NCSEJ WEEKLY NEWS BRIEF Washington, D.C. June 30, 2017

Former Soviet Jewish Prisoner Yuli Edelstein Returns to Russia as Israel’s Knesset Speaker By Liza Rozovsky Haaretz, June 28, 2017 http://www.haaretz.com/1.798292

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, who was born in the Soviet Union and imprisoned in a labor camp in the 1980s by Soviet authorities for his Jewish activities, came full circle on Wednesday in Moscow and addressed the upper house of the Russian parliament.

Introduced at his appearance in parliament by the chairwoman of the Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko, one of the most powerful politicians in Russia, she noted Edelstein's birth in Ukraine and his studies in Moscow and that he had moved to Israel in 1987. She failed to mention the period that he spent in the labor camp due to his pro-Zionist activities, which included his efforts to teach Hebrew at a time when Soviet authorities were seeking to stamp out expressions of Jewish identity and efforts by Soviet Jews to emigrate.

Edelstein, however, noted it at the beginning of his remarks in parliament. Speaking in Hebrew, Edelstein said: “Today, I stand here before you as speaker of the Knesset, and in the same language that I was imprisoned for teaching. I bless you with the ancient Jewish blessing: 'Shalom Aleichem!' Even in my wildest dreams I did not believe I would reach this moment.” He also said that his appearance represents the closing of a circle not only for him personally but for the Jewish people of which he is a representative.

Switching to Russian, Edelstein devoted much of his speech to Israel’s achievements and to the fruitful cooperation between Israel and Russia since diplomatic relations were re-established 25 years ago. Edelstein, who is on a three-day visit to Moscow, was invited by Matviyenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Edelstein will also be meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and with Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma.

Coming 30 years after his release from detention, Edelstein's stay in Moscow also includes a visit to a jail where he was incarcerated and the courtroom where he was tried. Following his imprisonment, Jewish communities around the world actively campaigned for his release and that he be allowed to emigrate to Israel. He arrived in Israel two months after his early release. He was elected as a member of the Knesset for the first time in 1996 and has been the speaker of the Knesset since 2013.

Turning his attention to developments in the Middle East, he spoke of the animosity of Hezbollah and Iran to Israel and castigated the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, which he said has been waging war against Israel's citizens for years. "But they treat the lives of the Arab residents in Gaza with the same contempt,” he said. Russia has close ties with Hamas. Just this January, a delegation of high-ranking Palestinian officials, including representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, visited Moscow and met with Foreign Minister Lavrov.

Summing up his speech, Edelstein said in the 21st century, “terrorism has taken the place of Nazism as the absolute evil.” He called upon Russian parliamentarians “to stop dividing the terrorists into good and bad." Terrorism, he said, is indivisible and can only be defeated "by fighting it courageously, side by side."

Edelstein concluded his speech with a prayer for Jerusalem recited in Hebrew.

In Russia, Knesset speaker acknowledges tensions on Iran, Syria By Marissa Newman The Times of Israel, June 27, 2017 http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-russia-knesset-speaker-acknowledges-tensions-on-syria-iran/

MOSCOW — Meeting with his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Tuesday, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein acknowledged “tension” over Syria and Iran, as the two parliamentary leaders hailed increasingly friendly ties between Moscow and Jerusalem.

Both Russia and Iran are backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the ongoing civil war. Despite being allied with Tehran, Moscow coordinates its air space with Israel over Syria when the IDF carries out periodic airstrikes on weapons arms convoys by Lebanese terror group and Iran proxy Hezbollah. Israel has also reportedly sought Russia’s help in preventing Iran from gaining a foothold on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, which abuts Israel’s border.

As part of the coordination efforts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has traveled to Moscow several times for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the past two years, as well as numerous phone calls. The prime minister also traveled to Russia to mark 25 years of diplomatic relations in 2016, in a visit that was seen as marking a warming of ties.

Edelstein — a former Soviet refusenik who spent three years in forced labor camps for teaching Hebrew — on Tuesday kicked off a three-day official visit to Moscow, coinciding with 30 years since his release. The visit will see him become the first Israeli politician to address Russia’s upper chamber of parliament and hold a series of high-level meetings.

On Tuesday, Edelstein met with Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, who had issued the invitation to Edelstein.

“I would summarize it with one sentence,” said Edelstein after the working meeting in a joint press conference with Matviyenko. “We are looking at the issues for cooperation that need improvement, economy, education, Holocaust remembrance, the fight against anti-Semitism — all the things that unify us. “

“At the same time, it’s no secret that in our region, there is tension. It’s also no secret that Russia plays a role in our region,” he added.

The Knesset speaker suggested that Israeli lawmakers on the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee were able to sway their Russian counterparts during a meeting held last week in Israel’s parliament.

“I must note, and I know this from my colleagues in Israel — from the members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee — that last week there was a very serious, very open discussion there [with their Russian counterparts],” said Edelstein. The Russian MPs, “I will allow myself to say, learned some things, and saw the complicated reality in Syria with a slightly different eye,” he asserted.

Matvikeyenko — seen as the third most powerful political leader in the country after Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — praised the coordination between Israel and Russia, characterizing the talks between Netanyahu and Putin as “very good and deep dialogue.’

“We have good coordination with the government on security and on economic issues. We have a positive dynamic,” she said, speaking in Russian through a translator.

During the press conference, Matviyenko also denied allegations Russia meddled in the US elections and condemned anti-Semitism.

The US accusations are “simply hysteria,” she said. “It does not match reality. Russia never meddled and never meddles in any elections.”

She said Russia “condemns any forms of xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

“We condemn those who deny or try to deny the Holocaust,” she added.

At Matviyenko’s invitation, Edelstein on Wednesday will become the first Israeli leader to address Russia’s Federation Council, an honor generally reserved for heads of state, according to the Knesset spokesman. He will also visit the Moscow apartment where he was arrested, the courthouse where he was tried, and the prison where he was detained for months before his trial in 1984.

On Thursday, the Knesset speaker will also meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the leader of the State Duma lower parliamentary chamber, as well as with local Jewish leaders.

While the visit is an official one, Edelstein has highlighted its personal resonance, describing it as “coming full circle” in his history.

In 1979, the Ukraine-born Edelstein applied for an immigration visa to move to Israel, which was rejected by the Soviet authorities and had him join the ranks — and accompanying ostracization — of the “refuseniks.”

Over the next few years, Edelstein taught Hebrew and Zionism clandestinely in the Soviet Union, until his 1984 arrest in his Moscow apartment on trumped-up drug allegations. After a brief trial, he was sent to various labor camps near Siberia and sustained a serious injury after falling from a watchtower. In May 1987, after serving two years and eight months, he was released. Edelstein immigrated to Israel two months later with his late wife, Tatiana (Tanya).

After entering politics in 1996 and holding a number of ministerial portfolios, including the Immigration Absorption Ministry, Likud MK Edelstein in 2013 was appointed the Knesset speaker.

For Russians, Stalin is the ‘most outstanding’ figure in world history, followed by Putin By Daniel Filipov Washington Post, June 26, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/26/for-russians-stalin-is-the-most-outstanding- figure-in-world-history-putin-is-next/?utm_term=.cc1882792f87

MOSCOW — More Russians consider Joseph Stalin the “most outstanding person” in world history than any other leader, according to a poll released Monday. Tied for second in the same survey is the man who has done more than anyone to restore the notorious Soviet dictator's reputation, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The poll by the Levada Center asked a representative sample of 1,600 Russians to name the “top 10 most outstanding people of all time and all nations.” It also compiled a list of all 20 names that received more than 6 percent of the vote.

Without prompting, 38 percent named Stalin, followed by Putin at 34 percent, in a tie with Alexander Pushkin, the renowned 19th-century poet often referred to as “the Shakespeare of Russia.”

Putin's 34 percent is his highest ranking on this list since he came to power 17 years ago. Stalin has actually slipped a few notches: He polled 42 percent in 2012, the first time he topped the survey of the world's most influential people, which has been conducted by Levada and its predecessors since 1989.

But there's little doubt of the connectivity between the popularity of the former and current Kremlin occupants.

Stalin in Russia is increasingly portrayed not as the murderous architect of the Gulag, forced collectivization, mass starvation and political purges that claimed millions of his citizens' lives, but as the steely architect of the Soviet victory in World War II — called the Great Patriotic War here.

The defeat of Nazi Germany is central to the Putin regime's portrayal of itself as the logical outcome of Russian history. In the Kremlin’s view, saving the world from fascism was the greatest achievement of the 20th century. Russia inherited this legacy, and thanks to Putin, it has returned to its proper place as a global power, his supporters say.

“The use of the cult of victory for propaganda goals naturally adds up to the acquittal of Stalin to a certain degree,” said Denis Volkov, a sociologist at the Levada Center.

In the fourth of his interviews with American director Oliver Stone, Putin characterizes Stalin as a “complex figure” and acknowledges “the horrors of Stalinism,” but also goes on to say that “excessive demonization of Stalin is one of the ways Russia's enemies attack it.”

Several Russian cities have unveiled monuments to Stalin in recent months. A Levada poll released in May found that the number of Russians who consider Stalin's repressions to be “political crimes” has diminished from 51 percent in 2012 to 39 percent. The number of Russians who did not know anything about the repressions doubled over the same time from 6 percent to 13 percent.

Though the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought to light the full scope of Stalin's crimes, the complete archives of the Soviet KGB secret police and its predecessors were never made public.

Tanya Lokshina, Russia program director for Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Post recently that “Russia never had a proper de-Stalinization and there is little awareness” of Stalin's crimes in Russia today.

In his interview, Putin compares Stalin with Napoleon, as “leaders who came to power by way of revolution and concentrated huge authority.”

The French military leader and emperor was ranked 14th in the Levada Poll, chosen as one of the most outstanding world figures by 9 percent of Russians, highest among non-Russians (or non-Soviets) on the list. The only other foreigners to receive more than six percent are Albert Einstein (16th) and Isaac Newton (19th).

The ethnocentric responses reflected by the poll are not unusual. People tend to name the people and events closest to their lives, which explains how last year's Orlando shooting, horrific tragedy that it was, ended up on a list of the most significant historic events in Americans' lifetimes published in December.

There's also no question that Yury Gagarin (6th), the first man in space, Leo Tolstoy (7th), and Dmitry Mendeleev (13th), who developed the periodic classification of the elements, all deserve to somewhere on all- time outstanding lists. Also, Vladimir Lenin (4th) and Peter the Great (5th), modernizer of the medieval Russian state, certainly are figures of major historical importance. No U.S. president or leader made the 6 percent cut.

You might be wondering what Putin has done to belong.

The Russian leader's approval rating — as measured by Levada — hasn't dropped below 80 percent since he annexed Crimea in 2014, and he enjoys daily praise from the commentators and news reports on state-run television, where most Russians get their news.

The Levada Center is no lap dog of the state, by the way. It was slapped with the Russia's foreign agent label last year, a de facto acknowledgment that the government doesn't approve of its unvarnished takes on Russian public opinion.

So believe Volkov when he tells you that there's more to Putin's ranking than the fact that he heads an authoritarian regime.

“He is credited with rescuing Russia from the economic ruin of the 1990s,” Volkov said. “For many people that is a monumental accomplishment.”

Look, but don’t touch: Moscow’s Schneerson Collection goes online By Julie Masis Times of Israel, June 27, 2017 http://www.timesofisrael.com/look-but-dont-touch-moscows-schneerson-collection-goes-online/

MOSCOW — In 1922, a few years before he fled the Soviet Union, the sixth Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson petitioned the Russian government to return 35 crates of books they had seized years earlier.

The books had been passed down to his father, Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneerson, by his grandfather and had belonged collectively to generations of Lubavitch Hasidim going back to Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, who began the collection in the 18th century.

There was an illustrated haggadah, published in 1712 in Amsterdam, its pages stained by wine that was spilled at Passover seders hundreds of years ago. There was a book printed in 1552 in Venice, not long after the printing press was invented, with a handwritten inscription in cursive Hebrew reminiscent of Arabic. There was a Torah from 1631, with comments in Latin, written in pencil by Christian scholars who had studied the Jewish holy book.

The Soviet government did not return the books, and for almost a century they remained on the shelves of the Lenin public library in Moscow. But this month the Russian State Library will finish scanning and putting online the more than 4,500 books in the Schneerson Collection, making them accessible to everyone in the world at the click of a mouse.

“We have about 10 to 20 books left to scan. They’ll be on the site in a month,” said Svetlana Khvostova, the Russian State Library employee in charge of the Schneerson Collection at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow.

These contested books are claimed by both the United States and Russia, with each side demanding that the other pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for failing to return them.

The dispute goes back to World War I, when Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneerson (the fifth Chabad rabbi) and his son Yosef Schneerson fled the village of Lyubavichi in the face of advancing German troops and placed the books in storage in Moscow.

The letter from sixth Libavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, requesting the return of his family's seized library from the Russian government. (Courtesy) The letter from sixth Libavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, requesting the return of his family’s seized library from the Russian government. (Courtesy)

In the 1922 letter on display at the Jewish Museum in Moscow, Yosef Schneerson explains that he placed the books in storage because he did not have anywhere else to keep them. But when a few years later he wanted to take the books back, the government refused to return them. Instead they moved the books to a public library in Moscow.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Chabad sued the Russian government in an American court for the return of the books, and in 2013 an American judge ruled that Russia should pay a fine of $50,000 per day for failing to do so. The Russian government, in return, opened its own case concerning seven books from the Schneerson Collection that were loaned to the Library of Congress in Washington DC in the 1990s, but were never returned to Russia, Khvostova said. Instead, the Library of Congress gave the books to Chabad.

Yet the Russian government did take a step toward a resolution of the matter when they invited a Chabad librarian to Moscow to pick out the books that had belonged to the Schneerson family. He selected the 4,651 books, which were moved from the Russian State Library to the special Schneerson Collection at the recently opened Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. American court documents mention 12,000 books, but Khvostova says she isn’t sure where they came up with this number.

However, the manuscripts, letters, documents and family photographs of the Schneersons were not handed over to the Jewish Museum.

Allegedly, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson left these letters and documents behind in Poland when he fled to America during World War II, and they ended up in the hands of the Nazis. When the Soviet Union won the war, the Red Army took them to Moscow. The letters are currently kept at the Russian State Military Historical Archive in Moscow, and have all been scanned, but are not yet accessible online, Khvostova said.

The handwritten manuscripts the of Chabad-Lubavitch rebbes are still in the Russian State Library because the Jewish community didn’t mention them specifically, Khvostova said.

“The Hassidic community wrote a letter to Putin and they requested ‘the books from the Schneerson collection’ — so the manuscripts remained at the Russian State Library,” she said.

Visitors can see the manuscripts at the Russian State Library, but a written request needs to be made in advance and few people bother to do so, Khvostova said.

So far, only the published books from the Schneerson Collection have been made available online, but they are already being used by researchers outside of Russia. For example, a project at Columbia University in New York is studying the movement of early Jewish books based on inscriptions in them, Khvostova said.

“We always find something new in the margins of these books,” Khvostova said. “We see children’s drawings, scribbles, and even people practicing their handwriting.”

The books are kept in special cardboard boxes — microorganisms can’t survive in this acid-free cardboard, Khvostova said — in a temperature-controlled room with a gas-operated fire extinguishing system that ensures that the precious volumes wouldn’t be damaged even in case of a fire.

Not many Russians come to look at the books. These religious works are in Hebrew and are not of much interest even to Russian Jews, most of whom aren’t literate in the language. In fact, even the library employees at the Jewish Museum can’t read them.

Only three of the five staff members know some Hebrew, which they are studying at Moscow State University.

But the thing that most interests those who do come here from abroad is the sticker with the name of Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson and the name of his father and grandfather. The Chabad Hasidim believe that the books hold almost magical powers, Khvostova said.

“One time, a family came from America with five kids, they came here directly from the airport to see Schneerson’s books. They didn’t even go to the hotel,” she said. “Hasidic people who come here are not interested when we tell them that the books are scanned. They want to hold the book in their hands.”

The Schneerson Collection can be viewed online by visiting the site of the Russian State Library, clicking on “Online Catalogue,” then “Databases.” The collection can be searched through in either Hebrew or Russian.

The man who spread the Limmud vibe worldwide By Jenni Frazer Jewish News Online/Times of Israel, June 29, 2017 http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/the-man-who-spread-the-limmud-vibe-worldwide/

Early encounters with Britain’s 35s — the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry — ultimately led to the creation of Limmud FSU, the decade-old organisation for Russian-speaking Jews both in and from the former Soviet Union.

Limmud FSU’s founder, Chaim Chesler, is a veteran Israeli civil servant who worked in the UK as a shaliach (emissary) in the early 1970s. When he returned to Israel, after studies at Bar-Ilan University he became involved in the Soviet Jewry campaign, becoming executive director of the Israel Public Council for Soviet Jewry.

As Chesler tells it, during his time at the council, many of the “big beasts” of Soviet Jewry were freed – Natan Sharansky, Yuli Edelstein, Ida Nudel. “I was lucky to be there when that moment came,” he says.

His next move was to lead the Jewish Agency in North America, based in New York, where he served from 1988 to 1991. But he was then approached by Jewish Agency chair Simcha Dinitz and asked to go to the Soviet Union to put his Soviet Jewish expertise to work.

In 1993, Chesler, elected as a member of the Jewish Agency executive, went to Moscow, together with his wife and young family. For his children, he says, it was a huge change to move from comfortable New York to the initial privations of Russia.

“But eventually they loved it; there were only four or five students in each class, so they got a lot of individual attention. And because cultural life was so cheap for us, and because we didn’t understand what was being said on TV, we spent nearly every night at the opera, the ballet or concerts. It was fantastic.”

Working in Russia, Chesler says, “was the greatest time of my life”. He had 110 shlichim working for him and presided over a huge operation of 70,000 emigrants to Israel every year. It was while working in Moscow that he was invited to speak in Nottingham by Limmud UK.

“I did not know what Limmud was about, but when I got there I realised it was something unique,” he says. “I was shocked and amazed –but I made up my mind that I would copy it for Russia, because part of the attraction was that Limmud is not a top-down organisation, where things are imposed on people, but that it works, through volunteers, from the bottom up. And I knew that would appeal to Russians.”

By 1999 Chesler was treasurer of the Jewish Agency and had the power to make things happen. He began speaking to international Jewish organisations to put together a funding base for what would become Limmud FSU.

At the same time, he says, he was aware that while many young Russian Jews went to Israel via the Birthright programme, there was no follow-up and people would return to their home republics in the FSU with no opportunity to enjoy their Judaism.

In 2005, dipping his toe in the water, Chesler took a group of 15 Russians to Limmud UK, wondering how they would respond to the Limmud vibe, particularly its trademark of having different events taking place at the same time. He needn’t have worried: they loved it.

And so in May 2006, Chesler staged a one-day Limmud event in Moscow. “And 1,000 people came. So that was a miracle; and 18 months later we had a full-scale four-day Limmud, which again attracted 1,000 people”. Ukrainian millionaire Vadim Rabinovich then offered to stage a Limmud event in Yalta.

And in 2009 Limmud FSU held its first gathering in Israel, in Ashkelon. Within months, there were Limmud events for Russian speakers in America, on both the east and west coasts; a Limmud FSU in Canada, in Australia, and this year, in another first, a Limmud FSU for Russian speakers from all over Europe, which was held in Windsor, in the UK.

Next year, says Chesler, he hopes to hold a Limmud FSU Europe in Vienna, an ironic touch as Vienna was for years a staging post for Soviet Jews who were leaving and spent time in the Austrian capital en route to Israel or the States.

Almost none of the Limmud FSU events – which Chesler oversees alongside co-founder Sandy Cahn, President Aaron Frenkel and chair of the International Steering committee Matthew Bronfman – attract fewer than 1,000 people. And, says Chesler proudly, “people pay – they don’t get freebies.”

The whole extraordinary calendar of spinning plates – there are gatherings lined up next month in Moldova, in September in Romania, in October in Odessa, in November in San Francisco and in St Petersburg in December – is run by a tiny permanent workforce of just seven or eight people. Everything else, in the spirit of Limmud, is done by volunteers.

Chesler does try to go to almost everything, but even he groans at the schedule these days. However, you can hear both a grin and pride in his voice as he talks about his remarkable creation. The networkers’ networker has built something extraordinary.

Brothers in arms: Why Russian ultranationalists confronted their own government on the battlefields of Ukraine By Leonid Rogozin CodaStory, June 29, 2017 https://codastory.com/disinformation-crisis/armed-conflict/brothers-in-arms

On a snowy January day in 2016, a small crowd assembled in central Kiev to honor the fight against the far right. The gathering of diehard anti-fascists was commemorating the 2009 murder of the Russian lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who’d defended activists and victims of the Russian military, and the Ukrainian journalist Anastasia Baburova, who’d investigated neo-Nazi gangs.

As they unfurled banners in memory of the pair, a group of young men confronted them. In footage posted online, the men, many of them masked, identify themselves as members of the Azov Civic Corps, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist movement linked to a regiment fighting Russian-backed rebels in the east.

An unmasked Azov member, sporting a strap-like beard across his chin, begins arguing with the crowd. Like most people in Kiev, he speaks in Russian — but his accent is distinctly Muscovite. He refers to the murdered lawyer as one of the “scumbags” responsible for imprisoning his friends. Someone in the crowd responds: “But is it OK to kill people because of their political views?”

“Of course it is OK,” the bearded man says. “If these views contradict the interests of the nation, they should be uprooted.” Although he does not mention any nation in particular, he refers to Russian soldiers as his “blood brothers” and condemns the murdered lawyer Markelov as a “Russophobe.”

The left-wing activists appear puzzled. Their public assemblies had always risked clashes with their homegrown opponents, the Ukrainian ultranationalists. Yet here they were in their capital, Kiev, amid a war with Russian-backed forces, quarreling with a Russian agitator somehow aligned with the Ukrainian far-right.

INTERNATIONALIST ULTRANATIONALISM

The man’s name is Roman Zheleznov, and he is indeed a Russian citizen. He is also an ultranationalist who idolizes the neo-Nazi gang-leader convicted of murdering the lawyer and the journalist. Many of his fellow ultranationalists from Russia have, predictably enough, backed the pro-Russian rebels in their war with Ukraine.

Zheleznov is one of the dozens of “internationalist” ultranationalists who has left Russia and joined the Ukrainians fighting against a proxy military force in Eastern Ukraine that is sustained by his own government. But Zheleznov is part of a Russian contingent that has wound up on the opposite side, joining the Ukrainians fighting against the rebels. Their exact number is hard to confirm, as they keep a low profile. Zheleznov puts it at 200, while others speak of several dozen.

These Russians are, in effect, battling a proxy military force that is sustained by their own government and that includes their former comrades from the far right. But their brand of nationalism cuts across national borders. In this sense, they are paradoxical figures — “internationalist” ultranationalists.

Their journey can be traced to the Russian far right’s complex relationship with their country’s institutions and with similar groups in Ukraine. Most of the Russians who champion the Ukrainian cause began their careers with ultranationalist gangs back home. These gangs had powerful sympathizers and at times enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with officialdom, advancing its aims and battering its opponents. In return, they seemed to receive immunity from prosecution and access to resources.

While individual gangs have periodically supported official causes, the Russian far right as a whole has remained independent of the state. Perhaps inevitably, gangs that have served the authorities have, at other points, run afoul of them. Their involvement in violence and criminality has made them easy targets for prosecution when this relationship goes sour.

During crackdowns at home, many gang members have sought shelter in neighboring countries, including Ukraine. In doing so, they have exploited — and strengthened — existing links between the region’s various far-right groups. These are ties that have typically been forged online and on foreign visits, with like-minded individuals mingling at skinhead concerts, summer camps and soccer matches.

When the war broke out in Ukraine in 2014, Russian ultra-nationalist gangs constituted a powerful and unruly street movement.

They enjoyed contacts with a network of similar groups abroad, and while many had served the Russian government’s aims, their collective loyalty to that government could not be taken for granted. Their role in the Ukraine conflict would therefore be far from straightforward.

During crackdowns at home, many gang members have sought shelter in neighboring countries, including Ukraine. In doing so, they have exploited — and strengthened — existing links between the region’s various far-right groups. The war gave a huge boost to President Vladimir Putin’s domestic popularity — and sent fissures through the far right. Many ultranationalists expressed their support for Putin and the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. Others supported these separatists but would turn against Putin. Most notable among them was an ultranationalist former security officer, Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov. He had ignited the uprising in eastern Ukraine but swiftly fell out with the Kremlin and has recently called Putin a “prostitute who can’t choose between her American and Chinese client.”

Other ultranationalists, like Zheleznov, would defy Putin as well. They looked to the Ukrainian far right as their true comrades and to Ukraine itself as a platform for challenging the Kremlin.

Since 2014, the Russian authorities have prosecuted hundreds of ultranationalists, suspecting that they sympathize with the Ukrainian enemy. “Nationalists are the best organized opposition group in Russia,” says Aleksandr Verkhovsky, an expert on political extremism at Moscow’s Sova think tank. “So I’m not surprised the authorities are clamping down on them.” He says the latest crackdown has been “harsher than on any other political force in Russia,” except the Islamists of the banned Central Asian Hizb ut-Tahrir group.

Under pressure, Russian ultranationalists have continued taking sides. For those who oppose the Kremlin, Ukraine occupies a place like the one once held by Syria in the jihadist imagination. It represents a test of loyalties, a revolutionary ideal, an escape from troubles at home, and a chance to gain battlefield experience with one’s comrades.

If any of this is a surprise, it is because of the way the war has been reported in both the West and Russia. For many in Europe and the U.S., the conflict in Ukraine has shown Putin to be the very embodiment of Russian nationalism. The president’s actions in Ukraine have indeed boosted his standing among many nationalists at home. He does not, however, have their universal support. This Western understanding of Putin fails to explain how the conflict in Ukraine can pit his opponents, such as Zheleznov and Strelkov, against each other.

Meanwhile, Russia’s propaganda has portrayed the country’s adversaries in Ukraine as neo-Nazis, striving to avenge historic defeat by the Soviet Union. The conflict has emboldened Ukrainian groups with fascist tendencies, catapulting their leaders into military and political roles. Yet they have fared poorly in elections, and depend on oligarchs and mainstream politicians for support. The Russian view, too, is unable to explain how Ukrainian nationalism has ended up attracting Russian ultranationalists, such as Zheleznov.

Both the Russian and Western narratives are incomplete. If figures like Zheleznov appear self-contradictory, it is because they do not fit into either of them.

“A RACIST”

The Kiev confrontation ended abruptly. The ultranationalists heard a quick speech from their Ukrainian leader, joined him in a chant of “Sieg Heil,” and marched off into the snow.

Other ultranationalists, like Zheleznov, would defy Putin as well. They looked to the Ukrainian far right as their true comradesand to Ukraine itself as a platform for challenging the Kremlin. The online footage captures the curious mood of the encounter — the bemusement of the left-wingers and the bravado of their antagonists. At one point, Zheleznov is filmed teasingly pulling an anti-fascist activist’s hat over his eyes. Seconds later, smiling, he cocks his fingers and mimes shooting the activist in the head.

As a teenage neo-Nazi in Moscow, he did it for real. During a routine street fight with anti-fascists, he fired a shotgun at the back of another man’s head, earning his first prison sentence. His victim, struck by rubber pellets at close range, was lucky to have survived. “He’s got a solid skull so he wasn’t even crippled,” Zheleznov recalls with a smile when we meet in Kiev, three weeks after the filmed encounter with the left- wingers.

Born into Moscow intelligentsia, Zheleznov proved to be a bright student, skipping a grade at secondary school. He took a keen interest in history and classical Russian literature, and says he entered the nationalist subculture through heavy metal and punk music, rather than through the well-trodden route of soccer hooliganism.

In 2009, the year he first went to jail, he also graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Moscow’s elite High School of Economics. As he approaches 30, he has a boyish smile and narrow eyes. He pays close attention to his clothes, revealing a penchant for tweed caps and Harrington jackets, popularized by British mods and skinheads.

Asked to spell out his politics, Zheleznov says that he is, “first and foremost, a racist.” But he adds that out of all political systems, he prefers democracy.

Confused, I ask him what he thinks of Adolf Hitler, whom he has praised in online posts. “Hitler was a great man, and I would be proud if I could at least partly follow in his historic path,” he says.

Zheleznov’s updates on the Russian VKontakte social network include quotes from Mein Kampf and references to National Socialism.

One post is laced with dark sarcasm about Babi Yar, a prominent Holocaust site in Kiev that is being revamped by Jewish groups following years of neglect. The occupying Nazi army massacred some 34,000 Ukrainian Jews at the woodland location over the course of two days in 1941.

During the entire occupation, some 100,000 people would be killed at Babi Yar, including Jews, Roma Gypsies, and Soviet soldiers. “If not for World War II and the German occupation of Kiev, Jewish organizations would never have gentrified the park,” Zheleznov writes. “Which is another way of saying: Thank you to everyone involved.”

FROM RUSSIA WITH AZOV

Our meeting place is a quiet café near Kiev’s Independence Square, better known as the Maidan, the scene of the 2014 protests against President Viktor Yanukovych that precipitated the conflict with Russia. The protests were triggered by the president’s decision to abandon an agreement with the EU in favor of closer ties to Russia.

When the unrest broke out, Zheleznov was serving a second term in a Russian jail, this one for shoplifting. By the time he was released, the protests had become a revolution. He tried to enter Ukraine, succeeding on his second attempt after receiving the support of powerful figures that were assembling a volunteer force to defend the eastern port city of Mariupol from the Russian-backed rebels. The force was named the Azov Battalion, after the nearby Sea of Azov, and it would soon grow to the size of a regiment.

The Azov Battalion was cobbled together in desperation to step in for Ukrainian military units that had been wrong-footed by the rebels. Its core members were known to the authorities for their capacity for violence. They were plucked from a thriving ultranationalist milieu, comprised of gangs of soccer hooligans, or ultras, as well as a large far-right organization, Patriot of Ukraine.

Along with Right Sector, another volunteer force run by Ukrainian ultranationalists, the Azov Battalion would become a magnet for fighters from neighboring countries. Best known among those was the regiment’s head of reconnaissance, Sergey Korotkikh, nicknamed Malyuta after a murderous henchman of Ivan the Terrible. In his native Belarus, Korotkikh had been a member of Russian National Unity, an organization that sought to restore the Russian empire to its old borders. He would later move to Moscow and launch a neo-Nazi organization there, only to flee in 2007 after being implicated in a bombing near the Kremlin. No one was hurt in the attack.

Korotkikh was granted citizenship by the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in December 2014. The televised ceremony caused some embarrassment to the Ukrainian authorities, who appeared unaware of their newest citizen’s colorful past.

“When you are defending your country, you welcome everyone who can help,” says Olexiy Kovzhun, a PR consultant who has been steering Azov toward the mainstream. “The last thing you’d ask is whether they have good relations with their families, whether they love their mothers and treat their pets well.” He wears a Star of David prominently around his neck, a mark of his Jewish identity that also serves as a symbolic riposte to the claims of intolerance and anti-Semitism swirling around the Azov regiment.

Kovzhun says the Russians on the Ukrainian side were also valued for the role they could play in the information war between the two countries. “We needed to create an alternative perspective for the Russian audience,” he says. “We needed a few Russian pairs of eyes on our side.”

Over time, the Azov regiment’s battle-field victories, backed by a slick PR operation, have attracted a cult following beyond its far-right base. Its ranks today include fighters from all over Ukraine as well as the U.S., Western Europe, and the former Soviet Union, not all of whom necessarily share the ultranationalists’ convictions.

RACIAL NATIONALISM

Zheleznov presents his journey to the Ukrainian side as a rebellion against the Kremlin. He describes the nationalism of his Ukrainian comrades as a model for Russia because it’s ideologically purer.

Zheleznov’s views are echoed by other ultranationalists who have sided with Ukraine. They oppose the migration from Central Asia that has propped up the Russian economy with cheap labor. They dispute the nationalist credentials of a Putin administration that has encouraged that migration. And they view Ukraine as a lever for changing the administration.

Verkhovsky, the expert on extremism, says Putin is a nationalist in the imperial sense — he invokes an idealized Russian past. However, he says, many on the far right are nationalists in the racial sense — they invoke an idealized Russian ethnicity. Where Putin views Ukraine as part of Russia’s historic domain, many ultranationalists regard Russians and Ukrainians as ethnic kin — especially compared to migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. “Blood means more to them than empire,” Verkhovsky says.

Zheleznov’s past shines a light on the ultranationalists’ murky dealings with the Russian authorities and their links to Ukraine. His contact list is a who’s who of the far right in Russia, including many individuals who are currently incarcerated.

While still in his teens, Zheleznov began compiling a database of anti-fascist activists, hoping this would make it easier to ambush them where they lived. He says this database attracted the interest of the aides to a pro- Kremlin legislator, and he eventually gave them some of the information he had collected.

According to Zheleznov, his contact with the aides had been brokered by Ilya Goryachev, the co-founder of Born, a notorious Moscow ultranationalist gang. Goryachev was believed to have friends in high places. In media interviews, he claimed he was trying to build a broad nationalist movement curated by the government. Born’s political wing, Russky Obraz, staged joint actions with pro-Kremlin youth groups, helping to marginalize and suppress the liberal opposition. At subsequent trials involving Born members, witnesses and suspects said Goryachev had been in frequent contact with senior figures in the Russian parliament, the presidential administration, and pro-Kremlin movements. These statements correspond with other accounts of official dealings with the far right, in which employees and associates of the Kremlin seem to act with autonomy, providing their bosses with a degree of deniability.

The gang’s name — thought to have been inspired by the Matt Damon character in the Bourne spy films — is an acronym for Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists. The gang was co-founded by Nikita Tikhonov, who would eventually be convicted of the murders of the lawyer, Markelov, and the journalist, Baburova. The gang was also responsible for killing anti-fascist activists, foreign migrants, a federal judge, and a boxing champion from the North Caucasus. They beheaded one of their victims, a Tajik laborer, and sent the photos to news organizations, hoping to sow fear among Central Asian migrants. Both Goryachev and Tikhonov have been jailed for life in Russia, while other members of the gang are serving long prison sentences.

The trial of the Born members also revealed their links with Ukraine. Tikhonov turned out to have been living there to avoid murder charges in Russia, before returning to kill Markelov and Baburova. The two gang members accused of beheading the Tajik migrant also fled to Ukraine.

Zheleznov emerged from his first prison term after two years, a rising star of the far right. He was recruited by perhaps the most prominent Russian neo-Nazi of the time, Maksim Martsinkevich. Also known by his nickname, Tesak, meaning “The Hatchet,” Martsinkevich was as much a showman as a militant. He was even featured on Russian TV shows and on the British documentary series, Ross Kemp on Gangs. He appointed Zheleznov as PR man for his new organization, Restruct, which became known for harassing people whom it claimed were pedophiles — though most of them, Zheleznov now admits, were just “regular gays.”

In a typical operation, Restruct would use teenage recruits, posing online as male prostitutes, to lure its victims. Once a meeting had been arranged, Restruct members would arrive at the scene and subject the victim to a prolonged and humiliating ordeal, bordering on torture.

The attacks were filmed and uploaded to sites such as YouTube. One episode features Martsinkevich using a stun gun to threaten a naked man seated in a bathtub. His victim is forced to drink from a bottle containing what appears to be urine, before being ordered to empty its contents onto his own head. Restruct carried out a similar campaign against alleged drug dealers.

Although these attacks were clearly illegal and widely publicized, they did not invite immediate prosecution. They were instead believed to enjoy the tacit support of the authorities, coinciding as they did with the rightward swing in the Russian administration. Thus Martsinkevich appeared on government-controlled TV stations as an expert on pedophilia, and was interviewed by presenters who seemed supportive of his views. For his part, Martsinkevich helped reinforce the government’s propaganda against its critics by linking them to the alleged pedophiles. In the bathtub episode, he forced his victim to greet the leaders of Russia’s liberal opposition by name.

The law eventually caught up with Restruct in one of the periodic crackdowns on the far right. Martsinkevich fled to Cuba but was extradited to Russia in January 2014 and sentenced to five years for the “pedophile” attacks.

By this point, Zheleznov had fallen out with Restruct over tactical issues. In May 2013, he was arrested and jailed once again, this time for stealing a piece of beef from a supermarket. He claimed he was framed by the police, but Restruct was known to advocate shoplifting as a sideline to the homophobic attacks that formed its core mission.

WHAT NEXT?

For both parties in the Ukraine conflict, the ultranationalists have played a dual role, serving in the trenches and starring in the propaganda. They have been portrayed as valiant patriots and as murderous fanatics, depending on which side they were facing. Yet some of this propaganda has also spun out of control, inadvertently undermining its original purpose.

In early 2014, the Kremlin exaggerated the role of Ukrainian neo-Nazis in the Maidan protests, hoping to discredit the uprising. The reports helped polarize the Russian far right by casting the looming conflict as a turf war between ultranationalists. As the war got underway, some of the Russians joined the Right Sector and Azov, hoping to confront their own government. Others joined the rebels, hoping to defend it.

While the majority of the Russian far right supports the pro-Rusian rebel movement in Eastern Ukraine, the war nonetheless caused a schism in what used to be the country’s most united opposition force. Both groups pose problems for their masters. The Russian neo-Nazis fighting alongside the rebels have undercut Russian propaganda that sought to identify the Ukrainians exclusively with the neo-Nazis.

The Azov Battalion has also tried to play down its early reputation as an international brigade for ultranationalists. While that image attracted recruits, it also brought scrutiny from Ukraine’s allies. In 2014, after a series of critical reports in the international press, the U.S. Congress explicitly banned Azov from acquiring any of the funds it had allocated for the Ukrainian military. The ban would be quietly lifted a year later as the regiment was incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its ultranationalist leaders began to be replaced by regular officers.

While the Azov regiment retains its original logo and many of its original personnel, its ultranationalist commanders have shed their uniforms to enter the upper echelons of politics and administration. Its founder, Andriy Biletsky, has resigned to become a member of parliament. His former deputy, Vadim Troyan, has become the head of the Ukrainian police. The Azov Civic Corps — whose members confronted the anti-fascist gathering in Kiev last January — has become a political party, calling for Ukraine to develop its own nuclear weapons and replace prison terms with hard labor or capital punishment. The party, led by Biletsky, also wants Ukraine to reject the EU in favor of a regional union with Belarus and the Baltic States.

The far right’s entry into national politics has divided Ukrainian liberals. Can institutions rein in the extremists even as they use these groups as a check against other dangerous forces? Or is this part of a normalization process, whereby extremist views become mainstream?

Many Ukrainians who would not describe themselves as ultranationalist have accepted that ultra-nationalist language and imagery have a place in public life, at least during a time of war. Online, some have adopted these signs and slogans simply as way of defying and trolling Russians.

The Russian authorities, too, may eventually have to reckon with the forces unleashed by the war in Ukraine. Ultranationalists on both sides have come to view the conflict as a landmark on the road to ultimate power.

In a recent VKontakte exchange on the subject of tactics, a seasoned neo-Nazi, under the alias Walter Weiss, summed up the far right’s long game in both Ukraine and Russia.

“Climb the social ladder, pull up people with similar convictions,” he advised. “If you demonstrate results...you can obtain supplies and support from above, which means you have an opportunity to change the system from within.”

In partnership with Meydan TV.

Why is Ukraine Afraid of the Internet, But Not Afraid of the SS? By Sergey Movchan Political Critique, June 29, 2017 http://politicalcritique.org/cee/ukraine/2017/movchan-ukraine-decommunisation-history-symbols-totalitarianism/

Last month, two significant events related to the de-communisation laws happened in Ukraine. Both of them are very telling. First, on the 4th of May, the Halytsky District Court of Lviv passed its first sentence based on the renewed Article 436-1 of the Criminal Code, regarding “production, distribution of communist, Nazi symbols and propaganda of communist and national-socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes.” The young man accused of posting prohibited content on Facebook pleaded guilty, and as a result of the plea he “got away” with only two and a half years on probation.

The second event was the scandal centred on the column written by the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolynsky, in which he called for prosecution, according to the abovementioned Criminal Code article, of the organizers of the march dedicated to the 74th anniversary of the SS Galicia division. In his reply to Dolynsky, Volodymyr Viatrovych, the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, said that he did not see anything illegal in the actions of the organizers of the march or the symbols used. And although these two events are not directly connected, they both provide perfect illustrations of the content and application of the Ukrainian “de-communisation” laws, as well as of the social changes that have happened in the last few years.

It is worth noting that the Article 436-1 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code existed before, but it only concerned National Socialism and fascism. However the Law “on condemning the communist and the National Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the prohibition of their symbols,” passed in the summer of 2015, has fundamentally changed this article. Not only did this law add passages about the prohibition of communist symbols, it also made the passages about the Nazi regime miraculously disappear. The new edition does not mention the “public denial or justification of the crimes of fascism,” particularly of “the crimes committed by the Waffen SS organization and its subordinate structures, by those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition and collaborated with fascist occupants.” According to the old law, the organizers and the participants of the march dedicated to the SS Halychyna division would clearly be committing a crime. But not according to the new one.

A simple comparison of the law dedicated to communism and National Socialism makes it clear whom the law targets.

And now it turns out that Volodymyr Viatrovych is absolutely right. When, in his replies to official requests and in his public statements, he denies that there were any violations of Ukrainian law, in which the symbols of the Waffen SS and SS Galicia in particular are not prohibited, he is actually right. You will not find any mention of these organizations in the law. Neither does it mention any SS symbols at all. It barely mentions anything. In the section on the prohibition of National Socialist symbols, the only symbols that are explicitly prohibited are the flag and the coat of arms of Nazi Germany in 1939-45, as well as the symbols of the National Socialist Party and quotes by the party leaders. And that’s basically it. No “…or its elements,” no “and other symbols,” like in the case of the communist symbols. Not a word about the symbols of the countries allied with Germany, such as fascist Italy. Even a simple comparison of the number of paragraphs in the text of the law dedicated to communism and National Socialism makes it clear whom this document targets and why, for example, a Facebook post ends up outside the law, while a march celebrating the SS militants is a totally legal event.

On Wikipedia, you may find Nazi symbols which Ukrainians can use in their everyday lives without fear of prosecution. Some of them look very familiar, don’t they?

No wonder such laws were met with many objections in the Venice Commission. While it generally recognises the right of any country to prohibit certain symbols, it still pointed out that the wording of the article is too vague; the list of prohibited symbols is not exhaustive, which makes it open to interpretation; the law allows the prohibition of certain political parties solely for their name and not for their criminal activities proven in court; and so on. In addition, violations of the prohibition, according to the law, entail unjustifiably serious punishment, comparable to punishments for such felonies as murder or rape: imprisonment of up to 5 years with possible confiscation of property.

However, everybody knows that in Ukraine, the law is not as important as its enforcement, and the strictness of law is often mitigated by its optionality. For example, marches dedicated to the SS Galicia division were organized even before the new version of the Criminal Code was adopted, and there are streets named after the division in Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil (although the municipalities decided not to include the unpleasant letters “SS” and named the streets simply after the “Galicia division”). Law enforcement officers also do not mind the numerous groups and users on social media whose profiles are full of clearly Nazi content; they do not mind the use of the Nazi salute at political demonstrations or the symbols of certain volunteer battalions. [The author hints here at the symbol of the Azov battalion, which is a stylized version of the Nazi symbol Wolfsangel. — Transl.] Moreover street violence by the far right has practically never been investigated as hate crimes, if ever investigated at all. Everybody expected that the law enforcement would treat the “violators on the left” in the same way. However, what is important in this story is exactly this: it is a warning to all those who share left-wing views that, from now on, you can actually get punished for this.

Are we heading towards a situation where you will only be allowed to carry a limited amount of “dangerous” literature with you?

We can find examples of questionable law enforcement practices even here, in the very first case. Evidence in a case about the distribution of communist ideology on the internet was, surprisingly, represented by offline material objects, such as ribbons, flags, raincoats, hats or even the book Capital by Karl Marx, which was called a “textbook” in the court. The convict kept these things at home, and he neither manufactured nor distributed them. As it turns out, not only production and distribution of prohibited symbols, but even storage of them for personal use are now de facto criminalized. To make an analogy, are we heading towards a situation where you will only be allowed to carry a limited amount of “dangerous” literature with you? And if, when you’re arrested, you will possess slightly less copies than necessary to be charged with a crime, cops will gladly add some more Lenin’s brochures into your pockets.

The sentence based on the de-communisation can become a model. Not only is it the first move in the fight against communism, it is also the first example of political censorship on the internet. Only a couple of weeks have passed since this court hearing and the day when the President signed the decision to block Russian websites. The next step — a law on government regulation of the internet, which, according to experts, is nearly identical to its famous Russian counterpart — is said to be presented to the world by this summer.

The Ukrainian government has once already tried to introduce censorship and limit access to certain websites. Back then, in January 2014, this initiative of the Yanukovych regime was perceived as a threat to the freedom of speech and nicknamed “the January 16 dictatorship laws.” Today, in contrast, the government presents similar laws as a defence against the enemy in a hybrid war and as a triumph of historical justice, demonstrating its remarkable capability of maintaining double standards. Double standards, as the recent “de- communisation” case demonstrates, also permeate the judicial and law enforcement systems — with a strong tilt to the right. And the society even greets it with applause.

Grave robbers exhume bodies of Holocaust victims from Crimean killing trench JTA, June 30, 2017 https://www.jta.org/2017/06/30/news-opinion/world/grave-robbers-exhume-bodies-of-holocaust-victims-from- crimean-killing-trench

Police in Crimea are investigating the desecration of a mass grave of Holocaust victims near the city of Simferopol.

The investigation opened Tuesday following the unauthorized exhumations performed last week at the site of a firing trench where Nazis and their collaborators killed hundreds of Jews, the Russian TASS news agency reported. Russia annexed the territory from Ukraine in 2014.

“A local resident saw at night strangers digging and immediately informed us,” Anatoly Gendin, head of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Crimea, told the news agency. His organization also complained to police about the dig, which he said was likely the work of robbers looking for precious items.

The incident, the second case of its kind in five years in Crimea, came amid preparations for enclosing known burial sites with concrete.

“There is a preliminary decision of the Crimea State Committee and Jewish community organizations on setting up concrete enclosures and establish there a surveillance system,” Grigory Ioffe, a deputy speaker of the parliament of Crimea, one of Russia’s semi-autonomous regions, told TASS.

The Germans captured Simferopol in November 1941 when it had approximately 12,000 Jews, including many Krymchaks — a nearly extinct ethnic group of Jews of Turkmen descent who had lived in Crimea for many centuries before the Holocaust.

They were ordered to wear white armbands with a Star of David on both sleeves or on their chests, according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Some of those who ignored the order to report for registration by the German occupying forces were hanged on the city streets in order to intimidate the Jewish population.

Nearly all of Simferopol’s Jews were shot to death. Many of the victims had been betrayed to the Germans by the local population.

‘Unprecedented’ Cyberattack Hits Ukraine, Affects Other Countries Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 27, 2017 https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-banks-cyberattacks-companies/28581698.html?ltflags=mailer

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman says his country is suffering an "unprecedented" cyberattack but that "vital systems" are not being affected.

Although Ukraine initially seemed to be the target of the cyberattack on June 27 -- affecting government computer networks and websites of banks, major industrial enterprises, the postal service, Kyiv's international airport, and its subway system -- the attack also hit other countries and international companies around the world.

A Ukrainian government official said on June 27 that a version of the Wannacry ransomware had hit government networks and several public institutions in a widespread cyberattack.

Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, said a version of Wannacry was being used.

"The ultimate goal of the cyberattack was to try to destabilize," he wrote on Facebook, adding that the attacks probably originated in Russia.

WannaCry is a virus that shut down more than 200,000 computers in some 150 countries in May, demanding that the computer users pay hundreds of dollars to regain use of their computer and not lose their data.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko said on Facebook on June 27 that every computer monitor in the cabinet of ministers was locked and displayed a message in English warning users that if they shut down their computers all of their data will be deleted.

Rozenko said on Twitter that "the entire network is down in the government's secretariat. It has either been hacked or shut down by the security system. That's unclear."

The Ukrainian central bank said a number of Ukrainian banks were also affected by the attack -- which it described as being caused by an "unknown virus."

"As a result of these cyberattacks these banks are having difficulties with client services and carrying out banking operations," it said in a statement, without naming any of the banks affected.

"The central bank is confident that the banking infrastructure's defense against cyberfraud is properly set up and attempted cyberattacks on banks' IT systems will be neutralized," the statement added.

Meanwhile, a growing list of international companies based in countries including the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Denmark, Norway, France, Russia, and India also reported being affected by similar cyberattacks.

Russia's top oil producer, Rosneft, said its servers had been attacked, as had the Copenhagen-based international shipping company Maersk, French industrial group Saint-Gobain, the U.S.-based Merck pharmaceutical company, and the British advertising giant WPP.

Several other companies and organizations also reported having computer network problems.

A Swiss IT company, MELANI, said on June 27 that it appeared the virus Petya, a version of Wannacry, was being circulated again.

MELANI said in an e-mail that Petya had been blamed for affecting computer networks around the world in 2016.

Online security companies Bitdefender Labs and Kaspersky Labs said the virus was being spread because of a tool created by the U.S. National Security Agency known as EternalBlue, which allows malware to spread inside an organization's network.

In Ukraine, Prime Minister Hroysman said on Facebook that "the attack will be repelled and the perpetrators will be tracked down."

Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, said there were signs of Russian involvement in the cyberattacks.

Ukrainian state power distributor Ukrenergo said its IT system had been hit by a cyberattack on June 27, but the disruption had "no effect on power supplies."

Several local power distributors also experienced disruptions due to the cyberattack, including Kyivenergo, Dniproenergo, and Zaporizhiaenergo, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

At the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which still produces energy for Ukraine, officials said some of the facility's routine radiation checks were being done manually because of the "disconnection" of some of its computer systems.

Anotonov, the Ukrainian state-run aircraft manufacturer, has also been hit by a cyberattack. A spokeswoman for the company said it was still unclear how serious the attack is.

Pavlo Ryabikin, the acting director of Kyiv's Boryspil airport, said on Facebook that a cyberattack on the airport's official website and digital flight schedule could cause flight delays.

Also in the capital, the Kyiv subway said on Twitter that its payment system had been hit by a cyberattack and credit-card payments were not being processed.

Belarus: Comprehensive survey of Jewish cemeteries announced Jewish Heritage Europe, June 26, 2017 http://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2017/06/26/belarus-survey-of-jewish-cemeteries-announced

The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative will launch in early July a three-month project to “comprehensively survey the Jewish cemeteries of Belarus.” Training is currently under way for the teams that will go out in the field.

ESJF said its survey teams will spread out across Belarus, “providing a full mapping of all the Jewish cemeteries in the country and their current state.”

ESJF said it expects that as many as 500 sites will be surveyed, and a full report will be published in the autumn. (The Jewish Heritage Research Group in Belarus has a list of more than 150 Jewish cemeteries on its web site.)

“We are very grateful also to our local partners in the Jewish community in Belarus and particularly to Chief Rabbi Mordechai Raichinstein for his technical support for this project,” ESJF said in a statement on its Facebook page.

The project is funded by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.

It follows on from a bilateral agreement signed in September 2016 between the U.S. and Belarus regarding the protection and preservation of cultural property, focusing on that of groups “that were victims of genocide during World War II and are no longer able to protect and preserve properties without assistance.”

The bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Belarus is one of 25 such accords currently in effect. These agreements have resulted since the mid-1990s in surveys of Jewish cemeteries and other heritage sites in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, Moldova, Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine. All these are available online in downloadable form on the U.S. Commission web site.

Belarus was renowned for synagogues, sages and yeshivas but has seen its Jewish heritage devastated over the past century, both by World War II and by Soviet rule: today’s Belarus was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union until 1991.

Many of the hundreds of Jewish cemeteries were destroyed, their gravestones were removed for use as paving and construction, and the sites Jewish cemeteries and mass graves were built over, ignored or marked with monuments that failed to note that the victims were Jews.

Some work on documenting Jewish cemeteries in Belarus has already been carried out, but seemingly not in the comprehensive manner of the ESJF/Commission survey.

In August 2016, for example, some 29 people took part in a field work session in Beshenkovichi , Belarus, one of whose aims was to completely document the Jewish cemetery as part both of a broader catalogue of Jewish cemeteries in the country and a general Jewish heritage preservation project in the town. The project was organized by the Sefer Center together with the Institute of Slavonic Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences) and supported by Genesis Fund, UJA Federation of NY and Russian Science Foundation.

During the field work the Jewish cemetery was completely catalogued, with 1,200 gravestones describes, and a detailed map of the cemetery was made.

European MPs pledge support for restitution of claims of Holocaust survivors By Tamara Zieve The Jerusalem Post, June 26, 2017 http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/European-MPs-pledge-support-for-restitution-of-Holocaust-victims-497934

European Parliament members from more than 20 EU member states and five European political groups have backed a pledge to increase support for Holocaust survivors and their families seeking the return of stolen and looted WW2 property, the World Jewish Restitution Organization told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Seventy-one MEPs, from across the political spectrum, issued a joint declaration promising to work together on Holocaust-era restitution, and to address the growing welfare needs of survivors, many of whom live in poverty.

The statement calls on the European Commission and EU member states to appoint special envoys for Holocaust-related issues, and urges the EU to provide technical advice and support to assist and monitor restitution processes across Europe to meet the obligations of the 2009 Terezin Declaration on Holocaust-Era Assets.

Forty-seven countries, including all 28 members of the European Union, approved the Terezin Declaration, which recognizes “the importance of restituting or compensating Holocaust-related confiscations made during the Holocaust era between 1933-45.”

Welcoming the statement Monday, Gideon Taylor, Chair of Operations at the World Jewish Restitution Organization, said he hoped that the focus placed on restitution by the European Parliament would spur nations to act.

“Holocaust-era property restitution requires urgent action to help put an end to the injustice done to survivors, and to support those living in poverty and hardship,” he said. “The European Parliament’s declaration puts the EU at the forefront in calling for justice for survivors and their families.”

In the declaration, the MEPs pledge "enduring commitment to the provision of adequate and immediate social welfare support for Holocaust survivors, the demarcation, protection and preservation of Jewish cemeteries, mass graves and other burial sites, the preservation of Jewish heritage sites, and the promotion of Holocaust education, research and remembrance."

“With this declaration, members of the European Parliament affirm the moral responsibility of the European Union member states to advance Holocaust-era property restitution,” said Gunnar Hokmark MEP, chair of the European Alliance for Holocaust Survivors.

“It also sends a strong political message that with the advancing age of Holocaust survivors, resolving property restitution is an urgent issue, and ensures that bringing some justice to the victims of the mass theft of the 1930s and 1940s remains a high priority for the European Union.”

Ambassador Joël Lion, Special Envoy of the Israeli Foreign Ministry for Holocaust Era Assets Restitution remarked that “It has been more than seventy years since the Holocaust, but only a small fraction of private and communal immovable and movable property that was illegitimately seized from Jewish victims has been returned. At the same time, many Holocaust survivors live in poverty and without adequate social care, and their social welfare needs are expanding rapidly as they age.”

“Restitution is a human rights issue, not purely a Jewish concern, and so it is the responsibility of all member states to address the legacy of the Holocaust and ensure that every country has a comprehensive and efficient system for restoring property to their rightful owners,” he added.

At a conference on restitution and Holocaust remembrance held in Brussels in May, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani urged European countries to step up efforts to ensure the return of property and possessions seized from Jewish victims during the Holocaust. At that event, titled Unfinished Justice: Restitution and Remembrance, the declaration was first put on the table.

Signatories include representatives of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), European People’s Party (EPP), Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA), and Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Countries represented by the MEPs are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.

Love of Israel on display at Krakow Jewish Culture Festival Jerusalem Post/Reuters, June 28, 2017 http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/WATCH-Love-of-Israel-on-display-at-historical-Krakow-culture-festival-498141

The 27th Jewish Culture Festival held in Krakow's historical Jewish district Kazimierz aims to promote Israel and educate participants on its traditions.

For over a week tourists can ride through Jerusalem streets in a virtual taxi, taste traditional Jewish cuisine and listen to concerts by a number of folk bands.

Every year the festival culminates in a giant open air concert on Szeroka Street, the main street of Kazimierz. After 27 years the festival became a symbol of tolerance, pluralism and celebration of Jewish culture in Poland.

The history of Kazimierz can be traced back to 1335 when it was officially founded for Jewish settlers on what used to be an island outside of Poland's capital Krakow by King Kazimierz the Great. After it was awarded merchant rights the area prospered and became one of the most influential Polish towns.

Hungary’s Resistance Has a Hip Jewish Address – But For How Long? By Shaina Shealey Jewish Daily Forward, June 28, 2017 http://forward.com/news/375774/hungarys-resistance-has-a-hip-jewish-address-but-for-how-long/

In America, “the Resistance,” as some call the activist opposition to President Trump, has drawn many Jews to its flag. But in Hungary, the resistance to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing nationalist government includes a specifically Jewish address.

Located on Aurora Street in Budapest’s shabby 8th District, not far from the city’s old Jewish quarter, the Aurora Café is a cooperative community and home to many nongovernmental organizations.

It’s also one of Budapest’s hippest bars and music venues. There are exhibition areas for art, a performance space for music and theater, and a small film theater. Oh, and there’s a Torah upstairs. Young Hungarians gather there for daily prayers and for Kabbalat Shabbat, Friday night get-togethers to welcome the Jewish Sabbath.

Then, there’s the food.

One weekday morning, a young server at the café spread onion and paprika spiked Hungarian egg salad onto a handmade bagel. The bagel was the real deal – glossy on the outside and delightfully chewy. Wafts of bread and cinnamon drifted into the cafe from upstairs, where the bagels are made daily next to office spaces that host civil society organizations like the Roma Media Center, an independent news outlet covering the Roma community in Hungary.

“There aren’t too many bagel shops in Hungary,” Adam Schönberger, the cafe’s founder, said. There also aren’t many places in Hungary where signs to the bathroom are written in Farsi, for migrants who use the cafe space for community meetings.

This combined religious and cultural center is sponsored by Marom, the youth group of Hungary’s Conservative Judaism movement, and reaches about 25,000 Hungarians yearly, with concerts, parties and educational programs. Income from the cafe and bar subsidizes rent for civil society organizations whose offices are on the top floors of the building.

Since it opened three years ago, Aurora has become a bedrock of liberal activism in Budapest. Most of its operational costs are covered by income from events and from cafe and bar sales. But Aurora has also received funding from the New York-based Open Society Foundations, founded and chaired by the liberal philanthropist George Soros, along with other organizations, including UJA-Federation of New York.

Amid a Hungarian political culture listing ever further right, Aurora’s self-defined mission is to increase the number of socially active citizens to advance democratic practices in Hungary.

That mission has recently been under attack by Hungary’s right-wing nationalist government, which is known for its rhetoric against immigrants and minorities. In addition to an escalating campaign against Soros, the government is clamping down on civil society organizations serving minorities. In mid-June, Hungary’s parliament passed a law forcing every NGO receiving more than $27,000 from abroad to register as a “civic organization funded from abroad.” The label must appear on all the organizations’ materials. While some say the law is aimed at increased transparency, others denounce it as an attempt to label groups promoting minority rights — many of which get backing from sources in the United States and elsewhere in Europe — as foreign agents.

Schönberger is afraid the law will stigmatize Aurora. “It’s part of the political agenda to be anti-Semitic, anti- Roma and anti-LGBTQ,” he said.

Noting the frequent use of classic anti-Semitic tropes in the government’s current campaign against Soros, he said, “When the government is organizing an entire campaign against Soros, it is easy to see the anti-Semitic elements.” It is, he said, a “massive campaign where you will see a Jewish person trying to corrupt Hungary. At the end of the day, that’s the message you will get.”

The new legislation is almost the same as a law that passed in Israel last summer forcing NGOs that receive money from abroad to register as foreign funded. In Israel, the law disproportionately targets human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

Marom, which was founded 20 years ago, is also headed by Schönberger. Before launching the cafe project, members of Marom held a discussion about how to use their resources outside the Jewish context. They decided that as a Jewish group it was important to build alliances with other minorities to fight exclusion and racism.

Schönberger says his personal desire to build alliances with other minorities comes from his own Jewish experience. He is the son of two Jews whose own parents survived the Holocaust. Schönberger’s father is a rabbi, one of the few trained locally in a Hungarian rabbinical seminary.

“If you’re Jewish in Hungary you’re part of a minority,” he said. “It’s not like in Western European countries, [where] it’s not a big deal anymore. There are bad feelings.”

A few years ago, a band performing for a Marom concert wrote a song for the event. “Gay, Gypsy and Jew, Hungary is so proud of you,” went the chorus. “Gypsy, Jewish and gay, Hungary is the place to stay.”

This became something of a slogan for Aurora, whose leaders embrace intersectionality as a powerful force for liberal activism.

In an office above the cafe, writer Ernő Kadét says that when Aurora offered office space to his group, the Roma Press Center, he was thrilled. He was eager to work with and learn from other civil society organizations. “We do a lot of work together,” he said, noting that other civil society organizations “know something new. They come from different backgrounds, and that’s why coming together could build something better.”

While helping civil society groups like the Roma Press Center is a primary mission for Aurora, the project’s leadership also wants to create a meaningful space for Jews. They see most young Jews in Budapest as already socially active and conscious and seek to draw these Jews to their space. For some, it has helped develop a meaningful sense of Jewish identity.

In Hungary, many young Jews don’t grow up speaking about their Jewish roots, Schonberger said. He sees them as missing part of their identity. “Marom is here to help draw up the missing part,” he explained.

Dora Koranyi, a 30-year-old Aurora patron, said she probably would never go to prayer services in a synagogue. But she goes to Aurora for Kabbalat Shabbat all the time. “When we do learning at Kabbalat Shabbat, we often speak about an issue mentioned in that week’s parsha [Torah portion], but we talk abut it in the current context, which makes it more real,” she said. “We talk about Judaism in the context of what’s happening politically in Hungary.”

Koranyi says there are many young Jews in Hungary who don’t feel comfortable in religious spaces because they are assimilated in Hungarian society. So it’s nice to have a space to meet like-minded people, experience Jewish holidays and not worry about fitting in religiously. Since Aurora has a bar, she added, she is also able to have drinks with friends after Shabbat prayers. Non-Jewish young people also go to Aurora for community events and nightlife. Ana Cukovic, a recent graduate of Central European University, says Aurora is an important place because of its unique environment, one that, she said, is “welcoming, inclusive and safe. There are other places [in Budapest] that feel inclusive, but I think Aurora is the place in that sense.”

But Hungary’s rising right-wing nationalism is now a threat to Aurora. Schönberger’s concern comes after a riot in May by the far-right nationalist group Sixty-four Counties Youth Movement. The black-shirted group came to Aurora in the middle of a Sunday and posted photos with a cross that was drawn across George Soros’s face. Proudly videoing themselves, they spray-painted “Stop Operation Soros,” with the symbol of their group in several places near the entrance to Aurora.

The next day, cafe employees spray-painted dots above the O’s in “Soros,” the Hungarian word for “beer.”

Schönberger’s strategy is to react with humor. He ironically hung in his office one of the signs from the raid with Soros’s face crossed out. But he says he needs to be more careful. Now that the government is provoking anti-minority sentiments, Schönberger says, the threat of oppression and violence is more real. When people see massive propaganda campaigns against Soros, they might get the impression that others feel the same. “They might feel justified to do anything against groups like this,” Schönberger said.

Schönberger says his goal at Aurora is to help transform Hungary’s prejudices against minorities. The state’s targeting of minorities should be a warning sign for the Jewish community in Hungary, he says, because while the Jews in Hungary aren’t under direct threat today, they could be targeted tomorrow. “That’s the reason these organizations have to help each other and work together,” he said.

Mihai Tudose, Once Accused of Plagiarism, is Romania’s New Prime Minister By Palko Karasz New York Times, June 29, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/world/europe/romania-government-parliament.html

A little-known former economy minister who surrendered his Ph.D. after plagiarism accusations was confirmed by Parliament on Thursday as Romania’s prime minister, a decision that disappointed reformers.

Mihai Tudose, 50, will succeed Sorin Grindeanu, who was forced out last week as a result of a split in the governing party, the Social Democrats.

The party’s leader, Liviu Dragnea, is widely seen as Romania’s de facto leader, though he is ineligible to be prime minister because of a fraud conviction.

Corruption is arguably the greatest issue in Romania. Giant protests, the largest in the country since the fall of communism in 1989, erupted this year after the government tried to push through proposals that would have pardoned officials imprisoned for bribery and raised the financial threshold above which official misconduct is punishable by prison.

Mr. Tudose, a member of Parliament since 2000, served two stints as economy minister since 2014, but remains a relatively obscure figure despite his time in public service.

The appointment of Mr. Tudose and his cabinet disappointed some observers, who had in mind a requirement announced by the country’s president, Klaus Iohannis, for the prime minister to be a figure of integrity and competence.

“Plagiarism, fraud, no connection whatsoever with the field that they are supposed to manage,” Oana Suciu, an associate professor of political science at the University of Bucharest, said in assessing the new government.

Romania joined the European Union in 2007 and has displayed strong economic growth, but the bloc has pressured Romania to do more to fight corruption. Ms. Suciu said the country’s democratic institutions were still functioning, “but the ethics, or the morals, are really questionable.”

Mr. Tudose asked in 2016 for his doctoral degree to be rescinded following allegations that he plagiarized parts of his thesis. However, his 2010 dissertation, in the field of military intelligence, is still listed on a parliamentary website.

In Mr. Tudose, Mr. Dragnea has found a prime minister who is seen as malleable, one who will allow him to lead from behind the scenes. That arrangement, however, could make the government vulnerable to continued infighting among the Social Democrats.

“There is a structural tension that leads to the sort of situation that we saw, the conflict between Dragnea and Grindeanu,” said Paul Ivan, a senior policy analyst at the European Policy Center, a Brussels think tank.

A case in which Mr. Dragnea is accused of abusing power and instigating forgery will continue in September.

The New Government’s Plans

The Social Democrats won election last December on a platform of bread-and-butter issues, including wage increases for state employees.

But before Mr. Tudose’s government was confirmed, his new finance minister, Ionut Misa, caused alarm by proposing a new income tax. He also hinted at changes to the country’s pension program, only to be quickly contradicted by Mr. Dragnea.

Analysts were immediately skeptical. “They’re trying to raise money from new sources because they promised that they were going to increase salaries and realized that they didn’t have the money,” Ms. Suciu said.

Observers predicted that the change in power would have minimal impact on the economy, which relies heavily on funding from the European Union and foreign investment. “While the political turmoil is a cause of worry, Romania offers a combination of low wages, a good business infrastructure and consumers with strong affordability, which are usually hard to match,” said Oru Mohiuddin, an analyst with Euromonitor, a market research firm.

In February, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, and in provincial capitals, to protest perceived backtracking on Romania’s decades-long fight against corruption.

Under pressure from the street and European partners, the government stood down on the measures. It seems unlikely that the Social Democrats would try again to ease corruption measures, but Mr. Ivan warned that they might use a softer approach, “achieving similar things through smaller steps, which raise less public attention, less opposition.”

So far, however, the handling of the new tax and pension proposals suggests that opponents are watching closely and are ready to react. “Giving people the impression that you are going to take the money they’ve saved is never a good idea,” Mr. Ivan said.

Kazakhstan: Allied with Muslim bloc, but great friend of Israel By Udi Shaham Jerusalem Post, June 27, 2017 http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Kazakhstan-Allied-with-Muslim-bloc-but-great-friend-of-Israel-498008

ASTANA – Mutual exchange of technologies, flourishing business connections and warm bilateral diplomatic relations are the main characteristics of Israel and Kazakhstan, said Michael Brodsky, the Israeli ambassador to Kazakhstan.

Commemorating 25 years of diplomatic relations, Brodsky said Kazakhstan is one of Israel’s major friends. In many fields, mainly the economic one, Kazakhstan has a great interest in Israel.

Last December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Kazakhstan. During the visit, which was described as positive by both sides, the parties held a joint business forum, which included dozens of participants.

“This country thinks through the economic perspective,” said Brodsky.

“And despite the fact that it is mostly Muslim, it has no affect on our bilateral relations.

“They want us to prosper, and Israel is the role model for them,” he added. “They want to learn from us.

All this ‘make the wilderness bloom’ myth is very appealing to them.

Astana is a great example of that – it started off as a vision of [Kazakhstan] president [Nursultan] Nazarbayev and became a reality, just like the State of Israel.”

Brodsky mentioned three main fields in which Israel and Kazakhstan share information and technology: Agriculture, health and security.

“In these fields we have a lot to offer to Kazakhstan,” he said. “They see them as ‘must fields,’ meaning that cooperating with us on them is not luxury, and it won’t be affected by situation changes.

“There are many Israeli companies that operate here, and there is always talk on how to expand it,” he added.

There are some 10,000 Jews living in Kazakhstan. The vast majority came from the western part of the USSR or eastern Europe in the past century. However, Farsi-speaking Jews lived in the southern areas of the country and along the Silk Road trading route for thousands of years.

Brodsky noted that Kazakhstan is known for being very welcoming for Jews. He said there is no antisemitism in the republic.

“There is a small Jewish community, and it is spread out in several cities,” he said. “The Jewish life here is flourishing. There was never antisemitism in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh people is known to be tolerant and has a great attitude to all nations.

“The Jews also remember the special treatment they received when they got here during World War II, when they fled from eastern Europe,” he added. “Many Jews arrived here during that period.”

Despite that, Brodsky said that when it comes to the United Nations and its agencies, Kazakhstan is still committed to the larger Muslim bloc.

“When it comes to the bilateral relations, we have very warm connections and they are openly proud of it. But it is clear that they are obligated to the Muslim world,” Brodsky said. “We can see it in their [UN] votes. They voted against us not once, but we speak about it openly.

We know that they have other considerations and we are not letting it damage our great relations,” he said.