A Day In The Life Of Russia’s Collective Unconscious
February 4, 2009
There are some surprising — I’d even say, clinical — changes happening in the Russian collective unconscious and in foreign policy, which is directed largely at shaping that collective unconscious.
Take a look at the news reports from just one day, February 3. The day started with two articles. One in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” was written in such a way that it caused a sensation: U.S. State Department official Matthew Bryza was portrayed as threatening Moscow with the prospect that the United States would establish military bases in Georgia in retaliation for planned Russian military installations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And “Kommersant,” citing unnamed sources, reported that during talks later that day between Kyrgyzstan’s president and his Russian counterpart it would be announced that Bishkek would demand the closure of the U.S. base at Manas. Read more
Medvedev: ‘We Want Independent, Democratic Georgia’
February 4, 2009
Russia has always remained and will remain “committed to centuries-old tradition of good neighborly and friendly relations with its close Georgian people,” Russia’s President, Dmitry Medvedev, told the Georgian community living in Russia.
In his written address to the congress of Georgians, held in Moscow on February 3, Medvedev said: “We sincerely want to see stable, independent and genuinely democratic Georgian state; the state, which lives in peace and security, which has friendly relations with other states.”
“Your meeting has special importance in the light of the fact that Russian-Georgian inter-state relations are going through serious test today,” the address posted on the Kremlin’s website reads. “I hope your forum will significantly contribute to formation of positive atmosphere in the Russian-Georgian relationships.”
“Close cultural and humanitarian relations are integral part of our joint history. Direct people-to-people contacts and relations between civil society organizations play important role in strengthening mutual understanding and confidence.”
The congress was organized by head of the Union of Georgians in Russia, Mikheil Khubutia. The Georgian television stations which covered the event extensively, reported the congress was held with the Kremlin’s blessing. Khubutia, who says that President Medvedev is his friend, told journalists on February 4 that while Russia can live without Georgia, it will be difficult for the latter to live without Russia.
Khubutia said in a recent interview with the Georgian television that he had invited some of the officials from the Georgian government, including Iulon Gagoshidze, the state minister for diaspora issues; the latter declined to participate. Nestan Kirtadze of the opposition Labor Party participated in the event.
In December the Russian daily, Kommersant, reported that President Saakashvili had an attempt to establish contacts with the Russian authorities through intermediaries and met with Khubutia in Munich in November for that purpose. There has been no official confirmation of the report from the Georgian authorities.
In his address, President Medvedev also said that “close relations” between the Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches were of special importance.
A delegation of the Georgian Orthodox Church was in Moscow participating in the enthronement ceremony of Russia’s new Patriarch Kirill this week. Ilia II, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, was not able to attend the enthronement of Russia’s new Patriarch, because of the health condition. Ilia II left for Germany on February 4 for medical examination, the Georgian patriarchate said.
Patriarch Kirill told the Georgian delegation that relations between the two Churches should not depend on political developments between the two countries.
“Orthodox unity is not simple words,” the Russian Patriarch said. “We can help our nations by joint efforts.”
“We hope and his [Russian Patriarch’s] words confirm it that the Russian Church will still continue to support the unity of the Georgian Church and we hope that he will help us to achieve actual and not fictitious restoration of functioning of the Georgian church there [in breakaway regions], that will promote the unification of our country,” Metropolitan Gerasim of the Georgian Orthodox Church, who was in the delegation, told journalists after the meeting.
Issues related with the canonical jurisdiction of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – breakaway regions, which Russia has recognized – are yet to be resolved.
Before becoming the Patriarch, Metropolitan Kirill, who chaired foreign relations department of the Moscow Patriarchate, said in November, 2008 that canonical jurisdiction limbo in which these two regions remained was “the most painful and the most difficult issue, which may not be resolved today or tomorrow.”
He told Russia’s Vesti news channel in November that the Georgian church in fact was not able “to take spiritual care” of parish in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, because of the political situation. Metropolitan Kirill said “some kind of temporary, transition solution” should be found to this problem.
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=20372
Source: Civil.Ge, February 2009
EU’s War Inquiry Mission Visits Moscow
February 4, 2009
EU-sponsored inquiry mission into the August war led by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini visits Moscow.
On February 4, the mission met with a group of Russian lawmakers.
“I think that the mood is very constructive; there are no foregone conclusions; there was readiness to accept the Russian side’s arguments,” MP Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian State Duma’s foreign affairs committee, said after the meeting. “I think that our position has been heard and what is the most important, it seemed to me that the mission will not only focus on fact-finding, but also on setting out recommendations.”
“Today it is important to gather the facts and documentary evidence,” MP Sergei Markov said after the meeting. “Of course, Russia is cooperating [with the mission], we are holding meetings… I think that Ossetians and Abkhazians will also cooperate with them upon our request.”
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=20376
Source: Civil.Ge, February 2009
Talk with Government – Saakashvili Tells Moscow
February 4, 2009
Russia should talk with the Georgia’s leadership, if it is really willing to have a dialogue with the Georgian people, President Saakashvili said on February 4.
Saakashvili’s remarks were made in response to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev’s statement that Moscow has always remained and will remain “committed to centuries-old tradition of good neighborly and friendly relations with its close Georgian people.”
Medvedev also said in his written address to the congress of Georgians living in Russia: “We sincerely want to see stable, independent and genuinely democratic Georgian state; the state, which lives in peace and security, which has friendly relations with other states.”
The Russian leadership has said previously that they would not negotiate directly with the Georgian President and Medvedev even said in September: “President Saakashvili no longer exists in our eyes; he is a political corpse.”
“I want to tell the Russian government and the President: if they want to talk with the Georgian people, they should talk with the government, elected by Georgia and we can talk on any issue after Russia de-occupies the Georgian territories and after it retreats from the occupied territories,” he said.
Saakashvili spoke mockingly about the congress of Georgian community in Russia held on February 3, calling it “so called gathering of Georgians, organized by the Kremlin.”
“They [Russia] say that there are million Georgians living in Russia – although there are not as many – and in a 310-seat hall they could hardly gather 191 participants from all over Russia,” Saakashvili said. “They could not even fill the smallest hall in Moscow and the Russian President changed his decision last minute and did not go to the event”
“I want to thank all the Georgian citizens of all ethnicity who went from Georgia and are now in Russia; they acted in dignity… Just imagine, they [the Russian authorities] have in fact failed to find anyone – although there have been rare exceptions – who would have confronted own country [Georgia] and this amounts to civil heroism in today’s Russia,” he added.
The congress was organized by Mikheil Khubutia, head of the Union of Georgians in Russia. Khubutia, who says that President Medvedev is his friend, told journalists on February 4 that while Russia can live without Georgia, it will be difficult for the latter to live without Russia.
Khubutia said in a recent interview with the Georgian television that he had invited some of the officials from the Georgian government, including Iulon Gagoshidze, the state minister for diaspora issues; the latter declined to participate. Nestan Kirtadze of the opposition Labor Party participated in the event.
In December the Russian daily, Kommersant, reported that President Saakashvili had an attempt to establish contacts with the Russian authorities through intermediaries and met with Khubutia in Munich in November for that purpose. There has been no official confirmation of the report from the Georgian authorities.
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=20373
Source: Civil.Ge, February 2008
In Wake of Georgian War, Russian Media Feel Heat
September 15, 2008
At the height of the crisis over Russia’s invasion of Georgia last month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin summoned the top executives of his nation’s most influential newspapers and broadcasters to a private meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The Kremlin controls much of the Russian media, and Putin occasionally meets with friendly groups of senior journalists to answer questions and guide news coverage. On Aug. 29, though, for the first time in five years, he also invited the editor in chief of Echo Moskvy, the only national radio station that routinely broadcasts opposition voices.
For several minutes, according to people who attended the session or were briefed about it, Putin berated the editor in front of his peers, criticizing Echo’s coverage of the war with Georgia and reading from a dossier of transcripts to point out what he considered errors.
“I’m not interested in who said these things,” one participant quoted Putin telling the editor, Alexei Venediktov. “You are responsible for everything that goes on at the radio station. I don’t know who they are, but I know who you are.”
The message to the 30 or so media executives at the gathering was clear: With Russia occupying parts of Georgia and locked in perhaps its most serious conflict with the West since the Cold War, they should be especially vigilant against reporting anything that the government might find objectionable.
Four months after Putin handed the presidency to his protégé Dmitry Medvedev, mildly raising expectations that the Kremlin might relax its grip on political life here, the continuing standoff with the West over Georgia has largely ended that talk and brought fears that a turn toward increased repression might be underway instead.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into whether Echo Moskvy has broadcast “extremist” speech. A leading opposition figure in the troubled Ingushetia region has been shot dead by police.
And a campaign to undermine the reputations of nongovernmental organizations seems to be picking up. In remarks to a group of foreign academics last week, Putin said Russia needed to act in Georgia because “certain nongovernmental organizations in certain republics” were using the crisis to justify separatism in the Russian part of the Northern Caucasus region.
The domestic fallout of the Georgian war can also be seen in the caution and anxiety of journalists, civic activists and others who work near the boundaries of what the Kremlin tolerates — and who little more than a month ago were optimistic those limits might be expanding.
“When Medvedev took office, we hoped for a new thaw,” said Mariana Maximovskaya, deputy editor of Ren-TV, a station that often broadcasts voices critical of the government. “But after the Georgian war, people are now very concerned about a new tightening inside the country.”
Yuri Samodurov, former curator of the Andrei Sakharov Museum, an institution devoted to honoring the late Soviet dissident, said a prominent filmmaker recently backed out of a plan to produce a documentary for the museum about the Soviet era. “Before the war, she agreed to do it, but she told me she is afraid now,” he said. “The situation is changing, and she felt it changing.”
The museum is also being more cautious, he said. For years, a banner protesting Russia’s long war in Chechnya hung outside the building. After the invasion of Georgia, Samodurov wanted to put up another tough message, but the museum decided to take down the old banner and not replace it. “It’s just a bad time to do it,” said Igor Veritiny, the museum’s acting director. “We’re trying to be careful.”
During eight years in office, Putin consolidated control of the government, media and big business. Many analysts say he remains Russia’s paramount leader despite stepping down as president to make way for Medvedev, the low-profile bureaucrat and former law professor he chose as successor.
After winning an election carefully scripted by the Kremlin, Medvedev immediately appointed Putin prime minister.
But even as Medvedev positioned himself as a Putin loyalist, he raised hopes in some quarters with promises to fight corruption, help small businesses and champion human rights and the rule of law. In an early move, Medvedev established a think tank, the Institute of Contemporary Development, to help him develop domestic policy and gathered a group of liberal-minded scholars who favored a program of economic and democratic reforms.
“We had hopes in the spring that we were entering a new stage,” said Evgeny Gontmakher, an economist whom Medvedev invited to serve on the board of the institute. “We hoped for some kind of democratic transition.”
Gontmakher said he and others thought that Medvedev was trying to build a base of political support for such action, and that Putin had stayed on as prime minister to help him. But the Georgian crisis has altered the political calculus, he said, making it more likely the leadership will put off reforms and strengthening influential officials and state corporations resisting change.
“It’s a dangerous situation,” Gontmakher said, warning that with economic problems on the horizon — industrial growth has slowed, and inflation is climbing fast — Medvedev and Putin might be tempted to use the crisis in Georgia to divert public anger over the economy.
Some analysts still think a thaw is possible under Medvedev, arguing that he has gained political capital during the Georgian crisis by positioning himself as a tough, decisive leader. Although Putin remains far more popular, Medvedev’s approval ratings have jumped, and he has received more time on national television than Putin.
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But others say the crisis has highlighted Medvedev’s lack of clout, especially after he signed a cease-fire agreement with Georgia and then appeared unable or unwilling to get his military to comply. Gontmakher said officials have told him that Putin has been the driving force behind the key decisions during the crisis.
Yevgenia Albats, a prominent journalist who hosts a show on Echo Moskvy, said that although Medvedev has been getting media attention, he has looked like Putin’s press secretary. Democratic reforms, she added, will be difficult to adopt because the Kremlin has portrayed the West as the enemy in the Georgian crisis, and reforms are associated with the West.
“All hope is gone,” she said. “Basically, most of the liberals are trying to figure out if we are about to go into a repressive period in our history. It means what’s left of the free media may disappear. We don’t know if Echo Moskvy will exist a month from now.”
Venediktov, Echo Moskvy’s editor in chief, confirmed he had been called on the carpet by Putin in Sochi. He said Putin pointed out problems with the station’s coverage of the Georgian war, including a statement by one reporter referring to Russian soldiers as enemy forces and a report about troop movements based only on Georgian accounts.
“It was unpleasant to be publicly reprimanded, and it was even more unpleasant to have to admit mistakes, because there were mistakes, unfortunately,” he said, adding that Putin didn’t single out any journalists or make any demands.
Venediktov said that he disagreed with some of Putin’s complaints and was allowed to explain his positions, and that Putin expressed his displeasure with the radio station even more forcefully in a private session. Venediktov declined to further describe that conversation.
The station continues to operate as usual and broadcast voices critical of the Kremlin. But Venediktov acknowledged that “the situation is complicated” by heightened official scrutiny. “It means we must work even more professionally, even more accurately,” he said.
A day after meeting Putin, Venediktov barred a dissident politician, Valeriya Novodvorskaya, from appearing on Echo Moskvy for the rest of the year after she made on-air remarks that appeared to defend the Chechen separatist responsible for the 2004 Beslan school siege that left 334 people dead. He also announced that Yulia Latynina, a program host and critic of the Kremlin, would be off the air and out of the country on business and vacation for several weeks.
Latynina is the focus of an investigation by prosecutors in the southern province of Dagestan examining whether the radio service violated laws prohibiting “public incitement of extremist activity through the mass media,” the official RIA Novosti news agency reported Aug. 27.
According to two journalists, the pressure on Echo Moskvy intensified after the meeting with Putin. Top government officials reacted angrily to its coverage of the slaying of Magomed Yevloyev, the opposition leader in Ingushetia province who was shot in the head in a police vehicle Aug. 31.
Authorities have maintained that Yevloyev was shot after trying to seize a gun from an officer in the car with him. But opposition leaders say the killing is an example of how the Georgian crisis has emboldened hard-liners in the government apparatus. A colleague of Yevloyev’s, Magomed Hazbiyev, was heard on Echo Moskvy accusing the Russian government of committing genocide in Ingushetia and saying that if it continued, “we need to ask Europe or America to have us disconnected from Russia.”
Opposition activists said they thought that Murat Zyazikov, the former KGB official who is the Kremlin-appointed president of Ingushetia and has been accused of waging a campaign of abductions and killings against his critics, seized on the Georgian crisis as a chance to move against Yevloyev and others with impunity. Hazbiyev, for example, said Zyazikov’s security forces fired machine guns at his home just days after the Georgian war began.
Addressing a news conference on Sept. 5, Zyazikov denied there was any unrest in Ingushetia and accused the United States of trying to “destabilize” the republic just as he said it had done in Georgia.
Hazbiyev and other opposition activists in Ingushetia have gathered tens of thousands of signatures on a petition calling on Medvedev to replace Zyazikov. But Zyazikov is considered a strong ally of Putin’s, and there has been no action on the request.
Source: The Washington Post, September 2008
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091402249_2.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Russian Forces Withdraw from Key Georgian Checkpoints
September 13, 2008
Russian peacekeepers are withdrawing from five checkpoints in western Georgia where they have been since the conflict between the two countries broke out last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday, according to the state-run Interfax news agency.
Russian troops
Russian soldiers pack up their gear at the Georgian checkpoint in Poti on Sept. 11.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said the peacekeeping forces will be withdrawn over the next seven days from five spots between the port city of Poti and the town of Senaki farther inland, Interfax said.
Nesterenko said the move was in line with Russia’s agreement this week to completely withdraw from Georgia, with the exception of the two disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The agreement came after French President Nicolas Sarkozy traveled to Moscow and met with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.
The September 8 agreement also called for 200 international monitors to be deployed to South Ossetia.
Russia said Saturday, however, that its forces would remain in a “security zone” around South Ossetia and Abkhazia — a zone that is actually inside Georgia.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the goal of remaining in the zone is to prevent Georgia from launching any offensive in the territories, and that Russia expects the international monitors to take over responsibility in the zone once they arrive.
“If that is done, Russia will honor all of its obligations” and withdraw from the security zone, Putin said in an interview in the French newspaper Le Figaro. “But it is necessary that the European Union also fulfills its obligations.”
The conflict began in early August after Georgia’s military moved to secure South Ossetia, sparking the intervention of Russia, which pushed its troops deep into Georgia proper. Some Russian troops have remained in Georgia ever since.
Source: CNN, September 2008
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/13/russia.georgia.withdrawal/index.html
Medvedev Describes Georgia Attack as Russia’s 9/11
September 13, 2008
· President says US backed assault on South Ossetia
· Nato membership ‘would destabilise region’
Georgia’s attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia was unnecessary and unprovoked and was encouraged by the United States, Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, said in an interview yesterday.
“For Russia, August 8 was like September 11 for the United States,” he told a group of foreign journalists and academics. “I would like to see major lessons from it for the world.”
He made clear that the lessons, as Russia sees them, are that the post-cold war “illusion” that a world with one super power is a safe and predictable place is now over.
The 42-year-old president said George Bush had phoned him shortly after he had ordered Russian forces to drive the Georgians back. “‘You’re a young president with a liberal background. Why do you need this?’ Medvedev quoted Bush as saying. “I told him we had no choice,” he said.
Suspicious Minds
September 13, 2008
It’s mutual mistrust, rather than a difference in basic outlook, that plagues the relationship between Russia and the west
A decade ago a member of Abkhazia parliament told me that “the conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia would not be resolved until Russia and the west divide their spheres of interests”. We were sitting on the Black Sea coast and I thought that the guy was crazy. Surely, the conflict was between Georgians and Abkhazians, or Georgians and South Ossetians, and it was up to them to resolve their differences. How naive I had been. In his now traditional Valdai encounter with western experts, Prime Minister Putin confirmed what was obvious to separatist politicians 10 years ago.
The logic of the current discord runs as follows: The west assumes that Russia invaded Georgia in August to punish it for its Nato bid. It would have loved to do so to the Baltic states when they were joining Nato, but had no power at a time. Following this line, Ukraine is to be persecuted next, if not militarily, then politically and economically. Western efforts need to be geared to building a bastion around Ukraine to protect it from being the next victim.
Russian Military Leaves Georgian Port
September 13, 2008
Russian troops have begun leaving some parts of Georgia.
Russian forces evacuated five posts in western Georgia today, which Moscow had promised to dismantle. Among the closures were military camps in Nabada and Patara Poti, outside the strategic Georgian port of Poti, as well as in Teklati and Pirveli Maisi, near the town of Senaki.
Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia has confirmed the withdrawal.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said today’s withdrawal from the Poti-Senaki line was taking place in accordance with a September 8 agreement between Russia and the European Union.
Russians Troops Pack Up, Leave Western Georgia
September 13, 2008
Hundreds of Russian forces packed up and withdrew from positions Saturday in western Georgia, and a Georgian official said Russia met a deadline for a partial pullout a month after the war between the two former Soviet republics.
Russian soldiers and armored vehicles rolled out of six checkpoints and temporary bases in the Black Sea port of Poti and other areas nearby, Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said.
“They have fulfilled the commitment” to withdraw from the area by Sept. 15 under an agreement European Union leaders reached with Russia last week, Lomaia told The Associated Press. But he stressed that Georgia — like the West — demands a full withdrawal to pre-conflict positions.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko confirmed the withdrawal.
“Right now the withdrawal of our peacekeeping forces is happening from these posts,” Nesterenko said in televised comments.
However, Lomaia said some 1,200 Russian servicemen still remain at 19 checkpoints and other positions, 12 outside South Ossetia and seven outside Abkhazia.
Russia said it would pull them out by Oct. 11 as long as a 200-strong delegation of European Union observers was in place by Oct. 1. However, OSCE documents seen by The Associated Press have raised questions over Russia’s true willingness to accept the monitors.
The presence of Russian troops dug in deep in undisputed Georgian territory more than a month after the fighting ended has deeply angered Georgians and been an enormous sore point between Russia and the West.
Russia’s military campaign in Georgia and its subsequent recognition of Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent nations has plunged its relations with the United States and Europe into their worst crisis since the Cold War.
An Associated Press television crew saw Russian soldiers pack military trucks before dawn Saturday with blankets and other supplies at a post by a road leading to Abkhazia province. Among the items taken down — the Russian tricolor flag.
Four trucks stood packed and ready to leave the post in the village of Pirveli Maisi, along with an armored personnel carrier. A Russian column about the same size rolled past on a road leading to Abkhazia.
Russian forces left the two posts they had maintained for weeks on the outskirts of Poti, one by a bridge on a main road leading into the city and one a few miles from Georgia’s main port and devastated naval base, Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said.
“Russian forces have withdrawn completely from Poti,” he said.
A third Russian post established more recently by the port of Poti had also been vacated, Lomaia said. He said some 250 soldiers and 20 armored vehicles pulled out of their positions and headed toward Abkhazia.
Near the de facto border with Abkhazia, an Associated Press photographer saw several small columns of Russian armor crossing a bridge leading toward the breakaway region and military trucks heading across another bridge at a separate location.
The brazen presence in Poti had been particularly galling for Georgia because it is hundreds of miles from South Ossetia, where the war broke out and where most of the fighting occurred.
Under an additional agreement forged last week, the Kremlin promised to withdraw from Poti and other posts in western Georgia by Monday and from all its positions on Georgian territory outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia within 10 days of the deployment of EU observers.
But in Vienna, confidential OSCE documents revealed that Russian forces and their separatist militia allies were deliberately keeping international monitors out of South Ossetia, where large numbers of Georgian homes have been looted and burned down.
The documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press say Russian troops stopped some observers from entering South Ossetia as recently as two days ago.
Western governments also say Moscow’s plans to maintain 7,600 troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for the long term violates a provision in the cease-fire calling for both sides to return to positions held before the conflict erupted.
Georgian troops tried to retake South Ossetia by force on Aug. 7, but were quickly repelled by Russian tanks, troops and warplanes. The Russian military then drove deep into Georgia, occupying large swaths of territory before an initial withdrawal in late August.
The five-day war killed hundreds of people and drove over 150,000 people from their homes.
Source: The Associated Press, September 2008