Fighting in Kyrgyz-Tajik border areas has died down after deadly clashes in late April, but residents of the Tajik region of Vorukh say tensions remain high. They’re set apart from the rest of their country, surrounded by Kyrgyz territory, and some fear that their freedom of movement and access to resources are far from guaranteed.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In his speeches at the annual Red Square military parade marking the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized the massive role the Soviet Union played, while often minimizing the contributions made by the Western Allies, including the United States.
This year, he seemed to take that approach a step further, even going off-script — possibly — to suggest that the Soviet Union essentially defeated Hitler on its own. The remark drew criticism from Russians who accuse Putin of using the people’s pride in the victory in the war, which killed an estimated 27 million Soviet citizens and left few families untouched, for his own political purposes.
In the initial Russian-language transcript of the May 9 address on the Kremlin website, Putin is quoted as saying that “at the most difficult moments in the war, during decisive battles that determined the result of the struggle against fascism, our people were united — united in the toilsome, heroic, and sacrificial path to victory.”
Those words are unremarkable: Amid ethnic tensions inside Russia today and disputes between Russia and other former Soviet republics, Putin has often used his Victory Day speech to advance the narrative of wartime unity among the Soviet people — though in some cases, such as with dictator Josef Stalin’s persecution of ethnic groups in the North Caucasus, this picture is inaccurate.
But in the speech itself, Putin replaced the word that means “united” with one that means “alone,” suggesting that the Soviet Union — at least at the most crucial junctures in the war — had no help.
“I didn’t even believe it at first — I looked at the text and it said ‘united,’ and I thought I had heard it wrong,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin adviser who is a critic of Putin, told the Russian news outlet Dozhd TV. “Then I listened to him again — no, he specifically said ‘alone.’”
Andrei Kolesnikov, who heads the Russian domestic politics program at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, also said he did a double take when he heard Putin’s words.
“In the official text of Putin’s Victory Day speech [it says] ‘our people were united,’” Kolesnikov, who is also a critic of Putin, wrote on Twitter. “I clearly heard [that] he said twice: ‘our nation was one, one (in a sense of alone) on…the road to Victory.’ In any case, no allies in the Victory were mentioned.”
‘Denial Of Reality’
At some point after the address, the Russian-language transcript on the Kremlin website was altered to conform with Putin’s words, and it was unclear whether he had misspoken or said “alone” deliberately. Either way, it fit in with what analysts say is Putin’s use of the May 9 celebrations and the speech itself to seek to burnish his image and to send messages to the Russian people and foreign leaders.
Over Putin’s 17 years as president, the parade speech has been a kind of barometer of ties with the West. In years when relations have been better, Putin has mentioned the Western Allies’ contributions.
In 2005, with U.S. President George W. Bush among leaders from both former Allied and Axis powers in attendance, Putin said that “the most ruthless and decisive events — the events that determined the drama and the outcome of this inhuman war — unfolded on the territory of the Soviet Union.”
But he also paid tribute to the Western Allies, saying: “We never divided victory into ours and theirs. We will always remember our allies — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the other countries that fought in the anti-Nazi coalition, the German and Italian anti-fascists.”
This year, it came at a time when relations between Moscow and the West are at or near the lowest levels since the Cold War, and in some ways even below those levels. The only foreign leader on the podium on Red Square to watch the parade and hear Putin’s speech was Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.
But it was not the first time Putin he has neglected to mention the role of the Western allies in defeating Nazi Germany — an omission that seems in part a product of the frequent assertions by Russian officials that Western governments downplay the Soviet role, which was inarguably colossal and came at a massive cost that is still being felt in Russia and other former republics even as few veterans remain.
It was also not the first time, by any means, that his Victory Day speech has included veiled hints that the world now faces potential threats from Moscow’s wartime allies in Washington and the West.
Critics said that in describing the Soviet Union as “alone,” Putin took the Kremlin’s narrative of the war too far.
His language was “a denial of the reality of a world war,” opposition politician Leonid Gozman wrote on Facebook. “He managed not to say a word about those whom Stalin called ‘our valiant allies.’”
Putin’s message, he said, seemed to be that Russia is “alone against the world,” Gozman wrote, adding that he had also “essentially likened all the countries in conflict with the state he leads to Nazi Germany.”
Stolen Victory?
Pavlovsky also contrasted Putin with Stalin, who he said mentioned allies in a in a speech on Red Square in November 1941, and suggested that Putin’s wording reflected his own feelings and fears. “It’s he who is alone. He feels abandoned, betrayed, surrounded by enemies,” Pavlovsky told Dozhd TV. “He has no allies.”
Another analyst, Abbas Gallyamov, said that ahead of September parliamentary elections in which the unpopular Kremlin-controlled United Russia party faces a test, Putin is trying to use the war and the Soviet victory as something voters will associate with him and his government.
“On practically all the issues on the current agenda — political, economic, and social — the Kremlin has already lost the sympathy of the majority,” Gallyamov told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
“But for the majority [Victory Day] really is a sacred holiday, and the patriotic rhetoric about how our grandfathers fought more or less answers to the mood of the majority, or at least does not sharply contradict it,” he said. “And so, Putin is hysterically trying to drag the historical agenda into the current political discourse.”
Imprisoned Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny has not commented on Putin’s May 9 address. But at a court hearing late last month, he said the World War II victory was one of the pieces of the past that Putin had tried to “appropriate — to steal — and to use for his own personal purposes.”
“He has been doing this for many years with our people’s victory in the Great Patriotic War,” Navalny, who was convicted of defaming a World War II veteran in a trial he contends was politically motivated, said at an appeals hearing on April 29. “He is trying to appropriate it for himself.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When hostilities broke out along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border at the end of April, many countries and organizations were quick to call for an end to the fighting and a peaceful resolution to the long-running border conflict.
No one wanted to openly side with either Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan, let alone comment on the violence that left more than 50 people dead.
But in the days following an agreement between Kyrgyz and Tajik officials that halted the fighting, there have been hints of the positions of some leaders through their statements and actions.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon was fortunate to have accepted an invitation months ago to make an official visit to Moscow for the May 9 Victory Day celebrations. Rahmon was the only head of state to attend the Moscow ceremonies but the trip allowed him an opportunity to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 8 and again the next day during the parade on Red Square.
Reports on the meetings of the two presidents did not mention any discussion of the April 28-30 fighting on the border, though Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said days earlier it would be on the agenda, and Putin had offered on April 30 to act as a mediator in the conflict.
Where Moscow Stands
Putin’s comments were interesting, as they seemed to indirectly address the problem between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The topic of Russia’s bases in Tajikistan, where Russia’s 201st Division has been stationed since shortly after the end of World War II, is a perennial whenever Putin and Rahmon meet and with U.S. and other foreign forces withdrawing from Afghanistan. Putin said Russia would “work on strengthening [the bases] and on strengthening the armed forces of Tajikistan.”
The part about strengthening Tajikistan’s military was certainly noticed in Kyrgyzstan, even if Putin said the strengthening was needed because of increased fighting in Afghanistan. Though both sides in the border fighting took substantial losses, the casualty figures show that Kyrgyz took a worse beating in the fighting with the Tajiks.
The Kremlin has made many statements about the need for stability in Kyrgyzstan, where Russia also has a military base and where there have been three revolutions since 2005.
In July 2019, then-Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev met with Putin in Moscow. Atambaev was in the midst of a feud with his successor, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, but despite technically being under house arrest, Atambaev left Kyrgyzstan on a plane that departed from the Russian military base in Kant.
At the end of the meeting with Atambaev, Putin referred to the 2005 and 2010 revolutions in Kyrgyzstan: “Kyrgyzstan has endured several serious internal political shocks…at least two,” adding, “the country needs political stability.”
Putin also said that as part of achieving stability, the people in Kyrgyzstan should “unite around the current president and help him in developing the state.”
The feud between Atambaev and Jeenbekov did not end and barely two weeks later, elite troops of Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry raided Atambaev’s compound outside Bishkek. After a deadly standoff, Atambaev surrendered and was eventually put in prison.
Then in October 2020, protests over the results of rigged parliamentary elections ousted Jeenbekov. But Moscow’s relations with the new government of President Sadyr Japarov have been icy.
Rahmon, on the other hand, has been in power in Tajikistan for nearly 29 years and, for the Kremlin, he represents stability in a country that borders Afghanistan. Russia has put a lot of effort and money into making Tajikistan a country that could hold the line against spillover from Afghanistan.
However, in his meeting with Rahmon on May 8, Putin also spoke about Tajik migrant laborers in Russia. “I know this is a sensitive issue for Tajikistan,” he said. “A significant volume of support for the families [of migrant laborers] is sent from Russia back home [to Tajikistan].”
That is true also for Kyrgyzstan. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan work in Russia and send money back to their families. Without these funds the economies of both countries would collapse, and the resulting economic decline would fuel social unrest.
By promising to lend further help to Tajikistan’s military, Putin might be sending a message to Kyrgyz authorities to forget about any thoughts of renewing aggression along the border with Tajikistan, and by mentioning the billions of dollars migrant laborers send back, he sends a message to both countries about the potential leverage Russia can employ against Tajikistan — or Kyrgyzstan — if either side takes measures along their common border that destabilize the situation.
Offering Condolences, Aid
While the Kremlin needs to maintain some sort of balancing act, other countries do not. Again, no country or international organization has come out on the side of either Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. But some have sent messages of sympathy over losses from the fighting.
Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev phoned President Japarov on May 1 to express his condolences to the victims of the fighting in the southern Batken Province, and to say Kazakhstan was ready to render humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan.
Toqaev also spoke with Rahmon, who reportedly “informed [Toqaev] in detail” about the history of the border conflict and the current situation. Toqaev also offered to help mediate between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and is scheduled to visit Dushanbe on May 19-20.
On May 4, Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov phoned Kyrgyz counterpart Ruslan Kazakbaev to offer Turkmenistan’s condolences “to family and friends of the deceased citizens of Kyrgyzstan.”
That same day, Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan phoned Kazakbekov with the same message. Ayvazyan also spoke with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin on May 4, but reports did not mention if Ayvazyan expressed any condolences for Tajik losses.
Japarov spoke with Putin on May 10 and the two reportedly discussed the recent fighting.
Putin promised to provide humanitarian aid for Kyrgyzstan, but a phone call is not the same as two days of meetings in Moscow, even though many of the details of the Putin-Rahmon talks — particularly their discussion of the fighting along the border — remain unknown.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
XALQOBOD, Uzbekistan — A court in Uzbekistan’s southern Surxondaryo region has sentenced blogger Otabek Sattoriy to 6 1/2 years in prison in a high-profile extortion and slander case that has sparked harsh criticism of the country by domestic and international human rights groups.
The Muzrabot district court pronounced the ruling on May 10. Last week, a prosecutor asked the court to sentence the blogger to 11 years in prison.
The 40-year-old blogger faced a number of charges, including extortion and slander, which his supporters and rights defenders have characterized as retaliation by the authorities for his critical reporting.
Sattoriy, whose trial started in March, has insisted that the case against him was “based on lies.”
Sattoriy is known to be a harsh critic of the regional governor, Tora Bobolov. In one post on his Halq Fikiri (People’s Opinion) video blog, Sattoriy openly accused the local government of launching fabricated criminal cases against bloggers and vowed to continue to raise the issue of corruption among officials despite the “crackdown.”
Since his arrest in late-January, Sattoriy has been tried in a separate case and found guilty of defamation and distributing false information. According to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, the blogger was ordered to pay a fine for the offenses.
The Prosecutor-General’s Office has also rejected criticism by human rights organizations, saying that Sattoriy’s arrest was lawful.
Uzbekistan is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders organization’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.
Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Uzbekistan to repeal recent legal amendments that the group says “deepen restrictions” on online speech ahead of a planned presidential election in October.
The changes introduce prison sentences for crimes such as insulting or defaming the president online and making online calls for “mass disturbances.” They also make it an offense to publish statements online calling on people to violate the law and threaten public order, or show “disrespect” to the state.
President Shavkat Mirziyoev took over as the head of Central Asia’s most-populous state after authoritarian leader Islam Karimov’s death was announced in September 2016.
Mirziyoev has since positioned himself as a reformer, releasing political prisoners and opening his country to its neighbors and the outside world, although many activists say the changes have not gone nearly far enough.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has pardoned hundreds of inmates on the occasion of a religious holiday, including jailed Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Berdymukhammedov was quoted on May 9 as saying that the pardons marked the Night of Revelation, an important stage during the holy month of Ramadan which is currently being observed by Muslims around the world.
State media outlets reported that 1,035 inmates were released from prisons around the country on May 9, including 982 Turkmen nationals and 53 foreigners.
A spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jarrod Lopes, told RFE/RL that 16 followers of the denomination, who had been sentenced to prison terms for refusing to serve in the Turkmen armed forces due to their faith, were among the released inmates.
Turkmenistan’s laws oblige all men between 18 and 27 years of age to serve in the armed forces for two years. Failing to serve is punishable by up to two years in prison.
Berdymukhammedov’s predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, issued similar amnesty decrees once a year during Ramadan.
Berdymukhammedov, an authoritarian ruler who controls all aspects of Turkmen society, has issued such decrees several times a year, usually on the eve of state holidays.
Such acts usually do not cover political prisoners.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
TBILISI — The Tbilisi City Court has ruled to release from pretrial detention Nika Melia, the leader of the opposition United National Movement (ENM), after the European Union posted his bail to help end the country’s protracted political crisis.
The EU said over the weekend that it had posted bail of 40,000 laris (more than $11,600) for Melia, allowing for a court in the capital Tbilisi on May 10 to “order the release,” his lawyer Dito Sadzaglishvili said.
Melia, whose case has roiled the country’s political scene, went on trial on April 8 for allegedly organizing “mass violence” during 2019 anti-government protests.
Melia has rejected the charge calling it politically motivated, which the ruling Georgian Dream party denies.
His release was part of an agreement that the ruling Georgian Dream party and opposition leaders signed last month under European Council President Charles Michel’s mediation.
The ENM, however, had refused to join the EU-mediated deal until Melia was released from pretrial detention. There was no immediate comment from the party on the court’s May 10 ruling.
The political scene in Georgia has been on the brink of crisis since October parliamentary elections dominated by the Georgian Dream party, but which independent monitors said were marred by irregularities.
The opposition has boycotted the new parliament and staged protests demanding new elections.
The decision to arrest Melia after he refused to pay an increased bail bond led to the resignation of Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia in February.
Gakharia said the decision was unacceptable if it threatened to fuel political divisions in the Caucasus country of 3.7 million people. It also sparked mass protests as well as international condemnation amid mounting fears in the West over the ex-Soviet republic’s perceived backsliding on democracy.
The Interior Ministry carried out the arrest on February 23, five days after Gakharia stepped down, which further deepened an ongoing political crisis in the South Caucasus country caused by the parliamentary elections.
The 41-year-old politician faces up to nine years in prison if found guilty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Using fields as his canvas, Belarusian runner Vadzim Simanau creates virtual pictures with a GPS tracker to support anti-government protesters. When police cracked down on demonstrators, Simanau said he decided to create protest signs “that can’t be destroyed.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Council of Europe member states should reinforce efforts to combat violence against women by quickly ratifying and implementing a regional treaty on women’s rights that the group said has faced “unprecedented backlash” in a number of countries.
HRW made the call in a statement on May 10, the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention.
The convention has been ratified by 33 countries in the 47-member grouping since taking force in 2014.
Twelve others have signed but not yet ratified the convention, including Ukraine, which signed it in 2011.
Azerbaijan and Russia are the only two Council of Europe member states that have not signed the treaty.
HRW warned that some governments have withdrawn or threatened to withdraw from the treaty while others have refused to ratify it despite “soaring reports of domestic violence” during lockdowns aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed violence against women as one of the most far-reaching and persistent rights abuses, and a daily threat to the lives and health of women and girls around the world,” said Hillary Margolis, senior women’s rights researcher at the New York-based human rights watchdog.
“At this decisive moment, Council of Europe members should demonstrate they are serious about prioritizing the safety and well-being of all women and girls by committing to and carrying out the Istanbul Convention.”
The Istanbul Convention “establishes robust, legally binding standards for governments to prevent violence against all women and girls, support survivors, and hold abusers to account,” according to HRW.
It noted that the treaty mandates protections from forms of violence that are often not incorporated into national legislation, such as sexual harassment or forced marriage, and requires protections for all victims of violence — regardless of age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and immigration status.
But Turkey earlier this year decided to withdraw from the convention. HRW said the move “poses dangerous risks for the region” and called it “a setback for women’s rights in the country.”
In 2020, Poland’s justice minister announced he would pursue withdrawal from the convention, while parliaments in Hungary and Slovakia blocked its ratification.
Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court ruled in 2018 that the convention’s use of “gender” makes it unconstitutional.
“Conservative politicians and groups have erroneously claimed the convention threatens ‘traditional’ families, promotes homosexuality and so-called ‘gender ideology,’ and corrodes ‘national values,’” HRW said.
Some governments “claim that national legislation provides adequate protection from and accountability for violence against women,” while “many survivors continue to face stigma, dismissive attitudes from authorities, and social pressure to remain silent,” according to the group.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on May 9 presented one of the state’s highest honors to Peter Handke, an Austrian writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019 who denies the genocide in Srebrenica.
The Order of Karadjordje’s Star of the First Degree was given to Handke in Belgrade because of his “uncompromising fight for the truth,” according to a statement by the moderator of the ceremony.
Vucic said that by presenting the award, Serbia “shows its gratitude to its academic and friend Handke.” Vucic also thanked him “for everything you do for our country, for our Serbia,” and apologized that some Serbs “have not always been able to show enough gratitude for everything you have done for us.”
The honor is for “special merits and successes in representing the state (Serbia) and its citizens,” according to the website of the Serbian Army. A decree on awarding the honor to the writer was passed in February 2020.
Handke, who was declared an honorary citizen of Belgrade in 2015, arrived in Belgrade from Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he received the highest awards two days earlier by representatives of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian entity of Bosnia. Film director Emir Kusturica also honored him with the literary Grand Prize Ivo Andric in the eastern city of Visegrad.
In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, however, Handke’s visit to the region was met with rejection and dismay. The local media referred to him as a “genocide denier.”
Handke is well known for his support of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s policies in the 1990s. He was criticized by the international community for his support for internationally isolated Serbia, visits with Milosevic in The Hague tribunal’s detention unit, and attendance at his funeral.
Many in the Balkans see Handke as an apologist for Serb war crimes during the conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Bosnia marked the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide last year. In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were rounded up and killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.
The massacre was labeled as genocide by international courts, but Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials refuse to accept that wording.
The 78-year-old Handke, considered one of the most original German-language writers alive, has argued that Serbs were unfairly portrayed by the Western press as the only aggressors in the conflict.
Handke was a controversial choice for the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature. Bosnia, Albania, Croatia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Turkey boycotted the Nobel Prize award ceremony that year. Protests also were held in Sweden on the day the awards were presented.
Numerous reporters who reported on wars in Bosnia and Kosovo raised their voices against Handke on social media at the time.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The head doctor at the hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk that treated Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny has not been seen since he left a hunting base on an all-terrain vehicle on May 7, according to regional authorities.
Emergency services, hunting inspectors, employees of the Emergency Situations Ministry, and local residents joined in a search for Aleksandr Murakhovsky, the press service of the Omsk region Interior Ministry said in a statement on May 9.
A helicopter and drone were involved in the search, which was complicated by difficult terrain, including swampy areas, the statement said, adding that an all-terrain vehicle had been found about 6 kilometers from the hunting base.
Murakhovsky’s acquaintances reported that he was missing on May 8 in the north of the Omsk region in the Bolsheukovsky district, according to news reports.
A few months after treating Navalny, Murakhovsky was appointed health minister for the Omsk region.
Navalny was admitted to the hospital on August 20, 2020, after he became ill, forcing his flight to make an emergency landing in Omsk.
Initially, doctors at the hospital publicly admitted that the cause of Navalny’s illness was poisoning, but then denied that it was. After tense negotiations with the authorities, Navalny was airlifted to Germany for further treatment.
Murakhovsky, a member of the ruling United Russia party, delayed Navalny’s transfer to Berlin for two days after announcing that Navalny’s grave health condition was caused by a “metabolic disorder.”
WATCH: Jailed Opposition Leader Navalny Delivers Scathing Criticism Of Putin
Navalny, who returned to Russia from Germany in January, is currently serving a 2 1/2 year prison sentence on embezzlement charges that he says were trumped up because of his political activity. A Moscow court in February ruled that while in Germany, Navalny violated the terms of parole from the embezzlement case.
He recently ended a hunger strike to demand he be examined by his own doctors amid what he has described as a “deliberate campaign” by Russian prison officials to undermine his health.
Two other doctors at the hospital where Navalny was treated have died in recent months. Rustam Agishev, head of the trauma and orthopedics department, died in March after suffering a stroke in December 2020.
Agishev’s death followed the death of Sergei Maksimishin, deputy chief physician for anesthesiology and resuscitation at the hospital. Maksimishin died of a heart attack.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The fighting along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border on April 28-30 was a shock, despite the clear signs that tensions were building along that border for years.
It was the first time since the five Central Asian states became independent in late 1991 that militaries of two countries had engaged in combat against each other.
While the skirmishes were over relatively quickly, the fighting was on a scale never seen before in the area and the vast majority of casualties were civilians.
There have been attempts at reconciliation despite the mutual accusations over who is at fault — and the question of marking the last sections of the Kyrgyz-Tajik frontier has gained new urgency.
On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what led to the fighting, what happened during those three days, and how the fighting has changed the situation along the border and in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
This week’s guests are: from the United Kingdom, Madeleine Reeves, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Manchester and also the author of Border Work: Spatial Lives Of The State In Rural Central Asia that draws on Reeves’ extensive research in the exact area where the conflict occurred; from Geneva, Switzerland, Cholpon Orozbekova, a director of the Bulan Institute for Peace Innovations; from Germany, Hafiz Boboyorov, a guest researcher at Bonn University and previously with the Academy of Sciences in Tajikistan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.
Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Yegor Ligachyov, a former member of the Soviet Communist Party’s Politburo who was once seen as Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s right-hand man, has died at the age of 100.
Ligachyov, who in November 2020 became the first former top Soviet official to reach the century mark and was known for coming up with Gorbachev’s hugely unpopular anti-alcohol campaign, died in a Moscow hospital in the evening of May 7.
He was considered in the late 1980s as the second-most-powerful official in the Soviet Union after President Gorbachev, with whom he initially was seen as a close ally.
Ligachyov later became associated with anti-perestroika forces and was excluded from the Central Committee of the party in 1990.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ligachyov expressed regret for supporting Gorbachev and joined the leadership of the Communist Party.
Ligachyov was a lawmaker from 1999 to 2003.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Having a tattoo or an unmarried sister or an Instagram account — all of these things can count against women seeking custody of their children in Russia’s North Caucasus region, where local court decisions often reflect communities’ beliefs that children belong to the father’s side of the family.
In Muslim-majority Chechnya and Ingushetia, and to a lesser extent, Daghestan, deep-seated customs dictate that children go to the father’s side of family following a divorce. And while Russian federal law has demonstrated its preference for such children to stay with their mothers, city and district courts in the North Caucasus often go their own way in the name of tradition.
The issue is the subject of an extensive report by Current Time that tells the stories of several women struggling to wrest their children from a firmly established patriarchal system.
Nina Tseretilova’s efforts to be reunited with her three children have been thwarted for more than a year, despite the overturning of a local court’s decision to deny her custody because of her “lifestyle.”
In taking her kids away from her in July, Daghestan’s Kirovsky District Court was apparently swayed by testimony from Tseretilova’s ex-husband, Magomed Tseretilov, who argued that she had created an “unhealthy” moral and psychological environment for bringing up children.
As evidence, he presented photographs and videos from his ex-wife’s Instagram page in which she had conversations about “sex” and unconventional relations, and the court record noted that tattoos were visible on her body.
Tseretilova’s underage children, meanwhile, testified that she had hosted parties at which young people had smoked and consumed alcohol. The court was shown a music video by the Dagestani group Duet 11 in which Tseretilova plays a prominent role.
For her part, Tseretilova testified that she had married her ex-husband when she was 18 and that from the beginning he periodically beat her. She said she left him after he beat her while she was pregnant with their third child.
The court, taking into account the established traditions of Russia and of the Republic of Daghestan, determined that Tseretilova led a lifestyle “that does not correspond to the behavioral norms and rules of the majority,” and granted custody to her ex-husband.
Tseretilova, who tells Current Time that her ex-husband had “decided to punish” her after she pursued payment of alimony following their divorce in 2016, took the case to Daghestan’s Supreme Court.
But even though the high court ruled in her favor in March, her children have still not been handed over.
Zhanetta Tukhayeva has been working to get her eldest son back in an ordeal she says began seven years ago when her ex-husband, Ruslan Ibayev, kidnapped the boy for the first time, leaving their younger son with her only because she was still breastfeeding him.
In March 2020, the Leninsky District Court in the Chechen capital of Grozny ruled in favor of Ibayev, saying that both the couple’s sons should live with their father and that her parental rights be limited.
Ibayev’s argument in the case he initiated against Tukhayeva stressed the importance of “adats” — customary practices observed by Muslims in the North Caucasus — and cited her “divorced sisters” and “silicone lips” among reasons to deny her custody.
In its ruling, the court noted that Ibayev was an attentive father whose “social behavior was “completely based on the norms of Islam and Chechen traditions.”
It also backed Ibayev’s complaint about comments Tukhayeva made on Instagram in which she criticized the court proceedings as “laughable.” She wrote that her religious beliefs prevented her from getting any cosmetic procedures and accused her husband “of slinging mud and trying to intimidate her.”
The court, saying the post “shows what kind of person she is,” ordered her to delete her account.
The decisions were completely overturned just four months later by the Chechen Supreme Court, and Ibayev’s petition to appeal was denied. But Tukhayeva still has not been reunited with her eldest son and does not know where he lives.
Russian Islamic scholar Akhmet Yarlykapov explained that tradition- and religion-bound beliefs influence North Caucasus communities’ views on custody issues, particularly those involving women who married outside their clan.
“Following a divorce, the woman leaves for her father’s house, leaves for that clan. The children are considered to belong to the family of their father and, accordingly, remain in his family,” Yarlykapov told Current Time, the Russian-language network overseen by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. “With the grandmother, with an uncle, with anyone — but on the father’s side.”
In custody disputes, the influence of Shari’a law often leads the local court to side with the father’s family, according to Yarlykapov.
Olga Gnezdilova, a lawyer for the Legal Initiative project, which helps people file cases with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), said that in these cases it is common for local courts to scrutinize the “moral character” of the mother.
Gnezdilova says her organization has taken on many such cases from the North Caucasus. She highlighted multiple instances in which the fathers had died, yet local courts awarded custody to the deceased male’s families.
The lawyer added that Russian courts, referring to the 1959 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, have repeatedly enforced the declaration’s article stating that young children should not be separated from their mothers except in exceptional circumstances.
But while Russia does not officially recognize Shari’a law or adats, in practice Islamic law and tradition often compete against Russian secular law in the North Caucasus.
Gnezdilova said that while “regional judges have no legal basis to rely on in such decisions, they know that the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation does not like to review decisions about family disputes in the North Caucasus.”
She says that in some cases Russian judicial authorities have effectively upheld decisions by lower courts in the North Caucasus to deny the mother custody in favor of the father’s family.
In one example, Luiza Tapayeva’s four daughters were taken away by her husband’s family in Chechnya after his death in 2015. When she sued for custody, claiming that her four daughters had been kidnapped by their grandfather, the Urus-Martan city court decided the children should remain with the grandfather.
To the Legal Initiative’s surprise, Gnezdilova said, “the Supreme Court of Russia upheld this decision, even though the parents have a priority right in the upbringing of their children.”
The Russian government has been obligated in such cases to argue at the ECHR that the mothers’ rights had not been violated by the courts’ reliance on local customs.
“If the Russian authorities in an international court argue that the mother’s rights were not violated by deferring to tradition,” Gnezdilova asked, “then what can we expect from district judges?”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. prosecutors said they were seeking a 17-year prison sentence for a former U.S. Army Green Beret who pleaded guilty last year to years of providing classified information to a Russian military intelligence agent.
The filing on May 7 in U.S. federal court in Virginia follows Peter Debbins’s guilty plea last November to a federal Espionage Act charge.
According to the court filing, Debbins, 46, had a 15-year relationship with Russian intelligence dating back to 1996 when he was an exchange student from the University of Minnesota and on a visit to Russia for an independent study program gave an alleged Russian handler the names of four Roman Catholic nuns he had visited in Russia.
Two years prior, according to U.S. prosecutors, Debbins, whose mother was born in the Soviet Union, traveled to Russia for the first time and met his current wife in the central city of Chelyabinsk. Debbins’s father-in-law was a colonel in the Russian air force.
Debbins told Russian intelligence he considered himself a “son of Russia,” and “thought that the United States was too dominant in the world and needed to be cut down to size,” according to the indictment filed last year.
Court filings show that Debbins joined the U.S. Army as an active duty officer in 1998 and served through 2005, the last two years as a Special Forces officer.
While on assignment in Azerbaijan, he was discharged and lost his security clearance after violating protocols. That included bringing his wife with him to Azerbaijan and allowing her to use a government-issued cell phone, according to the court filing.
After being discharged from the military, he worked as a civilian for U.S. military contractors, in some cases in counterintelligence, including work as a Russian linguist.
The original charging indictment alleged that he provided information and names of his fellow Special Forces members while he was on assignment in Azerbaijan and Georgia.
According to his guilty plea, Debbins admitted that the Russian agents used the information he provided to evaluate whether other Special Forces officers could be persuaded to cooperate with Russia.
It wasn’t immediately clear when Debbins will be sentenced.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made a veiled dig at Russia and China when he told the UN Security Council that the actions of some big powers are sending a wrong message to other countries.
In a virtual session chaired by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on May 7, Blinken stressed the need to uphold international commitments, focus on human rights, and respect the principle of equality of all nations.
Blinken said that when UN member states — particularly permanent council members — violate these rules and block attempts to hold accountable those who violate international law, it sends the message that others can break those rules with impunity.
He didn’t name any countries, but his remarks appeared aimed especially at China and Russia, which along with the United States and its allies France and Britain are permanent, veto-wielding powers of the 15-member council.
Blinken’s comments come amid spiraling tensions between Washington and Moscow over issues including Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, the conflicts in eastern Ukraine and Syria, alleged meddling in elections in the United States and other democracies, cyberattacks allegedly from Russian hackers, and the poisoning and jailing of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.
WATCH: U.S. Doesn’t Accept ‘Spheres Of Influence,’ Blinken Says In Comments Aimed At Russia
Washington and Beijing are also at odds over influence in the Indo-Pacific region and human rights in Hong Kong and the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where the treatment of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups has drawn condemnation from the international community.
Blinken said countries don’t respect a founding UN principle of sovereign equality — according to which every sovereign state possesses the same legal rights as any other sovereign state in international law — when they “purport to redraw the borders of another” country, threaten force to resolve territorial disputes, claim entitlement to a sphere of influence, or target other countries with disinformation, meddle in elections, and go after journalists or dissidents.
Blinken also said that governments that insist what they do within their own borders is their own business don’t have “a blank check to enslave, torture, disappear, ethnically cleanse their people, or violate their human rights in any other way.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said that the time and place for his proposed summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, are still being worked out.
“I’m confident we’ll be able to do it. We don’t have any specific time or place. That’s being worked on,” Biden told reporters at the White House on May 7 when asked about meeting Putin in June — during his planned trip to Europe.
He said that Russia’s massive buildup of military forces near Ukraine’s border and in annexed Crimea “does not impact my desire to have a one-on-one meeting” with Putin.
“And you’ll notice he had more troops before. He’s withdrawn troops.”
Biden in April offered a meeting in a third country to discuss spiraling tensions over issues including military threats to Ukraine, the SolarWinds cyberattack on U.S. computers, and Russia’s treatment of jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny.
“We’re working through the question of some logistics – place, location, time, agenda, all the specifics – that was always going to happen at a staff level. It’s really up to them what they want to achieve,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on May 7.
Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, on April 25 said that planning for a face-to-face meeting between the two presidents was underway, adding: “June is being named, there are even concrete dates.”
Biden has repeatedly stated that while he will be tough on Russia over any hostile policies, he is also seeking to cooperate where the two sides have mutual interests. This includes on such issues as nuclear proliferation, climate change, the Iran nuclear deal, North Korea, and fostering peace and stability in Afghanistan.
During a trip to London on May 3, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington wants a “more stable, more predictable relationship” with Moscow but that will depend on Kremlin policies and how “recklessly or aggressively” it decides to act.
On May 7 in Kyiv, Blinken denounced Moscow’s “reckless” actions against Ukraine and said the United States is considering Ukraine’s request for “additional” military assistance to help deter Kremlin aggression.
WATCH: U.S. Doesn’t Accept ‘Spheres Of Influence,’ Blinken Says
Last month, Russia amassed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s borders as well as in Crimea, the biggest mobilization since Moscow seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014 and war broke out in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is backing separatists.
For his first overseas trip since taking office in January, Biden plans to join the other leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized nations for a summit in Britain set for June 11-13.
He will then fly to Brussels to participate in a NATO summit on June 14 and attend an EU-U.S. meeting with the bloc’s 27 leaders.
With reporting by Reuters
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
As deadly violence erupted on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border last week, two peaceful Kyrgyz-majority districts of Tajikistan — located hundreds of kilometers away from the conflict zone — found themselves dragged into media reports of “evictions” and “deportations.”
Kyrgyz media falsely reported that Tajikistan began deporting ethnic Kyrgyz from its Lakhsh and Murghob districts, sparking a barrage of angry social-media comments.
RFE/RL contacted authorities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — including local mayors and police — as well as several ethnic Kyrgyz in Lakhsh to establish what was happening. It also contacted several residents of Kyrgyzstan who say they know people who were deported from Tajikistan.
Neither Tajik nor Kyrgyz officials could confirm reports that ethnic Kyrgyz were being sent out of Tajikistan.
But both sides said in recent years and months, Tajik authorities have indeed been telling ethnic Kyrgyz they cannot obtain Kyrgyz passports unless they first renounce their Tajik citizenship.
Tajikistan doesn’t allow dual nationality with any foreign country except for Russia. Kyrgyzstan prohibits dual citizenship with any of its bordering states — Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and China.
“We do indeed tell people that they must choose between the two citizenships,” Faizullo Barotzoda, the mayor of Lakhsh district, told RFE/RL on May 5.
WATCH: Fallen Officers’ Families Grieve In Wake Of Conflict On Kyrgyz-Tajik Border
But the mayor insisted “the requirement is not related to the latest border conflict” between the two Central Asian countries.
Over the past year, about 100 ethnic Kyrgyz from Lakhsh have given up their Tajik citizenship and chosen to keep their Kyrgyz passports, Barotzoda said. About the same number of people decided to renounce their Kyrgyz passports and keep their Tajik citizenship, he added.
Asked about deportations of ethnic Kyrgyz from Tajikistan, Barotzoda said: “There have been cases in which Kyrgyz citizens who violated the immigration rules — a 60-day, visa-free stay — were deported from Tajikistan.”
But he said he wasn’t aware of any such deportation since the border conflict erupted on April 28.
Barotzoda did, however, give RFE/RL a list of 42 Tajik citizens, most of them ethnic Kyrgyz, who were sent back to Tajikistan through the Karamik border crossing between May 3 and May 6.
RFE/RL has asked Kyrgyzstan’s Border Service for comment but had not received a response as of May 7.
The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry claimed it knows of Tajikistan’s “expulsions of Kyrgyz citizens, both those visiting or permanently living in Lakhsh.” But it offered no evidence of the claim.
The ministry added on May 4 that it’s been closely watching the situation since mid-March amid reports of unannounced inspections of ethnic Kyrgyz people’s documents by Tajik authorities in Lakhsh.
Meanwhile, in the town of Murghob in eastern Tajikistan, district Mayor Husniya Rajabzoda said “no deportations” are taking place. Ethnic Kyrgyz make up 60 percent of Murghob’s population of some 16,000 people.
In Kyrgyzstan, the border service of the State Committee for National Security denied statements by the head of a Russian human rights organization that some Tajiks flying in from Russia had been beaten at airports in Bishkek and Osh since the border violence in late April.
Valentina Chupik, a Moscow-based human rights activist, said Kyrgyz officials should “do something with their employees” at the airports to prevent the harassment, which she claimed included beatings and extortion.
Tajik citizen Khursandmurod Khomidov, who flew from Russia to Osh on his return to Tajikistan on April 30, said he and several others were ordered to pay money at the Osh airport and later were beaten by Kyrgyz border guards at the border.
And Nuriddin Ilyosov, a Tajik citizen studying at Osh University, told RFE/RL that Kyrgyz guards extorted money from him at the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border crossing at Dustlik.
Well-Integrated Communities
In Lakhsh, ethnic Kyrgyz schoolteacher Bakhtiyor Aitmatov told RFE/RL that Kyrgyz and Tajiks communities live peacefully and are unaffected by the border violence that occurred some 700 kilometers away from his village.
“I didn’t hear about anyone being kicked out of their homes. I’m hearing it for the first time now from you,” Aitmatov said, when asked about reports of deportations from Lakhsh.
Ethnic Kyrgyz make up just over half of the Lakhsh district’s 57,000 people, which was previously named Jirgatol and is located in Tajikistan’s Rasht Valley.
“Kyrgyz and Tajiks are very much integrated [and] mixed marriages are very common in Lakhsh,” Aitmatov said.
Aitmatov lives in the Lakhsh town of Jirgatol, where he works at a school attended by both Kyrgyz and Tajik students. He said several people in his extended family have married ethnic Tajiks, and their children consider themselves both Kyrgyz and Tajik.
The family keeps close contact with Aitmatov’s elder brother and two uncles who moved to Kyrgyzstan permanently several years ago and received Kyrgyz citizenship.
Under a program called Kairylman (a returnee), Kyrgyzstan offers citizenship for ethnic Kyrgyz who move to the country from abroad. Tens of thousands of ethnic Kyrgyz have obtained citizenship since the program was launched in 2007.
Separately, thousands of ethnic Kyrgyz relocated from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan during the Tajik civil war in the 1990s.
During that war, Kyrgyzstan also offered asylum for hundreds of Tajiks who fled the violence in their home country.
‘Six Hours To Leave’
Akimalidin Kalbekov, a resident of Kyrgyzstan’s Chui Province, offers a different story.
Citing a friend from Lakhsh, Kalbekov told RFE/RL that ethnic Kyrgyz who don’t want to give up their Kyrgyz passports are being forced to leave Tajikistan immediately.
“[Tajik authorities] give them six hours to leave the country. Around 100 citizens are leaving Jirgatol,” Kalbekov said on May 5. “My friend came from Jirgatol.”
Kalbekov didn’t want to give his friend’s name over concern of possible retaliation against his relatives in Tajikistan. He said the friend’s wife has decided to stay in Lakhsh for the time being.
Another Chui resident, Rakhimbek Kasymov, said he worries about the “hardship” awaiting those deported from Tajikistan.
“When they come to Kyrgyzstan they have nowhere to live,” Kasymov said on May 5. “Some stay in relatives’ houses and have many difficulties.”
Kyrgyz-Tajiks Expelled
The Lakhsh local government says that 19 Tajik citizens — most of them ethnic Kyrgyz students — were deported by Kyrgyz officials to Tajikistan late on May 3. Twenty-three more reportedly were also returned to their home country through the same border crossing between Batken and Lakhsh on May 6.
After being tested for the coronavirus, they are currently staying in quarantine in Lakhsh.
Contacted by RFE/RL, several of them said Kyrgyz officials told them they should return to Tajikistan because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Among them are at least five people who have both Kyrgyz and Tajik passports.
It’s not known how many ethnic Kyrgyz Tajiks have obtained a Kyrgyz passport while keeping their Tajik citizenship, though some sources estimate some 10,000 Kyrgyz just from Lakhsh and Murghob have done so. It’s unclear if they have told Kyrgyz authorities that they have not renounced their Tajik nationality or vice versa.
An official at the Internal Affairs Department in Lakhsh told RFE/RL that some of those “dual citizens” who chose to keep Tajik citizenship are farmers.
“They have up to 10 hectares of farmland leased from the state and they don’t want to lose that,” the official said. “If they chose Kyrgyz citizenship they would have to obtain a residency permit and face completely different rules for renting the land and [paying] taxes.”
The official, who is directly involved in the “inspection of documents,” spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
Many other ethnic Kyrgyz Tajik citizens use their “second” Kyrgyz passports to get jobs in Kyrgyzstan, with the large southern city of Osh being a popular destination.
Some ethnic Kyrgyz hope that Bishkek and Dushanbe reach an agreement on dual-citizenship or a special arrangement for citizens to work and subsequently claim pensions and other social benefits in the neighboring state.
But with the ongoing tensions and deadly violence that has occurred, it’s unlikely the neighbors would consider such a step in the near future.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MINSK — Belarus’s authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka has downplayed a criminal complaint filed in Germany on behalf of 10 Belarusians alleging that the strongman has committed crimes against humanity.
Speaking two days before Belarus commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, Lukashenka referred on May 7 to the German lawyers who filed the case as the “heirs of fascism” and said they were in no position to judge him.
The lawyers said on May 5 that, on behalf of “torture victims,” they had submitted a complaint to federal prosecutors in the German city of Karlsruhe against Lukashenka “and other Belarusian security officers.”
“Who are they to judge me? For protecting you and my country? I do not reproach them. But they are the heirs of the generations who unleashed that war,” he was quoted by the official BelTA news agency as saying.
The 66-year-old Lukashenka, who has run the country since 1994, was officially declared the winner by a landslide of a disputed presidential election in August 2020. This triggered almost daily protests demanding that the longtime strongman step down and new elections be held.
The opposition says the vote was rigged, and the West has refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of Belarus.
Security officials have cracked down hard on the demonstrators, arresting thousands, including dozens of journalists who covered the rallies, and pushing most of the top opposition figures out of the country.
Several protesters have been killed in the violence and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used by security officials against some of those detained.
Lukashenka has refused to talk to the opposition about a new elections and responded on May 7 to a call from some U.S. lawmakers a day earlier for Belarus to hold a new vote by saying that he will do so only if the United States does the same.
“Let the Americans call early elections and we will call an election in Belarus that very same day,” BelTA cited him as saying.
He added that he considers the results of last year’s U.S. presidential election as having been “falsified,” a claim pushed by former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters despite showing no proof to back up their words.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Lukashenka and other senior Belarusian officials over the bloody crackdown. The European Union has followed suit.
Lukashenka looked to placate protesters in December by saying that there needed to be constitutional amendments before an early presidential election could be held.
His opponents, however, have called Lukashenka’s gesture a sham to help him cling to power.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Amnesty International says it has decided to redesignate Aleksei Navalny as a “prisoner of conscience,” after the human rights watchdog earlier this year stopped referring to the jailed opposition politician as such over past comments he made that reached “the threshold of advocacy of hatred.”
Navalny “has not been imprisoned for any recognizable crime, but for demanding the right to equal participation in public life for himself and his supporters, and for demanding a government that is free from corruption,” the London-based human rights group said in a statement on May 7.
“These are acts of conscience and should be recognized as such.”
Amnesty International announced in February it would stop referring to the Kremlin foe as a “prisoner of conscience” on the grounds that in the past he had made comments over his alleged advocacy of violence and discrimination and comments that included hate speech.
But the group said in its latest statement that the Russian government and its supporters used that decision to “further violate” Navalny’s rights.
As a result, Amnesty International launched a review of its approach to the use of the designation “prisoner of conscience” and decided as an interim step to “not exclude a person…solely based on their conduct in the past.”
“We recognize that an individual’s opinions and behavior may evolve over time. It is part of Amnesty’s mission to encourage people to positively embrace a human rights vision and to not suggest that they are forever trapped by their past conduct.”
The designation of an individual as “prisoner of conscience” doesn’t imply the endorsement of their views by Amnesty, it said.
By confirming Navalny’s status as a “prisoner of conscience,” the watchdog is “highlighting the urgent need for his rights, including access to independent medical care, to be recognized and acted upon by the Russian authorities,” according to the statement.
Navalny is serving a 2 1/2 year prison sentence on embezzlement charges that he says were trumped up because of his political activity.
He recently ended a hunger strike that he had been holding to demand he be examined by his own doctors amid what he has described as a “deliberate campaign” by Russian prison officials to undermine his health.
The 44-year-old has been in custody since January, when he returned to Russia following weeks of medical treatment in Germany for a nerve-agent poisoning in August 2020 that he says was carried out by operatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB) at the behest of President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has denied any role in the poisoning.
His incarceration sparked numerous protests across Russia which were violently dispersed by police.
Navalny’s anti-corruption organization has targeted many high-profile Russians, including high-ranking government officials.
In the course of his political career, he has also come under criticism for his association with ethnic Russian nationalists and for statements seen as racist and dangerously inflammatory.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
PRAGUE — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has called on Russia to stop “targeting” journalists after one of its contributors lost an appeal against her inclusion on Russia’s controversial registry of “foreign agent” media.
The City Court in the western Russian city of Pskov on May 5 said the inclusion of RFE/RL contributor Lyudmila Savitskaya on the Justice Ministry’s list was lawful.
“Lyudmila is not a ‘foreign agent’ — she, and RFE/RL journalists Denis Kamalyagin and Sergei Markelov, are Russian nationals providing objective news and information to their fellow citizens. We call on the Russian government to stop targeting journalists and blocking the Russian people’s access to information,” RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement late on May 6.
Russia’s so-called “foreign agent” legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and to submit to audits.
Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media. At the end of 2020, the legislation was modified to allow the Russian government to include individuals, including foreign journalists, on its “foreign agents” list and to impose restrictions on them.
Activists have described the “foreign agent” legislation as “restrictive” and intended “to demonize independent groups.”
Savitskaya and four other people — Sergei Markelov, a freelance correspondent for the North.Realities (Sever.Realii) of RFE/RL’s Russian Service; Denis Kamalyagin, editor in chief of the online news site Pskovskaya gubernia and a contributor to RFE/RL’s Russian Service; human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov; and artist and activist Darya Apakhonchich — were included in the “foreign agent” media list in December 2020. The ministry did not give any justification for why these individuals were listed.
‘You Have Turned Everything On Its Head’
In court on May 5, Justice Ministry representatives presented as evidence against Savitskaya articles she had written about anti-government protesters, alleged torture in Russian prisons, and the blocking of electronic communications in the areas around prisons.
They also presented a large number of documents marked “for official use only” from the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor-General’s Office, and other agencies that Savitskaya and her attorneys were not allowed to examine. They have said they will appeal the case to a higher court.
In her closing statement at the appeal, Savitskaya ridiculed the country’s justice system saying the Justice Ministry was “fighting against the wrong people” as all she was doing was “simply” reporting the facts and writing “in such a way that the authorities pay attention to the misfortunes of citizens and help them with their problems.”
“You have turned everything on its head, Justice Ministry representatives. You call a person whose work is to help people a ‘foreign agent.’ But the real foreign agents are not here in this courtroom. They are in the Kremlin and the State Duma,” she told the court.
“They are the ones who every day are passing repressive laws, taking away the rights to life and liberty from citizens, and barring people under the threat of prison from speaking the truth. They are the agents of some sort of foreign-to-us-all totalitarian state. They are. Not me. I am a journalist and I remain a journalist,” she added.
Savitskaya’s defense argued that none of the materials presented indicated that she was working at the behest of any foreign power.
In her remarks, Savitskaya noted that the Justice Ministry “made an interesting selection of my articles” in an attempt to “make me out to be a politician.”
“You cleverly forgot to include my articles about veterans who are living in rotting shacks; about the prisoners in concentration camps, who at the state’s orders are huddling in railway-station closets; about the child diabetics who are not being given the medicines they need; about the Pskov paratrooper who voted for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin his entire life and died during a military mission in Syria and about his wife, who was not granted his military pension,” she said.
“People in judicial robes and military epaulets with ranks bow obsequiously to our jaded authorities, which remain nonetheless an insatiable conspiracy. The law is finished and only terror remains. ‘Do you think this regime will last forever?’ I asked in court. The three in epaulets and the one in the judge’s robe remained silent. They all understand — it is just that today [the system] came for someone else,” she added.
In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time on the list.
Earlier this year, Russian courts began imposing large fines against RFE/RL for failing to mark its articles with a government-prescribed label as required by rules adopted in October 2020. RFE/RL is appealing the fines.
RFE/RL has called the fines “a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation,” while the U.S. State Department has described them as “intolerable.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
PODGORICA — Still rutted with historically fraught questions of religious and national identity, Montenegro’s political path took a sharp turn in August.
That’s when a diverse coalition of Serbian nationalists, populists, centrists, socialists, environmentalists, and anticorruption campaigners won just enough votes to edge out the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) that had run the former Yugoslav republic for 30 years.
A record turnout among Montenegro’s some 540,000 registered voters demanded change and heralded impatience with President Milo Djukanovic and the perceived clientelism that helped make him one of Europe’s longest-serving democratic leaders.
But now, as the incongruous 10-party coalition and its “cabinet of experts” approach six months in power, signs are mounting of roiling ethnic and national tensions as well as political obstacles that could further divide — or even destabilize — the Balkans’ smallest state.
Alongside a fast-paced reset in official relations with the powerful Serbian Orthodox Church headquartered in Belgrade, pro-Serbian Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic’s bid to refashion the country’s laws on nationality and citizenship has sparked “Montenegrin Spring” protests.
“We’ve got a polarized society in which I find myself on neither side and it seems to me I don’t belong to such a society,” Lazar, a 23-year-old in the capital, Podgorica, told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.
He described the “sides” as the “Komitis,” a reference to ethnic Montenegrin nationalists, and a “Serbian world” envisaged by proponents of closer cultural and political ties with Serbia.
“Whether these tensions will be resolved,” Lazar said, “I’m not sure it will happen anytime soon, and it seems to me that we’re sinking deeper and deeper into divisions.”
Using My Religion
Within weeks of taking power in early December, Krivokapic’s government introduced changes to a year-old Law on Religious Freedoms.
The amendments had been sought by the Serbian Orthodox Church and its Montenegrin arm since the law’s passage by Djukanovic and his allies in late 2019 — and Krivokapic’s For the Future of Montenegro alliance had promised ahead of the elections to make such changes.
One of the most contentious elements in the new law was an obligation for religious communities to prove their ownership of churches and other property prior to 1918, when Montenegro joined the future Yugoslavia under disputed circumstances and the Montenegrin Orthodox Church’s assets were eventually taken over by the Serbian church.
That led the Serbian church to fear the nationalization of its 700-plus churches and other sites in Montenegro if the law was rigorously enforced.
Its rushed, late-night passage by parliament was boycotted by pro-Serb parties, including some in the current coalition, and sparked months of clergy-led public protests that helped fuel opposition to Djukanovic and the DPS.
The 62-year-old Krivokapic — whose side jobs have included decades teaching information technology at a Serbian Orthodox seminary in Cetinje, not far from Montenegro’s capital — made rescinding parts of the law his government’s top priority.
Coalition lawmakers quickly approved the amendments and overrode Djukanovic’s veto in January.
Around half of Montenegro’s 620,000 citizens are thought to attend Serbian Orthodox services.
A far smaller — but vocal — number of Montenegrins attend services of the mostly unrecognized Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which Djukanovic has spent decades promoting as the rightful successor to the defunct church of the same name.
“The scar is, so to speak, still open,” Emil Saggau, research fellow at Lund University’s Center for Theology and Religious Studies, said. “The Serbian Orthodox Church might have won the battle for now, but the conflict is not over. If they don’t use the situation to defuse things further it might create a political and religious backlash.”
But Krivokapic didn’t stop there.
Since amending the Law on Religious Freedoms, he has seemingly single-handedly prepared a Fundamental Agreement to regulate relations between the Montenegrin state and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Krivokapic has kept its contents secret, but he and the new Serbian patriarch, Profirije, are expected to sign it as soon as this week.
Saggau called the agreement with the Belgrade-based church the “logical next step” because the Serbian church “has technically been in a sort of legal gray zone” since Montenegro regained independence in 2006.
The deal could “normalize the relationship,” he said, and “restore the Serbian Orthodox Church to the same position as the Jews, Muslims, and Catholics” in Montenegro.
“It is therefore hardly surprising that they came to an understanding,” Saggau said.
He called it a “deep blow” to the noncanonical Montenegrin church.
Otherwise ‘Mixed’ Reviews
Freedom House described Montenegro’s leadership in its Freedom In The World 2021 report as “a government of nonpartisan experts…[and] a de facto minority government supported by an ideologically heterogenous parliamentary majority, leaving it vulnerable to instability as its work begins in earnest.” https://freedomhouse.org/country/montenegro/freedom-world/2021
So rejigging church-state relations may have been the easy part.
It was the issue that most observers agree provided the decisive momentum going into the elections that flipped the result Krivokapic’s way.
“On other reforms or stated policy priorities, the picture [so far] is mixed,” according to Kenneth Morrison, a professor of modern Southeastern European history at Britain’s De Montfort University.
Among the new government’s successes, he cited Foreign Minister Djordje Radulovic’s pledge that Montenegro won’t deviate from its Euro-Atlantic orientation, although he noted that there has been “some skepticism regarding this.”
Morrison also mentioned last month’s arrest, in the coastal city of Kotor, of suspected senior figures in the Kavac clan, which is purported to be heavily involved in international drug trafficking and other serious crimes.
He said those arrests and a blunt public warning to the group by Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic could signal the coalition’s intent to make tackling organized crime “a key cornerstone of government policy.”
“But it is really too early to judge, more broadly, the efficacy of the new government,” Morrison said.
However, the government’s legislative vigor and its promised reforms have remained stalled since December.
One of the leaders of the senior governing Democratic Front complained last month that “the government hasn’t sent a single legislative proposal to parliament since December, and that shows a lack of strategy.”
But that same Democratic Front has reportedly conditioned its support for new legislation on judicial and prosecutorial changes that smack of payback for convictions against two of its members for an alleged coup plot around the 2016 elections that involved Serbians and Russians.
Such threats from the ranks of a disparate, three-bloc coalition with a collective one-seat majority hints at the potential for delays in the government’s legislative agenda.
“Given the very narrow majority that they have in parliament and, equally, how narrow the margin of their victory was in the 2020 elections, they are never going to be an overwhelmingly popular government,” Morrison said.
To make matters worse, as the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on, it is taking a huge toll on Montenegro’s tourism industry, which represented more than one-fifth of gross domestic product two years ago.
‘Shifting Center Of Gravity’
But Krivokapic has not been idle on one of the country’s most contentious topics: nationality.
Amended regulations that Krivokapic floated in March would provide a path to citizenship for tens of thousands of foreign residents currently prevented from becoming Montenegrin by a ban on dual citizenship.
Many of those residents are Serbian, prompting Montenegrin critics to decry the change as a thinly veiled “Serbianization” of their country, which split from a joint state with Serbia after a referendum in 2006.
“Patriotic” protests, many of them organized under the banners of a “Montenegrin Response” or a “Montenegrin Spring,” erupted in Podgorica and other cities in April to push back against Krivokapic’s initiative.
And nationalist incidents and demonstrations have been on the rise since election night when the DPS was sidelined by pro-Serb, pro-reform, and anti-corruption parties but some of the most boisterous celebrants sang Serbian national songs and waved Serbia’s tricolor flag.
“There were protests and efforts to draw attention to institutional corruption prior to the elections, which is one of the many reasons the results aggregated the way they did,” Kurt Bassuener, a senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council, a Berlin think tank, told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service. “But I think those who voted with that motivation clearly underestimated the potential downside — how quickly and how far the political center of gravity could shift.”
Montenegrin Interior Minister Sergej Sekulovic warned in late April that the postelection period has been marked by increased tensions and confrontation.
He said 152 rallies — almost all of them organized via social media and without permits — had attracted more than 130,000 attendees since August.
Such events “deeply divide the public and encourage an environment of intolerance and violence,” Sekulovic warned.
He cited attacks on religious buildings, incitement of religious and national hatred, and ethnic polarization.
“It appears to me that what had seemed to be a solid popular majority for Montenegrin statehood and identity as a multiethnic state was far less deeply rooted than many Montenegrins, let alone outside observers, believed,” Bassuener said.
Nationalism is a particularly painful topic in the Balkans, where wars that broke out amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s killed at least 130,000 people, many of them victims of ethnic cleansing.
In early April, Krivokapic requested the dismissal of Justice, Human and Minority Rights Minister Vladimir Leposavic after he questioned the UN war crimes court’s description of the 1995 Serb killings of thousands of Bosniak men in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica as genocide.
The Democratic Front’s parliamentary leader said Leposavic wouldn’t be removed “for as long as the DF exists” and added that every “Serb in Montenegro has the same view as Leposavic.”
A newly released poll this week showed that nearly two-thirds of Montenegrins think there are still the kind of ideologies and policies in place in their country that were responsible for the bloodshed of the 1990s. One-third of respondents agreed with Leposavic that it has not been “unequivocably established” that Srebrenica was genocide.
Parliament is due to debate Leposavic’s cabinet fate on May 11.
The atmosphere was toxic enough in late April for an elementary-school principle in the northern town of Pljevlja to be slated for dismissal after a photo on social media showed her wearing a shubara, a traditional peasant hat frequently worn by Serb soldiers during 20th-century conflicts, including the wars of Yugoslav succession.
Krivokapic was forced to comment on the case after a Democratic Front lawmaker raised the issue in parliament.
It’s not necessarily a good look for NATO’s newest member and a country that many have long regarded as the Western Balkans’ most eligible candidate for EU accession.
Ethnicity, nationality, and the sanctity of post-Yugoslav borders are already causing headaches in Brussels with the recent leaks of purported “nonpapers” among EU member states, one of which purported to suggest the breaking up of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Just this week, 266 intellectuals, artists, and other public figures from throughout the Balkans warned in an open letter to the U.S., EU, and NATO governments of the ongoing “pursuit of border changes or ethno-territorialism” in the region. It urged them to “confront” a “clear and present danger” stemming from decades of “deterrence failure.”
“There is still time for the U.S. and EU to arrest the current trajectory, which would eventually end in violence,” the signatories warned.
Boris Raonic, president of the Podgorica-based Civic Alliance, an NGO that promotes civil and democratic society and human rights, says the international community could help combat runaway nationalism with messaging and other encouragement “if there’s no desire or readiness by politicians in Montenegro” to do it.
“What is certain is that they don’t need another hotspot in the Balkans,” Raonic said.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Photo: TOBIAS MARSCHALL (Courtesy Photo)
Hey, you’re busy! We know rferl.org isn’t the only website you read. And that it’s just possible you may have missed some of our most compelling journalism this week. To make sure you’re up-to-date, here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL’s team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.
Nomadic Pamir Kyrgyz shepherds face a life-altering choice: Should they stay in Afghanistan’s isolated and poverty-stricken northeastern panhandle? Or should they accept an invitation to resettle in Kyrgyzstan? By Ron Synovitz
Russian teenager Olga Misik attracted national attention in 2019 when she was filmed reading the Russian Constitution aloud to body-armored riot police. Ahead of a verdict on criminal vandalism charges over a separate incident, she maintains her innocence — and her unrepentant final speech in court has rippled through Russian social media. By Robert Coalson
Russian journalist Eduard Shmonin believes he was targeted by investigators for his expose on massive oil theft in western Siberia. He’s now facing up to 11 years in prison. By Sergei Khazov-Cassia and Carl Schreck
A look at the beekeepers of western Georgia who risk their lives for liquid gold. By Amos Chapple
Hasan Akbarov, a 31-year-old Tajik border guard, was shot dead the day before he was set to celebrate his sister’s wedding. In Kyrgyzstan, border officer Isfana Bekzod Yuldashev died in the same conflict days before his 31st birthday. Their families are among those whose lives were shattered by two days of violence. By RFE/RL’s Tajik and Kyrgyz services, Margot Buff
Baha’is say officials at a cemetery in the Iranian capital have pressured them to bury their dead at a space containing mass graves of political prisoners executed in the late 1980s, in what Baha’is say is the continuation of state pressure and persecution on its members in Iran. By Golnaz Esfandiari
Thousands of Kazakhs have received their first shot of the Kazakh-made coronavirus vaccine QazVac, which is still in its final trial stage. QazVac’s developers insist it is safe and effective but “don’t have time” to publish more research results, causing some to be leery of it. By Farangis Najibullah and RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service
Opponents of Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka can face arrest simply for displaying the red and white colors of the opposition, even on socks. The longtime authoritarian leader is doubling down on fear to silence his opponents. By Tony Wesolowsky, Current Time, and RFE/RL’s Belarus Service
When spray-painted pictures began appearing on the streets of Tashkent about a year ago, they prompted a wave of photos on social media and excited talk of the “Uzbek Banksy.” Now, in his first-ever interview, he told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that when he started, he had never previously heard of the famous English-based street artist he was compared to. By Ray Furlong and RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In an interview with RFE/RL during a one-day visit to Kyiv on May 6, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to stand up “for the right of journalists to do their jobs.” His comments came as RFE/RL finds itself under increasing pressure in Russia, where authorities demand that it identify itself as a “foreign agent” in accordance with legislation that critics say is designed to crack down on independent media and NGOs. In recent weeks, RFE/RL has been confronted with multiple legal challenges and a record amount of fines for refusing to label its content. The targeting of RFE/RL has raised concerns the Russian government may be moving to shutter RFE/RL’s operations inside Russia. Blinken was asked whether he thought there was a chance to influence the situation.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A verdict is expected on May 11 in the trial of 19-year-old OIga Misik, who became well-known after reading from the Russian Constitution to riot policemen in Moscow in 2019. Misik delivered a fiery courtroom speech which has been widely discussed on social media. She faces up to three years in prison for splashing paint on government buildings during a protest last year.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MINSK — Several Belarusian activists who took part in rallies demanding the resignation of authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka have been handed sentences amid a continued crackdown following months of protests sparked by a disputed presidential election last August.
The Frunze district court in Minsk on May 6 sentenced 45-year-old Syarhey Sikorski to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of taking part in mass disorder and the possession and distribution of illegal drugs.
Sikorski was among demonstrators in Minsk on August 11 who protested against the official results of an August 9 presidential election that handed victory to Lukashenka, who has run the country since 1994. Opposition politicians say the vote was rigged and that their candidate, Svyatlana Tsikhaouskaya, won.
When riot police arrived to disperse one rally, demonstrators began pelting them with stones and other objects. Sikorski was present at the rally but said at the trial that he “did not do anything wrong” and was trying to assist people attacked by the police. It was not immediately clear if he had commented on the drug allegations.
Investigators said that when Sikorski was detained at his home in September, he was under the influence of drugs, which they claim was later confirmed by tests that found mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant drug of the amphetamine class, in his body.
The investigators also said that police found the drug in Sikorski’s apartment and later investigations revealed that he sold the drugs at least once to an acquaintance.
Meanwhile, the Pershamay district court in the Belarusian capital on May 6 sent another protester, Yauhen Rapin, to three years in “open prison” on charges of damaging a security camera on the wall of a detention center in Minsk during an anti-Lukashenka rally in October.
Rapin, the father of three children, pleaded guilty and asked for a mitigated sentence.
The open prison system is known across the former Soviet Union as “khimiya” (chemistry), a name that goes back to the late 1940s when convicts were sent to work at dangerous industries, mainly chemical factories, and allowed to live in special dormitories instead of being incarcerated in penitentiaries.
These days, a “khimiya” sentence means that a convict will stay in a dormitory not far from their permanent address and work either at their workplace as usual or at a state entity defined by the penitentiary service.
Also on May 6, a court in the western city of Brest sentenced local resident Syarhey Zubovich to 18 months of “freedom limitation,” a parole-like sentence for insulting online the then-chief of the Main Directorate for the Fight Against Organized Crime and Corruption, Mikalay Karpyankou, who currently serves as a deputy interior minister.
Zubovich pleaded guilty. The court also ruled that Zubovich’s Samsung mobile phone must be confiscated since it was “a tool used to commit the crime.”
In another western city, Pruzhany, a court on May 6 sentenced local resident Lyudmila Tsaranu to 18 months of “freedom limitation” for “distributing false information about a police officer via the Internet.”
Tsaranu’s posts on social networks targeted police officer Syarhey Urodnich, accusing him of “falsification of protocols and lying at the trials” of anti-Lukashenka activists.
Tsaranu rejected the charge, though she refused to testify at the trial.
Tens of thousands of Belarusians have taken to the streets to demand Lukashenka step down and new elections be held. He has refused to hold talks with opposition leaders.
Security officials have arrested thousands in the protests in a crackdown that has become more brutal with each passing month.
Several have been killed in the violence and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used against some of those detained.
In response to the ongoing crackdown, the West has slapped sanctions on top Belarusian officials. Many countries, including the United States, as well as the European Union, have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Halfway between opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s grim winter homecoming and September parliamentary elections that will test President Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy, analysts say Russia has entered a new era of repressions that poses risks for the Kremlin — and will be hard to reverse.
Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.
When Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko scheduled a meeting of the upper house of parliament after President Vladimir Putin’s state-of-the-nation speech last month, she said it would follow an address for a “new time.” It was unclear what she meant, and speculation that her remarks signaled some aggressive move by Moscow — such as a merger with Minsk or a new offensive against Ukraine – has not been borne out so far.
But she was not wrong: It is a new time.
Since Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny was jailed upon his return to Russia in January — and arguably since his poisoning last August, or even earlier — there has been a substantial alteration in the Kremlin’s approach, analysts say, and one that will be hard to reverse, even if Putin wants to.
Different observers have put it in different ways: One wrote of a “worst-case” scenario coming true; another said that Putin’s Kremlin is “killing off hope”; while a third tweeted that the Russian state has gone “all in on repression.”
Still another said the level of “repression and authoritarianism” in Russia today “marks a milestone in the political decay and intellectual debasement of late Putinism.”
“There is no way of escaping the realization that a major policy shift has taken place in Russia,” Mark Galeotti, an analyst, author, and expert on the state security services, wrote in an article published in The Moscow Times on May 1.
“A regime that for 20 years sought to be an exemplar of a kind of ‘hybrid authoritarianism,’” he wrote, has shifted to a more menacing style of rule that “could be called post-post-authoritarianism — or maybe just plain, old-fashioned authoritarianism.”
Since Navalny’s return, this shift has for some, at least, come to seem inevitable. Each week, perhaps even every day, has brought multiple fresh signs of an intensified crackdown on dissent — what Freedom House called Putin’s “vicious efforts to silence dissenting voices” ahead of parliamentary elections in September.
“The attempted murder of Aleksei Navalny in 2020 and his imprisonment…. This year was just the most prominent demonstration of the regime’s cruelty,” the U.S. government-funded NGO said in its annual Nations In Transit report, released on April 28. Russia’s National Democratic Governance score dropped to its lowest possible position, the report said.
“The suppression of protests with unprecedented severity, the extension of the foreign agents law to practically any citizen involved in political activities, and plans to tighten state control over the Internet all suggest that the Kremlin is fearful of its critics and determined to secure a choreographed victory in the fall 2021 elections by any means necessary,” it said.
But like other major moves that have ratcheted up tensions with the West in recent years, such as the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it was not easily predictable. And it was not widely predicted — certainly not before it became clear, just 14 months ago, that Putin would hand himself the option of seeking two more six-year terms after his current Kremlin stint ends in 2024.
“I didn’t think the Kremlin would go all in on repression as quickly and as deeply as it has,” Sam Greene, a political analyst and director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London, said in an April 30 thread on Twitter.
In November 2018, Greene “looked at the challenges facing Vladimir Putin, the options on his menu, and tried to predict what he’d do,” he wrote. “Looking back, I was right about most things, but wrong about one. I wish I hadn’t been.”
Among four paths Putin might choose to take in a bid to solve his problem, Greene wrote in 2018, one was to “break the constitution” by “engineering an end to term limits” for himself, as Greene accurately predicted Putin would do.
But he predicted Putin would stop short of seeking to “break the people,” to turn to “wholesale repression in order to cow opponents and make democratic legitimacy less important.”
Greene guessed wrong, he wrote, because he “misunderstood the cost-benefit analysis from the Kremlin’s point of view.”
He thought that Putin would reason that “increased repression created risks, if only because it could spark an unpredictable dynamic of contention,” and would decide not to take that risk, Greene wrote. But in the Kremlin, “the question was evidently posed differently: Was it riskier for the Kremlin to have an autonomous opposition, or to have none? The answer is clear.”
Putin’s administration “has gradually concluded that it is no longer bound by the niceties of democratic procedure,” Greene went on. “The Kremlin — much like the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong, or its neighbors in Minsk — has decided that outright repression is now a legitimate form of governance.”
Other analysts have also suggested they thought, or at least hoped, that such a dire turn of events was unlikely as well as unfortunate.
“I am struck by the extent to which Russia today, and US-Russian relations today, resemble the worst-case scenarios of those ‘possible Russia futures’ studies we wrote in the 90s and oughts,” Olya Oliker, Europe and Central Asia director at the International Crisis Group, wrote on Twitter on April 30.
Greene bet against the “break-the-people” option because, he wrote, “Given that the relationship with the opposition was manageable, why risk it?”
Galeotti suggested that he also struggled to understand why the Kremlin decided to take the path it has chosen.
Despite years of challenges to the viability of a “hybrid” or “postmodern” brand of authoritarianism that “relied largely not so much on fear and force as control of the narrative,” he wrote, Putin’s “regime was still solidly in power. There was no meaningful opposition, the elite were either content or fearful of losing what they had, and the state’s capacities, from financial reserves to repressive capabilities, in healthy surplus.”
“This makes it all the harder to explain “the apparent decision to drop the mask and turn to much more openly repressive measures,” he wrote.
He indicated there may have been several factors. One of them: The challenge mounted by Navalny, whose arrest and imprisonment have sparked several rounds of nationwide since his return on January 17 following treatment for the nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin. Another: Sheer momentum.
“Once you start along some roads, it’s hard to stop,” Galeotti wrote. “When [Navalny] survived and defiantly returned to Russia the regime clearly felt it had no alternative but to imprison him, lest it look weak. And once his movement began to hold mass protests, which spread beyond the usual metropolitical set and into towns and cities across the country, then the ‘logic’ of cracking down more broadly became hard to resist.”
Another ingredient is the Kremlin’s narrative — deep-rooted and still growing, it seems, despite a lack of evidence — according to which the West, and in particular Washington, is bent on undermining Russia and pushing Putin from power. There’s debate about whether Putin and other Russian officials believe that, but Moscow’s actions suggest that may not matter much.
In any case, Galeotti wrote, while “the scale of repression can and will be modulated depending on the needs and fears of the Kremlin at any time,” the road the Russian state has taken “is not a path that can be retraced.”
“Putin’s is now a throne of bayonets — and billy clubs — and he will have to sit on it,” he wrote in The Moscow Times article.
Greene, too, warned that Putin and his government have passed a point of no return. They will share the risks run by other states that have cracked down hard, from China to Belarus, where Alyaksandr Lukashenka has chosen violence and repression as the means to retain power amid determined opposition to his 26-year rule following a deeply disputed election last August.
“China may never again be able to govern Hong Kong with the consent of its residents; Lukashenka’s rule will last only as long as the police are content to keep him in power,” Greene wrote. “For the Kremlin, too, there is no turning back.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The United States has laid out all the concessions it’s prepared to make in order to rejoin the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, a senior administration official said on the eve of a fourth round of talks on bringing Washington and Tehran back into full compliance with the deal.
The official, who spoke to reporters on a conference call on May 6, said Iran shouldn’t expect major new concessions, and success or failure now depends on Iran making the political decision to accept those concessions and to return to compliance with the accord.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview it was unclear whether Iran is prepared to make the decisions necessary to return to full compliance with the agreement.
“They unfortunately have been continuing to take steps that are restarting dangerous parts of their program that the nuclear agreement stopped. And the jury is out on whether they’re prepared to do what’s necessary,” he said in an interview broadcast on May 6 on NBC.
The talks, which are taking place in Vienna, are focused on creating a road map for Washington to lift sanctions on Iran and for Tehran to reinstate restrictions on its nuclear program that were laid out in the original deal.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, the head of Iran’s delegation, said after the third round of talks ended on May 1 that Tehran stands by its demand for the United States to lift sanctions across a range of sectors, including oil, banking, and most individuals and institutions.
Araqchi told Iranian media there was progress despite the differences, but European diplomats from the so-called E3 — France, Britain, and Germany — said the talks had moved very slowly.
The talks began last month with senior officials from China, Germany, France, Russia, Britain, and Iran — the remaining parties to the deal – taking part. The United States does not have a representative at the table because it left the deal, but European diplomats are acting as intermediaries between the Iranian and U.S. delegations in Vienna.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said he wants the United States to rejoin the deal, which former President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, reimposing sanctions against Tehran. Iran responded as of 2019 by breaching many of the deal’s limits on its nuclear activities.
In parallel with the nuclear talks, Iranian media reported last weekend that there was an agreement between Tehran and Washington for the release of prisoners held by each side.
Washington and London have dismissed or downplayed the reports, as well as others that have said the United States is considering unfreezing some Iranian assets.
The latest report on the unfreezing of assets came on May 6 when CNN reported that $1 billion in Iranian funds could be unfrozen for use in humanitarian relief.
The funds would be allocated to the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, which was set up last year to allow humanitarian to be sent to Iran without violating U.S. sanctions, the report said.
The Iranian funds have been frozen in accounts in the United States and their release could serve as a goodwill gesture, according to sources quoted by CNN. But the plan is facing opposition from some members of Congress who view unfreezing Iranian funds as diminishing U.S. leverage.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Latvia has recognized the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide, drawing an angry response from Turkey.
The Baltic nation’s parliament passed a resolution on May 6 condemning and recognizing the tragedy with 58 of 100 lawmakers voting for the measure.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry slammed the decision as a “null and void attempt to rewrite history for political motives.”
National governments and parliaments in some 30 countries have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide.
U.S. President Joe Biden did so in a statement released on April 24 — Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
During and immediately after World War I, Armenians and many historians say as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed, in what Armenians call “The Great Crime.” Armenians have documented mass murder, banditry, raping of women, pillaging of property, and other atrocities.
As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey objects to the use of the word genocide and says that hundreds of thousands of Muslims also died in Anatolia at the time due to combat, starvation, cold, and disease.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The United States does not recognize “spheres of influence,” seeing it as an idea “that should have been retired after World War II,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service while on a visit to Kyiv on May 6. While making his remarks in response to a question by Olena Removska on U.S. reaction to a recent warning by Vladimir Putin that the West should not cross Moscow’s “red lines,” Washington’s top diplomat also said that sticking to this concept was “a recipe not for cooperation, but for conflict.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.