Pipeline Politics: How Georgia Influences Israel and Iran
Charles Ganske
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. In spite of the hype pushed by some conspiracy theorists, Israel only supplied Georgia with a tiny fraction of its military equipment and suspended all arms sales months before the August 2008 war
Since the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, many geopolitical analysts have tried to understand the origins of the conflict, and explain both U.S. support for the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Russian support for his opponents, the separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In doing so, geopolitical thinkers around the world have sought explanations for the conflict that go beyond the personalities of the individual leaders involved, such as the Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Russia-Ukraine Gas Wars: Another New Year's Tradition
Charles Ganske
Besides watching the romantic comedy Irony of Fate (Ирония судьбы) and presidential speeches to the nation every New Year's Eve, another perennial Russian tradition, it seems, is for Ukraine to fall behind on paying its natural gas bills and for Russia's state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom to shut off the taps. This year, instead of a mere threatened cutoff followed by the usual eleventh hour haggling, Gazprom made good on its threat when Ukrainian utilities failed to wire sufficient funds into an account by midnight January 1, 2009.
Gazprom claims that Ukraine owes it $1.5 billion in debt, and is asking Ukrainians to begin paying $419 per thousand cubic meters -- a price still below what Gazprom's end customers in Germany, Italy and France pay for the same Russian gas that transits Ukrainian territory. Gazprom has also accused Ukraine of not allowing independent European auditors to survey the pipes, to insure that gas is not being siphoned off from export pipelines to Europe by Ukrainian oligarchs. Ukraine's government denies all these charges and insists that it made a sufficient down payment (about $500 million) on its debt by midnight to keep the gas flowing, and has declared that the Gazprom supply shutoffs are unfair and politically motivated.
Irony of Fate and S Novim Godom! (Ирония судьбы, или С легким паром!)
Charles Ganske
Irony of Fate with English subtitles, part 1 of 11 video clips
One of the most common Russian holiday traditions is to watch Irony of Fate, a romantic comedy produced in 1975 by the Soviet studio Mosfilm, with family and friends. The film has proven so popular over the years that director Timbur Bekmanbetov, producer of the blockbusters Night Watch and Wanted, released Irony of Fate 2 on January 1, 2008 starring his frequent collaborator, actor Konstantin Khabensky. The sequel, which brought back most of the original cast -- now thirty five years older -- proved to be a box office hit.
Click on the extended post to read more about the original film.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's New Year 2009 Address to the Nation
Charles Ganske
President Medvedev's speech
Every year on New Year's Eve Russia's President gives a speech to the Russian nation. This year was the first time in eight years that Vladimir V. Putin would not be giving the address. Instead, it was his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. As could be expected after a tough year for many Russian families, Medvedev's speech emphasized home, individual dreams and aspirations, and the importance of family in difficult times.
Muscovites celebrating the New Year near the Kremlin on January 1, 2008
During this time of year, it's traditional, in Russia as in the West, to take stock of the previous year and to make resolutions for changes in the upcoming year. Yuri Mamchur, Russia Blog's creator and main editor, has published a retrospective in the Seattle Times this week (scroll down on the main page or click on this link to see Yuri's article) on how Russia could have been better prepared to face the current global economic crisis. Addressing the same topic, Professor Andrei Tsygankov from San Francisco State University in California has sent us a panel discussion he participated in with other experts for the magazine Russia Profile.
Eight years after President Boris Yeltsin gave up the presidential suite, Russian economic legislation had matured, but the economy hadn't. Russia doesn't have much to show for its meteoritic economic rise and fall. But it could have been avoided if Russia had not missed important opportunities, from infrastructure investment to small business loans.
THE Russian government and people, awash with money, were convinced their economy was invulnerable to the world financial crisis. By September, Russia's gold reserves stood at $581 billion. The federal budget seemed strong, salaries high, economic reforms successful and government investments wise. In hindsight, it was all too noticeably "Potemkin" and vulnerable. When foreign markets crashed and oil prices fell, Russia's financial standing changed overnight.
Paul Weyrich possessed the unrivaled ability to take public stands on behalf of his (and our) core principles, even when doing so created a breach with the conventional wisdom that reigned inside Washington at any given moment. Personal relationships with Washington’s power brokers (and he knew them all, because they all quietly and respectfully sought his counsel) were irrelevant if the broker in question was contemplating a policy that violated one of his core tenets. He would patiently explain his point of view, counsel adherence to a timeless principle over a strategic feint that might (but usually didn’t) yield some transitory political advantage, and then go public with his principled view if the quiet conversation proved fruitless.
Besides taking strong positions on moral, human life, and family issues, Weyrich was not afraid to criticize what he saw as misguided foreign policies, particularly those advocated by his fellow conservatives and within the Republican Party. Whereas others simply accepted the expansion of NATO into the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine as a given, Weyrich pressed the hard question to his fellow conservatives of whether these steps would actually advance the cause of freedom worldwide, or if they would needlessly antagonize Russia without making America or Europe the slightest bit more secure.
For the sake of educating the public and press about what Weyrich believed and advocated, Russia Blog has republished two of his final op-eds about the future of U.S.-Russia relations.
Click on the extended post to read Weyrich's op-eds from December 2 and August 20, 2008
As a tribute to Paul Weyrich, Russia Blog is reposting below this article two of his op-eds published earlier this year on topics related to Russia. We hope our readers enjoy them and remember Weyrich for who he was -- a lifelong advocate of ordered liberty in America and around the world.
- The Editors
Paul Weyrich, the founder and longtime CEO of the conservative Free Congress Foundation, died on December 18, 2008, at the age of 66. Born in 1942, Weyrich began his career as a young newspaper and radio reporter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and as an activist in the groundbreaking 1964 campaign of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. While working as press secretary for Colorado U.S. Senator Gordon L. Allott, Weyrich formed a friendship with Jack Wilson, an aide to the brewing magnate Joseph Coors. In 1973, with $250,000 in seed money from Joseph Coors, Weyrich, Wilson and Ed Fuelner founded the Heritage Foundation, which would become one of the most influential non-profit public policy institutes in the world and a model for other think tanks, including the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.
Weyrich became involved in outreach to democracy advocates in Russia as President of Free Congress Foundation's Kreible Institute from 1989 to 1996. Through Kreible Institute events, Weyrich met Dr. Edward Lozansky, a Soviet émigré and naturalized U.S. citizen who had created the group Russians for Reagan during the 1980s to support Reagan's pro-freedom policies in the Communist Bloc. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Weyrich and Lozansky joined with others to petition the George H.W. Bush Administration to bury the Cold War divide once and for all, by admitting Yeltsin's struggling Russian Federation into NATO. Weyrich and Lozansky's proposal did not get very far in the Bush 41 White House. Nonetheless, for his work with the Kreible Foundation and personal outreach to Russians, Weyrich deserves to be remembered as a champion of post-Cold War reconciliation between America and Russia.
Click on the extended post to read more about the remarkable life and career of Paul Weyrich.
A film by director Pavel Lungin Ostrov (Остров), about a monk striving to overcome his painful past at an isolated monastery in northern Russia, became a modest hit at the Toronto International Film Festival after its release in 2006
Today the International Herald Tribunepublished an article about the revival of interest in Orthodoxy in the Russian media, including in the Russian edition of GQ. The passing earlier this month of Patriarch Alexy II, the first post-Soviet hierarch of the Church, created a flurry of round-the-clock media coverage for several days. The Russian media emphasized interviews with priests and laity who shared their memories of the late Patriarch, and the quiet but very public grief of ordinary Russians.
Whereas some in the West view the revived Church as little more than an extension of a resurgent Russian State, the Moscow Patriarchate's view of the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia was that it was a tragic dispute between two Orthodox nations that have historically been friends. Many observers noticed when the Patriarch Elias II (also pronounced Elijah or Ilia) of Georgia was not only invited to Alexy's funeral in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior Cathedral, but delivered an impassioned homily during the service in memory of his friend.
The Sunday International Herald Tribune story profiles several small and medium-sized Orthodox magazines and periodicals and their editors, many of whom started their careers at Russia's top secular publications. It also touches on the touchy issue of whether many Russian celebrities and politicians are participating in public Orthodox rituals because it's become a fashionable thing to do or if the revival in religious faith and practice in Russia is heartfelt.
Russian Church and State: What is Patriarch Alexy's Legacy?
Charles Ganske
Patriarch Alexy II speaking to the Council of Europe in October 2007
Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov of San Francisco State University has sent us an article previously published by Russia Profile that included contributions from him and James George Jatras, a Washington D.C.-based international lawyer and the Director of the American Council for Kosovo, which opposed U.S. recognition of the former Serbian province. Jatras has been a frequent speaker at events hosted by the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Institute of World Politics.
In the Russia Profile panel, Tsygankov and Jatras discuss the controversial question of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian State, and how Patriarch Alexy changed these relationship, and with it the culture of post-Soviet Russia.
- The Editors
Click on the extended post to read the full article.
Sloppy Editorials on Russia at The Washington Post
Charles Ganske
Mark Ames, the former publisher of The Exile, a controversial English-language "alternative" newspaper in Moscow, has an excellent article appearing in the latest issue of the American left-wing journal The Nation. In his article, Ames does some old fashioned fact checking concerning The Washington Post's editorial line about Russia. Specifically, Ames points to an embarassing rush to judgement without the slightest evidence in the odd case of Karina Moskalenko, a Russian human rights lawyer based in Strasbourg, France.
In recent years, Moskalenko has pursued several cases against the Russian government at the European Court of Human Rights. When tiny traces of mercury were discovered in her car, the Washington Post quickly suggested that someone had tried to poison the attorney. Upon further examination, however, the mercury traces came from a thermometer that the previous owner of the car had broken in the vehicle. The Washington Post, however, didn't issue a correction about the case on the editorial page when the facts dispelled foul play, and buried news of the case in the news section.
The real issue here is not getting one story wrong or posting the correction in fine print -- this often happens at even the best newspapers -- but what the case says about the mentality of the Post's editors when it comes to Russia. Certainly, left-wing critics of American foreign policy like Ames are hardly the only ones to have asked this question. A few weeks before the Georgia War began on August 8, 2008, Paul J. Saunders, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Nixon Center, published an article in The National Interest labelling the WaPost the "Tblisi Post" for its frequent championing the cause of the tiny Caucasian nation and its embattled President, Mikheil Saakashvili.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Russia: "With the Russians, you can be tough, but you should listen"
Charles Ganske
Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President in the 2008 election
Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. (ret) Colin Powell has made a lot of news this year. First, the longtime Republican Powell endorsed Illinois Democrat Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States. Second, on Sunday, December 14, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, Powell gave a candid account of his time as Secretary of State for President George W. Bush(2001-2004), in which he discussed the day-to-day "business" of U.S.-Russia relations. In his discussion with Newsweek and CNN correspondent Zakaria, Powell declared that while missile defense systems may eventually be deployed to protect the U.S. and its allies, they must be proven to be workable, and their deployment weighed against other diplomatic and military priorities in U.S. grand strategy.
Suzanne Massie's Advice to President Obama: Adopt Reagan's Attitude toward Russia
W George Krasnow
Suzanne Massie is a Russia expert and former adviser to President Reagan
"Take bold steps, like Ronald Reagan, and chart a new foreign policy course toward Russia." This is the advice that Suzanne Massie, a Russia expert and former adviser to President Reagan, gave to President-elect Barack Obama during her presentation ,"Reagan's Evolving Views on Russians and their Relevance Today," at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (KIARS) in Washington D.C. on December 1, 2008.
Ms. Massie is a writer, lecturer and the author of best-selling books, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, as well as other books dealing with Russia's history and culture. Born in New York City in the family of a Swiss diplomat, she was educated at Vassar College and the Sorbonne. From 1985 to 1997 she was a fellow of the Harvard Russian Research Center. Trilingual (fluent in Russian, French, and English), she was invited by KIARS's director Dr. Blair Ruble to reminisce on the years of 1984-1988 when she was an adviser to President Reagan.
Russia’s Solzhenitsyn Remembered: A Tribute from the USA
Yuri Mamchur
Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died on August 3, 2008, would have turned 90 on December 11. The following is written in his memory by W. George Krasnow.
No one did as much to promote liberty in Russia as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And few did more than he to strengthen the West, intellectually and morally, in its resistance against Soviet expansion.
One of the most "Russian" among writers, not only did he win the Nobel Prize and world-wide recognition for his works, but he also found a place of refuge for research and writing in Cavendish, Vermont. His face-off with the Soviet regime pretty much reflected the Free World's face-off with Communism. When in 1994 he returned to Russia, he did so on the wings of liberty we so cherish.
The funeral for Alexy II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is starting at this hour (1200 PST, 0800 GMT, 1100 MSK) in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. Alexy will be buried this afternoon at the Bogoyavlensky Monastery (Church of the Epiphany) in Moscow. Thousands of people are expected to gather outside the monastery and along the route of the funeral motorcade through the city.
Russia Today TV is providing exclusive English-language coverage live from Christ the Savior Cathedral. If you have a fast Internet connection, you can watch the live video feed here.
UPDATE: 0900 PST Click on the extended post to read an excerpted news story from the AFP.
The funeral for Alexey will begin Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 11 a.m., in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. President Dimitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and other Russian dignitaries and national figures will be in attendance. Alexey will be buried Tuesday afternoon at the Bogoyavlensky Monastery (Church of the Epiphany) in Moscow.
Panikhida services praying for the Patriarch are being said in Russian Orthodox Churches all over the world today and tomorrow. In the last forty eight hours, thousands of mourners have filed in to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, while thousands more have lined up outside the church along the Moscow embankment, standing in freezing temperatures to pay their respects. Over 600 churches in and around Moscow rang their bells this weekend to announce the Patriarch's passing, an event unprecedented in the history of post-Soviet Russia.
Anastasiya Khabensky, Wife of Russian Actor Konstantin Khabensky, Passes Away in USA
Charles Ganske
Anastasiya Khabenskaya (photo by: rian.ru)
Anastasiya Khabenskaya, a radio journalist and actress married to popular Russian actor Konstantin Khabensky, died from complications of a brain tumor in Los Angeles this week. She was 35.
The couple, both natives of St. Petersburg, Russia, were married on January 12, 2000. Their only child, Ivan (Vanechka) was born in 2007. Anastasiya developed the brain tumor during her pregnancy and was treated at the Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute in Moscow. Anastasiya's friends remember her as a young, energetic woman who loved life and her son. Anastasiya met Konstantin in 1999, when she interviewed the upstart actor for her radio show, and as Konstantin said, "it was love at first sight."
A former electrical engineering student and struggling street musician, Konstantin Khabensky is best known to American audiences for his role in the Angelina Jolie action-adventure movie Wanted. Russians know him best as the star of Admiral (Kolchak), The Irony of Fate 2 (Ironi Sudbi 2), Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor), Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) and other Russian blockbusters.
Russia Blog expresses our sincere condolences to Konstantin Khabensky and his family.
In August 1980, a new film was released in the Soviet Union, shattering any blockbuster records in the USSR and becoming an iconic feat of Soviet cinematography - "Pirati 20 Veka» (Пираты XX Века) – (20th Century Pirates). This was the first domestically produced "boyevik" - an action thriller - and it became an instant and long-lasting success.
The film, almost three-decades old, has the feel of being "ripped off the headlines." Today's Russia is taking an active role in combat international piracy off the coast of Somalia. Its Navy is participating in protection, search and destroy missions, and along with its American and British counterparts, and has already enjoyed limited success.
U.S. companies can't drill there - but foreign firms may be drilling in the Straits of Florida very soon
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republicans urged the Democrat majority in the U.S. Congress to allow American oil companies to "drill here, drill now, pay less" amidst record gasoline prices. One of the claims Republicans made was that the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, particularly off the coast of Florida, was ridiculous because Cuba had already leased drilling rights to Chinese companies. Thus, Chinese firms would be drilling nearly 90 miles off the coast of the U.S., while American laws would prevent American oil majors from doing the same.
At that time, Democrats dismissed these GOP claims about Chinese drilling as apocryphal, and said that China hadn't drilled for any oil in or around Cuba and that more domestic drilling wouldn't reduce gasoline prices for consumers at the pump. Later on during the campaign, as gasoline prices peaked in July 2008 and U.S. public opinion polls shifted decisively in favor of drilling, the Democrat majority in Congress allowed the long-time drilling ban to slip. Nonetheless, Florida and other states retained their bans on offshore oil and gas development.
One wonders if the news Sunday that Russian oil majors are also considering development in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the debate over drilling in the Florida legislature and on Capitol Hill. The announcement by a Russian diplomat came ahead of President Dimitry Medvedev's state visit to Havana, part of a presidential tour planned through Latin America.
President-elect Barack Obama's spokesman John Podesta has already announced that Obama will review several Bush-era executive orders, including the President's recent decision to abrogate the previous President Bush's 1990 executive order that banned offshore oil drilling. Lower gasoline prices due to the global economic slowdown (and some analysts claim, the bursting of a speculative bubble in commodities) has reduced the pressure on Democrats to allow drilling -- for now. But one wonders whether China, Russia, India and other rising economic powers will have much interest in joining a U.S. and Western European-led carbon "cap and trade" scheme, the favorite policy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats, to reduce worldwide CO2 emissions that may contribute to global warming.
Click on the extended post to read excerpts from the Associated Press story.
Russia Sends More Warships to Indian Ocean Somali Pirates Hold Supertanker Hostage
Charles Ganske
Pirates based in lawless regions of Somalia have become increasingly brazen in their attacks on merchant ships in the Indian Ocean.
The Russian Navy announced yesterday that it is sending another warship to the Indian Ocean to protect surface shipping from pirates. The Russian frigate is being dispatched after pirate gangs based in Somalia seized a supertanker near the Horn of Africa. The Sirius Star, a Saudi-flagged supertanker carrying two million barrels of crude, was seized this week by pirates operating nearly 500 miles off the coast of eastern Africa.
The Star is one of the largest vessels of its kind in the world, roughly the size of a U.S. aircraft carrier, and is manned by a 25-man multinational crew. Somali pirates are demanding millions in ransom money to release the ship and its crew. Unless their demands are met within ten days, the pirates have threatened to harm the crewmembers and hinted at causing a catastrophic oil spill. The Somali pirates are employing not only the traditional cigarette speedboats to attack merchantmen close to the coast, but also "mother ships", GPS devices and satellite phones that can extend their reach hundreds of miles offshore.
According to the A.T. Kearney survey, a global city is defined as an urban center that "excels across multiple dimensions" of human achievement, with different rankings for leading cities in business, finance, education, and governance. Some cities came off better in the rankings due to their historic position as global economic hubs, such as New York, London, and Tokyo, while others offered more lifestyle attractions, such as Toronto and Los Angeles. But all of the established megacities in the developed world have increasing competition from emerging market boomtowns like Beijing, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, and Shenzhen. As the capital of the Russian Federation, Moscow found its spot in the combined rankings at #19 out of 60 global cities, situated in between Vienna and Shanghai.
IHT: Russian Military Modernization May Be Hampered by Economic Crisis
Charles Ganske
A Russian soldier in Georgia
The International Herald Tribune has done some of the best reporting about Russia in recent months, including C.J. Chivers recently published analysis questioning many initial reports from the August 2008 war in Georgia. The Georgia War revealed that the Russian military still has sharp teeth - at least when fighting an inferior opponent on its own borders.
However, the war also revealed that even the Russian Army's elite formations were fielding 1980s vintage equipment, and did not have night vision goggles or Global Positioning System (GPS) devices like some of their Georgian opponents. The lack of unmanned aerial vehicles also led to a Russian Air Force Tupolev bomber getting shot down on a routine reconaissance mission over Georgia, with the loss of the entire crew. Russian army commanders, like the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, were reduced to issuing battlefield orders over easily intercepted cellphone lines due to a shortage of secure radios.
In late October the IHT reported on large Russian military exercises then taking place across all eleven time zones of Russia, complete with ICBM tests (hat tip: former Sovietologist and blogger Thomas P.M. Barnett). The IHT added that most American officials in the Pentagon and Bush Administration considered these changes in the Russian military's organization to be routine and not a cause for alarm in the West. If anything, President Medvedev's ambitious plans to modernize the armed forces may have to be scaled back due to a weak ruble, falling oil prices, and declining tax revenues into the Russian federal budget.
Click on the extended post to read an excerpt from the IHT article. Click on the Human Rights section of Russia Blog to read more about the problems of brutal hazing (dedovshina) and low morale in the Russian army.
