Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Approach ‘Orthodox in Form but Muslim in Content,’ Akhmetov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – Vladimir Putin has more support in the predominantly Muslim republics of Tatarstan and Chechnya than he does in Orthodox Christian Moscow, a reflection of the reality that “in terms of its content, Putin’s policies are Asiatic” rather than Christian, according to Rashit Akhmetov, the editor of Kazan’s “Zvezda Povolzhya.”

            The Russian president’s approach remains Christian “only at the level of rhetoric.” In terms of how he approaches the world and what he is doing, Akhmetov says, “putin is conducting what is essentially a Muslim policy” (“Zvezda Povolzhya,” no. 20 (June 5-10, 2014, p. 1).

            Or to put it in terms that will be familiar to anyone who recalls the Soviet past, Putin’s approach is “Orthodox in form [but] Muslim in content.”

            An underlying reason for this is that the Russian president recognizes that “Muslims in principle are in any state ‘the strongest’ supporters of statehood,” and Putin’s interest in building a state and the Eurasian Union is why he is relying on the Tatars and also on the Chechens, albeit for different things.

            Another reason for Putin’s approach is his desire to use the Kazan Tatars as a bridge to the Crimean Tatars and through them to Turkey.  And yet a third is the Kremlin leader’s recent turn from Europe to China.  That shift in focus is already being felt by the leadership in Tatarstan.

            According to Akhmetov, his republic “is gradually acquiring not only the status of an experimental Russian economic space but also becoming the eastern gates of Russia, open to China and to the Muslim world,” almost the only regions of the world where the governments are positively inclined toward Russia.

            Putin clearly understands that “China not only is a completely different culture than Russia’s but that its culture is opposed to Russian culture” rather than being “complementary” in Lev Gumilyev’s sense.  Thus, China’s relations with Russia will always be those of “a dragon and a rabbit.” Tatarstan can be a bridge.

            In his commentary, the Kazan editor then recalls that when Tatarstan was planning its sovereignty referendum, some in Moscow urged then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin to send troops to put down the Tatars. But Yeltsin, having learned that there were several hundred thousand Tatars serving in the Russian military, rejected such ideas.

            One Russian official told him, Akhmetov says, that Yeltsin called in Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and cursed him out.  Invading Tatarstan, Yeltsin said, could result in “a nuclear civil war inside Russia.”  “’You are mad” to propose such things, the Russian president said and directed that talks begin with Kazan.

            That led to the cooperation that has existed between Moscow and Kazan and helps to explain why Putin has taken the next step.  But that makes the recent decision by the authorities not to allow the Tatarstan Social Center (VTOTs) to mark its anniversary all the more troubling.  “It is easy to destroy” relations “but it is very difficult to build them,” Akhmetov points out.

            Despite that bump, he continues, Tatarstan is now in “a strategically favorable moment” and should exploit this to the fullest by pressing Putin “not to spend money on useless stadiums” for a competition that may be taken away from Russia but rather to invest in projects that would make Kazan “a Russian Boston.”

            If that were to happen, and Akhmetov insists that the Tatars could realize such a project far better than some in Moscow, then, “thousands of [new] Lobachevskys will be able to find the means to restrain the Chinese.” And he cites the observation of “the Tatar Suvorov” that victory comes not to the most numerous but to the most clever.

           

           

Window on Eurasia: Putin’s China Deal Won’t Help Russian Economy Much, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – The much-ballyhooed gas deal Vladimir Putin signed with Beijing will only have an “insignificant” impact on Russia’s economic development and state revenues, according to an analysis by experts at the Center of Development of the Moscow Higher School of Economics.

            Their 43-page report is available at opec.ru/data/2014/06/04/1233922990/KGB_70f.pdf.  Its main conclusions are provided by Nikolay Kondrashov in an excerpt that is posted at opec.ru/1714558.html.

             The micro impact of the May 21 agreement, that involving Gazprom, the economist says, is quite difficult to predict because many of the parameters set by the accord have not been released. But the macro-economic impact of the agreement is clearer and “useful to know,” he adds.

            The macro effects, Kondrashov says, are the impact the deal will have on investment in Russian infrastructure, on income from the sale of gas to China, and on the revenues the Russian state treasury will receive from such sales.

            The agreement calls for 55 billion US dollars of investment in Russian infrastructure, spread over seven years.  How much of an impact such investments will have on the economy depends on how large a share imports form of these investment projects and whether these investments will stimulate broader economic activity in the sectors where they occur.

            Russia has the capacity to produce large-diameter pipeline, Kondrashov says. Indeed, its capacity in that area is currently underused. Consequently, any expansion of production will not have the same multiplier effect it would have if its plants were working at full capacity.  Another limiting factor is what amount of raw materials Russia may have to import.

            According to Kondrashov, he and his experts do not expect such infrastructure investments to boost the growth of the Russian economy a percent in some years and less in others and then only until 2021. After that, he suggests, whatever investments have been made will have little impact on growth.

            Russia will earn money from the sale of gas to China, but the impact of these sales on the economy as a whole will be small in the near term and equal to “zero” in the longer term. But there is “one constant positive effect,” the Moscow economist suggests. This deal will boost the revenues of the government. Indeed, the state treasury is “the chief beneficiary” of the deal.

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Punishing Lithuania for Its Support of Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – Russia is redirecting its trade flows away from Lithuania in order to punish Vilnius for its outspoken support of Ukraine and opposition to Russian aggression there, a shift that has cut the flow of oil through the Butinge terminal by more than a third from a year ago and is costing Lithuanians money and jobs.

            In the first four months of this year, statistics show, the flow of goods has increased in most of Russia’s Baltic Sea ports, Riga, and “to a lesser extent, in Liepaja and Tallinn, but it has fallen significantly in Lithuanian ports and in Kaliningrad, which is dependent on crossing Lithuanian territory (rubaltic.ru/article/energetika-i-transport/04062014_tranzit-eksporta-cherez-klaypedu/).

            Compared to the same period last year, goods traffic through Ust-Luga in Leningrad rose 3.5 percent and through St. Petersburg 9.9 percent. Riga port traffic grew 21 percent, Liepaja 7.2 percent and Tallinn three percent.  But flows through Ventspils fell by 3.9 percent, through Klaipeda by 16 percent, and through the Butinga terminal by 34.5 percent.

            These shifts are against a total growth over this period of 2.39 percent in good trafficfor all the ports of the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea.

            Butinge suffered the biggest hit because redirecting oil flows is easier than shifting other kinds of good traffic, experts say.  And that is something the Lithuanian authorities are learning the hard way because, according to one pro-Moscow commentator, they have “ignored” the fact that these facilities were built “as part of a single economic complex” in Soviet times.

            Aleksandr Nosovich adds that “any problems with Lithuanian energy and transport, be they the Ignalina atomic power station or the Lithuanian railways or with the Klaipeda port or Mazeikai oil processing plant turn out to be connected with politics. That is what is taking place now” with Russia punishing Lithuania for its pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian rhetoric.

            Normund Grotins, a Latvian who is regional vice president of the Alliance for European Democracy, concurs. He says that the decline in trade across Lithuania is “a result of the presidency of the country in the European Union” and that Lithuania’s actions are going to have consequences for Estonia and Latvia as well.

             Indeed, Nosovich says, “it is now possible to speak about covert sanctions.”

                The Russian analyst suggests that Moscow is being very selective. Given greater cooperation with or at least less public condemnation from Latvian officials, the Russian side has restricted trade flows there less than it has done in Lithuania, something he says should be a clear lesson to all.

            He then asks “Does business and especially big business and that connected with the government want to link itself with countries which work to undermine international cooperation, against Russia (and also Belarus) on the bass of abstract geopolitical ideas and to the detriment of their own economic profit?”

            “The Lithuanians,” Nosovich says, “have already driven themselves into a dead end who now wants to have strategic cooperation with ‘a besieged fortress’?” Latvia and Estonia, he suggests, “still retain the chance not to fall into the same situation.”

                Besides the obvious misapplication of the term “besieged fortress” which applies with far greater force to Russia under Putin than to any of these other countries, these Russian actions point to three new realities:  First, Moscow is throwing its economic weight around in many places where the broader international community is not paying close attention.

            Second, the Russian authorities are pursuing a divide and conquer strategy here in much the same way they have done elsewhere, seeking to pit one or another Baltic country against the other two in the hopes of weakening all three NATO and EU member countries. Unfortunately, they have had some success in this regard.

            And third, what Moscow is doing with oil exports via Baltic ports provides yet another argument for those who want to see Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies reduced because obviously what the Russian government and its dependent firms are doing now to the Baltic countries, it could do to other European countries as well.

Window on Eurasia: Kuban Cossack Youth Back Ukraine Rather than Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – Despite the efforts of Moscow to suggest that the Cossacks are the unified advance guard of “the Russian world” and to create a wholly controlled Cossack establishment consisting of people with no links to the Cossack past, many Kuban Cossacks and especially the younger ones now support Ukraine against Russian aggression.

            In an article this week on Rufabula.com, Igor Kubansky says that the Russian authorities in Moscow and the Kuban have sought to involve the Cossacks in “the information war” against Ukraine but that these efforts are backfiring because real Cossacks and not just those who are playacting are on the side of the people not the Kremlin (rufabula.com/articles/2014/06/04/the-cossacks-and-bandera).

            Indeed, Kubansky says, Moscow’s efforts in this regard are failing for two reasons.  On the one hand, many of those who call themselves Kuban Cossacks consist of people “who do not have any Cossack roots and for whom service in the Cossacks is a kind of official support for Russian imperial chauvinism.”

            That reflects, he continues, the way in which many supposedly “Cossack” units were restored beginning in the late 1980s, where anyone who declares himself to be a Cossack is considered one regardless of his background or his knowledge of Cossack history, suffering and traditions.

            That has made it easy for the authorities to suggest that the Cossacks are all on their side because many who are supposedly Cossack leaders are little more than opportunists who will do and say anything Moscow wants but who do not reflect the views of the Cossack community, however much Russian propagandists claim otherwise.

            And on the other, Moscow’s efforts are failing because its propaganda is so crude and inconsistent that no one and especially no Cossack can take it seriously.  Thus, it is absurd to say that when a Ukrainian leader says “Glory to Ukraine” that is “fascism” while when Russians and the Cossacks they control say “Glory to Russia” that is “patriotism.”

            Further, Kubansky asks rhetorically, “why is Kuban Ataman Vyacheslav Naumenko who cooperated with the Nazis [now to be considered] a good figure, while [Ukrainian nationalist Stepan] Bandera to be held up as a blackguard and ‘fascist’?” “Why is the anti-communist struggle of the Cossacks worthy of respect but the anti-communist fighters in Western Ukraine only deserving of all possible denigration? There is no answer.”

            The gap between Russian claims and Cossack realities, he continues, is prompting the Cossack youth of Kuban to declare its support for Ukraine and its opposition to Moscow.  Real Cossacks remember what Moscow did to them after 1917 and know all too well what the siloviki and the Kadyrovites are doing now “under the protection of the FSB.”

            “Putin, Gundyayev [Patriarch Kirill], and other Kremlin dwarfs are building castles  more luxurious” than Yanukovich’s, Kubansky says. They are spending fortunes on Sochi and aggression in Ukraine, and the Russian and Cossack peoples are only being impoverished.  “We recognize that our chief enemy is in the Kremlin.”

            Moreover, he continues, “all of us have recognized that our future is not with the oppressor Kremlin but with our historical motherland, Greater Ukraine.”  And Ukrainians today “are giving us an example” of how to struggle with the Putin regime. Just now, the Kuban Cossacks are weak, but “we await the liberating Ukrainian Army on the lands of sunny Kuban.”