Russian Occupiers to Close All but One Crimean Tatar Media Outlet as of Tonight

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 31 – “At the stroke of midnight” today, Denis Krosheyev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, says, “all but one Crimean Tatar language media outlets, which have come under a sustained assault since the Russian annexation, will fall silent.”

 

            Despite the efforts all of them have made to register, the occupation authorities will now close down Crimean Tatar outlets in “a blatant attack on freedom of expression, dressed up as an administrative procedure … to stifle independent media, gag dissenting voices and intimidate the Crimean Tatar community” (amnesty.org/en/articles/news/2015/03/crimean-tatar-media-will-shut-down-as-arbitrary-registration-deadline-expires/).

 

            Following the Anschluss, Russian officials required all media outlets on the Ukrainian peninsula to re-register. Pro-Moscow Russian-language channels, news services and print publications have had very few problems, but Crimean Tatar outlets have been “repeatedly and arbitrarily denied registration,” Amnesty International says.

 

            In the best Soviet-era tradition that Vladimir Putin’s regime is increasingly restoring, one Crimean Tatar outlet, the newspaper “Yeni Dunya,” will be allowed to continue so that pro-Moscow trolls and supporters of the occupation can point to it in order to deny that Moscow is conducting an ethnically-based purge of the Crimean Tatar media space.

 

            But that is exactly what is going on. QHA, the largest Crimean Tatar news agency, has been refused re-registration twice and has not reapplied, Amnesty noted. ATR, the Crimean Tatar-language television channel, has been turned down three times. It has applied a fourth time, but if it doesn’t hear by tonight, it too will shut down lest it face heavy fines, the confiscation of its equipment, and criminal charges against its mangers.

 

            Other Crimean Tatar-language outlets, including the Maydan radio, the 15minut.org website, the newspaper “Avdet,” and the magazine “Yildiz” have not received re-registration and will shut down. And in an indication of how sweeping this Russian purge is, the occupation authorities have refused to register the Crimean Tatar children’s magazine “Armanchikh” and the children’s television channel, “Lale.”

 

            “The fact that children’s television channels and magazines are being forced to shut down may sound like a cruel April Fools’ Day joke, but this is certainly no laughing matter,” Krivosheev says.  “Instead it heralds a latest stage in an ongoing clampdown on human rights … the brunt of which is being felt by the persecuted Crimean Tatar minority.”


             And to add insult to this injury, the occupation authorities have taken the additional step of warning Crimean Tatar leaders not to protest these closures lest they run afoul of Russian “anti-extremism” law.  As has become typical, the officials issued these warnings orally and refused to leave any documentation, undoubtedly so they can deny that they have in fact done so  (khpg.org/index.php?id=1427798413).

 

Belarusian Spy Agencies’ Cooperation with Russian Ones in Lithuania Highlights Larger Problem

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 31 – The security services of Belarus are closely cooperating with their Russian counterparts against Lithuania as far as their targets are concerned, according to the annual report of the Lithuanian State Security Department, an arrangement that underscores the real relationship of Mensk and Moscow and that calls attention to a much larger problem.

 

            That larger problem is this: After the disintegration of the USSR, Moscow maintained its covert presence in the other post-Soviet capitals and especially in their security agencies and often has deployed them against third countries where residents may be less suspicious of their actions than they would be of those of Russian officials.

 

            Thus, to take a hypothetical example, a Lithuanian official almost certainly would be less cautious if approached by a Belarusian than he or she would be if approached by a Russian, something KGB and FSB doctrine fully recognizes and has long sought to exploit through an especially nefarious kind of “false flag” operation.

 

            According to the Lithuanian report on “Threats from the Belarusian Security Services” (available in Lithuanian at vsd.lt/Files/Documents/635633000992101250.pdf and analyzed in Russian at charter97.org/ru/news/2015/3/30/145501/), Belarusian agents in Lithuania continue to focus primarily on “the activity of the Belarusian opposition … and its ties in Lithuania.”

 

            If that is something one would naturally expect, another focus of the Belarusian special services in Lithuania might not be: They are currently working in exactly the same directions and against the same targets as the Russian intelligence services, the Lithuanian security service report says.

 

            Not only are the Belarusian services seeking to recruit Lithuanian border guards, but the Belarusian defense ministry’s intelligence administration is “aggressively acting” to recruit agents and “collect information about military and strategic civilian infrastructure sites” in the country.

 

            Some of these Belarusian adjuncts to the Russian intelligence services are at the Belarusian embassy in Vilnius, the Lithuanian service says, but others are operating under cover of business groups, including in particular tourist offices.  Tourist firms are useful because they can plausibly arrange visits by Lithuanians to Belarus.

 

            The Lithuanian security service concludes that it is quite probable that “the Belarusian GRU  has shared the information it has obtained with the Russian GRU” and thus constitutes a greater threat to Lithuania’s security than many, who consider what is going on only about Belarus, may currently think.

 

 

Moscow’s Nervousness about Buryatia Highlights Transbaikal Republic’s Importance

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 31 – Foreign intelligence services are seeking to drive a wedge between the various peoples of Buryatia, a Kremlin official told a Novosibirsk meeting on ethnic relations  and national security yesterday, a latest indication of Moscow’s increasing nervousness about that strategically important republic and a signal to Buryats of just how important they are.

 

            Magomedsalam Magomedov, the deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, said that inter-ethnic relations in the Siberian Federal District were improving but that in Buryatia things were going in the opposite direction as a result of the work of foreign intelligence services and diplomats (asiarussia.ru/news/6695/).

 

            The Kremlin aid added that there were problems as well in Tuva (another Buddhist republic), the Transbaikal kray (where there are numerous Buryats), and Omsk. But Magomedov was clearly focused on Buryatia, and his words have already sparked an active discussion in that Transbaikal republic.

 

            Arkady Zarubin, a journalist in Buryatia, suggested that what Magomedov had said reflects the fact that “Buryatia is a strategically important territory for the country,” one  through which “all land routes to the East pass through” and in which, thanks to Lake Baikal, there is an enormous reserve of potable water.

 

            Thus, he said, “stability” in Buryatia must be maintained “at any price.”

 

            That Moscow doesn’t think that there is such stability now reflects the enormous corruption in the region, the incompetence of the republic’s leadership in appointing a Russian outsider to head the local university, and the work of the Buryat opposition.  But the role of foreign intelligence services is obscure, he suggested.

 

            Whenever he has been involved in preparing protest meetings, Zarubin said, “no special services besides the local ones have disturbed [him].  Since when did these become foreigners? Or don’t I know something?” he asked.  What is clearly going  on is that somebody feels he or she has to blame outsiders in order to shift blame.

 

            Buryatia, an enormous republic which sits astride the Transbaikal region, numbers just under a million people, who are roughly divided between the Buryats who form a third of the population and ethnic Russians who form almost two-thirds.  Maintaining tight central control over it has always been a focus of Moscow’s security thinking.

 

            But talking about this reality may have just the opposite effect that Moscow intends.  That is because comments like those of Magomedov remind Buryats like Zarubin of just how important they are in the mental maps of Muscovites, a reminder that may lead them to make more rather than fewer demands on the center.

 

            And in comparison to many other non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation, the Buryats have two serious advantages: On the one hand, as a Buddhist people, they are linked to Tuva and Kalmykia, the two other Buddhist nations in Russia.  And on the other, as Mongols, they have increasingly close ties to neighboring Mongolia.

 

           

Russians in Deep Denial about Their Country and the World, Irisova Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 30 – “The longing for ‘former greatness’” that many Russians feel is “playing a bad joke” on them, Olga Irisova writes in “Moskovsky komsomolets” today, because it has led them to don “thick rose-colored glasses” and engage in deep denial about reality, “subconsciously blocking out” anything which doesn’t fit with their preferred imagery.

 

            As a result, the Moscow commentator says, “the majority of Russians cannot accept the fact that with their support the leadership has committed a mistake which has cost the country its economic well-being and solid international status”  but thinks it is now the leader of an alliance with China (mk.ru/politics/2015/03/29/kak-druzhili-slon-i-moska.html).

 

            Most of them, Irisova continues, cannot cope with the notion that “in the world at large, Russia is viewed not as a superpower and guarantor of security but more often as an unpredictable player.”  They think that Vladimir Putin gained stature when he threatened to use nuclear weapons, forgetting that his role model was a North Korean leader no one respects.

 

            Indeed, none of the ideas about effectively challenging the US and the unipolar world or standing on its own or allying with China to oppose the West stand up to even the most cursory examination, she says.  Russia is in no position to dictate to China no matter how much many Russians would like to believe otherwise.

 

            “No one in Beijing intends to make a fateful bet on a Russia-China union,” the Moscow commentator says. That country isn’t even willing to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Instead, it has given Kyiv 3.6 billion US dollars in loans so that the Ukrainian government can end its dependence on natural gas from Russia.

 

Moscow TV’s “talking heads” for the last year have been telling Russians how fortunate they are to have turned from the West to the East. “We don’t need the West,” they claim. “We have a wonderful partner in the form of China.” But in fact, China views Russia not even as playing the “elder sister” role Andrey Kortunov has suggested.              Beijing does not even see Moscow as a sister at all. Instead, its interest in Russia is indistinguishable from its interest in African or Latin American countries which have natural resources China can use, Irisova say. But Russians cannot see this through “the rose-colored glasses” they use to look at the world.               China is an economic giant, as is the West. The Russian economy is only one-fifth the size of either. And in high technology areas, the gap between China and the West, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, is only getting larger.               Russians should be able to see this economic situation, but they don’t. But they also are failing to see that China is playing a much larger role in international security affairs, a role it is assuming not by entering into a confrontation with the US and driving itself into a corner as Russia has but by showing itself capable of playing a cooperative role.              China is hardly likely to scrap what has been an effective approach in favor of Russia’s which has failed, but Russians who remain in deep denial about this as well as about almost everything having to do with the power and status of their country can’t see it.  That of course points to more troubles ahead.

 

Russians’ Hatreds Easy to Unleash But Difficult to Limit, Reverse or Overcome

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 30 – Many are taking comfort in the notion that just as

Russians appear to have reduced their hatred of immigrants when encouraged by the Kremlin to hate Ukrainians instead so too their hatred against the latter could be ended relatively easily if Moscow changed course -- and in any case won’t expand to include others.

 

            But in fact, as a panel discussion organized by Radio Liberty points out, there are two problems with the optimistic vision. On the one hand, it ignores that there was a reservoir of hatred among many Russians ready to be whipped up by the government for its own purposes. Moscow did not create it; it exploited it (svoboda.org/content/transcript/26926308.html).

 

            And on the other, such a view also downplays the danger that while Moscow may be able to exploit such hatreds, it could quickly lose control over them and not be able either to restrain them once they are unleashed or to prevent them from being extended to other groups that the regime either wants to protect or does not want to offend.

 

            Indeed, to deal with this situation, the panel suggested, the regime will either have to offer new objects of hatred in the hopes of diverting Russians from one enemy to another or employ massive amounts of repression in order to limit the expression of that hatred. In either case, the problems involved with such feelings and their use are not limited or short term.

 

            Thus, for example, any lessening of official anti-Ukrainian hysteria in the  absence of any new target group almost immediately threatens to provoke new outburst of hostility toward migrants or toward other groups, including Chinese workers and industrialists in the Russian Far East whom Moscow has every reason to protect lest it offend Beijing. 

 

            (Indeed, that issue is so sensitive that the authorities have taken down an entire website after it featured an article showing that xenophobic attitudes and actions against the Chinese are in the rise there. The article was it sibpower.com/novosti-regionov/kitaiskaja-migracija-na-rosiiskom-dalnem-vostoke.html, but now even the site has been shut off. A cached version is available at

ebcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://sibpower.com/novosti-regionov/kitaiskaja-migracija-na-rosiiskom-dalnem-vostoke.html).

 

            Consequently, thanks to Putin’s actions in unleashing and exacerbating Russian hatreds in the current crisis, Russia and the world are entering a Martin Niemöller moment, one in which just because they hate someone else now, there are no guarantees that they will not hate others, including ourselves, later.

 

Border Disputes Spreading and Intensifying in Eastern Europe, Moscow Scholar Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, March 30 – The announcement three weeks ago that Prague is prepared to transfer 360 hectares of territory to Poland in the Těšín Silesia area is the latest indication that the border changes in the former Soviet and Yugoslav spaces are sparking new questions about borders in the northern portion of Eastern Europe, according to Aleksey Fenenko.

 

            On March 6, the Moscow State University international relations specialist notes in an article in “NG-Dipkuryer,” Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Subotka announced the transfer, something he said would end a territorial dispute between the two countries that has been going on since 1958 (ng.ru/dipkurer/2015-03-30/10_europe.html).

 

            Because Subotka provided no additional details and because the amount of land involved was so small, his words attracted relatively little attention. But Fenenko argues that border disputes are endemic in the region and that “the wave of de-Stalinization” at the end of the 20^th century “has led to the de-legitimization of the borders of the 1940s.”

 

            That is because, he continues, “for public opinion of these countries, references to the fact that the borders were established by ‘Stalin’s USSR’ is sufficient to recognize their illegitimacy.” The EU has been able to quiet “but not stop the process of their review.” And after the Těšín Silesia case, “the process is starting to take on a practical character.”

 

            “Up to the present,” Fenenko says, “border changes have taken place in the Balkans and the territory of the former USSR. In Central Europe, on the contrary, the borders of the 1940s have been preserved.” He suggests that “the disintegration of Czechoslovakia … did not change the situation since it occurred quickly along administrative borders within the country.”

 

            Now, however, “the situation is changing,” the Moscow specialist says, as the Těšín Silesia shows.  Warsaw and Prague, under pressure from the Entente agreed to the border in 1920. But both sides had problems with it, and immediately after Munich in 1938, Poland demanded and got a border adjustment in its favor.

 

            In 1947, following the Soviet occupation of the entire area, Poland and Czechoslovakia signed an accord that largely restored the 1920 border; but Poland later tried to make greater changes, something Czechoslovakia rejected.  In any case, the small adjustment announced now highlights the reality that “Poland and the Czech Republic have a problem” with borders.

 

            The 1938 Munich agreement between Hitler and Chamberlain is “traditionally viewed in Europe exclusively in a negative way.”  Any reference to it, including by Moscow, Fenenko says, represents a kind of “’red line’” that must not be crossed.  But Prague’s action this month has the effect of implicitly and partially rehabilitating of part of Munich.

 

            Could this prompt other countries in Central Europe, and especially Hungary, to raise similar issues, Fenenko asks. The answer is far from clear. Germany isn’t going to question its borders: the current ones are too much part of that country’s self-definition. But the situation with regard to Lithuania may be different.

 

            The current Polish-Lithuanian border follows a line established by the Soviet-Polish treaty of August 16, 1945, but “problems of the border delimitation between Poland and Lithuania remain,” the Moscow scholar says, with each side having claims to portions now within the borders of the other.

 

            On the one hand, many in Lithuania consider portions of Poland and Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast to be part of Little Lithuania. And many Poles still remember when Vilnius was within Poland, not Lithuania.  As a result, Fenenko says, “Warsaw could activate discussions about the principles of the delimitation” of the border.

 

            There is also the possibility of disputes between Poland and Ukraine. According to the 1945 Soviet-Polish treaty, Poland gave up territories to the Ukrainian SSR;” and “officially, Warsaw has refrained from advancing demands on Ukraine.” But that doesn’t end Ukraine’s western border problems: it also has them with Moldova.

 

            The most serious set of border issues involve Hungary and Hungarians. After 1945, some of Hungary’s lands were handed over to Romania, others to Yugoslavia, still others to Czechoslovakia and the USSR.  In 1991, Budapest began talking about the formation of “a Greater Hungary” that would reunite all of these.

 

            The US blocked that at the time by promising Hungary eventual NATO membership if it refrained. But, Fenenko points out, “over the last few years,” discussions of this kind in Budapest have “intensified.” Budapest now has problems with Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine, problems it has exacerbated by demanding autonomy and offering dual citizenship to ethnic Hungarians.

 

            Now, given “the precedent of the Polish-Czech negotiations,” the Moscow specialist continues, “Budapest in the future may achieve the establishment of a negotiation framework with Ukraine about the provision of particular rights to Hungarians” in that country.

 

            Fenenko’s article is important for three reasons: First, it is clearly an effort to set the stage for Russian demands for border changes by suggesting that this is not a “Moscow problem.” Second, it suggests that some in the Russian capital are interested in promoting such conflicts as a way of expanding Moscow’s influence over the region.

 

            And third, it is a reminder that the West, having failed to stop Russia’s “territorial” adjustments in Georgia in 2008 or in Ukraine in 2014, has opened the door not only to Vladimir Putin but to other leaders around the world who may decide that the era of fixed borders is over and that they have everything to gain by seeking to expand their own.

Reshetnikov Details How RISI Helps Putin Make Decisions

Paul Goble

             Staunton, March 30 – Leonid Reshetnikov, the obscurantist and imperialist former SVR lieutenant general and head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), says that his organization is “one of leading” organizations providing input to Vladimir Putin as the Kremlin leader formulates his foreign and domestic policies.

             In the course of a long survey of his views on the world and Russia, Reshetnikov provides additional details on the way in which RISI is involved in “the development of information-analytic materials, proposals, recommendations and expert assessments for state structures including the Presidential Administration (lenta.ru/articles/2015/03/26/risi/).

             According to its president, RISI “is one of the analytic centers [in Russia] which supplies the Presidential Administration with analytic materials. Besides us, I think,” Reshetnikov continues, “the Kremlin above all relies on the reports of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,on the work of our special services … and on the work of other institutes.”

             But “among these other institutes,” he suggests, RISI “occupied one of the leading places.”

             Reshetnikov served for several decades in the SVR and ultimately was head of its analytic administration. Consequently, he says, he understands what ordinary people do not – just how reports are prepared for senior officials. Outsiders “think that someone writes something, gives it to Putin, he then reads it as says: ‘Fine! Let’s take this decision now!’”

          

            That is not how things proceed. Instead, there is a constant flow of materials “from various sides,” and this is processed again and again at various levels in what is “an enormous analytic” process which “continues” at each level “right up to the very top,” that is, to Vladimir Putin.

             The RISI president tells Lenta.ru that Russia’s foreign intelligence services did not have an analytic shop until “the end of 1943.”  That was one of the reasons for the country’s failures in the first months after the Germany invasion. There was plenty of operational information, he says, but “there wasn’t any analysis” that sorted it out.

            As a result, the country’s leaders were pushed now in one direction, now in another. Thus, Reshetnikov says, “Zorge wrote that war would begin on June 22, but some agent in Berlin reported that it wouldn’t begin at all, and a third asserted that the war would happen but it would start only in December.”

            Now, he continues, the situation is different. There is an enormous analytic apparatus, and one of its strengths is that it contains and reports “alternative points of view” up the line so that the Kremlin will not be blindsided or trapped by a single position.

             Asked about RISI’s role in the run-up to the annexation of Crimea, Reshetnikov says that “we of course constantly prepared analytic materials both on Crimea and on Ukraine … but I want to say,” he insisted, “that in the preparation of the reunification of Crimea, no one from Russia took part … it was something unexpected for all.”

             Challenged by his interviewer that Putin has said that the Crimea operation was planned, Reshetnikov suggests that it “was planned when already everything had begun,” that the planning “went in parallel with events,” rather than in anticipation of them even though RISI and others had highlighted the attitudes of the Crimean population and Kyiv’s shortcomings.

            “But unfortunately,” the RISI president says, “we did not allow for the possibility that these attitudes would move toward a more effective phase, one of action.”  When that happened, Moscow, however, was ready to respond.

             (For background on RISI, Reshetnikov, and its and his recommendations, see “Kremlin Think Tank Confirms Close Links with Kremlin and with New Greek Premier” (February 1, 2015) at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/02/kremlin-think-tank-confirms-close-links.html; “Putin’s Personality, Agenda and Nuclear Weapons Make Him ‘Most Dangerous’ Leader in History, Piontkovsky Says” (March 18, 2015) at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/03/putins-personality-agenda-and-nuclear.html; and “Russia Must Stop Relying on Soviet and Western Answers to the Nationality Question and Use Tsarist Ones Instead, RISI Says” (January 14, 2014) at http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/01/window-on-eurasia-russia-must-stop.html.)