Archives for February 2014

Russian Federation Sitrep 2014.02.27

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for , on February 27, 2014

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP

27 February 2014

Olympics. A triumph, no question about it, with the added  unexpected pleasure for Russia of topping the medal list. A Levada poll showed something less than enthusiasm at the start: 53% were glad Russia was hosting but 26% were not. Bet there’s more support now! Perhaps connected is a poll rating that puts Putin up to 68% approval. So, after all the toilets, fake pictures, (intentional fakes too), breathless warnings, subtropical, they were safe, everybody had a private toilet and food, the athletes seem to have enjoyed themselves. Will Western opinioneers and media outlets admit to getting it wrong? (“Sochi has been utter embarrassment for Vladimir Putin”). Silly question: “away from all the cameras, there are still many glaring questions”, “these games were anything but carefree”. I believe they went too far: in the event, millions and millions of viewers have seen the Western MSM’s coverage of Russia revealed to be largely lies and propaganda and the happy, modern ordinary Russians shown are a contrast to the grey, miserable, downtrodden Russians we’re told about. So, while they are indeed only sports, the Games’ success is another bucket of paint remover thrown at the Western portrait of Russia.

Corruption. Investigations chew away: an investigation into fraud at the Defence Ministry re-opened upon new testimony. Perhaps connected is a report that the former minister seeks amnesty. Seven generals and admirals investigated last year for corruption. A senior official in Interior Ministry detained over claims of bribery and abuse of office. Another senior Interior Ministry official dismissed with no reason given.

Bolotnaya case. Jail sentences for seven (longest 4 years, shortest 2 ½ – less double time served I presume as is usual) and probation for one. An anti-Putin rally turned violent in 2012. My sources tell me the violence was organised to happen (one of the principal Putin opponents said she wouldn’t appear because she knew there would be violence) but the WMSM of course pretends that this is a terrible outrage.

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Propaganda and the Narrative

This about Politics, tagged , , , , , was written by for on February 25, 2014

I assume that most of the people who read this blog agree that a great deal of what might be called the “Standard Western Media Narrative on Ukraine” could better be termed propaganda. That is to say that it is a constructed narrative designed to produce deep-rooted convictions. Or, more bluntly, constructed lies and selected truths designed to shape opinion.

Let’s get the truths out of the way: Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych ran a corrupt and inefficient government. The condition of life for a great many Ukrainians is dreary, disappointing and declining. EU association had serious, perhaps majority, support in Ukraine at the time Yanukovych abandoned it. A lot, perhaps even a majority (but no one knows), supported, at least to some extent, the Maidan protesters and are glad to see the back of Yanukovych. Those could be agreed to, with some discussion about how big the support was and how bad Yanukovych was, by practically all people with any degree of informed knowledge. But those aren’t the things I am talking about.

The “Standard Western Media Narrative on Ukraine” (SWMN henceforth) goes quite a bit further than that. It would, I would say, consist of the following assertions

  1. Yanukovych was very much under the thumb of Putin (It’s very personalised: Russia is Moscow is Putin. But that’s another story.)
  2. A key Putin policy is to keep Ukraine and the other former USSR countries under his influence.
  3. Putin will not allow Ukraine or any of the former USSR countries to form an association with any other power.
  4. Using his influence, in furtherance of his aim to keep Ukraine under control, Putin forced Yanukovych to cancel the EU agreement.

Perhaps a little variation in the SWMN; maybe Putin bribed Yanukovych rather than ordering or threatening him. But these variances are unimportant and these four assertions are taken for granted in almost every Western report on recent events in Ukraine.

I say that these four are propaganda and I say they are because there are huge logic holes in them; therefore they cannot be true. They can only be believed if they are repeated so loudly, quickly and routinely that none of the audience gets a chance to think.

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Revolution

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on February 22, 2014

Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15):

From what I am observing on Twitter, things are rapidly spiraling beyond our usual frames of reference so far as Ukraine is concerned.

Yanukovych, nowhere to be seen, is fast becoming something of an irrelevance so far as both sides are concerned. The new government is being formed without his input, and he is nowhere to be seen at the “separatist” congress in Kharkov. The revolutionaries now apparently have a super majority in the Rada, and if that is true, his impeachment is now just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, the Rada has also passed a law illegalizing separatist movements period. Whether that will dampen or inflame the incipient centrifugal tendencies in Crimea, Donetsk, and Kharkov remains to be seen.

Western Media Coverage of Sochi

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on February 17, 2014

Here is a radio discussion on VoR I did on Sunday with Amos Gelb and Robert Bridge on the western media’s coverage of the Sochi Olympics.

http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_02_17/Western-media-coverage-of-Sochi-The-worst-form-of-poor-sportsmanship-9458/

Please note that the written summary provided gives only a fraction of the discussion. Anyone wanting to follow the whole discussion will need to listen to it.  Please be warned it lasts around 40 minutes.  However  I thought it was a good discussion.  It contained the interesting disclosure from Amos Gelb that CNN was about to expose massive corruption at the Atlanta Olympics but that the story was suppressed by Ted Turner who had an interest them.  Evidence there (Russian liberals please note) that corruption is not exclusive to Russia but also happens on a big scale in the US including at Olympic Games and that the US media is fully capable of suppressing information about it when the interests involved are powerful enough

We got on to the subject of the “gay propaganda” law towards the end of the discussion. Anyone wanting my considered opinions of this law will not have to wait long. I have a (very) lengthy post on the subject almost ready.

Ukraine, the Nuland Leak, and the Amnesty Law

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , , was written by for on February 17, 2014

A discussion on Crosstalk with Peter Lavelle in which I appeared discussing the Nuland leak.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLHXpCRPo-k

I found some of the comments made by Taras Kuzio frankly surreal but judging from what I read on Kyiv Post he is pretty mainstream in Ukrainian opposition terms.

Two weeks earlier in an interview on RT I said that though the Ukrainian opposition had appeared to reject the terms of the offered amnesty law and were demanding the unconditional release of arrested protesters their anxiety to get their people released meant that if the government stuck to its position the opposition might modify theirs. See my first reply to the interview below

The news today is that the administrative buildings including the Kiev city administration centre and most if not all of the administrative buildings in the provinces have now been freed in accordance with the provisions of the amnesty law. I believe that as required by that law there has also been or will be a withdrawal from Hrushchevsky Street.

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The Coup in Ukraine

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for on February 6, 2014

In my last Sitrep I said that the West was trying to pull off a coup in Ukraine against the duly elected President.

We now have very strong evidence in the shape of an intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. They talk about how to arrange a new government and are not as supportive of the EU as they would be in public. Pretty hard to spin this as anything else but another “colour revolution”.

But, of course, such  alleged intercepts are often faked and by themselves aren’t necessarily evidence of anything.

But White House spokesman, Jay Carney has (probably inadvertently) admitted the veracity of the intercept. Surely he will attempt to walk this back once he realizes that he has given away the secret, but it’s too late.

The intercept is here; the report of Carney’s press conference is here.

Get it now before it disappears down the memory hole.

So who made the intercept? Carney says Russia but Ukraine also has the capability. Whether Kiev or Moscow, they’re finally getting better at the propaganda war.

Will there be more intercepts coming?

Today’s Redundant Rant. Tiresome, Too. But I Amuse Myself.

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on February 6, 2014

Got this in the mail from Jamestown.

My response. Not that I expect much of an answer.

 What a load of crap! Saakashvili, the as-yet-unindicted-former,-but-now-despised,-boss-of-Georgia (saved and given a comfortable retirement in the USA. His creator.) is going to feed us more lies. Wah hoo! I so want to be there to hear him emit fecal extrusions and watch the rest of you ingest them. And say “Yum Yum!” as you swallow them down. But, why would I PAY to do this when I could watch my toilet flush for free. But (HA HAH) you take the tie-eater seriously. (But, what the hell, you paid for him).

As an added bonus, Paul Goble will extrude more hyperventilation about Circassians.

But, Paul, I gotta tell ya, that’s so Last Week — last week it was Circassians being pissed off, today it’s dogs being slaughtered. But, hell, stuff moves along, maybe I’m out of date: maybe today the Big Story is dead bees in my honey. Get with the program, Jamestown, be up-to-date. Otherwise who gives a shit? We know that the Big Story is that Sochi Sucks (it’s a scale model of Russia which is Putinville. Which Sucks.) but, every day and in every way, it sucks in a different way. (Maybe today’s hot story is curtains.)

Why would I want to read your take on Last Week’s News about How Russia Sucks Today?

Anyway, your star, Paul Goble, buys all the crap about spending; then talks about how nasty old Putin pissed on the “reset”? The What??? You mean the famous button thingee in which Hillary didn’t even know that those tiresome Russkies had their own alphabet?

Why do I want to read this derivative/predictable drivel? I can read it for free anywhere: “Russia Sucks. USA great!”. I could write all your “inside” reports in my sleep.

TAKE ME OFF YOU FUCKING DISTLIST! PRONTO! INSTANTER! QUAM CELERRIME!  I send it to the trash anyway so save an electron!!

PS. Saakashvili, for fuck’s sake! What are you going to do when the Government of Georgia seeks to extradite him?

Patrick Armstrong Analysis,

Ottawa, Canada

Kettle, Meet Pot

This about Politics, tagged , , , , was written by for on February 3, 2014

“Corruption across EU ‘breathtaking’ – EU Commission” says a headline in the BBC. The Commissioner responsible for the report said that she believed the cost of corruption was “probably much higher” than the €120 billion (US$162 billion) the report estimates. And indeed that is probably correct because corruption within EU organs themselves was not included. Given that the auditors have persistently found money missing in the EU accounts (or, as it is quaintly put in Eurospeak: “error rates”) for nearly two decades, 4.8% of €138.6 billion (€6.6 billion or US$8.9 billion) in 2012, there may well be more. Almost half the businesses operating in Europe say they find corruption to be a problem, More than half the people surveyed think the problem is getting worse. 8% claim to have personally experienced something in the past 12 months.

Here’s the actual report.

Now, these are precisely the politicians, followed enthusiastically by a barking pack of reporters, opinioneers and editorial writers, who are always ready to lecture Russia and posture as an paradigm to be emulated. Indeed Ukraine is being torn apart precisely by the pretension that the EU is the only route for it to get out of stagnation and corruption. I do not believe that tu quoque is a particularly effective way of arguing but there are times when outright hypocrisy must be acknowledged. Eurosceptics like myself have always expected that huge uncontrolled bureaucracies producing ever more layers of regulations is a strong precondition for corruption – how else can a company or individual navigate through contradictory and incomprehensible regulations than by the lubrication of a shot of cash in the right place? It is to the credit of the EU that it produced such a harsh report.

And it’s not just hypocrisy that Ukrainians should think about. What if the EU structure is in fact the principle cause of stagnation and corruption just as communism was? There are important similarities after all: faceless, well-paid bureaucrats at the centre conducting experiments on a powerless population.

Who are the faceless gnomes of Brussels to lecture Moscow or Kiev or anyone else?

Who can take anything they say seriously any more?

 

“Everything is Annihilated”: The Economic Split of Ukraine

This , about Economy, tagged , , , was written by for on February 2, 2014

The attention of political analysts around the world is focused on the events in Ukraine. But at a certain moment, the fires die out and the riots subside – what will remain are the dry statistics.

Translator’s notes: This is a translation of a post on the weblog “Sputnik and Pogrom”, the authors can be described as Russian Nationalists. But that does not make it any less true, the reason that I translated this is that you will never read something like this in the Western Media, Russian Nationalists do not fit the narrative.

Original post by Kyrill Ksenovontov, 28th of January 2014

Translation: Nils van der Vegte

everythingisannihilated

Ukraine showed itself and the world in 2013 that the country is not important: instead of the planned 3.4% economic growth, it achieved something close to zero. 2013 was a negative year for almost all its economic sectors, except for agriculture (industry decreased by -4.7%). Most experts expect no more than 1% GDP growth in 2014. The irony is that the final fall into the abyss of economic crisis was prevented only by trade with Russia. But in 2014 even trade with Russia will do nothing to prevent that: The budget deficit for 2014 is 4.3% of GDP. The worst thing is that, economically speaking, the two halves of the country vary even more than the Czech Republic and Slovakia once did.

For example, the share of the Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk regions of total Ukrainian exports  is 35% , whilst the 7 most western regions (some of which have a serious historical bonus), make up for just 1/14 of Ukrainian exports. Regionally speaking, the highest number of people living below the poverty line can be found in the north-western and south-central regions (in the Lvov region, 30% of the people live around the poverty line).

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Sochi-Adler Krasnaya Polyana Panorama

This about Society, tagged , , , , was written by for on February 2, 2014

There has been an unceasing campaign to denigrate the construction in the Sochi-Adler area. Incompetence, corruption, double toilets and so on and on. In all of this, few people have been shown what has been built for the total cost of 55 billion or so US Dollars. We have a preview; but first a discussion of cost.

Most Western sources claim that the real cost of the Sochi Olympics is the 55 billion and Putin is assumed to be lying when he says the cost is 6 billion or so. Now that Navalniy has his report out that claims to measure the alleged corruption, the Western media is full of wide-eyed quotations from it. But Western discussions, and Navalniy (not, I suspect, by coincidence) ignore the other stated purpose of the construction which is to create a full-scale sports and holiday complex in Russia’s Riviera. The aim being to attract Russian tourists away from foreign holidays and provide some development and employment opportunities in the chronically depressed North Caucasus.

So what is the real cost of the Olympics? 1) All of the 55 billion or 2) just the proportion that would not have been spent if the Olympics weren’t coming or 3) something in-between? The first question to be answered is how much of the total is definitely Olympics-only spending. Here Navalniy actually agrees with Putin: from his report “Olympstroy spent $6.3 bn to construct 11 sport venues”; that is the number Putin gives.

The disagreement is over what column to put the other expenditures in. Navalniy insists they all be charged to the Olympics, Putin that they be charged to resort complex construction and necessary infrastructure improvement. That’s what the disagreement actually amounts to, not that anyone in the Western media will tell you: Putin says some is Olympics, most is infrastructure, Navalniy says all is Olympics. But they agree on the total that has been spent. Putin wants to play the Olympics costs down, Navalniy wants to play them up; so each picks his favourite split. Each is being disingenuous.

Certainly an immense amount of money has been spent on sports facilities, visitor amusements, transportation facilities, hotels, restaurants and the rest. So, Dear Reader, you decide the split. How do you judge the most expensive single project (the 5-6 billion road-rail connection to the ski resort, replacing the Soviet-era link)? Would it have been built anyway to connect the town of Adler (where, as we have interminably been told, it doesn’t snow much) to the ski resort area where it does? Or do you judge that it was only built because of the Olympics? Or should only some of the cost be assigned to the Olympics and how would you assign it? How about the airport at Adler? The port development at Sochi? The isolation hospital in Lazerevskiy district? The Adler power station? The shopping mall? Putin says none, Navalniy says all but they don’t disagree that 50-plus billion was spent overall. And, when you make your decision, what makes you think the next person would agree? The only correct answer is that, when the Olympics are gone, there will still be a vast complex of modern facilities in a place and situation that ought to be pretty attractive to tourists.

The truth is that a large high quality resort complex has been constructed, together with a great deal of infrastructure created or improved; some of this was built only because the Olympics were coming. So what is the cost of the Olympics? I don’t know either. 6 billion seems too narrow a definition but 55 billion is far too high. Can we pick a number out of the sky and say 7 or 8? Certainly a ludicrous amount of money to shell out for a few weeks of sports; probably an argument for having a permanent facility but, given that there wasn’t much there in the beginning except Nature, not absurdly high as these things are priced.

These panoramic photos show what has been done. And don’t forget, Dear Reader, Navalniy and others would like us to believe that a third of the money was stolen: look at all this stuff and decide whether that sounds right.

Russian language only, but you’ll get the idea.

PS. The toilet story isn’t true.