Russia-Georgia and the WTO - the view from cyxymu

I've translated a post by cyxymu, apropos of Russia easing some of the visa restrictions on Georgians (possibly related to Georgia's role in Russia's WTO accession). Having a visa regime is an unusual situation between Russia and a former Soviet republic; however, it's been the situation - with occasional talk of easing the requirement - for Georgians and Russians since around 2000, and has been an element of Russia's support for the secessionist areas of Georgia as well as - more recently - a representation of increased tensions between the two countries. Now it looks like Russia will allow certain categories of Georgians to receive visas:

Only a naive person could believe that the Russian authorities decided to loosen the visa blockade of Georgia just out of kindness. No, with this action the they wanted to sweeten the arrival of the delegation from Russia to negotiate Russia's WTO accession. The blockade is the stick, and the issuance of visas to certain groups of Georgian citizens is a small carrot.

However, Georgia, I think, will continue to insist on the legalization of all border checkpoints on the Russo-Georgian border. Recently Russia has illegally opened checkpoints on the [River] Psou and at the Roksk tunnel, which Georgia has declared closed some time ago. And Georgia demands that Georgian customs officers occupy these checkpoints.

One other disagreement is the Russian ban on the import of Georgian Borzhomi [mineral water] and Georgian wines, based on trumped-up reasons. How can Georgia agree to Russia's WTO accession without the resolution of these problems? I don't think Georgia will agree.

I of course do not intend to suggest that WTO membership is so necessary to the Russian people, but it is necessary for the oligarchs, and therefore for Putin, and he pressures Georgia to admit Russia to the WTO because his oligarchs are losing nearly a billion dollars a year.

Cyxymu is probably the most-read and most commented on blog about Abkhazia. It's written,
I believe, by a refugee (or, rather, internally displaced person) from the conflict. The blog's full title is "Memories of Sukhumi, the war, and pain," which gives you some idea of its focus, although recently the author has written a bit about the conflict in South Ossetia as well. It often has photos of Sukhumi and other places in Abkhazia, along with reminiscences from the blog's author or others in the comments section, and it has a consistent community of readers/commenters who guarantee a lively dialogue and often add their own very interesting information about goings-on in Abkhazia.

One of the topics raised in the comments to the post I translated above - and sure to have been discussed in the WTO accession talks - is the Russian ban on Georgian wine and mineral water imports.

Tbilisi, Georgia, August 13, 2006

Moscow Memory

From March 5, 2005, a photo taken after I had put my mother-in-law on a train to Chisinau.

View of Moscow from the last car of the Moscow-Chisinau train.

CIMG3517, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

Cheating on Moscow

I arrived this morning in London to classically drizzly weather. I'll be here for the next six weeks - splitting the summer between here and Hong Kong this year, as opposed to last year and the previous four when I spent it in Moscow. But I haven't been able to avoid reminders of the city we called home for so long.

It seemed like some sort of omen when the sticker I'm supposed to put in my passport for Hong Kong arrived by DHL the same day that my Russian visa expired. Then, last night at Dulles, as I was schlepping my overweight baggage to check-in, I heard the PA system making the last boarding call for Aeroflot flight 318 to Moscow. This is a flight that has so much resonance for me that when I set up wi-fi in our apartment in DC in the fall of 2005, in a fit of "home"sickness, I named the network "SU 318."

As if that wasn't enough, I'm staying at a place just around the corner from streets called Moscow Road and St. Petersburgh Place, and the guy who checked me turned out to be from Kyrgyzstan. Londonistan, indeed.

Put Putin in the pokey?

Nicu Popescu has posted some of his notes from an interview with an unidentified "Russian expert" (identified only as being not a "militant liberal") from his recent trip to Moscow.

The ruling ideology of Russia is to be on the rise. But the problem is that the economy is stangnating – there is no growth beyond oil and gas. And even in the oil and gas industries there is significant underinvestment.

Ru is now hyper dependent on exports of declining commodities – oil and gas. Both gas and oil production, and gas and oil prioces are stagnating. And Ru also has growing gas consumption – Ru is heading towards a catastrophe.

Ru has a worsening foreign policy with ALL is partners. Ru rise is based on US’s (Iraq) and EU’s (internal crisis) weakening not on Ru rising power. Putin has crossed the boundaries. He is afraid to leave. Cause he will be sidelined – the same way he sidelined Eltsin. But Putin also has Beslan, Chechnya, the explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 – and consequently all the chances to end up in the Hague. The only guarantee is to stay in power – and they increasingly cross the limits and increasing authoritarianism.

Ru is very worried of the ENP [European Neighborhood Policy] – it means that ENP countries align to the ENP and the EU is becoming an internal actor in these states. And it strengthens the competitiveness of EU businesses in CIS because of legislative harmonisation at the expense of Russian businesses.

Ru is for silovaya (forceful) integration of the post-soviet space. Ru is not only threatening with higher gas prices – but is also offering a way out – to let Ru take over energy infrastructure. But the problem is that it is too late for “silovaya” integration. It was possible before the 2004 EU enlargement. But when Russia is doing this now – it gets the worst case scenario – it does not take over energy infrastructure and it scares away the CIS states.”

I can't say I agree with all of that analysis, and I'd love to know the name of the source, but it is all quite interesting nevertheless. The part that I focused on - about Putin being put on trial in some sort of international forum - is a somewhat bizarre idea (in my opinion) that I've heard repeated at least a couple of times in recent months. The reference must be to the International Criminal Court, which cannot prosecute any crimes committed before July 1, 2002. Furthermore, Russia is not a state party to the ICC, and any war crimes committed in Chechnya were committed on Russian territory, so the ICC would not have jurisdiction unless the UN Security Council voted to refer such a case to the ICC - not exactly a likely outcome given Russia's veto in the Security Council.

If the reference to the Hague was a nod to the tribunal there for war crimes committed in the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, there would be the same barrier to setting up a similar tribunal on Chechnya. I doubt that a special war crimes tribunal will be created for Chechnya, bearing in mind that the two such tribunals currently in existence (ICTY and ICTR) were created by the UN Security Council, and Russia could use its veto in this case also to nix the creation of any proposed Chechnya tribunal. So, to be honest, I don't see any legal threat from international institutions to Putin in his retirement. Even more odd is the thought that Putin would have any sort of international liability for purely domestic events which did not involve any ill intent (e.g., Beslan).

More recently, there has been speculation about Putin's potential liability (presumably under UK law) for the Litvinenko killing if he travels abroad when no longer head of state.

Killings May Leave Putin a Hounded Man (Times of London, March 11, 2007)

[...] Some of Putin’s opponents intend to turn the tables on the Russian leader. Yuri Shvets, a former KGB major and friend of Litvinenko, believes Putin will be hounded abroad when his term expires in 2008, like the late Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet, who was accused of human rights abuses.

“The biggest concern for Putin is what he is going to do after he retires and loses his immunity as head of state,” Shvets said at his home in Virginia. “He should be afraid of turning into another Pinochet. Putin likes to travel abroad and one day he may go downhill skiing in Europe and find himself behind bars.”

Barry Carter, professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington, also said Putin had good cause to worry. “Heads of state are generally protected, but once he stands down, his legal status becomes very murky. If he travels, it will be at some risk.” [...]

These statements were made and quoted in the context of not only Litvinenko's death but also the killing of Anna Politkovskaya and possible killing of Ivan Safronov; however, it is hard to see how Putin could be in too much legal trouble in other countries for the latter two incidents.

None of those three alleged killings would give rise to international criminal liability (i.e., the potential to be tried in the ICC), as far as I can tell, so it would seem that the only way Putin could be prosecuted would be for Litvinenko's death in another country's (presumably the UK's) domestic courts. This, I suppose, is a possibility, but it seems like a remote one at this point. And I don't think that any domestic courts (other than Russian ones) would have the proper jurisdictional hook to try Putin for war crimes in Chechnya or anything else that happened in Russia, unless the victims were foreign nationals.

Incidentally, when Pinochet was tried outside of Chile it was in a Spanish domestic court, and the original basis for arresting him was alleged responsibility for Spanish citizens having been killed in Chile. No similar basis exists for Putin, except possibly with respect to Litvinenko. So, unless I'm missing something (and I'm definitely going to research this more thoroughly when I have time), I can't see any great likelihood of Putin facing prosecution if he leaves office.

It all seems like the sort of idea that would be really useful to those who have Putin's ear and want to convince him to stay on for another term. This may be the classic case where extreme forces on opposite sides help each other, if inadvertently - true Russophobes who always want to stick it to Russia may advocate going after Putin if/when he steps down, and those close to Putin who want him to stick around in office may remind him about this possibility, because there seems to be a (not entirely true, as there is no immunity for heads of state in the ICC) notion that a sitting head of state cannot be prosecuted.

[Image source (scroll down) / a translation of the full brochure into English]

This page (from a brochure distributed by the pro-government youth group Nashi at a recent demonstration in Moscow) tosses out the suggestion that trials of Russian Chechen War veterans will be in the headlines in 2008 and suggests that international legal processes are viewed by some in Russia as being simply an instrument of American domination. Note the "Saddam Executed" headline on the newspaper in the background, which also suggests a threat to Putin in an oblique way, by implying that the US just kills off foreign heads of state it doesn't like (other parts of the brochure talk about the US carving up and colonizing Russia).

Some articles alleging war crimes in Chechnya (and other articles somewhat on this topic) that I found when googling around on this issue:

Bush and Blair Could Face War Crimes Charges (2007)

Putin Urged to Seek Justice in Chechnya (2007)

Crime Without Punishment - Russian Policy in Chechnya (2003)

Could Putin Someday Join Milosevic in the Dock at the Hague? (2002)

No Indictment for Moscow War Criminals? (2000)

War Crimes and Human Rights Violations in Chechnya (2000)

Chechnya: Russia is Committing War Crimes and Genocide (1999)

A sutki and a half in Piter

I can't resist posting an article like this, especially given the lede:

36 Hours in St. Petersburg, Russia
NY Times, May 13, 2007
Clifford J. Levy

BACK when foreigners in Leningrad were treated almost like interlopers, shunted into dormitory-like hotels and pummeled with propaganda about the primacy of Soviet Man, the city was an improbable destination for families. No longer.

Plus, the article recommends Teremok, another thing I find irresistable.

Photoset at winter's end

I thought I remembered seeing something in a Russian blog about snow in Moscow in the past few days, but I can't find any verification on the internet (interestingly, it's much harder to find info about the weather three days ago than forecasts for three days in the future). But as recently as late April, snow in Mo-town was documented by Chris at his blog. Anyway, here in DC it's definitely safe to say that winter is over and the summer heat is about to set in. So here are a few photos that might prove useful to us all as we try to stay cool in the coming summer months. All are from a couple of morning walks in St. Petersburg on Dec 25-26, 2005.

Local prosecutor's office

L'vinyi Most (Lions' Bridge)

Cat by the entrance to Nikolsky Sobor

Bits on Estonia

I decided to translate this article - emailed to me by a friend in Moscow who gets his news in part from Inosmi.ru. This article originally appeared in a Polish newspaper, was then translated by an Inosmi reader, and I'm translating it from that Russian version, so something may be lost in translation. Anyway, I take no position on the article - just wanted to translate it.

The Pinnacle of Russian Hypocrisy
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland
Sergei Kovalyov
May 2, 2007

The same thing that is taking place in Estonia is happening at the same time in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, where the remains of Soviet pilots who perished in battles with the Germans are being relocated. The only difference is that in Moscow the militia dispersed a demonstration by youthful protesters, but in Estonia demonstrations are permitted.

Russia's protest against the relocation of the monument to Soviet soldiers in Tallinn is the pinnacle of slander and double standards. Russia is protesting because we are ruled by the heirs to the Stalin era, who have never apologized or sought forgiveness for the fact that the Soviet Union turned Central-Eastern Europe into a concentration camp. It would never even occur to them that Stalin didn't liberate but actually cruelly conquered Estonia.

Russia's misfortune lies in the fact that, unlike other peoples, we have no concept of "national guilt" or "historical guilt." And this situation was not an innovation of communism, but dates from an earlier wea. Russia's actions were justified by empire-building, but the idea of creating a Third Rome in Moscow, of uniting all of the Slavs under the scepter of the Tsar. Communism adopted this mentality. If we had a sense of historical guilt, then those who committed crimes under Stalin would have been punished or at the very least subjected to condemnation. But nothing of the sort happened.

It was easier for the Germans to do this after the Second World War, since they were occupied, and de-Nazification was forced on them. In Russia after the collapse of communism nothing of the sort happened, and we can feel the results of this today.

Our politicians, who are protesting the events in Estonia so vehemently, should have at least a tiny bit of a conscience.

For those interested in Polish readers' reactions to this article, the same Inosmi reader has translated into Russian a bunch of comments to the original article (though with a bias - indicated in the italicized translator's introduction - toward translating more of the pro-Russian comments).


The best summary I've seen of Estonia's argument against characterizing the Soviet Army as a "liberating" one was in a comment by Peteris Cedrins at Siberian Light:

If two bandits invade your house, theu both rape you, they fight, and one comes back to rape you for another fifty years — the last is a “liberator”? Because he fathered a bunch of children upon you?

Russia's official - and from all indications unofficial - reactions to this scandal have been extreme. The website of the youth organization Nashi has a whole section headlined "Estonian state fascism," and comments from government officials have been similar to or even harsher than the following:

Alexei Borodavkin, Russia's permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the "blatant human rights violations in Estonia" indicated "indifference and connivance by the EU and NATO, organizations that have given membership to a country that tramples on the values upon which European culture and democracy rest."

Copydude also has some fairly trenchant commentary on the bronze soldier - and one Russian's view of the situation.

Gazprom - in a more visual perspective

Sean has posted an essay by Simon Lewis discussing Gazprom, which reminded me of these unposted photos from late 2005 - Dec 27, to be exact, when I was strolling along the Moscow River embankment and my wondering eyes espied tiny figures assembling the edifice - or at least the brand identity - of the new Russia.









Sorry if that's one or two too many photos of the same thing, and for mixing B&W with color, but I had a hard time selecting which ones to post.

New (and new-ish) blogs

I wanted to call everyone's attention to a new project which promises periodic posts of translations from the Russian press about higher education issues: The VUZ Blog.

And an old-school analyst is now using new media: "Window on Eurasia" is written by Paul Goble, who is something of a legend in the Russia-watching community for his early sensitivity to Soviet nationalities issues and for his outspoken-ness. Apparently this used to be an email publication, but it's now available in blog form. Anyone interested in the discussion here about Russian national identity will appreciate this post of Goble's from earlier this year.

Soldiering on

There is a lot of comment around the blogosphere about the recent events in Tallinn. See here and here for Siberian Light's take; Global Voices also has coverage. Here's my small and unoriginal contribution, from today's bne newsletter.

Russia-Estonia stand off
Rencap, Russia
Tim Brenton
Thursday, May 3, 2007

The week-long stand off between Russia and Estonia reached a new level yesterday (2 May) when demonstrators from the Nashi youth group stormed a newspaper office in Moscow in order to disrupt a press conference being held by the Estonian Ambassador to Russia, Marina Kaljurand. The ambassador called the press conference to criticise Russian authorities for failing to protect her rights as a diplomat as laid out in the Vienna treaty against what she claimed were intimidation tactics used by the youth group.

Members of Nashi, the youth arm of United Russia, have been camped outside the Estonian Embassy for the past six days since the Estonian government removed a war memorial to Soviet soldiers from the centre of Tallinn and moved it to a cemetery outside the city. Estonia claims the memorial was becoming a focal point for clashes between Estonian nationalist groups and ethnic Russians living in the country. While Russia claims the move is yet another symptom of anti-Russian feeling in Estonia and disrespect for the dead. The Russian Orthodox Patriarch yesterday called the move "a sin"; and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has sent an extremely strongly worded letter to a number of his foreign counterparts complaining about the move.

The Nashi youth group is widely seen as being a tool of a faction within the Kremlin. Recently there have been cyber attacks on a number of Estonian government Web sites, which the Estonians claim originated from within the Kremlin.

However strange this saga may appear, it could be symptomatic of a number of things. Firstly, that Russia now feels in a powerful enough position to take on the Baltic States which have long been the most independent and anti-Russian former members of the Soviet Union. Secondly, yesterday's clash demonstrates a nervous political situation in Russia, where relatively minor events result in overly strong, possibly politically motivated reactions, in our view.