Medvedev: A Safe Choice For Putin

In the end, it all boiled down to two men. Putin would endorse one, and the one he endorsed could become Russia's next president.

Contender number one was Sergei Ivanov, a first deputy premier who, says WSJ, "built up a stern and hawkish reputation while defense minister."

The other, "a business-friendly lawyer and board chairman of state natural-gas giant Gazprom," was another first deputy primier, Dmitry Medvedev.

Let's look at the two as Putin would:

• Ivanov is a tough guy, much like Putin. He's built a core of support in the military as defense minister and in a Russia hungry for rekindled prominence on the world stage, could easily enough build his military support into public support.
  
  
• Medvedev is an inside player, a safe bet for the economy, and more likely to support Putin's wishes than his own.

No contest, eh? In fact, if Putin decided in a couple years that he's had enough time without the reins of power firmly in his grip, he could ask Medvedev to step down, and the lawyer would most likely do so, opening the door for a new Putin Era.

So who is the incoming president of Russia? Look behind the veil and you'll see it's the outgoing president of Russia.

Putin Wins, Russia Loses

Putin wins big ... but Russian Democracy loses.

Western media are being pretty straightforward with reporting the corruption that's wildly evident in Putin's victory, as evidenced by this AP's coverage:

It was "not a fair election," said Goran Lennmarker, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The election monitoring arm of the OSCE — regarded in the West as the most authoritative election monitor — did not send observers, saying Russia delayed granting visas for so long that the organization would have been unable to meaningfully assess election preparations.

Luc van den Brande, who headed the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said Russian authorities exerted the "overwhelming influence of the president's office and the president" on the campaign, skewing its outcome.

In Berlin, government spokesman Thomas Steg said Germany considered Russia's vote neither fair nor free, adding that the country could not be considered a democracy.

The NYT was in considerable denial however, burying a few short critical paragraphs in a story that otherwise trumpeted Putin's "triumph" and went on to answer "what next?" quesitons. Granted, whether the election was corrupt or not probably won't matter much to history, and Putin's decisions about his future -- and the Russians' willingness to accept his wishes -- matters more.

But what is with Putin? How megalomiacal is he, anyway? It's clear that a strong Russian majority is behind him, content with economic progress and not too culturally abhorrent of government heavy-handedness. Yet his drive for an overwhelming mandate left him with questions that, to the Democratic West and Russian opposition at least, leave him no mandate at all.

It was the kind of election only Jimmy Carter could call fair ... and an election that is the sign not of a savvy politican but of a very troubled mind.

Putin Loves That Ol' Soviet Style

With an election coming up, Vladamir Putin wants to make sure his United Russia party makes a good showing; anything less would be embarrassing and detrimental to his daydream of re-establishing the old Soviet-style government. So ...

MOSCOW (AP) - With the Kremlin determined to see a high turnout in Sunday's election, many Russians say they are being pressured to vote at work under the watchful eyes of their bosses or risk losing their jobs.

They say they also are being told to provide lists of relatives and friends who will vote for United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin.

United Russia is expected to win handily. But Putin has turned the parliamentary elections into a plebiscite on his rule, and the Kremlin appears to be pushing for nothing short of a landslide. ...

"The plebiscite will become a mockery if only slightly more than half of the people vote and if only 60 percent of those vote for United Russia," as the latest opinion polls predict, political analyst Alexei Makarkin said.

In one example cited in the article, a school teacher says her school's administration got absentee ballots for the entire staff, and they will meet on Sunday to cast them together, under the watchful, totalitarian gaze of their union boss. And that's not all, by a long shot:

Similar accounts have been given by teachers, doctors, factory workers and others around the country. Some have said they were warned they would lose their jobs if they did not comply.

Hundreds of people have called an election hot line to complain about the use of absentee ballots, the Central Elections Commission said in a summary of the complaints posted on its Web site.

Some complaints came from hospital patients, who said they had been threatened with early discharge if they did not produce absentee ballots.

Election officials have promised to investigate ... as soon as they mark their absentee ballots while their bosses look on.

Next up: Military hardware on display in Red Square next May 1?

The Green Mr. Putin?

Kurt Vonnegut wrote gleefully of granfalloons, a wonderful construct we've all observed in our lives. His prime example was Hoosiers -- not just people from Indiana, but people from Indiana who, as Hoosiers, felt themselves part of something bigger ... a false community they believed to be real. Sure, there are people from Indiana, but there is no cosmic fellowship involved; it's just geographic coincidence.

Vladimir Putin is doing a big of granfallooning of his own, saying in Iran yesterday that no Caspian Sea nation should allow its lands to be used for attacks against other Caspian sea nations. He was obviously wagging a finger at Azerbaijan, warning its leadership not to allow the US to use bases there to attack Iran.

His Kaspian Konstruct also works well for him not just on global policy issues, but also on economic ones, since it allows him to attack any effort by other Caspian nations to better themselves without Moscow breathing heavily down their necks, sour vodka smell and all.

Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them.

Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow's strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.

It's an interesting theory that doesn't play too well on a world stage. Imagine Egypt telling Spain it can't undertake some project because there wasn't unanimity among Mediterranean nations. What could be his justification? Oh -- it's One Earth drivel!

"Projects that may inflict serious environmental damage to the region cannot be implemented without prior discussion by all five Caspian nations," he said.

That's got to be the Laugher of the Week, given Russia's long history of environmental destruction on the Caspian Sea, the desires of other Caspian nations be damned.

Back in 2003, the UN set up yet another useless task force, this one to help improve the environment of the Caspian, and in announcing the effort, it laid out what Caspian nations (with the exception of Iran, all former Soviet states) had done to their common sea:

The Caspian Sea is under severe stress from industrial pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, agricultural run-off, sewage, and leaks from oil extraction and refining.

Other threats include uncontrolled fishing of caviar-producing sturgeon, the overexploitation of other marine resources, and the destruction of the region’s biological diversity, which includes some 400 species unique to the Caspian. On top of this, water levels are currently rising, threatening coastal communities and ecosystems.

Now suddenly the leader of the world's greatest polluter wants veto authority over any project -- even one designed by Americans with environmental protections incorporated that the Soviets would never have dreamed of -- that steps foot in the polluted Caspian environment. Once the laughter dies down, the Caspian states should tell him they don't care one bit if their oil resources get sold on the world market without Moscow's meddling.

In these statements, Putin shows himself to be a member of something that is decidedly not a granfalloon: that large pack of self-aggrandizing world leaders who put rhetoric far ahead of reason or truth.

Litvinenko Suspect May Dodge Prosecution

It's as if O.J. Simpson avoided prosecution by getting elected to Congress. In Russia, where being elected to Parliament gives one immunity against such piddling charges as murder, a key suspect in the Polonium-210 murder of Alexander Litvenenko has announced he's running ... not from the law, but to the lawmakers.

Andrei Lugovoi is running for a seat for the Liberal Democratic Party, a nationalist party, says BBC.

Britain wants Lugovoi extradited as a key suspect in the Litvenenko murders. Russia refuses the extradition request and its early promise of cooperation in the investigation of the murderer has become a typical Russian wall of denial.

I was looking back over my old posts on this matter and found that the OJ Simpson idea had occurred to me before:

In what must be the biggest non-surprise in cloak and dagger history, British prosecutors have charged Andrei Lugovoy with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the polonium-poisoned Putin critic.

Litvinenko had met Lugovoy and another Russian businessman, Dmitry Kovtun, at London's Millennium Hotel last November, a few hours before falling severely ill. It took him three weeks to die, as the polonium attacked his organs and he wasted away in pain and anger.

The Russians apparently hired O.J. Simpson as their strategy czar on this one, as they reportedly started their own investigation into who killed Litvinenko. Last we heard, they were chasing down leads ... and air-headed women ... on Florida golf courses. They tell us they're getting closer, but to what, they're not saying.

Obviously, Russia under Vladamir Putin is not yet ready to be a legitimate nation.

Ruskie Base Goes Dark

Vlad the Impaler Putin can rattle his saber all he wants, but it might be more productive for him to rattle his panhandling can instead:

The Russian garrison at an air base in Kyrgyzstan has been left without power after failure to pay the bill, local electricity company Severelectro said Tuesday.

The company said the barracks for 300 servicemen at the Kant base, near the Central Asian country's capital Bishkek, were cut off on Monday, but added that the air strips were not affected.

The Russian military promised that the unpaid bills of 13,000 dollars (9,500 euros) would be paid by the end of the week. (AFP)

You can bet George Bush is paying the electric bill for our base in Kyrgyzstan.

No Fixed Climate Goals From G8

My shrinking respect for the Bush administration got an up-tick today with the publication of the G8 Summit's declaration on "Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy," which included a lot of blather about global warming but no fixed limits on greenhouse gases.

The only numeric statement on global warming in the document is this:

In setting a global goal for emissions reductions in the process we have agreed today involving all major emitters, we will consider seriously the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050. We commit to achieving these goals and invite the major emerging economies to join us in this endeavour.

No specific commitments, limits or policing mechanisms are given; each G8 member is up to its own devices -- and the challenge is also given to India, China, Brazil and other emerging economies to join in the fun.

Elsewhere, the statement addresses global warming largely in the context of the need for energy to maintain global prosperity, the ability of technology and forward planning to address the "crisis," and a preference for free market approaches.

A president Gore would have thrown the out the baby, the bathwater, the tub and the water heater. President Bush dug in his cowboy-booted heels and prevented the Germans from pushing through a global warming strategy that could have resulted in terrible economic consequences.

Bush also scored big on the European missile deal, with Putin saying it would accept missiles in Azerbaijan but not Poland -- an excellent first concession in an ongoing high-level diplomatic dialog.

So all in all, a bump for Bush in Heiligendamm.

Putin Now Has His Brown Shirts

Vladmir Putin, there's no disputin', is sounding more and more like Rasputin. Darn tootin'.

Arrogance, anger and self-assurance are amped up in his new voice, as evident in this passage from today's WSJ article on the threatening Mr. P.:

Meeting late Friday with reporters from a small group of newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Putin rejected as "stupidity" a British request to extradite a Russian man accused of murdering a Russian exile last year in London and parried concerns about the Kremlin's crackdown on domestic critics and increasing state ownership of key industries.

But Mr. Putin reserved his sharpest comments for security policy. He accused the U.S. of filling Eastern Europe with new bases and weapons in what he said appeared to be an effort to provoke Russia into a new arms race. If the U.S. goes ahead with its missile-shield plan in Europe, "We will have to get new targets in Europe," Mr. Putin said. "Which weapons will be used...ballistic missiles, cruise missile or some completely new systems -- that's a technical matter."

To fully understand what's behind Putin's positions, one needs to understand that neo-Sovietism is robust and powerful in Russia today -- and that it is being fed and nurtured by the Kremlin -- specifically, by Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov, a former GRU officer, currently Putin's Deputy Chief of Staff and called by some the Kremlin's Karl Rove.

Surkov is behind the growing NASHI ("Us Slavic Russians") youth movement. NASHI is old-line all the way, according to a Publius Pundit expose that includes the first translations of NASHI materials into English. Publius says of NASHI:

Nashi claims that the USSR simply "decided" to give up the arms race because of its own enlightenment, and likewise "decided" to allow German reunification on the same basis (and note too its obsessive focus on the idea of counterrevolution, now styled as "colored revolution," and the demonization of the U.S., linking Russia's "liberals" to foreign spies looking to subvert Russian independence). It attempts to take sole credit for the defeat of Hitler for Russia, implying that Russia saved Europe, yet does not mention Stalin's secret deal with Hitler selling Europe down the river.

Another Publius post provides some key quotes from NASHI's manefesto:

"Today the U.S. on one side, and international terrorism on the other, are trying to take control of Eurasia and the entire world. Their sights are set on Russia. The task of our generation is to defend the sovereignty of our country the way our grandfathers did 60 years ago."

"The 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine and the 'Rose Revolution' in Georgia occurred due to internal reasons, but under critically important influence from outside. External forces in large part prepared these revolutions and organized their progress. For this reason one can say that the countries that underwent 'colored revolutions' organized from abroad in large measure lost their sovereignty."

"On the eve of the 2007-2008 elections, the party of oligarch revenge is again raising its head. It is betting on an orange revolution in Russia, a 'Berzovskiy revolution.' We, NASHI, will not allow the party of oligarch revenge to return to power in Russia. We will not allow them to steal Russia's future. Oligarch capitalism is our main enemy in Russia. We will uproot it and ensure progress, freedom and justice in Russia.:"

"NASHI is firmly determined not to allow Russia to suffer a geopolitical coup d'etat and the introduction of external control under the guise of a 'colored revolution.' At the decisive hour we are prepared to send hundreds of thousands of young people into the streets of Russia under the banner of 'Sovereignty and Independence for Russia.' We are prepared to fight for Russian democracy."

"Our opponents claim that NASHI is a Kremlin-sponsored scheme against an 'orange revolution' . . . And indeed, we are opposed to an 'orange revolution' of the Ukrainian type, because this is a geopolitical scheme for the establishment of external control over the country." [TN: No attempt whatsoever is made anywhere in the Manifesto to rebut the accusation that NASHI receives its financing from the Kremlin -- even after the Manifesto itself brings it up.]

"We will help the members of the Movement to become high-ranking professionals and . . . prove their right to lead Russia, in government organizations, businesses, social structures and mass media."

"Every oligarch or bureaucrat, street rabble or member of a totalitarian organization who raises a hand against a member of our movement should clearly understand that tomorrow he will face the movement as a whole."

Reading this Kremlin-endorsed rhetoric, it is becoming increasing clear that Putin has no plan to simply step down when his term expires in 2008. It would be radical to say that he intends to overthrow the Russian Constitution and keep himself in power, but it would be foolish not to see that he has created an infrastructure that will allow him to stay at the center of policy-making in Russia long after he supposedly retires to his dacha.

NASHI is a key component of his plan. No dictator has ever been able to maintain influence without a gang of brown shirts, and Putin now has his.

Confident that there is support -- at least thug support -- for Sovietism in Russia, Putin speaks more and more like a Politburo president. The West beware.

Lugovoy Charged In Litvinenko Murder. Duh.

In what must be the biggest non-surprise in cloak and dagger history, British prosecutors have charged Andrei Lugovoy with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the polonium-poisoned Putin critic.

Litvinenko had met Lugovoy and another Russian businessman, Dmitry Kovtun, at London's Millennium Hotel last November, a few hours before falling severely ill. It took him three weeks to die, as the polonium attacked his organs and he wasted away in pain and anger.

The Russians apparently hired O.J. Simpson as their strategy czar on this one, as they reportedly started their own investigation into who killed Litvinenko. Last we heard, they were chasing down leads ... and air-headed women ... on Florida golf courses. They tell us they're getting closer, but to what, they're not saying.

According to Reuters, the Brits immediately summoned the Rusky ambassador to demand the Putinites turn over Logovoy. The ambassador commented on the weather.

An arrest warrant is being prepared and it appears Tony Blair will leave office with some serious saber-rattling going on between the Lion and the Bear. With the outrageousness of the crime, it will be hard for Putin to ignore the international media frenzy that will follow.

Still, I don't expect to see Lugovoy whispering in his barrister's ear any time soon.

Quote Of The Day: Not Checkmate Yet Edition

"We now stand somewhere between Belarus and Zimbabwe."

-- Garry Kasparov

Former chess champ Garry Kasparov tied the Russia's government under Vladamir Putin to two other repressive states today, as Putin's enforcers behaved themselves much like the security forces of Belarus' Aleksandr Lukashenko and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Yeah, yeah, it's rhetoric, but consider this: Even supporters put the number of demonstrators in Moscow today at no more than 2,000, and AP reports "thousands" of police in full-blown riot gear were there to meet them. Hundreds were arrested amidst swinging nightsticks.

A couple thousand demonstrators is no small deal in Russia:

Andrei Illarionov, a former Putin economics adviser who has become a Kremlin critic, pointed out that in 1968 only six people appeared in Red Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Another demonstration planned for tomorrow in St. Petersburg has been prohibited by Putin's security forces. If even a few hundred show up for that demonstration, be assured: Thousands, if not millions of Russians, will be cheering themon.

Russia: A Half-Step From A Police State

The score in Vladimir Putin's Russia is a skosh in his favor -- 447 to 4, maybe 5 -- but that's not enough for him to allow complacency.

Having almost every member of the Duma loyal to the neo-Tsar is not the same has having all the Duma loyal, so yesterday, Russia's Supreme Court liquidated Russia's Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members.

Sound a bit Kafkaesque? "To keep the opposition from becoming larger, we will ban them for being small."

The Kremlin's powerhouse Duma recently passed a new election law that said all parties must have at least 50,000 members and be represented in half of Russia's provinces. The law is seen by opposition as a scheme to kill off smaller parties that oppose the Kremlin -- and it's evident it's quite effective in that regard.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, the leader of the Republican party, said yesterday that the ban was part of a Kremlin-inspired campaign to crack down on dissent. "This is part of the Kremlin's policy of suppressing the opposition. It's being done to prevent opposition parties from taking part in elections," he told the Guardian. "This is the fate any opposition party in Russia." (The Guardian)

The ban ame in the face of continued anti-Putin demostrations by The Other Russia, which has proven that it can gather 5,000 or so people at locations throughout the country, in defiance of bans on their movement. Witness how hard the supporters of Putin -- have you ever noticed how his name of onomopoeic of a wad of spit launching towards, then hitting a spittoon? -- strain to contain the group:

Organisers of today's rally in Nizhny Novgorod say they have faced widespread intimidation by the city's pro-Kremlin authorities. Earlier this week police from the special organised crime unit of Russia's interior ministry seized 60,000 copies of an opposition newspaper due to be distributed during the demonstration.

The mayor's office announced a children's festival on the site of the proposed march, and blocked off the road to carry out what it said were urgent repairs.

Another small anti-Putin party, the National Bolsheviks, were crushed last week.

Why the iron boot? I can't help but think that Putin is putting his cards in place to continue serving is Russia's Tsar, er, president when his term expires in 2008.

hat-tip: memorandum

Safronov Set To Reveal Secret Russian Arms Deals

Dead -- murdered? -- Russian journalist Ivan Safronov told friends just before his mysterious death that he planned to expose secret Russian arms deals with Syria and Iran. Moscow News:

Safronov told his colleagues that he was going to check the information about new deals to supply Russian weapons to the Middle East — the sale of the Su-30 jets to Syria and S-300V surface-to-air missiles to Iran.

The reporter said that in both cases the weapons were to be supplied via Belarus to protect Russia from Western accusations of supporting rogue states.

He added that he was not going to write about these facts immediately because he had received warnings from the Russian security service, the FSB, that the international scandal would lead to his arrest and trial over disclosure of state secrets.

No wonder Vladamir Putin works so hard to keep Aleksandr Lukashenko in power in Belarus! As the launderer for Moscow's deals to arm the Islamofascist terrorists who are fighting us and killing our troops, Lukashenko holds the key to the foreign capital Putin so desperately needs.

Safronov was poised to blow the cover on Putin's proxy war against America and now he's dead. And guess what? The NY Times isn't covering the story.

New Stuff On Death Of Latest Putin Foe

Ivan Safronov, the smiling guy on the right, is the latest opponent of the Putin regime to meet an untimely and questionable death. He died last Friday in a mysterious fall from the fifth floor of his apartment building.

He lives on the third floor.

For those who missed the earlier reports, here's a good background story. Basically, according to the Moscow Times, the ever more notorious FSB -- the Federal Security Bureau, which follows closely in the KGB's footprints -- was not happy with Safronov's reporting on sensitive weapons systems. Safronov was a retired Colonel assigned to Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, so he had a lot of savvy, extensive connections and a pretty highly tuned BS-sniffer.

Perusing Nexis today I found an article in the Russian publication Defense & Security that raised a killer question or two in somewhat broken English:

According to investigators, a day later he committed suicide. [sic] This meant that the clever, joyful and successful journalist, 50 years old, a colonel, did not even point a pistol at his temple but ascended to the fifth floor and jumped down. He did not go to the tenth or twelfth floor of any neighboring house to ensure instant death, but went instead to the fifth floor to have a torturous death from fractures.

Seem a bit odd to you? Safronov had just returned from an arms sale expo in Abu Dhabi, a place rife with shady deals and questionable transactions.

I wonder what kind of weapons deals the Russians had made at the expo, what Safronov knew about the deal, and who knew what Safronov knew.

It's getting tougher and tougher to be a Putin critic -- or even a decent, hard-working reporter -- in Putin's Russia.

Has Putin Struck Again -- This Time In US?

Have the defenders of Vladamir Putin's name gone beyond gunfire in Moscow and Polonium in London in their retaliation against Putin's critics and brought their violence to the US? The National Terror Alert reports:

FBI agents say they are assisting police in suburban Washington who are investigating the shooting of a Russian expert a man who spoke out on “Dateline NBC” last weekend and strongly suggested that remnants of the KGB were responsible for the bizarre poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Officials said Paul Joyal was walking up his driveway on Lackawanna Street at about 7:30 p.m. when he was confronted by two men and shot. He was taken to an area hospital in serious condition.

Neighbors said police responded quickly to the shooting.

Nothing appears to have been taken from Joyal and a witness claimed to have heard one of the men tell the other man to go ahead and shoot Joyal.

Earlier, at about 6 p.m., Joyal met his friend, Oleg Kalugin, at the Spy Museum. Kalugin, an ex-KGB general, is an advisory director of the museum. After he was shot, Joyal told his wife to call Kalugin to tell him about the shooting, sources told Collins.

Joyal was an acquaintance of Polonium victim Alexander Litvinenko, so conclusion-drawing is good sport in this story. In its report, Al Jaaz comes even closer to implicating Putin:

In an interview broadcast last Sunday on 'Dateline NBC', Joyal had accused the Russian government of trying to silence its critics.

"A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you - in the most horrible way possible," Joyal said.

The National Terror Alert report also mentions that another participant in the Dateline story has died suddenly and unexpectedly:

In a strange twist, another man who also appeared on the “Dateline” broadcast died of a heart attack last month. Reporter Daniel McGrory of the Times of London, who has written about the Litvinenko case, died Feb. 20, before the “Dateline” segment was broadcast. He was 54. His family said he “died suddenly at home."

There's a lot left to be investigated in this story, but how long will leaders of the West continue to treat Putin, who WaPo described in an editorial today as a "Gangster President," as a peer and not the leader of the world's foremost Mafiacracy?