power and totalisation of information space in the society lead to same results?
At least somebody sees some reason to criticise Russia: According to the Belarussian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka Russia’s regional policy is still far too democratic. Lukashenka criticised Russia during his visit to Yekaterinburg, where he was fishing Russia’s support to his already decided electoral victory in this year’s presidential election. According to Lukashenka, it is a clear failure that Russian mayors and governers are still being elected by popular vote and so they are not totally subjected to the "vertical structure of power". Verticality of power has been a key notion used by Putin. (RFE, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report, 24th April.)
The Russian intelligence has started a special campaign against Turkey. Aleksandr Khinstein, well-known of his FSB contacts, accused the Turkish intelligence MIT of participation in the hijacking of Sufyan Arsayev and Co. as well as of spreading "influence" among the Turkic republics of former Soviet Union. (Moskovskiy Komsomolets, 17th April.) According to the FSB spokesman Aleksandr Zdanovich, Russia suffers of an increasing danger that "foreign spies" are trying to gain information and analyse the Chechen war. The FSB will set actions for this. (RFE, 19th April.) The main attack is directed against Turkey, by accusations that Turkish spies have "tried to found associations for Kurds, Circassians and Meskhetians in the territory of the Russian Federation". (RFE, 20th April.) Later the FSB announced that the teachers of Turkish language usually come to Russia "to spread Wahhabism" and that they are spies. (Izvestija, 25th April.) Turkey, of course, is a secular country and has nothing to do with "Wahhabism".
Reconstruction aid aimed at Chechnya ended again "accidentally" in wrong hands – this time to the Rosagropromstroi company and from there directly to the Russian Communist Party! (RFE, 24th April.)
There are 50 radioactive areas in the city of Moscow. About 90 tons of radioactive nuclear waste is found every year in the area of Moscow city. (Interfax, 18th April.)
As many as 59 % of Russians think that the president and the government should not act against the constitution. (RFE, 19th April.)
Yegor Stroyev, chairman of the Russian Federal Council, said that international terrorism is resulted by the fact that the Soviet Union split up. (RFE, 19th April.)
The city council of Amursk in Russian Far East decided to "liquidate Pentecostal parishes". (RFE, 19th April.)
A foreigner may end up in a very interesting situation in Russia, if he gets troubles with the authorities. An American stipendiate student in the Russian town of Voronezh, John Tobin, was first accused of espionage. Later drugs were found in his possession. (RFE, 24th April.) The FSB can nowadays also arrest people for anonymous hint and keep them imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.
The Cossacks of Don, Kuban and Terek want more "law-enforcement rights" to themselves, although they have already been granted with such peculiar rights. (Izvestiya, 25th April.) Russia has rehabilitated the tradition of using the Cossacks to terrorise Caucasian and Turkic populations in Southern Russia. There have been regular pogroms throughout the period, for example in Rostov and Stavropol regions, but basically throughout Russia.
Russians demand amnesty to Colonel Yuri Budanov. (RFE, 25th April.) Budanov kidnapped, raped and strangled to death a teenage Chechen girl Elza Kungayeva, and then drove over her with an armoured vehicle in order to cover up physical evidence. Budanov and his assistant Lieutenant Fyodorov were the first and only Russian officers who have been charged for such crimes against Chechen civilians, although Russian war crimes have been most abundant. Angry for Budanov’s arrest, the Russian troops bombed the Chechen village of Tangi-Chu into dust. This was a revenge, since the girl Elza was from that village.