Putin and Poroshenko Meet Briefly in Normandy

Merkel, Poroschenko and Putin in Normandy

Putin and President-elect Petro Poroshenko met informally with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday in Normandy as a sideline to the D-Day events. 

​​French President Francois Hollande had personally invited Putin to the D-Day commemoration, in recognition of at least 20 million Soviets killed during World War II. Reuters, on Twitter, reported Hollande's office as saying Putin and Poroshenko shook hands.

French officials said that Putin and Poroshenko discussed a possible ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists.

Russian news agencies reported that both leaders called for 'a speedy end to to the bloodshed in southeastern Ukraine and to the military actions of both sides - the Ukrainian armed forces and the supporters of the federalization of Ukraine.'

It is hoped that this informal contact between Putin and Poroshenko might help ease tensions between Russia and Ukraine after Russia's seizure and annexation the Crimea.

President Obama also met with Putin for about 15 minutes. Read a report of that meeting here.

NATO Supreme Allied Commander on Ukraine

Further Russian intervention in Ukraine, following its annexation of Crimea, would be a "historic mistake" that would deepen Russia's international isolation, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday.

"If Russia were to intervene further in Ukraine, I wouldn't hesitate to call it an historic mistake. That would lead to further international isolation of Russia. It would have far reaching consequences for the relations between Russia and ... the Western world. It would be a miscalculation with huge strategic implications," he told a news conference after a meeting of alliance foreign ministers.

'Very ready force'

Russia has massed all the forces it needs on Ukraine's border if it were to decide to carry out an "incursion" into the country and it could achieve its objective 'in three to five days,' NATO's top military commander said on Wednesday.

"This is a very large and very capable and very ready force," said NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, referring to the presence of an estimated 40,000 Russian troops on Ukraine's border.

Calling the situation "incredibly concerning", Breedlove said NATO had spotted signs of movement by a very small part of the Russian force overnight but had no indication that it was returning to barracks. ​​

Breedlove made his remarks an interview with Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

Read it all here.

New HIV Strain Spreading

The Vektor Virology and Biotechnologies Research Center in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk region, has found a new HIV-1 strain, which is spreading rapidly in Russia and neighboring countries.

HIV, a retrovirus that causes the immune system to slowly fail of, has two types: HIV-I and HIV-II, each of which has numerous subtypes - C (I) is common in Africa, A (I) in Russia and B in the United States and Europe.

Viral strains may exchange genetic information in human cells, which is called a recombination process. Each recombinant virus is given a number.

"Vektor specialists have discovered a new genetic version of HIV-I in Russia, a blend of the recombinant virus 02_AG and Russia's subtype A," the center said.

Read it all here.

Russia's Nuclear Power Contract with Iran

On September 23rd, Russia announced that it had handed over operational control of the Bushehr nuclear power plant to Iran. However, Russian specialists would remain at the facility throughout its 2-year “warranty period.”

The nuclear facility at Bushehr was the focus of a considerable amount of controversy, especially in the United States. The reactor was being built under an agreement between the Russian and Iranian governments for $800-million. Although originally intended to be the location of a German-built reactor in the 1970s, the new reactor was to be built to Russian design specifications, though the original reactor buildings exterior appearance would remain essentially the same. There were two reactors at Bushehr, one was in an advanced stage of completion the other had not been worked on for some time and was not scheduled to be completed as of 2006.

Iran was a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), though it had not ratified two additional protocols to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Program 93 + 2, which was designed to prevent states from developing nuclear weapons covertly, despite IAEA inspections, as Iraq was able to do prior to the Gulf War. Iran maintained that it would not ratify 93 + 2 due to it being denied civilian nuclear technology for Bushehr, despite its positive record with the IAEA.

Nuclear power industry contacts between Iran and Russia were based on the inter-governmental agreements of 25 August 1992, on cooperation in the civil use of nuclear energy and in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran.
Additional Reactors

Iran had also been considering the construction of three to five additional reactor facilities, which might or might not be located at Bushehr, for an estimated cost of $3.2 billion. A 5 September 2001 Moscow Times report indicated that the Russians would be submitting plans for the construction of additional reactors at Bushehr and that negotiations could begin as soon as December 2001, though the number of reactors being proposed was unclear and it was not apparrent how much the project might cost. It was estimated that the total cost of building the reactor complex at Bushehr may be roughly $4-6 billion since construction began in 1976.

During a March 2001 Moscow summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, Khatami confirmed plans to order a second reactor after the first was delivered, possibly by late 2002. The Iranian leader signaled his intention to proceed with a second contract that could be worth up to $1 billion.

On 26 July 2002 the Russian government indicated that it planned to continue building new nuclear reactors in Iran as part of a draft plan outlining potential areas of economic, industrial and scientific cooperation with Iran over the coming decade. The document approved by Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov outlined plans to build three more reactors at the Bushehr site. The document also indicated that Russia would offer to build two more reactors at a new nuclear power station at Ahwaz, a city about 60 miles from Iran's border with Iraq. These plans were apparently shelved after complaints by the United States.

In was reported on by IRNA on 26 August 2003, that Iran had received from Russia feasibility studies for a second reactor at Bushehr. According to that report, Russian specialists believed that it would be more practical to build two reactors from scratch rather than continue working on the reactor that had been abandoned by Siemens under pressure from the United States. The studies had been achieved by the time of Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev's visit to Tehran in December 2002.

Calls for additional power plant construction were made again by the Chairman of Majlis Energy Commission in October 2004, who sought approval for 9 more power plants. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said in November 2006 that the AEOI had been given 20 licenses for the establishment of additional nuclear power plants. However, by July 2008 Iran was said to be looking to build only 19 more reactors, six of them by 2020. One of these reactors was reported to be planned for construction in Darkhoyen, construction of which had been announced in December 2005.
Beginning of Operations at Bushehr

On 13 August 2010, the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) announced that the first reactor at the Bushehr NPP would be loaded with nuclear fuel on 21 August 2010 and would henceforth make the Bushehr facility qualified as an operational nuclear power plant. The process for transferring the fuel to the pool located near the heart of reactor was estimated to take seven to eight days. It was expected at that time that the Bushehr NPP would come online by September 2010. It was reported on 27 November 2010 that the plant's reactor was fully loaded after numerous delays. Russia's contractor Atomstroiexport confirmed this on 2 December 2010.

In February 2011, it was reported that the fuel rods were being removed from the Bushehr NPP. Iranian officials stressed that the activities and associated delays were entirely normal and routine. Foreign observers believed that the issues were more a matter of technical competence or issues regarding the Russian technology used to build the reactor, rather than issues stemming from release of the Stuxnet computer virus into computers related to Iran's nuclear infrastructure in the fall of 2010. The Stuxnet virus has primarily affected uranium enrichment operations, such as the operation of centrifuges at Natanz. Iranian authorities later blamed the delays on the Russian contractors.

In early September 2011, Iran reported that the Bushehr NPP had been reloaded with fuel and successfully connected to the nation's power grid. The facility had come online on 3 September 2011, with the power of 60 megawatt after successfully passing a number of unspecified tests. The plant was officially launched on 12 September 2011 after numerous delays. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said during a press conference that "The power plant will be disconnected for different tests some time after the connection. The tests might take several weeks. The power plant will regain the power and will obtain its 100 percent power of 900-1000 megawatt." The Bushehr nuclear power plant had joined Iran's national power grid with a capacity of around 60 megawatts at 11:29 p.m. (1859 GMT) 10 September 2011.

Source:  Global Security

Russia will be bitter pill for Snowden

Snowden May Face a Tough Time in Russian Asylum

August 22, 2013

by Andre de Nesnera

People who know about these things predict accused NSA leaker Edward Snowden will soon be very unhappy he chose Russia as the place to avoid prosecution in the United States on espionage charges.

Snowden was working as a computer network manager for the National Security Agency in Hawaii, but turned up in Hong Kong earlier this summer and began releasing information about secret electronic surveillance programs the agency uses to monitor telephone and internet traffic around the world.

Then when the United States started seeking his arrest and extradition, Snowden took a plane to Moscow, where he holed up in an airport international transit zone hotel while he tried to find a more permanent place to settle outside America’s reach.

There was talk of Cuba or Venezuela, but those didn’t work out. After a month, Moscow granted him asylum for 12 months despite fierce objections from Washington.

David Barrett, a national security expert teaching at Villanova University, says Snowden will soon find out, if he hasn’t already, that Russia may not be the ideal place for a self-proclaimed whistle-blower.

“One of the things that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin said when he spoke of the possibility of Snowden’s staying there, is that Snowden would have to be quiet,” Barrett said. “He would have to stop saying things and revealing things about U.S. intelligence.

“And I don’t think that that would be a very happy existence for Snowden if he had to live under those conditions where he could not speak to reporters and groups about NSA,” Barrett added.

'Gray unhappiness'

Peter Savodnik, an expert on Americans seeking asylum in Russia, says the Moscow authorities are good at creating what he calls “a sort of gray unhappiness.”

“The Russians specialize in that sort of thing where somebody shows up at your doorstep and there is something very pathetic about this. You have nowhere else to go - you are throwing all of your trust, your faith into the Kremlin,” said Savodnik, whose upcoming book is about Lee Harvey Oswald’s brief defection to the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin, Savodnik says, will “allow you to think for a while that you have arrived. And then, of course, you realize you have not.

“And then you begin to become a little bit crazy and mad, which is what happened to Oswald and what has happened to every single American who has defected or sought asylum in Russia…, Savodnik continued.

Oswald, you may remember, came back to the United States and in 1963 was arrested on charges of assassinating President John F. Kennedy, but was himself assassinated before he could go to trial.

“I don’t think there has been a single case of an American who went to Russia since World War II and found the ‘happily ever after’ that he was looking for,” Savodnik said

As for Snowden, Savodnik says the Russians would want him far away as possible from the news media – and in the worst case scenario, they would send him to live in a remote region of the country.

Cleaning gymnasium floors?

“They will stick him in some Khruschevka [apartment buildings built in the 1960s] or some other Brezhnev-era dump,” he predicted. “He’ll clean the floors of some gymnasium or work in some broken down factory that is being propped up by the state and probably shouldn’t exist.”

Wherever Snowden ends up, says Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at Washington’s Wilson Center, one thing is certain: no-one is going to trust Edward Snowden.

“Because it’s understood: this is someone who would betray their own country and so that’s hard to respect for most ordinary people, including Russians,” Rojansky said.

“That has been the fate of almost every westerner who has spied or defected and then gone to the Russians – they end up being quite isolated, and perhaps living comfortably if they stay for the long term, but certainly not living well in the sense of being fully integrated in a part of their society.”

And Rojansky says the Snowden affair will inevitably affect relations between Washington and Moscow.

“The Snowden issue is going to remain on those lists that senior American officials take into negotiations for years to come,” he said. “It may not be at the top of the list, but it will be somewhere on there.

“And at some point, America will be able to offer enough to Russia and the circumstances will be right, and the media spotlight will have faded, and so maybe they’ll move him on to a third country,” Rojansky said. “He’ll spend some decent interval of time there and then suddenly he’ll end up in a courtroom in Honolulu or something like that.”

Analysts say there is no doubt Snowden would have a better life in a place other than Russia, but where that would be is anybody’s guess.


Source: Global Security

Russia warns against tourism in Egypt

MOSCOW, August 15 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian government urged its citizens Thursday to avoid traveling to Egypt, a popular tourist destination engulfed by riots over the sacking of an Islamist president that have already resulted in more than 500 deaths and the torching of churches.

The death toll stood at 525 as supporters of the ousted Mohamed Morsi clashed with security services, The Associated Press reported Thursday, citing the country's Health Ministry.

The pro-Morsi movement Muslim Brotherhood said police had used live rounds against civilian protesters and put the death toll at close to 2,000. Police denied using lethal force.

The majority of casualties occurred after police cracked down on camps of Morsi supporters in the capital Cairo on Wednesday, dispersing them after a clash.

Each side accused the other of using snipers to shoot indiscriminately at people involved in the riots. The list of victims includes at least two foreign reporters from the UK and the UAE, while a Russian television crew was robbed at knifepoint by looters in Cairo.

The Muslim Brotherhood plans to stage a mass rally in Cairo on Thursday evening, Reuters reported, citing a statement by the group.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday that Russians should avoid traveling to Egypt, while the Federal Tourism Agency called on travel agencies to sell fewer holidays to Egypt, one of the most popular destinations among Russians.

But no plans were reported for the evacuation of Russians currently vacationing at local resorts, whose numbers were tentatively put by the Russian Tourism Industry Union at 40,000 to 50,000.

The Egyptian embassy in Moscow called the Russian warnings "unfounded," pointing out that no Russian tourists have been harmed so far during riots.

The Russian Orthodox Church expressed concern Thursday over reports that at least seven Christian churches had been torched in Egypt by Islamists, and that local Coptic Christians had been forced to flee the country over accusations that Christian minorities in Egypt had backed the ouster of Morsi, known for his Islamist views.

Engineering divisions of the Egyptian military have been deployed to rebuild the churches, local media said Thursday.

Morsi narrowly won the presidential elections in May 2012 that followed a revolution that ousted his authoritarian predecessor Hosni Mubarak, but was removed from the presidency in July in a military coup d'état that came after months of street protests by Morsi's opponents.

Morsi is currently under house arrest, which was extended until Sept. 15 on Thursday, local media reported.

The ouster polarized the country, with Morsi's supporters replacing his opponents in the streets. The military declared a nationwide state of emergency in an attempt to stop the violence.

Several European countries, including Germany, France and Italy, have expressed concern over the situation in Egypt, as has US President Barack Obama on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no recent comments on the ongoing crisis, but warned soon after Morsi's ouster against a possible civil war in the most populous Arab nation.

Source: RIA Novosti, August 15, 2013

At this date at least 50 churches have been burned by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Kerry on US-Russia Relations

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said Washington still has 'shared interests' with Russia, despite deteriorating relations, most recently over the case of fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

Opening talks with the Russian foreign and defense ministers in Washington, Kerry said bilateral ties are facing some 'challenging moments.'

'It's no secret that we have experienced some challenging moments and obviously not just over the Snowden case. We will discuss these differences today for certain,' Kerry said. 'But this meeting remains important above and beyond the collisions and the moments of disagreement. It is important for us to find ways to make progress on missile defense, on other strategic issues including Afghanistan, Iran, on North Korea and Syria.'

The meeting in Washington follows the announcement from the White House on August 7 that President Barack Obama was canceling a one-on-one meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin scheduled for Moscow next month.

'Our agenda is rather broad and it includes, of course, issues where we have disagreements,' Lavrov said. 'We will continue to talk about them, calmly, as we should. I recall my first meeting with John in his current position when he said our countries share a special responsibility and a lot depends on us. So, we need to work together, as adults. This is what we're trying to do and we hope it will be mutual.'

The meeting also included U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

It is expected to focus on the situations in Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea, and U.S.-European plans for a missile-defense shield that Russia strongly opposes.

Ties between the United States and Russia are strained over several issues, one being Russia's decision to grant Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, temporary asylum.

Snowden leaked classified information about U.S. global Internet- and telephone-surveillance programs and faces espionage charges in the United States.

Washington has also been frustrated by Moscow's continued support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad amid the country's devastating civil war. The United States supports rebel factions in the country and wants to see Assad leave power.

Moscow, for its part, has been concerned for several years about the joint U.S.-European plan to build a missile-defense shield in Europe. Washington says the system is intended to protect NATO countries from a possible attack from Iran, but Moscow argues it could affect Russia's nuclear deterrent.

The United States has also expressed concern about what it says is a crackdown on civil society in Russia since Putin returned to the Kremlin last year. There have been increased protests in the United States over a Russian law adopted this summer that criminalizes the 'propaganda' of homosexuality to minors.
​​
That law and another requiring nongovernmental organizations that accept foreign funding and engage in 'political activity' to register as 'foreign agents' have led to calls for the United States to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The Obama administration has said it is not considering a boycott.

On August 8, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko defended the gay-propaganda law.

'I want to calm everyone down first of all, as in addition to this law on the territory of Russia, we have the Constitution of the Russian Federation that guarantees all citizens the right to a private life, guarantees that there will be no interference in this private life,' Mutko said.

'This law is not intended to deprive citizens of any country, religion, or orientations of their interests and rights. This law is intended to ban the propaganda among youth, more than anything else.'

Mutko added that the law should not affect the Sochi Games.

'I can assure you that the Olympic Games will take place at the highest level. All rights of all citizens will be protected, but the laws of any country whose territory you enter, must of course be observed,' he said. 'But I'll say it again -- this doesn't affect the athletes at all. Come and compete.'

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, AP, and ITAR-TASS

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-us-relations- obama-putin-snowden/25070617.html

Putin on Snowden, Russia-US relations

President Vladimir Putin says Russian-American ties are more important than the issue of the fugitive former U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, who is currently sheltering at a Moscow airport.

'Our bilateral ties, in my view, are much more important than any squabbles around the work of security services,' Putin told journalists in the context of questions about tensions related to the U.S. contractor.

Snowden has been in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23 and has requested temporary asylum in Russia.

Putin said he was more focused on the task of developing U.S. relations.

'We have warned Mr. Snowden that any activity on his part that could harm Russian-U.S. relations is unacceptable to us,' Putin said, repeating a warning from July 1.

Read it all here.

RT Media versus US "Lame-stream Media"

"RT Media tells more truth about America than CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and all the newspapers combined. That in itselt makes RT a saint compared to the trash fed to Americans and the rest of the world. That’s why the attack dogs are out in force to try and discredit RT. I am very pleased with the truth RT uncovers, or at least, asks the questions no one else is asking in the media.” YouTube comment

Syria Willing to Talk

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich told a news conference in Moscow, "'We are pleased to announce that Damascus has expressed its readiness in principle to participate in the international conference [on Syria] in order for Syrians themselves to find a political path to a solution of a conflict that is so disastrous for the nation and the region."

The peace conference, dubbed 'Geneva 2' and expected to be held in June in the Swiss city, would be aimed at ending the raging Syrian civil war, which in two years has killed more than 80,000 people.

'Demands to immediately set a concrete date for convening the conference, with no clarity about who will speak on behalf of the opposition and what powers they will have, cannot not be taken seriously,' Lukashevich cautioned.

Read it all here.

Lake Baikal one of the world's wonders

The unique life that's evolved over millions of years in Earth's deepest body of freshwater is under threat, says Anson Mackay.

Lake Baikal in central Asia is one of the natural wonders of our planet. Known as the 'Galapagos of Russia', it contains a unique flora and fauna - most of the 2000 plus plants and animals that live in its deep waters are endemic - found nowhere else.

A top predator in the lake, Pusa sibirica, is one of the world's very few species of freshwater seals, and up to 40 per cent of Baikal's species have not even been described yet. It is a major biodiversity hotspot, declared a World Heritage Site by the UN in 1996.

Baikal's endemic species have evolved over tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of years, to occupy niches that may never have been disturbed before the last three or four decades.

The lake's unique ecology stems from its physical properties. Baikal is the oldest lake in world; it started forming over 25 million years ago when a fissure in the continent began to open up. It is also the planet's deepest lake, averaging 744m deep and going down to 1642m in places, due to a tectonic pulse that made the rift's shoulders rise up while the bottom continued to deepen.

Astonishingly, Lake Baikal accounts for over a fifth of all surface fresh water on Earth, outside polar ice caps and glaciers. And unlike other deep lakes, it contains dissolved oxygen right down to the bottom.

Read the whole article here.

Chechen Brothers Grew Up as Refugees

James Brooke

Russian TV reported Friday that two ethnic Chechen brothers are suspects in terrorist bombings. But, for Russians, there was a new twist: the bombings were in Boston.

In recent years, ethnic Chechens were charged in bombings of the Moscow metro, a Moscow airport and a train from Moscow. But this time, Russian reporters fleshed out the biographies of two young Chechen men, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suspected of attacks in the United States.

In Dagestan, a traditionally Islamic republic bordering Chechnya, school principal Temirmagomed Davudov said the Tsarnaev family came to Dagestan in 2001 from the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan. During World War II, Stalin deported most of the population of Chechnya to Central Asia.

Davudov told reporters that the two brothers and their two sisters attended school for one year, in 2001, in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. Then, he said, the family emigrated - apparently first to Turkey, then to the United States.

Read it all here.

Russia Rejects UN's "Evolving" Morals

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

GENEVA, December 14 (C-FAM) A UN committee of legal experts reprimanded the Russian Federation last month for allowing the Ryazan province of Russia to enforce a law that bans the promotion of homosexuality among minors as part of a national effort to protect children from early sexualization, and related adverse health consequences.

In 2009 Irina Fedotova, a lesbian activist, lodged a complaint against Russia with the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors the implementation of the 1966 International Convention of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). She was detained and fined for standing outside a secondary school with posters that read “Homosexuality is normal” and “I’m proud of my homosexuality – ask me about it.” Russian secondary schools are attended by children as young as 10 and as old as 17.

The UN committee decided that Ms. Fedotova had “not made any public actions aimed at involving minors in any particular sexual activity or at advocating any particular sexual orientation” and that she was merely “giving expression to her sexual identity and seeking understanding for it.”

The decision of the committee, known as “views” because it is neither binding nor enforceable, was divulged on November 30, and comes at a time when the Russian Federation is being widely criticized for bans on the promotion of homosexuality among minors enacted by several provinces and municipalities of the country. Similar legislation is being contemplated at the federal level.

The Constitution of the Russian Federation, according to Russia’s Constitutional Court, allows bans on the promotion of homosexuality among minors to preserve their health and morals.

The 1966 treaty on civil and political rights under which the complaint was brought similarly lists the preservation of public health and morals as one of three grounds on which state parties may limit free speech. The Human Rights Committee, formed by that treaty, disagrees with the Russian Constitutional Court on whether homosexuality is a sufficient moral and health concern to curtail free speech.

Despite differences between UN member states on homosexuality, and the absence of any mention of homosexuality in the treaty it is charged with monitoring, the committee bases its rationale on the “evolving” nature of moral standards.

Citing its own interpretation of the 1966 treaty published in a non-binding document last year, known as General Comment 34, the committee maintains that limitations on speech “for the purpose of protecting morals must be based on principles not deriving exclusively from a single tradition” and that in order to avoid being discriminatory they must be based on “objective criteria.” The committee found Ryazan’s ban on the promotion of homosexuality among children defective on both counts.

Russia argued that the law did not affect Ms. Fedotova’s private conduct in any way, and that the purpose of the law was to protect minors from “derangements of their spiritual, mental, physical and social development.” But the experts said that even if Ms. Fedotova’s purpose was to engage children on the subject of homosexuality this would not justify curtailing her speech.

Laws banning the promotion of homosexuality among minors are routinely enforced by Russian authorities, as two celebrity divas have discovered. Madonna faced a lawsuit after she voiced support for homosexual rights during a recent tour. Reuters reported this week that Lady Gaga has been threatened with similar action because she did the same at a concert in St. Petersburg on Sunday.


From here.

Russian Internet Blacklist Law

by Elena Vlasenko

Vladimir Putin says he doesn't use the internet very much. But he has definitely recognised its power. The biggest protest rallies in post-Soviet Russia, against Putin and his United Russia party, were organised online. No wonder that the parliamentary and presidential elections and Putin's inauguration were all marked by the hacking of independent media websites and LiveJournal, Russia's most popular blogging platform, via DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.

Russian television is poisoned by censorship, and there are few offline platforms for public discussion. That is why social networks and blogs provide the space people from all over Russia use to share ideas and plans protests against Putin.

The precedent for persecuting bloggers to silence them was set in 2008. A year after blogger Savva Terentyev criticised police in a comment on a LiveJournal post he was given a one-year suspended sentence, under article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code, for "fomenting social hatred" towards police officers. Since then, article 282, which covers actions provoking animosity and hatred towards certain religious, social, gender or national groups, has been used to silence bloggers through the courts.

The other charge commonly used against internet users is "extremism". Throughout Putin's reign this charge has been used to target people who criticise the Kremlin - together with defamation and drug legislation. Russia's Department of Presidential Affairs won three defamation lawsuits against newspaper Novaya Gazeta in just one week last year. The newspaper's editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, told Index on Censorship that the Kremlin has been using defamation suits as a censorship instrument.

In late August, Taisia Osipova, a The Other Russia activist, was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of drug trafficking. Rights activists have called her a political prisoner and connect her prosecution with her political activism - her husband is a member of The Other Russia political council. No fingerprints were analysed with the drugs Osipova allegedly held in her flat, and the three witnesses in the case were pro-Kremlin youth movement members.

Starting on 1 November 2012 Russian authorities won't need a court ruling, like they did in the Terentyev case. Authorities will appeal to ISPs, create website blacklists and will be able to actually shut down anything they don't like. Previously, a court ruling could make a website or the URL for certain web content inaccessible in a specific region, while it stayed available in another.

Andrey Soldatov, an expert on Russian security services, notes that soon "the Kremlin will have at its disposal the facilities for blocking access to internet resources across the whole of Russia", including Skype and Facebook.

This is the result of the activities of the State Duma this summer. The period after Putin returned to Kremlin will stay in Russians' memory as a time of scandalous criminal prosecutions and controversial laws, which in spite of people's protests, were passed by the Duma.

The internet blacklist law, perhaps more than any of the other new laws - against rally organisers, NGOs which are financed from abroad, and the law which re-criminalised defamation - is likely to cause the saddest and the biggest consequences for Russian civil society.

Read the uncondensed version here.

Related reading: Putin's Win Result of Skewed Campaign

Support this Good Cause

Tatiana and her son

Tatiana Vyushinskaya is a native of Moscow where she works as an interior designer. Here is her story:

I’ve always loved the process of designing and creating beautiful spaces for a living, and my designs have received commendations from both clients and professionals. However, my present career path does not allow much room for professional, personal, or financial growth. My present salary allows me to modestly support myself, my son and my mother, who live with me in our Moscow flat, but my hope is to develop my skills in creative new directions and to better provide for my family.

For some time, my dream has been to expand my work to include scenography, giving me the creativity, space, time and potential for career development. I hardly dared apply for a program in London at the University of London School of Speech and Drama - the place where many of England's greatest Shakespearean actors have studied, and the place with the degree and training I am seeking, but a few American friends in Moscow urged me on. With no previous experience in theater design, after my first interview, I was asked to design a series of sketches to go along with a poem by the 20th century avant-garde Irish poet and playwright Samuel Beckett, which resulted in an hour-long lively conversation with the examiner who considered them “brilliant”, and admitted me to the school!
If my dream comes true, I will also be able to take my five-year-old son, Tikhon, to London to specialists working with children with Asperger's syndrome, which he has, and find the future care that he needs. He is currently involved with socializing play-therapy groups; however, Asberger’s treatment is rather new to Russia and I believe that he could greatly benefit from the programs and support groups that British therapists and parents of children with Asberger’s have developed since the 1980’s. I am already in touch with some of these parents, and can see that their programs are several decades ahead of us.

If you feel moved to donate - I would be very grateful! The tuition cost of the program must be raised by October of this year, giving me just a few months. I can provide any information necessary, also sketches, my portfolio, a copy of my acceptance letter and recommendations as needed. I am also open to an interest-free loan or other options.

Tatiana's friends add: please join us in bringing out the sun! Your generosity to help create this possibility is much appreciated.

Donations can be made here.

Russia to Stop Shipping Arms to Syria

Carla Babb

A senior Russian defense official said Moscow will no longer sell any weapons to Syria until the situation there calms down, as a Syrian activist group said the death toll from the Syrian conflict has surpassed 17,000.

Vyacheslav Dzirkaln, the deputy chief of the Russian military and technical cooperation agency, said Monday that Russia will not sign any more arms deals, deliver any more weapons or ship any spare parts for weapons delivered earlier.

The United States and other world leaders have pushed Russia to stop helping Damascus crackdown on the opposition there.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said the Syrian government and the opposition groups should be forced to enter negotiations.

"I am convinced that we must do everything possible to force the conflicting sides to find a peaceful political solution to all the disputed issues," Putin told a group of Russian and foreign diplomats in televised remarks.

His comments came hours after his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met with a senior Syrian opposition leader, Michel Kilo, in Moscow.

Heavy toll of conflict

Russia's announcement that it will no longer send weapons to Syria comes as the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 17,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict since it began in March of last year.

Rami Abdelrahman said Monday that 31 died across Syria, including 11 Syrian army troops and 20 civilians and rebels.

He said there was heavy fighting and army shelling in the provinces of Homs, Idlib, Daraa and Deir Ezzor, and near Damascus.

"There is fighting everyday. It doesn't ever stop," Abdelrahman said.

Annan-Assad meeting

Meanwhile, the U.N.'s special envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Monday before traveling to Iran. The U.N. diplomat called the talks "constructive and candid."

"We discussed the need to end the violence and ways and means of doing so," Annan told reporters. "We agreed on an approach which I will share with the armed opposition."

Annan has been trying for months to implement a peace plan in Syria, but has admitted that the efforts have failed.

In an interview with German television broadcast Sunday, Syrian President Assad accused the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of hindering peace and supporting what he called "terrorists."

The United Nations wants independent investigators to probe Assad's charges that terrorists, and not the government, are responsible for the violence.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

Source: Global Security.org

Related reading: UN and Russia Condemn Houla Massacre; Syria Violence Escalates

U.N. and Russia Condemn Houla Massacre

The United Nations Security Council condemned on Monday a massacre of dozens of Syrian civilians, including children, in the country's western village of Houla.

“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest possible terms the killings, confirmed by United Nations observers, of dozens of men, women and children and the wounding of hundreds more in the village of [Houla], near Homs, in attacks that involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighbourhood,” the Council members said in a statement issued following a closed-door emergency meeting in New York.

“The members of the Security Council also condemned the killing of civilians by shooting at close range and by severe physical abuse,” the statement said.

General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission, told the Council members during a video link that more than 100 people, including some 30 children under the age of 10, had been killed in Houla, a cluster of villages in the Homs province, on Friday and Saturday.

An amateur video posted online showed people in Houla burying their slaughtered relatives in mass graves, as well as bloodied bodies of children, some with their skulls split open. The brutal images triggered shock around the world, raising questions over the viability of a peace plan proposed by the joint UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to stop 15 months of bloodshed in Syria.
Kofi Annan, the U.N./Arab League special envoy to Syria, urged “every individual with a gun” to lay down their weapons as he arrived in Damascus Monday. He condemned the massacre of at least 108 people in Houla as “an appalling crime,” saying the government has to prove it is ready to work for peace. Annan was scheduled to meet Syria’s foreign minister and would hold talks with President Bashar al-Assad Tuesday, reports Al Jazeera.

The Assad regime, however, seems to care little, if at all, about international condemnation. Reuters reports that at least 41 people were killed in an assault on the nearby city of Hama, shortly after the U.N. Security Council condemned the massacre, according to activists.

In a sign of how much the horrific images coming out of Houla have shocked the world, even Russia, long one of Syria’s most reliable allies, said the government was at least partly to blame for the killings over the weekend, reports the Associated Press. “Both sides have obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.



Iranian Troops in Syria


A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander has admitted that Iran has sent its troops to help the regime of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fight opposition forces.

“Before our presence in Syria, too many people were killed by the opposition but with the physical and non-physical presence of the Islamic republic, big massacres in Syria were prevented,” Ismail Gha’ani, the deputy head of Iran’s Quds force, a shadowy branch of the Revolutionary Guards in charge of overseas operations, said in an interview with the semi-official Iranian Student’s News Agency (ISNA), according to a report by the Persian-language GozaraNews website.

Read more here and here.

Putin's Win Result of "Skewed" Campaign

MOSCOW, March 5 (RIA Novosti, Maria Kuchma) - International monitors gave different assessments of Russia’s presidential elections that secured Vladimir Putin a third term in the Kremlin.

While observers from former Soviet states hailed the vote as “transparent” and “fair,” their colleagues from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) pointed to mass procedural violations and a clear bias in favor of Putin.

The 59-year-old prime minister won the Sunday polls with almost 64 percent of the vote, leaving four other candidates far behind. His closest rival, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, gathered just over 17 percent, while the rest were even less successful.

Monitors from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose alliance of former Soviet republics, were quick to declare that the vote was “transparent, conducted in conditions of fair competition, openness, and in accordance with generally recognized international norms.”

Meanwhile, OSCE and PACE observers said in their preliminary statement on Monday that the vote was marred by limited competition and abuse of state resources, which gave Putin a “clear advantage” to win the race.

Although there was a “clear winner” in the race, the voter’s choice was “limited," the head of the PACE delegation, Tiny Kox, said during a news conference in Moscow, adding that the presidential campaign "lacked transparency.”

"The point of an election is that the outcome should be uncertain," said Tonino Picula, who headed the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation. "This was not the case in Russia."


'Skewed' campaign

The observers noted in their statement that “although all contestants were able to campaign unhindered, the conditions for the campaign were clearly skewed in favor of one candidate.”

While all candidates had access to media, the coverage of Putin’s election campaign was much more intensive than those of his competitors, they said.

Putin himself said last night that he had won the race in a “fair and open fight” as he addressed a crowd of his supporters under the Kremlin’s walls shortly after the end of the vote.

The western European observers said, however, that while the voting itself could be accessed “positively overall,” the vote count was flawed by “procedural irregularities.” Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini who headed the OSCE/ODIHR monitoring mission said during the news conference that vote count at “one third” of the 98 polling stations visited by the monitors could be accessed as “bad” or “very bad.”

The OSCE/PACE mission involved some 270 monitors, while another 120 observers from countries outside the post-Soviet region worked at polling stations independently. One of the monitors, U.S. attorney Kline Preston, said on Monday that the absolute majority of independent observers rated the elections as "good," with nine percent going for "acceptable" and one percent denouncing them as “bad.”


Monitors urge investigation into fraud reports

Both the CIS and OSCE/PACE monitors praised the role of Russia’s civil society groups in monitoring the elections. Driven by enthusiasm to prevent a repeat of vote fraud which is alleged to have marred last year’s parliamentary vote, tens of thousands of Russians have volunteered to observe Sunday’s presidential polls.

Tagliavini welcomed steps made by Russia’s authorities to minimize possible violations, including the installation of transparent ballot boxes and web cameras at most of the polling stations. She said, however, that those measures were “insufficient” and that all violations reported during the vote should be “thoroughly investigated.”

Putin said on Monday he would ask Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov to “thoroughly look into all possible violations” reported during the polls.

The Commission said it had received some 180 reports of electoral violations on Sunday. Nevertheless, Churov said the vote was “open and fair” like in no other country. The Interior Ministry also said it had not registered any serious breaches of electoral laws that could affect the results of the vote.

Russia’s largest independent election watchdog Golos, which has been accused by the Kremlin of bias against the government, said some 5,000 people called the organization to report about violations which included many cases of so-called “carousel voting,” in which busloads of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times. Those reports cannot be independently verified.

The OSCE and PACE monitors are planning to present their final report on the vote in two months.


Related reading:  Russia Disputes Election Observer Report

Syria on the Brink of Civil War

VOA News


In-Depth Coverage The chief of the Arab League warned Friday that Syria may be heading towards a civil war as thousands of Syrians took to the streets in support of an armed rebel group.

Arab League head Nabil Elaraby made the comments in interviews with The Associated Press and and Egyptian television station while anti-government protesters voiced support for the Free Syrian Army, composed mainly of former soldiers.

Activists say 20,000 gathered in the town of Ariha in the northwest Idlib province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says soldiers opened fire on protesters in the region, killing at least one person.

The 10-month crackdown on anti-government protests has turned more violent in recent months as defecting soldiers have taken up arms against the government.

Elaraby spoke after at least 11 members of the Arab League observer mission were injured by pro-Assad supporters earlier this week. Meanwhile, one observer quit the monitoring team, calling it a "farce," and activists say that 11 members are expected to quit the mission soon.

Foreign observers have been operating in Syria since December 26 to check President Bashar al-Assad's compliance with an Arab League plan to end his violent suppression of the uprising that began last year.

The United Nations and the United States say killings of protesters by Syrian security forces have intensified since the monitoring mission began. But on Friday Elaraby denied the charge in an interview with the Egyptian Al-Hayat television channel.

Meanwhile, Turkey's foreign minister said a Russian ship carrying "dangerous cargo" has arrived in Syria, after being temporarily held in Cyprus. Cypriot media reported on Wednesday that authorities had intercepted a vessel carrying ammunition from St. Petersburg in Russia to Syria during a fuel stop. Media reports said the ship was carrying up to 60 tons of ammunition and explosives.

The United Nations estimates at least 5,000 people have been killed in the uprising, many of them peaceful protesters attacked by Syrian security forces. Others have been killed in fighting between the Syrian military and the army defectors who have joined the rebellion in recent months.

Earlier this week, the first Western journalist was killed in Syria during a government-organized trip to Homs. Paris prosecutors said Friday that a preliminary investigation has been launched into the death of the France-2 Television journalist. Damascus has also said it will also investigate the death.

Some information for this Global Security report was provided by AP and AFP.

India Leases N-Sub from Russia

MOSCOW: Russia has handed over the nuclear-powered attack submarine Nerpa to India following more than two years of delays, according to a senior naval official.

The signing ceremony happened yesterday at the Bolshoi Kamen shipbuilding facility in the (Far East) Primorye region where the Nerpa is now based, the official in the naval chief of staff told ITAR-TASS on Friday.

The report said an Indian crew would sail the Akula II class craft to its home base at the end of January after receiving it on a 10-year lease, in a deal that has angered Pakistan.

"All of the naval tests and performance checks have been completed, the Russian official said. The crew will begin making themselves feel at home on board the craft after New Year and start sailing it to India in the latter half of January.

The Nerpa will be the first nuclear powered submarine to be operated by India in nearly two decades after it decommissioned its last such Soviet built vessel in 1991.

India is currently completing the development of its own Arihant-class nuclear-powered ballistic submarines and the Nerpa`s delivery is expected to help crews train for the domestic boat`s introduction into service next year.

The Russian Pacific port ceremony was held on the same day a shipyard fire engulfed the Northern Fleet`s Yekaterinburg nuclear-powered strategic submarine in the Murmansk region on the opposite side of the country.

The Nerpa had initially been due tobe handed over to India in 2009 but experienced various problems during testing.

It suffered a mishap during trials in the Sea of Japan in November 2008 that killed 20 sailors when a fire extinguisher released a deadly chemical that was accidentally loaded into the system.

Media reports said that some of the vessel`s equipment malfunctioned during testing and that the weapons navigation system did not work to India`s specifications.

The 8,000-ton vessel can fire a range of torpedoes as well as Granat cruise missiles that can be nuclear-tipped.

India has promised not to arm the submarine with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles under its obligations to international treaties it adopted after conducting a series of atomic tests in the 1990s. But Pakistan is worried over the craft`s delivery.

"Rest assured, there will be no compromise in terms of maintaining the credibility of our deterrence", spokesman for Pakistan`s Foreign Office Abdul Basit was quoted as saying by The Asian Age newspaper this week.

The submarine is due to be commissioned as the INS Chakra in India under a 2004 agreement that had seen the South Asian country pay $650 million in construction costs.

Newspaper reports in India said New Delhi could end up paying as much as $900 million under the terms of the deal.

Russia supplies 70 per cent of India`s military hardware but New Delhi has been unhappy about delays to arms orders from Moscow and looked to other suppliers including Israel and the United States in recent years.-AFP

Source:  Pakistan Dawn