Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Russia takes interest in Latvia’s Latgale minority

The latest example of Putin’s claims winning out over reality involves the Latgals of Latvia, a group of approximately 100,000 people who feel themselves culturally distinct from Latvians and speak a language that Radio Free Europe at one time even broadcast in. Among them are a tiny number of activists who would like more autonomy and a less anti-Russian Latvia. . . .

Rosbalt journalist Petr Zhuk, for example, says that the Latgale issue exists almost entirely because of the actions of Vladimir Linderman, a Latvian Russian of Jewish origin who has been a member of Russia’s National Bolshevik Party since 1997. Three years ago, Linderman had called for a discussion on autonomy for Latgale. In response, the Latvian Security Police conducted an investigation, including searching Linderman’s office, and filed charges against him. Latvian officials both in Latgale and in Riga said at the time and have repeatedly said since then that there is no popular support for any secession (Rosbalt, February 6).

Nothing much was heard of it until earlier this year when stories about the creation of a Latgale People’s Republic began to circulate online and when one of them showed a map of Latvia minus Latgale. Emblazoned on it was the unofficial flag of the kray with “Latgale People’s Republic” written in Russian. The security police announced that they had identified the culprits, although they have not released their names because the case is still sub judice. But some in the police said that these sanctions “correspond to the geopolitical interests of Russia” and that Latvians should inform the authorities if there are any new developments. Jānis Lāčplēsis, the mayor of Daugavpils, the largest city in Latgale, said at that time that all such talk about secession was the purest fabrication, adding that while “there are people in Riga who call themselves Latgals, in [the region of] Latgalia [itself], you cannot name even one prominent one.”

NATO expelling dozens of suspected Russian spies from Brussels HQ (about time!)

Nato is expelling dozens of suspected Russian spies from its Brussels headquarters in a bid to reduce Moscow’s intelligence gathering amid growing east-west tensions.

Up to 45 Russian delegates are assumed to be working for their country’s intelligence services, Nato said privately, with sources claiming half of the 90 Russians at Nato headquarters were spies.

They are believed to have infiltrated the military organisation – which is drawing up plans to protect Europe from Vladimir Putin.

It comes three months after military chiefs warned that Britain has entered a new Cold War with Russia as Putin continues to flex his muscles by sending submarines and planes to probe Europe’s defences.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3076455/Dozens-Russian-spies-booted-Nato-headquarters-western-military-alliance-seeks-crackdown-Moscow-s-intelligence-gathering.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Europe doesn’t want Ukrainian asylum seekers (only black and brown ones)

The numbers of Ukrainian migrants are still relatively small — especially compared with the tens of thousands crossing the Mediterranean into Italy from the Middle East and Africa — but they are growing and now account for among the largest group of asylum seekers in several European nations.

“Over the last 10 or 20 years, Ukrainians were essentially not present in the asylum numbers,” said Robert K. Visser, the executive director of the European Asylum Support Office, based in Malta. “That changed substantially and quite suddenly in March of last year.”

. . . .

And while asylum seekers from other war-torn countries have seen their applications overwhelmingly accepted in the European Union — 95 percent of Syrians, for instance, and 89 percent of Eritreans get full refugee status — Ukrainians have either seen their applications languish or faced rejection.

In 2014, of the 2,985 Ukrainian asylum applicants whose cases were processed in the European Union, only 150 were granted full refugee status; 2,335 were rejected; and the rest got other forms of protection — an acceptance rate of only 22 percent.

Still, it was better than the flood of immigrants from Kosovo and Serbia who pushed across the border into the European Union in 2014. Without even the justification of the conflict that Ukrainians face, only 8 percent of Kosovars saw their applications accepted, and just 2 percent of Serbs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/world/europe/ukrainian-migrants-fleeing-conflict-get-a-cool-reception-in-europe.html?_r=2

Kadyrovtsy: “Vladimir Putin’s Combat Infantry” and Ramzan Kadyrov’s Henchmen — they could easily become a huge problem for Russia

The Kremlin relies on many overlapping security forces. I suspect there is a constant game of balancing them against each other. Kadyrov’s semi-private army can easily become a huge problem for Moscow.

http://www.interpretermag.com/kadyrovtsy-vladimir-putins-combat-infantry-and-ramzan-kadyrovs-henchmen/

Nationalists vs Corruption — military industries are selling to both sides

I’ve heard a lot of stories like this. Many military officers hate having Right Sector or other nationalists around b/c then they can’t run corruption schemes.

Oligarch have no nationality nor motherland – Donbass terrorists have declared that Poroshenko`s military plant sells them grenade launchers

Russian terrorists said that Poroshenko`s military plant “Lenin’s smithy” that produces rocket launchers, seits its production for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the “DNR” terrorists at the same time

http://antikor.com.ua/articles/46516-hebrivskij_predlagaet_amnistirovatj_otdeljnyh_separatistov

Russia’s Humiliation Narrative of NATO expansion is mostly domestic propaganda

1 of 2:

In recent years, the tendency to misremember past debacles as humiliations has emerged as one of the salient features of the Kremlin’s conduct of international affairs. Amid recriminations over US and western European interventions in Kosovo, Libya and Syria, the Russian leadership has begun to question the legitimacy of the international agreements on which the current European order is founded. Among these, the centrepiece is the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany of 12 September 1990, also known as the Two-plus-Four Treaty because it was signed by the two Germanys, plus the US, the Soviet Union, Britain and France.

Yet the claim that the negotiations towards this treaty included guarantees barring Nato from expansion into Eastern Europe is entirely unfounded. In the discussions leading to the treaty, the Russians never raised the question of Nato enlargement, other than in respect of the former East Germany. Regarding this territory, it was agreed that after Soviet troop withdrawals German forces assigned to Nato could be deployed there but foreign Nato forces and nuclear weapons systems could not. There was no commitment to abstain in future from eastern Nato enlargement. . . .

In a recent interview, Gorbachev distanced himself from earlier statements to concede that no agreements had been breached. “The topic of Nato expansion was not discussed at all. It wasn’t brought up in those years.” And when the issue arose later, in the early 1990s, “Russia at first did not object.” Following the Duma allegations of “annexation” of East Germany by West Germany, Gorbachev protested, warning that “our appraisal of the past should not be based on today’s views”. Sadly, it seems likely that this warning and others like it will fall on deaf ears in the Kremlin.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been challenges and power plays on both sides. But misframing the past as a narrative of deceptions, betrayals and humiliations is a profoundly dangerous move. Today, as in 1908, tales of Russian victimisation play potently to domestic opinion.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/russia-nato-expansion-memory-grievances

***

2 of 2:

Humiliation as a Tool of Blackmail

An analysis of the Kremlin’s “Weimar syndrome”, and why so many Western elites believe in it.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/06/02/humiliation-as-a-tool-of-blackmail/

Soviet Tradition of Snitching Makes Comeback in Russia: And What A Sad Tradition It Was

Last week Anna Reshyotkina, editor-in-chief of a glossy magazine in Yekaterinburg, was unexpectedly summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office for a 30-minute conversation about the cover of the May issue.

She was asked to explain who was responsible for putting a photo of Sofia Nikitchuk — this year’s Miss Russia — draped in silky material in the colors of the Russian flag under the headline “The Taste of Victory” on the cover of Stolnik, a local lifestyle magazine.

Prosecutors told Reshyotkina that the probe had been prompted by a request from an unknown individual, who was apparently offended by the cover and thought it desecrated the Russian flag, a criminal offense that carries up to a year in prison under Russian law.

“I was not told the name of the person who was offended by our cover,” Reshyotkina told The Moscow Times, adding that the summons from prosecutors had taken her by surprise. Prosecutors have not contacted Reshyotkina since the meeting, she said.

The phenomenon of informants appealing to state bodies such as the Investigative Committee has become rife in recent years, prompting some pundits to draw parallels with the purges of the 1930s, when people would denounce their neighbors, colleagues and love rivals to improve their living conditions, advance their career or curry favor with the authorities.

“Everything is sliding back to 1937: denunciations, secret informants and squealers,” said Irina Khaly, a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“These people are not in the majority, but they seek career advancement and other benefits, so they are active,” she told The Moscow Times in a phone interview. . . .

At the same time, it is possible that investigators sometimes use the “concerned citizens” formula to justify their actions when in fact the initiative came from investigators themselves, said Vladislav Inozemtsev, director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies think tank.

“I think this is either done by law enforcement agencies themselves, or inspired by them,” Inozemtsev told The Moscow Times in a phone interview.

“The investigators want to create the illusion that they are fighting something real,” he said, adding that he doesn’t see parallels with the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. . . .

“In Western societies there is no room for these groundless denouncements, because they would not have any effect. Here we have the opposite situation, where making baseless denouncements is institutionalized. For instance, the whole foreign agents law is one vast misinformation campaign,” said Gasan Guseinov, a prominent culturologist and philology professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.

“Individually, people can be driven by greed, envy or the desire for revenge, but we cannot exclude the possibility of people simply being mistaken and making a claim about someone that isn’t true,” Guseinov told The Moscow Times.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/soviet-tradition-of-snitching-makes-comeback-in-russia/522763.html