Putin Rarely Says He’s Good Only that All the Others are ‘Shits,’ Ponomarev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – A key to understanding Vladimir Putin and his regime is that the Kremlin leader rarely says that he is good, Ilya Ponomarev says. Instead, he says that all the others abroad are “shits.” On the one hand, “if all others are that, then what difference do things” in Russia matter? And on the other, it leads Putin to try to make things worse in other countries. 

            Ponomarev, a Russian opposition politician who now lives in exile in Ukraine, says that explains why Putin interferes in other countries: he is doing so to ensure they look bad to Russians and thus he by contrast looks if not good at least better. But that impulse carries the risk Moscow often makes mistakes that backfire (afterempire.info/2019/04/29/ponomarev-kreml-2/).

            But this vision of the world often leads the Kremlin to miscalculate as it has in the Ukrainian elections where it expected Poroshenko to win or at least finish close enough to create confusion and unrest in the wake of the vote. The massive vote for Zelensky that it didn’t expect has thus thrown the Russian political technologists into confusion.

            Moscow faces a young leader who is less predictable and ultimately less deferential than Poroshenko; and consequently, Russian policy makers are going to have to think long and hard about how to deal with someone who is not pro-Russian whatever they may have hoped and who is serious about protecting his country and himself.

            What has happened in Ukraine may have an even larger echo in the future than it does so. Some opposition groups in Belarus and Kazakhstan, for example, are now looking for “their own” Zelenskys (svaboda.org/a/29906276.html, charter97.org/ru/news/2019/4/29/332283/ and fergana.agency/articles/106887/).  It is not unthinkable that some Russians may do the same.

Remember Novgorod and Fight Putin’s Despotism, Milin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Vladimir Putin wants to convince Russians that they have always lived under despotism and that therefore they should accept his latest version as entirely consistent with Russian tradition, Dmitry Milin says. But in fact, Putin’s claims are not true. Russia has an ancient democratic tradition and it needs to remember it in order to revive it.

            That tradition rests in the Republic of Novgorod the Great, the Russian commentator says. It is republican and democratic and its existed for hundreds of years until Muscovy conquered and suppressed it, something the supporters of despotism now would like to “white out” of the history of the country (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5CC6963749B83).

            Indeed, Milin continues, “anyone who speaks about ‘the eternal slavery of the Russians’ is playing into the hands of despotism and Putin.” Those who support democracy and a republic form of government must remind everyone that “the history of Rus (both Muscovite and Kievan) is not only the history of despotism and monarchy.”

            It also includes “the history of the greatest trade and manufacturing republic which existed 342 years while surrounded by stronger despotisms.”  Those who want to keep democracy in Russia suppressed want everyone to forget about that part of the nation’s history and celebrate only the despots like Putin.

            “Our duty,” Milin says, “is to oppose that.”

            “Genuine Russian traditions are the traditions of the democracy of the veche, and NOT of despotism. Do not forget about this however difficult it sometimes seems to be.” If one forgets this for even a minute, he suggests, one is unwittingly helping those who insist that “’Russians need a tsar’ or a supreme leader or a dictator.”

            In fact, in Russian history and Russia today, there are many people committed to freedom and equal treatment of all peoples; and they do not need to survive “any tsar, supreme leader, dictator or a president with dictatorial authority.”

Moscow’s Failure to Demarcate Chechen-Ingush Borders Behind Current Crisis, Kostoyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Under the 1992 Russian law recognizing the creation of the Republic of Ingushetia, Moscow is responsible for demarcating the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia, Isa Kostoyev says; but the center’s failure to act as required has led to the current crisis, one that is already at the boiling point and may soon explode. 

            In a 3,000-word essay for the Zamanho portal, the former Ingush senator says that Moscow’s current unwillingness to live up to its commitments compounds the problems that the Russian government has created in the past by its drawing and redrawing of the borders in the region (zamanho.com/?p=7000).

And the central authorities by refusing to allow an open discussion of the complex issues involved, issues that Kostoyev says mean that Ingushetia should be given far more land than it now has in order to keep the population density of his republic equal to rather than much higher than in Chechnya.

For that to be achieved, Ingushetia would need more than 1200 square kilometers of land now within the borders of Chechnya. 

In the absence of such open and honest discussion, he continues, Ingush and Chechens have turned to the Internet where people on both sides are not so much talking about real history but dreaming up their versions of it to support whatever position they now hold. This is dangerous and can only be ended if the media open up. 

If Moscow continues to impose silence and remains inactive, Kostoyev says, there is one other way out: the convention of a shariat court to do justice.  In short, although he does not mention Vladimir Putin by name, the Putin regime has ensured that there will be an Islamic solution rather than a secular one, exactly the opposite of what Moscow says it wants.

            Meanwhile, the situation in and around Ingushetia continues to deteriorate, with official harassment of the opposition, arrests involving people ever more distant from the top leadership of the protesters, and fines on them increasing in number with each passing day (novayagazeta.ru/news/2019/04/29/151307-v-ingushetii-oshtrafovali-aktivista-priehavshego-na-protestnyy-miting-po-prosbe-vlastey,  kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334912/, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334874/, fortanga.org/2019/04/u-syna-ingushskogo-deputata-prohodyat-obyski/, zamanho.com/?p=7034 and zamanho.com/?p=7010).

            But perhaps the most negative development is that the Yevkurov government and its Moscow allies are sending those it has detained to jail and trial in neighboring republics, a practice that is further exacerbating the situation inside Ingushetia (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334919/, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334900, fortanga.org/2019/04/ahmed-barahoev-i-malsag-uzhahov-nahodyatsya-vo-vladikavkaze/  and zamanho.com/?p=7021).

            Another dangerous development and one that indicates that borders in the Caucasus really matter however much Moscow and some analysts dismiss them as mere administrative conveniences is the fact that now, several Ingush residents living near the Chechen border have been arrested and carried off into Chechnya (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334882/).