Putinova Rusija

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Mikhail
June 15, 2015 at 9:30 am

You can’t be serious. The US does not fight with the UK, Norway etc because they are already in your pocket. On rare occasions if not the US have other options than waging war: money, blackmail, staged protest etc. This is all political technology, you know. Anyway show me an example of a situation where their opinions on important international political issues were “radically” different than that of the US.

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Jim Kovpak Post author
June 15, 2015 at 9:40 am

“You can’t be serious. The US does not fight with the UK, Norway etc because they are already in your pocket”

You see this is why people hate you. You can’t imagine that maybe these independent countries side with the US because of common values and mutual benefits. Apparently in your geopolitical worldview, all countries must be perpetually at war or in someone’s pocket. Now do you understand why Ukraine doesn’t want to be with Russia? There’s no chance of an equal partnership. At least the EU let’s them pretend.

“Anyway show me an example of a situation where their opinions on important international political issues were “radically” different than that of the US.”

Oh I’m so glad you asked. Remember when the US wanted to get NATO involved in the Iraq invasion? Who were the two biggest opponents, who shot that idea down? France and Germany. Then Spain pulled out, followed by the Italy and the Czech Republic.

In another example, Norway has an economy radially at odds with that of the US, and that which is highly recommended by US and IMF economists. For example, it has at least one oil company that is 100% state owned, i.e. more state-owned than Russia’s oil companies.

More important than this, Norway has the world’s largest capital fund, the sovereign pension fund. Because Norway believes in ethical investment, that fund will not invest in certain companies for a number of reasons. Many of those excluded are US companies. This effectively bars them from investing in some rather large American corporations. Also note that there is only one Russian company on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway#Excluded_companies

If you actually bothered to look, you’ll find plenty of disagreements between these countries, but it is far more beneficial for them to either agree to disagree or work out the disagreements in a normal manner rather than going to war or trying to overthrow governments.

This might be surprising to you, but many people go out to support protest movements on their own, because they actually believe in things and value them. Your RT apparently thinks that’s the case with Occupy Wall Street at least.

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This is why they’ll lose

Today’s post will be rather short, mainly because it should have been added to yesterday’s post covering the massive buttrage explosion over Eurovision. As it turned out, I saw the story in question only after publishing yesterday’s piece. The story was an otherwise mundane report on the decline of tourism in the Crimea in The Moscow Times. I never would have considered writing about it were it not for one of the last lines:

“The Crimean authorities have denied the falling popularity of the peninsula among Russian tourists. Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Ruslan Balbek, who oversees the tourism sector, said that Svyaznoy- Travel’s data don’t reflect the the real situation in the market.

“This is most likely either an information attack or a lack of knowledge. Crimea is one of the main tourist destinations in Russia,” Balbek was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.”

“An information attack.”

“INFORMATION ATTACK.”

“IN-F.UKCING-FORMATION ATTACK!”

A negative report on tourism is “most likely an information attack.” Yes, the CIA had a whole team of guys working on that cunning ruse!

Do you get a sense of what I mean when I say that Putin’s regime has reduced this society to the maturity level of children? This is by no means the first time we’ve heard this from Russian state officials. Indeed, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov couldn’t even wait for the Panama Papers to be released before warning audiences that the West was preparing an “information attack” against poor president Putin. Officials spotlighted by Navalny’s organization have claimed his investigations are “ordered by the West.” I don’t know about you, but if Navalny were falsely claiming that I own certain property I would just show who actually owns it, or I would show how I managed to afford said property via legitimate sources of income. But these days, all you have to do is say “information attack” and that will suffice.

This, dear reader, is yet another reason why that “New Cold War” you’ve been hearing about is going to be very, very short. There was a time when the whole “information war” thing was just pablum to feed the TV-watching masses, people for which the Russian ruling class has nothing but the deepest contempt. But in the past couple years it’s become increasingly clear that the leadership has been “getting high on its own supply,” so to speak. They are beginning to believe their own propaganda.

In systems where you have real, competitive democracy and political pluralism you may find seemingly hopeless gridlock and bickering, but it also means you always have a source of new ideas. Of course Western political systems are not immune to group-think or conventional wisdom. We saw what happens when such a system breaks down during the Bush administration. Sure, there was some intelligence showing that Iraq had WMDs. There were also a lot of qualifiers, unknowns, and contradictory evidence. Intent on going to war, the Bush administration decided it would only consider that evidence which supported its case, however flimsy. Since then American politics have shifted towards an anti-intervention, more isolationist position, even among conservative individuals. Trump’s success contrasted with Jeb’s spectacular failure bear witness to this fact. Essentially, no matter how limited the choices may look, the very idea that there should be dissent, pluralism, a “marketplace of ideas,” etc. would seem to ensure that no ideology can dominate indefinitely, and if some mode of thinking has been dominant long enough without achieving any positive results, it will eventually be replaced by other ideas.

The Kremlin regime doesn’t work this way. The only ideology is ambiguous “patriotism,” and patriotism is determined by loyalty to your superiors, ending with Putin at the top of the pyramid. Whereas in the West we admire people who followed their conscience, from Smedley Butler to Daniel Ellsberg, such individuals would be seen as nothing but traitors by the Russian elite and sadly, much of the Russian public. Even if you’re a die-hard Kremlin fan, even if you are on Putin’s side, dissent is a risky move. I for one have seen how pro-Kremlin writers who failed to be sufficiently supportive of Putin and his policies were viciously attacked by their own compatriots. Insufficient faith in the Dear Leader’s infinite wisdom is tantamount to treason. Depart from me, ye who work neo-conservatism!

The ultimate result of all this is that the system cannot reform in any meaningful way. Like the Bush administration years ago, the Kremlin is engaging in a behavior that has been termed “bending the map.” It refers to a tendency for people who are lost to mentally “adjust” their map so that they are not really lost or closer to safety than they actually are. While believing that there’s a town just over that next ridge is comforting, it is also delusional and likely to lead to disaster. On the other hand, knowing you’ve got ten or twelve miles to the nearest road means you can mentally prepare for that journey and anything that happens along the way. But whereas the Bush administration was bending the map, sometimes it seems like the Kremlin is simply crumpling it up into a ball and setting it on fire.

Unfortunately, there is little but bad news on the horizon for Russia, but every new report will likely be met in roughly the same way.

“It’s an information attack!”

“The West is behind this!”

“It’s the fifth column! No the sixth column!”

What about the poor sap who says “Maybe we’re doing something wrong?” Well he’s definitely a traitor, probably working for the Americans! Toss him out the window!

And that’s why they’ll ultimately lose. For all its faults, the West is made up of countries that adapt over time, more or less rejecting failed ideas and keeping what works. Russia, on the other hand, belongs to that club of authoritarian nations where adaptation is either off-limits or severely hampered. More alarmist purveyors of the New Cold War thesis often like to shout about how Russia is using the same tactics of the Soviet Union against the West. And that’s supposed to make us afraid? How effective were they last time, and how scary is it if in order to wage their little Cold War the Kremlin has to dredge up the very same outdated tactics that ultimately failed?

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Mikhail Matovnikov, a chief analyst at Sberbank, announced today that Russia's average wages have fallen below the typical income in China. According to Matovnikov's study, the average Russian now earns $443 a month.

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On May 12, an unknown man posing as the executive director of the Perm-based television channel Ural-Inform TV presented forged documents to the local branch of Rostelecom, which houses the equipment that broadcasts the network over the airwaves. After gaining access to this hardware, Ural-Inform TV suddenly went off the air. For the past week, the channel's actual staff and executives have been unable get inside Rostelecom's office to turn the broadcast back on.

Ural-Inform TV says it's filed formal complaints with the police, the district attorney, the Investigative Committee, and Federal Security Service, and Russia's Ministry of Communications, demanding the restoration of its television broadcast. Nothing has worked, so far.

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Immediately after being taken off the airwaves, Ural-Inform TV sent reporters to Rostelecom's office, but a security guard refused to let them into the building. The night guard, stumbling and slurring his words, was visibly drunk. (To behold this spectacle, skip to 0:58 in the video below.)

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At first glance, the massive shoot-out at Moscow's Khovanskoye Cemetery this past weekend seemed pretty retro.

What, after all, reminds us more of the 1990s than rival Russian gangs staging a deadly brawl in a turf war over control of the lucrative burial business? What is more reminiscent of the gratuitous violence and lawlessness of the first post-Soviet decade than a shooting gallery amid the tombstones?

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But in addition to giving us a blast from the past, the showdown at Moscow's largest cemetery also gave us -- perhaps -- a glimpse of the future.

Because Putin never ended the gangsterism of the 1990s, he just nationalized it.

And now the Kremlin's grip may be slipping.

If Boris Yeltsin's Russia often resembled a mafia masquerading as a country, it was a mafia run by a weak, feeble, and frequently inebriated godfather. This, of course, was a recipe for chaos, as it gave Yeltsin's capos and underbosses a lot of leeway, which they used with impunity.

Putin, in contrast, sent a clear and early message to the underworld: the state is the biggest gang in town and all others are subordinate to it.

Putin's deal with the criminal underworld was simple: do your gangster stuff, but don't do it in the open; don't embarrass the Kremlin with the noisy public shoot-outs that were the hallmark of the 1990s.

And oh, by the way, if the Kremlin needs a favor someday, you had best be ready to oblige.

The shoot-out in Khovanskoye Cemetery violated Putin's first commandment to the underworld.

It also exposed the soft underbelly of the regime; it revealed the rot that forms the foundation of Putin's Power Vertical.

Organized crime groups are colluding with the authorities and with law enforcement at every level. Police are often more concerned with taxing the illegal narcotics trade than fighting it. And even things like cemeteries are bound up in Russia's sprawling political- bureaucratic-criminal web.

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One of those arrested was a police officer. Also under investigation is the cemetery's director. And one of the main subjects of the investigation is Ritual, a state-run funeral agency.

"The language of the banditized '90s no longer describes today's power structures," journalist and political analyst Oleg Kashin wrote in Slon.ru. "The integration between criminals and the authorities is on a whole new level, as are the stakes."

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When the economic pie was expanding, it was easy for the Kremlin to manipulate the criminal underworld and keep it tame and well fed.

But those days are over. The pie is shrinking and only the best connected crime groups are thriving -- and the rest are getting restless, and more willing to break the rules.

The shoot-out at the Khovanskoye Cemetery might just be a harbinger.

"It's neither the opposition nor the bureaucracy, but those who are willing to die to achieve their specific goals who are showing us what a potential civil war in Russia could look like," Kashin wrote in his column in Slon.ru.

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On May 10, an unusual post appeared on Facebook, apparently signed by Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN). “Comrades and fellow soldiers,” it began. “I want to apologize that I couldn’t save our organization. We protected our national interests honestly.” Someone somewhere seemed far from happy with the decision to dismantle one of the largest government agencies.

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Ivanov’s name features prominently in any account of Putin’s rise to power. A career KGB officer, he moved to St. Petersburg in the 1990s to take up a role within the city administration. According to some reports, he did this on Putin’s own recommendation.

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When Putin was elected president, the “HR manager,” albeit with KGB roots, enjoyed a meteoric rise to become presidential deputy chief of staff. This was a position of enormous authority. It placed Ivanov in charge of the Kremlin’s HR department, and gave him control over all issues relating to national awards and staffing within the justice system.

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The extent of Ivanov’s omnipotence was publicly revealed in court in 2008, when a leading Supreme Arbitration Court judge testified that Ivanov’s staff directly intervened in judicial appointments. This is unconstitutional. One of Ivanov’s former colleagues agreed that “of course” this was what was happening — “but this is how the system works, they were acting in the interests of the state, and besides, it has only gotten worse since.”

It was around this time that Ivanov’s rise was checked and his career problems began. He first ran into Dmitry Medvedev, who became president in 2008, and who found it difficult to deal with Putin’s KGB associates. Ivanov was asked to move out of the Kremlin, and, in a clear demotion, he was transferred from his top position within the presidential administration to become head of the new Federal Drug Controls Service.

The idea for creating a special federal agency for drug control came from another of Putin’s St. Petersburg security associates, Viktor Cherkesov, in 2002. It was largely modeled on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration created in the early 1970s to fight drug smuggling.

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The new agency was given priority resourcing: 40,000 officers, all necessary operational hardware and, more importantly, the authorization to use it. The FSKN wiretapping department gained legendary status.

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The tale of Cherkesov’s eventual downfall began in August 2000, even before the FSKN was formed, when Russian customs seized a furniture shipment on the charge of falsifying its weight and price. This apparently routine operation turned into an epic years-long struggle within Russia’s corrupt security clans once it transpired that top FSB officials were involved. Several people were killed and dozens arrested in relation to the case.

Putin tasked his then-trusted lieutenant Cherkesov with securing surveillance and criminal evidence, something the FSKN was famous for. But the operation did not go to plan, as highly influential players have been hurt. In 2007, several of Cherkesov’s FSKN officers were arrested on the grounds of obtaining illegal surveillance in the furniture case. Cherkesov responded to the arrests by publishing an accusatory and highly revealing op-ed in Kommersant newspaper.

But by doing so, he broke Putin’s number one rule: Never air your dirty linen in public. Within the space of a few months, Cherkesov was dismissed and Ivanov had taken over the helm of FSKN.

Eight years on, FSKN itself is soon to be no longer, and now it’s Ivanov’s resignation that doesn’t look entirely honorable.

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Different power and security state institutions continue to fight each other for their place in the sun. Russian security is in many ways like a snake biting its own tail, sodden in corruption and racketeering. The line between Russian law enforcement, the state and organized crime is becoming increasingly difficult to draw.

Putin’s dissatisfaction with Ivanov may have derived from a scandal that took place thousands of kilometers away in Spain, Makarkin says. In early May, a Spanish judge issued international arrest warrants for 12 Russians suspected of organized crime including Nikolai Aulov, the deputy head of FSKN and Ivanov’s close associate from the 1990s.

“Aulov has a very bad reputation even within the law enforcement community,” says Roman Anin, a Russian investigative journalist. “All those who know him are highly allergic to his name,” Anin adds. Phone conversations tapped by Spanish prosecutors suggest he was close to Gennady Petrov, a top Russian mafia boss.

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Anin says that the Aulov problem could plausibly have affected Ivanov’s fate. The recent Western crackdown on criminal groups with Russian links has certainly set alarm bells ringing within Russian establishment. Putin may now be motivated to be harder and more scrupulous toward his longtime associates.

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Most experts and insiders surveyed by The Moscow Times agreed that the liquidation of FSKN is a risky call, and the situation with drug trafficking will deteriorate. Roizman believes the agency kept other government ministries on their toes. “There will be less competitiveness,” he says. “The FSKN and the interior could never come to terms and always tried to let each other down. Now the interior will know nobody is after them.”

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Come June 1, nothing will remain of the former agency. “Not one FSKN general will move over to the Interior Ministry,” says the source

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The average monthly Russian wage in U.S. Dollars was on par with salaries in Kazakhstan in 2015, the RBC news website reported Tuesday.

The weak ruble caused the average Russian monthly salary to total just $558 last year, a 34 percent decrease compared to 2014, a report from Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE) found.

In comparison, the average monthly wages in Kazakhstan and Belarus last year were $549 and $415 respectively.

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