NCSEJ WEEKLY NEWS BRIEF Washington, D.C. September 16, 2016

Clinton Sets Meeting With Ukraine's Poroshenko RFE/RL, September 15, 2016 http://www.rferl.org/content/hillary-clinton-meeting-poroshenko-contrast-trump-embrace- putin/27989131.html

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, her campaign said on September 14, in an effort to contrast her pro-Kyiv stance with her Republican opponent Donald Trump's public comments in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Clinton's meeting with Poroshenko, whose country has struggled economically and politically since Moscow forcibly annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and fueled a war with separatists in eastern Ukraine, will occur on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly meeting in New York next week.

Ukrainian officials said on September 14 that both Clinton and Trump had been invited to meet Poroshenko, but so far only Clinton has confirmed.

Aides said the former secretary of state will use the meeting with Poroshenko to burnish her foreign policy credentials and show her solidarity with Ukraine.

'Excellent relations with Jewish community and Israel,’ Azerbaijan’s president tells WJC delegation WJC, September 13, 2016 http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/excellent-relations-with-jewish-community-and-israel- azerbaijans-president-tells-wjc-delegation-9-2-2016

A delegation of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC) headed by WJC President Ronald S. Lauder held talks in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku on Tuesday.

At a meeting with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Lauder said the situation of Jews in the former Soviet republic, a predominantly Muslim nation, was very good and he thanked the Azeri head of state for it.

President Aliyev underlined what he said were “excellent relations” of his administration with the Azeri Jewish Community, as well as with the State of Israel and with international NGOs such as the World Jewish Congress.

Aliyev said both Ashkenazi and Mountain Jews had been living in the country for more than two millennia, and all religious and ethnic communities in the country were living in harmony with one another. He also said that there was no censorship, with nearly 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s population having full access to the internet.

WJC Vice-President Yuri Kanner, who is also president of the Russian Jewish Congress, said after the meeting: "This was a very open and substantial discussion of all key issues of concern to Presidents Aliyev and Lauder. The Republic of Azerbaijan celebrates the 25th anniversary of its independence this year, and the people of Azerbaijan have come a long way.

“It is important to understand the processes that happen here today, and to note that they constitute an example for other Muslim-majority countries. The success of this model of multiculturalism was noted by all participants.”

WJC Vice-President God Nisanov declared: "I am very pleased that this meeting with President Ilham Aliyev went very well. Its Importance for the Jews of Azerbaijan cannot be overestimated. For us, it is a great honor that the president of the World Jewish Congress is paying a visit to Azerbaijan. I hope that the delegation will have a chance to see with their own eyes and appreciate that Azerbaijan is a prosperous and flourishing country, and that there is no place for anti-Semitism. All Jews are welcome here."

The delegation also held talks with the chairman of the Clerical Office of Caucasus Muslims, Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade, and with the leaders of Baku’s Jewish community.

The visit has been organized by WJC Vice-President & RJC Board Member God Nisanov and by RJC Vice- President German Zakhariaev. In addition, the delegation is comprised of WJC President Ronald S. Lauder, RJC President and WJC Vice-President Yuri Kanner, Euro-Asian Jewish Congress President Julius Meinl, WJC CEO and Executive Vice-President Robert Singer, and WJC Deputy CEO for Diplomacy Maram Stern.

EAJC President Julius Meinl said: “It is heartening that the Jewish community in Azerbaijan is thriving, and we regard it as our role to engage with governments to build productive relations.”

The delegation will also travel the village of Qırmızı (Russian: Krasnaya Sloboda; English: Red Town), considered the national hearth of the community of Mountain Jews, who have been living there for more than 2,000 years. Qırmızı is also the birthplace of God Nisanov and German Zakhariaev.

The WJC and RJC leaders were scheduled to visit Jewish burial grounds and met with representatives of the Mountain Jews community.

Krakow march recalls centuries-old Jewish presence JTA, September 13, 2016 http://www.jta.org/2016/09/13/news-opinion/world/krakow-march-recalls-centuries-old-jewish-presence

Hundreds marched through the streets of Krakow to commemorate the centuries-old Jewish presence in the city in an event organized by local Christian organizations.

Marchers waved Polish and Israeli flags at the “memory march” held Sunday. Among those on hand was the Krakow bishop, Grzegorz Rys.

The aim of the march was reconciliation between Poles and Jews, and to stand in opposition to anti-Semitism.

“Many of my colleagues from other countries would like to be in my place,” Anna Azari, Israel’s ambassador to Poland, said at the event. “They also have marches, but anti-Semitic ones.”

Zdzislaw Mach, a professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, said at the start of the march: “There is no Krakow without its minorities, there is no Krakow without Jews. There is also no Jagiellonian University without Jews.”

The honorary patron of the event was the mayor of Krakow, Jacek Majchrowski.

More than 60,000 Jews lived in Kralow before World War II, most in the Kazimierz district, where today there are seven synagogues that survived the war. The ghetto existed in Krakow from 1941 until 1943.

Steven Spielberg filmed his Oscar-winning movie “Schindler’s List” in the Kazimierz district.

Suspected neo-Nazis vandalize Holocaust memorial in Hungary The Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2016 http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Suspected-neo-Nazis-vandalize-Holocaust-memorial-in-Hungary-467519

Budapest's 'Living Memorial' was reportedly desecrated a few weeks after an article threatening to destroy the site was published on a neo-Nazi website.

Suspected neo-Nazis over the weekend allegedly vandalized a vigil dedicated to Hungarian victims of the Holocaust, local media reported Sunday.

According to the Hungarian Free Press, the grassroots 'Living Memorial' in Budapest's central Liberty Square was desecrated Friday night by unknown perpetrators, weeks after an article threatening to destroy the monument was published on a neo-Nazi website.

The assailants apparently tore down photographs and shattered and stole items placed at the site that serves as testimony to the nearly 600,000 Hungarian Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

In 2014, activist group established the memorial site that commemorates the victims with photographs of victims, votive candles and rocks that are traditionally placed on Jewish graves. Hungary boasted a large Jewish population until more than half of the community perished in the Holocaust.

The far-right Hungarian portal Kuruc.info, which is believed to have links to Hungary's radical national Jobbik party, reportedly published the post threatening to damage the memorial some three weeks ago.

“I promise that one night, in the beginning of September, I will walk by the Living Memorial and I will pack up four or five kilograms of the display, which legally is considered to be garbage, into a strong bag," the Hungarian Free Press quoted the incriminating post as reading.

"And putting that into my car, I will take it to where it belongs. Naturally, I won’t dump it into the Danube, because that is already very polluted,” continued the message allegedly written under the alias Alitea Guzmán.

A report of the incident has reportedly been filed with local police, and activists have noted that the square is well- equipped with security cameras.

Jewish cemetery desecrated in Poland Arutz Sheva, September 12, 2016 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/217655

The Jewish cemetery in Novominsk, Poland was desecrated in recent days by anonymous persons in a flagrant display of anti-Semitism.

According to local authorities, anonymous persons burst into the cemetery, closed most hours of the day, and sprayed swastikas on a number of graves, desecrating the graves.

The activity was discovered by locals who discerned the break-in; they alerted representatives of the local Jewish community.

The Jewish community, in turn, immediately called police, who opened an investigation into the incident.

Between the two World Wars, Novominsk included some 4,000 Jews – close to half of all its citizens. By World War Two, the city contained 5,246 Jews. With onslaught of the Holocaust, however, the Jewish population of the city dwindled to a small ghetto inside the city, and the Jewish population disappeared almost entirely as the War continued.

With eye on West, Belarus holds slightly freer election By Andrei Makhovsky Reuters, September 12, 2016 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-parliament-idUSKCN11G0VC

Lawmakers loyal to hardline Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko retained power in an election on Sunday, but the opposition's win of a seat for the first time in 20 years could help the ex-Soviet nation further improve ties with the West.

The opposition, which has not been represented in the 110-seat parliament since 1996, had not been expected to gain any seats, but in a concession to Western calls for greater transparency its candidates were able to register more easily. External monitors were also given access to the vote count.

Lukashenko, in power since 1994, has kept Belarus in a close strategic alliance with Moscow. However, some cracks appeared in the relationship following Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and since then Minsk has made overtures to the West.

Anna Konopatskaya, a member of opposition party United Civil Party, won a place in parliament, election results showed. Independent candidate Elena Anisim, who has links to the opposition, was also elected.

The presence of the opposition in parliament will not change the political landscape, but it shows the authorities are willing to make some adjustments in the interests of boosting Western ties.

"We've done everything so that there aren't complaints from the Western side. We accommodated their requests," Lukashenko told journalists after casting his vote in Minsk.

A buffet that included a stuffed suckling pig and a cake in the shape of Belarus had been laid out at the president's polling station. Providing buffets is a Belarussian tradition to encourage citizens to vote and many were seen across the country.

Relations between Minsk and the West have warmed since recession-hit Belarus held a peaceful presidential election last October.

The release of political prisoners and Lukashenko's role in hosting Ukraine-Russia peace talks also eased international criticism of the veteran leader, who the United States once said ran Europe's last dictatorship.

The European Union ended five years of sanctions against Belarus in February. The United States has also relaxed some of its restrictions on Minsk and said the authorities' handling of Sunday's vote would be a factor in an upcoming review of sanctions.

"For the Belarussian authorities, this election is more an issue of foreign than domestic policy," said Denis Melyantsov, senior analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies.

DEMOCRATIC CHANGE

Opposition groups did not stage a mass boycott or protests like those held over previous elections. Instead they decided to take part in the hope of boosting their support.

The West has pushed for democratic change in Belarus but has been shifting its approach to engagement rather than isolation, also with a view to countering what it sees as a more aggressive Russia.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored Sunday's vote and has criticized previous elections for being undemocratic, said on Monday it had had better access to the vote counting this time.

"There has been some improvement," observer mission chief Kent Harstedt told a briefing in Minsk, but cautioned that the OSCE had hoped for "faster progress" on electoral reforms.

The easing of Western sanctions is necessary for Belarus's plans to improve commercial ties with the EU and to lessen its dependence on the crisis-hit Russian market, which currently accounts for 40 percent of Belarussian exports.

Seeking loans from international lenders, including $3 billion from the International Monetary Fund, Belarus has implemented cautious economic reforms such as raising the retirement age and relaxing foreign currency rules.

Russia's economic crisis, which is linked to weak global oil prices and Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis, has hit other former Soviet republics including Belarus, where the economy shrank by 3.9 percent in 2015.

Why Uzbekistan’s Jews already miss the iron fist of their late ruler By Cnaan Liphshiz JTA, September 13, 2016 http://www.jta.org/2016/09/13/news-opinion/world/why-uzbekistans-jews-already-miss-the-iron-fist-of-their- late-ruler

Driving through this dusty desert city of many ornate and ancient mosques, Shirin Yakubov recalls the ruthlessness of her country’s recently deceased president of 25 years.

“He killed all of them, every last one,” she says of Islam Karimov’s role in the 2005 police massacre of hundreds of suspected Islamists in the eastern city of Andijan following unrest.

“Our president acted exactly right,” she adds, smiling.

A no-nonsense businesswoman and a doting Jewish mother of three, Yakubov belongs to the urban elite of this Central Asian country of 32 million citizens that shares a border with Afghanistan.

Like many from her social class, she credits the absence of radical Islam from public life to Karimov’s oppressive rule. Under Karimov, who died Sept. 2 from a stroke at 78, the all-powerful SNB security service was responsible for the torture and “disappearance” of countless dissidents in a country with no free press and a no-entry policy for foreign journalists.

With the passing of Karimov, an isolationist who strived to stay on good terms with but independent of Russia and the United States, Yakubov and other relatively affluent Uzbekistanis — including the country’s 13,000 remaining Jews — look to an uncertain future.

Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev was appointed Sept. 8 to succeed Karimov as an interim president, auguring changes that hold risks but also the promise of greater political, individual and commercial freedom and trade opportunities.

Foreign diplomats here blame Karimov not only for systemic violations of human rights, but also for holding back mineral-rich Uzbekistan from realizing its full economic potential. Under Karimov, the country’s restrictive policies included an obstructive visa regime for outsiders and an official exchange rate that is half the actual black-market value of its local currency, the sum, against the dollar.

But many Uzbekistanis and all Jewish community leaders, it appears, say they are grateful to the late leader for the stability achieved under his rule and the growth that did occur. The provincial city of Tashkent grew into a clean and safe metropolis of 3 million residents with an efficient subway system, shining conference halls and stadiums, hygienic marketplaces and peaceful parks where magpies and Indian starlings bathe in fountains amid hedges of purple basil plants.

As for Yakubov, she credits Karimov’s policies for her ability as a woman to drive a car despite the resistance it raises in a deeply traditional society where many women are not expected to go out of the house much, let alone sit behind the wheel of an automobile.

In 2005, amid the unrest that exploded in Andijan, someone threw a large brick into her car twice, smashing the windshield, she says. The intimidation stopped immediately after police questioned some neighbors – a standard procedure in some countries, but which in Uzbekistan is perceived as a last warning before the dispensation of swift and perhaps extrajudicial steps.

“No one is going to call me a ‘dirty Jew’ here,” says Arsen Yakubov, Shirin’s husband, as he walks to one of Bukhara’s two synagogues for services on Friday evening. Even before going inside, he donned the traditional, square and ornamented Bukharian hat that serves many Jews here as a kippah.

At a time when synagogues in Western Europe and even Russia are patrolled by armed police or military, Jewish institutions in this predominantly Sunni nation are unguarded. It goes a long way toward explaining why special prayers for Karimov’s soul were recited in Uzbekistan’s five synagogues following his passing.

Beyond the threat of retribution by an authoritarian government against anyone who punishes them, the Jews here are also safe because they are widely accepted as a native ethnicity, just like ethnic Tajiks and Russians. They have, after all, maintained a documented presence here for 1,000 years, which some historians believe actually goes as far back as 1000 B.C.

In Bukhara, where anywhere between 40 to 150 Jews live – depending on the definition one applies – some are greeted with “shalom” by their Muslim neighbors as they gather for evening and morning prayers (achieving a minyan, the quorum of 10 Jewish men necessary for some prayers in Orthodox Jewish communities, is often an issue).

Kosher meat, produced by a local rabbi and ritual slaughterer, is sold here in some shops run by Muslims.

At the local Jewish school, a predominantly Muslim student body is taught to sing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem – reflecting the desirability of the school and a Jewish population that shrunk after the fall of the Soviet Union. Some 75,000 Jews left their former Soviet republic after its fall.

“We are brothers, the Muslims and the Jews, and we live like it, too,” says Yossif Tilayev, the makeshift rabbi of a Jewish population of 200 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan’s second city, and caretaker of its turquoise-domed, 19th- century synagogue, which is among Central Asia’s prettiest.

But to many, this record of coexistence is no guarantee against an Uzbekistani version of the interethnic and interreligious wars that have ravaged neighboring countries, including Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan — and Afghanistan.

Even under Karimov, the Yakubovs from Bukhara have been feeling growing religious radicalization. While thousands of villagers moved into their city, the educated elite has largely left in favor of Tashkent, the capital. In 2014, this process of internal migration was slowed considerably after the government toughened its enforcement of regulations – internal visas known as “propiska” — that limit where citizens may live and work.

But the atmosphere in Bukhara is no longer the same as a decade ago, Shirin Yakubov says.

“I can’t go to the swimming pool like I used to 10 years ago because they stare at my bathing suit,” she says. “I don’t want my daughter wearing shorts because it’s beginning to attract too much attention. I no longer feel comfortable here.”

Her parents and three siblings already live in Israel, as do most of her husband’s siblings. Yakubov and her husband stay in Bukhara because her in-laws won’t leave, she says.

“But we will leave soon — and quickly, if anything bad happens after Karimov,” she says.

Yakubov is among the many locals Jews who believe that extremism is never too far below a surface that is kept calm only thanks to strict enforcement.

“We have everything – wahhabism, jihadism, Taliban. They just don’t show their faces, thanks to Karimov,” she asserts.

Arkady Isasscharov, the president of the Bukharian Jewish community of Tashkent, partially concurs.

“You always have to be careful,” he says. “One rabbi was already killed here.”

The reference is to the suspicious death in 2006 of Avraam Yagudaev, a Jewish leader whose autopsy said he died in an automobile accident but who some believe was murdered.

Still, Uzbekistani society “won’t let what happened in Afghanistan happen here,” says Issascharov, who served in Afghanistan as a soldier in the Red Army when Islamists led a rebellion against Soviet domination of that country in the 1980s. Soviet troops and the Taliban both carried out atrocities in that bitter conflict.

But tour guide Vadim Levin, an ethnic Russian of Jewish descent from Tashkent, isn’t so sure of his native country’s immunity to radicalism.

In the chaotic months following Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, Levin says he was beaten on the street for speaking Russian by “a gang of nationalists, religious extremist” ethnic Uzbeks looking for payback for Moscow’s long repression of religious and ethnic identities.

Karimov, the first ruler of an independent Uzbekistan, had gradually stepped up pressure on religious and other forms of extremism since then, restoring stability. But it came at the price of a free press and such basic individual freedoms as growing a beard – a frowned-upon practice that carries social penalties.

Israelis and other Jews, Levin adds, “tend to understand the trade-off better” than other Westerners because “they have seen the face of radical Islam, they have felt its shadow on them.”

“Of course, I pay with certain liberties for my country’s stability, I am aware of that,” says Levin, a homeowner and father of one who speaks three languages fluently and has visited Europe, Israel and the United States. “But it’s a trade-off I hope to be able to continue making under Karimov’s successor.”

Kremlin to hold 2nd Int'l Congress of separatists in Moscow UNIAN, September 13, 2016 http://www.unian.info/world/1518053-kremlin-to-hold-2nd-international-congress-of-separatists-in- moscow.html

The second annual conference of the separatists from around the world will be held in Moscow late September. The organizers received a RUB 3.5 billion presidential grant for its holding.

According to RBC, the conference titled "Dialogue of Nations. Right of peoples to self-determination and the construction of a multipolar world" is convened by the public organization "The Anti-globalization Movement of Russia" (AGM).

The Congress will be attended by the "fighters against the ideology of world domination and economic exploitation," the statement said. The forum is expected to discuss and work out a resolution in support of the right of peoples to self-determination.

A previous conference of the movement was held in September 2015.

The organizers expect the delegations of separatists from Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Western Sahara, Scotland and other regions. According to the announcement on the website, many delegates will come from the United States – these are the supporters of independence of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, as well as separatists from California and Texas.

The organizers have invited representatives of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) – one of the largest separatist organizations in the United States. Today, TNM is preparing a referendum on state independence. In 2014, they had already participated in the AGM events in Russia, but they failed to get to the conference in 2015. AGM Chairman Alexander Ionov told RBC that the authorities of the Western countries were able to prevent the delegates from going to Moscow in 2015, as the FBI raided the TNM headquarters.

The AGM received RUB 3.5 million for event management from the National welfare fund that distributes presidential grants for NGO development.

"The Conference of the anti-globalists looks like the Soviet anti-globalization programs to find the opponents of the establishment in the West, who were considered as their allies," said Chairman of the Center for Political Technologies Boris Makarenko. "But if earlier the allies were sought among the "green" and social democrats, today – it's among the marginalized ultra-right activists and separatists."

According to the expert, an ideologized struggle between the two systems took place during the Cold War, while now this ideologization is largely contrived.

IMF board approves $1 billion loan disbursement to Ukraine By David Lawder Reuters,September 15, 2016 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-imf-idUSKCN11K2VH?il=0

The International Monetary Fund said its board on Wednesday approved a long-awaited loan disbursement to Ukraine of about $1 billion after a review of the country's bailout program.

The IMF has agreed to pump $17.5 billion into Ukraine's economy in a four-year bailout, releasing the funds in installments subject to the government making progress on economic and anti-corruption reforms.

To date, Ukraine has received about $7.62 billion in the program launched in March 2015.

The latest disbursement was less than the roughly $1.7 billion anticipated, after some reforms required by the fund had stalled.

But the IMF said in a statement that the board had approved waivers for Kiev's failure to meet criteria related to international reserves targets, external payments arrears and foreign exchange restrictions.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the disbursement would clear the way for an additional $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee and a new 600 million-euro loan from the European Union.

In a statement, he said a Russian attempt to undermine the IMF's decision had failed, and that the funds' release would help keep the hryvnia currency stable and aid the economy.

"The positive decision by the IMF is evidence that the world recognizes that reforms are happening in Ukraine, that real and positive changes are happening in Ukraine, and that the country is moving in the right direction," Poroshenko said.

Last week, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk said the IMF decision should clear the way for the sale of about $1 billion in U.S.-guaranteed bonds by the end of September.

The IMF cash and external loans should boost foreign currency reserves to $17.2 billion by the end of the year, a central bank deputy governor, Oleh Churiy, said, welcoming the IMF decision as a positive signal for domestic and foreign investors.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement after the board's vote that Ukraine was showing signs of recovery and improved confidence, which she attributed to the implementation of reforms, sound macroeconomic policies and efforts to rehabilitate Ukraine's banking system.

"Further progress in fiscal reforms is key to ensure medium-term sustainability," Lagarde said, calling for pension reforms and tax policies that would avoid higher deficits, and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

Crimean Tatar Leader Nominated For EU's Sakharov Prize RFE/RL, September 14, 2016 http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-russia-crimea-tatars-dzhemilev-eu-sakharov-prize/27988059.html

The European Parliament's largest political bloc will nominate Crimean Tatar politician Mustafa Dzhemilev for the 2016 Sakharov Prize.

The European People's Party will nominate Dzhemilev on September 14.

The European Conservatives and Reformists bloc -- consisting of Britain's Conservative Party and the Polish Law and Justice party nominated him a day earlier.

Dzhemilev is expected to be one of the three shortlisted candidates chosen by the European Parliament's foreign affairs and development committees vote on October 11. Members of the European Parliament will decide the winner on October 27.

Dzhemilev is a Ukrainian lawmaker and a well-known Soviet-era human rights activist.

Dzhemilev, a former chairman of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar people who strongly opposed Crimea's occupation and annexation by Russia, is currently living in Kyiv.

The Sakharov Prize -- with a cash prize of 50,000 euros ($57,206) -- has been handed out since 1988 to honor individuals and organizations who defend human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Russia Adds Salt to Western Food Embargo The Moscow Times, September 13, 2016 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-adds-salt-to-western-food-embargo-55316

Russia is to boycott Western imports of salt, the Kremlin announced in a statement Tuesday.

The embargo, which will come into effect from Nov. 1, will add to the long list of Western food products currently banned in Russia, which include fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, milk and dairy.

The Kremlin announced that it would boycott food imports from the U.S., EU, Australia, Canada and Norway in August 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in June, extending the embargo until the end of 2017.

The boycott has hit Russian consumers hard, with food prices soaring by 31 percent in the last two years, Russia’s Economic Development Ministry announced in August.

The move was in response to sanctions placed on Moscow for the annexation of Crimea and its ongoing role in the Ukrainian conflict. The EU voted on Sept. 7 to extend the sanctions, which include travel bans and asset freezes for a number of prominent Russian figures and companies.

Azerbaijan Releases Opposition Activist Ahead Of Key Referendum RFE/RL, September 11, 2016 http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-opposition-activist-released-jafarli-/27980427.html

Azerbaijani authorities have released an opposition activist from jail, just weeks after his detention prompted international criticism in Europe, North America, and elsewhere.

Colleagues of Natig Jafarli, of the Republican Alternative Movement, said he was released from a Baku jail on September 9.

The head of the Republican movement, Ilqar Mammadov, remains in prison.

Jafarli was arrested on August 12, charged with “illegal entrepreneurship” and other charges that prosecutors said stemmed from a grant the Republican movement received from the U.S.-based nongovernmental organization, the National Democratic Institute.

The move comes ahead of a September 26 referendum scheduled in the tightly control South Caucasus country that will strengthen the authority of President Ilham Aliyev and likely prolong his rule.

The United States said it welcomed Jafarli's release and called for the release of Mammadov and others it considers to be political prisoners.

Gazprom executive Karen Karapetyan named as Armenian PM Reuters, September 13, 2016 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-armenia-primeminister-idUSKCN11J1I2

Energy executive Karen Karapetyan was named prime minister of Armenia on Tuesday, a week after the abrupt resignation of his predecessor.

Hovik Abrahamyan stepped down on Sept. 8, saying the Caucasus country needed fresh policies, after his government struggled with an economic slowdown and protests in the capital.

The government has also faced political challenges, including a flare-up of violence in neighboring Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region in April between Armenian-backed separatists and Azeri forces.

Karapetyan, 53, is a former head of national gas distributing company ArmRosGazprom, and was mayor of the capital Yerevan from 2010-2011.

He was deputy CEO of Russian gas producer Gazprom's Mezhregiongaz unit before Tuesday's appointment.

Armenia, a tiny mountainous nation which borders Turkey and Iran, will hold a parliamentary election next year. President Serzh Sargsyan's term in office is due to end in 2018, marking the nation's transition from a semi- presidential republic to a fully parliamentary system.

Human rights situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorates – UN report Ukraine Today, September 15, 2016 http://uatoday.tv/society/human-rights-situation-in-eastern-ukraine-deteriorates-un-report-747435.html

A new UN report released on Thursday describes the deterioration of the human rights situation in eastern Ukraine, as a result of escalating hostilities between June and August, and the continued disregard for the protection of civilians by both sides of the conflict.

The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said that by 15 September 2016, it recorded 9,640 conflict-related deaths and 22,431 injuries among Ukrainian armed forces, civilians and members of the armed groups since the conflict began in mid-April 2014.

The report, which covers the period from mid-May to mid-August, shows a 66 per cent increase of the number of conflict-related civilian casualties in the east, compared to the previous reporting period.

Read also UN rings alarm bells on record number of civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine

In total, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented 188 civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine, including 28 dead and 160 injured, during the three months covered by the report.

"While the situation has improved since the ceasefire was restored on 1 September, the situation along the contact line remains deeply unstable, as demonstrated by the incidents which took place last week-end. In fact, there is a real risk that a new outbreak of violence could happen at any time," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.

The authors of the report also reiterate that civilians living in the conflict-affected area are deprived of protection, access to basic services and humanitarian aid, and that their freedom of movement is severely hampered.

Those who fled the war-torn Donbas region are also facing serious problems, including discrimination in accessing employment, accommodation or banking services based on their place of origin.

The situation of more than 1.7 million people registered as internally displaced people is a major source of concern, the UN Human Rights Office says.

One of the key issues lies in the decision by the Ukrainian Government to link the payment of pensions and social entitlements to IDPs to their registration and the verification of their place of residence, which has negatively impacted some 500,000 to 600,000 IDPs in eastern Ukraine.

Full report on the human rights situation in Ukraine can be read here.

Georgia’s European Choice ‘Irreversible,’ says Georgian Prime Minister By Ashish Kumar Sen Atlantic Council, September 14, 2016 http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/georgia-s-european-choice-irreversible-says-georgian- prime-minister

In an election season in which Georgia’s NATO aspirations have been hotly debated, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili insists that his country’s European choice is “irreversible.”

“An overwhelming majority of the people of Georgia consider the goal of joining EU and NATO to be a necessity that will lead to a higher standard of democracy, security, peace, and prosperity in our country and region,” Kvirikashvili said in an interview.

Georgia will hold parliamentary elections on October 8.

“While there are policy differences between many of the political parties running for office, it is remarkable that all major parties are unified in their commitment to further integration with the West,” said Kvirikashvili.

A National Democratic Institute survey conducted earlier this year found strong support among Georgians for their government’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations—68 percent in support of NATO and 71 percent for the European Union.

Nevertheless, in June, Nino Burjanadze, the leader of the Democratic Movement party, said: “Georgia should reject joining any kind of military bloc, be it NATO or any other military alliance. There should be no troops of any foreign country or a bloc on the Georgian soil.”

In response, Davit Usupashvili, the leader of the Republican Party and speaker of the parliament, proposed a bill that would reflect Georgia’s NATO aspirations in its constitution.

Georgia’s quest for NATO membership has made little headway amid concerns among some members of the Alliance that such a move would incite Russia.

Asked about the Russian factor in Georgia’s European aspirations, Kvirikashvili said: “[W]e firmly believe that embracing the European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Georgia and other countries of the region will send a strong signal that the re-emergence of spheres of influence and attempts to limit the foreign policy choices of sovereign states are unacceptable in the 21st century.”

In our interview, Kvirikashvili also made the case for the EU to grant visa-free travel to Georgians. He contended that visa liberalization will be a “tangible benefit for our citizens, who overwhelmingly support European integration.”

“It will also serve as a crucial reminder to the people in the occupied territories of the advantages of our European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” he added, referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two provinces that were occupied by Russia following the war with Georgia in 2008. Russian President Vladimir Putin has since signed treaties with both provinces that give Moscow control over their defense as well as their borders.

EU enlargement commissioner, Johannes Hahn, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty earlier in September that a decision on visa liberalization for Georgia will be made later this year.

Russian Election Watch 2016: Noteworthy Candidates By Ola Cichowlas The Moscow Times, September 12, 2016 https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russian-election-watch-2016-noteworthy-candidates-55249

The last time Russia held a parliamentary election, in 2011, the capital erupted in mass protests. The authorities responded by cracking down on dissent at home, and embarking on full-blown confrontation abroad. On Sept. 18, Russians return to the polls. This time, nobody expects street protests or anything but a Kremlin victory.

But that does not mean the Kremlin has forgotten about 2011. President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff Vyacheslav Volodin, the Kremlin’s man in charge of this election, has been telling the cameras all summer that this will be the cleanest vote in Russian history.

In a way, it will be. Ella Pamfilova, the new head of the electoral committee, says she is determined not to play into the hands of the ruling party and promises the vote count to be fair. In a scene unimaginable just a few months ago, Russia even saw its former prime minister turned opposition figure Mikhail Kasyanov take part in a live debate on state television. Arch Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who spent a decade in a Siberian prison, was even allowed to finance 18 candidates as part of his Open Russia initiative.

But these are signs of the Kremlin’s confidence rather than its openness and do not make this election any less predictable: No matter what happens next week, United Russia will secure its victory. Russia’s “systemic opposition,” the political parties who make the Duma look pluralistic but in practice support the Kremlin, are expected to break the 5-percent barrier to enter parliament.

Meanwhile, the liberal opposition has been divided by scandals and infighting in the run-up to the vote and is unlikely to make real inroads. Russia’s most famous Kremlin opponent, Alexei Navalny, was banned from registering his political party.

Even with the opposition in such disarray, however, the authorities have left nothing to chance. The Kremlin hopes to avoid United Russia’s poor 2011 result by returning to an electoral system not used since 2003.

This year, half of the Duma’s 450 deputies will be chosen from party lists; the other half will be elected in single- member districts using a first-past-the-post system. The overwhelming majority of the winners in these local elections are expected to be loyal Kremlin supporters. Still, the districts are the biggest unknown of this election — and look set to throw at least a few surprises.

A selection of the most interesting battles follows.

An Unlikely Candidate

Voters in Saratov may be surprised to see Volodin’s name on their ballot. Perhaps the biggest mystery of this election is why Putin’s deputy chief of staff is running in the election he has been assigned to oversee. Russian political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko says Volodin may be running in order to prove he has done everything for the election to be as open as possible.

Since overseeing Putin’s 2012 re-election, Volodin became the Kremlin’s chief election manager. His next assignment was to be the 2018 presidential vote, but this is now uncertain.

Insiders say Volodin could be heading to the Russian parliament. Formally, chairing the Duma is the third most powerful job in Russia. But in practice, the position would move Volodin away from the real power: Putin.

Soviet Crimea

Crimea will take part in the Russian State Duma election for the first time since annexation. Kiev has urged Crimeans to boycott the election.

The notorious, Moscow-appointed, Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov tops United Russia on the peninsula. He will be joined, among others, by prosecutor-turned-celebrity Natalya Poklonskaya, a Kremlin-loyal Crimean Tatar, and an astronaut.

In the single-member-districts, United Russia is putting forward three candidates. One is Svetlana Savchenko, a woman who bears the same last name as Ukrainian pilot and national hero Nadiya Savchenko. Crimea’s capital Simferopol is covered in posters of “our Crimean Savchenko.” The Crimean candidate herself admitted she was afraid to reveal her surname to Dmitry Medvedev during a recent visit to Crimea. The Russian prime minister tried to comfort her — “there’s nothing wrong with your name,” he said.

In Sevastopol, voters will see a familiar name on the ballot papers. Here, Andrei Brezhnev, the grandson of the longest serving Soviet leader Leonid, is running for the marginal nationalist party Rodina. Unlike his grandfather, who led the U.S.S.R. for 18 years, Andrei Brezhnev has not yet succeeded in politics. In 1999, he ran in the Moscow region Duma elections, but received only 2.3 percent of the vote. He also unsuccessfully stood for Moscow mayor and governor of the Tula region.

The younger Brezhnev is no doubt hoping for more luck in Russian-annexed Crimea, where Soviet nostalgia is being whipped up to rally support for the Kremlin.

Fighting the Kremlin Far From Its Walls

Yabloko, led by Yeltsin-era politician Grigory Yavlinsky, is the only party denouncing the Crimean annexation with an albeit tiny chance to make it into the Duma. Several human rights activists are running for the party in the provinces.

Their most high-profile candidate outside Moscow is Lev Shlosberg, a journalist from Pskov who made headlines when he was badly beaten while covering the stories of Russian paratroopers who died while secretly fighting in eastern Ukraine. Shlosberg has since become a leading figure in Russia’s opposition: He was recently awarded the inaugural Boris Nemtsov Foundation prize for “defending the values of freedom and democracy in Russia” in Moscow. In his native Pskov, a small city on the Estonian border, Shlosberg gained popularity for his anti-corruption work as a lawmaker and is one of Russia’s few activists with a chance to enter the Duma.

On Russia’s southern border in Krasnodar, environmental activist Yevgeny Vitishko, 42, is running for Yabloko. The geologist spent 22 months in prison for spray-painting graffiti on a fence on the eve of the Sochi Olympics. He was released in December 2015. “They wanted me out of the way: I raised inconvenient questions. And now I am back,” he told a local paper.

In Ingushetia, a North Caucasus republic, Yabloko is putting forward veteran human rights activist Valery Borshev. A member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Borshev has been campaigning against Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

In the party lists, Yabloko’s chances are hampered by its veteran Moscow bosses. Minchenko believes the party is unlikely to enter the Duma because it “failed to put forward a new face as its leader.”

Three Faces of Moscow’s Opposition

Most liberal eyes in the capital are on Dmitry Gudkov, 36, the Duma deputy running for re-election for Yabloko in a northern Moscow suburb. The son of Gennady Gudkov, a parliamentarian expelled from the Duma in 2012, he is known as the last real opposition minister in parliament. Gudkov has recycled the tactics of Navalny’s 2013 effective mayoral race: He is crowdfunding his campaign and documenting his finances on social media.

Central Moscow, meanwhile, has become a battleground for two liberal opposition candidates.

PARNAS, led by Kasyanov, has put forward academic Andrei Zubov in the city center. A philosophy professor, Zubov was sacked from Moscow’s State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 2014 for comparing events in Crimea to the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria. The professor is up against activist Maria Baronova, 34, Khodorkovsky’s candidate in central Moscow and a prominent participant of the 2011-12 anti-Putin protests. Neither stand a chance: A recent poll by Moscow-based, independent pollster the Levada Center showed only 2 percent of residents would vote for Baronova or Zubov. In competing against each other, the liberals are securing the re- election of United Russia’s veteran Moscow minister Nikolai Gonchar.

United Russia will have a similarly easy ride across the country. In Putin’s 17th year in power, this Duma election looks set to be the Kremlin’s easiest victory. Other parties entering parliament make almost no difference.

As Russia reasserts itself, U.S. intelligence agencies focus anew on the Kremlin By Greg Miller Washington Post, September 14, 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-russia-reasserts-itself-us-intelligence- agencies-focus-anew-on-the-kremlin/2016/09/14/cc212c62-78f0-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

U.S. intelligence agencies are expanding spying operations against Russia on a greater scale than at any time since the end of the Cold War, U.S. officials said.

The mobilization involves clandestine CIA operatives, National Security Agency cyberespionage capabilities, satellite systems and other intelligence assets, officials said, describing a shift in resources across spy services that had previously diverted attention from Russia to focus on terrorist threats and U.S. war zones.

U.S. officials said the moves are part of an effort to rebuild U.S. intelligence capabilities that had continued to atrophy even as Russia sought to reassert itself as a global power. Over the past two years, officials said, the United States was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s aggression, including its annexation of Crimea, its intervention in the war in Syria and its suspected role in hacking operations against the United States and Europe.

U.S. spy agencies “are playing catch-up big time” with Russia, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. Terrorism remains the top concern for American intelligence services, the official said, but recent directives from the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have moved Russia up the list of intelligence priorities for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Though hidden from public view, the escalation in espionage activity is part of a broader renewal of conflict and competition between the United States and Russia after a two-decade lull. Surging tensions now cut across nearly every aspect of the U.S-Russia relationship.

The hack of the Democratic National Committee has raised fears that Russia is seeking to undermine democratic institutions if not influence the outcome of the American presidential race.

U.S. efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in Syria with Russia have divided Obama administration officials and served as a tacit acknowledgment that Moscow’s intervention succeeded in one of its principal aims: ensuring that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be in position to influence any Syria endgame.

Even an encounter between Obama and Putin at a recent summit in China turned, at moments, into an tense staring contest.

U.S. officials stressed that while the need for better intelligence on Russia is considered an urgent priority, there is no intent to return the CIA or other spy agencies to Cold War footings. At the height of that decades-long conflict, former officials said, U.S. spy agencies often devoted 40 percent or more of their personnel and resources to tracking the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites.

U.S. officials said that CIA and other agencies now devote at most 10 percent of their budgets to Russia-related espionage, a percentage that has risen over the past two years.

Critics contend that U.S. intelligence agencies have been too slow to boost collection against Russia and respond to its provocations abroad, repeatedly enabling Putin to gain an upper hand.

“The failure to understand Putin’s plans and intentions has been the largest intelligence failure since 9/11,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes said that despite a now well-established pattern of Russian aggression online, against neighboring states and in Syria, U.S. spy agencies have struggled to anticipate Moscow’s moves.

“These should have been red flags,” Nunes said, “but we continue to get it wrong.”

Timothy Barrett, an ODNI spokesman, said in an emailed statement: “The Intelligence Community continues to maintain its focus and deep expertise on Russia, which has enabled us to understand Putin’s evolving worldview. The IC allocates resources directed against Russia commensurate with this evolving threat.”

Barrett and a spokesman for the CIA declined to comment on the scope or nature of espionage activities against Russia. Senior U.S. officials said that divining Putin’s intentions is a particularly daunting task because of the Russian president’s leadership style.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. has said that Putin is “impulsive and opportunistic” rather than guided by consistent strategic aims that would help U.S. intelligence analysts understand or anticipate his moves. “What his long-term plan is, I’m not sure he has one,” Clapper said in a CNN interview last year. “I think he is kind of winging this day to day.”

Former U.S. intelligence officials involved in spying operations against Russia disagreed, saying that Putin’s motivations are consistent and clear — to reclaim his country’s standing as a global rival of the United States, to destabilize Western governments that contest that aim and to constantly test how much Moscow can provoke its adversaries before they respond.

“What he’s basically doing is probing and saying: ‘How far can I push? How much can I gain?’ ” said Steven L. Hall, a former CIA officer who was responsible for overseeing operations in Russia and the former Soviet Union. “The DNC hack is nothing more than a modern iteration of something the Russians and Soviets have been doing for a long time — trying to meddle in other countries’ politics to their benefit.”

The greater challenge in gathering intelligence on Russia’s president, said current and former officials, is that because of Putin’s formative experience as a KGB officer, he takes extraordinary precautions to ensure that his plans are not vulnerable to foreign intelligence services. Critical information is kept to a tight circle within the Kremlin whose members are guarded in their use of phones, computers and other devices that might be penetrated.

Russia’s intelligence budget is probably a small fraction of the roughly $53 billion that the United States spends each year on espionage. But Russia aims a larger share of its resources at the United States, officials said, and takes advantage of a large disparity in manpower.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is believed to have 150 or more operatives in the United States, officials said, concentrated not only in Washington and at the U.N. headquarters in New York but in San Francisco and other major cities.

The CIA, by contrast, has at most several dozen case officers — the term for agency employees responsible for stealing secrets abroad — based in Russia, with several dozen more scattered across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states, former officials said.

Those numbers have expanded in recent years, the officials said, as the CIA has directed dozens of additional recruits emerging from its training campus near Williamsburg, Va., to assignments that will eventually involve espionage against Russia. But the officials said that few of those new hires have any Russian language abilities and will require years of training before they become productive case officers who can recruit and manage networks of spies.

“It is a pipeline process,” a former official said. “It will be years before they can be used operationally.” The official, like other current and former officials interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues.

Former officials said there is an even greater imbalance in the counterintelligence resources the countries devote to tracking and disrupting the other’s spies.

“The counterintelligence operation that [Moscow] runs against the U.S. Embassy measured in the thousands” of agents, said Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who until 2014 served as U.S. ambassador to Russia. “It always felt, especially sitting in Moscow, of course, that we were in a counterintelligence and collection battle that was an asymmetric fight.”

The FBI broke up a sprawling Russian spy ring in the United States six years ago and maintains surveillance on dozens of other suspected Russian operatives in the United States, former officials said. Even so, the officials said that the number of bureau agents assigned to tracking Russian espionage is a small fraction of the personnel deployed for the equivalent purpose by Moscow.

Though outnumbered, the CIA has embraced a more aggressive approach to recruiting Russian officials to spy for the United States in recent years, former officials said. The agency has taken advantage of the surging number of high-ranking Russians who travel abroad — trips they would rarely have made when the Soviet Union was intact. CIA operatives are also more daring in their approaches to Russian targets, officials said, waving wads of cash to entice would-be recruits in a nation where the pursuit of wealth has supplanted communism as the prevailing ideology.

The more brazen behavior by the CIA has been met with an intensifying campaign of harassment of American officials in Moscow. In the most recent case, an American official returning by taxi to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after dark in June was tackled and thrown to the ground by a Russian guard stationed at the gate.

The American was formally identified as a U.S. diplomat, but current and former officials said that he was a CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover in Moscow and had to be evacuated from the country to have his injuries treated. State-owned Russian television subsequently aired video of the brawl, depicting it as an act of bravery by a Russian guard seeking to protect the embassy from a dangerous intruder — an interpretation denounced by U.S. officials as preposterous.

Even during less combative periods in U.S.-Russian relations, American spy agencies kept some of their most sophisticated capabilities aimed at Moscow. Budget files provided to The Washington Post by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden depict Russia as on par with China and North Korea as an intelligence priority.

Despite Russia’s high-profile cyber-exploits, current and former U.S. officials said Russia’s digital espionage capabilities are inferior to those of the United States.

One entry in the Snowden files refers to a National Security Agency program that “will attempt to penetrate the Russian intelligence services’ computer networks, increase access and gain expertise on all elements of Russia’s cyber programs, and strengthen the [intelligence community’s] ability to counter Russia’s potential to tap or disrupt the undersea and landline communication cables that carry sensitive U.S. data.”

Even so, officials expressed concern that basic U.S. capabilities fell to levels that could take years to rebuild. The ranks of Russian analysts and speakers went through two stretches of resource drain, officials said, first during the “peace dividend” years after the Soviet Union’s implosion and the second when Russian sections were stripped of people who were reassigned to counterterrorism units after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The House and Senate intelligence committees sought to accelerate that rebuilding process by steering tens of millions of additional dollars toward Russian-related espionage in the budget adopted by Congress last year. But officials said that U.S. spy agencies have been slow to spend that money and that the CIA has not been given any additional authority to mount covert operations beyond traditional categories of espionage against Moscow.

“We have really talented people that need direction from the DNI and White House,” a senior U.S. official said. “There needs to be a robust presidential finding,” the official said, referring to the authority required for covert activity, “that would allow us to do a lot more.”

Putin would probably be skeptical that U.S. spy agencies face any such constraint.

Clapper and other U.S. intelligence officials have said that Putin’s renewed aggression against the United States appears to be driven in part by his paranoia that the CIA and other agencies have been behind public uprisings — including throngs of demonstrators in 2012, scenes that analysts say unnerved Putin before his return to the presidency.

“He assigns a lot of influence and agency to organizations like the CIA,” McFaul said. “He grossly exaggerates what they can do in the world and what they can do in Washington. But because he’s got that mind-set, he wants to win that war.”

In Expanding Russian Influence, Faith Combines With Firepower By Andrew Higgins The New York Times, September 13, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/world/europe/russia-orthodox-church.html?ref=europe&smid=tw- nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_r=1

The golden main dome of a new Russian Orthodox cathedral now under construction on the banks of the Seine shimmers in the sun, towering over a Paris neighborhood studded with government buildings and foreign embassies. Most sensitive of all, it is being built beside a 19th-century palace that has been used to conceal some of the French presidency’s most closely guarded secrets.

The prime location, secured by the Russian state after years of lobbying by the Kremlin, is so close to so many snoop-worthy places that when Moscow first proposed a $100 million “spiritual and cultural center” there, France’s security services fretted that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer, might have more than just religious outreach in mind.

Anxiety over whether the spiritual center might serve as a listening post, however, has obscured its principal and perhaps more intrusive role: an outsize display in the heart of Paris, the capital of the insistently secular French Republic, of Russia’s might as a religious power, not just a military one.

While tanks and artillery have been Russia’s weapons of choice to project its power into neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, Mr. Putin has also mobilized faith to expand the country’s reach and influence. A fervent foe of homosexuality and any attempt to put individual rights above those of family, community or nation, the Russian Orthodox Church helps project Russia as the natural ally of all those who pine for a more secure, illiberal world free from the tradition-crushing rush of globalization, multiculturalism and women’s and gay rights.

Thanks to a close alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin, religion has proved a particularly powerful tool in former Soviet lands like Moldova, where senior priests loyal to the Moscow church hierarchy have campaigned tirelessly to block their country’s integration with the West. Priests in Montenegro, meanwhile have spearheaded efforts to derail their country’s plans to join NATO.

But faith has also helped Mr. Putin amplify Russia’s voice farther west, with the church leading a push into resolutely secular members of the European Union like France.

The most visible sign of this is the new Kremlin-financed spiritual center here near the Eiffel Tower, now so closely associated with Mr. Putin that France’s former culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, suggested that it be called “St. Vladimir’s.”

But the Russian church’s push in Europe has taken an even more aggressive turn in Nice, on the French Riviera, where in February it tried to seize a private Orthodox cemetery, the latest episode in a long campaign to grab up church real estate controlled by rivals to Moscow’s religious hierarchy.

“They are advancing pawns here and everywhere; they want to show that there is only one Russia, the Russia of Putin,” said Alexis Obolensky, vice president of the Association Culturelle Orthodoxe Russe de Nice, a group of French believers, many of them descendants of White Russians who fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. They want nothing to do with a Moscow-based church leadership headed by Kirill, patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, a close ally of the Russian president.

A Broader Push

The French Orthodox association is instead loyal to the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, a rival church leadership in Istanbul that has provided a haven for many of Mr. Putin’s churchgoing foes. After a long legal battle with Moscow, Mr. Obolensky’s association in 2013 lost control of Nice’s Orthodox cathedral, St. Nicholas, to the Moscow Patriarchate, which installed its own priests and rallied the faithful behind projects to warm France’s frosty relations with Russia.

When Russian church staff and their lay French supporters broke into the Nice Orthodox cemetery in February and declared it Russian property, allies of Mr. Obolensky hoisted a banner on the iron gate: “Hands off, Mr. Putin. We are not in Crimea or Ukraine. Let our dead rest in peace.”

Moscow’s quest to gain control of churches and graves dating from czarist times and squeeze out believers who look to the Constantinople patriarch is part of a broader push by the Kremlin to assert itself as both the legitimate heir to and master of “Holy Russia,” and as a champion of traditional values against the decadent heresies, notably liberal democracy, promoted by the United States and what they frequently call “Gayropa.”

“The church has become an instrument of the Russian state. It is used to extend and legitimize the interests of the Kremlin,” said Sergei Chapnin, who is the former editor of the official journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church and affiliated churches outside Russia.

Unlike the Catholic Church, which has a single, undisputed leader, the pope in Rome, the Orthodox or Eastern branch of Christianity is divided into more than a dozen self-governing provinces, each with its own patriarch. The biggest of these, the Russian Orthodox Church, covers not only Russia, but also fragile new states like Moldova that formerly belonged to the Russian and later Soviet empires.

“We have been independent for 25 years but our church is still dependent on Moscow,” complained Iurie Leanca, a former prime minister of Moldova, who in 2014 signed a trade and political pact with the European Union that the church and the Kremlin worked hard to derail.

In the vanguard of the anti-European cause in Moldova has been Marchel Mihaescu, the deeply conservative Orthodox bishop of Balti, who was appointed to his post by the Moscow patriarch.

He has warned worshipers that new biometric passports, required by the European Union in return for visa-free access to Europe, were “satanic” because they contained a 13-digit number. He also tried to torpedo legislation extending protection against discrimination in the workplace to gay people, warning that this would draw God’s wrath and sunder relations with “Mother Russia.”

“The voice of the church and the voice of Russian politicians — not all, but the overwhelming majority of Russian politicians — are the same. For me, Russia is the guardian of Christian values,” the bishop said in an interview in a high-ceiling office decorated with a half-dozen portraits of past and current Russian patriarchs and a single picture of Moldova’s own senior priest, Metropolitan Vladimir of Chisinau.

Europe, said the bishop, has “definitely given us lots of money, but wants too much in return. It demands that we pay with our souls, that we alienate ourselves from God. This is not acceptable.”

In their determination to fend off the West, conservative Orthodox priests in Moldova have made common cause with politicians like Igor Dodon, leader of the pro-Moscow Socialist Party.

When gay activists staged a parade this summer in the center of Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, Mr. Dodon rallied his own supporters for a rival event dedicated to traditional values while a group of Orthodox priests gathered nearby to chant prayers and curse homosexuals.

The gay parade, which was joined by a number of Western diplomats, got called off after just a few blocks when it ran into a crowd of protesters waving religious banners and throwing eggs.

Opposition to gay rights has also been taken up with gusto by Russia and the Orthodox Church in Western Europe.

The Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, a research group in Paris headed by a former Soviet diplomat, threw its support behind opponents of a new French law in 2013 allowing same-sex marriage. It organized a conference on “defense of the family,” and promotes Russia and its Orthodox faith as protectors of Christian values across Europe.

Natalia Narochnitskaya, the institute’s head, told an Orthodox Church website run by Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, a Moscow monk close to Mr. Putin that Europeans are fed up with what she called the “victory parade of sin” and increasingly look to Russia for guidance and solace. “We have started to get letters at the institute: ‘Thank you Russia and its leader,’” Ms. Narochnitskaya said.

What role the new cathedral complex in Paris might play in this agenda will not be clear until it opens later this year, but those who have studied Mr. Putin’s methods predict it will serve as a megaphone for his take on the world.

“This cathedral is an outpost of the other Europe — ultraconservative and anti-modern — in the heart of the country of libertinism and secularism,” said Michel Eltchaninoff, a French writer and author of “Dans la tête de Vladimir Poutine,” a book about the Russian president’s thinking.

A huge complex of four separate buildings, the “spiritual center” will include not only a church but a school, conference halls and a cultural center run by the Russian Embassy.

The complex is owned not by the church but by the Russian state, which beat out Saudi Arabia, Canada and other countries that had also sought to buy the coveted plot.

Moscow has been looking for an imposing church in Paris ever since the city’s principal Orthodox site, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, broke with the Russian church hierarchy after 1917 and transferred its allegiance to Constantinople.

Though fervently opposed to religion, the Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev both pressed Charles de Gaulle to hand over control of the Nevsky Cathedral to Moscow.

He refused, leaving Orthodox churchgoers loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate to set up their own far more modest place of worship in a Paris garage.

Under Mr. Putin the quest to recover church property has resumed with vigor — in tandem with a drive to reach out to far right political forces in Europe seduced by the idea of Russia as a bastion of conservative social and cultural values.

A Corner of the World

The merging of political, diplomatic and religious interests has been on vivid display in Nice, where the Orthodox cathedral, St. Nicholas, came under the control of the Moscow Partriarchate in 2013.

To mark the completion of Moscow-funded renovation work in January, Russia’s ambassador in Paris, Aleksandr Orlov, joined the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, for a ceremony at the cathedral and hailed the refurbishment as “a message for the whole world: Russia is sacred and eternal!”

Then, in a festival of French-Russian amity at odds with France’s official policy since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the ambassador, Orthodox priests, officials from Moscow and French dignitaries gathered in June for a gala dinner in a luxury Nice hotel to celebrate the cathedral’s return to the fold of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Speaking at the dinner, Vladimir Yakunin, a longtime ally of Mr. Putin who is subject to United States, but not European, sanctions imposed after Russia seized Crimea, declared the cathedral a “corner of the Russian world,” a concept that Moscow used to justify its military intervention on behalf of Russian-speaking rebels in eastern Ukraine. Church property from the czarist era, Mr. Yakunin added, belongs to Russia “simply because this is our history.”

The outreach seems to be working. Unlike the national government in Paris, local leaders in Nice, who mostly represent right-wing forces, support Mr. Putin, even applauding the annexation of Crimea.

After the July 14 terrorist attack on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice by a man driving a truck into a crowd, which killed 84 people — among them were four Russians, including an officer at the St. Nicholas Cathedral — Eric Ciotti, the president of the Nice region, demanded that France seek closer relations with Moscow so as to defeat the so- called Islamic State.

Andrei Eliseev, the Nice cathedral’s Moscow-educated and multilingual senior priest, denied accusations by his foes in the émigré community that he works for Russia’s security agency and blamed hostility against him and Moscow on the feuds of old aristocratic families.

But he said he nonetheless has a duty to serve the state, explaining that the Russian church has effectively been a government department since Peter the Great took control of religion in the early 18th century.

So limited is his room for maneuver, he said, “I need written permission from the state just to move an icon” in the cathedral, which belongs to the Russian government, not the church.

With its control of the Nice cathedral secure and work on the new Paris cathedral moving toward completion, Moscow in February turned its sights on a small patch of Orthodox territory still beyond its control — a cemetery containing the graves of long-dead anti-Communist generals, a former czarist foreign minister, a relative of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, and scores of other Orthodox Christians, mostly Russians, who died on the French Riviera.

Christian Frizet, a zealously pro-Moscow French engineer, recalled how he went to the cemetery on instructions from the Russian Embassy in Paris and quickly loosened the lock on the iron gate. “It took me only five minutes and I did not even need a screwdriver,” he said.

Helped by Father Eliseev’s assistant at the cathedral, a former Russian military officer, Igor Sheleshko – who later died in the Nice terror attack — Mr. Frizet then put up a sign declaring the graveyard property of the Russian Federation and secured the gate with a padlocked chain.

Mr. Obolensky and his supporters have since taken down the sign, removed Mr. Frizet’s padlock and replaced it with their own. In a rare truce, it was agreed that each side should have a key.

“They will not stop until they control everything,” Mr. Obolensky said jokingly. “One day the Promenade des Anglais will be called the Promenade des Russes.”

Russian engagement in the Ukraine crisis. Is it really hybrid? By Maksym Beznosiuk New Eastern Europe, September 14, 2016 http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/articles-and-commentary/2121-russian-engagement-in-the-ukraine-crisis- is-it-really-hybrid

Over the past two years, many scholars in defense, security and other areas of study have attempted to examine and explain the Russian engagement in the Ukraine crisis through a broad range of conceptual approaches. Such concepts as asymmetric warfare, full spectrum conflict and hybrid warfare have been among the most frequently used conceptual approaches to decipher Russian activities in Ukraine. In this regard, hybrid warfare has been predominantly used to give meaning to Russia’s swift annexation of Crimea and current destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine. Many scholars have claimed that Russia is elaborating upon this hybrid warfare doctrine which was first successfully applied in Ukraine. Also, in their view, there is a high likelihood of such hybrid warfare techniques being replicated by Russia elsewhere in the region.

On the other hand, there are experts that point to the misleading perception of unprecedented nature of hybrid warfare concept, mainly due to the lack of newly displayed military and informational capabilities. Apart from that, they claim that there is no clear evidence of the emergence of Russia’s hybrid warfare doctrine. In their opinion, it is crucial not to overemphasise the novelty and recent transformations in Russian capabilities, while also not overlooking the importance of Soviet-inherited techniques and permissive environment for such hostile Russian actions in Ukraine. In addition, they point to the potential dangers and misperceptions which could be caused by applying the hybrid warfare concept to describe Russian engagement in Ukraine.

Such an absence of shared understanding and agreement over the very nature and key motives of Russia’s engagement in Ukraine has made it problematic for the international community to properly assess and address the informational and military challenges posed by Russia. Describing the Kremlin’s behaviour through conceptual approaches, which have emerged under other circumstances and conditions, prevents an adequate analysis and understanding of Russian engagement in Ukraine. It also makes it difficult to examine the recent attempts by Russia to adapt itself to the realities of modern warfare.

Hybrid warfare, Soviet-inherited practices and permissive environment in Ukraine

The term “hybrid warfare” has been in use since the early 2000s. It first appeared in the debates of military experts as an attempt to explain the behaviour of non-state actors, such as Hezbollah, who have managed to exploit the limited weaknesses of more powerful states (with conventional armies and technological and military hardware) through a mix of the limited military and informational tools at their disposal.

Nevertheless, there are several issues which make it problematic to apply this concept to the behaviour of state actors such as Russia.In spite of sounding new, hybrid warfare's analytical utility is quite limited due to its descriptive nature. The key reason for this is that it simply refers to a combination of conventional and unconventional types of warfare used to achieve political-military objectives. It does not describe a new form of combat and some of its frequently mentioned components such as information and cyber warfare, diplomacy, and the use of both conventional and guerrilla tactics have been the elements of such concepts as compound warfare, 4th generation warfare, full spectrum conflict, asymmetric warfare, and several others. These concepts have also emerged under special circumstances and have reflected the attempts of military and security experts to explain the evolution in the use of armed forces in conjunction with other elements of national power.

In spite of being popular among academia and policymakers in the West, the concept of hybrid warfare has not been in frequent use in the official documents produced by relevant state authorities in the West or in Russia. For example, this situation could be observed in the United States where it was concluded that the term hybrid warfare offers nothing new compared to other more frequently used concepts. Moreover, what is often mistaken for hybrid warfare doctrine applied by Russia in Ukraine could be better explained within the framework of the Soviet-inherited practices as well as recent transformation of military and informational capabilities of Russia.

In terms of the Soviet-inherited practices, specific attention should be paid to Russian information operations which rely on the combined use of active measures and reflexive control methods. The active measures represent deceptive operations which involve disinformation, political influence operations, and coordinated activities of various non-government and non-political organisations to promote relevant Russian goals. The roots of these measures can be traced back to the subversive warfare previously practiced by the KGB, the GRU, the Communist Party and Soviet Military Main Intelligence Directorate during the second half of the 20th century. Currently, one of the key goals of the Kremlin is to deceive public opinion by distorting information concerning the events in Ukraine and to influence the political, governmental, business and academic affairs of different countries. In light of the above, it should be stressed that the key purpose of these tactics is to counteract the political influence and information aggression of the West against the Russian state.

Reflexive control measures have also been successfully adapted and integrated within the recent Russian information operations. For a very long time, the Soviet and Russian Armed Forces have studied the use of reflexive control at operational and tactical levels, especially for disinformation and deception purposes, including ways to influence and control opponent’s decision-making processes. As of today, this method is regarded by many Russian military experts as more important in achieving military objectives than traditional conventional instruments. At the heart of reflexive control are attempts to make an enemy voluntarily choose the actions most advantageous to Russian objectives through shaping the enemy’s perceptions of the situation. In case of Ukraine, it was achieved through denial and deception operations to conceal the presence of Russian forces in the country and shaping the narrative about the Ukraine conflict through official channels and social media sources.

In terms of the transformation of military and information capabilities, Russian leadership has undertaken a broad range of steps aimed at modernising its armed forces and improving its overall information propaganda to catch up to the realities of modern warfare. As of today, it is evident that the Kremlin possesses a sufficient combination of both hard and soft power instruments to pressure and isolate countries such as Ukraine, while simultaneously deterring and preventing any possible support coming from Ukraine's far more advanced friendly states.

With regard to hard power instruments, Russia has been able to update and significantly strengthen its military capabilities within the last decade. Since Putin came to power in 2000, Russia has undergone a substantial military transformation, which has enabled it to overcome a post-Cold War legacy of the steady decline of armed forces. This was mostly due to the fact that the military budget was significantly increased in comparison with the early 1990s. For instance, the military budget in 1998 was 20.8 billion USD, while it was increased to 90 billion USD in 2013.

The 2008 military reform, with its structural and organisational remodelling, enabled a far greater centralisation of political-military control over armed forces. Moreover, mobility and rapid reactions capabilities were improved. In addition, in 2013 Russia initiated a pool of rapid deployment forces consisting of intelligence and special operation units, including other brigades to be engaged in the possible intervention in its neighbourhood. The annexation of Crimea demonstrated an excellent coordination of special operations.

In spite of such a substantial progress, however, the Russian army still faces a broad range of problems, under- financing being one of them. There is a shared understanding that it is still unrealistic to consider Russia as a compatible conventional rival to NATO. Hence, its nuclear arsenal makes up for its shortcomings in conventional capabilities and serves as the backbone of Russia’s deterrence against the West. In order to compensate for such a conventional disadvantage, Russia relies on a set of state-funded TV and radio channels as well as various online sources. The goal has been to mobilise information warfare technologies to unify the domestic public in support of Russia’s foreign policy and to promote the Kremlin’s neo-Eurasianist agenda abroad.

Russia has also managed to integrate cyber tools within its information operations. They were successfully applied during the information campaign against Ukraine which led to the quick consolidation of Russian control over Crimea. Unlike the campaigns previously conducted against Chechnya and Georgia, when Russian information operations encompassed active measures, reflexive control and psychological operations, Russia has managed to successfully apply cyber tools in Ukraine to maximise the efficiency of traditional information operations as well as conventional military efforts.

Finally, there has been a permissive environment which has helped to secure the relative success of Russian engagement in Ukraine. First of all, it was the proper timing for Russia to proceed with the annexation of Crimea due to a weakened Ukrainian leadership. The Russian engagement took place right after the new political forces took over the power following the Revolution of Dignity. During this time the Ukrainian leadership was concentrated on dividing political and economic spheres of influence rather than security and defence issues. Secondly, the operation was unique due to the presence of Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol and the status of its forces in Crimea. The circumstances enabled traditional military invasion and occupation of the peninsula by the combined use of available military brigades, special operations units and information techniques which ensured the smooth completion of the conventional seizure.

Thirdly, Russia has been backing pro-Russian separatism in Crimea since the early 1990s. The Kremlin has supported and controlled the activities of these groups and has maintained a contingent of civilians and intelligence officers in Crimea. It used a broad range of informational techniques to save the peninsula from “fascists” from Kyiv who were said to terrorise and repress ethnic Russians. At the same time, the Kagaranov’s Doctrine on the protection of Russians was used together with the rhetoric of returning Crimea back to the “Russian World.” As a result, it took around three weeks for Russia to carry out its well-prepared and well-conducted military takeover of Crimea. An illegal referendum on Crimea’s reunification with Russia, as well as Crimea’s declaration of independence and request to join Russia quickly followed.

“Hybrid” according to Russia

A lot of experts in the West tend to apply Western concepts to define Russia’s approach to modern warfare. Their use of the term “hybrid war”, which was developed to describe the current tactics of Russia, should be properly questioned due to several factors.

First of all, there is not much research aimed at exploring Russia’s perception of the concept of hybrid warfare. After taking a closer look at the ongoing scholarly debate, one notices a prevalent tendency to use the hybrid warfare concept to describe Russian actions in Ukraine through the prism of Western thinking. Such an approach misses the point because it disregards the current Russian thinking and the continuity of Soviet-inherited practices which significantly differ from Western approaches. Aside from this, there is little evidence to suggest that Russia defines its approach in Ukraine as hybrid. In fact, until recently the term hybrid warfare has been absent from the official Russian lexicon. Moreover, prior to the Ukraine crisis, it was frequently used to describe US warfare techniques. Following the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, Russian experts have widely considered the unfolding situation in the country as an example of the use of hybrid warfare techniques by the US to destabilise the situation in the post- Soviet space. Moreover, as the narrative continues, after the success in Ukraine the US could plan a similar hybrid warfare operation in Russia to topple the current leadership and install a pro-Western regime.

Second, not much effort has been made to examine the hybrid warfare concept within the Russian ideological context and compare it with Russia’s understanding of its role in the world. A siege mentality has prevailed among Russian leadership which has been reflected in official documents and debates since the early 2000s. The Kremlin sees the world through a geopolitical lens and Russia as being encircled by hostile forces, viewed as a continuation of Western attempts to destabilise Russia after the USSR’s collapse. Many Russian experts believe that such attempts could be observed in hybrid warfare techniques which combine a set of military, informational, economic and other means jointly used to undermine Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet space and within Russia itself. On a larger scale, the Kremlin considers hybrid warfare as an American tool of dragging regional actors under its umbrella and away from Russia. Hence, they believe that the US-led West intends to reach a global domination through the use of hybrid warfare techniques.

Finally, instead of mistakenly labelling Russian operations in Ukraine as hybrid warfare, more attention should also be drawn to the conceptual attempts of Russia to catch up with the realities of modern warfare. Within the last few years, Russian specialists have been working on conceptualising Russian understanding of modern warfare. This can be observed in the recent debates concerning the changing realities of modern warfare, which were triggered by the emergence of the Gerasimov Doctrine – often misquoted as the doctrine of Russian hybrid warfare. To be more precise, Russian scholarly research pays specific attention as to how the joint use of hard and soft power instruments could be more effectively applied across various domains together with more coherent application of economic and diplomatic tools. In this regard, the key focus of study has been on how to maximise the coordination and efficiency of non-military tools and minimise the use of military instruments.

It is of utter importance to pay attention to the continuity between Russian strategic military thinking and the many practices inherited from the USSR. What is often regarded as the Russian application of the doctrine of hybrid warfare in Ukraine is simply a combined use of active measures and reflexive control methods coupled with the conventional components that have undergone significant transformation and modernisation since the early 2000s. It is also crucial not to forget about the uniquely permissive environment in Ukraine which enabled Russia to undertake a swift and well-coordinated annexation of Crimea using both information and military tactics. It is highly unlikely that such conditions and environment could be replicated elsewhere in Europe.