Восток - дело тонкое*

This just goes to show that (to paraphrase Skynyrd) you can take the boy out of Russia, but you'll never take the Russia out' the boy. Rather than buying a porcelain Mao on Hong Kong's Hollywood Road, I found this overpriced (HK$300, bargained down from a truly outrageous HK$850) and rather anatomically incorrect porcelain Stalin (or, as some here who've seen him have dubbed him, "red-headed Mao with a moustache") in a somewhat more out-of-the-way tchotchke shop. I know that Soviet-sculpture-obsessed Rubashov will appreciate this.

Chinese Stalin - acquired in Hong Kong, July 2007.

*The origin of this phrase is this canonical movie, which has provided the title for at least one excellent blog.

Stalin in the Underground

Are London subway riders more intellectual than the Metro hordes in DC? That is one conclusion one might draw from some of the things advertised in the Tube here. In DC, I recall ads for defense contractors, HIV medication, living in Baltimore (!), health & auto insurance, fake-me-out college degree programs, and (to be fair) a number of other things, including books, albeit usually trashy romances or pulp thrillers. In London, I see ads for musicals and museums, along with, of course, ads for travel agents, movies, booze, insurance, plastic surgery & botox injections, etc. But what made me pose the question was seeing this series of ads a couple of times:

Stalin in the Underground, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

The product being advertised is Simon Sebag Montefiore's book Young Stalin (to be released in October in the US). The ads are attention-getting; my only beef with them is that they - like the posters for the Borat movie - use a Cyrillic "Д" in place of the Latin letter "A". I've griped about the same type of offense being committed in a similar context in the past, and I still don't understand why publishers / advertisers do this. Can someone who doesn't read Russian enlighten me? Does the appearance of an out-of-place Cyrillic letter that sort of resembles the Latin letter it's replacing instill an air of compelling exoticism in the product being advertised?

"Cyber Attacks Explained"

I thought this was a nice, apolitical article about an incident (or would it better be called a phenomenon?) which I don't think I've yet seen discussed in politically neutral terms. Clinically discussing the technical aspects of what happened is a good antidote for the hysteria which has tended to envelop all online discussions of this topic that I've seen. Of course it's because the author's agenda has nothing to do with Russia or Estonia - rather, his goal seems to be the laudable one of raising consciousness about potential American vulnerabilities.

Cyber Attacks Explained
By James A. Lewis, Director, CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program
June 15, 2007

The small Baltic country of Estonia was the target of a series of cyber attacks in May 2007. These were "denial of service" attacks, where an attacker floods the target network with bogus messages, causing its servers (computers that serve as a hub in a network) to slow or shut down.

The attacks caused grave concern among NATO officials, in large part because, at first, Russia was blamed. This attribution was wrong, in the sense that the attacks were not launched from Russian government computers. Like many things in cyberspace, it was difficult to tell who was at the other end of the Internet. Attribution in the Estonia case was made even harder by the use of "botnets." Botnets—short for robot networks—are the big new thing in cyber crime. A cyber criminal takes remote control of a computer by surreptitiously loading software on it. Most consumers don’t know that their computers have been compromised. Some botnets are huge, using tens of thousands of computers around the world. Having these gigantic criminal networks simultaneously send thousands of messages every minute overburdened Estonian servers and caused them to crash.

Attacks, crashes, robots—sounds like a war—and many commentators saw this as the first "cyber war." This was, of course, completely erroneous. Botnets are used all the time—they are the source of most spam—and are nothing special for cyber crime. This was not the first time that a government had seen foreign protestors attack servers and Web sites with botnets, hacks, and graffiti. China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the United States have seen similar attacks, albeit on a smaller scale.

Nor was the Russian government inept enough to leave a trail of e-mails leading back to the Kremlin. Though one Russian government computer was used in the attacks, that was because it had been captured and controlled in a botnet. This does not prove that the Russian government is innocent. Russian government agents could have used chat rooms and e-mail to incite patriotic Russian hackers and cyber criminals to batter Estonian networks as punishment for daring to move a statue of a Soviet soldier. Estonian police arrested one such hacker, an ethnic Russian and Estonian citizen. Again, this is standard stuff—intelligence agents inciting a protest or riot. The attacks on Estonia are better seen as cyber protests than as war, like demonstrators lying down in a capital’s streets to block traffic (only without the risk of being run over).

On the Estonian end, there was turmoil, but not collapse or terror. Since independence, Estonia has been a leader in "e-government," or service using the Internet. This made them more vulnerable, but it also made them prepared to work in cyberspace. The Estonians responded calmly and were able to restore key services to minimal levels within a few days. Parliament, the president’s office, the police, and the foreign ministry were the primary targets, along with Estonia’s largest bank. Some took the simple response of blocking messages coming from other countries—this reduced the attacks, although it kept Estonians on travel from accessing their bank accounts.

Denial of service is not the most dangerous form of attack. A serious attack would not have been as noisy but would have penetrated Estonian computers and databases and scrambled or erased the data. Making health records and bank accounts disappear would have been far more disruptive. The United States faces this kind of attack, and it is vulnerable—U.S. government networks are routinely penetrated. We have many more networks than Estonia. Many are secure. Others are not. Unfortunately, we do not know which is which. All will be made clear when it is our turn to be attacked, but it might be better to find and fix our vulnerable systems before this occurs.

The article in pdf format.

Yeltsinomics - or, old jokes are the best jokes

Following on from Boris Yeltsin's funeral,
our favourite story from a British journalist
who interviewed him:

Journalist: "So, President Yeltsin, how would
you describe the state of the Russian
economy in one word?"

Yeltsin: "Good".

Journalist: "Okay then Mr President, perhaps
you would describe it in more than one word?"

Yeltsin: "Ah, in that case - not good."


Thanks, MK!

A tale of two cities - three, actually

St. Pete & Moscow meet in London

The photo is from May 13, the day I arrived here.

More on Moldovans in Italy

A couple of months ago, I translated a comment on Alex Culiuc's blog which I found to be touching and revealing about the lives of Moldovan labor migrants. Since then, I've been meaning to translate a follow-up comment by the same person (here's the original), and I've finally gotten around to it:

...when I write about Moldova I get very emotional, because I don't understand why life is so difficult. On every corner in Italy there are Moldovans looking for work which they hope will make them some money and allow them to pay off their debts and send some money home to their children. Just today I was standing by a bank, and a strange woman walked up and greeted me. She asked me just one thing: "Do you know of any job at all, no matter what it pays, I'm sick of walking around outside and searching from morning until night," and she got teary-eyed, then she got embarrassed and left.

It's difficult when there's nothing I can do to help, it's difficult when I hear hurtful words about us, but those at home should know that there are lots of us here who work very hard and aren't ashamed to say we're from Moldova, and to tell people about our holy places; we cook our national dishes, and we pray all the time for our motherland.

I know lots of people who say that they are sick of being someone's slave and have gone home to their villages, because it is psychologically very difficult to always be a foreigner.

My friend is an Italian, and he always wants to learn something about my country, I'm happy that at least Europe is interested in us because of our girls. Because before, 10 years ago, no one even knew what side of the world we were from, but now, like they say, "whether they talk good or bad about you, at least they talk about you." [...she describes differences between Moldovans and Italians...]

I'm still quite young, and I have time to choose my way in life, but now I want to tell the people who want to come here that the land where you were born will always be in your soul. Best to you all, Ciao vi voglio sempre bene.

Another comment from Snejana, in which she summarizes an Italian's opinion and posts it in full (in Italian, which I can't translate and have omitted here):

Here are a few words from Italians who have visited Moldova. I don't know if you'll understand Italian, but I'll translate the most important part, which is that those who have been there a few times say that the situation is getting better; I want to believe this, too.

So do I, although I'm not sure it's true.

Old and New on Str. Cosmonautilor - Chisinau, Moldova, August 2006

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)