NCSEJ WEEKLY NEWS BRIEF Washington, D.C. June 23, 2017
Trump meets Ukrainian leader amid Russia investigation By Vivian Salama Washington Post, June 20, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-meets-poroshenko-for-brief-drop-in-visit/2017/06/20/3f0aa70c- 55ce-11e7-840b-512026319da7_story.html?utm_term=.0ef47589bbaf
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump met with his Ukrainian counterpart Tuesday amid intensifying questions over whether his administration will step in to protect partners in the face of Russian aggression.
The meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was originally described by the White House as a brief “drop-in.” But the two presidents posed for photographs in the Oval Office and made brief remarks following Poroshenko’s more extensive meetings with Vice President Mike Pence and the administration’s top national security advisers.
With the Ukrainian leader sitting by his side, Trump said it was a “great honor” to meet Poroshenko and that “a lot of progress has been made” in the U.S. relationship with Ukraine.
There was no mention of Russia, nor did Trump respond to questions about the ongoing investigation over possible collusion by members of the Trump administration with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. Trump staunchly denies he had any contact with Russian officials during the campaign and has tweeted that the investigation is a “witch hunt” spearheaded by Democrats bitter over losing the election.
Trump has maintained that he hopes to establish better ties with Moscow, repairing ill will from the Obama era that resulted from Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its widely condemned support of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, despite his attacks against civilians. In April, following a suspected chemical attack against civilians in northern Syria by government forces, Trump said U.S. relations with Russia “may be at all-time low.”
But less than a month later, the president hosted top Russian diplomats in a closed-door Oval Office meeting that suggested relations weren’t so bad after all. Photos later emerged showing Trump laughing with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s envoy to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. The White House press corps was not allowed access to that meeting.
Trump has also raised concerns among NATO allies about whether he would turn his back on the military alliance, which partly promises U.S. support for European allies against Russian aggression. Trump has worked to assure European leaders that he will continue to support the alliance but insists that member countries meet their financial obligations to “pay their fair share.”
Poroshenko, speaking softly, said Tuesday he hopes the two countries can engage in “effective collaboration.”
In his meeting later with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Poroshenko said, “I think that we can expand our cooperation because we fight not only for our territorial integrity and our independence, not only for our sovereignty, we are fighting for freedom, we are fighting for democracy.”
The White House meeting began shortly after the Trump administration announced it has imposed sanctions on two Russian officials and three dozen other individuals and companies over Russian activities in Ukraine.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the new penalties are designed to “maintain pressure on Russia to work toward a diplomatic solution.”
In all, Tuesday’s action targets 38 individuals and firms. Any assets they have in the U.S. are now blocked. Americans are prohibited from doing business with them. The Russian officials affected are Moscow’s envoy for overseas Russians and its chairman for humanitarian assistance in separatist-held, eastern Ukraine.
Lavrov, speaking in Moscow Tuesday following talks with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, said the new restrictions “don’t help to improve the climate.” He added that he could “only voice regret about the Russo- phobic obsession of our American colleagues ... that has gone beyond any limits.”
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia are high even as the White House considers scheduling a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of next month’s G20 meeting.
Russia threatened this week to target U.S. coalition planes after the U.S. shot down a Syrian fighter jet for the first time.
White House statements on Poroshenko’s meetings with both Trump and Pence made no mention of Russia. However, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that the topic of Russia “obviously came up to discussion with the president today.”
Spicer said the administration will continue to “advocate” for sanctions so long as Russia continues its aggression in eastern Ukraine.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain on Tuesday lambasted the administration’s nominee to be the No. 2 official at the Pentagon, Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan, for initially sidestepping questions on whether he favors providing lethal weaponry to Ukraine. Shanahan told McCain he now supports it, but that did not seem to satisfy McCain, who said he was disappointed that the nominee did not initially have an opinion.
“Do not do that again, Mr. Shanahan, or I will not take your name up for a vote before this committee,” said McCain.
“We’ve not provided lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in the past, but we also don’t rule out the option of doing so in the future,” said Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis.
Readout of the Vice President’s Meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Office of the Press Secretary The White House, June 20, 2017 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/20/readout-vice-presidents-meeting-ukrainian-president- petro-poroshenko
The Vice President met today with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to reaffirm the United States' support for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and for President Petro Poroshenko's implementation of the reforms necessary to transform Ukraine into a peaceful, prosperous, and secure European country. The Vice President highlighted continuing U.S. support for the Normandy Format negotiations to implement the Minsk agreements and stressed the importance of continued reforms to fight corruption, improve the business climate, and keep Ukraine's International Monetary Fund program on track.
Trump Imposes New Sanctions on Russia Over Ukraine Incursion By Alan Rappeport and Neil MacFarquhar New York Times, June 20, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/united-states-sanctions-russia-ukraine.html
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Russia on Tuesday, unveiling sanctions on more than three dozen additional individuals and organizations that have participated in the country’s incursion in Ukraine.
The Treasury Department made the announcement on the same day that President Trump hosted his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro O. Poroshenko, at the White House to discuss a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Russia. The sanctions also came as Mr. Trump continues to face questions about whether his campaign colluded with Russia to help him defeat Hillary Clinton.
The new sanctions underscored the renewed tension in already abysmal relations between Washington and Moscow. On Monday, Russia threatened to target American and other coalition aircraft over Syria a day after an American fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said there should be no sanctions relief for Russia until it meets its obligations under the Minsk agreements — the 2015 cease-fire deal between Russia and Ukraine.
“These designations will maintain pressure on Russia to work toward a diplomatic solution,” he said. “This administration is committed to a diplomatic process that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty.”
Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are expected to meet for the first time on the sidelines of the G-20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, early next month. Sanctions are one of many potentially thorny issues on the table.
Mr. Putin was asked last week on his nationwide live call-in show whether Russia could weather sanctions indefinitely. He said the West had been trying to contain Russia for hundreds of years with such measures, with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea the latest excuse.
In some ways, he said, sanctions have made the country stronger as it has grown more self-reliant, but they have also harmed the Russian economy and Western countries that interact with it. “All of these restrictions do not produce anything good, and we should work toward a global economy that functions without these restrictions,” Mr. Putin said.
Asked about the latest sanctions at a news conference on Tuesday, Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that they were once again adopted “out of the clear blue sky” and that he regretted the “Russophobic obsession” of the United States.
The 38 individuals and entities newly designated by the Treasury Department were largely involved in efforts to try to knit Crimea and the breakaway Donbass region in eastern Ukraine more closely to Russia. A few were cheerleaders for the efforts.
Given that few of the individuals and entities have any known interactions outside Russia or areas of Ukraine under Russian influence, it is unclear that the sanctions will have an immediate effect on their work.
Various shell companies and banks used to extend Russian influence in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk were designated, as were officials who had suggested measures like using the Russian ruble in the region or issuing local passports that Russia would recognize.
In Crimea, the company insuring a $3 billion project to build a bridge linking the peninsula to the mainland was targeted, as well as a tourism project in the coastal city of Alushta.
Among the most intriguing sanctions were those involving a motorcycle gang, Mr. Putin’s chef and a shadowy company that supplies contract soldiers to Russian military efforts overseas. A catering company owned by the chef, Evgeniy Prigozhin, who is sometimes called “the Kremlin’s chef” and who was the subject of sanctions in 2016, was added to the list. Among other contracts, the company, Concord Catering, supplies food to many of Moscow’s public schools, according to Russian news reports. Journalists have also reported that Mr. Prigozhin has funded a factory of so-called internet trolls who endorse Russia’s fans and harass its foes abroad.
Aleksandr Zaldostanov, an ardent Putin supporter who is the leader of the nationalistic Night Wolves motorcycle club and is known as the Surgeon, was previously the subject of sanctions. This time, two administrators and two organizations with ties to the Night Wolves, including the group’s Bike Center in Moscow, faced sanctions.
“A whole U.S. ministry is thinking about the Night Wolves,” Mr. Zaldostanov told the Russian news website gazeta.ru after the announcement.
The new sanctions were also directed against Dmitry Utkin, the founder of PMC Wagner, a private military contractor that the Treasury Department said had recruited soldiers to join separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.
One Russian politician, Vladimir Dzhabarov, suggested that Moscow would weigh some manner of retaliation right away.
“We have to react calmly and, perhaps, to take a political decision on countermeasures,” Mr. Dzhabarov, the first deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian Parliament, was quoted as saying by the Tass news agency.
As a candidate, Mr. Trump suggested that his presidency would herald a new era of improved relations between the United States and Russia, but the various investigations into possible collusion by his campaign have dampened those hopes. Instead, members of Congress have become increasingly resentful of Russian efforts to interfere in American politics.
Last week, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate voted for a measure that would bolster existing sanctions and allow Congress to thwart any presidential effort to curtail sanctions without congressional approval.
Hal Eren, a former Treasury official who worked in the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in the 1990s, said the Trump administration’s move on Tuesday was probably related to concerns about Congress trying to tie its hands.
“I think it was prompted by this contemplated legislation and meant as a way for the administration to say, ‘Look, we are doing something about this, and there is no need for this law,’” Mr. Eren said. “It’s a way to say that Trump is tough on Russia.”
The Trump Administration Has a New Plan for Dealing with Russia By John Hudson Buzzfeed News, June 19, 2017 https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/this-is-the-trump-administrations-plan-for-dealing- with?utm_term=.hvnAPnrjA#.rkJ6ed8m6
As the White House fends off accusations of collusion with Russia, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has taken it upon himself to guide the Trump administration’s thinking on dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former Texas oilman, who worked extensively with Kremlin officials as CEO of Exxon Mobil, has crafted a three-point framework for future US-Russia relations that takes a narrow view of what can be achieved between the former Cold War adversaries, but seeks a constructive working relationship with Putin on a limited set of issues.
“Right now, US-Russia relations are in the gutter,” a senior State Department official familiar with the framework told BuzzFeed News. “We want to make sure it doesn’t flush into the sewer.”
The framework, a classified document that hasn't previously been revealed, has become the source of anxious speculation by US allies still puzzled about Trump's commitment to deterring Russia and bolstering NATO allies, even after his endorsement of the military alliance’s principle of collective defense.
The first pillar of the framework, a US official said, is to convey to Moscow that aggressive actions against the United States are a losing proposition that will be counterproductive for both sides. When Russia takes bold actions against American interests, such as sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan or harassing US diplomats in Moscow, Washington will push back.
The second pillar is to engage on issues that are of strategic interest to the United States, including the long- running civil war in Syria, North Korea's rapidly developing nuclear weapons program, and cybersecurity and cyberespionage, a US official said. Tillerson wants to reverse Moscow’s recent boost in trade with North Korea following some modest success in getting China to ban imports of coal from the rogue nation. He is seeking better coordination with Russia in Syria against ISIS, although it is unclear how that might be achieved. The two Cold War foes also maintain an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of cyberweapons, but lack a mutual understanding of what’s fair game and what isn’t.
The third pillar of Tillerson’s framework emphasizes the importance of "strategic stability" with Russia, an ambiguous umbrella term that encompasses a range of long-term mutual geopolitical goals.
“Right now, US-Russia relations are in the gutter. We want to make sure it doesn’t flush into the sewer.” “It's a mixture of pushing back and also engaging on issues where there might be convergence,” said Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine and a scholar at the Brookings Institution, after reviewing a framework summary.
Pifer said the framework is similar to a four-point strategy for dealing with Russia that the Obama administration created in 2015, after the Ukraine crisis upended efforts to “reset” relations with the Kremlin. The difficulty, he said, is knowing whether Trump will adhere to it or pursue a more ambitious grand bargain with Russia that shows deference to Moscow’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. “We’re talking about a Tillerson document,” he said. “If we’ve learned anything over the last four months, it’s that the president could throw it out at any moment.”
James Carafano, a defense expert who worked on the Trump transition team, defended the framework as a clever tool for Tillerson to show his boss the limits of engagement with Putin.
"Putin will deliver nothing on Syria or North Korea and this will allow Tillerson to show Trump he tried,” said Carafano. "It's not a reset because we are not giving away the farm at the front end to get nothing in return.”
A key difference from the Obama-era strategy is that the Tillerson framework does not expressly commit to building up the "resilience" of Russian neighbors. Obama’s strategy, drafted by his White House senior director for Russia, Celeste Wallander, pledged to make Eastern and Central European countries more “resilient against Russian tactics” through various democracy-building programs and the development of NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, which first deployed in June 2015 for a NATO exercise in Poland.
When asked about the omission, a State Department spokesperson said US support for Eastern Europe will remain in place, even if it isn’t explicitly stated in the framework. She pointed to Tillerson’s remarks during a Senate budget hearing last week pledging to maintain a “particular emphasis on the countries that we see in Europe that are most at risk of Russian interference.”
Tillerson’s reassurances were met with skepticism last week, when lawmakers including Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham questioned his budget proposal, which would cut US assistance to several countries in Russia’s sphere of influence. “What do we tell our friends in Georgia about reducing their aid about 66% given the threats they faced?” Graham said.
Tillerson said the goal of US aid programs has never been to provide assistance to US allies indefinitely.
Another difference from the Obama-era framework is how the Tillerson strategy was crafted. Under the Obama administration, Wallander lead the drafting process from her perch at the White House. Under the Trump administration, Tillerson and his top aides at the State Department took the lead on writing it.
“Tillerson and the State Department had the pen, which was different with how things worked in the Obama administration where the NSC had the pen,” said Charles Kupchan, who served as Obama’s senior director for Europe in the White House. “Under the Obama administration, the NSC drove the interagency process.”
A White House official familiar with the process said the drafting of the document originally began with Fiona Hill, the White House senior director for Europe and Russia. But during that process, Tillerson came forward with his own framework — a product of his personal views, numerous one-on-one luncheons with the president, and the State Department's director of policy planning, Brian Hook. Tillerson’s outsize influence on the document, which won approval at a meeting of White House cabinet officials including Secretary of Defense James Mattis, demonstrates the new power dynamics inside the Trump administration.
“What you’re seeing now is the reemergence of the role of the agencies, whether that be DoD, State or the intelligence community,” the senior State Department official said. “So things like this would start in the State Department.”
The State Department’s bigger role in the policymaking process is welcomed by some observers, who say the Obama White House often micromanaged the departments and agencies under its control.
“Most of my former colleagues from State would argue that the Obama NSC was way too operational,” Pifer said.
Others, however, view the National Security Council’s Fiona Hill as one of the few bona fide Russia experts on Trump’s leadership team, and worry that a diminished role for her would be to the detriment of US foreign policy.
“Fiona has lots of fans on Capitol Hill who don’t want to see her marginalized,” said a senior Republican Senate aide who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Hill, who in 2013 cowrote a critically acclaimed biography of Putin titled “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” did not travel with the large delegation of Trump officials to a key NATO meeting in Brussels in May, an absence that raised questions about her clout in the NSC. Meanwhile, she has been subjected to unusual public attacks by Roger Stone, a longtime friend and informal adviser to Trump, who has called her a “mole” and a globalist — a charge amplified by the controversial conspiracy theory website infowars.com. The website, which occasionally serves as a sounding board for the ultranationalist wing of the Trump White House, recently claimed Hill is “known for supporting [George] Soros-funded efforts to flood Europe with Muslim refugees from the Middle East,” a charge made without evidence.
When asked, a White House official pushed back against the notion that Hill is being marginalized, telling BuzzFeed News “Fiona remains in the lead of the NSC policy development process.”
Much of the concern about Hill’s status is due to a lack of Russia experts in leadership roles in the Trump administration, outside of Tillerson. The White House hasn’t nominated a deputy assistant secretary for Russia at the Pentagon, or an assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department. Tillerson has blamed the delay on the “extraordinarily burdensome” process of filling out paperwork to the Office of Government Ethics, but those procedures are not unique to this administration.
One appointment that could be announced in the coming weeks is that of Wess Mitchell, a Russia hawk and president of the Center for European Policy Analysis. Two individuals familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News that Mitchell is a top candidate to be nominated assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, the top US diplomat for Europe and Russia. Mitchell, a vocal Putin critic, also worked on Europe issues at the John Hay Initiative, a neoconservative-leaning policy shop run by Hook that offered foreign policy advice to Republicans running for public office.
The State Department is also struggling to find the right person to fill a new special envoy position to deal directly with the Russians on the Ukraine crisis. One individual familiar with the search said former State Department officials Dan Fried and Victoria Nuland have withdrawn their names from consideration for the position.
In the meantime, Tillerson has tapped Tom Shannon, a career foreign service officer and the State Department’s number three official, to help get US-Russia relations back on track. Shannon will travel to St. Petersburg on June 23 to address “irritants” between Moscow and Washington. One of the issues up for discussion is the return of two diplomatic compounds, or dachas, in New York and Maryland that were seized from Russia by the Obama administration as punishment for Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Then-president Barack Obama expelled Russian diplomats from the compounds in December, saying they were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes.”
Democrats skewered Tillerson last week about the planned talks, saying returning access to the Russians would send the wrong message about the gravity of interfering in US elections.
“[Why] would we even consider the return of those dachas as part of any discussions that we’re having with them?” asked New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
Tillerson said the potential return of the dachas would be discussed as part of a larger conversation about getting the US-Russia relationship back on track — an approach he formulated after his April meetings with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
“I came out of those meetings and I said our relationship is at the lowest level it’s been at since the Cold War and it’s spiraling down,” Tillerson told Shaheen. “The two greatest nuclear powers in the world can not have this kind of a relationship. We have to stabilize it and we have to start finding a way back.”
While the larger goal is to secure better cooperation with Russia on the crises in Syria and Ukraine, Tillerson said the two sides would begin working on a more modest “list of things that have been problematic for both of us.” On the US side, State Department officials are seeking permits for a US consular office in St. Petersburg, Tillerson said, and to put an end to the harassment of US embassy officials in Moscow. Russian officials, meanwhile, have been increasingly adamant in demanding the immediate return of the dachas.
Tillerson said US officials may be willing to allow Russian officials access to the compounds if they can ensure that they are not used for intelligence collection. Tillerson said he told the Russians the US is aware of its past espionage practices at the compounds. “We know what you were doing there,” he said. “We’re not going to allow you to continue to do that.”
Kennan Cable No. 23: Putin’s Middle East Triangle By Audrey Altstadt Wilson Center, June 19, 2017 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/kennan-cable-no23-putins-middle-east-triangle
Introduction
The recent Russian-Iranian-Turkish de-escalation plan for Syria tells us more about Russia’s geopolitical vision for itself than about Syria’s prospects for peace. The agreement forged on May 4 in Astana, Kazakhstan, calls for the three powers to assist with maintaining a cease fire and delivering humanitarian assistance in four de- escalation zones. Turkish and Russian troops will patrol the areas, but UN assistance is “not needed.” This plan may be no more effective than previously acclaimed cease-fires and this agreement has its own loopholes: Russia won’t bomb in those areas as long as “rebels” cease fighting. The identity of “rebels” and whether they really cease fighting will be judged by Russia.[1]
But the aims which the agreement reveals show the political aspirations of the parties. By making these powers co-guarantors of the projected de-escalation, the plan shores up each country’s position within Syria and the region. Turkey staves off the Kurds and Iran continues to support fellow Shi’ites and the Assad regime. The big winner, despite the costs, is Moscow. Russia is not merely poised to reestablish power (political, commercial, and military) in the Middle East, but asserts itself as the preeminent world power in this region at the expense of the United States.
Russian and Soviet Aims in the Middle East
Russian outreach to the Middle East has been a recurring foreign policy pattern since Muscovy strove for access to the Black Sea in the late 17th century. In the 18th century, Peter the Great built a fleet just to fight the Ottomans there. Catherine the Great took its north coast, with Crimea, and acquired special rights for Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman-held Holy Land. Later, Russian competition against France and Britain for access to the eastern Mediterranean led to the Crimean War in the 1850s. The collapse of the Romanov Empire during WWI ended Russian hopes for control of the Straits, and Stalin’s effort to revive that imperial goal met the same frustration at the end of World War II.
Bolshevik rule altered Russia’s rhetoric but not its goals. Lenin and the intellectual core of the Bolshevik leadership expected global revolution— not a revolution confined merely to Russia with its tiny proletariat. Given the limited reach of industrialism in his time, Lenin lit on the idea that the populations of the “colonial and semi-colonial world” constituted a kind of global working class to the capitalist-industrial empires like the British. After the World War, Lenin thought emergent Turkey and Iran were especially ripe for Bolshevik appeals. The Red Army’s occupation of the Caucasus, starting with Azerbaijan in 1920, put Lenin’s regime on the doorstep of the Middle East.
Azerbaijan’s capital, the industrial city of Baku, was thus transformed in Bolshevik strategy from the “alarm bell” for labor unrest in the tsarist period to a “springboard for the revolution” to the colonial world. To showcase Baku as a model of Soviet rule in “the Muslim world,” the oil city hosted the Congress of the Toilers of the East in September 1920, when the Bolsheviks controlled only part of Azerbaijan. Throughout that decade, the communist regime made policies in Baku with an eye to the impressions they were making in neighboring Muslim areas, especially Turkey and Iran. The restoration of political stability in those countries in the mid- 1920s led their leaders to reject Bolshevik overtures. Moscow did not reach out again for two decades, when the heavy hand of Stalin tried to grab territory from both Turkey and Iran after World War II. Only Stalin’s successors managed to approach the Middle East in a more congenial guise: not as a revolutionary beacon, but as a commercial partner and even as a “Muslim power” with millions of happy Muslims who had better electric power and more schools than neighboring Muslim states. Russian president Vladimir Putin has followed in the foots steps of both Peter the Great and Lenin and then went one better – he has forged commercial as well as military bonds with Iran and strengthened political relations with NATO-member Turkey, positioning Russia to be a bridge between the two as well as coordinator of policy in their neighborhood— specifically, in this decade, in Syria.
Putin’s Long Front in the West
Working quietly and consistently, Putin has reestablished Russian influence and even military presence in areas that tsars and commissars historically coveted. The Russian leader has spent a long time patiently building relations with Iran and Turkey through bilateral commercial deals, diplomacy, military cooperation, soft power such as tourism (to Turkey), and multi-lateral institutional bonds through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Russian-sponsored peace talks for Syria, starting early this year in Astana, Kazakhstan, followed a Russian-Syrian deal on the naval base at Tarsus and use of airbase near Latakia ensuring Russian presence there for next 49 years.[2]
There’s a pattern. Crimea (and thus Ukraine), the Straits (hence Turkey) and the eastern Mediterranean (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine) are, from the Russian perspective, one long front. Crimea is not part of a “Ukraine problem” as separate from the base at Latakia as part of a “Syria problem.” This long front extends northward to the Baltic and south to Suez. Only by looking at the map from this perspective, Moscow’s perspective, do the actions in these areas appear as parts of a single strategic policy that require a corresponding vision for analysis and response. By the same token, NATO-member Turkey, which breaks up that frontline of Russian expansion, has seemingly been softened as a bulwark of western influence by the newly cordial relations between Putin and Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is chafing under Western criticism of recent political repressions. Putin needs this emerging partnership for his strategic plan in the West, just as Erdoğan needs Russian gas and tourists.
What is behind that long front? From the Baltic to the Crimea, the rear is Russia itself. The southern part of this front, however, is bordered on the east by countries that Russia must strive to manage and in which Putin has varying degrees of leverage. East of Turkey lie the former Soviet republics of the south Caucasus -- Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. East of Syria is chaotic Iraq and regional power Iran. The relationships of these countries in the rear of Putin’s western front have enormous political, economic and strategic implications for Russia, the Middle East, and the world.
Caucasus in the Triangle
The states of the south Caucasus are situated at the center of the geopolitical triangle defined by Turkish- Russian-Iranian relations. But each of these three small states does not and cannot play the same role in this triangle. Armenia has a common border but no diplomatic relations with Turkey. Armenia borders Iran, with which it has a friendly relationship and trade, but has no common border with its political and economic ally Russia. And Yerevan is irked by Russian weapons sales to its enemy, Azerbaijan. Georgia is hostile toward Russia, which instigates separatist minorities along their common border in the restive Caucasus Mountains. But Tbilisi maintains cordial ties to its neighbor Turkey, a commercial partner and popular destination for Georgian tourists. Georgia has no common border with Iran but enjoys growing trade and Iranian investment in several key areas including energy and agriculture.
Oil/gas-rich Azerbaijan, in contrast, is the only state that borders Russia, Iran and Turkey, the latter for a 20- mile stretch in the exclave of Nakhjivan. It has diplomatic and commercial relations with all three of these neighbors and Georgia. The vital Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil export pipeline carries Baku oil to the Mediterranean at Ceyhan in Turkey, less than 200 miles north of the Russian naval base at Tarsus.[3] A natural gas pipeline from Baku through Turkey to Europe is under construction and dovetails with Russian-Turkish gas deals.[4] Finally, Azerbaijan is poised to be the final link in an overland corridor between Iran and Russia. Baku is becoming a major hub in the trilateral relations of its powerful neighbors.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev moves easily between at least two of these neighbors. Aside from his excellent command of English, his Russian is fluent and Azerbaijani is so close to Turkish as to be mutually intelligible. Relations with Iran are generally correct if not always cordial, especially under Rouhani. Despite Azerbaijan’s majority Shi’a population, contentious issues irritate Iranian- Azerbaijani relations including Baku’s relationship with Israel, Azerbaijan’s secularism, and Tehran’s fear that Azerbaijan as an independent state will attract Iranian Azerbaijanis who chafe under cultural pressures of the state and Persian majority. Nonetheless, Azerbaijan’s location and energy resources make it a major player in the region despite its sham elections, human rights violations, and rampant corruption.
The Southern Front
Certainly the weakest leg of this triangle is Turkish- Iranian relations. The two are adversaries who have competed for territory and resources for centuries. Iran’s adoption of Shi’ism as the state religion around 1501 added a sectarian component to their mutual enmity. There are currently grounds for rapprochement. The main common interest for present rulers in Ankara and Tehran is keeping the Kurds down. This imperative has led to some Turkish acquiescence on Iran’s role in Iraq, exemplified by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s February visit to Baghdad to get support for keeping the PKK out of Iraq’s northern Sinjar region.[5] Ankara may drop objections to keeping Assad in Damascus to get a free hand against Syrian Kurds, and the early May Astana agreement codifies that trade-off.
Other issues, particularly in Syria, continue to block Turkish-Iranian cooperation. Competing projects for gas pipelines through Syria will benefit only one of these states. One pipeline would run from Qatar through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to Bulgaria. The other would begin in Iran and transit Iraq and Syria then, skirting Turkey, would run under the Mediterranean to Greece.[6] Both projects need Syria. Either one of these, or any new gas pipeline for that matter, stands to reduce European dependence on Russian gas and thus undermines Gazprom earnings and Moscow’s leverage in Europe. As long as Syria is mired in civil war, no construction can take place. The Astana plan, with its exception to respond to “rebel action,” gives the guarantor state a perpetual license to bomb any zone.[7] Russia has already done so in previous cease fires. And should peace break out on the basis of these zones, the competition of the guarantors on the ground may perpetually delay construction, also to Russia’s benefit. Thus all gas pipeline plans involving Syria remain a pipedream.
North South Transit Corridor (NSTC)
In contrast, the North-South Transit Corridor (NSTC) is already a reality. It will soon link Iranian and Russian rail systems through Azerbaijan, the only state bordering both nations. The land route will rival, and perhaps shift trade away from, the maritime trade route through the Suez Canal with economic, political and military repercussions around the globe.
The concept for this overland transit corridor goes back at least to 2002. Development moved ahead mostly below the international radar as Iran extended its domestic north-south rail line which ran from Bandar-i Abbas, a major Iranian port on the Persian Gulf, north to Qazvin. The project got a very public boost with an August 2016 meeting in Baku of presidents Putin, Aliyev, and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani. By January 2017, the Iranian extension of the rail line northward from Qazvin to Rasht near the Azerbaijani border was 90 percent complete.
Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia are three oil/gas-producing countries who have been hurt by the drop in oil prices. The two larger states are both objects of Western sanctions, and Azerbaijan is potentially a target of the Global Magnitsky Act. All three are regularly criticized by Western organizations and states for human rights violations and failures of democratic process in elections, legislature, and judiciary. The three presidents are banding together in this financial and political deal overtly for trade and “security,” a cover for quashing domestic unrest and rebuffing foreign critics. Other aims are likely military and intelligence cooperation.
Russia and Azerbaijan have, in the last year, pledged an unspecified amount of financing[8] for the completion of the last crucial rail link between Astara, Azerbaijan and Rasht, Iran. The 140-km of track is scheduled to be completed during 2017, potentially shifting millions of tons of trade away from the maritime routes. Cargo, possibly including military, via the NSTC is projected to reach 6 million tons per year at opening and 15-20 million tons per year in the future.[9] Smuggling becomes easier as well. Passenger traffic raises security challenges given the proximity of such terrorist groups as the Islamic State.
The Win-Win-Win Deal
The NSTC is a win-win-win deal. It helps Iran break out of its international isolation imposed mainly by the US since the hostage-taking of 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran will be able to link its domestic railway to Russia’s and also connect its port of Bandar-i Abbas, which receives substantial trade from India. With the new rail connection, Iran stands to capture an even larger share of trade from India that presently transits to Europe via the maritime route. The expanded volume of trade, together with the demands of maintaining the rail system, will generate revenue for Iran and may contribute to Rouhani’s pledge to create non-oil jobs for Iran’s young population. These steps will enable Tehran to project a stronger image in economic and soft power to constituents from the eastern Mediterranean to central and south Asia. Moreover, this project has a mirror image in eastern Iran with the under-construction rail lines from the port of Chabahar (another destination for south Asian goods) north to Zahedan on border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. The next step may be north to Turkmenistan. Meanwhile, China is developing Pakistan’s Gwadar port as part of its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) meant to avoid shipping Middle Eastern oil to Asia through the Straits of Malacca.[10] Iran gains with either one of these projects, and even more so if both are completed. In time, US sanctions may become only a minor annoyance.
Azerbaijan has been planning to become a transit hub since the 1990s. Discussions of this vision have focused on east-west transit trade linking Central Asia and perhaps China to the Middle East and Europe through Turkey. That idea does not, of course, preclude the north-south corridor that is nearing completion. The drop in oil prices of 2014 hit Azerbaijan hard with catastrophic loss of income, despite claims to the contrary (Azerbaijan’s currency the manat has been devalued three times since early 2015, most recently last January). The NSTC will not only bring in millions, but unlike diversification of the economy with local manufacturing, will concentrate this income flow at the top of government, benefitting the oligarchs who are deeply involved in construction and transportation sectors. This in turn strengthens the Aliyev family’s hold on power.[11]
Azerbaijan has reached out to other potential partners for NSTC trade. In January, Aliyev’s government signed an agreement with the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia to expand Islamic practices of lending in Azerbaijan.[12] And the Saudis are interested in the NSTC. Apparently, they are willing to hold their noses and trade with or through Iran via Bandar-i Abbas.
Russia: The Biggest Winner
Russia stands to gain not only from the NSTC, but also from its commercial and military relations with all its partners in the triangle and in the Caucasus. First the NSTC: Putin has said the new overland corridor would be an alternate (shorter, cheaper) trade route for goods from Asia to Europe. Russia can therefore tax goods going west and might make additional deals to send trade eastward, boosting commerce, and thus political bonds, with Central Asia and China. Moreover, Russian control over one stream of trade into Europe, like the flow of gas, may give Moscow leverage, albeit marginal, over Western countries.
Iran has been a key partner in Russia’s projection of power into the Middle East, permitting Russia use of its bases and transit through its air space. After resolving the crisis of the shoot-down of one stray Russian plane in Turkish airspace last year, Ankara has made its peace with Russian military presence in warships off its coast on the way to their Syrian base. These partnerships and the agreement on Syria give Russia greater access to returning Chechen jihadis whose influence could threaten Russia control in the Caucasus.
Is Russia truly a big winner in Syria after its own bombers have reduced to rubble infrastructure and entire sections of major cities like Aleppo? If Russia under Putin wants to “save” Syria as well as Assad’s regime and make it a viable and grateful client, then such destruction works against that goal. But if Putin wants to show that he controls the ground game in this strategic area, that Russia and not the United States is the most important power in the eastern Mediterranean, then the destruction only enhances his position there and his image. The use of overwhelming force is part of Russian military doctrine, as demonstrated against “radicals” in Grozny, Chechnya. Moreover, a Russian victory here can be spun as a victory for Russian “values” of stability and a defeat for Western values of democracy and human rights, which authoritarians claim is destabilizing and intrusive. The new US leadership has conceded the latter. With Western influence and traditional principles undercut, the greatest losers are the people in the conflict zone who hope for an end to repression.
Endnotes:
1 Thanks to Henri Barkey, Sarah Chayes, and Rajan Menon for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.
2 Rod Nordland, “Russia Signs Deal for Syria Bases’ Turkey Appears to Accept Assad,” NYT Jan 20, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/ world/middleeast/russia-turkey-syria-deal. html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20
3 Michael Peck, “How Russia Is Turning Syria into a Major Naval Base for Nuclear Warships (and Israel Is Worried),”
The National Interest, March 18, 2017; http:// nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/how-russia-turning-syria-major- naval-base-nuclear-warships-19813
4 The Trans-Anatolian pipeline or TANAP will be an extension of the existing South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) that now carries gas from Baku to Erzurum; it is expected to be complete in late 2018 and to carry gas to western Turkey and Europe in 2020. See http://www.bp.com/en_ge/bp-georgia/about-bp/bp-in-georgia/south- caucasus... scp-.html for details.
5 Baraa Sabri, “Saudi and Iranian Rapprochement in the Face of Russia and Turkey,” Feb 15 2017, http://www. washingtoninstitute.org/fikraforum/view/saudi-and-iranian-rapprochement-in-the-face-of-the-russia- and-turkey
6 Charis Chang, “Is the fight over a gas pipelines fueling the world’s bloodiest Conflict,” Dec 2, 2015; http://www.news. com.au/world/middle-east/is-the-fight-over-a-gas-pipeline-fuelling-the-worlds-bloodiest- conflict/news-story/74efcba95 54c10bd35e280b63a9afb74
7 The terms are similar to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that protected Estonia as long as it remained neutral but left the definition of that neutrality up to Moscow.
8 Azertac January 7, 2017; “Russia ready to finance Rasht- Astara railway construction,” 26, November 2016, (http:// realiran.org/russia-ready-to-finance-rasht-astara-railway-construction/)
9 In 2007, 7,700 container ships carried over 318,000 tons of cargo through the Suez Canal noted a World Shipping Council Report (http://www.worldshipping.org/ pdf/suez-canal-presentation.pdf). A 2017 report (Luke Graham, “Cargo ships could save thousands by skipping the Suez Canal,” CNBA 26 Feb 2017; http://www.cnbc. com/2016/02/26/cargo-ships-could-save-thousands-by-skipping-the-suez-canal.html) noted that with falling oil prices, some ships avoid the costly canal fees and use the longer route around Africa.
10 On the Chabahar port project and Modi visit to Iran May 2016 – Diplomat article (July 11, 2016, by Kabir Taneja)
11 Amina Nazali, “Iran minister says joint transport projects to bring multiple benefits,” January 18, 2017, http://today.az/ news/business/157826.html
12 Nigar Abbasova (Today.az), “Azerbaijan, IDB signed grant agreement…” January 18, 2017, http://today.az/news/business/157828.
The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author.
A majority of Russians don’t trust Putin to stop corruption. But they trust him to run the country. By David Filipov Washington Post, June 20, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-majority-of-russians-dont-trust-putin-to-solve-corruption-but- they-trust-him-to-run-the-country/2017/06/20/fed1abcc-55b9-11e7-840b- 512026319da7_story.html?utm_term=.0e58c7d2f214
MOSCOW — At a time when public anger over government corruption has led to Russia’s most widespread protests in years, fewer than half of Russians are confident in President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to rein in crooked officials, according to a survey released Tuesday.
The survey, by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, finds Russians generally confident in their country’s direction, enthusiastic about Moscow’s growing say in world affairs and increasingly sanguine about the economy. A whopping 87 percent of those surveyed said they trust Putin to represent their country’s interests on the global stage.
But approval of the job Putin is doing to eliminate corruption has fallen over the past two years, from 62 percent to 49 percent, according to the center, which conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,002 Russians between February and April.
That time span coincides with the first of two nationwide anti-corruption protests spearheaded by opposition activist Alexei Navalny, after he alleged that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had illicitly acquired $1 billion in yachts, mansions and vineyards through bribes.
The anti-corruption rallies are part of a wave of dissatisfaction in Russia unseen since 2012, most of it connected with popular misgivings about official malfeasance.
“Our data indicate that although Russians have a high level of confidence in their president when it comes to global affairs, they nevertheless point to serious problems within their country that affect their daily life,” said Margaret Vice, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. “Corruption is also Russians’ second-top concern, second only to rising prices, with almost 9 in 10 saying corrupt political leaders pose a problem for Russia.”
In recent months, Russia has seen rallies by long-distance truckers angry about road tolls collected by a company run by the son of one of Putin’s oldest friends.
Moscow apartment owners who oppose the city’s plan to relocate as many as 1.6 million Muscovites have held several large protests. A recent Transparency International report characterized the relocation as a gift to Russia’s “construction lobby,” builders and suppliers who have fallen on lean times because of a recession.
Questions and text messages about corruption popped up during Putin’s annual live call-in show three days after nationwide protests June 12, puncturing his effort to convey good news about an economy finally nosing its way out of the recession.
While Navalny’s popularity in Russia remains minuscule, 58 percent of respondents in a poll conducted by Russia’s independent Levada Center displayed a positive attitude toward anti-corruption protests.
None of this suggests that Putin’s chances of being reelected to a new six-year term next March are in any danger, said Natalia Zorkaya, head of sociological research at the Levada Center, which posts frequent polls showing that Putin’s approval rating has not dipped below 80 percent since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Confidence in Putin, she said, “is not decreasing, despite the growth of dissatisfaction with domestic problems.” And “even though the protest mood in society is growing,” this mood “will not affect elections and the victory of Putin,” she said.
Zorkaya said that “the confirmation of the country as a great power” is a far more powerful source of Putin’s popularity than the protest movement is a draw against it.
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan institute, and neither its survey nor its researchers were willing to draw political conclusions about the results. But several of the findings support Zorkaya’s comments.
The Pew survey found that 59 percent of Russians think their country plays a more important role in world affairs than it did a decade ago, and 58 percent are satisfied with the direction Russia is taking, up from 20 percent in 2002.
However, support for Putin’s handling of relations with the United States dropped from 85 percent in 2015 to 73 percent this year, Pew found. Putin also received lower marks for relations with the European Union, China and Ukraine.
Natalya Abbakumova contributed to this report.
Putin-Era Taboo: Telling Why Some Soviets Aided Nazis By Andrew Higgins New York Times, June 21, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/world/europe/vladimir-putin-russia-vladimirmelikhov.html
PODOLSK, Russia — As a former Soviet factory director, Vladimir Melikhov survived the brutal business turf wars of the 1990s to make a fortune in construction. Now he devotes his energy and money to what, in the Russia of President Vladimir V. Putin, has become a truly risky enterprise: digging into Russian history.
Mr. Melikhov has founded a private museum that is devoted to the memory of the “anti-Bolshevik resistance” and that delves into a singularly taboo topic — why many Cossacks and other persecuted Soviet citizens welcomed, at least initially, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
The museum, housed in a three-story building he built himself on his private estate in Podolsk, south of Moscow, makes no attempt to glorify Nazi collaborators. But it has enraged the authorities by focusing on the relentless persecution that followed Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik revolution, creating fertile ground for anti-Soviet treachery during a war that cost 25 million Soviet lives.
“What they really don’t like is that I make people think about what happened in the past and what is happening today,” Mr. Melikhov said.
As a result, he has been denounced on state television as a traitor, Russian border guards have defaced his passport to prevent him from leaving the country, and he has faced a string of seemingly trumped-up criminal charges. Last week, a court in Podolsk found him guilty of illegal weapons possession and sentenced him to a year of “restricted freedom” — house arrest or some other limits on his movements.
The hostility of the Russian state toward Mr. Melikhov is a measure of how the history of World War II, which Russians know as the Great Patriotic War, is a delicate topic — particularly at a time when Mr. Putin and his allies constantly refer to the conflict to fortify their legitimacy.
A Nazi poster claiming that the German Army was the defender of the Soviet people. The museum is housed in a building Mr. Melikhov built himself on his private estate. Credit James Hill for The New York Times They cast themselves as the true heirs of wartime patriots and vilify their foes — like the anticorruption campaigner Aleksei A. Navalny, who orchestrated nationwide protests against the Kremlin last week — as sellouts akin to Nazi collaborators.
With communism ditched and liberal capitalism largely discredited as an alternative, the Soviet Union’s victorious 1941-45 struggle against Nazism has become the untouchable cornerstone of a new state ideology built around a sanitized history of patriotic sacrifice, discipline and national unity.
“The myth of the Great Patriotic War is the founding myth of contemporary, post-1991 Russia,” said Serhii Plokhii, a Russian-born history professor at Harvard. “Anything that challenges that myth, understood as the victory of the unified Russian people over the hostile West, or introduces shades of gray into the black-and- white picture of the battle between good and evil, is rejected and attacked.”
Mr. Melikhov is not the only one to be singled out. A state committee in Moscow recently vetoed a decision by scholars in St. Petersburg to award a doctoral degree to Kirill Alexandrov, a historian. His dissertation, on the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, an outfit set up in 1944 with German support to rally opposition to Stalin’s regime, was deemed insufficiently patriotic.
Mr. Melikhov believes that his principal crime, as far as officials are concerned, is not just the matter-of-fact treatment of reviled traitors at his museum in Podolsk, and another museum of his near Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia.
A bigger problem, he said, is that any open discussion of the choices Russians made during the war undermines Mr. Putin’s efforts to rally Russia around the heroism of the past and his hostility to the internal and external enemies that the Kremlin presents as besieging the country.
“The Soviet Union collapsed, but the Soviet system of rule and thinking has stayed the same,” Mr. Melikhov said. “There was monopolization of political power, monopolization of economic power, monopolization of mass media, monopolization of civil society. Today, the basic elements of this Soviet system are all being put back in place.”
The evidence presented against Mr. Melikhov at his trial consisted of a rusty 19th-century gun from his museum collection and a stash of bullets that did not fit any weapon in his possession. Mr. Melikhov said investigators had planted them.
“I struggled against many bandits in the 1990s, but now it is even worse: You can’t fight back against our officials,” he said in an interview at his estate, a fenced-in compound of brick buildings, lush gardens and a pond built atop a Soviet-era waste dump.
If not for his interest in history, Mr. Melikhov, 60, would seem a good fit with Mr. Putin’s vision of a resurgent Russia built around traditional values and muscular patriotism.
Mr. Melikhov is a descendant of Cossacks, the rugged horsemen who secured the frontiers of the Russian empire and whose members have been in the forefront of various nationalist causes since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. He is also an Orthodox Christian and has built a handsome wooden church next to his house in Podolsk.
But years of work collecting and reading old books and documents have convinced Mr. Melikhov that what Mr. Putin and his allies in the Orthodox Church and elsewhere celebrate as Russian tradition grossly distorts the past.
He said that while Mr. Putin had helped lift Soviet-era suspicion of Cossacks, who mostly sided with anti- Bolshevik forces during Russia’s 1917-22 civil war, he had forgotten the core of the Cossack creed.
“The most important value for a Cossack has always been his own freedom,” Mr. Melikhov said.
That reading of Cossack tradition, which many still associate with pogroms and brutal service to an expanding Russian empire under the czar, has helped Mr. Melikhov win unlikely support from Russian liberals.
Mr. Melikhov, a descendant of Cossacks, with a painting depicting the forced repatriation of Cossacks by the British in 1945. “The most important value for a Cossack has always been his own freedom,” he said. Credit James Hill for The New York Times One prominent fan is Andrey Zubov, a liberal historian who was removed from his post at a prestigious Moscow institute after he compared Mr. Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine to Hitler’s annexation of territory in 1939. Mr. Zubov promptly earned himself a place on a list of “traitors” assembled by Mr. Putin’s supporters.
“Communism is obviously dead as an ideology,” he said. “There is no communism. But there is a Soviet way of thinking, a Soviet form of imperialism that survives and that authorities want to protect from historical facts.”
Calling someone a traitor, Mr. Zubov added, shuts down all discussion: “A traitor is an enemy, something awful, but it has become just another way for our authorities to describe somebody who merely has a different point of view.”
A website called predatel.net, which translates as traitor.net, features a list of Moscow intellectuals and others who are deemed to have betrayed their country, and invites readers to fill in a form and “suggest a traitor” to add to the list.
Who stands behind the website is a mystery, but its mission meshes with a message promoted tirelessly by the Kremlin and state-controlled media since the crisis in Ukraine in 2014: Russia is under threat from within and without by enemies that must be exposed and defeated.
Mr. Melikhov said the latest case against him had been orchestrated not by local prosecutors in Podolsk but by the Federal Security Service in Moscow, the domestic intelligence arm of the old Soviet K.G.B., after he publicly supported an anti-Kremlin political party before parliamentary elections last year.
He also opposed the annexation of Crimea, the prime litmus test of supposed treachery, a charge that Mr. Melikhov said was being applied to those who merely disagreed publicly with the Kremlin.
“What they really don’t like is that I make people think about what happened in the past and what is happening today,” Mr. Melikhov said of the authorities. Credit James Hill for The New York Times That, he said, is what makes his two museums so threatening: They prod the thousands of ordinary Russians who have visited to think about their own history and question simple labels like patriot and traitor. They also amplify questions that professional historians have quietly raised about official accounts of the war.
Those official versions tend to play down Stalin’s 1939 pact with Hitler, his murderous purge of military officers in the 1930s and the relentless persecution of perceived internal enemies before the Nazi invasion.
In the museum guest book, a visitor wrote, “Thank you to the creators and curators of this museum for the opportunity to look at those pages of our history that the official authorities try to hide from us.”
Determined to fortify the official line of heroic unity and almost superhuman endurance, the authorities have steadily restricted access to historical archives that opened up after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
They have also come down hard on scholars who question popular legends like the story of 28 guardsmen led by Maj. Gen. Ivan Panfilov who sacrificed themselves to help beat back German troops advancing on Moscow in the winter of 1941.
The longtime director of the Russian State Archive, Sergei Mironenko, was removed from his job last year after he exposed the story as “fiction” invented by Soviet propagandists.
In response, Russia’s deeply conservative culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, declared that inconvenient historical facts should not be allowed to stand in the way of cherished national myths.
Wartime heroes like Panfilov and his men, the minister ordered, must be treated like “saints,” and those who cast doubt on their exploits are “scum” who “should burn in hell.”
State Dept.’s anti-Semitism monitoring office to be unstaffed as of July 1 By Ron Kampeas JTA, June 22, 2017 http://www.jta.org/2017/06/22/news-opinion/politics/state-dept-s-anti-semitism-monitoring-office-to-be- unstaffed-as-of-july-1
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. State Department’s office to monitor and combat anti-Semitism will be unstaffed as of July 1.
A source familiar with the office’s workings told JTA that its remaining two staffers, each working half-time or less, would be reassigned as of that date.
The Trump administration, which has yet to name an envoy to head the office, would not comment on the staffing change. At full staffing, the office employs a full-time envoy and the equivalent of three full-time staffers.
The State Department told JTA in a statement that it remained committed to combating anti-Semitism – and cited as evidence the tools, including the department’s annual reports on human rights and religious freedom, that existed before Congress mandated the creation of the envoy office in 2004.
“We want to ensure the Department is addressing anti-Semitism in the most effective and efficient method possible and will continue to endeavor to do so,” the statement said.
“The Department of State condemns attacks on Jewish communities and individuals. We consistently urge governments around the world to address and condemn anti-Semitism and work with vulnerable Jewish communities to assess and provide appropriate levels of security.
“The Department, our Embassies, and our Consulates support extensive bilateral, multilateral, and civil society outreach to Jewish communities,” the statement continued. “Additionally, the State Department continues to devote resources towards programs combating anti-Semitism online and off, as well as building NGO coalitions in Europe. We also closely monitor global anti-Semitism and report on it in our Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and International Religious Freedom Report, which document global anti-Semitism in 199 countries.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress in testimony earlier this month that he believed special envoys were counterproductive because they provided an excuse to the rest of the department to ignore the specific issue addressed by the envoy.
Congressional lawmakers from both parties have pressed the Trump administration, in letters and proposed bills, to name an envoy and to enhance the office’s status. They have noted that unlike other envoys, whose positions were created by Trump’s predecessors, the office of the envoy on anti-Semitism is a statute and requires filling.
“As the author of the amendment that created the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, I remain hopeful that these critical positions will be filled,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who authorized the 2004 law, said in a statement to JTA.
Jewish groups have lobbied President Donald Trump to name an envoy, saying that despite Tillerson’s testimony, the position has been key to encouraging diplomats and officials throughout the department to focus on anti-Semitism. Hannah Rosenthal, a special envoy on anti-Semitism in the Obama administration, instituted department-wide training on identifying anti-Semitism.
“The idea of having a dedicated envoy who can travel around the world to raise awareness on this issue is critical,” the Anti-Defamation League CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, told JTA in an interview.
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t value for all ambassadors and every embassy in addressing issues of anti- Semitism and bigotry in countries they operate,” he said. “But if the administration is truly committed” to combating anti-Semitism, “maintaining the special envoy for anti-Semitism seems like a no-brainer.”
The ADL, coincidentally, launched an online petition Thursday to the White House to fill the position.
Officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has enjoyed a good relationship with the Trump administration, said that if the unstaffing was coming ahead of a reorganization of the office, that was understandable. But positions remain unfilled in all of the major federal departments and agencies since Trump took office.
“However, we are almost in July and there is still no one of proper rank at the State Department whom the Wiesenthal Center and others can work with to re-activate US leadership in the struggle against anti-Semitism at a time when global anti-Semitism is rising,” said an email from Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the center, and Mark Weitzman, its director of government affairs.
Jason Isaacson, the American Jewish Committee’s director of government and international affairs, said the position was essential.
“It’s not as though the need for a special envoy has diminished,” he told JTA in an interview. “If anything it has increased.”
EU Justice Minister: Progress Made in Fighting Antisemitism on Social Media By Yonah Jeremy Bob The Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2017 http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/EU-justice-minister-progress-made-in-fighting- antisemitism-on-social-media-497467
“Lawyers and experts have to consider that this hate speech can incite real violence in the real world.”
The European Union has made a “big improvement” in motivating social media giants to combat antisemitism on their platforms, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Vera Jourova told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Jourova spoke to the Post leading up to her visit to Israel that begins on Thursday and ends next week as part of the 11th EU-Israel seminar on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and Antisemitism.
While noting that “antisemitism is on the rise in Europe,” she said the EU was trying to stop this “with a code of conduct which information technology companies adopted,” obligating them to “swiftly take down hate speech online and on social media.”
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (run by Google) are all signed on to the initiative.
Next, she was asked about claims that the EU and social media giants often look the other way when antisemitic posts are dressed up as anti-Israel posts to make them look like political speech.
She said, “We try hard to push information technology companies to push back against posts supporting killing or injuring Jews. I have never heard criticisms that we would not protect Israel or some specific state.”
Jourova added, “Lawyers and experts have to consider that this hate speech can incite real violence in the real world,” noting they need to review their “criteria about whether to take it down or not. It’s on them to do it. I can only” hope they will remove xenophobia and other content that is “prohibited by law.”
The EU justice minister, a former Czech minister for regional development, emphasized that “freedom of speech is a priority..., but it is not beyond the rule of law.”
She said that her work had shown that initially, social media platforms were “not very systematic in their approach to notifications” they received about hate speech online.
“So we discussed with IT providers to take it very seriously” and to follow-up on “notifications wherever they come from,” as well as “to respond to those who notify regarding what has been done with the notification,” she said.
According to the EU’s recent report, “the IT companies committed in particular to reviewing the majority of valid notifications of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and to removing or disabling access to such content.”
Although an earlier report found more modest progress by social media, the recent report found that “in 59% of the cases, the IT companies responded to notifications concerning illegal hate speech by removing the content. This is more than twice the level of 28% that was recorded six months earlier.”
Furthermore, “the amount of notifications reviewed within 24 hours improved from 40% to 51% in the same six- month period. Facebook is however the only company that fully achieves the target of reviewing the majority of notifications within the day,” said the report.
As for counterterrorism cooperation, Jourova said Israel and the EU could help each other “because we face the same challenges in... digital space and with evidence. Some terror attacks could be under preparation... and is it hidden in the cloud or in other places.”
Two specific areas she hopes to work on with Israel are forging an agreement between the Eurojust’s agency and Israel to enhance law enforcement cooperation and in the sphere of countering terrorism financing.
“According to our intelligence, financial transfers usually are the first indication that something is being prepared,” she said, while qualifying that this did not help combat “lone wolf” terrorism.
She was asked to address the gap between the US, Israel and other nations that have pushed for the balance between security and human rights to be closer to security than in Europe, which still places greater emphasis on privacy rights.
The EU justice minister said, “I am the one who negotiated... the legal conditions for transferring private data from Europe to the US” after the Edward Snowden fallout showed the US had not met EU privacy standards. “The emphasis of security in the US is somewhat higher than the protection of privacy, while in Europe we are still more sensitive about this.”
Pressed about signals that some European countries recently hit by terrorism may move closer to the US/Israeli approach, she said, “Obviously there is some kind of increased demand for security now in Europe, which means people say, ‘Yes, we are willing to give up part of our freedom,’ but again it must be limited and we must be very vigilant lest it go to far.”
Regarding the new cyber and “fake news” threat to European elections, she said, “I don’t even think that it has a technical solution.
It must be counteracted by educating people not to be impacted by fake news from the computer and we must intensify active defenses against” these phenomena.
In the area of gender equality, she said that her conversations with Israeli officials would focus on measures to protect women from violence and to block gender discrimination in the field of developing technologies.
Jourova pointed out that she previously visited Israel in 1998, celebrating the state’s 50th birthday.
On this trip she will meet with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel, speak at a Tel Aviv University cyber conference and visit Yad Vashem.
Romania’s government collapses as ruling party MPs oust prime minister By Jon Henley The Guardian, June 21, 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/21/romanias-government-collapses-as-ruling-party-mps-oust- prime-minister
Romania’s prime minister has been toppled after the parliament passed a vote of no confidence tabled by his party.
Barely six months after winning elections, Sorin Grindeanu was ousted by almost all the MPs in his leftwing Social Democratic party (PSD) with the backing of their junior coalition partners, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE).
The motion of no confidence, which accused Grindeanu of delays in carrying out planned economic and social reforms in one of the EU’s poorest countries, passed by 241 votes to seven, more than the 233 required.
Despite the resignation of 25 of the 26 ministers in his cabinet, Grindeanu, who was appointed prime minister after the PSD won 46% of the vote in December’s elections, had refused to step down when his party withdrew its support last week.
He instead accused the PSD’s powerful leader, Liviu Dragnea – who is barred from running for office because of a 2016 vote-rigging conviction but continues to dominate the party – of trying to “concentrate all the power” in his hands.
“This is a sad day for us. The premier did not perform,” Dragnea told MPs before the vote on Wednesday. “It didn’t go badly, it went quite well, but that’s not enough.”
He accused Grindeanu of “clinging on … in a highly illegitimate way”.
Grindeanu said he would remain in office until a new government was installed, adding that Dragnea’s influence would mean whoever replaced him as prime minister “has no chance of exercising the role”.
It was nonetheless important, Grindeanu said, “that we get out of this blockage and send a message to investors and governments around the world that Romania remains a stable and predictable environment”.
The two ruling coalition parties are expected to suggest a new prime minister to the centre-right president, Klaus Iohannis, who had previously urged the government to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible.
Talks with the president are scheduled for Monday, and Iohannis has the right to refuse a candidate. Once appointed, the new premier will have 10 days to win a vote of confidence in parliament for his cabinet and programme.
The crisis is the second to hit the PSD since it returned to power in the December poll. In February, the largest protests in Romania since the fall of communism forced the government to drop plans to water down anti- corruption laws.
The party was forced out of power in 2015 after mass protests over a deadly Bucharest nightclub fire that killed 64 people and was widely blamed on corrupt officials ignoring safety regulations.
Although its economy is growing fast at about 5.6%, the International Monetary Fund and the European commission have warned that Romania remained in urgent need of further far-reaching reform.
Analysts said Grindeanu’s departure could be linked to his alleged failure to push through the controversial anti-corruption laws – which may have allowed Dragnea to run for office despite his conviction.
“Liviu Dragnea only wants one thing – amendments to the anti-corruption laws” that prevent him from becoming premier, a former PSD member, Alin Teodorescu, told Agence France-Presse.
What’s in store for Serbia’s Jewish community? World Jewish Congress, June 21, 2017 http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/whats-in-store-for-serbias-jewish-community-6-3-2017
Protests erupt in Kiev against renaming main street after SS officer By Itamar Eichner Ynetnews, June 19, 2017 https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4978080,00.html
Dozens of demonstrators were injured over the weekend in Kiev, Ukraine in violent protests against the decision of the city council to replace the name a main street to that of an officer who was one of organizers of an anti-Polish ethnic cleansing.
The street was named after General Nikolai Vatutin, who liberated Kiev from the Nazis, but now it was decided that it would be named after Roman Shukhevych, an SS officer responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of Jews.
In October 2009, the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko even gave Shukhevych the title of hero of Ukraine, even though he took part in an ethnic cleansing.
The decision was passed by the city council on June 1 with a majority of 69 out of 120.
The mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, did not support the decision but did not object to it either, even though his Jewish grandmother was one of those whom General Vatutin had liberated from the Nazis.
In the past two weeks, Klitschko has been under heavy pressure to veto the decision and not to change the name of the street, but so far he has refused to intervene. The decision is due to take effect in the coming days.
This move drew the ire of many of Kiev's citizens.
On social networks, it won the name "National Day of Shame." A few days ago, hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the statue of General Vatutin in the center of Kiev, standing above his grave, calling for the name of the street not to be changed. Most of the demonstrators were World War II veterans who shouted "shame."
On Saturday, violent demonstrations took place in Ukraine, in which 20 people were injured. Police arrested several rioters.
Edward Dolinsky, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Ukraine, said: "Is it possible to measure the depth of a moral decline? It is not easy when there are cases where the decline is so deep that it cannot be measured.
A decision by the Kiev city council to change the name of the street in the name of General Vatutin to the name of a Nazi officer, whose hands are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Jews and Poles— is precisely a case of a moral decline, cynicism and contempt for humanity. This is a day of national shame. "
The Jewish community filed a petition with the Kiev Regional Court, which issued an interim injunction prohibiting the mayor from signing the order to change the name of the street until a final decision on the matter was made.
Alex Tantzer, a social activist among immigrants from the former Soviet Union, said: "For years, murderers of Jews have been titled as heroes. The Prime Minister of Ukraine is Jewish and he is silent. Mayor Klitschko, whose grandmother is Jewish, did not object, and even Israel is silent.
"I expect Israel to protest in the strongest possible terms against this decision.
"There is a limit to cynicism and moral decline. If Ukraine is looking for heroes, it should not find them among Nazi collaborators. The Ukrainian people are entitled to other heroes."
(Translated & edited by Lior Mor)
Heirs of Nazi-looted art collection can sue Hungarian museums in US courts JTA, June 22, 2017 https://www.jta.org/2017/06/22/news-opinion/united-states/federal-court-rules-heirs-of-nazi-looted-art- collection-can-sue-hungarian-museums-in-u-s-courts
The heirs of one of the largest prewar art collections in Hungary can sue in the United States for the recovery of some of the works from Hungarian institutions, a federal court ruled.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that the heirs of Baron Mór Lipót Herzog can sue Hungarian state-owned museums and a university to recover the more than 40 artworks with an estimated value exceeding $100 million. The collection includes works by artists including El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán, Lucas Cranach the Elder, van Dyck, Velázquez and Monet.
The appeals court rebuffed claims by the Hungarian institutions that they are immune from U.S. jurisdiction under the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, in which foreign countries are exempt from being sued by U.S. citizens, and agreed with the Herzog heirs that the seizure of the collection during the Holocaust violated international law. The court also agreed that a 1947 peace treaty between Hungary and the United States does not bar the claims.
The court dismissed the Republic of Hungary as a defendant under the act, however.
De Csepel v. Republic of Hungary was filed originally in 2010 in the District of Columbia federal court after the family unsuccessfully pursued the art through other channels for decades, including the Hungarian courts, which in 2008 ruled that Hungary was not required to return the art.
David de Csepel of Los Angeles, a great-grandson of Baron Herzog, filed the suit on behalf of about a dozen relatives. Csepel told The New York Times in 2010 that he remembers his grandmother talking about the art when he was a boy living in New York.
The family believes there are many other Herzog artworks still in Hungary of which they are not aware and are not named in the lawsuit. In addition, the family has made legal claims for Herzog artwork in Poland, Russia and Germany.
Members of the Herzog family fled Hungary in 1944 to escape the genocide being carried out by Hungarian authorities with technical assistance by the Nazi SS. The Hungarian government enacted a law requiring Jews to deposit their art with the government for “safekeeping,” requiring the family to leave the artworks behind.
The Herzog Collection was inspected personally by Adolf Eichmann, who designated certain works for shipment to Germany. Others were left in Hungary’s possession or looted by others, according to the website Hungary on Trial, which chronicles the family’s search to recover the collection.
How a female Jewish journalist alerted the world to Ukraine’s silent starvation The Times of Israel, June 18, 2017 http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-a-female-jewish-journalist-alerted-the-world-to-ukraines-silent-starvation/
While driving through the Ukrainian countryside in 1932, Rhea Clyman, a Jewish-Canadian journalist, stopped in a village to ask where she could buy some milk and eggs.
The villagers couldn’t understand her, but someone went off and came back with a crippled 14-year-old boy, who slowly made his way to her.
“We are starving, we have no bread,” he said, and went on to describe the dire conditions of the previous spring. “The children were eating grass… they were down on all fours like animals… There was nothing else for them.”
To illustrate the point, a peasant woman began to peel off her children’s clothes.
“She undressed them one by one, prodded their sagging bellies, pointed to their spindly legs, ran her hand up and down their tortured, misshapen, twisted little bodies to make me understand that this was real famine,” recalled Clyman in a piece published by the Toronto Telegram, one of the largest Canadian newspapers at the time.
Largely forgotten, a Ukrainian professor in Canada is writing a book about Clyman, the first ever biography of the intrepid reporter.
“She went to the Soviet Union feeling very optimistic, [expecting that there would be] no unemployment, that men and women were equal,” said Jaroslaw Balan, of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. “But she very quickly came to the realization that this was an incredible totalitarian state — how poor people were and how difficult their lives were.”
Clyman was born in 1904 in Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire, and immigrated to Canada when she was 2 years old. At the age of 6, she was hit by a streetcar and had her leg amputated. She spent the next few years in and out of hospitals.
Yet this didn’t stop her, at age 24, from traveling alone to the Soviet Union and trying to make a living as a freelance foreign correspondent.
‘She learned the language. She developed a perspective that was very different’ In 1928 Clyman got off the train in Moscow with no acquaintances and only a few words of Russian. She spent hours in the train station until someone showed her the way to a hotel, where she slept in the bathtub of an American journalist. She was to remain in the Soviet Union for the next four years.
“A lot of newspapers sent journalists [to the USSR] for short [stints],” Balan said. “But she learned the language. She developed a perspective that was very different.”
At one point, Clyman traveled to Russia’s far north to the town of Kem, near a Soviet prison camp, a place off- limits to foreigners. She met the wives of the prisoners, saw the former inmates who were not permitted to leave the town even after they were freed, and reported on how the Soviets used political prisoners as forced laborers to chop wood. This was an important story for Canada, which was then losing its lumber market in the United Kingdom to the cheaper Soviet competitor.
“It supported the claims that cheap labor was used in the Soviet Union, and [that’s why] Canada couldn’t compete,” Balan said.
But it was Clyman’s coverage of the Holodomor, the man-made famine estimated to have led to the deaths of some 4 million Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, that really interests Balan. He first came across Clyman’s work while searching through Canadian newspapers for what was written about the famine in Ukraine.
In 1932, Clyman drove in a car southward from Moscow through Kharkiv — then the capital of Ukraine — to the Black Sea and on to Stalin’s birthplace in Georgia.
In Ukraine, she passed empty villages and wondered where had all the people gone?
A group of villagers on a collective farm gathered around her to see if she could bring a petition to the Kremlin to tell the Soviet leaders that the people were starving. All their grain had been taken away. Their animals were long ago slaughtered. When she tried to buy eggs, a village woman looked at her incredulously and asked if she expected to get them for money.
“Of course,” Rhea answered. “I don’t expect to get them for nothing.”
“You don’t understand,” the peasant told her. “We don’t sell eggs or milk for money. We want bread. Have you any?”
Balan said that Clyman developed insights into the causes of the famine — that it was not just due to drought, but a result of forced collectivization. For instance, the Soviet attempt to mechanize agriculture led to problems when the production of machinery didn’t go as quickly as planned. Horses and cattle were already killed, but there weren’t enough tractors to harvest the crops. This was the result of poor decisions from the top, Balan said. When Ukrainians were starving, the Soviets sealed the borders between Ukraine and Russia so that people couldn’t escape, he added.
“Her story is important for Jews and Ukrainians,” Balan said. “Among Ukrainians, there are a lot of stereotypes that the Jews were Bolsheviks and that they were responsible for the famine. And here’s a Jewish woman who’s written about the famine. In truth, Jews were also persecuted. She’s Jewish too, but look, she wrote the truth.”
In 1932, Clyman became the first foreign journalist in 11 years to get kicked out of the Soviet Union, allegedly “for spreading lies.”
But from there she went to Germany, to report on the rise of the Nazis.
Balan still needs to do a lot more research to find the articles that Clyman authored from Germany. He said that he has only been able to read two of them so far.
Clyman reported from Germany until 1938, when fled the country on a small airplane together with a few Jewish refugees. Unfortunately, as the plane came in for landing in Amsterdam, it crashed. Nearly half of the passengers were killed and Clyman broke her back — though she somehow avoided paralysis.
She returned to North America, where she moved to New York and recorded her memoirs. She never married nor had children, and died in 1981.
Upon her death, Clyman’s memoir remained unpublished and Balan is hoping to find it. He is also trying to find out where she was buried. He located some of her relatives but they did not know where she was laid to rest, he said.
“If we could find her memoirs that would be an exciting thing to see, that would be a goldmine,” he said.
Balan recently gave a talk on Clyman at Limmud FSU in New York, the largest gathering of Russian-speaking Jews in North America. The talk was sponsored by the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter, a Canadian nonprofit that aims to promote cooperation between Ukrainians and Jews. Launched by Canadian businessman James Temerty, the initiative aims to do away with negative feelings between the two peoples.
“Jews have been living in Ukraine probably for 1,000 years, and certainly in large numbers since the 16th century,” Balan said. “If you take out the periods of the pogroms and the Holocaust, the rest of the time, Jews in many cases flourished in Ukraine.”
American Communists attacking a group of Ukrainians protesting the Soviet-caused Holodomor famine in 1933, which killed 4 million Ukrainians. (Public domain) American Communists attacking a group of Ukrainians protesting the Soviet-caused Holodomor famine in 1933, which killed 4 million Ukrainians. (Public domain)
The two peoples have more in common than they might realize — the food, for one — and they should learn more about each other’s culture, said Natalia Feduschak, the director of communications for the Ukrainian- Jewish Encounter.
Feduschak said that Clyman helps to bridge the gap between the two communities because she was a Jewish woman who wrote “about the Ukrainian famine with great compassion and great understanding.”
“Because of World War II and the horrific events of that period, the communities find it difficult to communicate with one another,” she said. “But there are a lot of similarities.”