Russia Patents First Two Antidotes for Those Infected with Coronavirus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 31 – Like most countries, Russia has focused on developing vaccines to prevent those who have not been infected from contracting the coronavirus or getting such a severe form; but it has also been working on antidotes and today, Veronika Skvortsova of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency said Russian scientists have come up with two breakthrough drugs (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/v-rossii-obyavili-o-sozdanii-pervogo-v-mire-antidota-ot-koronavirusa-1029924804).

            She did not provide details for the media, but presumably these two new medicines will be used to treat those already infected and will cure them. If that testing proves these to be safe and effective, that will be a major addition to the toolbox doctors are already using to treat and often cure those infected during the pandemic.

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 27,747 new cases of infection and 593 new deaths (t.me/COVID2019_official/2291).Dmitry Rogozin reported that “more than 10,000” of those employed in his Roskosmos branch have come down with the coronavirus infection. He provided no details on deaths (regnum.ru/news/3155794.html).

            The pandemic continued to ebb and flow across the country with most places heading into the New Year’s holiday with restrictions (regnum.ru/news/society/3154313.html). St. Petersburg, which is suffering from a spike, said the burden on the healthcare system was unprecedented and compared the pandemic to a war (regnum.ru/news/3155769.html).

            On the vaccine front, former chief specialist at the health ministry Irina Shestakova said that Russia must vaccinate about 50 percent of the population if it is to overcome the pandemic, a percentage far higher than the share of Russians willing to get the vaccine according to all polls (regnum.ru/news/3155534.html).

            Instead of seeking to change that by playing up the value of the vaccine and the wrongheadedness of the anti-vaxers, the Russian media have been attacking liberals for supposedly undermining the government’s efforts by raising questions about Sputnik-5 and the country’s medical facilities (mbk-news.appspot.com/sences/felgengauer-o-liberalah-i-sputnike/).

            On the economic front, HIS Market reported that business activity in Russia had declined slightly in December after major falls earlier (markiteconomics.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/ba5f95859d1a4f498185e01107870119).

            Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,

·         Ever more Russians are concluding that plans to have a coronavirus passport in the coming year is part of a larger plan to have “a total digital dictatorship” (svpressa.ru/society/article/286131/).

·         Moscow has bragged about how many countries are purchasing its vaccine but has not emphasized that most are third and even fourth world countries where the Putin government has been meddling and that few advanced countries have shown any interest (newssky.com.ua/sputnik-v-kak-kreml-stavit-opyty-nad-grazhdanami-drugih-stran-eksklyuziv/).

·         Aleksandr Myasnikov, chief doctor at Moscow’s Clinical Hospital No. 71, says that the pandemic has taught Russians and others some important lessons including that “nothing is firm or permanent in this world” and that individuals must be ready to take responsibility for what happens to them because “no one is going to make us happy” except ourselves (regnum.ru/news/3155769.html).

2021 is 30th Anniversary of Russia’s Latest Failed Attempt to Turn from Authoritarianism, Klyamkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – The year ahead marks the 30^th anniversary of the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the USSR, developments that many at the time hoped would allow Russia to emerge as a free and democratic state. Those hopes have been quashed by developments over the three intervening decades.

            Many of those hopes were inspired by the belief that the problems Russia had to overcome were those of the Soviet system and that, having ceased to be communists, Russians could easily become democrats. One who even then saw that was not the case was Igor Klyamkin, the current president of the Liberal Mission Foundation.

            In 1987, four years before the end of the Soviet Union, he published his seminal article, “What Street Leads to the Church?” (liberal.ru/sovet_fonda/kakaya-ulica-vedet-k-hramu) in which he argued that Russia’s problem was not limited to Stalinism or Sovietism but very much part of the Russian historian tradition.

            Now, in an interview he has given to Daniil Kotsyubinsky of Novaya gazeta, Klyamkin explains why instead of leading to the church” of Western democracy, Russia has moved along a street that ends with Vladimir Putin (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/12/30/88576-pochemu-rossiyskaya-ulitsa-vmesto-hrama-privela-k-putinu).

            Klyamkin recalls that his suggestion that there is a strong authoritarian tradition was read at the time as a defense of Stalinism because his argument implied that the Soviet dictator was only following that tradition rather than being responsible for its hyperbolic forms. But inevitability and responsibility are different issues, he says.

            When he wrote his article, the commentator/activist says, he was certain that “neither the liberalization of the communist system nor its gradual dosing of democracy could open the prospects for the transformation of the command and planned economy into a market one.” And indeed that did not happen except by zig zags that have restored much of what went before.

            Klyamkin says that Mikhail Gorbachev found himself caught in the contradiction between his proclivity for using authoritarian means and the non-authoritarian system he believed he needed to create. As a result, he too moved in zig zag fashion, now tilting one way not another but not breaking entirely with the past.

            According to the Liberal Mission Foundation, “the decisive contribution to the process of the renewal” of authoritarianism was made not be Gorbachev or even by Vladimir Putin. Instead, it was made by Boris Yeltsin, who recognized that Russia could be authoritarian only in more restricted borders and if it used democratic forms to promote authoritarian ends.

            That is what he did between 1991 and 1993, Klyamkin says. Yeltsin moved selectively but he put in place the model that Putin has followed, extending authoritarianism from one sector to another. The current Kremlin leader was able to do that because of his role in touching off the second post-Soviet Chechen war, something that gave him legitimacy in the eyes of many as the head of a new imperial state.

            Putin has put in place “a new form” of classical Russian autocracy, “one different from its tsarist and soviet” predecessors. It is eclectic in its combination of autocracy with liberal democratic attributes, uses constitutions and laws for anti-constitutional and anti-legal ends, and thus puts in place “a falsified version of a legal state.”

            That does not end the Russian authoritarian tradition. Instead, it has allowed it to survive into a new century. But the forms themselves, however much their content has been gutted by the Kremlin leader, provide the basis for some hope that Russians will begin to invest them with the meaning they should have but that Putin rejects.

            If that occurs, then Russian history can change, not easily or with certainty or without the opposition of those who would lose power if it does; and if those changes happen, then a new road will open, one that could lead not to another despot but to liberal democracy as a system and not just the power of liberals who then betray what many say they stand for.

KBR Officials See Islamist Extremism where Population Sees Only Ordinary Conflicts

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – The positions of the civil authorities and the population have reversed the norm in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic. Instead of the former dismissing ethnic and religious conflicts as mere day-to-day disputes, they are insisting that the conflicts have their roots in Islamist extremism, with the latter taking exactly the opposite effect.

            On the one hand, this unusual reversal of positions may be a sign that the civil authorities in the North Caucasus are about to launch, quite likely at Moscow’s insistence, a major campaign against Islamism and thus are inclined to see signs of its existence even where many would not.

            But on the other hand, it suggests that people in the North Caucasus are now prepared to defend their attachment to Islamic values by insisting that the argument the secular authorities have made before is one that they can use in the defense of those values. That creates a situation the powers may have great difficulty in countering – and not just in Muslim areas.

            In almost any society, there are differences between state laws which the government enforces and religious ones which the leaders of those communities do. Typically, these two sets of laws coexist without much difficulty, but there are times when the actions of the religious undercut the secular powers and then the latter respond, often harshly.

            The current case in KBR involves charges against a group of young Muslims in the settlement of Anzorey that the powers that be say have formed “Islamic patrols” and have been using force or the threat of force to compel obedience to Islam. Those charged face six to ten years in prison (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/358001/).

            Relatives and lawyers of the accused say there is no such organization which prosecutors are calling a jamaat, the term for any community within Islam. But officials say that they have evidence that the group has been active since 2005 and has become more so over the last four years (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/357934/ and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/357830/).

            Ruslan Kurbanov, a specialist on Islam in the North Caucasus, says that within almost every faith there are those who want to take action to compel obedience. In short, he argues, this isn’t an “Islamic” problem, despite the attempts of the KBR authorities to present it as such.

            Oleg Orlov, a specialist on the North Caucasus for Moscow’s Memorial human rights group, agrees. He says that what such “patrols” are doing in the North Caucasus among Muslims is exactly equivalent to what Cossacks are doing among Orthodox believers in other parts of the Russian Federation.

            Such things are dangerous in both places and should not be tolerated, but it is important that Muslims and Orthodox Christians not be treated differently in this regard, the Memorial specialist says. Otherwise, that will be viewed by both sides as evidence of the kind of double standards that could land Russia in trouble.

            Given how often the powers that be fabricate criminal cases, it is no surprise that this is happening, Orlov suggests. And indeed, according to Valery Khatazhukov, head of the For Human Rights movement in KBR, most people there see these latest charges against the supposed jamaat members as nothing more than that.

‘Arc of Instability’ around Russia that Grew in 2020 Likely to Spread and Intensify in 2021, Martynov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – The coronavirus pandemic has overshadowed what has been the most dramatic development in the past year for Russia: the increasing instability in the arc of countries around its borders, a trend that gives every sign of intensifying in 2021 with new crises likely in Qarabagh, the Fergana valley and Transdniestria, Pavel Martynov says.

            The Nakanune commentator says that the last year has been characterized by “a growth in tensions literally across the entire post-Soviet space.” Five years ago, there was only the Donbass, but now it can be seen everywhere and appears certain to spread and intensify (nakanune.ru/articles/116632/).

            The Qarabagh conflict is far from over, and there are likely to be a recrudescence of the kind of conflicts not only in the Caucasus “but also in Transdniestria and the Fergana Valley” in Central Asia that Moscow hasn’t see or had to deal with since the late 1980s and early 1990s, Martynov continues.  

            But if many of the conflicts are long-standing, some of them have reached the point where they may be about to explode. The presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan on January 10 may even lead to the collapse of central authority and splitting apart of that country, the commentator says experts like Aleksandr Knyazev say.

            Indeed, they suggest that Kyrgyzstan may descend into the kind of chaos long seen in Afghanistan, something that could make it a source of conflicts in neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and affect plans by China to build a railroad. Indeed, one of Kyrgyzstan’s oblasts has the potential to become “a Crimea or a Donbass.”

            There has never been a fully articulated separatist movement in that oblast, Martynov adds, “but given the weakening of the state and the reduction of its importance, it is impossible to exclude that something like that may arise.”

            At the same time, the upcoming parliamentary elections in Moldova may re-ignite the Transdniestria issue. The new pro-Western Moldovan president has called for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the restoration of Chisinau’s control over the breakaway republic. If the parliament changes and goes along, there will be a crisis there.

            It is even possible this will spread into Ukraine. Belarus is already unstable because of the continuing protests, and even the three Baltic countries, long a bastion of relative stability, have been weakened by the pandemic and may find it difficult to emerge from the current crisis without the kind of clashes that have weakened other parts of the region.

            What all this means, Martynov concludes, is that the region will enter 2021 in a less than quiescent way and that “practically in all regions of the post-Soviet space, there will be conflicts that could draw Russia in or force it to yield to others if it does not intervene. One can only hope, he says, that “there won’t be any major bloodletting” in 2021.

 

If 19th Century Ended in 1914, the 20th Did in 2020, Yershoff Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – People are accustomed to think of periods of time in terms of the calendar, but often the characteristics of one period change not with a shift in decades or centuries but more irregularly. According to Yegor Yershoff, the 19^th century ended in 1914, but the 20^th has done so in 2020.

            The conservative Russian commentator, writing in the Riga-based Harbin portal, argues that the coronavirus pandemic is playing the same role that World War I did earlier, highlighting the gap between those countries which had modernized earlier and those which had resisted any chance (harbin.lv/2020-itogi).

The former, including the United Kingdom and the United States, became the paramount powers if not immediately then shortly thereafter, while the four great empires of Europe in 1914 – the Russian, the German, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman – disintegrated over that period, Yershoff continues.

Now, with the pandemic, some countries in the former category are in trouble, facing challenges they do not know how to respond to be in Brexit or Black Lives Matter and the radical expansion in the number of voters and their coming under the influence of the Internet; and some of the latter are hoping to go backwards in time, with few prospects that is possible.

For Russia, he says, “the coronavirus has been much like Chechnya,” with “super-centralization again proving to be its Achilles’ heel.” First, Moscow ignored the problem; then, it launched a campaign against it; and then it backed down, yielding all the places it had seized earlier, highlighting the Kremlin’s inability to deal with problems at home.

This time around, the Kremlin has extracted some benefits from the pandemic: it has tightened the screws, it has deflected responsibilities onto the regions, and it has put in place new constitutional arrangements which it hopes will allow it to continue to operate just as it has and ensuring it won’t be able to respond to new challenges.

And three of those challenges are now very much on public view: a multipolarity which means Moscow no longer has to worry just about the US but about Europe and Turkey, the rise of protests in the regions as at Khabarovsk rather than only in the capital, and its botched poisoning of Navalny.

The latter is particularly dangerous because in the new information environment, Navalny’s documentary film about what was done to him and how the organs failed threatens to become “the GULAG Archipelago of the 21^st century,” Yershoff suggests, a document which undermines the entire system.

“Just as in the Archipelago are clarified the systematization of the Soviet punitive machine from top to bottom” as shown in a single case. But in an era of tweets, an hour-long video is completely the equal of a multi-volume work” especially because it shows that the system is passing from tragedy to farce.

The conservative commentator says that 2020 echoes the past in another way. It was the centenary of the execution of Kolchak, the centenary of the Tambov uprising, the centenary of the Russia Exodus, the 75^th anniversary of the KONR Manifesto, as well as “the 150^th anniversary” of the birth of Lenin and “the 75^th of the victory of the GULAG over Buchenwald.”

All this suggests that 2020 was the real end of the 20^th century and the beginning of a new one, one in which many do not know how to respond, in which no one should be surprised, and everyone should be ready for things to get worse. The history of the coming years will sort things out just as the years after 1914 did.

Moscow Promoting Economic Growth over Environmental Protection, Thus Undermining Both, Russian Analysts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – In its as-yet not fully approved climate doctrine, Russian environmental activists say, the Kremlin is continuing to give priority to economic growth rather than to the defense of the environment, a strategy that will lead to its falling further and further behind the advanced countries and harm the world’s ecological situation.

            Not only are the provisions of the new climate doctrine, which Vladimir Putin only in part confirmed in November, internally inconsistent, but they show that Moscow intends to continue to rely on fossil fuels both domestically and as an export earner rather than shift to renewable energy (russian.eurasianet.org/россия-новая-климатическая-стратегия-ведет-в-технологический-тупик).

            Russian industrialists believe that this is the only way the country can begin to expand by  the more than anemic numbers it has achieved in recent years, but they do not see that the shift other countries are making toward renewable energy will keep demand for Russian oil and gas low and thus reduce the contribution such sales can make to the economy.

            Moreover, environmental experts argue, Russia’s failure to move in the same direction means not only that Moscow will have ever smaller earnings from hydrocarbon sales but that its industry will increasingly be out of date and thus unable to compete with the economies of other countries.

            Russian officials and businessmen have long been climate change deniers, even though Moscow signed both Kyoto and Paris accords and has proclaimed its support for the goals of protecting the environemnt; and so the fact that Russia now has a strategy document (economy.gov.ru/material/file/babacbb75d32d90e28d3298582d13a75/proekt_strategii.pdf) and that Putin has approved it in part (http://kremlin.ru/acts/bank/45990) represents progress.

            But Moscow’s strategy document exploits the lack of specificity in the Paris accord about when the middle of the century is and how much Russia must do in order to reduce carbon emissions. Moreover, the Russian government acknowledges that if its strategy is realized, Russia likely will increase not decrease emissions in the coming decades.

            And all of its planned achievements are postponed until after 2020, an indication that it views economic recovery as more important than improving the economy and does not want to pay any political costs for restricting growth now in order to have more growth in the future, Russian analysts say.

            To a large extent, Russia has escaped withering international criticism on climate issues because as a result of economic decline, its emissions of greenhouse gases now are almost 50 percent less than they were in 1990. But it is now clear that Moscow intends to rebuild its economy along existing lines rather than modernize it to protect the environment.

            Given Russia’s economic problems, one can understand why some would be attracted to such an approach, but Mikhail Yulkin, head of KarbonLab, a Russian environmental group, argues that “such ‘pragmatism’ will bury any hopes for the modernization of the economy.” Not only will income from gas and oil sales fall, but Russian industry will remain backward.

            And that means that any short-term recovery that Vladimir Putin may be able to oversee will be followed by larger and longer-term declines in the Russian economy and larger and longer-term harm to its environment and the environment of the world.

Loose Talk about Russian-Armenian Union State Reflects PTSD in Yerevan, Moscow Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 30 – Calls by some in Yerevan to create a Russian-Armenian “union state” to protect the Armenians from Turkey and Azerbaijan are first and foremost a reflection of the post-traumatic syndrome disorder among Armenians, find little support in Moscow and will soon dissipate, IMEMO Caucasus specialist Vadim Mukhanov says.

            Some Armenians are inclined to make such proposals because they really believe that without such a union, Armenia will become “a Turkish vilayet,” while others argue that Moscow’s failure to support Yerevan during the recent fighting shows that Armenia must join Russia or face even worse in the future.

            But this idea is going nowhere for “a whole line of reasons, Mukhanov says, and will soon disappear from the public space in Yerevan and, what may be far more important, not gain any traction in Moscow which has compelling reasons now not to agree to such a new arrangement (mk.ru/politics/2020/12/29/soyuznoe-gosudarstvo-armenii-i-rossii-byt-ili-ne-byt.html).

            First of all, the Moscow analyst continues, “Armenia is in a intense military-political conflict with Azerbaijan.” Moscow doesn’t want to be drawn more deeply into that. “Second, [Armenia] has not delimited its borders,” guaranteeing that any close ties with it would have exactly that effect. “And third,” Russia and Armenia “do not share a common border.”

            To be sure, he argues, “Russia is the guarantor of the security of Eurasia, but only as an ally and not as its new common home. The latter is more an ideological tale than anything else, with the help of which some are trying to calm society. But when a little time has passed, they will forget about it.”

            And the future relationship between Moscow and Yerevan will remain “bilateral ties of two independent states.”

            On the one hand, this recalls the situation in Soviet times when the Bulgarians asked to become part of the USSR and Moscow said no. But on the other, given Putin’s desire to create a union state, it reflects a recognition in Moscow that at present in any case, Russia’s position in the Caucasus and elsewhere is not strong enough to move to create a union state.

            And that realization may lead some in Moscow to urge that the Kremlin to back away from union state plans not only in the Caucasus but elsewhere and in the first instance with Belarus however passionately Putin and his regime may have wanted this up to now.

            Ayk Khalatyan, an Armenian political analyst, also reacted to this idea in a comment for Moskovsky komsomolets. He says that there really are people in Armenia who think that a union state is a necessary precondition for their salvation, but there aren’t people in Moscow who believe this is “something Russia needs.”

            Armenia has no choice but to be a close ally with Russia, he continues. In the Caucasus now, the only other power center is Turkey; and an alliance with Turkey remains unthinkable for Armenians regardless of their views on anything else.  But knowing that is the case, Moscow has no reason to go further than it wants to in meeting Armenian requests.