June 19, 2008
First time in 20 years Russia got into the quarter-finals of Euro soccer championship. Russian team crushed Sweden with 2:0 score. (Photo by Reuters).
A Note on Filling the Page. Today is the 490th Thursday that I have done a Sitrep. I have always been able to fill a page, some days more easily than others. This is the hardest I’ve worked to do so. For some years, we have been living with the “Russian Question”. One day, it, like the “Eastern Question” or the “German Question”, will pass and there won’t be enough happening to warrant weekly Sitreps. While that day is not here, we are, perhaps, closer to the desired end when Russia ceases to be a “Question” (with, FAR less bloodshed than the other two were settled, by the way, and far less than predicted by anyone). A “normal” Russia: one with which other countries may have trade disputes or strategic disagreements but will be confident that they can be settled “inside the box”. It’s a mixture of perception and reality: the latter changing much faster than the former.
Russian Tourism. A result of the growing prosperity of the Putin years has been a steady increase in tourism by Russians. 15 years ago the fear was millions of refugees; ten years ago thousands of criminals; the reality has become ordinary Russians on holiday. I have noticed this for some time but last year in the Mediterranean it was interesting to see that there are now enough of them to justify guidebooks in Russian everywhere and we often had a Russian couple beside us in a cafe. This Russia Blog post discusses the phenomenon. To my mind, the relative absence of such pieces in the mainstream media (although see JRL/2008/116/2) is a product of the meme that Russia is locked down by Putin and his Chekist minions. But, as Stalin understood, to really lock a country down, you can’t let people out and you can’t let people in. Perception and reality again.
Paul Klebnikov was the editor of Forbes Russia and the author of Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism (also published with the subtitle Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia). Klebnikov's book and decision to publish the Forbes' list of the richest Russians annoyed many powerful people in Russia. Klebnikov was shot dead outside his office in Moscow on the evening of July 9, 2004
Paul Klebnikov case. This is also the likely explanation in the murder of Paul Klebnikov nearly four years ago – certainly it is the heart of the prosecution case. The Presidium of the Supreme Court just ruled that the decision to return the case to the Prosecutor and suspend the trial was lawful. The Prosecutor General’s Office believes that he was murdered on the orders of a Chechen “biznesman” (now apparently dead himself) who didn’t like what Klebnikov said about him in the book Conversation with a Barbarian. But the prosecutors have been unable to produce either the killers or witnesses, as is not unusual in mob hits.
Anna Politkovskaya case. The Investigation Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office has announced that it has “finalized” the investigation into her murder. Murder charges have been brought against three Chechens and the police officer, earlier rumoured to have been the “spotter” for the killers, has been charged with abuse of office and extortion. The editor of the paper for which she worked, Novaya Gazeta, which has been doing its own investigation, questioned how “finalized” the investigation was. While it was “on the right track”, he reiterated that there were more people involved than the three shooters. As was evident the moment the prosecution’s case was outlined, the murder was not something ordered by the Kremlin, as so many in Western media outlets rushed to assume. As I thought from the beginning, it appears that she ran across some piece of information a “biznesman” didn’t want known.
TNK-BP. I have no idea what is going on and it appears that there is no clear opinion elsewhere either. Some see it as another Kremlin-inspired takeover while others believe it is an internal corporate dispute.
You just can’t keep up anymore! The newspaper that published the false report that Putin was going to divorce has announced that it will resume publication; on the other hand, The eXile newspaper is stopping. While the latter’s closing will be – is being – spun as pressure from the center, so was the former’s. Apparently The eXile was no longer making money for its backers. Print newspapers are dying all over the world, not just in Russia.
North Caucasus. Last week featured quite a number of apparently coordinated small-scale terrorist attacks across the North Caucasus on and around Russia Day. In Dagestan, a bomb in Makhachkala killed one, the authorities were pursuing another group near the Chechnya border, and a bomb was defused near Khasavyurt. In Chechnya there was an attack on a village in the mountains and a couple of attacks elsewhere and in the Ingush Republic an attack on a police post. Nothing on the scale of a few years ago, but a reminder that the jihadists are still dangerous, as they are in other parts of the world.
Caucasian rumors of wars. There was an explosion yesterday on the railway line in Abkhazia on which the Russian railway troops are working. Tbilisi denies any involvement. There are, however, a number of Georgian militia groups in Western Georgia that are not necessarily under Tbilisi’s control. Meanwhile accusations and claims continue to come from all parties.
Patrick Armstrong received a PhD from Kings College, University of London, England in 1976 and retired in 2008 after 30 years as an analyst for the Canadian government. He was Political Counsellor for the Canadian Embassy in Moscow from 1993 to 1996. He has been a frequent speaker at the Wilton Park conferences in the UK.
