The Associated Press reports:

When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia's new president.

When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him.

Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that he intends to remain Russia's principal leader, at least in the short term _ and possibly much longer. He is keeping the trappings of his presidency and many of its powers as well. It was not always meant to be this way. Putin initially said he intended to hand the full powers of the presidency to his chosen successor and step aside. But as the time drew near, he clearly changed his mind as infighting between rival Kremlin factions spilled into the open, threatening to undermine political stability.

Veterans of the secret services have come to dominate the government under Putin, a 55-year-old former KGB officer. These powerful figures, known as the "siloviki," have been given leading roles in major businesses _ including oil companies and aircraft and automobile manufacturers _ that Putin has brought back under state control. They see Putin as the key to preserving their positions and continued access to financial flows. Some of them opposed Putin's choice of Dmitry Medvedev, a 42-year-old lawyer, who was inaugurated as president on Wednesday. Putin may have decided to stay around to keep the peace and protect his protege until he consolidates his position. Immensely popular and at the height of his powers, Putin appears to want Russians to see him as still in charge and to anticipate his return to the presidency in 2012, which he has not ruled out.

In a fervent 45-minute speech Thursday before parliament, Putin laid out huge ambitions for the economy and boasted that under his leadership Russia "had not just changed but become a different country." He was approved by a vote of 392-56, with only the Communists opposing him. Medvedev, by contrast, was a lackluster supporting player, introducing Putin in a bland five-minute address that underlined Putin's potency. Putin left the Kremlin on Wednesday, but just moved down the road to the building known as the White House, the government headquarters near the U.S. Embassy. In anticipation of his arrival, the prime minister's fifth-floor office overlooking the Moscow River has been renovated and its staff greatly expanded. Many of those who served him as president have made the switch, and others are expected to follow.

Putin will continue to travel to work in a motorcade from the same wooded estate in one of Moscow's most exclusive suburban neighborhoods where he lived as president and which is now his to keep. While quietly laying the groundwork for expanding the scope of the prime minister's office, Putin has firmed up his position by becoming chairman of the Kremlin's dominant political party, which gives him control over parliament and strong leverage over regional leaders. Members of that party still have Putin's portrait in their offices. Putin has said he feels no need to hang the portrait of Russia's new president in his office in a traditional sign of respect. Other government officials will hang a picture of Medvedev and have to decide whether to take down Putin. Many are expected to hedge their bets by displaying both.

Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, whom Forbes magazine calls Russia's richest man, said recently that it is clear Putin remains in charge. "In Russia, in our culture we need to have a leader," Deripaska said at a lunch with foreign journalists. With Putin in control, Deripaska said there is no risk of political instability. "There is no chance for any intrigue. Don't bet on it," he said. Putin and Medvedev, who have worked together since the early 1990s, stress their friendship and full agreement on Russia's course.

But Putin seems to be taking no chances that Medvedev will turn against him. His party has a 70 percent majority, which gives it the power to change the constitution, block legislation or impeach the president. As prime minister, Putin will control the budget and oversee gigantic state corporations, including Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer. These corporations, staffed with Putin loyalists, have allowed Russia to reassert its global might. Both men have said Medvedev will set foreign policy.

Boris Makarenko, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, said there will be no need to amend the constitution, which in spelling out the powers of the president and prime minister leaves room for interpretation. "The gray areas will be shared differently than they are now," he was quoted in Vremya Novostei as saying. An early signal of the level of Putin's influence will come when Russia forms a new government. Most members of his team are expected to remain in high posts. Another important sign will be the TV coverage of Putin and Medvedev on national channels, which are all under Kremlin control and have served as a political bellwether. Medvedev has been given lavish coverage, but Putin remains the main hero of the evening news.

The Globalist reviews the KGBification of Russia:

From former Communist Party Secretary General Yuri Andropov to former Russian President Vladmir Putin, the KGB has shaped the course of Russian politics for the last three decades. Andropov hoped to achieve substantive reforms to save the hemoraging Soviet Union. But Putin and his former KGB brethren — many of whom got to occupy high places in Russian government and industry during his presidency — seem to desire only wealth and political power.

In the waning years of Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, which encompassed a period from 1964 to 1982 and entered Russian history as a period of stagnation, then-KGB chief Yuri Andropov was thought to be the most cultured and open-minded member of the ruling Politburo. This may seem ironic, because as a Soviet secret police boss, he was in charge of spying on the West, fomenting unrest in the developing world and suppressing domestic dissent. He did it all well. Abroad, the late 1970s were characterized by seemingly unstoppable gains for the Soviet Union and its allies, from Nicaragua and Grenada in the Western Hemisphere to Angola and Ethiopia in Africa — and Indo-China and Afghanistan in Asia.

Previously non-allied nations and Western clients were one by one falling into the Soviet orbit. At home, meanwhile, the dissident movement that flourished in the 1960s and early 1970s was ruthlessly rooted out.

Soviet dominance?

Because he was required to achieve real results, Andropov had to gain thorough knowledge of reality — not live in a dream world of Leninist ideology as his Kremlin colleagues did. What he saw horrified him. He realized that the Soviet Union, behind a façade of unity and strength, was a ramshackle collection of often medieval, grotesquely inefficient and incompatible parts. Its technology, social and economic infrastructure and economic efficiency lagged far behind the United States and Western Europe.

Soviet decline

Whatever achievements were seen immediately after World War II had mostly disintegrated and, unbeknownst to the senile old men living behind the Kremlin wall, the USSR was becoming a third world nation. Andropov was a highly educated, cultured man who was tough, but well-read. He reportedly enjoyed reading some of the very same dissident Russian writers his KGB had banned from publishing. He understood that, unless major reforms were implemented, the Communist system was doomed. The problem was Brezhnev — who kept on living. By the time the Great Leader finally died in 1982 at the age of 75, Andropov was mortally ill himself. Despite being only 70, a relative youngster by the standards of the 1980's Soviet Politburo, Andropov died of kidney failure in February 1984 — only 16 months after succeeding Brezhnev as Secretary General of the Communist Party. Few Russians who lived through those 16 months have anything nice to say about Andropov. The first thing he did was tighten discipline at the workplace.

Return to party discipline

He clamped down on absenteeism — by sending police officers and volunteer vigilantes to stores during working hours, with orders to stop working-age shoppers and demand why they were not at work. Other harsh measures, reminiscent of Lenin's murderous War Communism during the Russian Civil war in 1918-1920, were also introduced. But in hindsight, it seems that Andropov was merely working to establish impeccable Bolshevik credentials before embarking on a path of reform.

Nixonian reformer?

Richard Nixon may have served as a template. He came to power as the standard-bearer of the American Right, then initiated détente with Russia and China and ended the war in Vietnam — something no liberal Democrat would have ever been able to do. The problem with Andropov was that he died before the reform stage could begin. However, he had enough time to promote and bolster one of his most talented protégés — Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev, it should be noted, came from Stavropol, Andropov's power base, and he consistently enjoyed the KGB chief's patronage since joining the Politburo in 1979. When they first began in 1985, Gorbachev's perestroika, glasnost and other reforms were the same package that had been conceived at the KGB headquarters on the Lubyanka Square during the time of Andropov.

Overdue reforms

Like his late patron, Gorbachev intended to keep the fundamentals of the Communist system in place — but loosen some of the most hide-bound economic and political restrictions that prevented the USSR from competing efficiently on the global stage. The problem was that even Andropov and his KGB did not appreciate how thoroughly the entire Soviet system had rotted through. Like a dead tree in the woods, it could remain upright as long as no one touched it. Any attempt to adjust it resulted in an immediate, clamorous collapse.

Collapse

Communist Party reformers, starting with Gorbachev himself, were caught offguard by the ignominious disintegration of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Andropov had to gain thorough knowledge of reality — not live in the Kremlin’s dream world of Leninist ideology. What he saw horrified him. So was the KGB. Its officers — who had been the true masters of the country for 80 years — found themselves out of work. Under Boris Yeltsin, the power of the secret police — now renamed the Federal Security Service, or the FSB — was curbed substantially, its ranks thinned out and its bloody archives were thrown open to historians.

Many former KGB officers employed their skills by working for the newly rich oligarchs, or for organized crime conglomerates. Even Putin had to go to work as a factotum for St. Petersburg's reformist mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Initially, when Putin unexpectedly became Russia's leader, he too seemed to be following in Andropov's footsteps. He talked of boosting discipline at all levels of government, administrative reform and greater openness to the rest of the world. He appeared to be moving slowly in practice, but that seemed justified. After all, to cite Otto von Bismarck, isn't politics in a democratic state "the art of the possible?" The important thing was that he seemed to be moving in the right direction.

The rise of Putin

However, Putin's rise was a combination of wild luck — his own — and monumental stupidity and overconfidence — that of those rich Russian oligarchs who picked him to succeed Boris Yeltsin in 1999. Putin’s rise was a combination of wild luck — his own — and monumental stupidity and overconfidence — that of those rich Russian oligarchs who picked him to succeed Boris Yeltsin.
The oligarchs thought they controlled Russia and couldn't conceive that this uncomplicated, unambitious and seemingly unconnected guy could turn the tables on them. Especially since all the political infrastructure around him remained in their hands. But they failed to take two facts into consideration. First, Putin did have at least some connections in the KGB establishment and, second, the Russian state — although greatly weakened after the collapse of the Soviet Union — was still a formidable force.

Putin's old colleagues in St. Petersburg did what other KGB officers were doing after the fall of the Soviet Union — find jobs in the nascent private enterprises. The main difference was that in Russia's second-largest city, working for private businesses often meant becoming involved with a highly diversified and powerful private enterprise-gangster network. It is not for nothing that St. Petersburg has been nicknamed Russia's "Crime Capital."

The KGB's "old boy network"

Most prominent members of Putin's administration, as well as those who head powerful "silovik" ministries and agencies and run the increasingly dominant, state-owned energy and natural resource enterprises, were mainly St. Petersburg law and order alumni and personal acquaintances of the president from his former life. Even Andropov and his KGB did not appreciate how thoroughly the entire Soviet system had rotted through The quiescent early years of Putin's rule were merely a time when those people moved into the position of power, took over the Russian state — and gathered strength. In the end, the KGB — which initiated the process of reforming the tottering Soviet Union — has ended up on top. Those who were junior officers when the reform project was conceived now run Russia and its energy monopolies.

Era of corruption

The difference is that Andropov, for all his faults, was trying to make the country better. In contrast, too many of his former employees — for all their talk about addressing Russia's monumental social, environmental, health and other problems — think primarily of stuffing their own pockets and staying in power. Government graft, bribery and corruption, which has always been a problem in Russia, has now probably surpassed Nigerian proportions.

Paul Goble reports:

Moscow’s charge that Tbilisi preparing to invade Abkhazia is just as absurd as Stalin’s suggestion that Finland was planning to attack the USSR in 1939, according to a Moscow military analyst. But far more serious, the Russian Federation could soon find itself in a similar military situation to that in the Winter War, one in which the Russian side lost. In an interview to Georgia’s Interpressnews agency late yesterday, Pavel Fel’gengauer, military affairs analyst for Moscow’s Novaya gazeta, discussed the current military situation in Abkhazia, Moscow’s propaganda campaign against Tbilisi, and what is likely to happen next. Fel’gengauer, who is widely recognized as one of Russia’s most astute national security analysts, said that the Russia side had introduced forces into the Tkvarchel district that “unlike peacekeepers” have “artillery and heavy weapons,” a projection of force apparently intended to help drive the pro-Tbilisi “Abkhaz government in exile” out of Kodorskiy gorge.

That has long been a goal of the Abkhaz government, many of whose members believe that a major “cause of the non-recognition of the independence of Abkhazia” by Russia is that government and its role in maintaining Georgian control of the highland districts of their breakaway republic. Assertions by the Russian foreign ministry that “Georgia is preparing a place des armes I the Kodorsky gorge for an attack on Abkhazia are laughable,” Fel’gengauer says, because “even if the entire Georgian army were to be placed [there], it would be physically impossible to attack Sukhumi.” Indeed, the “Novaya gazeta” commentator says, “the declarations by the Russian side [on this point] recall [Stalin’s] propagandistic preparation for the [Soviet] attack on Finland in 1939 when [Moscow] accused the Finns of aggression.” Today, “military actions are being prepared in Kodorskiy gorge but not by the Georgians.”

According to his information, Fel’gengauer said, Abkhazian units are assembling near the village of Tsebella in the lower part of the gorge. From there they can reach the upper reaches of the gorge by passing along the new road Tbilisi has built. Using howitzers and Grad rockets, they can prevent the Georgians from an effective response. In addition, the additional Russian “peacekeeping forces” now in the Kodorskiy gorge will be in a position to prevent the Georgians from attacking Abkhazia on its flanks.” When his Georgian interlocutor noted that this was not a pleasant prospect, Fel’gengauer said that he understood but that “unfortunately, everything is going in that direction.” But then he pointed out that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is “speaking the truth when he says that Russia does not intend to conduct a serious fight with Georgia. Moscow only wants to teach Tbilisi a lesson.” Moscow understands that “threats by Russia against Georgia are insufficient” to force the Georgians to leave the Kodorskiy gorge and not begin military actions in other directions.” And consequently, it has introduced its own forces to help the Abkhaz achieve their goals against the pro-Tbilisi government.

But Fel’gengauer implies, Moscow may have seriously miscalculated. If events develop and get out of hand, “then Russia in reality will find itself in a worse situation than the Soviet Union did in 1939 in connection with Finland.” That is because whatever Russia’s diplomats or generals say, “in the contemporary world, no one will believe them.” And consequently, Fel’gengauer argues in conclusion, unlike the Finns in 1939, “Georgia today will receive what it has always wanted – international support.

Source: Ellustrator.



Hat tip: Reader Elmer.

(1) EDITORIAL: Garry Kasparov, Sniveling Coward?

(2) Latynina Asks: Who is Putin?

(3) Golts on Georgia

(4) Applebaum on Georgia

(5) Annals of the Neo-Soviet Crackdown on Journalism

NOTE: Oleg Kozlovsky has been preemptively arrested and given a two-week sentence to stop him from participating in the formation of the shadow parliament.

NOTE: Why is the junta that governs Myanmar so willing to flout the authority of the civilized world and ignore the plight of its own people? The same reason other rogue regimes, like Iran and Venezuela and Hamas are willing -- support from the mother of all rogue regimes in Russia. Publius Pundit has the details and is now publishing comments as blog posts, so feel free to e-mail yours regarding this outrage.

NOTE: On Wednesday, we were pleased to welcome the quarter-millionth visit to this blog.

Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times:

Who is Mr. Putin? Until 2003, he was a leader who could have made Russia a truly great country if he followed through on his liberal economic program.

But he had one weakness. As a former security services operative, machinations became his modus operandi for ruling the country. And he who lives by machinations sooner or later falls victim to them.

President Vladimir Putin surrounded himself with people who were terribly unqualified to run a business or government. But they were very skilled in another area -- exposing Putin's enemies. If there are no enemies, you can always invent them. And once the enemies were exposed, Putin's friends grabbed up their assets.

The first to fall victim to this kind of scheme was Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin's confidantes issued dire warnings to the president about how Khodorkovsky was planning to seize power. This campaign continued every day until Putin was convinced that Khodorkovsky posed a real threat.

Whenever Putin believed he had a sworn enemy, that person was removed at the drop of a hat. When he thought that Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov wanted to become president, Kasyanov quickly found himself out of a job. Also, once Putin was convinced that Russneft founder Mikhail Gutseriyev was financing insurgents in Ingushetia, the Federal Tax Service initiated an investigation against the company for tens of millions of dollars in back taxes.

Putin did not make a lot mistakes at the helm, but he never admitted to the few he did make. Instead, he attributed his mistakes to the intrigues of his enemies. Take the seizure and expropriation of Yukos, for example. That was not a mistake, but the successful elimination of a dangerous enemy. Or take the defeat of pro-Kremlin candidate Viktor Yanukovych in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. It wasn't that Putin made mistakes in formulating his policy toward Ukraine; it was the insidious United States that undercut everything by plotting an Orange Revolution.

As government corruption became increasingly worse, the picture presented on state television became increasingly rosy. While Putin's elite vacationed at the posh French ski resort in Kurshavel, the Kremlin constantly warned Russia's lumpen proletariat of the country's mortal enemies in the West. As Nashi youth pelted the Estonian Embassy with stones, eggs and insults, Russian state-controlled television presented this as the resurgence of a "strong Russia."

"Strong" is the key word here. Any person who is incapable of making decisions in difficult situations has a great need to pretend to be strong. Remember the photos of Putin shirtless during a fishing trip or the shots of him in the cockpit of fighter jets. But on the frightening morning of Sept. 1, 2004, when Putin -- who planned to attend a school-opening ceremony in Nalchik that day -- learned about the terrorist attack at Beslan School No. 1, located 90 kilometers away from Nalchik, he rerouted his plane in midflight and returned to Moscow.

We have been told repeatedly that Putin rules the country with a "strong hand," but, in reality, his orders are routinely ignored. He once ordered the firing of a number of high-ranking Federal Security Service officers, but they all remained at their posts. Moreover, Putin's subordinates continued to destroy companies even after he had personally told them to back off. This happened with the East Line company that owns Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, for example.

In the end, what good has come of Putin's presidency? Eight years of his authority produced swarms of enthusiastic toadies, who have already begun sucking up to the new president, Dmitry Medvedev. And, of course, his friends became very rich.

Alexander Golts, writing in the Moscow Times:

There won't be a global war, but there will be a global battle for peace so heated that it won't leave a single stone unturned." I am reminded of this Soviet-era joke in light of the conflict among Georgia, Abkhazia and Russia.

The recent round of tensions began on April 16, when President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to recognize some documents issued by the separatist authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to expand economic cooperation with these unrecognized territories. In response, Tbilisi declared that Moscow was taking steps toward annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and it reinstated flights by reconnaissance drones over Abkhazia. After an aircraft of unknown origin shot down one of these drones, Georgia protested Russia's moves as an act of aggression. For its part, the Kremlin then announced it would increase its peacekeeping force in the conflict zone by one-third, from 2,000 to 3,000 personnel. This was ostensibly done in response to Georgia's supposed bolstering of its military forces in the conflict zone. Georgian and Russian officials no longer mince words: Both sides go to great lengths to offend each other. All of this is bringing both sides to the brink of war.

I am certain, however, that neither side truly wants this conflict to escalate toward a military conflict. In reality, all of their actions and aggressive stances are meant as signals intended for the United States and NATO.

It is clear that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's policies have hit a dead end. He promised Georgians that Abkhazia and South Ossetia would return to Tbilisi's control, but he has no way of making good on it in the foreseeable future. Although Russia's intervention in the region has been a factor, the savage civil war of the 1990s left wounds that will take decades to heal. Given these problems, Saakashvili is looking to join NATO as quickly as possible in the hope that the organization can help restore Georgia's territorial integrity. But NATO's rules prohibit the accession of any country that is embroiled in an internal territorial conflict such as Georgia's. Tbilisi, however, is hoping that NATO will overlook this rule and defend Georgia as an eventual NATO member against Russian aggression. To make the threat from Moscow look menacing, Georgia must constantly provoke Russia.

At the same time, it is obvious that open warfare with Russia would end badly for Georgia. Russia holds absolute military superiority, with 90,000 soldiers and 200 military aircraft in its North Caucasus military district, and they would quickly overwhelm Georgia's 21,000 troops and eight aircraft. Russia has battle-hardened, fully equipped troops, that it can draw on in the event of war. Saakashvili's army doesn't stand a chance of winning a direct conflict.

Moscow appears determined to aggravate the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, taking pains to create the impression that Russia is ready not only to annex these "unrecognized territories," but to do so by force. The Kremlin is enraged that Georgia and Ukraine will eventually be allowed to join NATO, claiming that the West has unilaterally changed the fundamental rules that govern international relations. And Moscow is determined to aggravate the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, sending the message that the rules to its game in the Caucasus can be changed as well.

In reality, however, Moscow is not interested in war any more than Georgia is. If Russia were to defeat Georgia, it would violate one of the unstated principles of its foreign policy. Despite all of its militaristic rhetoric, in all the years of Putin's presidency, the Kremlin never once took an action that would be possible to consider as aggressive. A war with Georgia would mean that Russia, as the Soviet Union before it, represents a danger to the world community. And that would inevitably lead to sanctions and isolation. Russia's elite, whose families and money are located in the West, have no desire to see that happen.

And so we have a paradoxical situation. Nobody wants war, but both sides are doing everything to spark a military conflict. This is not the first time this situation has arisen. Recall how World War I began. States wanted only to protect their national pride and frighten their opponents. But at some point, the tensions escalated sharply and, coupled with mass mobilizations of their armies, the conflict in the Balkans spun out of control with tragic consequences for the entire world. This scenario could be repeated in the Caucasus.

Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post:

Before it happened, nobody imagined that the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo would set off World War I. Before the "shot heard round the world" was fired, I doubt that 18th-century Concord expected to go down in history as the place where the American Revolution began. Before last weekend, when Itar-Tass declared that the government of Georgia was about to invade Abkhazia, nobody had really thought about Abkhazia at all. As a public service to readers who need a break from the U.S. presidential campaign, this column is therefore devoted to considering the possibility that Abkhazia could become the starting point of a larger war.

Many Americans haven't heard of Abkhazia. It's a pretty safe bet that it's probably not the priority of many people in the White House, either, and it hasn't even been one of those "can you name the general who's in charge of Pakistan" trick questions in the U.S. presidential campaign. On the contrary, Abkhazia ranks right up there with Nagorno-Karabakh, Dagestan, South Ossetia and all the other forgotten Caucasus regions, cities and statelets that no one wants to think about too hard but where, occasionally, something really awful happens.

For the record, Abkhazia is a province of Georgia that declared its independence in 1992. A small war followed, and ethnic cleansing of Georgians from Abkhazia came after that. There have been some UN attempts to make peace, and Georgia has tried offering Abkhazia broad autonomy, but, mostly, Georgia and Abkhazia maintain an uneasy stalemate, which occasionally turns into an extremely uneasy stalemate.

Usually this happens when an atmosphere of extreme uneasiness is useful to Russia, which is Abkhazia's closest military, economic and political ally and has a long-term interest in the destabilization of pro-U.S., pro-Western, pro-NATO Georgia.

Thus, when Itar-Tass announces that Georgia is about to invade Abkhazia, it may mean that Georgia really is about to invade Abkhazia. But it might also mean, as everyone in the region understands, that Russia is about to invade Georgia -- as a "preemptive strike," of course.

Why would the Russians do that? Or even hint that they want to do that? Russian politics having become utterly opaque, it's hard to say. Some think Russia began stirring up trouble in Abkhazia in recent weeks to exact revenge for NATO's recognition of Kosovo -- or perhaps to be able to strike quickly, had NATO decided at its recent summit to offer Georgia a clear path to membership, which U.S. President George W. Bush vocally supported. Others think that recent Russian pronouncements, some of which come close to recognition of Abkhaz independence, are related to the inauguration this week of the new president, Dmitry Medvedev. Maybe Medvedev wants to demonstrate how tough he is, right at the beginning. Or maybe someone else wants to demonstrate how tough Medvedev is, on his behalf. In any case, someone, Abkhaz or Russian, has shot down at least two and maybe four unmanned Georgian military planes in the past six weeks in what looks like a pretty obvious attempt to create a casus belli.

It might not work -- and for the moment the Georgians say they have no intention of declaring war. But Georgia holds parliamentary elections this month, under the leadership of a president who might be grateful for a chance to look bold. If the provocation works, or if Russia does invade Georgia -- an emerging democracy, an aspiring NATO ally, a country with troops in Iraq and many implicit assurances of security from Washington and Brussels -- then the West will have to come up with a major response, if not military then political and diplomatic.

The timing couldn't be worse. There are many wonderful things about the U.S. political system, but one of the least wonderful is the amount of energy a presidential campaign sucks out of public life. Between now and January, the current president is a lame duck: Could he make any credible response to a Russian invasion of Abkhazia, should such a thing happen? Is anybody ready to debate a whole new part of the world? Last weekend, the U.S. media focused unprecedented attention on ... the Guam primary, in which 4,500 people cast ballots and Barack Obama won by seven votes.

Of course, from another perspective, the timing couldn't be better: If you wanted to attack a U.S. ally, or if you just wanted to destabilize and unnerve a U.S. ally, wouldn't this be the perfect moment? Perhaps if the Russians don't take the opportunity, someone else will.

Writing on Kasparov.ru and translated by Other Russia Victoria Rabotnova, a St. Petersburg based journalist, decries Vladimir Putin's crackdown on the Russian press. She completed the Journalist Faculty of the Leningrad State University in 1984. Since then, she has worked for a number of publications, and has been widely published around Russia. From 1991 to 2005, she was the parliamentary commentator for the Nevskoe Vremya newspaper. At the present moment, she serves as a columnist for the Novaya Gazeta, and is a staff writer for the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya Segodnya (Russian Federation Today) magazine.

Long ago, when I first started working at a newspaper, relatives would constantly congratulate me with our professional holiday. Now they don’t offer congratulations: they simply don’t know when, and most importantly, for what.

As to May 5th –the Day of the Soviet Press—I personally have fond memories. The relaxed editorial get-togethers and the inevitable bonuses truly made the day festive for all the journalists and newspaper-writers (employees of radio and TV had their own special holiday on May 7th). During the years of Perestroika, a significant part of newspapers came out of the control of the [Communist] party organs, but this didn’t affect attitudes toward May 5th. The jokesters, truth be told, did suggest renaming it to the Day of the Anti-Soviet Press, but no one wanted to break traditions and renounce the favorite holiday. Yet as a bit more time passed, the traditions broke on their own.

Understandably, after the putsch happened, it became sort of indecent to celebrate the day of the first issue of the Pravda newspaper. So May 5th was changed to January 13th, which took root slowly and with grumbling. But this is beside the point.

Honestly, I don’t remember if we marked the Day of the Press in 1991. This was a time when all the standing journalists wrote much and earned enough to not depend on the holiday’s bonuses. And we sat in the editorial offices well into the night every day, because the newspapers went to print late at night: there was simply no time to sit around a festive table, because we needed to monitor the news, finish writing or rewrite articles, create pages… in short, to work. And the work seemed so much more interesting than some holiday sit-arounds.

The May 3rd Day of the Free Press was definitely never celebrated. This seemed pointless during times when [the Press] was indeed free every day. Today, when the space for freedom has contracted like pebbled skin, this isn’t just pointless, but even cynical –the same as celebrating innocence in a brothel. According to a Freedom House rating, Russia is in 164th place for the degree of media freedom, letting not only Moldova and Kyrgyzstan pass by, but even Iran and Afghanistan. In the previous year, I’ll note, we were slightly higher – in 158th place. [note: The most recent 2008 assessment by Freedom House ranks Russia as 170th.] How is it that [Vladimir] Vysotsky put it? “You can’t hold on at the top – you’re plummeting down”?

Obviously, the Russian press did not become restricted immediately – we are speaking of a protracted process, spanning a decade, the start of which was rooted as far back as [Boris] Yeltsin’s times.

Of course, economic reasons played an important role in this. In the 90s, printed publications, sent floating into a liberal economic voyage, ran into serious troubles. Prices for paper, typographical services and mailings were mushrooming, while the number of subscribers was falling. Those people that had formerly subscribed to three or four newspapers could no longer afford such a luxury. In substance, many publications ended up on the brink of closing, and their leadership, clutching at straws, grabbed at the offers of collaboration coming from the business structures.

The businessmen were willing to finance the newspapers, but under the condition that the controlling stake of shares ended up in their hands. Naturally, they assured the editors and journalistic collectives that they wouldn’t interfere with editorial policy. And as a rule, they actually didn’t interfere… at the start. But afterwards, it turned out that the esteemed shareholder was interested in keeping up nice relations with the authorities, and categorically didn’t want to support a publication that kept him from doing so. That’s why critical materials about bureaucrat A (B, C, D – make your selection) must be removed from the newspaper’s sheets. And instead of them, write and print a different, praiseful article.

The need to keep earning funds quickly increased the role of advertising departments, who were searching for and finding clients. The interests of these clients, if they were looking for a long-term campaign, would also have an affect on editorial policy: It was clearly explained to the journalists, that you can’t bite the hand that feeds you, and so no critical speech regarding businessman or politician A (B, C, D – make your selection) were allowed at the moment. But to write something positive about them is actually very needed. It’s worth noting that orders from the advertising department (just like the special assignments of shareholder), were paid with a special rate, and that those willing to write them were always easy to find. And those, who categorically did not want to do this, sooner or later started to feel like “superfluous people” in the editorial offices.

Of course, you could stand by your principles, refusing to write “as needed” and continuing to write what you were thinking. But more and more frequently, such principled behavior would lead to a simple result: articles were lain on the editorial “table” and remained there forever. And then it came time to receive your wages – and involuntarily, many thought: isn’t it worth the sacrifice? That is, isn’t the income (necessary to live yourself, and often to feed your family) worth enough to assuage your commitment to your principles and go for the compromise? Ultimately, there are more than enough topics which you’re allowed to cover –and you can always choose less biting ones, or simply don’t walk out “past the flags.”

Truth be told, there was another choice –to try to change one newspaper for another, where the editorial policy was different. At first, many did just that –since different media depended on different commercial structures, which had different interests. But afterwards, a growing number of these structures began to themselves depend more and more on the authorities. And critical overtones in their corresponding media became less and less frequent. The number of newspapers where you could freely state your opinions was rapidly melting away — and consequently, so did the number of work-places where you could transfer when it became completely odious…

And afterwards… afterwards a news generation of journalists grew up. And those, who didn’t go to a PR-service or a political consulting structure directly after college, but stayed in journalism, already perceived “the air of non-freedom” as the only one they were used to breathing. Many journalists of the previous generation came to peace with [the situation] as well – some grew older, some became tired, some decided that it was impossible to spit against the wind their whole lives, some changed their topic –for instance, to cover sports, where it is still possible to speak absolutely freely, where, as-yet, no teams, sportsmen or trainers exist that are closed off from criticism. Possibly, however, this omission will soon be corrected.

And what’s left in the outcome? Well, that people believe less and less what the majority of newspapers (and television all the more so) [are telling them]. The reader-viewer is not quite so stupid and naïve as they possibly assume in the power structures, where they are so interested in narrowing the “extent of freedom.” [The reader] sees that one life is happening around him, while much of the media are telling him of a completely different one, as if they’re speaking of some parallel world. He takes the Peterburgsky Dnevnik (the St. Petersburg Journal) newspaper, published by the St. Petersburg administration with a circulation of 200 thousand, out of his mailbox and sees, for instance, that “the news of the week” from the 9th to the 15th of April 2007 is the approval of a new draft law by the city government, which bans gambling machines starting in July 2008. The violent crackdown of the “March of Dissent” on April 15th, which proved to be at the center of attention of the majority of the world media, isn’t considered as news of the week by the paper. It isn’t even mentioned. This event just didn’t happen…

At one time, in the distant Soviet past, there was a popular joke about a person who visited a psychiatrist with a complaint. He says, “I see one thing around me, but on the television – it’s completely different.” “We don’t cure socialism,” the doctor replies to the poor fellow. Can it be that we’re reverting?

Altogether, we have nothing to commemorate on May 3rd, because you cannot be free only one day of the year. You are either free all the time—or constrained every day…

(1) EDITORIAL: Postcards from Potemkin Russia

(2) Putin's Quiet Coup D'etat

(3) Who does the Russian Military Think it's Fooling?

(4) Russians Beg for Mercy from Tsar Dimitri

(5) Welcome back to the USSR

(6) Annals of "Pacified" Chechnya

NOTE: Vladimir Putin is invading Georgia with a massive army in clear violation of international law. Publius Pundit has all the details, via the brilliant Vladimir Socor over at Eurasia Daily Monitor.

Russia these days reminds us of a middle-class man who spends his life savings to buy a shiny new red Ferrari without realizing that the purchase will leave him with no funds to pay for gas, much less costly repairs or insurance. He charges out of the dealership onto the highway headed for a cross-country trek, only to run out of gas before he leaves his own state and ends up hitchhiking down the highway.

Bedazzled by an oil revenue windfall and its sparkly effects on Moscow, some Russophiles have forgotten there's a country out there, one that requires maintenance if it is survive. Just as in Tsarist and Soviet times, modern Russia's oligarchs ignore the welfare of the masses and burn their candle at both its ends.

It will not last the night, and as we reported on Monday the light it gives is far from lovely.

Take, for instance, a report on Monday from Bloomberg News about Lake Baikal:

Lake Baikal is warming faster than the atmosphere, challenging the idea that large bodies of water can withstand global warming, U.S. and Russian scientists said. Baikal, which holds 20 percent of the world's fresh water, has warmed by 1.21 degrees Celsius since 1946, said Marianne Moore, assistant professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Global temperatures have risen 0.76 degrees Celsius since industrialization, a United Nations panel on climate change said in March. The Siberian lake holds more than 2,500 plant and animal species, including the world's only exclusively freshwater seal, and some could become extinct by continued warming, said Moore, co-author of a report on Lake Baikal to be published this month in the journal Global Change Biology. The study challenges the idea that thermal inertia of oceans, seas and large lakes would make them more resistant to climate change, Moore said. "The warming that we're seeing in this lake is of more concern than that of any other lake because of the extraordinary biodiversity," Moore said. "You could potentially lose the Baikal seal." Beginning in the 1940s, data on Lake Baikal was collected by Mikhail Kozhov, a professor at Irkutsk State University. The research was carried on by his daughter and granddaughter, Lyubov Izmesteva, a co-author of the journal article. The family has taken samples of the lake every seven to 10 days since 1946, amassing a history that Moore analyzed. The data revealed that the lake's average summer temperature has increased by 2.4 degrees, Moore said. "My jaw just dropped to the floor when I heard this," Moore said. "I was extremely surprised that the data set even existed."

The New York Times adds: "Dr. Izmesteva and her colleagues pay for their work in part with fees they earn by consulting or doing environmental impact assessments. They sustain the program any way they can." In other words, without support from the Putin regime in Moscow. Such support would, of course, divert funds from Putin's parade of tanks through Red Square on Friday and all the other cold-war provocations he has in mind. But if Russia intends to keep control over the world's single largest portion of national territory (by a wide margin) then it will have to bear the world's largest maintenance costs. If it doesn't pay those costs, the nation will dissolve into rust and then be gobbled up by others who will. That's the law of nature.

But Russia shows no inclination whatsoever to do so. The Kremlin would prefer to spend Russia's ready cash on renewal of the cold war conflict with the West, and the people do not seem willing to lift a finger to stop that. Russia stands to lose one-third of its population in the next half-century, a far greater blow than any ever inflicted by a foreign enemy in war, yet the government is silent and the population demands no action, much less change of policy or regime. There is no environmental movement in Russia, because there is no support for one in the population. There is no racial justice movement, no women's rights movement, and indeed no real opposition of any kind to the edicts of the malignant little troll who prowls the Kremlin's parapets by night, spitting on the hapless denizens of his land from on high for his amusement.

Below, we report on Putin's plans to spend piles of money on an outrageous neo-Soviet parade of military hardware through Red Square. Who could ask for any more emphatic proof of Russia's neo-Soviet intentions than this? In another item we report below, Radio Free Europe calls it "a deliberate throwback to the country's communist past, when millions of people watched live on television as the Soviet Union celebrated its vast military might." And so it is, in more ways than one: Ass the report below shows, just as in Soviet times these actions are mere illusions, more efforts to create a Potemkin Village and dupe the unwary, both at home and abroad, into thinking that Russia is more than it is. How dare Putin simultaneously decry the expansion of NATO and parade armaments before a slack-jawed world? Is this man insane?

Dmitry Oreshkin, a Russian political analyst, thinks so. He tells RFE: "Putin gives free rein to the Soviet dream. The huge number of people who were brought up in a military tradition, and who conceive the world in terms of the West wanting to enslave them, have the painful feeling that Russia lacks tanks. So why not show them these tanks? Why not roll them across Red Square? Let them watch, shed a few tears, and calm down."

Frankly speaking, though, even if we despise Vladimir Putin, sometimes we empathize with him. Like the rulers of Russia who have come before him, how can he but be infuriated by the craven indifference of the population, by their dogged refusal to stand up and be counted for any reason? Why should he do anything differently, if the people of the country don't demand it? Why should he take any risks when he knows full well that any call for national effort will fall on deaf ears? Why shouldn't he conclude that he rules over a nation of cattle, and proceed accordingly?

Surely, that frustration was just as well known to Tsar Peter, and Lenin, and Stalin, and indeed to Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor reports:

Gazeta reported on May 5 that it had learned the structure and personnel make-up of the cabinet that Vladimir Putin will head as prime minister starting on May 8, the day after Dmitry Medvedev is inaugurated as president. According to the paper, outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov will remain in the cabinet as first deputy prime minister overseeing the “control and supervisory agencies.” Most of the current cabinet ministers will remain in their jobs, while Putin will have eleven deputies, as did Viktor Chernomyrdin during his tenure as prime minister. The main “intrigue,” the paper wrote, involves who will occupy the position of deputy prime minister overseeing the “power bloc.”

Still, Gazeta said that “the very appearance” of a deputy prime minister overseeing the “power bloc” simply confirms that “the center for making all important decisions, despite the protestations of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, is being transferred from the Kremlin to the White House.” Indeed, Gazeta noted that in one of his final press conferences as president, Putin said that he was leaving everything in the Kremlin to his successor except for the fountain pen that Boris Yeltsin used to sign his most important decrees and that he bequeathed to Putin on December 31, 1999, the day Yeltsin left office. “Perhaps that pen contains the sacred secret of Kremlin power,” the paper wrote. “In any case, together with that artifact, Putin … is taking possession of all command powers and levers of control over all key leaders, from the governors to the heads of the special services.”

According to Gazeta, Prime Minister Putin will use the resources of the Regional Development Ministry, headed by Dmitry Kozak, to control the governors; and Kozak will become a deputy prime minister. Zubkov, in his role as first deputy prime minister, will not only be in charge of the government’s “operational status” but will also have the role of “chief inspector” over how budgetary funds are used, putting him above the watchdog Audit Chamber and the Federal Service for Financial-Budgetary Supervision.

Gazeta wrote that Igor Sechin, the current deputy Kremlin chief-of-staff who is widely scene as the de facto leader of a faction of hardliner siloviki, will also become a deputy prime minister and could end up replacing Naryshkin as head of the government apparatus, with Naryshkin “shifted in another direction.” Sechin could also wind up doubling as head of the prime minister’s secretariat. “Vladimir Putin loves to appoint people close to him to compound positions in order to award them with a high status,” Gazeta wrote, noting that simply appointing Sechin as head of the prime ministerial secretariat, whose tasks involve “circulation of documents and red tape,” would be an “obvious insult.”

Putin’s current press secretary, Aleksei Gromov, may be appointed deputy prime minister in charge of education, culture and the media, Gazeta wrote, adding that the job of press secretary for the new prime minister would go to Gromov’s current first deputy, Dmitry Peskov.

A subject of “special intrigue” is the fate of First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, Gazeta wrote, noting that he might become secretary of the Kremlin’s Security Council if the decision is made to turn that body into a “counterweight” to Medvedev inside the Kremlin administration. Citing an unnamed source, the paper reported that the possibility of keeping Ivanov on as deputy prime minister in charge of the “power agencies” was discussed in March and April but that the idea of having a “decorative power vice premier” was rejected in favor of putting the prime minister personally in charge of the siloviki. The source told Gazeta that this was in part why Putin had decided to remain in high politics. Before internecine warfare broke out among rival siloviki last September, “Putin had seriously planned to leave, at least to rest for a time,” the source told the paper. “The decision to head the government was a forced move. The siloviki grandees’ internecine war has subsided, but it hasn’t ended.”

Gazeta cited “other sources in the Kremlin” as indicating that it was possible Putin could still appoint a deputy prime minister in charge of the “power bloc” and that Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolay Platonovich Patrushev could fill that position, given that in serving as both FSB director and a deputy prime minister, he would “de jure remain subordinated to Putin” (by law, the FSB director is appointed by the president, not by the prime minister).

According to an unnamed Gazeta source, after May 7 the Kremlin administration will be headed by current deputy Kremlin chief-of-staff Vladmir Surkov, a “compromise figure” for Medvedev and Putin. The source said that Medvedev did not want the current Kremlin administration chief, Sergei Sobyanin, to remain in that post, instead proposing a current presidential aide Igor Shuvalov, who was also being pushed by former Kremlin administrative chief Aleksandr Voloshin.

Gazeta’s source said that within a month, the cabinet could introduce amendments to the law on the government, in particular, to Article 32, Chapter 5, which was made part of the law on the advice of Boris Yeltsin and allows the president, essentially in violation of the constitution, to be in charge of the power ministries and the Foreign Ministry, With this change, the prime minister would be able to take over running the country, “including in the spheres of military and foreign policy … The constitution … can be interpreted so that the president, if he is lacking in ambition, turns into an English king and doesn’t interfere in current affairs of state, except in extraordinary cases”

The Associated Press reports:

For the first time in post-Soviet Russia, tanks and nuclear missile launchers are to rumble across Red Square on Friday, in a seemingly fearsome parade of military might.

The message to the world, two days after Dmitry Medvedev succeeds Vladimir Putin as president, should be clear: Russia is again a major military power.

"This isn't saber-rattling," Putin insisted Monday. "We are not threatening anyone."

And indeed, for all the investment in the military — an eightfold increase to an annual $40 billion during Putin's eight years in office — experts say it still has a long way to go to restore its Soviet-era might. "Our armed forces are merely a bad copy of the Soviet army," said retired Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, a former arms control expert with the Russian Defense Ministry.

The annual Victory Day parade that marks Nazi Germany's defeat may look impressive, but some Russian commentators think much of the military spending has been squandered through corruption, cronyism and mismanagement. Although in better shape than in the years immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved, the military remains an example of Russia's inability to use its eight-year oil bonanza to overhaul decrepit infrastructure and institutions.

The Soviet Union was bankrupted two decades ago by centralized planning and state dominance of the economy. After the sale of public assets in the 1990s, the state under Putin has expanded its role, and plans to create huge new government-owned military and technological conglomerates. But the army, the pension system, public health, secondary education and the road system have all eroded on Putin's watch, former government ministers Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov wrote in a recent report, "Putin: The Bottom Line." The main cause, they charge, is "Russia's dive into an unprecedented mire of corruption" that flows throughout the government.

INDEM, a Moscow-based research foundation, has reported that the volume of corrupt business conducted in Russia rose from $36 billion in 2001 to around $319 billion in 2005, its latest published data. The military budget accounts for around 4.6 percent of gross domestic product, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, roughly on a par with China and the U.S. But the generals don't let cash reach the grass roots where it's most needed, says security analyst Andrei Soldatov, and this "is leaving Russia's rapid-reaction armed forces in particularly bad shape."

The military's problems may be one reason why Medvedev repeatedly sounds the alarm about corruption, calling it "the gravest disease which has struck our society." Putin's Kremlin has poured $150 billion into its armed services, yet those services remain saddled with old weaponry and facilities. As part of an effort to reclaim Russia's previous status as a great military power, Putin has resumed long-range bomber patrols, boasted of developing a new strategic missile and threatened to deploy missiles closer to the heart of Europe. But only a handful of new combat jets and several dozen tanks have been added in recent years. Soviet submarines still frequently need repair and rarely leave their bases.

A new nuclear sub, the Yury Dolgoruky, cannot be deployed because the Bulava ballistic missile it was supposed to carry has failed tests. When the vessel eventually sails, it will likely only make training cruises, according to a report by the Federation of American Scientists. "Russia no longer maintains a continuous sea-based deterrent patrol posture like that of the United States, Britain and France, but instead has shifted to a new posture where it occasionally deploys a submarine for training purposes," the report said.

Military service is mandatory, but conditions are brutal and less than 10 percent of males end up in uniform, according to a 2007 study for the Swedish Research Institute of National Defense. Russia's declining population has also left it with a shrinking pool of draftees. According to population expert Murray Feshbach at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, young men being inducted into the military today are neither as healthy nor as educated as they were in the Soviet times.

Military communications also lag. The introduction of Russia's answer to America's GPS satellite navigation system was postponed this year due to equipment shortages. Basics like night-vision goggles, portable radios and satellite phones are scarce. The bottom line is that "the Russian military forces are in a bad state, and the situation is getting worse," said Alexander Khramchikhin, chief analyst at the Institute of Military and Political Analysis. So Russia increasingly relies on its nuclear missiles for defense. The weaker its army, the quicker it might resort to atomic weapons in a crisis, some analysts fear. "It's a very destabilizing concept," said Alexander Pikayev, head of military policy research at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.

Russians, meanwhile, worry that with the Soviet-era missile arsenal aging, Moscow will find it harder to maintain nuclear parity with the U.S. Still, things are better than in the 1990s. Jets and navy ships are no longer idled for lack of fuel. Wage hikes and better training have made troops more combat-ready. The return of heavy weapons to the annual celebration is "a demonstration of our growing defense capabilities," Putin said in remarks broadcast on state television Monday. "We are able to defend our people, our citizens, our state, our riches — of which there is quite a lot." But Putin, who is staying on as prime minister, and President-elect Medvedev, face formidable challenges if they want to do more than parade military hardware in Red Square, and turn Russia's armed services into a modern fighting force. Unlike 10 years ago, Russia today has the means to pursue these goals. All it needs now is the political will. Pikayev said Friday's parade shows it now has that will. "It demonstrates that Russia has risen from its knees and is prepared to do everything to make its concerns heard," he said.

The Moscow Times reports:

Thousands of people used traditional May Day marches to call for something new: an end to rising food prices. The protests against rising inflation and living costs coincided with an end on May 1 to government-led price freezes on selected goods, a voluntary curb agreed on by food wholesalers and producers last October as a measure to stem inflation. The protests, staged in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Volgograd, Stavropol and other cities, highlight a key challenge facing President-elect Dmitry Medvedev when he assumes power on Wednesday.

The protests are very topical, Dmitry Yanin, head of the Moscow-based International Consumer Societies Confederation, said Sunday. "People remember the 1990s when inflation was very high, and of course people are very worried," he said by telephone. In Moscow, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told May Day crowds that more than 5 million of the country's poorest people were barely surviving on 5,000 rubles ($210) per month amid rising housing costs. Communist supporters carried banners saying, "Everyone should have the right to a free apartment."

A pro-Kremlin march organized jointly by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and United Russia called for the "rise in wages to exceed the rise in prices." The refrain was also taken up in Volgograd, where demonstrators called for higher salaries, the Regnum news agency reported. In St. Petersburg, marchers chanted, "No to high prices!" and "Putin's Plan means high prices," Reuters reported. In the Far East, protesters in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk called for higher wages and for the government to take measures to bring down prices for fuel and food.

The battle cry for higher wages and pensions and lower food costs was taken up at May Day rallies around the world, with clashes between police and protesters in Turkey leaving nearly 40 people injured, while crowds rallied against the rising cost of food staples throughout Asia. In Paris, nearly 120,000 people marched to call for higher wages and pensions, while 25,000 people turned out in Madrid to voice their concerns over growing unemployment, Agence France Presse reported. Rising inflation has emerged as a global phenomenon in the light of poor harvests, the growing use of grain in biofuels production and rising demand from economies such as China. A growing number of governments, economists and NGOs have warned of a deepening global food crisis.

Here, the authorities have pointed to rising food prices as the chief driver behind spiraling inflation, yet Russians are facing higher costs in every aspect of their lives, from apartments to fuel. As of April 28, consumer prices had risen by 6.3 percent in the year to date, according to the State Statistics Service, throwing doubt on the government's ability to keep inflation to its target of 9 percent to 10 percent by year's end. Inflation officially rose to 11.9 percent last year, far outstripping the government's forecasts.

"The Federation Council is extremely disturbed by the uncontrollable increase in food prices and inflation," said Oganes Oganesyan, head of the council's committee on economic policy, Interfax reported. "We will react to the situation, particularly after the end of the ban on price increases on food products." He proposed empowering the government to react quickly to sudden price increases, enabling it to limit price increases on certain products in a similar way to its actions over the past six months.

Marina Kagan, an executive director at Wimm-Bill-Dann, the country's largest juice and dairy producer, welcomed the end to the voluntary price freezes, but said they were "never material" to the company, accounting for just 3 percent of its revenue. "At the time, it was probably the right thing to do because people needed to see some action," she said, adding that the company would continue to adhere to voluntary price freezes in some regions.

Analysts said they did not expect prices to rise significantly in light of the lifting of the price freezes — which was limited to "socially significant" products such as milk and cooking oil — but in some areas, such as Vladivostok, staple products had already risen by as much as 2 rubles since May 1, RIA-Novosti reported Sunday. Yanin said prices would continue to grow, irrespective of the agreement reached with wholesalers and producers. "I don't think this agreement had any influence on prices," said Yanin, noting that prices had grown, although at a slower rate, in spite of the freeze.

The government has come in for some harsh criticism from economists for fueling inflation through increased budgetary spending and reluctance to take substantive measures to bring it down. In particular, the government has poured money into boosting wages and pensions. According to the Health and Social Development Ministry, real incomes have risen by an average of 25 percent in the last two years, above official inflation figures. Economists view such wage hikes as another contributor to rising prices. "Usually street protests are very powerful tools to push the government into advertising its measures," said Yulia Tseplyayeva, an economist at Merrill Lynch. "I expect more public efforts … to demonstrate that [the government is] doing something, rather than anything practical."

Reuters reports:

At least five policemen have been killed and two injured in an explosion in Russia's turbulent southern region of Chechnya, the local interior ministry said on Monday. A ministry spokesman said a bottle packed with explosives and nails went off late on Sunday nearby a group of police officers on patrol in the Chechen capital Grozny. "Five policemen were killed by the blast," the spokesman said. Russia has fought two wars against Chechen rebels since 1994. It has largely pacified the region with help from former fighters who switched to Moscow's side. The Kremlin says only a handful of rebels remain but attacks on pro-Russian forces are frequent.

(1) EDITORIAL: The Land of the Slaves and the Home of Craven

(2) Putin's War on Lawyers

(3) Putin, Officially Condemned

(4) Annals of Neo-Soviet Annexation

(5) The Horror of Russia's Neo-Tsarist Future

NOTE: Kim Zigfeld's latest installment on Pajamas Media lays out the horror of Russian failure surrounding preparations for the Sochi Olympics. Check it out! And feel free to add your call for divesting Russia of the games in the interests of justice and the safety of the athletes. It's time for the world to end this charade before it is too late!

Freedom House has released its 2008 report on worldwide press freedom. The United States ranks #21 on the list (classified as "free") , while Russia ranks an appalling #170, tied with Kazakhstan, Sudan and Yemen and more repressive than Venezuela and Afghanistan. Russia is classified as "not free." Only 22 nations on the entire planet, out of 195 under review, have less press freedom than Vladimir Putin's Russia. Only 33% of the reviewed nations are classified as "not free," and Russia is among them. Only three nations out of 33 in Eastern Europe have lower scores for press freedom than Russia (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). Ukraine and Georgia are both much higher-rated, and Russia's arch nemesis Estonia is #1 at the top of the group. Russia is in the bottom 10% of its own region, not even a leader there much less in the world.

Russia can be credited with one truly amazing achievement in press freedom in 2007. It got even worse than in the prior year, when it was already one of the worst in the world. With so little room for decline, truly Herculean effort was undoubtedly required by Mr. Putin to find those last remaining vestigial remnants of freedom and exterminate them. In 2007, Russia ranked #164, so it's position has fallen precipitously in just one year, down 6 places when there was virtually no room left to drop. In 2006, Russia's ranking was #158 and in 2005 it was #145, virtually unchanged from 2004, when it was #147. So, in just the period covering Putin's second term in office, Russia has lost 25 positions on the world press freedom index, dropping a whopping 17% during that time. And Russia was already classified as "not free" when it started out that period.

There are no words which can express the ghastly spectacle of Russia's dictator claiming to be outraged that the Western World views his nation as "a little bit savage" and expecting to be seated at such tribunals as the G-7 while maintaining a barbaric record on repression of journalism such as Freedom House has documented. One expects to hear such lunatic ravings from the "mind" of someone like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, but one doesn't. Only from Russia does this kind of jaw-dropping hypocrisy emanate -- and as a result we have seen Russia's system of government totally collapse not once but twice in the past century (three times if you count the transfer of power by Boris Yeltsin to the KGB in 1999).

The Russia report (see page 175 of the PDF document explaining the findings) states: "Media freedom continued to decline in Russia as the Kremlin further restricted independent news reporting and public dissent while preparing for a stage-managed parliamentary election. Vladimir Putin's authoritarian, corrupt and lawless style of rule appeared set to continue at the end of his second term. Although the constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press, Kremlin has used the country's corrupt and politicized criminal justice system to harass and prosecute independent journalists. Throughout 2007, journalists faced dozens of criminal cases" for publishing stories the Kremlin did not care for."

"Authoritarian, corrupt and lawless." Ouch.

Even though Russians purport crave international recognition and respect, their every action betrays exactly the opposite desire -- to become an object of scorn and ridicule in the civilized world. The report refers to Russia as "one of the most dangerous countries in the world for media" and neither Russia's government nor its people did or demanded anything to make it safer next year.

Russians expect to be treated with due respect as equals by the United States, despite America's vastly greater economic and military attainment, yet Russians refuse to treat such nations as Georgia and Ukraine as anything other than servile colonies expected to do Russia's bidding. Russia expresses outrage at the "Russophobic bias" shown by independent organizations like Freedom House when they routinely condemn Russian barbarity, yet Russia's response is never to make clear efforts to improve the rating. Instead, Russia chooses to adopt the Soviet-era practice of trying to point out weaknesses in other countries, as if that might excuse Russia's self-destruction. That practice led the unreformed USSR to implode less than 100 years after it was created; if Russia follows the same practice, it should expect the same fate.

Paul Goble reports:

Together with other Russian law enforcement agencies, the FSB is now persecuting lawyers who defend individuals and groups the Kremlin doesn’t like, in ways that resemble the actions of the KGB in Soviet times, according to leaders of the All-Russian Congress of the Unions of Lawyers. Last Friday, speaker after speaker said that “along with the other problems of the legal profession,” Russian lawyers who defend people who have been charged with crimes for political reasons are now being persecuted in various ways by the Federal Security Service and other government agencies. The participants reported various incidents of “baseless persecution” of such defense counsel as Boris Kuznetsov, Serge Brovchenko, and Mikhail Trepashkin. And some of the lawyers attending the meeting distributed an open letter about this revival of this Soviet-era practice.

That letter described repeated incidents of “illegal actions” by FSB officers and about the unwillingness of the judges involved to do anything to protect the lawyers and the right of those charged with a crime to effective legal representation. The letter called on a senior judge “to personally intervene and not allow [this] open discrediting of the judicial system.” Other participants in this action said that “the problem of the persecution of lawyers for their professional activity by law-enforcement organs of Russia and, above all, by the FSB of the Russian Federation, [which were discussed at the congress] long ago became a norm of life” in post-Soviet Russia. “Unfortunately,” one of them pointed out, the government has not done anything to halt this or to take the steps needed to prevent the creation of a situation in which “soon there will not be any independent lawyers” in Russia “and citizens will have no one to turn to for their defense when their rights are violated by government officials.

Robert Amsterdam agrees:

It's no secret that over the past six years, the Russian government has began to target the lawyers and partners of its perceived opponents - a successful Soviet-style method of creating a culture of fear, whereby the enemy of the state is left without any support. In the Yukos case, we've seen the medical blackmail (and possible manslaughter) of general counsel Vasily Alexanyan, the attempt to disbar Karinna Moskalenko, my forced exile from the country, as well as many other motley office raids and interference. We're of course not the only ones. Just ask Boris Kuznetsov, Serge Brovchenko, and Mikhail Trepashkin (photograph) about the cost of performing their normal legitimate duties as lawyers.

Other Russia translates and publishes the condemnation by Russia's evolving shadow parliament group, which is operating under the encouraging new name "Congress of Democratic Forces." Also noteworthy is the fact that the National Bolsheviks have been excluded from the Declaration, and that it minces no words. Maybe these folks are finally starting to get a clue.

An event will take place in Moscow on May 7th, which the Kremlin announced as the “inauguration of the president of the Russian Federation.” With a bitter taste, we are compelled to state that the past presidential elections (just as those to the State Duma), in reality are not as such, and their results cannot be recognized as at all representative.

A competitive political system has been completely destroyed in Russia. Only those political figures and organizations that have passed a review for loyalty to the Kremlin have access to the political space. Those, that raise even the slightest doubt of loyalty in the ideological bureaucracy are blocked off from the political process. They are either completely shut out from elections, or are prevented from reaching a satisfactory outcome with the help of administrative resources, subordinate mass media, and if the need arises, with direct interference in the electoral process. There are no longer any electorally significant independent media in Russia – all the federal television channels are under direct ideological conformity to the presidential administration. This means that any unconstrained electoral campaigning is impossible. Russia’s judicial system no longer stand guard over electoral legislation. While making the appearance of serving the Law, it in practice serves as an obedient tool in the hands of the executive branch.

It was exactly under such circumstances that the March 2nd 2008 presidential elections in Russia were carried out.

Consequently, these elections can in no circumstance be recognized as free.

The March 2nd elections passed with a vast number of violations and falsifications, which were established by numerous observers from both Russian, as well as international civic organizations. Direct ballot stuffing, [ballot] forgery, [and] restricted access for observers at polling stations became the country-wide practice.

Consequently, these elections can in no circumstance be recognized as fair.

All the aforementioned allows one to conclude that a basic democratic principle was violated in the course of the presidential elections in Russia – the principle of the citizen’s free expression of will.

The development of a crisis in Russia, unavoidable under the continuation of the current monopolistic [and] parasitic course of the ruling faction, will force Russians to remember the problems of the authority’s legitimacy. The sole method to avoid the disastrous events of a future crisis in our country – is to restore the citizen’s downtrodden rights and freedoms, to abolish censorship, to reconstruct a competitive political space, [and] to conduct free and fair elections. We call on the authorities to undertake concrete steps in this direction. If this is not done, the responsibility of the ensuing developments of crisis in our country will wholly fall on the Kremlin and the White House [The Russian "White House" houses the offices of the Prime Minister and Government].

Signed

N. Belykh, chairman of board of the Union of Right Forces party
D. Bilunov, executive director of the United Civil Front party
G. Kasparov, chairman of the United Civil Front party
O. Kurnosova, chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front party
V. Milov, president of the Institute for Energy Policy
B. Nemtsov, politician, public figure
L. Ponomarev, executive director of the “For Human Rights” movement
M. Reznik, chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Yabloko party
A. Ryklin, journalist
Y. Samodurov, director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Community Center