THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED 1,049,700 PEOPLE IN MODERN SLAVERY IN RUSSIA – THIS IS EQUIVALENT TO 0.7315% OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION
Escalating ethnic violence in Russian cities,25 coupled with regional conflict has heightened racial tension, particularly towards migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus.26 Five people disappeared in 2013 after an alleged abduction-style detention by security forces in Ingushetia and another incident occurred in Chechnya in early 2013.27
Loss of Chechnya: the case for the defence
Chechnya’s ex-foreign minister Ilyas Akhmadov has published a book chronicling the loss of his republic to Russia. Politicians from other countries with similar tales of loss and betrayal have tried to justify their actions in the same way. Oliver Bullough examines the current situation in the light of some of their accounts.
If a politician has lost an election, he writes a book about it. If he has lost a whole country, however, you might expect him to keep it quiet. Nonetheless, over the centuries, a few men have taken on the task of explaining away the most enormous failure that a political career can end with.
Russia has tended to be the villain in these memoirs because of its habit of periodically swallowing its neighbours. As a result, it looked as though the genre might die with the Cold War, when Moscow finally lost its empire. In previous centuries, exiled ex-leaders of briefly-independent Georgia or Ukraine committed their excuses to paper, but those states are free now. So who could be left to remind us how we abandoned their small nations to Russian vengeance?
Enter Ilyas Akhmadov, who ably fulfils that role on behalf of the Chechens – for whom he was briefly foreign minister, although he lacked a ministry even before he lacked a country. And his memoir does so in bewildering detail. I already knew the names and biographies of many of the people he mentions, but even I struggled with sentences like this one: “it must have been when I was praising his house that Aushev asked me about the cement factory in Chiri Yurt”.
From the progression of the exiles’ memoirs, you can trace the development of the world order, as the leadership of the Western world swings away from Europe. The Polish captain blamed the French in the 1830s, while Zhordania and many others blamed the British in the 1930s and after.
“For the 250,000 Polish Servicemen who fought under British command, the Yalta agreements came as an unbelievable shock,” wrote Kazimierz Sabbat, Poland’s last president in exile before the collapse of communist rule, in Polonia Restituta, with admirable restraint considering the vastness of Poland’s betrayal at the Yalta conference.
Writing today, Akhmadov blames the Americans.
“The lack of a principled assessment in the West contributed to the radicalization of the Chechen resistance; the West was seen as acquiescing to Russia, leaving only two available paths: submission to (Russia’s ally) Kadyrov or jihad,” he writes sadly.
“It is either Kadyrov or extermination and that choice is being hailed by the outside world, somehow, as a sign of progress.”
(Via Open-Democracy: Russia; Post Soviet World)
Russia employs Arctic brigade to defend oil and gas reserves
The move follows a muscular series of comments from the deputy head of Russia’s Border Service Colonel-General Vycheslav Dorokhin who said the Kremlin planned to build up its forces in the region to better patrol its Arctic territorial waters.
The troops will be based in the far northern town of Pechenga on Russia’s Kola Peninsula close to the Norwegian and Finnish borders and will be combat-ready later this year.
Russian military planners said they had studied the way Arctic troops in Norway and Finland operated and had ordered in the necessary winterised clothing and arms for the new brigade which could number up to 8,000 troops.
In particular, he said Russia wanted to step up patrols of the strategically important North East shipping passage.
“Our potential there will be built up. We won’t let anyone feel themselves free (to move about as they please) in the Arctic.”
Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway are all locked in a race to grab a slice of the northern wilderness after US researchers predicted that global warming might leave the area ice-free, and therefore more easily navigable and explored, as early as 2030.
Experts say the region potentially contains one fifth of the world’s oil and gas reserves and that the swath of Arctic territory claimed specifically by Russia could be home to oil supplies double the size of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves.
(Via The Telegraph; by the interesting journalist Andrew Osborn)
The first and only national referendum in Soviet history
Twenty years ago, on March 17, 1991, the first and only national referendum in Soviet history was held. Citizens of the Soviet republics were offered the opportunity to express themselves on the matter of the preservation of the union state in “an updated form.” And although six of the union republics refused to participate, the majority of the remaining population voted in favor of the preservation of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, only a few months later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Today, Rossiyskaya Gazeta experts (Gleb Pavlovsky [president of the Effective Politics Foundation], Valery Khomyakov [general director of the National Strategy Council], Dmitry Orlov [general director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications], Boris Makarenko [first deputy general director of the Center for Political Technologies]) share their assessments of the event.
The referendum did not fail; it was the Soviet Union that failed. Of course, ultimately referendum results were annulled when Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down as president of the Soviet Union. It is also important that the referendum was the last collective expression of the peoples of the Soviet Union, which could have been something to rely on in certain actions. But the actions of the Soviet leadership were destructive.”
Many party members were categorically against this wording – they did not oppose preservation of the Soviet Union, but were against socialist values.
Most people voted ‘yes’ in the referendum. The same people who said ‘yes’ to ‘preserving the Soviet Union based on socialist values’ had forgotten everything and voted for independence.
The situation that happened with the referendum reaffirms the double-sided position of the Soviet leadership. If the Soviet leadership had conducted the referendum more precisely and acted more decisively in accordance with its results, without allowing for a collapse of the Soviet budget, for example, or unconstitutional actions by the Soviet republics, then it could have been a completely different situation. I agree with Vladimir Putin’s assessment that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Six of the 15 republics boycotted the referendum and unequivocally opposed the union. The referendum was not perfect, because the very wording – ‘Are you for or against the updated Soviet Union?’ – was unclear. A result of the referendum was a new union agreement, into which several union republics tried to enter in August.
(Via The Russia and India Report)
Fallout from Chernobyl in Poland
It is not uncommon today to read, or hear that the effects of the Chernobyl accident “have been greatly exaggerated” and that “only” 31 people died immediately when the disaster occurred (particularly as people rushed to minimize the dangers posed by Japanese Reactors following the recent earthquakes).
Naturally, the former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine come to mind quickly. But what about other countries?
Poland was the third country profoundly affected by Chernobyl.
It was a glorious late-spring time, sunny, warm, blue sky, light breeze. On Sunday evening, April 27th, the wind became very strong and changed direction. Many people had similar feelings of sleeping badly that night, waking several times and sweating. “It must be that hot eastern wind”, people commented.
The sister of the journalist, aged 40 at the time, a scientist in the field of fishery and hydrobiology, spent the day working on lakes in north-east Poland, about 40 miles from the former USSR border. On April 29th, the evening news on Polish TV was interrupted by a special communiqué from Moscow. “There was an accident in Ukraine nuclear power-station. “Shortage of tincture of iodine, all sold out” – a perplexed, tired looking lady chemist announced. (Iodine tablets did not exist in Poland).
My parents had a small bottle of iodine tincture at home. Ten million Polish children continued their normal school routine getting plenty of “fresh air” in their usual sport and outdoor exercise activities.
March 18th 2011 marked the 10th anniversary of her death.
(via The Irish Times)
Sacked ambassador stokes Russian tension over Libya
Russia’s former ambassador to Libya has stoked new tension between President Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, after calling the Kremlin’s acquiescence to air strikes targeting Libya a “betrayal of Russia’s interests”.
Chamov, who was sacked as ambassador to Tripoli by Medvedev earlier this month, told reporters that Moscow’s failure to oppose the bombing raids would lose Russian companies huge sums of money in arms and other contracts.
Russia abstained last week during the UN security council vote which approved military intervention in Libya.
Chamov, who was reportedly greeted at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport by Russian nationalists bearing bunches of flowers, declined to comment on Medvedev personally.
Analysts said Putin’s comments reflected his desire to please patriotic voters, while Medvedev had acted shrewdly to preserve respect in the west while bolstering Russian interests.
Medvedev and Putin have both said they will agree together who contests the Russian presidency next March. Some observers think any disagreements between the two are cosmetic.
(Via The Guardian)
Lavrov Opposes Arming Libyan Rebels
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West on Wednesday against arming rebels battling Moammar Gadhafi’s forces and said Libyans must forge their political future without any outside interference.
With Western leaders saying they were not ruling out arming the rebels, Lavrov emphasized Russia’s opposition.
Russia, a veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council member, backed sanctions against Gadhafi’s government and abstained in the vote on the resolution authorizing military action to enforce no-fly zones, allowing it to pass.
Turning to the future, Lavrov said “the Libyan sides must agree on what the Libyan state should be.”
(Via The Moscow Times)
Russian bombers ‘intercepted in British airspace’
March 25, 2010 (last year)
Rare photos of Russian strategic bomber jets purportedly intercepted in British airspace show Moscow’s war machine is becoming increasingly bold, analysts said Thursday as Russia denied any territorial violations.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence released images it said were taken earlier this month of two Russian Tu-160 bombers — known as Blackjacks by NATO forces — as they entered UK airspace near the Outer Hebrides islands off Scotland’s northwest coast.
It said the March 10 incident, which resulted in crystal clear images of the planes against clear blue skies and a dramatic sunset, was one of many intercepts carried out by British Royal Air Force crews in just over 12 months.
“This is not an unusual incident, and many people may be surprised to know that our crews have successfully scrambled to intercept Russian aircraft on more than 20 occasions since the start of 2009,” Wing Cdr. Mark Gorringe, of the RAF’s 111 Squadron, said in a statement.
(Via CNN)