radiofree.asia

Category: Russia

  • From Minsk to Hong Kong, people power just isn’t working any more | Will Hutton

    Last week’s detention of an activist in Belarus is only the latest of many signals that we must relearn how to defend our values

    The west’s ineffectiveness in the face of the arrant use of torture, unlawful arrest, savage imprisonment without trial and flagrant abuse of international law, even close to home in Europe, is among the bleakest symptoms of our times. The people power we saw embodied in the strikes in the Gdańsk shipyards, the fall of the Berlin Wall and even the Arab spring has not presaged the new era of democracy we once hoped for. Instead, the 21st century is becoming defined as a new era of agile autocracy and vicious strong-man rule.

    As the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, prepared the UK’s response to last Sunday’s forced landing of a Ryanair jet by a Belarusian MiG-29 over its airspace to secure the trumped-up detention of a well-known democracy activist, Roman Protasevich, it must have crossed his mind that Britain’s response would have been so much stronger within the EU. The UK is now a little Sir Echo, weakening the west. It is part of the reason why Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, can act with impunity, as he refuses to acknowledge his loss of last’s August presidential election.

    Too many western companies and governments, wanting export orders, collude with controlling one-party states

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Australia Is A Giant US Military Base With Kangaroos: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to this article:

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    Everyone around the world should criticize the US empire constantly and without apology. Nobody anywhere ever needs to justify or defend criticizing the most powerful, destructive and influential government on earth. It’s always right to criticize America, in any way you choose.

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    Consider the possibility that the most powerful government on earth got that way largely by being willing to do whatever it takes to claw its way to the top, no matter how many people it’s needed to kill and oppress to get there and remain there.

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    The US empire is the single most depraved and murderous power structure on earth. The Democratic and Republican parties are two Nazis arguing over which route to take to bring their captives to the concentration camp.

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    Growing up in crushing poverty is inherently traumatic. Not everyone who’s been traumatized goes on to hurt people, but everyone who hurts people has been traumatized. Supporting a status quo which includes an impoverished underclass is supporting widespread crime and violence.

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    If you believe anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, then you’re naturally going to see an uptick in “anti-semitism” every time Zionism rips children’s bodies apart with explosives.

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    What is being done to Palestinians would be horrific and inexcusable regardless of the ethnicity or religion of their persecutors. Opposing apartheid injustice and abuse has nothing to do with opposing anyone’s religion, and attempts to claim it does are made in bad faith.

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    If I wanted to sabotage the pro-Palestine movement, I would make myself a part of the conversation by criticizing Israeli abuses and supporting Palestinian rights, then I’d start going “This rise in anti-semitism sure is concerning though, can we pause and focus on this please?”

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    Zionists will spend 100 times more energy attacking and smearing an influential Jewish defender of Palestinian rights than opposing a brazen Jew-hating white supremacist. Supporters of Israeli apartheid don’t care about fighting anti-semitism, they care about narrative control.

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    The rapist was forced to murder his rape victim because she tried to fight him off. The rapist has a right to defend himself. Rape has a right to exist. This is actually a very complex issue, too complicated for you to understand.

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    If Moscow hadn’t intervened in Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015, the US wouldn’t have begun training us all to hate Russia in 2016.

    If Russia would’ve just let the US do its thing with the Ukraine coup and the proxy war to topple Damascus, there would not have been a Russia panic, because the US war machine would not have felt an argent need to manufacture one. But then Russia would’ve eventually found itself surrounded by a sea of hostile empire and forced to relinquish its sovereignty.

    Same goes for China asserting its own power regionally and economically. At some point Russia and China both realized that if they don’t start taking bold action to prevent the US empire from absorbing the entire world, they’re going to slowly see their allies and trading partners disappear until they’ve got no choice but to join. That’s all we’re seeing with all this hysteria.

    If you don’t interfere in the empire’s agendas of conquest and absorption, it won’t be in a hurry to get rid of you; it will just absorb you when it’s got time and nothing else to devour. Interfere with its war machine, though, and you’re in for it.

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    Steal from The New York Times. It’s not legitimate for the “paper of record” whose narratives shape your world to hide its stories from you behind a paywall. Use apps, use private browsers, use archive.is; any method used to access NYT and similar outlets without paying them is perfectly legitimate. That information is your right; you shouldn’t have to pay a plutocratic propaganda institution just to find out what it’s telling people.

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    The US-centralized oligarchic empire has no ideology and no values beyond the acquisition of more power. If Islamic fundamentalism serves them in one part of the world they’ll support that there, while simultaneously backing woke progressivism overseas if that serves them in that part of the world.

    Imperialists often favor corporate liberals over conservatives in the western world because they now see liberals as better custodians of the empire’s western branches. There’s dwindling support for Bible thumpers and racists in our society, so the empire seeks better drivers.

    And you may be sure that the opposite would have been the case if our society hadn’t become too conscious to accommodate the right’s ugliest aspects at mass scale. If racism had retained widespread popular support, all oligarchic institutions would’ve backed Trump to the hilt. All they care about is power and continuing their reign.

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    If you think it was a big red pill to realize that the media’s narratives about the world are nothing like real life, wait til you realize that the same is true of your own narratives about your own life.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • The Russia-China Relationship Points to a Better Future for the World

    The United States is openly stating its desire for a better relationship with Russia. At the recent meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland, United States secretary of state Blinken and his Russian counterpart Lavrov held what has been termed as a cordial meeting. It is well known that United States president Biden is anxious for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Putin. The Russians are correct to be cautious about such a meeting. Biden has some lost ground to make up. His television interview shortly after being elected in which he agreed with the interviewer that Putin was a “killer” has not been forgotten in Moscow.

    The Americans have made other gestures to signify that they are interested in a better relationship with Russia. Among these gestures is the dropping of United States attempts to stifle the completion of the Nord Stream 2 project that will bring electricity from Russia to Germany. That deal is due for completion later this year and will probably be delivering Russian power to Germany by September.

    United States opposition to the deal always had a high level of self-interest as they wished the Europeans to buy their own, much more expensive, electricity. The Germans were never interested in that deal, for multiple reasons, not the least being that it would place German industry even more susceptible to United States influence than is already the case.

    Although Nord Stream 2 now looks highly likely to be completed, it is not yet a done deal. There is some significant opposition within Germany itself, somewhat surprisingly, coming from the Green Party who are currently polling well is advance of September’s elections. It is surprising because the Green Party attitude placed them in line with the American view, which is one indicator of how far the Greens have travelled from their early days.

    The support of German industry is likely, however, to be decisive, regardless of the outcome of September’s elections. The election also marks the retirement of Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been the dominant German leader for the past 15 ½ years, making her Germany’s third longest serving leader.

    The United States gestures toward improved relationships with Russia has, of course, a subtext. The Americans have decided that the greatest threat to their continued domination is the rise of China. If the Americans are to compete with China, they see the need to separate Russia and China.

    It is a fact that the Russian-China relationship has grown markedly in recent years. In trade terms alone, Russia’s trade with China grew 20% in the first quarter of this year. Apart from trade there are a number of other areas where the two nations are building an ever-closer relationship, not least in their bilateral trade, but also through the joint membership of the Shanghai Corporation Organisation and other international organisations.

    Those organisations have a common interest in developing strong trade relations, freed from the often-suffocating embrace of the western dominated financial institutions that have dominated world international trade for the past 70+ years.

    China has been at the forefront of developing this new system. It is exemplified, for example, by its Belt and Road Initiative, which now embraces more than 140 countries around the world, having representation in all of the world’s regions including Africa and Latin America. Those two regions have historically been under the heavy influence of the British and the Americans respectively.

    It is no surprise that the United States is a prominent non-starter with the Belt and Road Initiative, seeing it as a threat to their earlier domination. Unsurprisingly, they are joined in this antipathy by Australia whose federal government recently blocked moves by the state of Victoria to participate in the BRI. The Australian government has gone out of its way to antagonise the Chinese in recent years, which, to put it mildly, is a singularly stupid policy to pursue with one’s largest trading partner by a considerable margin.

    Australian ministers have recently complained that their phone calls to Chinese counterparts go unanswered and not returned. According to the Australian government it is all China’s fault, which tells one more about the Australian mindset than it does about the reality of the relationship.

    China in the meantime continues its relentless advance. As measured by the more reliable indicator of parity purchasing power, rather than gross domestic product, China is now the world’s largest trading entity, having passed the United States some years ago. One of the reasons for China’s success, in the BRI and elsewhere, is that they base their relationship with their trading partners on what Chinese leader Xi calls a “win-win” situation.

    Unsurprisingly, this approach, so different from the West’s way of doing business, is one that finds favour with a vast number of countries. United States attempts to contain China and limit its ever-growing influence around the world is therefore unlikely to succeed.

    That does not make the United States challenge any less serious and one fraught with potential risks. United States has had things its own way for so long, and has used and abused that power with virtual impunity, that it will not take the emergence of a serious competitor lightly. Therein lies the greatest danger to the world.

    The Chinese are not going to allow any return to the dark years when they were dominated by Western influence. If the Americans do something stupid, like a military response to their declining power and influence around the world, then the Russia-China close relationship will doom that effort to failure. The majority of the world’s countries who are benefiting from the new form of partnership will certainly lend their influence to ensure the return to the old days of United States dominance remains very much a matter of the past.

    The post The Russia-China Relationship Points to a Better Future for the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Emperor’s New Rules

    Credit:  pinterest.com

    The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.

    In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.” But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?

    We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.

    But even as the United States’ illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos, U.S. leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive U.S. and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the United Nations Charter and international law.

    President Trump was clear that he was not interested in following any “global rules,” only supporting U.S. national interests. His National Security Advisor John Bolton explicitly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 Summit in Argentina from even uttering the words “rules-based order.”

    So you might expect us to welcome Blinken’s stated commitment to the “rules-based order” as a long-overdue reversal in U.S. policy. But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count, and the Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.

    For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a “rules-based order” seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia. At a May 7 UN Security Council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with “other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else.”

    The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations.

    The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from the Hague Peace Conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949, including the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

    As President Franklin Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress on his return from Yalta in 1945:

    It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries – and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join. I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace.

    But America’s post-Cold War triumphalism eroded U.S. leaders’ already half-hearted commitment to those rules. The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the United States must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force, exactly what the UN Charter prohibits. Madeleine Albright and other Democratic leaders embraced new doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and a “responsibility to protect” to try to carve out politically persuasive exceptions to the explicit rules of the UN Charter.

    America’s “endless wars,” its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.

    Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier. It has failed to sign or ratify about fifty important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children’s rights to arms control. Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law, and the new Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the pandemic.

    So is Blinken’s “rules-based order” a recommitment to President Roosevelt’s “permanent structure of peace,” or is it, in fact, a renunciation of the United Nations Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity?

    In the light of Biden’s first few months in power, it appears to be the latter. Instead of designing a foreign policy based on the principles and rules of the UN Charter and the goal of a peaceful world, Biden’s policy seems to start from the premises of a $753 billion U.S. military budget, 800 overseas military bases, endless U.S. and allied wars and massacres, and massive weapons sales to repressive regimes. Then it works backward to formulate a policy framework to somehow justify all that.

    Once a “war on terror” that only fuels terrorism, violence and chaos was no longer politically viable, hawkish U.S. leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—seem to have concluded that a return to the Cold War was the only plausible way to perpetuate America’s militarist foreign policy and multi-trillion-dollar war machine.

    But that raised a new set of contradictions. For 40 years, the Cold War was justified by the ideological struggle between the capitalist and communist economic systems. But the U.S.S.R. disintegrated and Russia is now a capitalist country. China is still governed by its Communist Party, but has a managed, mixed economy similar to that of Western Europe in the years after the Second World War – an efficient and dynamic economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in both cases.

    So how can these U.S. leaders justify their renewed Cold War? They have floated the notion of a struggle between “democracy and authoritarianism.” But the United States supports too many horrific dictatorships around the world, especially in the Middle East, to make that a convincing pretext for a Cold War against Russia and China.

    A U.S. “global war on authoritarianism” would require confronting repressive U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not arming them to the teeth and shielding them from international accountability as the United States is doing.

    So, just as American and British leaders settled on non-existent “WMD”s as the pretext they could all agree on to justify their war on Iraq, the U.S. and its allies have settled on defending a vague, undefined “rules-based order” as the justification for their revived Cold War on Russia and China.

    But like the emperor’s new clothes in the fable and the WMDs in Iraq, the United States’ new rules don’t really exist. They are just its latest smokescreen for a foreign policy based on illegal threats and uses of force and a doctrine of “might makes right.”

    We challenge President Biden and Secretary Blinken to prove us wrong by actually joining the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law. That would require a genuine commitment to a very different and more peaceful future, with appropriate contrition and accountability for the United States’ and its allies’ systematic violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the countless violent deaths, ruined societies, and widespread chaos they have caused.

    The post The Emperor’s New Rules first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Yury Dmitriev wins 2021 Sakharov Freedom Award

    Thomas Nilsen in the Barents Observer of 21 May reports that The Norwegian Helsinki Committee has given its 2021 award, the Sakharov Freedom prize, to Russian dissident Yury Dmitriev. for more on this award and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/DC70DA62-BCB5-497A-A145-79D1F865FC11

    Dmitriev is well known for his research and campaigns to create a memorial to the victims of Soviet terror in the Republic of Karelia, a northwestern province near Russia’s border to Finland. see also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/303c010f-033a-45b1-9d25-ed42d99b1da9

    “Yuri Dmitriev has returned the human value back to the Russian state. He confronts the past and gives a new vision for the future, which today’s regime does not have,” says Secretary General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Geir Hønneland, to the Barents Observer.

    Explaining the reason behind the award, Hønneland says it is not only about Dmitriev as a historian. “His work has already inspired thousands of young and old people, who want to find their dearest in the darkest graves. It is about hope and common identity.”

    Millions were killed during Soviet terror, but the victims of these atrocities and their living relatives have never been given real justice. This was what Yury Dmitriev was working on. In the forests of Karelia, tens of thousands of people were shot and killed without trial or conviction and buried in mass graves.

    Dmitriev is currently serving a 13 years prison sentence and is considered a political prisoner by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and other leading human rights organizations. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/10/01/dunja-mijatovic-calls-on-russia-to-end-judicial-harassment-of-human-rights-defenders/

    https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/democracy-and-media/2021/05/jailed-russian-historian-receives-sakharov-freedom-award

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Ottoman’s Forever Empire and its Multiple Triggers for War

    Trading Genocides

    On April 24, 2021, US President Joseph Biden declared that the massacre of 1.5 million Turkish Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide. As to whether genocide is the word Americans can consent to use about Native Americans who suffered death, torture, displacement, apartheid and disease at the hands, mainly, of European settlers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a lot less clear, although some state governors have gone for it. As for slavery, not until July 2008 did the US House of Representatives apologize for American slavery of blacks and the subsequent discriminatory laws and practices that have continued to marginalize and oppress a population that today constitutes over 47 million or 14% of the US population. 9 States have officially apologized for their involvement in the enslavement of Africans.

    European and American histories are replete with massacres, genocides, and unjust applications of overwhelmingly disproportionate force against indigenous peoples and others who have stood in the way of the material interests of their invaders and conquerors. The US slow determination to condemn Turkey for crimes not dissimilar to those that it has itself committed, abundantly, and in recent history, serves the cause of an official hypocrisy that has long characterized US foreign policy – bedazzling, confusing or distracting its own domestic citizenry from the ugliness of forever imperialism.

    Turkey, none too happy about being charged with genocide was hardly taken by surprise. While Turkey has always defended itself against such charges, several Ottoman officials were indeed tried and hanged for their role in the Armenian atrocities. (Which Americans were hanged for atrocities against the Indigenous peoples?). It was not only Turks who were implicated. Many Kurds, who today represent Turkey’s major internal nemesis (matching its external, Greece), participated. Others condemned the atrocities. Some Kurds who participated later atoned. Both Armenian and Kurdish exiles of the collapse of the Ottoman empire ultimately established themselves in Syria under French administration and where the Allawi Shia minority was later to extend protection to Christians against Sunni extremism and concede a fragile autonomy to the Kurds. Today, the Assad regime and Syrian Kurds face off against Turkish invaders who have afforded protection to as many as five million jihadist and former-ISIS supporters around Afrin and Idlib, while the US uses Kurdish forces (principally the SDF) to exploit Syrian oil and gas on its behalf and has them maintain prisons and camps for ISIS remnants.

    Biden’s charge was a politically nuanced expression of growing US dissatisfaction with its NATO partner even if, by the same token, it extended a measure of sympathy to the former Soviet and still pro-Russian nation of Armenia, which had suffered at the hands of Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey, in the 2020 battle for and successful acquisition of disputed territories of Nagorno-Karabakh. Might Armenia, possibly overcome by US moral magnanimity, wrench itself further away from the sphere of Russian influence and look with greater favor upon the USA? Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous oblast in Azerbaijan but sharing religious, cultural, and linguistic features of neighboring Armenia. In 1988 the parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh had voted to unify with Armenia. A UN Security Council resolution in 1993 called on Armenia to withdraw its forces from the Azerbaijani district of Kelbajar. Turkey imposed an economic embargo on Armenia and the border was closed. The eruption of hostilities in 2020 was possibly triggered by Armenia’s decision to restore an old border checkpoint, located 15km from Azerbaijan’s export pipelines or by an Azerbaijani incursion into Armenian territory.

    Turkish relations with Turkic Azerbaijan, whose population is around 10 million, and with whom it shares 11 miles of border have always been strong. Turkey has helped Azerbaijan realize its economic potential from the Caspian Sea by purchasing Azerbaijani gas and cooperating with Azerbaijan and Georgia in infrastructural projects such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Trans-Anatolian pipeline that connects to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) at the Turkish border with Greece at Kipoi.

    A Renascent Empire

    It is doubtful that Biden’s endorsement of the “G” word will do much to further complicate relations between the USA and Turkey, but it represents a good moment to pause and reassess what those complications are and the directions in which they point for the future of global peace and conflict. For the major questions today are not to do with the question of genocide as such but with whether, having breathed new life into the Ottoman corpse, Turkey rejoins the ranks of forever empires and, if so, the regional and global impacts this will have. The questions invoke more than empirical calculations of national interest since they have as much or more to with religion (especially Sunni Islam), transnational ethnic (Turkic) identity, national regeneration, energy policy under conditions of climate change and, not least, social class and gender inequities.

    That Turkey is a renascent empire is clear enough. By 2021, Turkey had engaged in barely contested or recent uncontested military actions in Iraq, Syria and Libya, had played proxies in South Caucasus and Yemen while engaging in disputes with Greece, strongly supporting the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and aspiring eastward along the pan-Turkic horizon towards western China. On February 19, 2021, the nationalistic State-owned Turkish television station TRT1 showed a map of the territories it claimed Turkey would control within the next thirty years. They included many Russian and FSU territories including Rostov, Volgograd, Astrakhan, Samara Oblasts, Chuvashia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Adygea, North Ossetia, and Crimea, including Sevastopol. Turkey was predicted to extend its sphere of influence to include Greece, southern Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Gulf countries, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Curiously, the map originated in a book published in 2009 by the founder of Stratfor Center for Research in International Politics.

    It might be appropriate to laugh this off as fanciful delusion, as did many Russian commentators, but by 2021 it was at least clear that Turkey had considerably and aggressively expanded its regional and global influence. Turkey had joined the Council of Europe in 1950 and the European Customs Union in 1995 and embarked on negotiations for membership of the EU in 1999. Yet mirroring the pro-Islamist orientations of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Justice and Development Party (AKP) that has held power continuously since 2003 — and in a corrective to the overly coercive imposition of western legal, cultural, and technological practices by the country’s founder Kemal Ataturk from 1923 (sustained by the military up until its participation in an attempted coup against Erdogan in 2016) – the AKP has exerted a strong eastward pull in recent years. This was partly cause and partly result of the stalling in 2015 of negotiations for entry to the EU, reflecting EU concerns about human rights and the rule of law, particularly in the light of the merger in 2015 of the AKP with the anti-European Nationalist Movement Party. In addition, the escalation of Turkish tensions with fellow NATO member Greece, as Turkey pressed claims to the right to prospective oil and gas deposits in what may be Greek maritime territories, has further impaired its image in Brussels.

    A Militaristic Empire of Bases, Interventions, and Soft Power

    Turkish forces were mainly instrumental in bringing about the formation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in 1974. This gained independence in 1983 but is only recognized by Turkey. Since 2018, Turkey has occupied a significant stretch of Syrian land along Turkey’s border with Syria, enveloping as many as five million people.

    Earlier, it had invaded northern Iraq in its perpetual quest to subjugate Kurdish populations. Turkish armed attacks in Iraq started in 2007 with an air attack involving 50 fighter jets. Turkey’s 2008 “Operation Sun” involved 10,000 troops. Turkey would likely be an influential party to the takeover by NATO, involving 5,000 NATO troops, of US training and military operations in Iraq from 2021.

    It was engaged in the conflict in southern Yemen through its support for the country’s local branch (the Reform Party) of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is represented in the government of Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed based in the south-eastern port city of Aden, thus helping fill the vacuum created by the downfall of the Ali Abdullah Saleh regime in February 2012 and an Iranian-staged coup by Houthi militia against President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi in March 2015. This raised concern in Egypt that Turkey’s efforts to increase its presence near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which Gulf oil is transported before reaching the Suez Canal, will threaten the security of Egypt and the Arabian Gulf. Turkey maintains a military base in Djibouti, has tried to gain a foothold both in Somalia and the Sudanese Red Sea island of Suakin.

    Altogether, Turkey maintained bases in Qatar, Libya, Somalia, Northern Cyprus, Syria, and Iraq. Turkey had established a strong alliance with the UN-approved Government of National Accord (the GNA) in Tripoli, Libya, by agreeing to establish an Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean as a step towards claiming rights to ocean bed resources, and by stationing Turkish forces in January 2020 in defense of Tripoli against the forces of a rival government based in Tobruk, eastern Libya, under former CIA asset Khalifa Belasis Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army. While the UN Secretary General registered the deal on October 1, 2020, the Tobruk government (supported by the EU, Greece, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Malta, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Serbia, Syria, Israel, Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Arab League) denounced Turkey’s agreement with the GNA as illegal. Notably, Greece protested that it ignored the presence of Greek islands Crete, Kasos, Karpathos, Kastellorizo and Rhodes, and their respective maritime borders. Turkey’s seismic survey ships and navy vessels regularly clash with Greek vessels near the Greek island of Kastellorizo. In August 2020, Greece and Egypt signed their own maritime deal in response, an exclusive economic zone for oil and gas drilling rights. Yet Turkey wields considerable influence over the coalition government that was established in March 2021.

    Turkey played a significant role in support of Azerbaijan in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2021. Turkey’s President Erdogan was the guest of honor at the Azerbaijani victory ceremony in Baku in December 2020, and hailed the “one nation, two states” relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

    In the gathering conflict over water rights between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in spring 2021, it was expected that Turkey (leader of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States which comprises Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan) would side with Kyrgyzstan, which considers itself a Turkic nation. Tajikistan speaks a language that is related to predominantly Iranian languages Farsi and Dari.

    Turkish influence is further enhanced by its considerable diaspora, giving Turkey some leverage over the internal politics of advanced nations with large Turkish immigrant populations, including France and Germany. This extends beyond Turkish ethnic communities as such to all Muslim communities, especially Sunni, open to persuasion that the Turkish state speaks on behalf of the Islamic world. Turkish charities have been active among the 5.7 million Muslims in France, for example, where 50% of imams are trained in turkey and serve Turkish interests while benefitting from Qatari funding.

    In addition to its international interventions Turkey’s natural assets grant it considerable leverage over global and regional trade, and military uses of the Turkish straits, Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

    A Troubling US and European Ally

    Turkey has been a principal ally of the USA throughout much of the Syrian conflict, following the uprisings against the Baathist regime of Bashar Assad in 2011. Experts are divided as to the extent to which these were genuine outpourings of Arab-Spring demands for more democracy, on the one hand, or incited, exploited and expropriated by jihadist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood — that thirty years previously had staged a violent campaign against Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father — and for which there was considerable support from Sunni Turkey as well as funding from Qatar. Turkey turned a blind eye to CIA and jihadist trafficking of fighters and materiel across the border with Syria and allowed itself to be used as a base for oppositional groups. (See also here). Despite a souring of US-Turkish relations following the attempted “Gülen” coup in 2016 against Turkish President Erdogan (who claimed that the USA had harbored its alleged progenitor, Muhammed Fethullah Gülen), the USA did little or nothing to contain a Turkish invasion of northern Syria that year, even though its most prominent victims were US allies, the Kurds, thousands of whose families around Afrin were displaced to make room for hundreds of thousands of oppositional Syrians and foreigners. Some of the new arrivals were bussed up from Ghouta under the terms of a deal agreed between Turkey and Russia. Turkey set up its own administration in the area, and incorporated it within Turkish electricity grid, cellphone networks and currency. It trained and incorporated oppositional militia who were integrated into a military police force, while establishing compliant local Syrian councils to run things. 500 Syrian companies were registered for cross-border trade. In 2019 the USA appeared to greenlight a further Turkish invasion by removing (some) US troops from the area, and in 2020 Turkey stood against a Russian and Syrian offensive on Idlib, although sources differ as to whether it was a win or a lose for Turkey. A continued Turkish occupation of northern Syria assists the USA and NATO in a medium-term policy, following a decade of inconclusive war, to impoverish and destabilize what remains of Assad’s Syria, even as some Arab nations, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, seek a road back to Damascus despite steep US sanctions that stand in their way. Turkish intervention in Syria has come at a high price: 3.7 million Syrian refugees on top of a domestic population of 84 million, and this in time will likely prove a major source of domestic aggravation. Whether Turkey’s Syrian intervention has achieved greater national security against Kurdish PKK insurrectionists or, to the contrary, consolidated Kurdish opposition to Turkey and provoked an assured succession of Kurdish terrorist attacks into the foreseeable future, is moot.

    Turkey has proven helpful to the USA as a member of NATO since 1952, its hosting of US military and air bases (notably Incirlik) and nuclear weapons and, more recently, in its military assistance to Azerbaijan against the much weaker Armenian (and Russian) interests in Nagorno-Karabakh (which Russia did little or nothing to defend despite Armenia’s membership of the Russian-led Collective Treaty Security Organization [CTSO], and despite Azerbaijan’s shooting down of a Russian helicopter over Armenian territory).

    Turkey provided robust support for the US-backed coup regime of President Zelensky in Ukraine against Russia, including the sale to Ukraine of up to 17 unmanned aerial vehicles in 2019, persistent refusal to recognize Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 (to which Turkey itself may lay historical claim), [There was a referendum where Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia — DV Ed] its assistance to the anti-Russian Tatars of Crimea, its cooperative partnerships with anti-Russian Georgia, and its control over access from the Aegean to the Black Sea (through the Turkish straits which include the Bosporus, sea of Marmara and Dardanelles), which it helps to patrol, and the Sea of Azov. In all these and other ways Turkey has contributed to US and NATO efforts to harass and contain Russia.

    Troubled US Patron

    The USA is not happy with (and has implemented sanctions in retaliation for) Turkey’s purchase in 2017 of Russia’s S-400 military defense system. The purchase had helped Turkey atone for its shooting down, for little apparent reason, of a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M attack aircraft in 2015 that had allegedly strayed into air space above the formerly Syrian province of Hatay – Syrian rebels shot the pilot as he descended by parachute and downed a rescue helicopter – constituting the first NATO downing of a Russian or Soviet warplane since an attack on the Sui-ho Dam during the Korean War in 1953. The USA is also irritated by Turkey’s conciliatory stance towards Nord Stream 2 and its involvement in TurkStream 1 and TurkStream 2, all of which facilitate the delivery of Gazprom oil and gas to Europe and impede US designs on the European market for its liquefied natural gas (LNG).

    Turkey’s Bi-Polar Economy

    Turkey’s economy has grown considerably in the 21st century, with average GDP growth averaging 5.4% 2003-2013 and, apart from China, Turkey outperformed all its peers in the fourth quarter of 2020. Turkey’s GDP growth of 5.9% was faster than for the G-20 nations in 2020 excepting China’s 6.5% rate. Its relations with China and China’s Belt and Road initiative are robust, even to the point of Turkish disinclination to intervene in the controversies over allegations of China’s treatment of the Turkic Uyghurs, another source of immigration to Turkey.

    Yet Turkey’s currency is fragile. The lira collapsed 50% against the US dollar 2017-2020, and inflation hit 15% in 2019 in response to government’s resort to printing money via its ownership of the Central Bank. While net national debt is a healthy 35.2% of GDP, foreign currency reserves are relatively low and inflation is high. The currency crisis reflects domestic political instability, international diplomatic errors, a balance of trade deficit, over-reliance on construction for growth, and over-dependence on foreign currency loans in the private sector. The Covid 19 epidemic badly bruised Turkey’s income from tourism. The crisis intensified in the final quarter of 2020 with the resignation of Turkey’s finance minister (son-in-law to President Erdogan) and ouster of the head of the Central Bank, following a precipitate further collapse of the lira. Erdogan took the opportunity to reassure the investment community of his faith in financial profiteering and in Turkey as a globally attractive source of cheap labor. Foreign investors likely to be of considerable importance in efforts to stabilize the Turkish economy include China, which is expected to participate in the Istanbul Canal project, and Qatar, which promised billions of new investments at the end of 2020.

    The Energy Factor

    Energy lies close not just to the country’s economy but to the existential center of neo-Ottomanism and its many apparent contradictions between domination, self-sufficiency, and dependency. It has both nurtured and stifled Turkey’s vacillating economy. This dynamic plays out in at least four principal ways:

    1. Control over oil, gas, and other energy flows by tanker through the Turkish (Bosporus) straits and a planned additional waterway, Erdogan’s pet project, the Istanbul Canal. As a hub for the supply of gas from Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East to Europe and other Atlantic markets, Turkey exercises enormous potential leverage over other nations that is immediately susceptible to political manipulation. State-owned corporations are powerful players in Turkish energy politics. They include TPAO for petroleum, domestically producing 7% of Turkish petrol consumption; BOTAS, the state-owned Petroleum Pipeline Corporation; and state-owned Tupras which controls 85% of Turkey’s refinery capacity. Countries that border the Black and Azov Seas are significantly dependent on the Bosporus Straits for passage of imports and exports. Many ports on the Azov ship grain to Turkey, for example. Russia exerts significant control over passage from the Black to the Azov seas via the Kerch strait, half of which it owns. Future monetization of Turkey’s advantage as gatekeeper of the potential Bosporus chokehold will likely be enhanced by construction of the Istanbul Canal which may not be constrained, it is thought, by the Montreux Convention of 1936 that currently regulates conditions of passage through the Straits, and that will permit Turkey to charge additional fees in return for speedier, more expansive permissions and passage. Critics fear the costs (an estimated $15 billion) of such an enormous enterprise and its environmental consequences. Russia fears that that the new canal will facilitate Black Sea access for NATO ships.
    1. Permission for and participation in the construction of regional pipelines (as in the Trans-Anatolian pipeline that delivers Azeri gas from the Caspian to the Trans-Aegean pipeline and on to Europe). Pipeline fees of passage are an important source of revenue. In 2021, Turkey had four long-term pipeline contracts with Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Two major pipelines include the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan), linking Turkey, George and Azerbaijan, and the Iraqi Pipeline from northern Iraq to Ceyhan (in the southeast corner of Turkey). The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) pipeline runs from Erbil in Iraq to Ceyhan. Ceyhan is an important port for Caspian and Iraqi oil imports. Under the US Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017, the US has sanctioned both TurkStream 1 & 2. But these are of declining significance to Turkey, in any case, given the competition from the Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea, and transit fees for passage through the new Istanbul canal that will likely prove more lucrative than pipeline fees. Another imminent threat to TurkStream 2 is the north-south corridor formed by Greece, Turkey and Ukraine that can be fed by LNG from the Mediterranean with reverse flows back to Ukraine.
    1. The purchase of Liquefied Natural Gas from the USA and other suppliers (Turkey is a primary destination for US LNG) and its rerouting by pipeline, tanker, or truck – a development that reduces the significance of regional pipelines, affords Turkey more flexibility in routing and also the blocking of competitors, and puts the USA in a potentially strong competitive position against Russia’s Nord Stream 1&2 and TurkStream 1&2 for delivery of gas to Europe. LNG gas imports from the USA, Qatar, Algeria, Nigeria were cheaper in 2021 than constructed pipeline gas from Gazprom. Turkey was now Europe’s third largest importer of US LNG behind Spain and France.
    1. The development of new oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas. These acquire considerable relevance in the context of Turkey’s near total oil and gas dependency, which has been a major economic stumbling block. Almost all (99%) of Turkey’s natural gas was imported in 2015, of which 56% came from Russia’s Gazprom (other suppliers were Iran and Azerbaijan), although Russia’s share had fallen to 34% by 2019. Turkey spent $41 billion on natural gas imports alone in 2019. 60% of Turkey’s crude oil imports are from Iraq and Iran, and 11% from Russia (2015). This very dependence has served as inspiration to Turkey to establish its own supplies of fossil fuel both in the Eastern Mediterranean, in partnership with Libya (where both the US and Russia have tacitly supported a policy of opposition to new developments lest these compete with their own exports) and in the Black Sea.

    In August 2020, President Erdogan announced a major find (320 billion cubic meters but may well prove much more) of natural gas reserves in the Black Sea within the western part of Turkey’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – the Sakarya field, on the perimeter of Bulgaria’s and Romania’s maritime borders. Critics worry about the costs of deep-water drilling and extraction from Sakarya, an ultra-harsh environment. Erdogan has expressed his desire that Turkey should develop Sakarya independently but, if the capability of TPAO falls short, involvement of non-Turkish majors could eat into profits considerably. For the longer term and as the impacts of climate change intensify, Turkey’s energy plans are uncomfortably wedded to planetary-menacing fossil fuel while at home, coal constitutes 40% of Turkey’s domestic energy production in conditions of escalating demand.

    Favoring Greece

    US unhappiness with Turkey as a partner stands at a crossroads. Turkey remains a strategically useful regional proxy force for the USA, alongside Israel, for the advancement of US interests in Syria. This can last indefinitely, even as Israeli preoccupation with Turkey’s expansion intensifies and as Turkey’s bid for leadership of Sunni Islam proves more compelling. This is particularly true of the Palestinian cause in Israeli-occupied Gaza. Turkish humanitarian organizations were behind the Gaza Freedom Flotilla of six ships in 2010 that sought to bring relief to the Gaza Strip. The ships were forcibly detained by Israeli forces in international waters and 10 Turkish activists were slaughtered. Israel has since paid compensation.

    The recent surprising alliance between the USA and Israel may be seen in this light, i.e. as Israel’s targeting of Turkey, not Iran, while Turkish interventions are perceived by the UAE, Egypt, and the Arab League as a threat to Arab security, a perspective that is shared by France and probably other European powers. UAE’s Foreign Affairs minister has even said that the UAE wants Turkey to stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, bête noire of Sisi’s post-Morsi Egypt and Syria’s Assad regime, among others. Turkey’s bid for Sunni leadership, therefore, cannot advance far in competition with powerful regional rivals, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt but, in as much as both Saudis and Egypt have recklessly betrayed the Palestinian cause in their attempt to maintain US favor, Turkey has uncovered a strong and unpredictable weapon of soft power. Turkey’s capability as US proxy in the Turkic world will prove increasingly useful as the USA persists in its attempt to destabilize, fragment, contain and threaten the Russian Federation and in its gathering assault on Chinese power. But on the other hand, Turkey’s quest for independent power may lead it towards seemingly unlikely alliances with Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China, possibly in league with Russia and Iran, against the USA and India in Asia. There have been two trilateral summits between Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan (2017, 2021). It is envisaged that there may be nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey (Pakistan has nuclear warheads), and Russia is building 4 nuclear energy plants in Turkey. China has supplied missile technology. The further the USA moves away from Turkey, the closer, inevitably, Turkey will draw towards Russia with implications for the way Turkey chooses to nurture its ties to Turkic powers within and close to the borders of the Russian Federation.

    In the Western world, on the other hand, the USA has increasingly less cause for sympathy with Turkish ambitions since these irritate both the European Union and NATO. US disillusionment may go so far as a US withdrawal of its military facilities in Turkey (including its air base in Incirlik and NATO’s Land Command in Şirinyer, Izmir) in favor of Greece as its new major Mediterranean center of operations, embracing new or expanded US facilities in Souda (Crete), Volos, Larissa, and Alexandroupolis. By 2025, Souda will become the largest and most important US naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean with 25,000 personnel. While Turkey has been suspended from the purchase of F-35 war planes since its purchase of Russian S-400 air defense in 2019, Greece is now planning expenditure of $3 billion on F-35s. A US-Greek Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement signed in October 2010 provides a framework for this expanding partnership. In line with US favoring of Greece against Turkey, Greece is set to intensify cooperation with Israel, as in pipeline deals to bring Eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe. Andrew Lee has called this overall strategy a version of the “Intermarium” – a geopolitical concept originating in the post-World War 1 era that envisages an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea, over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea that would serve as an alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion we can infer the following:

    (1) Turkey, released at least in part by Erdogan’s AKP from the foundational Ataturk mission of westernization and secularization, has rediscovered in Islamism an Ottoman legacy that could enable it to re-establish a regional, even a global influence – political, cultural, economic and military – throughout the Muslim and Turkic worlds and the Muslim diasporas of the non-Muslim and non-Turkic worlds.

    (2) Combining and deploying the advantages of new sources of energy independence and its traditional chokehold power in the Bosporus (extended now to the Istanbul Canal), Turkey will ascquire a much stronger negotiating position in its relations with Russia, the USA and EU.

    (3) Its economic fragilities notwithstanding, Turkey will grow in its attraction to international investors, particularly China, on account of its net international and regional energy networks.

    (4) Turkey’s greater activity in the Middle East will be perceived as a growing threat to the established powers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to Israel and the UAE, while its growing involvement in Yemen may give it a stronger toehold in the politics of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.

    (5) In Syria, Turkey will for some time exercise a significant constraint on the restitution of Syrian sovereignty and therefore will be regarded with suspicion both by Iran and by Lebanon whose interests are directly impacted by deterioration of the Syrian economy.

    (6) Domestically and regionally, Turkey must still worry about Kurdish irredentism which it has done little to soothe and much to anger. To this is added the pressure of a large, new, unsettled immigrant population of Syrian exiles.

    (7) Through its recently established links with Libya, and its long-standing influence over Northern Cyprus, Turkey will be a stronger contender for influence in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa.

    (8) Most importantly, Turkey’s relatively recent and aggressive renascence in some of the world’s most strategically and militarily sensitive parts of the world exponentially increases the likelihood of reckless behavior – on the parts of many players – and unforeseen consequences any of which could easily ignite regional tensions, in conflagrations that almost certainly will suck in the world’s major nuclear powers.

    The post Ottoman’s Forever Empire and its Multiple Triggers for War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Russian Bounty Story Is A Deadly Example Of Fake News

    A New York Times report about Russia paying Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan turned many heads in the summer of 2020 when it was first published. It solidified many Democrats’ views that Russia is a dangerous enemy that is consistently acting to not only undermine the U.S., but actually murder its citizens. As NBC News points out, Joe Biden treated the story as factual as a presidential candidate and has continued to repeat the allegations as president. Yet, as many on the left pointed out countless times since the story was published by major news outlets, the reports have never been adequately substantiated. Maj. Danny Sjursen, a historian and Afghanistan War veteran, has been a notable critic of the story from the get-go.

    The post The Russian Bounty Story Is A Deadly Example Of Fake News appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Latest ‘Columbine’ Adds To Scrutiny Over Russia’s Efforts To Improve School Security

    The “Columbine” comparisons began as soon as word and video footage of the deadly attack on School No. 175 in Kazan emerged. But if school shootings were described less than a decade ago as a rarity in Russia, this time Russian headlines lamented “another” attack that echoed the infamous 1999 tragedy at a U.S. high school.

    The May 11 attack in the Tatar capital — in which at least nine people were killed and 21 wounded — has been blamed on a disgruntled former student of the school equipped with a legally registered gun.

    The bloodshed led to a clamor from Russian officials talking about ways to try to avoid such shootings in the future, including calls by President Vladimir Putin to impose controls on the types of weapons available to ordinary citizens.

    It has also placed renewed focus on the growing list of shootings and other attacks on schools carried out by young people in Russia in recent years, and added to scrutiny of the government’s struggles to prevent what for years was seen mainly as a U.S. phenomenon.

    In 2014, at Moscow’s School No. 263, a 15-year-old carrying two rifles shot and killed a teacher and a police officer and took 29 classmates hostage before he gave himself up. Putin at the time called the incident “tragic,” and the city’s mayor ordered a comprehensive review of security measures at schools in the Russian capital.

    In January 2018, 11 children and a teacher were injured in the Urals city of Perm when two 16-year-olds entered a classroom and slashed them with knives. Most of those injured, some seriously, were aged 10-12. One suspect was alleged to have posted a video of perpetrators of U.S. school attacks, including the two teens who carried out the Columbine massacre, on his VKontakte page.

    Just days later, in a village outside the southern Siberian city of Ulan-Ude, a ninth-grader reportedly wearing a T-shirt resembling one worn in the Columbine attack injured four seventh-graders and a teacher with an axe and used a Molotov cocktail to set his former school ablaze.

    And in October of the same year in Russian-occupied Crimea, 21 people were killed in a shooting and explosion at a university in the city of Kerch.

    Russian state media were banned from making the connection to Columbine following the attack carried out by a shooter wearing clothing similar to that worn by the two teen perpetrators of Columbine, who fatally shot 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves. As with the shooting at the Colorado high school shooting, the attack in Crimea was dubbed a “massacre.”

    Attempts At Prevention

    Like other governments, Putin’s has struggled to find ways to avert such attacks. Following the 2014 attack in Moscow, he suggested that a more well-rounded education might help prevent student-on-school violence.

    “A new generation of spectators with good artistic taste should be brought up — capable of understanding and appreciating theatrical, dramatic, and musical arts,” Putin told theater workers in Pskov shortly afterward. “Had we been doing this properly, maybe there would have been no tragedies similar to today’s tragedy in Moscow.”

    That school shooting, which at the time was described by the media as “incredibly rare” in Russia, news that a school guard was unable to prevent the armed pupil from entering the school led Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin “to conduct a complete review of how our school security system is working, and to take additional steps.”

    Plenty of steps have been taken since to try to make schools safer around the country, adding to security measures implemented in the decade following the Beslan school siege, in which more than 330 people — most of them children — were killed in North Ossetia after militants took more than 1,000 hostages on the first day of school in 2004.


    “We have security screens. We monitor the entrance to the school — the rest of the school is surrounded by a perimeter fence — and it has an automatic gate, so that you can see who is coming into the school,” an official at a central Moscow school told RFE/RL three years after the siege. “We have a videophone system on the gate. And in this way we can monitor who visits the school. These measures were brought in after Beslan.”

    In recent years, Russia has invested heavily in school security, including in an initiative to install “Orwell 2k” facial-recognition systems in more than 43,000 Russian schools as part of Putin’s $25.4 million national digitalization project. The technology is intended to ensure safety by monitoring students’ movements and identifying outsiders on school premises.

    When the attack began on May 11, Kazan’s School No. 175 had security measures in place for its some 1,000 students in grades one to 11 — including an “action plan for the prevention of terrorism and extremism” last updated for the 2018-19 school year.

    The plan advises students to “get to know each other better,” and stresses the importance of sport, tolerance, and minimizing conflict. The school’s website also provides links to the “municipal program for the prevention of terrorism and extremism in Kazan for 2016-2020.”

    But there were also conflicting reports about the presence of security guards at the school. Representatives of the Russian National Guard revealed on May 11 that there were no guards on the premises — only a panic button to alert the National Guard.

    There were also claims that private security guards stopped working at the school three years ago due to problems with payment. However, the Telegram channel In Kazan quoted Galina Ukhvanova, a deputy director at School No. 175, as saying that the security firm had been paid in full, and that the school had a guard on its staff.

    Idel.Realities, of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, reported that the school said that a 62-year-old guard was on duty, and was hospitalized after the attack.

    It is unclear how security precautions — or the lack thereof — may have affected the outcome of the attack on May 11.


    Many Dead After Shooting Spree, Explosion At School In Russia's Tatarstan

    Many Dead After Shooting Spree, Explosion At School In Russia's Tatarstan



    Photo Gallery:

    Many Dead After Shooting Spree, Explosion At School In Russia’s Tatarstan

    At least nine people, including a teacher and seven students, have been killed in a shooting spree that followed an explosion at a school in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan.

    Heavily armed police and emergency vehicles reportedly responded quickly, and video showed students streaming out of the school and, in some cases, jumping to their death from windows in the multistory school in an effort to escape.

    Other videos showed students scrambling down fire-truck ladders to evacuate the school, while others show the wounded being treated outside the school.

    Local Suspect

    Grainy security-camera video posted to Telegram claimed to show the shooting suspect, whom Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had identified as “a local resident born in 2001,” walking along a street on his way to the school while brandishing a long gun. The regional interior minister said the attack was carried out by a 19-year-old shooter, who was apprehended, and media reports identified the suspect as Ilnaz Galyaviyev.

    As investigators opened a mass murder case, Putin reportedly instructed the head of the Russian National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, “to hammer out new regulations on the types of weapons that are designated for civilian use, and which weapons may be in the possession of citizens, including the types of small arms the gunman used in this shooting.”

    Some applauded Putin on social media, pointing to the availability of firearms in the United States and the steady stream of school shootings that have taken place there in the last two decades.

    Others suggested his steps may be misdirected.

    Pavel Lokshin, a Moscow correspondent for the German newspaper Welt, tweeted: “I guess it’s safe to say that school shootings in Russia aren’t driven by the availability of firearms which is already pretty low. Besides, Putin did exactly the same thing after the Kerch shooting. Didn’t prevent Kazan.”

    Some Russian educators say that security measures aside, the state has taken steps that could be detrimental to efforts to curb school violence, such as cutting the number of psychologists in schools.

    And while the May 11 attack raised questions about whether any warning signs had been overlooked, government critics say the state sometimes takes a heavy-handed approach in its efforts to avert school violence.

    In 2020, the homes of several students in Siberia were raided following accusations they had taken part in a social-media chat room dedicated to the Columbine massacre.

    Authorities claimed the teens had discussed a plot to attack a local school, and nine of them — including a 14-year-old girl — were forced to undergo involuntary examinations as a result.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Moscow Court Sentences Young Activists To ‘Freedom Limitation’

    A Moscow court has found three young pro-democracy activists guilty of vandalism for splashing paint on a booth at the entrance to the Prosecutor-General’s Office last year to protest against a crackdown on other activists. The court handed down parole-like sentences to the trio on May 11. Both Igor Basharimov and Ivan Vorobyovsky were given 21 months of “freedom limitation,” while Olga Misik was sentenced to two years. Misik became well-known after reading excerpts of the Russian Constitution to riot policemen in Moscow in 2019. She was 17 at the time.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia Expels Romanian Diplomat In Tit-For-Tat Move

    Russia has announced the expulsion of the Romanian Embassy’s deputy military attache in response to Bucharest’s decision to expel a Russian diplomat.

    Romania’s ambassador to Russia, Cristian Istrate, was summoned on May 11 to the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow where he “was given a note from the ministry declaring Captain G. Iliescu, aide to the military attache at the Romanian Embassy, persona non grata,” the ministry said in a statement.

    Iliescu has 72 hours to leave Russia, the statement said, adding that the decision was made “in response to the unfounded declaration of an aide to the military attache at the Russian Embassy in Bucharest persona non grata on April 26.”

    Romania late last month expelled the deputy military attache at the Russian Embassy in Bucharest for activities incompatible with his diplomatic status. It gave no further reason for the order.

    Several other former Soviet bloc countries in Central and Eastern Europe, all of them members of the European Union and NATO, have expelled Russian diplomats last month, triggering reciprocal measures by Moscow.

    The series of tit-for-tat expulsions began last month when the Czech Republic expelled scores of Russian diplomats over the accusations that Russian spies were involved in a deadly ammunition depot explosion in 2014, prompting a tit-for-tat response from Moscow.

    Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — all former Soviet republics — followed in Prague’s steps, expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with the Czechs. Slovakia and Bulgaria also followed suit.

    With reporting by digi24.ro, hotnrews.ro, Reuters, and TASS

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Attacks In Russian Schools

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘A Huge Tragedy’: Many Dead In Russian School Attack

    Many people, including students and at least one teacher, have been killed in an attack on a school in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan republic. After a shooting spree and reports of multiple explosions, one attacker was reportedly detained.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukraine’s Kuleba Says Some NATO Members Worried About Provoking Russia

    Kyiv says it does not expect that next month’s NATO summit will produce a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Ukraine because some members of the military alliance worry that such a move would provoke Russia.

    “Regarding the obstacles, unfortunately, there are still several countries among the allies who are guided by the logic of not provoking Russia and believe that sitting and doing nothing is the best way to keep Russia calm,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Ukraine 24 channel on May 11.

    Ukraine joining the alliance, which Moscow has fiercely opposed, “is historically inevitable,” Kuleba said. “It will happen. I am absolutely convinced of that.”

    The MAP is a program of “advice, assistance, and practical support tailored to the individual needs of countries wishing to join” NATO, according to the alliance’s website.

    Participation in the MAP “does not prejudge any decision by the Alliance on future membership,” it adds.

    Kuleba’s comments come after Russia earlier this year deployed more than 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine and in occupied Crimea — the biggest mobilization since Moscow seized the Ukrainian peninsula in March 2014 and war broke out in eastern Ukraine.

    The buildup prompted alarm in Western capitals over Moscow’s intentions amid an uptick in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Kremlin-backed separatists in the country’s east. The conflict has killed more than 13,000 people since April 2014.

    Russia says its troops have returned to their permanent bases after participating in massive drills, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on May 11 that Russia had not withdrawn military hardware.

    Zelenskiy told Ukraine 24 he believed Russia won’t resort to a “powerful escalation” because it could lead to “a world war.”

    During a visit to Kyiv last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “strongly” reaffirmed Washington’s “commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence,” and called on Russia to cease its “reckless and aggressive actions” against its neighbor.

    With reporting by Reuters, UNIAN, and RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Arms Control, Security Seen Leading Agenda Of Proposed Putin-Biden Summit

    The U.S. ambassador for disarmament says preparations for a possible meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden are under way.

    The two presidents “have agreed to explore strategic stability discussions on a range of arms-control and emerging security issues,” Robert Wood told a United Nations conference on May 11.

    “They are in the process of preparing for these discussions.”

    Speaking during a visit to Baku, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov backed up Wood’s comments, saying that Moscow had proposed discussing arms control and security matters if the bilateral summit were to take place.

    He also said that Moscow was still waiting for answers from Washington on details for any proposed meeting.

    Biden has said he hoped to meet with his Russian counterpart during a planned trip to Europe in June.

    The U.S. president in April offered to meet in a third country to discuss rising tensions over issues including military threats to Ukraine, cyberattacks allegedly by Russian hackers, and Russia’s treatment of jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny.

    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 issues such as nuclear proliferation, climate change, the Iran nuclear deal, North Korea, and fostering peace and stability in Afghanistan.

    In February, Russia and the United States formally extended the New START nuclear arms-control treaty for another five years, just days before it was set to expire.

    New START, the last remaining arms-control pact between Washington and Moscow, limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550, deployed strategic delivery systems at 700, and provides for a verification regime.

    With reporting by Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Teen Calls Case Against Her ‘Punishment’ For Having Thoughts

    MOSCOW — A Russian teenager, who along with two other activists is awaiting the verdict and possible sentences for their pro-democracy protest, has accused the authorities of “punishing thoughts.”

    A court in Moscow is expected on May 11 to hand down decisions in the case against Olga Misik, 19, Ivan Vorobyovsky, and Igor Basharimov, who were charged with “vandalism” over splashing paint on a booth at the entrance to the building of the Prosecutor-General’s Office in August last year.

    The trio launched the protest during the high-profile extremism case against members of the New Greatness youth group. Many in Russia consider the case to be trumped-up by the Federal Security Service (FSB).

    Prosecutors have asked the court to sentence Misik and her two co-defendants to two years and nine months of parole-like freedom limitation.

    Misik became well-known after she read the Russian Constitution to riot police during protest rallies in Moscow in 2019. She was 17 at the time.

    Misik told Current Time on May 10 that the case was filed against her and the other two activists “because in our country, it is forbidden to protest against the authorities.”

    The case “is punishment for your thoughts,” Olga Misik said.

    Her mother told Current Time that she understood the possible repercussions her daughter could face when she started her pro-democracy activism at the age of 16, but could not stop her.

    “She chose this path and it is necessary to support her,” Guzel Misik said.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Many Dead After Shooting Spree, Explosion At School In Russia’s Tatarstan

    At least nine people, including a teacher and eight students, have been killed in a shooting spree that followed an explosion at a school in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan.

    Media reports say that more than one person opened fire at School No. 175 on Dzhaudat Faizi Street in the city, which has more than 1,000 students. According to reports, one of the attackers was shot dead by police while at least one remained inside the building, holding hostages. Some reports also say that one attacker, a teenager, was apprehended.

    The area has been cordoned by law enforcement and students and teachers are being evacuated via windows.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Many Dead After Shooting Spree, Explosion At School In Russia’s Tatarstan

    At least eight people, including a teacher and seven students, have been killed in a shooting spree that followed an explosion at School No. 175 in Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan.

    The Interior Ministry for the republic added that 21 people had been injured in the incident, including six children who were taken to intensive care units.

    The region’s interior minister said that the assault was carried out by a 19-year-old shooter, who was apprehended.

    The school has more than 1,000 students.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • At Least Nine Killed In School Shooting In Russia’s Tatarstan

    KAZAN, Russia — Reports from Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan region, say a shooting spree and an explosion at a school has left at least nine people dead, including a teacher and eight students.

    Media reports say a blast rocked School No. 175 on May 11 before at least two people opened fire.

    One of the attackers was reportedly shot dead by police, while at least another one remains inside the school, holding a number of hostages.

    Some reports said that one attacker, described as a teenager, was apprehended.

    The area was cordoned off by law enforcement and students and teachers were being evacuated through the windows.

    The school has more than 1,000 students.

    With reporting by TASS and RIA Novosti

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • FBI Confirms DarkSide Hacker Group Is Behind Pipeline Cyberattack

    A criminal gang known as DarkSide is behind a ransomware cyberattack that has paralyzed the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, the FBI confirmed on May 10.

    A brief statement from the FBI statement posted on Twitter said it was working with Colonial Pipeline and other government agencies on investigating the cyberattack, which has alarmed the U.S. government and caused worry over potential fuel supply disruptions in the eastern United States.

    DarkSide has been assessed as a criminal actor, Anne Neuberger, deputy national-security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said at a White House briefing on May 10. Asked about whether Russia was involved, she added that this was “certainly something our intelligence community is looking into.”

    Neuberger said the White House was not offering advice on whether to pay the ransom. She said the cyberattackers used a known variant of ransomware software and advised other companies to take action to protect themselves.

    DarkSide, a gang that typically targets non-Russian speaking countries, said in a statement posted at its website that the goal of the cyberattack was to “make money, and not creating problems for society.” DarkSide described itself as “apolitical” in the statement, adding “we do not participate in geopolitics.”

    The statement said DarkSide intended to donate a portion of its profits to charities and had already sent its first donation.

    The statement, quoted by CNBC and other U.S. media outlets, did not say how much ransom the hackers were seeking. Colonial Pipeline has not commented on the hackers’ statement.

    Colonial Pipeline said on May 8 that it was the victim of a ransomware attack the previous day and in response it had “proactively” taken systems offline to contain the threat, which halted all pipeline operations and affected some IT systems.

    The privately held company said on May 10 that it expected to “substantially” restore operational service by the end of the week.

    The pipeline transports about 45 percent of the U.S. eastern coast’s fuel supplies — including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and home heating oil– from Gulf refineries in Texas all the way to New York. Experts said the shutdown was unlikely to have a major impact on fuel prices unless it were to last more than a week.

    The situation nevertheless raised concerns about supply, and the U.S. government has issued a regional state of emergency, loosening regulations for the transport of fuel products on highways across 17 states and the District of Columbia.

    The White House has made restarting the Colonial Pipeline network a top priority and organized a federal task force to assess the impact and decide what additional steps are needed to avoid disruptions in supply.

    There is no supply disruption currently, Elizabeth Randall-Sherwood, President Joe Biden’s homeland security adviser, said at a White House briefing.

    In a ransomware attack, hackers break into computer systems and scramble a victim’s data, making it unusable. The criminals then demand money in exchange for software decryption keys.

    The attacks, often carried out by criminal syndicates operating out of Russia or former Soviet states, have become increasingly prevalent, targeting governments and critical infrastructure organizations.

    The attack presents a new challenge for the Biden administration after two major cybersecurity breaches — the SolarWinds hack that compromised U.S. government agencies and private sector computer networks, and another penetration of some Microsoft e-mail servers.

    The SolarWinds hack was blamed on Russian state-backed hackers while the Microsoft breach was attributed to a Chinese cyberespionage campaign.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, CBS, CNBC, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Alone’ Among Allies? Why Putin Shunned The West In Victory Day Speech

    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.’”

    Screenshot from Kremlin.ru website of transcript of speech by Vladimir Putin on May 9.


    Screenshot from Kremlin.ru website of transcript of speech by Vladimir Putin on May 9.

    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.

    Tajik President Emomali Rahmon (left) was the only foreign head of state in Moscow on May 9.


    Tajik President Emomali Rahmon (left) was the only foreign head of state in Moscow on May 9.

    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.”

    Russian President Vladimir Putin walks along Red Square after a military parade on May 9.


    Russian President Vladimir Putin walks along Red Square after a military parade on May 9.

    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.”

    Vladimir Mikhailov of Current Time contributed to this report

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Neighbors Stake Out Positions After Deadly Kyrgyz-Tajik Border Conflict

    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.

  • HRW Warns Of ‘Unprecedented Backlash’ Against Istanbul Convention Protecting Women

    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.

  • Russian Doctor Who Headed Hospital Where Navalny Was Treated Missing In Omsk

    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.

    With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and TASS

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Putin Reviews Victory Day Parade

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Prince Michael accused of using royal status to ‘sell access’ to Vladimir Putin

    An undercover investigation has claimed prince Michael Franklin of Kent was willing to use his royal status for personal profit, and to seek favours from Russian president Vladimir Putin.

    Royal corruption

    The queen’s cousin told undercover reporters posing as investors from South Korea in a virtual meeting that he could be hired for £10,000 a day to make “confidential” representations to Putin’s regime.

    The revelation was made by Channel 4 Dispatches in collaboration with the Sunday Times, who set up a fake South Korean gold company called House of Haedong and approached five members of the royal family with an offer of a role.

    Franklin responded showing interest in working with the company, telling undercover reporters that he would give House of Haedong his royal endorsement in a recorded speech for a $200,000 fee and was happy to use his home in Kensington Palace as a backdrop.

    70th anniversary of D-Day campaign
    Russian President Vladimir Putin (Chris Jackson/PA)

    Franklin does not receive money from the civil list and earns a living acting as chairman of his own private company, which offers consultancy advice.

    He was also approached about a role helping the fictitious gold firm in Russia.

    A Royal scandal

    The programme said his business partner lord Simon Reading had used an event at Kensington Palace in 2013, in which Franklin was a guest, to sell access to Putin. The event, to promote the Russian wrestling sport of Sambo, also offered opportunities to personally meet the Russian leader at a later date, Dispatches found.

    In a recorded meeting with the undercover reporters, Reading said:

    If he [Franklin] is representing the House of Haedong, he could mention that to Putin and Putin would find the right person who is interested in South Korea or interested in gold.

    It just opens the door, you know, which is so helpful.

    He added:

    I think, if I can say this, this is kind of slightly discreet, we’re talking relatively discreetly here.

    Because we wouldn’t want the world to know that he is seeing Putin purely for business reasons, if you follow me.

    He went on to describe Franklin as (emphasis added) “Her Majesty’s unofficial ambassador to Russia”, and that tension between the UK and the Russian regime has not affected his relationship with Putin.

    “No public funding”

    Responding to the programme’s allegations, Franklin’s office said:

    Prince Michael receives no public funding and earns his own living through a consultancy company that he has run for over 40 years. Prince Michael has no special relationship with President Putin.

    They last met in June 2003 and Prince Michael has had no contact with him or his office since then.

    Lord Reading is a good friend, who in trying to help, made suggestions which Prince Michael would not have wanted, or been able, to fulfil.

    Reading said:

    I thought the approach from the House of Haedong was genuine and I was only trying to facilitate an introduction to my friend Prince Michael. I made a mistake and over-promised and for that, I am truly regretful.

    I wasn’t at my peak as I was recovering from a kidney transplant.

    For the record, the Sambo event which was eight years ago was my event and Prince Michael was simply my guest along with many other people.

    Dispatches: Royals for Hire, will broadcast at 7.30pm on 10 May on Channel 4.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Russia Pledges Support For Tajikistan Amid Concern Over Afghanistan

    President Vladimir Putin says Russia is working on strengthening its military base in Tajikistan to boost regional security as the situation escalates in Afghanistan.

    During a meeting with his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon on May 8, Putin also said that Russia helps to “strengthen Tajikistan’s armed forces.”

    Rahmon raised concerns over the rising tensions in neighboring Afghanistan since the United States’ announcement last month that it will pull out all remaining American troops by September 11.

    “I know you are concerned about this situation… For our part, we are doing everything we can to support you,” Putin told Rahmon.

    Tajikistan hosts about 7,000 troops from Russia’s 201st Motor Rifle Division that are stationed in three facilities.

    Tajikistan, one the poorest former Soviet countries, has close economic ties with Russa as hundreds of thousands of Tajiks work in Russia to support families at home.

    Rahmon was in Moscow to attend Victory Day ceremonies on May 9 to mark 76th anniversary of the end of World War II.

    Russia and many other former Soviet countries commemorate the May 9 anniversary with parades and celebrations.

    Rahmon, who has ruled Tajikistan with an iron since 1992, maintains close relations with Moscow.

    Based on reporting by Reuters and TASS

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Gorbachev Ally And Soviet Anti-Alcohol Crusader Dies At 100

    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.

  • Czech PM Asks European Council To Condemn Russian Involvement In Arms-Depot Blast

    Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said that he has asked the European Council to condemn Russia for its involvement in the deadly explosion of an arms depot on Czech soil in 2014.

    Asked whether he had brought up the explosion during an informal two-day summit of EU leaders taking place in Portugal, Babis told journalists on May 8 that he had “called for the [European] Council to condemn and declare such actions as unacceptable” when it presents its concluding statements at an EU summit scheduled to take place in Brussels later this month.

    Babis said that he called on the council to make it clear “that it is impossible to accept such actions, and that we must view an attack on one [EU] member state as an attack on all.”

    Babis on April 17 announced that investigators from the Czech intelligence and security services had provided “unequivocal evidence” that there was “reasonable suspicion regarding a role of members of Russian military intelligence GRU’s unit 29155 in the explosion of the munition depot in Vrbetice in 2014.”

    Two men were killed in the blast.

    In response, the Czech government announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats it considered to be spies, setting off a string of tit-for-tat moves between Prague and Moscow.

    Russia has denied involvement in the explosion.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Putin, Merkel Mark Anniversary Of End Of World War II

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent congratulations to fellow members of the Commonwealth of Independent States over their roles in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, and called for “brotherly friendship and mutual assistance” to mold their future relations.

    The message, delivered on May 8, came as Western Europe celebrated the 76th anniversary of the war and ahead of Moscow’s Victory Day parade scheduled for May 9.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel marked the anniversary with a Twitter message saying that “it remains our everlasting responsibility to keep alive the memory of the millions of people who lost their lives during the years of National Socialist tyranny.”

    On May 7, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also addressed Nazi crimes, saying: “Confronting National Socialism and the memories of injustice and guilt do not weaken our democracy. On the contrary, it strengthens its resistance and resilience.”

    Based on dpa and TASS

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Judged For Their Tattoos: Women In Russia’s North Caucasus Face Uphill Battles In Custody Cases

    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.”

    Nina Tseretilova


    Nina Tseretilova

    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.

    Zhanetta Tukhayeva


    Zhanetta Tukhayeva

    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?”

    RFE/RL senior correspondent Michael Scollon contributed to this report

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.