The Associated Press reports:

A senior Russian general says Russia will conduct military exercises in the Arctic to uphold the country's claim to the region's vast natural resources.

Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, in charge of military training at Russia's Defense Ministry, also said planning for the exercises began after several nations disputed Russia's Arctic claims. "Modern wars are won or lost long before they start," Shamanov told the military daily Krasnaya Zvezda in an interview published Tuesday. He noted that 5,000 U.S. troops were involved in the Northern Edge military exercise in Alaska last month.

Canada and Denmark have also been involved in the race to claim the area's extensive oil and other resources. Russia last August sent two mini-submarines to plant a Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole, staking its claim on an underwater mountain range that is believed to contain huge oil and gas reserves. A U.S. study suggests the area may contain as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.

After the Russian expedition, Canada vowed to increase its icebreaker fleet and build two new military facilities in the Arctic. The U.S. government also sent an icebreaker for a research expedition. Russian officials say preliminary results on soil core samples gathered by the expedition show that the 1,240-mile Lomonosov Ridge under the Arctic is part of Russia's shelf. More geological tests are planned.

Denmark has also sent scientists to seek evidence that the underwater ridge is attached to its territory of Greenland. The dispute over who controls what in the Arctic has become more heated with growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice, opening up new shipping lanes and resource development possibilities.

Yet in May, representatives from Denmark, Norway, Russia, Canada and the United States met in Ilulissat, 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle, to reaffirm their commitment to international Arctic treaties. Under the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, Arctic nations have 10 years after ratification to prove their claims under the largely uncharted polar ice pack. All countries with claims to the Arctic have ratified the treaty, except for the United States.

President Bush has been pushing the Senate to ratify the treaty.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Asia Michael Auslin, a resident scholar in Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, urges us to watch out for neo-Soviet imperialism in Mongolia:

While Washington continues to fixate on Iraq, a resurgent Russia is steadily expanding its influence in Eurasia. If the next U.S. president ignores Moscow's inroads, democratic development in Asia will come under threat, and the United States may soon be faced with a strategic challenge in one of the world's most resource-rich regions.

The Kremlin's main target of late is Mongolia, one of Asia's most vibrant democracies. Since first holding elections in 1990, Mongolia has developed a stable electoral system with more than 15 political parties and seen two peaceful handovers of power. Mongolians will vote on June 29 to elect a new parliament. Polls suggest the ruling ex-Communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, which regained power in 2000, could lose power to the opposition Democratic Party.

Regardless of the election outcome, Mongolia's relationship with Moscow will take center stage. State-owned oil company Rosneft supplies more than 90 percent of Mongolia's oil. Over the past three months, it has increased prices twice -- by an average of 20 percent each time. This comes on top of surging prices that, since 2006, have pushed inflation in Mongolia to over 15 percent annually. Rosneft recently told Mongolian officials that it would lower oil prices if given the rights to run oil production in the country. Moscow also wants to build 100 gas stations throughout the country, which would solidify its overwhelming presence there and reduce consumers' energy choices even further.

Similar tactics are afoot in other sectors of Mongolia's economy. Russian enterprises already own 49 percent of Mongolia's national railway and its largest copper and gold mining companies. An industrial group founded by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants to consolidate the Russian-controlled shares of all three companies, effectively giving Putin's cronies a near-stranglehold on key players in the Mongolian economy. Officially, Mongolian officials express confidence in the benefits of deeper economic relations with the Kremlin. Privately, they admit to feeling pressured into opening up their markets to Moscow and wish more Western companies would invest.

Despite these misgivings, Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar visited Moscow last month and agreed to discuss further joint uranium production and nuclear cooperation. President Dmitry Medvedev stated that bilateral trade will soon exceed $1 billion, cementing Russia's position as Mongolia's largest trading partner after China. If these trends continue, Mongolia may become an economic satellite of Putin's newly expansive Russia.

The stakes are high for fledgling Asian states, especially democracies, which must balance satisfying Russian demands with proving to their own people that they can protect their independence. If Russia succeeds in blackmailing Mongolia into economic subservience, then it can try to extend this tactic to Central Asian nations.

Imagine the precedent that would set. China could also decide that painstaking negotiations and diplomacy are a waste of time when it can bring its export and import power to bear. Democratic Japan and South Korea could feel greater pressure to join exclusive trading blocs led by authoritarian regimes. Finally, Mongolia and other states might be asked to make strategic concessions to Russian security forces to "protect" Moscow's investments. In this way, Russia could gain new opportunities to expand its military footprint beyond its own borders.

What can Washington do? First, it must encourage greater U.S. trade with Mongolia. Total trade stood at about $120 million in 2007. The United States should push beyond the 2004 Trade and Investment Framework Agreement and start negotiations for a full free trade agreement. In addition, the U.S. government-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation should increase its outlay for infrastructure projects in Mongolia far beyond the current total level of $285 million. Mongolians can also help themselves in this regard. Lingering governance problems partly account for slack Western investment.

Second, the United States should marshal global opinion against the Kremlin's strong-arm tactics and condemn exclusive economic arrangements. Developing states must be assured that no economic leverage will be used against them to secure unfair advantages. So far, the United States and other democracies in Asia have stood silently by as Russia has stepped up its bullying of Mongolia.

Third, Washington can push forward with the Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership project, proposed by President George W. Bush at the 2007 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, and unite Asia's free nations to support democratic values and assist states building liberal systems. Mongolia should feel that the United States is committed to linking up democratic nations in the region and addressing common concerns, be they economic or strategic in nature.

Finally, the United States and Mongolia can deepen their impressive security cooperation, which includes joint training and peacekeeping exercises. Even without a formal security relationship with the United States, Mongolia has built a training center for peacekeeping operations and dispatched nearly 200 troops to Iraq. For a young democracy, Mongolia has shown a welcome willingness to look beyond its borders and play a constructive role in the world. When Bush visited Mongolia in November 2005, he called Mongolia a "brother in the cause of freedom." Now is the time for the United States to help protect that freedom from economic and political threats alike.

In yet another craven show of weakness, a pathetic back-down on the wild-eyed attempt to seize the Arctic. The Canadian Press reports that Russia has once again bitten off much more than it can chew:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has downplayed his country's placing of the national flag under the ice at the North Pole, saying it was not meant to signal Russia's claim to the Arctic.

A Russian scientific expedition deposited a rustproof titanium version of country's flag on the seabed at the pole last year. The act heated up the controversy over an area that a U.S. study suggests may contain as much as 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.

"It should be seen basically the same way as the American flag was planted on the moon sometime ago," Lavrov said Tuesday.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin erected a U.S. flag when they became the first men to land on the moon.

Lavrov, who was headed to a meeting in Greenland to discuss sovereignty in the Arctic, said the flag at North Pole was not a political event.

"You shouldn't be in this fascinating game of treating this particular, scientific, human achievement as anything else," he told reporters.

Interest in the region is intensifying because global warming is shrinking the polar ice, and that could someday open up resource development and new shipping lanes.

"There is no claim for any territory. There couldn't be because as I said there is a sea convention, there are mechanisms created to implement this conventions, including for the continental shelf," Lavrov said.

Under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Arctic nations have 10 years after ratification to prove their claims under the largely uncharted polar ice pack. All countries with claims to the Arctic have ratified the treaty, except the United States.

Canada has announced plans to build a new army training centre and a deep-water port in Arctic waters. Norway, the United States and Denmark also have claims in the vast region.

Denmark is gathering scientific evidence to show that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 2,000-kilometre underwater mountain range, is attached to Greenland, making it a geological extension of the sparsely populated giant island that is a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

A UN panel is supposed to decide the Arctic control by 2020.

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn is representing Canada at the meeting on the Arctic this week in Ilulissat, Greenland. Officials from Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States will also be there.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller will co-host the conference with Greenland Premier Hans Enoksen.

Moeller reiterated that the aim of the meeting was to reaffirm the nations' commitments to international treaties governing the region.

Reuters reports on more proof of Russia's friendly, benign intentions towards its neighbors:

Ukraine banned Moscow's mayor from the country on Monday after he called for Russia to take ownership of the Black Sea naval port of Sevastopol, a ban which immediately angered Russia. Rows over Kiev's ambitions to join NATO and the price of Russian gas to Ukraine have already dented relations between the two former-Soviet neighbors over the last few years. Ukraine's security service issued Monday's ban on Mayor Yuri Luzhkov the day after he told a crowd of supporters in Sevastopol celebrating the 225th anniversary of the foundation of the Black Sea fleet that Moscow should reclaim the base. Russia rents the Sevastopol base from Ukraine. The ban annoyed Russia's foreign ministry. "We qualify this decision by the Ukrainian authorities as an unfriendly move which runs against mutual efforts to build an atmosphere of confidence and mutual understanding in Russian-Ukrainian relations," the ministry said in a statement. The 18th century Russian Empress Catherine the Great established the base at Sevastopol but Ukraine inherited it in 1991 after the break up of the Soviet Union.

In a nice bit of reporting that's only about six months late, the New York Times reveals that Russia relied on American ingenuity in order to make its visit to the sea floor below the polar ice cap, then -- as is its wont -- tried to claim the credit for itself, stabbing the American in the back.

Last August, a team of Russian scientists and legislators trekked to the North Pole and plunged through the ice pack into the abyss, descending more than two miles through inky darkness to the bottom of the ocean. There, explorers planted Russia’s flag and, upon surfacing, declared that the feat had strengthened Moscow’s claims to nearly half the Arctic seabed. The ensuing global headlines fueled debate over polar territorial claims.

But that wasn’t the whole story. The heroes of the moment did not mention that the dive had American origins. Alfred S. McLaren, 75, a retired Navy submariner, would like to set the record straight and, as he puts it, “acquaint the Kremlin with the realities” of recent history and international law. A major figure of Arctic science and exploration who spent nearly a year in operations under the ice, Dr. McLaren says he developed the polar dive plan and repeatedly shared his labors with the Russians and their partners — a claim he supports with numerous e-mail messages and documents.

The Russians, for their part, acknowledge that Dr. McLaren played a central role in the dive’s origins. But they say he took no part in substantive planning and logistics. Dr. McLaren’s plan drew on federal polar data and recommended specific sensors and methods to ensure a safe return. “I wrote the procedures for the dive,” he said in an interview. The Russians, he added, “went for the territorial claim.” Don Walsh, a pioneer of deep ocean diving who worked on the Arctic plan with the Russians, backed the account. The divers, Dr. Walsh wrote in an e-mail message, “did not develop the original idea, the operational plan and they did not pay for it” because wealthy tourists picked up the bill. “I am sure,” he added, “that this example of how to steal your way to fame will become a legend in the history of exploration.”

The Russians say they took little or nothing. “Talk is cheap,” Anatoly M. Sagalevitch, the expedition’s chief scientist, said in an interview. “But real operation, this is different.” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made the most of the divers’ feat, personally greeting them upon their return and announcing last month that Dr. Sagalevitch and two other team members would be named Heroes of Russian Federation, the nation’s highest honorary title.

Dr. McLaren first got to know the Russians through the lens of a periscope. As a submariner, he conducted more than 20 secret missions during the cold war, mainly in nuclear attack submarines. Three of his voyages ventured beneath the Northern ice pack, gauging its thickness, probing the dark waters below and bouncing sound waves off the bottom to map the craggy seabed. An important goal was to find safe submarine routes near the Soviet Union in case the cold war turned hot. Over all, he spent nearly a year under the polar ice. In 1972, he won the Distinguished Service Medal, the military’s highest peacetime award. He left the Navy in 1981 and earned a Ph.D. in polar studies from the University of Colorado in 1986. After the cold war, Dr. McLaren began working with his former enemies, lecturing aboard Russian icebreakers that carried tourists to the North Pole. He did so repeatedly while president of the Explorers Club, a post he held from 1996 to 2000. The idea for a polar dive arose in early 1997 when a television journalist, Jack McDonald, had dinner with Dr. McLaren and asked if anyone had ever gone to the bottom. The two decided to explore the possibility. “We spent a lot time on it,” recalled Mr. McDonald, who planned to make a documentary. The team envisioned going down in a submersible — a small craft with a super-strong personnel sphere that typically carries a pilot and two observers. Tiny portholes designed to withstand crushing pressures let the occupants peer out. A dive is typically an all-day affair, requiring hours to go down to the bottom and back up.

Later in 1997, Dr. McLaren attracted the interest of Mike McDowell, an adventure tour operator who organized the polar voyages. The next year, Dr. Sagalevitch, who runs Moscow’s twin Mir submersibles, came aboard. In 1999, the three men began diving in the Mirs to visit the deteriorating remains of the Titanic and the Bismarck. The dives were seen as practice runs for the polar plunge. All told, Dr. McLaren dived in the cramped submersibles five times. In 2001, Dr. McLaren wrote a polar dive plan for Dr. Sagalevitch in Moscow. Drawing on decades of federal polar data, it gave information like mean ice thickness (about 8 feet), water depth (about 2.6 miles) and salinity near the bottom (34 to 36 parts per thousand). “Jagged underwater projections and spurs,” the plan warned, could endanger a submersible.

The document, seven pages long, paid special attention to making sure the returning Mirs could find the hole through which they had entered the Arctic Ocean and not become trapped beneath the thick surface ice. It called for special upward-looking sensors. “Thank you for your recommendations,” Dr. Sagalevitch wrote in an e-mail message after receiving the plan. For several years the Explorers Club, based in New York City, marketed North Pole dives to adventure tourists. A cabin would be $16,000, a suite $21,000. The actual dive beneath the pole: $50,000 extra. Despite a flurry of interest, the spectacle did not materialize.

By 2005, the plan collapsed. In a bitter e-mail exchange, Dr. McLaren accused Mr. McDowell, the tour operator, of abruptly removing him from the polar dive roster and evading commitments that would have aided fund-raising. “You did not bother to answer any of my messages,” he wrote. Mr. McDowell in turn accused Dr. McLaren of failing to recruit dive sponsors and defended his removal as necessary because of rising costs and the need to attract more paying tourists. “I do all the work and take all the financial risk,” he added. Dr. Walsh, who worked with both men, laid the rupture to personality conflicts. “We were top-heavy in chiefs and needed more braves,” he said.

Another factor was the Kremlin, which was seeking new displays of geopolitical muscle. It seized control of the project. On Aug. 2, 2007, Dr. Sagalevitch and Mr. McDowell descended to the bottom, taking along two Moscow legislators. The polar dive was part publicity stunt and part symbolic move to enhance the Kremlin’s disputed claim to nearly half the Arctic seabed. It made global headlines, with much comment on Moscow’s new swagger. Time magazine’s cover article asked, “Who Owns the Arctic?” After the dive, many nations sharpened their claims. Denmark mapped icy regions. The United States mounted a polar expedition. And Canada unveiled plans for an Arctic military base. “The first principle of Arctic sovereignty,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada said in a much quoted statement, “is use it or lose it.”

Dr. McLaren grew livid as the dive’s impact spread. He now ridicules the Russian territorial claims as not only empty but duplicitous because of his unacknowledged contribution. He said, however, that he harbored no hard feelings against the Mir team. For his part, Mr. McDowell vigorously denied any fault and said any aid from Dr. McLaren was immaterial to the Russian feat. “What he’s saying is complete rubbish,” Mr. McDowell said from Australia, where he lives. “He’s all bent out of shape because he wanted to be first to the pole. Well, it just didn’t work out that way.” Dr. Sagalevitch confirmed that the original idea for the polar dive arose with the Westerners but said that he and his team had developed it exclusive of Dr. McLaren’s advice since 1998. “Fred was so far from any dive plan,” he said. “He doesn’t understand the technical side of the operation. He doesn’t understand the submersible.”

If there are fireworks, they may erupt March 15, when the Explorers Club will hold its annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. All the dive planners and doers are to be there, with Dr. Sagalevitch getting an award for excellence in ocean science. It will be a bittersweet moment for Dr. McLaren, who helped Dr. Sagalevitch and Mr. McDowell become members when he was club president. At the dinner, the Russian dive team is to complete a triumph: returning a club flag that it carried to the polar seabed. Dr. McLaren said he planned to go to the dinner but might excuse himself from the room when the flag was returned.

Writing in the Washington Times the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen (pictured) lays bare the horror of Russian imperialism in the Arctic (hat tip: Robert Amsterdam).

By planting the Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole and claiming a sector of the Continental Shelf the size of Western Europe, Moscow generated a new source of international tension, seemingly out of the blue.

Geopolitics and geoeconomics are driving Moscow's latest moves. The potential profits are certainly compelling. Geologists believe a quarter of the world's oil and gas — billions of barrels and trillions of cubic feet — may be located on the Arctic Continental Shelf and possibly under the polar cap.

The Arctic, the final frontier, also harbors precious, ferrous and nonferrous metals, as well as diamonds. At today's prices, these riches may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And if the ice caps melt and shrink, not only will these resources will be more accessible than they are today, but a new sea route along the northern coast of Eurasia may be open to reach them.

The other side of the economic coin is political — the exploration and exploitation of polar petroleum and other resources may be a mega-project for the 21st century — the kind of opportunity that Russia is seeking to satisfy its ambition to become what President Vladimir Putin has termed "an energy superpower."

In 2001 Russia filed a claim to expand the continental shelf with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf under the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), to which it is a party. However, in 2002 the commission declared it neither accepts nor rejects the Russian claim, and demanded more study. Russia plans to resubmit the claim, and expects to get the answer by 2010.

Russia's claims are literally on thin ice. Moscow is extending its claim to the Arctic Ocean seabed based on its control of the Lomonosov Ridge and the Mendeleev Ridge, two underwater geological structures that jut into the ocean from the Russian continental shelf. However, it looks like the ridges do not extend far enough to justify Moscow's claims beyond its 200-mile economic zone, while other countries also claim control of the same area.

This latest move by Moscow is also a chilling throwback to the 1930s Stalinist attempts to conquer the Arctic during the years when the U.S.S.R. was seized by fear and hatred. Stalin and his henchmen executed "enemies of the people" by the hundreds of thousands in mock trials and in the basements of the Lubyanka secret police headquarters, or in unnamed killing sites in the woods. Those not yet arrested were forced to applaud the "heroes of the Arctic": pilots, sailors and explorers, in a macabre celebration of Stalinist tyranny.

To the regime's critics, today's expedition is a chilly reminder of the brutal era when millions of Gulag prisoners were sent to the frozen expanses to build senseless mega-projects for the power-crazy dictator.

Today's Russian rhetoric is reminiscent of the past two centuries. The leader of the Arctic expedition, Artur Chilingarov, deputy chairman of the Russian Duma, proclaimed, "The Arctic is ours and we should manifest our presence." Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute declared, "This is like placing a flag on the moon" — conveniently forgetting the United States never claimed the moon as its territory.

Andrei Kokoshin, chairman of a parliamentary committee on the ex-Soviet region, said Russia "will have to actively defend its interests in the Arctic" and called for reinforcing Russia's Northern Fleet and border guard units and building airfields to "ensure full control." Vladimir Putin spoke on a Russian nuclear powered ice-breaker earlier this year, urging greater efforts to secure Russia's "strategic, economic, scientific and defense interests" in the Arctic.

A crisis over Russian claims in the Arctic would be perfectly avoidable, if Russia is prepared to behave in a more civilized manner. If Moscow suggested exploring the Arctic's wealth in a cooperative fashion, in partnership with the United States and other countries aboard, this could become a productive project that furthered international cooperation. However, the current rush to dominate the Arctic Ocean and everything under it indicates that greed and aggression characterize the new Russian polar bear.

The State Department has expressed its skepticism regarding planting of the Russian flag, and said it has no legal standing or effect on Russia's claim. Canada has voiced similar objections.

To stop the expansion, the U.S. should encourage its friends and allies — Canada, Denmark and Norway — to pursue their claims in the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. While the United Sates has not ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), other Arctic countries, including Norway and Denmark, have filed their own claims with the Commission, opposing Russian demands.

The Nordic countries do not view Russia's attempted seabed grab kindly. Nor should they. The U.S. should also encourage Canada to coordinate a possible claim through the International Justice Court in The Hague against the Russian grab.

Russia's decision to take an aggressive stand has left the U.S., Canada and the Nordic countries little choice but to design a cooperative High North strategy, and invite other friendly countries, such as Great Britain, to expend the necessary means to build up the Western presence in the Arctic. This will probably have to include a fleet of modern icebreakers, submersibles, geophysics/seismic vessels, and polar aircraft.

There is too much at stake to leave it to the Russian bear.

Writing in the Moscow Times Harley Balzer, a professor in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, offers readers top-ten list of reasons why a Russian dictator would want to make a grab for the North Pole:

10) If you don't have the technology to exploit the Shtokman gas deposits, claiming another large, ice-bound hydrocarbon source will help you learn how to do it.

9) It gets people's attention. There was a danger that U.S. President George W. Bush might want to forget all about Russia after President Vladimir Putin caught the last fish in the Kennebunkport waters.

8) Putin will need a new job in March. If the crew of the Russian icebreaker remains at the North Pole until then, he could win the local election in a landslide.

7) If the Russians don't claim the North Pole, Hugo Chavez might beat them to it.

6) Gazprom is preparing for its initial public offering, and going to the pole is a way to increase their oil and gas reserves without the hassle of mapping the rest of Siberia.

5) Russian scientists have finally accepted the reality of global warming. Once all the permafrost melts, the Arctic will be the only solid ground east of Yekaterinburg.

4) It's a sucker play. They don't really want the North Pole, but they will scare the European Union into trading a swath of the Mediterranean coastline in exchange for Russia abandoning its claim.

3) Proving that the Lomonosov Ridge extends to the North Pole might give Russia the right to claim the pole. This has opened up enormous possibilities in the international arena. Turkish geologists have found that rock samples support their ownership of the Black Sea coast all the way to the Danube. Japan has established geological rights to the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. And U.S. geologists have discovered that the Bering Sea land bridge is an extension of Alaska, supporting a U.S. claim to everything east of the Urals.

2) Due to the government's successful demographic policies, the Far East and Siberia have become dangerously overpopulated. They need more territory.

1) A political party with medved (Russian for "bear") as its mascot could be in trouble in the December State Duma elections unless it finds some more bears.

"I'm not sure of whether they've put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor. Either way, it doesn't have any legal standing or effect on this claim."

-- U.S. State Department

"Look, this isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and plant flags and say, 'We're claiming this territory."

-- Canadian Foreign Ministry

Russia's government-issued daily newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta stated on Friday that Russia's mission to the sea floor below the polar ice cap "is the start of a new redistribution of the world." Western governments responded by heaping appropriate scorn on Russia's outrageous and untenable act of imperialism.

It seems that Russia, just like the USSR before it, is quite content to alienate the entire world and try to go it alone. Russia stands without a single nation of consequence as an ally, and after directly provoking Great Britain and the EU with its outrageous conduct in the Litvinenko matter is now going after Canada and the United States.

And so, Russia will go the way of the USSR.

The Guardian reports:

It is already the world's biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.

According to Russian scientists, there is new evidence backing Russia's claim that its northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf.

Under international law, no country owns the North Pole. Instead, the five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts.

On Monday, however, a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage on a nuclear icebreaker. They had travelled to the Lomonosov ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia's remote and inhospitable eastern Arctic Ocean.

According to Russia's media, the geologists returned with the "sensational news" that the Lomonosov ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia's claim over the oil-and-gas rich triangle. The territory contained 10bn tonnes of gas and oil deposits, the scientists said.

Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper celebrated the discovery by printing a large map of the North Pole. It showed the new "addition" to Russia - the size of France, Germany and Italy combined - under a white, blue and red Russian flag.

[...]

"Frankly I think it's a little bit strange," Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, told the Guardian. "Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia."

The New York Times reports on Russians invading Latvia to escape economic hardship in so-called energy superpower Russia, and perhaps also as a means of extending Russian imperialism. In Latvia, Russians get a taste of how they make others feel in Russia; but they'll never know how it really feels, because their white skin lets them blend right in and avoid many forms of abuse they heap on foreigners in Russia.

RIGA, Latvia — Russia’s domination of Latvia officially ended when Russia pulled out its last tank more than a decade ago. But Inesa Kuznetsova, a 75-year-old who has lived here for more than 50 years, is still far from ready to shift her national identity.

“My address isn’t a city, my address isn’t a town, my address isn’t a street,” says Ms. Kuznetsova, a dressmaker, who arrived from Leningrad during World War II. “My address is the Soviet Union.”

Her address is, in fact, Bolderaja, a largely Russian-speaking neighborhood on the outskirts of Riga, where a former Russian naval barracks sits empty and signs in the supermarket are in both Russian and Latvian.

Here, she inhabits a parallel universe that has little to do with Latvia. She watches a Kremlin-financed television station and eats Russian food. And she has no intention of learning Latvian (“Why the hell would I want to do that?”), though she says her grandchildren are being forced to do so.

Ms. Kuznetsova calls it an “insult” that residents who arrived after 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, must now take a naturalization exam to become citizens.

She has not done so, instead pinning her hopes on a new “Russian occupation” of Latvia. This, she says, is gaining force with the arrival of illegal workers from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They have streamed in by the hundreds, if not thousands, to help fill the gap left by the nearly 100,000 Latvians who have left in search of a better life since their country joined the European Union in May 2004.

The influx is stoking fears in this tiny Baltic country of 2.3 million, which is still grappling with how to integrate more than 800,000 Russian speakers. One recent newspaper headline captured the national anxiety when, using variants on the name John, it said Latvian employers were “Looking for Janis, but finding Ivan.”

The anxiety is fanned by strong memories of the Soviet occupation, when tens of thousands of Latvians fled the country or were deported, and an equal number of Russians were sent here by Moscow. By the time of Latvian independence in 1991, the Russian population had swollen to nearly 50 percent, from 10 percent before World War II, with Russian the dominant language in large cities like Riga.

During the occupation, Latvia dreamed of breaking open its Soviet-guarded border and rejoining Europe. That dream has been fulfilled, with membership in the European Union and NATO.

But there was a price: while economic growth shot up to 10 percent this year, the large westward migration of Latvians has left a gaping hole in the job market. Now the country must choose either to accept the economic necessity of immigration or to hold on to deep and abiding historical resentments.

“We already have had Russians invading us for 50 years and we don’t need another invasion — it is too painful,” says Liene Strike, 21, a guide at the windowless Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, where a life-size model of a barracks in the gulag shows the cramped conditions under which Latvians deported by Stalin froze and starved to death.

As part of its cultural self-assertion, Latvia has introduced exams and an oath of loyalty for Soviet-era settlers who want to become citizens. To gain a Latvian passport, they must prove they know Latvia’s history and can speak Latvian.

Many of the nearly 400,000 Russian-speaking noncitizens are wary of taking a test, which includes questions like, “What happened in Latvia on June 17, 1940?” (Answer: “The beginning of Soviet occupation.”) But failure to pass the exam means being unable to vote or hold most public posts, and needing a visa to visit most other European Union countries.

Many Latvian employers argue that economic interests must supersede historical grudges if the Latvian economy, one of the poorest in the 25-member European Union, is to become competitive. So many Latvians have emigrated that construction sites across Riga sit empty for lack of workers. Companies have installed billboards across the capital pleading with Latvians, “Don’t go to Ireland; we need you.”

In an effort to stem the emigration, Latvia’s government will raise the minimum monthly wage next year to 120 lats (about $220), from 90 lats. But such increases have so far been ineffective, given the huge gap with wages elsewhere in the European Union. In Ireland, for example, the minimum monthly wage is more than $1,650.

Arturs, the 33-year-old owner of a cargo company, says he has been illegally smuggling Russian-speaking drivers from Belarus because he cannot find qualified Latvians. Declining to give his last name because he is breaking the law, he said he smuggled them in on three-month tourist visas and paid them about $640 a month, half the pay that Latvian drivers now expect.

“I just need workers,” he said. “I don’t care if they’re from Africa or China or Russia. I just need to earn my living.”

But the government considers the importation of foreign workers dangerous.

Aigars Stokenbergs, Latvia’s minister for regional affairs and until recently its economics minister, says relaxing immigration rules would drive down wages and saddle the country with a new generation of Russian speakers resistant to assimilation.

“It has taken 10 years to teach Russians here how to speak Latvian,” he said in an interview. “We can’t afford to assimilate another 100,000 people.”

The challenge of assimilation is apparent everywhere on Moscow Street, in a large Russian-speaking neighborhood called Moskachka, which is literally on the other side of the tracks.

On the one side is Old Riga: picturesque, medieval, bustling with tourists. On the other is Moskachka: poor, dusty, thronging with women in kerchiefs selling pickles and secondhand clothes in a giant covered market. Russian music plays from the stalls, where the women drink vodka to keep warm.

Tatiana Kaspere, 43, a Russian-speaking vendor, says she is fed up with feeling as if she will never belong.

Such are the contradictions of citizenship laws, she says, that her son, who was born before Latvian independence in 1991, is a noncitizen, while her 3-year-old daughter is Latvian. She says her husband, a construction foreman, cannot get a promotion because of his Russian identity.

“This is my home, but I don’t feel at home here,” she says. “Why do I need to take a test to prove my loyalty? I was born here. I would go back, but there is nowhere to go back to.”

Publius Pundit's Robert Mayer offers an excellent analysis of Russia's outrageous double standard where Ossetia's desire to break away from Georgia is concerned:

A much talked about concept (and concern) over the summer and autumn in EU foreign policy circles has been the birth of what is being called the “Kosovo double-standard,” by which the EU and United States support Kosovo’s independence from Serbia while declining to recognize the supposed self-determination of Georgian breakaway provinces Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The idea came about this year as talks began in February over Kosovo’s status, as well a vote this summer which allowed Montenegro to declare independence from Serbia. If last year was the year of democratic revolutions, then this is certainly the one of independence movements. Only, the EU fears that Kosovo and Montenegro will set a precedent for resolution to future conflicts, in a way that is not in line with their current foreign policy.

EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, interviewed with Radio Free Europe, explains:

BRUSSELS, October 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) — EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana today acknowledged that Kosovo’s campaign for independence could set a precedent for Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Solana also said the European Union could not meet a request made by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for peacekeepers, but that Brussels is actively trying to “build confidence” between Moscow and Tbilisi.

Solana told the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels today that during a recent phone conversation, Saakashvili had confessed to “tremendous worry” about the possible consequences that ongoing UN-sponsored Kosovo status talks could have for Georgia.

The Serbian province is seeking independence for its 2 million citizens, over 90 percent of whom are ethnic Albanians. Belgrade is staunchly opposed, but international negotiations — begun earlier this year — seem destined to end in eventual independence. Solana indicated that he, too, considers it possible that independence for Kosovo could have a negative effect on Georgia’s territorial integrity, acknowledging it would set a “precedent.” “We are trapped here,” he said. “President Saakashvili is trapped, all of us are trapped in a double mechanism that may have good consequences for one, but not for the other. It may not be a win-win situation — although we should be able to look [for] and find a win-win solution. But it will not be easy.”

The United States and the European Union both expect that Kosovo will achieve independence. Russia has warned that if Kosovo becomes independent, it will push for the secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Tensions between Russia and Georgia are running high. Moscow has blocked all transportation and postal links between the two countries in a continuing dispute over Tbilisi’s arrest on September 27 of four Russian military officers on spying charges. Solana also said today he himself is worried about “the manner in which Saakashvili is concerned about” the issue, but did not elaborate.

Solana said the EU will continue to stand up for Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Unsurprisingly, Russia has latched on to the notion more than anyone else, accusing the European Union of fostering these double-standards in its own self-interest. Indeed, Serbia was a key ally of Russia in Europe and its disintegration has been a blow to Russia’s over-inflated ego / sphere of influence. With Kosovo prepared to declare independence unilaterally without any say from Serbia, Russia sees no reason why the same framework cannot be applied to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

This is exactly what happened on Sunday, when South Ossetia held a referendum of independence from Georgia, in which no one except for Russia recognized the results. Russia says that it is simply supporting the self-determination and democracy of the South Ossetian people, though the believe such a thing would naive in the least.

MOSCOW, November 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the results of a referendum held in South Ossetia on Sunday, at which the breakaway region’s residents voted overwhelmingly for independence from Georgia, despite Western powers’ refusal to recognize the vote. The Foreign Ministry said the referendum was held in line with democratic principles. According to the official results of the referendum, held in conjunction with the self-declared republic’s presidential election, 99% of voters backed independence, while 96% voted for incumbent leader Eduard Kokoity. The ministry said in a statement released late Monday evening, “Whether people like it or not, we are dealing here with an expression of free will by the people of South Ossetia, expressed through democratic procedures.”

“No matter how Georgia or several other Western countries try to dismiss the importance of this event, it is nevertheless significant. To ignore this is, to say the least, short-sighted.”

Given a that respect for democracy by Russia’s current leadership falls a few feet too short, I am lead to believe that Russia is playing the double-standard card. Is it not reasonable to think that Russia considers its own self-interest as well, irrespective of the will of others? Of course not. So when the head of South Ossetia said that the province now intends to join Russia, bells of hypocrisy could be heard ringing in the distance as far away as America.

MOSCOW, November 14 (Itar-Tass) - Head of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity, in his remarks in a live broadcast of the Centre television network, has reaffirmed the republic’s striving to unite with North Ossetia and accede to the Russian Federation.

What Russia is doing is exactly what it accuses the EU of doing. It is playing to a double-standard. The only reason that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were able to split off from Georgia was because of support from thousands of Russian so-called peacekeepers. The Kremlin is therefore pushing for independence in these territories in order to both 1) weaken the Western-oriented Georgian government just as Serbia is weakened, and 2) strengthen Russia by incorporating South Ossetia into its territory.

This is just the beginning of Russia’s double-standard, though. One must also look at how the past and present leaderships of Russia have dealt with the separatist movement in Chechnya. When most Chechens wanted to legitimately secede from Russia and create their own independent republic, Russia immediately vowed to protect it sovereign territory, launching an all out war in which hundreds of thousands have died.

In Russia’s eyes, it can actively break the sovereignty of other nations so long as it serves Russia’s own national interest, but if similar separatist activity occurs in the Motherland — watch out! A city might get flattened. If anything, Russia is pursuing a double-standard. The EU must confront Russia over its expansionist policy and stop feeling as if it cannot act due to some perceived foreign relations hypocrisy. The fact is, the EU is not looking for Georgia to become a vassal state, but a partner. Yet Russia would prefer to see it as the former.

Could Russia possibly get any more hypocritical? It won't allow Chechnya its freedom, but it actively seeks to assist Georgian provinces in breaking away from Georgia and melding with Russia? How can Russians possibly expect anyone to take them seriously when they act in such an utterly outrageous manner? The Moscow Times reports:

TSKHINVALI, Georgia -- Voters in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia cast ballots on Sunday in a referendum that separatist leaders hope will reaffirm their bid for independence, although Georgia has warned that it will only increase tension. Police and security agents were out in force in the regional capital, Tskhinvali, with armed men in camouflage uniforms on every corner as ethnic music blared through loudspeakers. "Of course I voted for independence, independence and freedom. I want what every normal person wants," said Zoya Chugmazova, 64, a school teacher.

Most of Tskhinvali's streets were empty, and no reports of violence were recorded, though South Ossetian officials accused Georgian security forces of preventing residents of the village of Avnevi, 15 kilometers away from Tskhinvali, from voting. Georgian officials denied the claim. Election officials said that by 4 p.m., 76 percent of voters had cast their ballots -- well over the 50 percent plus one vote minimum required to make the vote legitimate. Election commission spokeswoman Irina Dzhagayeva said 55,000 people were eligible to vote. Six polling stations were also operating in the Russian region of North Ossetia, where some 20,000 South Ossetians now reside, Interfax reported.

A simultaneous vote for the regional leadership was also under way, and incumbent Eduard Kokoity was expected to win easily. Preliminary results were expected Monday.

The United States and Europe, which support Georgia's pro-Western aspirations and back its territorial integrity, are ignoring the vote -- the second such plebiscite since the region broke away from central government control in a war 14 years ago.

NATO on Saturday rejected the referendum, warning that it could exacerbate unrest in the region.

"On behalf of NATO, I join other international leaders in rejecting the so-called referendum and elections conducted in the South Ossetia/Tskhinvali region of Georgia," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a statement. "Such actions serve no purpose other than to exacerbate tensions in the South Caucasus region."

Russia, which is in the midst of a bitter diplomatic crisis with Georgia, has stopped short of recognizing the referendum, but urged Georgia to respect it. The Kremlin has cultivated strong ties with the region, and indicated that it would closely watch the fate of the disputed UN-administered Kosovo province of Serbia, where many seek independence, as a potential precedent.

But Russia denies Georgian allegations that Moscow, which has given most residents of South Ossetia Russian citizenship, is seeking to "annex" the region.

South Ossetia has run its own affairs without international recognition since it broke away from the Georgian government in the 1991-92 war, which killed more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousands. The region is dotted by ethnic Ossetian and ethnic Georgian villages like a chessboard. Settlements are closely guarded by armed separatist forces and Georgian police.

The referendum, which asks voters if they support independence and seek international recognition, is expected to receive overwhelming approval, since ethnic Ossetians make up the majority of the population.

A 1992 referendum proclaiming the province's independence went unnoticed by the international community, however, leaving the region in limbo.

Kokoity was met with folk dances and traditional offerings of bread and cheese as he voted. He later told reporters that he was in such a good mood that he felt like dancing. "Today we vote for independence, for peace, stability and a civilized way of solving our conflict," he said. "We're stretching our hands to Russia and Europe so that they renounce the policy of double standards. We will prove that we are right."

Georgian villages in the region, whose residents number some 14,000. were holding an alternative plebiscite and an alternative election for the regional leader. The Georgian government, which does not formally recognize either vote, hopes the renegade election will demonstrate a rift in the separatists' camp.

The Ukraine megablog Maidan says that, compared to the disaster that is modern Russia, Ukraine is looking mighty good on the democratic front (yet, Ukraine must still fret over the enormous anti-democratic Sword of Damocles hanging literally above its head):

An attempt to take stock of the 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union can fill a committed democrat with frustration if he looks at Russia, but with restrained optimism if he turns his gaze to Ukraine. During these years Ukraine has succeeded in showing that it can take part in international politics and be guided by its own ideas and interests. It is now, furthermore, demonstrating the existence of viable democratic institutions. Russia has passed through this decade and a half only to return to its old values – a strict internal regime, a security service for whom all is allowed, threats to the outer world, idolization of a leader, and, one should add, the lack of rights of ordinary citizens.

The end of the Soviet empire was seen by dissidents as the primary and overriding objective. The choice of form of development of the Soviet realm later did not seem a big problem after the main and mesmerising problem of the Soviet regime itself was eliminated. The impossibility of the existence in the Soviet Union of the individual and of different nations was the imperative for thinking, and the details for how the scenario for the development of Russia and its satellite republics “later” seemed for many unimportant. Meanwhile, among concerned citizens one could identify at least three groups with very different fundamental social concepts, yet cooperating with each other in the face of the KGB. One has in mind here representatives of the “pro-Western”, Eurocentric tradition of Russian culture, the “pochvenniki” [“people of the soil”] who were the ideological successors to the Slavophiles, and the nationalists of Ukraine, the Baltic States and other peoples of the Soviet Union. One should mention that it was not the differences in worldview, but the general recognition of the Soviet empire, the general understanding of its internal mechanisms and memory of one of its creators, Stalin, that became for all groups of dissidents the main component part in their communication.

For Ukraine and Russia the ideas of the dissidents after 1991 did not become the main guide for reforms, with no process taking place for de-KGB- and de-Sovietization of the government, nor lustration. The entire 1990s for state administration in both Russia and Ukraine were no more than a time for change and adaptation of the Soviet class of officials to the new, non-Soviet reality. Yet now criticism from dissidents of Soviet authoritarianism and totalitarianism needs careful attention.

We can say that the anti-empire tradition of Soviet dissidents has suffered defeat in the mass consciousness of contemporary Russian, while in Ukraine it can take on new meaning.
In Solzhenitsyn’s novel “The First Circle”, the author writes about camp prisoners, their future and at the same time about the future of the whole country. “Years will pass, and all these people, now oppressed, indignant, despairing and choking with rage will go to their graves, others will become weak, flabby, while a third group will forget it all, renounce it, with relief burying their prison past and a fourth will be turned around, and they’ll even say that it was all reasonable, and not ruthless – and maybe none of them will get around to reminding today’s executioners what they did to the human heart!” In contemporary Russia the idea that the terror was “reasonable” or “required” is gaining ever greater influence, most often they prefer not to remember it at all.

According to several studies, Putin’s authority in today’s Russia is measured not only as the authority of the “head of state” but as “spiritual” authority, and this latter is higher than the influence of yesterday’s “conscience of the nation”, the GULAG prisoner Solzhenitsyn. Note: the moral influence of a professional officer of the political enforcement body on the average Russian is higher than the experience of its former victim whose fury and pain made him worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature. However one can say that in Ukraine an individual like Putin could never aspire to the role of moral authority, in the first instance because of his past.

Over recent years many Ukrainians have become convinced that their country is freer than Russia, that their democratic institutions are much more developed and that at the end of the day, the Ukrainian state is more humane or, more accurately, less inhuman than Putin’s regime.

The level of freedom both of Ukrainian, and of Russian society can be measured by the weakening or strengthening of the enforcement structures of the state – against its citizens. A Ukrainian feels that living without an omnipresent and all-powerful secret police is possible and very comfortable, whereas Russians loudly declare their attachment to unlimited power of the state and their readiness to endure its police, both secret and open. Modern Ukrainians do not face any dilemma of whether to forget the fate of their grandfathers who were left to rot in labour camps, or the fate of their parents frightened to talk with foreigners – and to forget who made their life like that – or to feel redundant in that colony of fervent patriots which Russia is once again becoming.

In contemporary Ukraine, at least two general groups are implacable opponents of the re-emerging Russian imperial spirit, being able to speak about themselves as victims of Soviet Russia – the descendents of Ukrainian nationalists and the Crimean Tatars. The link between the Crimean Tatar dissidents and the Ukrainian nationalists was strong back in the times of their common struggle with the Soviet regime. Mustafa Dzhemilyev, leader of the Crimean Tatars, knew many of the outstanding figures of the Ukrainian democratic resistance, in particular, Petro Grigorenko. Nowadays in the Crimea Grigorenko is well-known as “a friend of the Crimean Tatar people”, and on one of the squares of Simferopol the Crimean Tatar community has erected a monument in his honour. Crimean Tatar Deputies are trying to gain legislative approval for measures in memory of Grigorenko. In Soviet days General Petro Grigorenko was one of the few who openly spoke about the deportation of 1944 and of the tragedy which the Crimean Tatars suffered.

The connection between the Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian dissidents is being continued by their descendents and this commitment to the memory of their heroes provides an antidote for any temptations towards new authoritarianism. However in Russia, the words of Sakharov and the testimony of labour camp prisoners are important to only a small number of human rights activists and journalists. This is an incredible feature of human beings – their ability to forget. Russians prefer not to remember their recent horror, and they don’t see that they are but a stone’s throw away from its new manifestation.

The fate of the Crimean Tatars gave them a unique experience – they are in the full sense of the word a “dissident people”, “a nation – victim of Stalinism”. Whereas Russians may imagine that the Stalin purges or the persecution of free thinking during the Brezhnev times were justified or necessary, it would simply be criminal for a Crimean Tatar to think in that way: their grandfathers who died in train carriages being deported to Central Asia, or the homes taken from their families in the Crimea are permanently in their consciousness, and any justification for the state’s crimes for them would be inconceivable. There is a similar atmosphere in the villages of Volyn or the Carpathian mountains, where each family remembers the Ukrainian resistance fighters and the methods of the MGB [predecessor to the KGB]. These people are unwaveringly aware that “there are crimes which it would be criminal to forget”, and the Soviet ethnocide ranks among these.

There is no need to list the disturbing facts of public life in modern Russia – what is appalling is that Putin’s administration is itself providing examples of suppression of those who express dissent.

If the restoration of authoritarianism were taking place in Russia as a trend among bureaucrats, the situation would be less depressing, however unfortunately the roots of the restrictions on freedom and the abuses by the Putin regime lie in the approval of this from average Russians. The desire to prove their national importance is seen as justifying the humiliation of other nations and neighbouring countries, and if it’s necessary to sacrifice their freedom and the freedom of their fellow citizens, such a sacrifice will be made. The Russian post-imperial syndrome is not unique, but it has national features – the low value placed on individual freedom plays a considerable and key role.

The beginning of the 21st century showed that Russia’s eternal drama – tyranny – will plague it in contemporary times. The reality of a global world and the conditions of “modernity”, it appears, have not penetrated the depths of Russian consciousness, the Russian worldview, and what might have seemed like a national mistake – Soviet totalitarianism – is seen now as a link in the chain of forms of Russian lack of freedom. Such an easy return to “a strong hand”, the relief when this was found, such widespread love towards him, i.e. towards Putin demonstrate that serfdom, the autocratic rule of the Tsar, the terror of the red commissars and the tyranny of Stalin were all aspects of the essence of Russian history.

The contemporary world and the liberation of 1991 did not become a threshold to a new life for Russia, but instead gave rise to a refined type of Russian state dictatorship, a new step in the consistent logic of outwardly different, but internally identical Russian dictatorships.
Who now will cry out together with Solzhenitsyn’s hero, the prisoner Nerzhyn: “And for all of it, all, all, for the investigations under torture, for the dying camp dokhodyagi [“goners”] – four nails in their memory! Four nails for their lying, in the palms and in their shins, and let them hang there and stink under the Sun goes out, until life fossilizes on the planet Earth”.

The nation which called itself the greatest readers in the world, the descendents of those Muscovites who organized triumphant Poetry Evenings in the 1960s, has forgotten about the fate of its poets. They have forgotten the death while being taken to the camps of Mandelstam, they have forgotten Akhmatova’s “Requiem” and the trial of Zabolotsky. Or perhaps today’s Russians are more children of those who organized the campaign against Pasternak, perhaps they are rather the offspring of those communists and chekists? Those who are persecuting Georgians in Petersburg airports and on Moscow streets would not I suspect be averse to organizing the persecution of a Georgian poet.

Fortunately, Ukraine is not sharing this disheartening path.

As if more evidence were needed that Russia has alienated the entire world, not only is Georgia vetoing Russian ascension to the World Trade Organization, but Poland is vetoing a Russia-EU accord on trade as well. The BBC reports:

Poland has vetoed the start of talks between the EU and Russia on a new partnership agreement covering energy, trade and human rights. The move means that it is unlikely the talks can be launched as planned at an EU-Russia summit in two weeks' time. Poland says Russia must first lift a ban on Polish food imports and ratify a treaty on trade in energy products. Officials say the EU's credibility will be damaged if a common position is not reached before the 24 November summit. Russia supplies a quarter of the oil and gas consumed in the EU, and the proportion is set to rise sharply in coming decades. Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Sunday that Russia was violating the current EU-Russia co-operation agreement by banning Polish meat, and many other foods. "We would like EU member states to show solidarity with Poland regarding Russia," he said, ahead of Monday's meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. After Poland wielded its veto, External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she hoped that it would still be possible for the EU to go into the EU-Russia summit with an agreed common position. However Poland "has not lifted its reservations," she said. Poland's insistence that Russia should ratify the Energy Charter Treaty - which would help foreign companies invest in Russia's energy market - is no longer shared by all EU countries. Russia has signed the treaty, and the EU has been trying for years to get Moscow to ratify it, without success. The European Commission is now aiming to enshrine many of the treaty's principles into the new partnership and co-operation agreement with Russia, once the old one comes to an end next year.

The Baltics are expressing strong solidarity with Georgia. RIA Novositi reports on the view from Estonia:

The local press has been comparing current Russian-Georgian relations to the Russian-Estonian conflict of the early 1990s. "We have seen this before. When Estonia adopted a pro-Western policy in 1992, Russia assumed a harsh stand toward it and started an economic war, doubling the customs duty for imports from Estonia and accusing it of infringing on human rights. A full-scale propaganda war was launched against Estonia, with attempts to deploy Russian troops in Estonia and block gas deliveries, as well as threats of war. The situation normalized only after Estonia's pro-Western policy became so obvious that Russia could no longer do anything about it." (Diplomatiya, November 4.) Estonian newspapers rule out the possibility of Russia becoming "a Eurasian version of the Untied States." "It would be a gross mistake to think that Russia, with its history, can develop into a modern state unless it embraces democracy, the rule of law and the basic principles of political discretion, and engenders trust. Modern Russia is not sufficiently advanced in these spheres, since the historical development of that mammoth state was complicated by authoritarian czarism and totalitarian communism. The country today is a cocktail of Kremlin demagoguery, oligarchs and organized crime."

Edward Lucas has posted a wonderful review on his blog of a new history of World War II by British Historian Norman Davies. A single sentence reveals the most under-appreciated fact about the war:

Stalin's death camps killed more people than Hitler's.

Always ahead of the curve, La Russophobe has already reported on Davies' article in the Times of London. Lucas writes:

Mr Davies's biggest demolition job is of the factual errors and ignorance that support the complacent national versions of wartime history. One notable example is the British myth that says that the island fortress stood “alone” against Hitler in 1940, which rudely neglects the efforts made by the Poles, Greeks and others. But these pale beside the monstrous failure of the Western powers to appreciate, then or later, the nature of their Soviet ally. The biggest and bloodiest struggle by far of the European war was between two gangster regimes whose awful treatment of their own people and neighbours is unmatched before or since. That, argues Mr Davies, makes it hard if not impossible to say that the war was any kind of struggle between a good and evil side.

Davies' analysis could not be more timely. Will we make the same mistake a second time where Russia is concerned?

On Tuesday, Russians marched in World War II garb to commemorate the 65th anniversary of a parade by thousands of Soviet troops who were heading off to the front in 1941. Writing in the Times of London (and arguing that Russia should get more credit than it does for defeating Nazi Germany), historian Norman Davies reminds us that at the beginning of World War II Russia was right next to Germany at the feeding trough of imperialism, greedly scarfing down as many smaller contries as it could get its hands on:

The attack on the Third Reich was a joint effort. But it was not a joint effort of two equal parts. The lion’s share of victory in Europe can be awarded only to Stalin’s forces and it is a fantasy to believe that he was fighting for justice and democracy.

Separating the facts from the myths and the propaganda is not easy. One of the trickiest problems in establishing a credible narrative of the war arises from the misconception that the largest combatant state, the USSR, stayed neutral before the German attack of June 1941. Soviet accounts have always preferred to focus on the so-called Great Fatherland War, and carefully avoids close examination of Stalin’s political and military machinations in the preceding years.

Western commentators have usually followed this line, reluctant to publicise their embarrassment at Hitler’s initial partner becoming the ally of the democratic West.

In reality, in the first 22 months of fighting when the Wehrmacht attacked and occupied eight countries, the Red Army attacked and occupied five. These manifest aggressions make nonsense of any claims of neutrality or of defensive responses to the provocations of others. In November 1939, for example, Stalin’s unprovoked invasion of Finland resulted in a war that lasted for twice as long as any of Hitler’s early campaigns.

Similarly, the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1940 was no mere “strengthening of the defences” or “readjustment of frontiers”. It was a brutal act of depredation that destroyed three sovereign European states, together with a quarter of their population. All these events were facilitated by the Nazi-Soviet pact, which gave Stalin the same licence for banditry in the Soviet sphere that Hitler was exploiting in the German.