NCSEJ WEEKLY TOP 10 Washington, D.C. August 23, 2019 Putin Not Putting 'Russia First Dmitriy Frolovskiy Haaretz | August 21, 2019

Russia’s political reality in the years following the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula echoes in many ways the atmosphere that prevailed during the Cold War era, with tensions boiling to a point of no return behind closed doors.

Dissent is gradually building in Moscow, even though it might appear to be a political monolith, unabashedly supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s notions of realpolitik and the end of liberalism.

Five years before U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed Russian operatives’ coordinated attack on the American political system, the Kremlin’s vision of relations with the West was different. Although Russia did not miss a chance to challenge the post-Cold War order and unleash diatribes, few there truly wanted to break up with the West.

The legacy of the rapprochement achieved following the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed unshakable. The EU's share in Russia’s foreign trade totalled at almost 50 percent in recent years, Western companies eyed to modernize the Russian army and the Kremlin rallied around the idea of a unified continental market from Vladivostok to Lisbon.

Crimea’s so-called return home, as it has been dubbed by supporters of the move, was the thermidor for the revolution in Russia’s foreign policy. From the times of Communist Party chief Mikhail Gorbachev, much of Russia’s public discourse was split between a desire to become part of the West and the will to embrace Russia’s “own way” of being somewhere between Europe and Asia. Putin ended this debate, denounced Russia’s Western path and condescended into the nativist orbit by embracing the role of a defender of traditional values and disruptor of the Western-centric world order.

Crimea, which was transferred to Ukraine by former Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushev in 1954, had a nearly sacral meaning to the majority of Russians and specifically to the nativists. The latter are not referred to as an organized group, but rather represent an ingrained set of nationalist, revisionist and somehow isolationist persuasions that equally exist within society and the highest corridors of power.

The peninsula was claimed as the birthplace of Russia’s Orthodox Christianity, while the city of Sevastopol became a landmark of the national military glory. It also continued to serve as a grave reminder of the millions of countrymen who were left outside the homeland after the collapse of communism. When addressing the annexation, Putin stated that “the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders’’ and two years later said that ‘‘the Donbass inclusion in Ukraine was a Bolshevik political mistake.’’ These statements were especially welcomed by the nativists, who perceived Ukraine as an artificial state and welcomed expansionism.

A fear of disrupting world orders and challenging the West, which broke its promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO to the east and saw Russia as a threat, helped propel Moscow back to its position as a global power.

Russian nativists still backed Putin when the notorious ‘‘little green men’’ marched through Eastern Ukraine, but they could not understand military ventures as far out as the Middle East and Africa.

Although the Orthodox Church and other conservative commentators tried to portray the aerial campaign in Syria as Russia’s “holy war” to defend Christians in order to appeal to the nativists’ sentiments, public opinion has been growing increasingly skeptical. According to the latest numbers by the Levada Center, the major independent pollster, 55 percent of Russians want their country to withdraw from Syria.

Russians are still haunted by grim memories from the Soviet-Afghan War, which has been dubbed the Afghan syndrome; few in Moscow want to see it embroiled in another Middle Eastern quagmire.

Depictions of the campaign as a tool to assert Russia’s status as a global power broker and prevent the Gulf monarchies from building a gas pipeline to Europe were received better as a justification for the intervention in Syria’s civil war, but this still didn’t suffice. Following reports of hundreds of Russians mercenaries being killed by American soldiers in February of 2018, Alexey Navalny – Russia’s major opposition figure – openly asked the question that bothered many: “What are we doing in Syria?”

A possible military confrontation with Israel and the coalition forces has also been perceived as major threats. In fact, following the imposition of U.S. sanctions and despite multiple strategic disagreements, Russia has been increasingly looking to Israel as a valuable intermediary in communications with Western nations.

Despite the Soviet-era confrontation with Israel, the current Russian strategy in the Middle East recognizes Jerusalem as an independent regional power rather than just a staunch ally of Washington. Putin’s close relations with Netanyahu, which continue to evolve via public diplomacy and the work of Jewish communities, have helped decrease anti-Semitism and aided in fostering mostly neutral public attitudes toward Israel, as highlighted by the recent Levada polls.

The example of Israel, however, is an exceptional one. Although the Syrian bet paid off and asserted Russia’s status in the Middle East for a relatively modest cost, foreign policy gains have not been transplanted to a political capital at home.

Some Russian strategists hope to join the scramble for resources and resurrect Soviet ties in Africa, but others remain skeptical. A Russian logistics base in Eritrea, military contractors in the Central African Republic and increased cooperation with Sudan illustrate the Kremlin’s growing interest in Africa. At home, however, such plans are viewed with caution. The legacy of the Soviet overstretch in Africa and billions of dollars in aid that were never repaid cause the nativists to grow increasingly disenfranchised.

While the Kremlin tries to present military campaigns in the Middle East and Africa as a return of the Soviet-like influence driven by economic interests, the public – and specifically the nativists – think that military involvements are pointless gambles and believe that it's more important to fix domestic problems first.

Russians don’t want to pay the price

At the height of the Cold War, a political principle of internationalism dictated the Soviet foreign policy. In attempts to spread the communist ideology and make more allies to confront the West, Moscow distributed massive amounts of aid and a big chunk of its imbalanced budget. While the volume of it is almost impossible to calculate, Moscow claimed $140 billion of Soviet assets abroad.

Although aid and involvement indeed helped the Kremlin assert and maintain a global power status, the ultimate cost created a perception domestically of an overstretch that led to the communist collapse. The following decades of Russia’s retrieve and expansion of NATO to the East inflated feelings of national humiliation that further empowered nativist sentiments among the public and politicians, and strengthened a firm belief in the rightness of a cynical realpolitik approach abroad, as well as a policy to keep Russia first – a non-interventionist agenda.

Russia’s foreign ventures make headlines and the public still supports the motivation to preserve the global power status, but few Russians actually want to go global at the expense of domestic hurdles.

A lack of economic reforms in times of stagnation and poor labor productivity amidst this century’s biggest decline in working-age Russians only enhance the argument that Putin’s government has betrayed the ‘Russia first’ ideology.

Attempts to resurrect certain aspects of the Soviet past could lead the public to feel that some of the great Russian pride has returned, but in the age of the internet and social media, Russians can no longer ignore domestic problems.

At the beginning of August, more than 50,000 demonstrated in Moscow for the fifth week of protests in what turned into the largest opposition rally since 2011. The recent Levada poll showed that more than a third of Muscovites support the protesters, which marks a gradual shift in public opinion and a decline in the popularity boost the Kremlin had gained after the annexation of Crimea and the military success achieved in Syria.

The agenda these days is dominated by claims for fair elections and domestic reforms, but that hasn’t distracted Russians from their growing preoccupation with the outcomes of the anti-Western crusade, including sanctions and the erosion of liberal values. This has inspired a loud call for a change in foreign policy.

Russian authorities may sense the growing public discontent, but a hermetically sealed system of power seems to be unable to change. Putin has surrounded himself with vicious kleptocracy that has grown increasingly similar over the years to the communist hierarchy.

The Kremlin tries to maintain the status quo by portraying leaders as political strongmen, as well as defenders of the notions of traditional values, while still supporting the nativist tenets. That, however, leads to a bizarre domestic dichotomy as the nativists strive to push the non-interventionist agenda further but lack the agency to act.

With domestic hurdles rapidly eroding the president’s approval rankings, reliance on traditionalism might be a shot in the foot in light of the Kremlin’s inability to convey even cosmetic changes in politics and in the economy. The nativists will inevitably gain power at one point. Now the real question is which direction Russia will take when they do; the answer, for now, continues to elude us.

MANY SOVIETS LOST THEIR CONNECTION TO JUDAISM, BUT THAT’S BEEN CHANGING Ruty Korotaev Canadian Jewish News | August 14, 2019

For many Jewish people, living in the U.S.S.R. meant that their Judaism had to take a back seat. As a result, many Russian-speaking Jews lost their connection to their heritage.

Things changed when the Soviet Union collapsed and Jews were finally allowed to leave. As they emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada and Europe, many Russian-speaking Jews began to reconnect to their roots and learn more about the religion that had been robbed from them. Some younger Russian-speaking Jews, the millennials and gen-Zs, who were raised outside of the Soviet Union, are now becoming more religious.

According to Rabbi Avroham Zaltzman, the director of the Jewish-Russian Community Centre’s (JRCC) South Richmond Hill and Maple branch, located north of Toronto, younger people are typically more motivated to go through the process of becoming religiously observant, as they are more flexible and often more idealistic.

Many of the families that go to Rabbi Zaltzman’s synagogue are Russian-speaking and, over the last 10 years, his synagogue has hosted bar mitzvahs for approximately 150 youths. He said a few of them made changes in their lives – some keep Shabbat, others put on tefillin every day – but none have “made the entire trip” and ended up in a yeshivah. He has also witnessed several families who have become observant, so that their kids would be able to attend Jewish day schools and get a traditional Jewish education.

According to Rabbi Zaltzman, Russian-speaking Jews are often very sceptical and “don’t let themselves be fooled,” but once they have a religious epiphany, many are drawn to a more observant lifestyle.

For M. Dubov, 21, this process started when she visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem. As she put her hand on the ancient wall, she felt her mind being filled with thoughts that were not her own. “This is when I realized that I couldn’t continue living a life where I did not believe in God, because this was a moment where I felt something else had inhabited me,” said Dubov.

“It just made me think that I need to smarten up. How can I continue to say that there’s nothing out there when there is clearly something?”

Growing up in north Toronto, Dubov was raised by a single mother who immigrated to Canada from Lithuania. Dubov’s first real exposure to the Jewish community, outside of her own friend group, was at the J Academy Camp, which caters to the Russian-speaking Jewish community.

“That was my first real connection, when it came to understanding what things were about,” said Dubov. “I still didn’t understand the biblical, rabbinical meaning behind the holidays and why Shabbat was a thing, but I liked the idea of sitting down and being with my friends on a Friday night without our phones.”

But it wasn’t until Dubov went on a gap year as an 18-year-old that she really started to get more involved in the Jewish world. She spent the first three months of her gap year in Italy, where she frequented the local Chabad.

Later on, she went to Israel and found herself in a youth hostel for Orthodox Jewish women in Jerusalem’s Old City. She was encouraged to take some classes at Yeshiva Aish HaTorah, and somewhat reluctantly, she agreed.

“I showed up and I honestly think that Aish has the best rabbis in maybe the world,” said Dubov. “They really know how to get people to sit down, listen to them and be interested in what they’re saying, because they combine contemporary issues with Jewish thought.”

Dubov is now a student at Ryerson University in Toronto and considers herself to be between traditional Conservative and modern Orthodox. When she got to university, she slowly began the process of becoming more observant. Over time, she quit her job at a bar, which required her to work Fridays and Saturdays, and started to work at Allen’s Table, the kosher restaurant at the University of Toronto’s Hillel. She learned about the laws of kashrut and trained as a mashgiach, all the while meeting a lot of like-minded individuals her own age.

Dubov said community was something that she greatly craved, seeing as she does not have a lot of family in Canada. “I wanted more friends, I wanted to meet people I could relate to and find a common tongue with, and a really big part of that was becoming more observant,” she said. “Through Hillel, I really started to build that community.”

Rabbi Zaltzman believes that, “Today’s generation is not what it was two or three generations ago, they’re not idealistic, but still young people have ideals. If a young person cares about ideals, they’re much more willing to go the distance for it.”

Ideals were what motivated Jake Reznik to learn more about his Jewish heritage. Growing up in Vancouver, Reznik, 21, always knew he was Jewish, but for much of his life, it did not mean much to him. His parents, who came from Russia and Belarus, did not celebrate the holidays, keep Shabbat or attend any Jewish institutions, largely due to their own atheistic upbringing.

Throughout high school, Reznik started learning about Israel. When he began studying at the University of British Columbia (UBC), he become more involved in the Jewish community on campus, attending Hillel and Chabad events. As he made more Jewish friends and became increasingly integrated into the community, he started to learn more about Jewish religious traditions and customs.

Now, having just graduated, he is working to become more observant by trying to keep kosher, learning Hebrew and attempting to observe Shabbat. His goal is to attend synagogue services once a week and have a “big Jewish family.”

“I learned so much in no time, because I didn’t go to Jewish school, we didn’t really talk about it in my family,” he said. “Now I understand a little bit more, which is a small victory.” He said much of his connection to Judaism came as a reaction to all the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric that he was exposed to in university. Tired of seeing so many apathetic Jewish students, Reznik decided to take action – he participated in a number of rallies and even served as the acting president of the Israel club on campus in his fourth year.

“For me, one of the most egregious things that people do is lie about Jewish history and Jewish ancestry, and specifically Israel,” said Reznik. “The anti-Semitism that I observed wasn’t necessarily just blind hatred of the Jews or Israel, but little half-truths or lies that would be permeated by blatantly anti-Israel clubs and resource groups that exist on campus.”

A turning point for Reznik came in 2017, when the UBC student union held a referendum on BDS. A lot of anti-Semitism exploded on campus and there were many events that spread anti-Israel propaganda.

In one session Reznik was “shocked at the vitriolic hate that existed in the small room of 60 people.” Israelis were accused of sending death squads to kill Palestinian civilians, while others praised the intifada and read out the names of all the Palestinians who were killed in the 2014 conflict in Gaza. Some speakers also stated that there is no relationship between Judaism and Zionism, that Jews belong in Europe and that pro-Israel students on campus are putting others in danger.

That week led to a lot of solidarity amongst Jewish students. “Just seeing the blatant and open anti-Semitism that existed, it finally brought what I was seeing on Facebook, at other universities, by other activists in other places – it put it in front of me for the first time and that was a very big moment for me,” said Reznik. “We can live in relative comfort right now, but nothing is guaranteed, nothing is permanent and we always have to fight for the existence of our future.”

His activism, combined with his increased involvement in Jewish events on campus and devotion to Israel, is ultimately what led him to pursue a lifestyle that is more Jewish than that of his parents.

“I see a lot of apathetic, non-involved Jews on campus and if I don’t stand up to those anti-Israel clubs, who else is it going to be? We don’t have the luxury of relying on other people, because we’re so small – somebody has to do it,” he said.

Rabbi Zaltzman agrees. “A young person gets exposed to something, and if they really care, they will want to explore it. Many people have the nature of being inquisitive, and if you’re inquisitive, you hear about something as weird as putting on tefillin every day and you ask questions.… That’s what I would think drives a young person to take on that change in their lives.”

It was this sort of inquisitiveness that led Yesy Tartakovsky-Gilels, a student at the University of Toronto, down the path toward a more observant lifestyle. Born in Netanya, Israel, she grew up in a Russian-speaking household. She describes her upbringing as secular, but very Zionist, as both her parents moved to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Her process of becoming more observant started two years ago, when she got involved in pro-Israel movements on campus. It was on a Hasbara Fellowship trip to Israel that she began to contemplate the reasoning behind her commitment to Israel.

“I think many Jewish people have this problem where they care so much about Israel, but don’t really understand where that passion comes from,” she said. “I came to the conclusion that a lot of it had to do with the fact that my values and morals align heavily with Jewish teachings and the Torah, and I thought, what am I going to do to make sure that my kids and grandkids will feel the same passion towards their culture and Israel?”

After this realization, Tartakovsky-Gilels decided to invest more time in her personal and spiritual growth. Initially, she studied the Torah with the intention of learning more about Jewish history, rather than becoming more observant. “I think you can’t have Zionism without understanding Jewish tradition or Jewish history, because so much of it is intertwined,” she said. “Anti-Semitism came from Jewish people being othered for their traditions, so you need to understand what it means to be Jewish before you can truly be a Zionist.”

Like Dubov, Tartakovsky-Gilels started studying at Aish HaTorah. As she began to learn more, she found that many aspects of Judaism enhanced her life. She slowly began to infuse more of the Torah’s teachings into her lifestyle – she stopped working on Saturdays, started to dress more modestly and began attending shul on a regular basis.

“In terms of my outlook and how I lead my daily life, there is definitely a huge focus on Torah and Judaism,” she said. “But I really want to keep my Russian roots alive. I think you can have a healthy balance of both – for me, I don’t think it’s one or the other, you can absolutely have synergy with both.”

Tartakovsky-Gilels also got more involved in the Jewish community, and found that despite her different upbringing, people were very accepting and supportive of her. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a family, regardless of what their upbringing was, that made me feel like an outcast,” she said. “Now, I have the pleasure of doing that for other students who are just starting off and looking for a place where they feel like they’re welcome.”

Dubov and Tartakovsky-Gilels have had some negative reactions from the people around them when they began this process. They have lost some friends, but have also strengthened their connections with others, including their families.

“I think one of the biggest breakthrough moments was having my mother ask me how to light candles and starting to light candles for Shabbat, starting to host people on Friday nights and attending shul on her own accord,” said Tartakovsky-Gilels. “Seeing my family transform made me realize there is something that I am doing right.”

However, Reznik’s family is not particularly supportive of his interest in Judaism, as they believe he sometimes takes things too far. “They always caution me and tell me to be mindful and to always question the things that I do,” said Reznik. “I don’t plan to go to a yeshivah – my mom would lose it – it’s crossing some kind of line that exists.”

Nevertheless, the three intend to raise their future families in Jewish households, while maintaining a strong connection to their Russian identities.

“I have the privilege of being raised in Canada and we have the freedom to practise or not to practise,” said Dubov. “It’s all a choice that you get to make, whereas that choice was already made for people in the Soviet Union.”

All Quiet in Russian-Belarusian Relations Arkady Moshes Ponars | August 2019

For approximately a year, from summer 2018 onwards, observers were paying close attention to tensions in relations between Russia and Belarus. A particular concern was caused by the assumption that Moscow might be planning to impose upon Minsk the reunification of two states, which could hypothetically allow President Vladimir Putin to circumvent the constitutional two-consecutive-terms limit on Russia’s presidency and stay in power beyond 2024 as the leader of a new political entity. Each of many bilateral presidential and prime-ministerial meetings provoked interest, and often anxiety, as it could potentially bring news about Minsk agreeing to Belarus’s absorption by Russia. However, as of today, all these have proven to be false alarms. Furthermore, in July this year, Russian and Belarusian leaders agreed to postpone the decision about the future of the two countries’ integration until December 2019, when the treaty on the Russian-Belarusian Union State will mark its 20th anniversary. Quite plausibly, if the reunification scenario has ever existed, it has now been shelved or abandoned altogether.

Argued here is that while the status quo in Russian-Belarusian relations is undoubtedly being revised by Moscow, the goal may be different and not that ambitious. The Kremlin may simply aim at significantly lowering the level of Russian economic subsidies to Belarus, energy subsidies above all, while preserving a critical degree of Minsk’s dependence and loyalty. In turn, the latter will try to delay the introduction of a new economic model and save as much as possible from the old times. Yet, its leverage vis-à-vis Moscow is limited and in the end Minsk will have to accept the offered compromise.

Not Exactly Business as Usual, or Is It?

Admittedly, worsening in Russian-Belarusian relations is a periodic phenomenon and for this reason singling out a period is a bit artificial. Yet, a statement made by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in June 2018 can be viewed as opening a new chapter. Namely, Lukashenko said that if his country were unable to “endure,” it would “have to join another state.” Whether this was just an analytical conclusion or whether he had in reality received a proposal of that kind is (and due to the lack of transparency about bilateral negotiations will remain) unclear, but it was in any case evidence of worry.

By that moment, Russian policy toward Belarus had already become less benevolent than before. Loans, once lavish, had shrunk and essentially could only be used to re-finance old debts. Russian health and veterinary authorities had started to massively restrict Belarusian food exports to Russia while customs checkpoints reappeared on the common border, although this was partly a reaction to the participation of Belarusian companies in the schemes of re-exporting sanctioned European goods to Russia. But the most painful was the approaching “tax maneuver” in the oil industry (introduced from 2019) which would make it no longer possible for Belarus to export oil products made of tax-free Russian oil. The estimated economic losses for Belarus were expected to reach $400 million in 2019 alone and up to $10 billion in 2019-24, and no compensation was offered.

Meanwhile, Russia tried to test and/or increase its soft power in Belarus. Russian media and social networks intensified campaigns targeting local “Russian world” sympathizers, fostering pro-Russian sentiment, and criticizing Lukashenko for his “flirtation” with the West. In October 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church, for the first time in history, held a session of its Synod in Minsk.

The link between economic subsidies and political integration was revealed in December 2018. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the Belarusian city of Brest, outlined two scenarios for the future: a “conservative” one— keeping the level of factual integration as it is—and an “advanced” one—namely the full implementation of the Union Treaty of 1999 with its provision on common currency, among other things. It became clear from the context that only the latter scenario would imply an increase in Russian economic assistance. Mikhail Babich, a former career KGB officer, who in August 2018 was appointed Russian Ambassador in Minsk and a special presidential representative on trade and economic relations with Belarus, became the central figure in public promotion of the Russian point of view in the country and, consequently, a target of Belarus’s harsh official ad hominem counter-criticism.

Putin, interestingly, on the contrary, chose to act as good cop. In December 2018 he agreed with Lukashenko to follow the bureaucratic path and create a working group tasked to prepare proposals on the development of bilateral relations, which lifted the pressure. In April 2019, he took a surprising step and decided to replace Babich, by that time barely tolerated in Minsk, with the much softer Dmitry Mezentsev. This was, perhaps, a turning point. Putin kept publicly reassuring the Belarusian side that Moscow had no plans of inter-state unification, which is also important, as changing this position would be an embarrassment.

Belarus Is Not Crimea

Conceivably, Moscow’s goal from the very beginning was to legitimize the decrease of subsidies as well as the refusal to negotiate compensation for the tax maneuver, etc., through the lack of progress in bilateral integration rather than to actually use the economic pressure to achieve that. In other words, bringing up the issue of integration to the negotiations table was a deliberate diplomatic tactic used in expectation of Minsk’s refusal; in reality, Moscow did not plan to insist.

However, if one presumes that Moscow’s “plan A” was indeed seeking reunification, a quick analysis would suffice to show that the costs would be prohibitive.

First of all, even if one imagines that Lukashenko himself could be persuaded to give up the powers of a sovereign ruler, which sounds next to impossible, the consent of powerful interest groups in Belarus would be very difficult to induce. Local business circles are traditionally wary of the arrival of more powerful Russian competitors. The bureaucracy and security apparatus would not necessarily be tempted to pursue careers in an “extended Russia” and may prefer the current, better-known environment. The offer to these groupings would have to be large, but the bigger it is, the less credible it would appear.

As concerns the population, negative attitudes and even resistance would have to be expected. Although traditionally geopolitical preferences in Belarus are split and volatile (in this context, Lukashenko’s claim from March 2019 that 98 percent of Belarusians would vote against entry into Russia sparks doubt), there is a constituency for which the reunification would be unacceptable. The ethnic Polish community, Belarusian Catholics, and national-minded circles would form a core of dissent, and it would resonate in larger societal strata that have no post-Soviet nostalgia whatsoever and treat national independence either as a value in itself or as an opportunity.

In turn, the absorption of Belarus would not necessarily be popular in Russia either. According to a VTsIOM poll conducted in January 2019, 48 percent of respondents believed that Russia and Belarus should not live in the same state but be good neighbors. 18 percent would support unification on equal terms, while only 17 percent favored Belarus’s entry into Russia as one or several subjects of federation. In these circumstances, the hypothetical reunification would not be a safe bet in the context of the “2024 problem” as it would not provide the Russian incumbent the same strong legitimacy as the incorporation of Crimea.

Negative international implications would also follow. Russian-Western relations would further suffer not only politically—which probably could be ignored by Moscow to a certain extent, but also militarily, which could not, as Russia and NATO would receive an additional 600 km of a direct line of contact. One should also think about a reaction from China. Beijing can hardly afford to stay indifferent toward a loss of sovereignty by its declared partner while Moscow can hardly ignore China’s position in support of Belarus, whether it be conveyed openly or behind closed doors. Finally, it is needless to say that Belarus’s incorporation into Russia would cause a very painful reaction among its partners in the post-Soviet space and may lead to their distancing from Russia and even balancing against it.

Taking It Easy

In view of these considerations, Moscow would appear better off resolving Putin’s “2024 problem” by amending Russia’s own constitution in ways that do not involve Belarus. And pursuing the cause of political integration outside of the “2024 context” makes even less sense for Russia.

In fact, Moscow may feel quite comfortable in the current situation for at least four reasons. First, the economic dependence of Belarus on Russian cheap energy and markets cannot be overcome in the foreseeable future even theoretically, which gives the Kremlin the ability to allocate and dose the assistance as it sees fit. All that Minsk and Lukashenko personally can do to resist is to blame Russia for “betraying its closest ally,” which no longer has the appeal inside Russia it once had and, therefore, has little influence on the Kremlin.

Second, the results of the reset in Belarusian-Western relations that has been going on for five years already are not compelling. Despite repeated high-level encounters, the EU is implementing in Belarus only small technical assistance projects, and no major money is forthcoming either as loans or as investments. Negotiations on a fundamental framework agreement of the type that the EU has with some post-Soviet states have not even started. Even a declaratory document called “Partnership Priorities” has not been signed; it was blocked by Lithuania, which has an irreconcilable dispute with its neighbor on the issue of the Astravets nuclear power station under construction in Belarus. To signal his dissatisfaction, Lukashenko refused to participate in the jubilee summit of the EU Eastern Partnership that was held in Brussels in May 2019.

Furthermore, Moscow creatively and demonstratively reminds Minsk about its limited options from time to time. In February 2019, for example, Lukashenko had to cancel his scheduled attendance at the Munich Security Conference, where he was expected to be on a panel with several other dignitaries from Eastern Europe, because he was invited to extend his visit to Putin’s Sochi residence and ski.

Third, Belarus has limited ability to balance between Russia and Ukraine because of Minsk’s status as Russia’s military and security ally.[1] The election of Volodymyr Zelenskiy as Ukraine’s president will further complicate the process. Establishing a personal relationship between Lukashenko and Zelenskiy, similar to the one that worked well between Lukashenko and Petro Poroshenko, will take time and may turn out to be impossible, taking into account the generational difference. Unlike in 2014 in Poroshenko’s case, in May 2019 Lukashenko did not attend Zelenskiy’s inauguration.

Fourth, despite his recurrent outbursts of accusations, Lukashenko himself is actually a source of psychological comfort for Kremlin. His actions and reactions are predictable. He is a person who has just celebrated his 25th anniversary in power and is obviously planning to start another presidential term after the elections of 2020. He himself is a guarantor that things will stay as they are, that a like-minded regime will be preserved, and that Belarus will not follow Ukraine’s path in relations with Russia. True, Lukashenko’s system may need to be occasionally helped economically to avoid critical worsening of the situation. But this is far easier than dealing with a ruler who would be less ideologically and politically pre-programmed against market economy and liberal democracy.

Forecast

Most likely, in December 2019, Moscow and Minsk will declare their readiness to deepen integration, but this will not imply the creation of a common state or Belarus’s entry into Russia. Belarus will still be offered a privileged economic relationship. Oil and gas prices will be higher than in Russia, but lower than they are for Russia’s other clients. Yet overall level of subsidization will continue to decrease. Possibly, Moscow will more actively seek control over key Belarusian industrial assets, but this has been incorrectly expected many times before and is far from certain.

The unavoidable question is to what extent Belarus, with its very slow growth and significant debt, can cope with the further decrease of Russian subsidies. There is no definite answer, but there are reasons for cautious optimism. Today, Belarusian society-at-large demonstrates a lot more independent economic behavior, is much readier to embrace markets, and expects a lot less from the state that it is often assumed. The less Russian money there is and the less capable the Lukashenko system is to fund its neo-patrimonial social contract, the more vocal society may become in demanding and supporting change.

Update: derelict synagogue in Săveni, Romania sold and converted into restaurant Jewish Heritage Europe | August 20, 2019

Back in 2013 we wrote about plans by the Romanian Jewish Federation (FEDROM) to sell the derelict synagogue in Săveni, in northeastern Romania — but bids were low and it was taken off the market.

A long essay this month in the Ziaristii news site laments that the abandoned synagogue was indeed sold and has been turned into a modern restaurant specializing in Romanian cuisine — erasing the physical testimony of Jewish history in the town.

In 2013, the synagogue was described as being in an advanced state of decay and steadily deteriorating, with the Jewish community unable to afford to maintain or repair it. All the interior fittings had been removed and taken to Bucharest.

According to the Center for Jewish Art, the synagogue was built in 1847. Known as the Cojocarilor (Furriers’) or Great Synagogue, it was a simple stone structure with a fanciful cupola topped by a Star of David.

The conversion stripped the building of virtually all traces of its original function, though it appeared to retain the women’s gallery. Now called Restaurant Iris, the establishment has a Facebook page with photos, videos, and menu. (You can also view photos of the exterior on google maps.)

“The menu of the day, and the jaws of a fat chef are […] the first things I see,” wrote Paul Palencsar, who grew up in the town, in his deeply personal essay, which is illustrated by photos of the synagogue in its dilapidated state and the restaurant conversion.

“The tower, with the Star of David, is gone, but the building is still there,” he wrote. “Part of my childhood was evaporated and with it the history of two hundred years of the city.” (A version of the essay, with fewer illustrations, was first published in November 2018).

He quoted the owner of the building as saying he had originally wanted to tear the synagogue down and build a garage to vulcanize tires, but decided to create the restaurant there instead.

The restaurant’s Facebook page shows photos and videos of the interior.

The menu features typical Romanian cuisine, and the videos show patrons dancing to Romanian folk-style pop music.

In his essay, Palencsar recalled the story of Jewish presence in the town and lamented bitterly that the synagogue should have been saved and turned into a museum telling the history of Saveni’s Jews, and that a tourist trail could have been developed to include it and the historic Jewish cemetery.

About 400,000 Romanian Jews survived the Holocaust, but almost all emigrated to Israel over the course of the next decades, leaving many synagogues that had survived the Shoah (and which had active communities into the 1970s or 1980s) without congregations.

The challenges of dealing with Romania’s Jewish heritage were presented by FEDROM’s Lucia Apostol at the conference on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage in Krakow in April. We have posted the video and full power point of her talk.

The Bratislava Statement, which offers best practice guidelines for preserving Jewish heritage, recognizes that “proper care of these properties; often involving substantial costs, difficult planning and use issues, and demanding historical and architectural preservation concerns, have preoccupied many Jewish communities for years. In many cases, and especially for smaller Communities, the needs of these properties continue to stretch professional and financial resources. Everyday community needs often delay or prevent the attention that properties require.”

Regarding synagogues, it notes that “Synagogue and former synagogues should retain a Jewish identity and or use whenever possible, though each one does not necessarily need to be restored or fully renovated. Former synagogues, no matter what their present ownership or use, should be sensitively marked to identify their past history.”

We had hoped that whoever purchased the Săveni would have marked it with a plaque or other indication of his original identity — but, according to the pictures we have seen, this does not seem to have been the case.

NETANYAHU PROMISES 'THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER BABI YAR Herb Keinon Jerusalem Post | August 20, 2019

Standing at Babi Yar, but with Iran obviously on his mind, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared it is Israel’s “constant duty to stand against murderous ideologies in order to ensure that there will never be another Babi Yar.”

Netanyahu’s comments came at a memorial ceremony on Monday at the site, where some 34,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators in September 1941.

“For humanity, Babi Yar is a warning sign,” he said. “For Jews, it is an eternal imperative – we will always defend ourselves, by ourselves, against any enemy.”

Netanyahu, who arrived in Ukraine on Sunday for a two-day visit – the first by an Israeli prime minister in 20 years – said that it was hard to believe that “this beautiful forest saw the horror that happened here. The forest was silent, but so too was the world.”

The prime minister, accompanied at the ceremony by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, noted that the horrible brutality in the forest did not take place on another planet.

“It took place just minutes from the bustling center of Kiev,” he said. “The massacre at Babi Yar by the Nazis and their collaborators paved the way for the murder of a million and a half Ukrainian Jews. It also preceded the final solution.” Netanyahu praised Zelensky and the Ukrainian government for preserving the memory of the Holocaust, and for its continued efforts against antisemitism. He contrasted the state of the Jews then – when it was a people who wandered from place to place, only to be slaughtered – to the situation of the State of Israel today.

“From a helpless people that was slaughtered, we have become a strong and proud state,” he said.

Zelensky referenced Israel’s strength when, after meeting Netanyahu earlier in the day in the Presidential Palace, said his country has “something to learn from Israel, especially in security and defense, and we will of course be doing that.” The Ukrainian president, who is Jewish and was voted into office in April, thanked Jerusalem for supporting its “sovereignty and territorial integrity” in its conflict with Russia in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Netanyahu, during his comments after the meeting, said that Kiev agreed to open a hi-tech and investment office in Jerusalem, and that Israel would also open a similar bureau in Kiev.

In opening an official office in Jerusalem, Ukraine is following the example of the Czech Republic and Australia, which have opened offices in Jerusalem, but kept their embassies in Tel Aviv.

While there is significant support in Ukraine’s parliament to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, this is considered highly unlikely because of the European Union’s fierce opposition to the move, and Ukraine’s need for European support and assistance in dealing with Moscow.

Netanyahu is in Kiev for a two-day trip that political opponents charge is little more than a photo opportunity before the September 17 election in an attempt to siphon Russian-speaking voters away from Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu Party.

Netanyahu made a point of mentioning during his comments that Zelensky said he would advance in parliament the ratification of a pension agreement, which would provide Ukrainian government pensions to some 8,000 Ukrainian seniors in Israel who immigrated after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

While Ukraine has agreed in principle to pay these pensions, the issue remains entangled in bureaucracy and has not yet been ratified by the Ukrainian parliament – partly because of funding issues. Netanyahu’s state visit began Monday morning with a visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a monument to the Holodomor – the famine in the Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933 during which millions starved to death. Zelensky, during his statement, asked Netanyahu to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide.

Some Holocaust scholars in Israel, such as Efraim Zuroff of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, have come out against such recognition, saying the Holodomor was the result of Joseph Stalin’s forced collectivization but was not aimed directly at Ukrainians. Others, however, disagree, saying that Stalin aimed to snuff out Ukrainian national aspirations.

Netanyahu’s official trip got off to a clumsy start when his wife, Sara, who was unfamiliar with the “korovai” ceremony, was caught on camera dropping a piece of bread that her husband handed to her after he was ceremoniously given the morsel by women in traditional dress who greeted them when they landed at Boryspil International Airport in Kiev.

Some in the Israeli media highlighted the incident and reported that the prime minister’s wife had thrown the bread to the ground. This was then picked up by some in the Ukrainian media as a sign of disrespect. Netanyahu dismissed this as “complete nonsense” and told reporters that he raised the issue with the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, whom he quoted as saying, “it was clear that there was no intention of Mrs. Netanyahu to show disrespect to Ukraine.”

And Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, addressed the issue in a tweet: “Just talked with the Head of the President’s Office, Andreii Bohdan, he told me that the whole bread incident was clearly unintentional and unimportant, and certainly not media-worthy.”

Zelensky, Netanyahu meet in Kyiv, talk up economic and cultural ties; Russia barely mentioned Natalia Datskevych Kyiv Post |August 19, 2019

A historical meeting between two international Jewish leaders — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — took place in Kyiv’s Mariyinsky Palace on Aug.19.

The two leaders talked about security, high-tech cooperation, the coming ratification and expansion of a free trade agreement and the problems that Ukrainians have in being allowed to visit Israel.

Netanyahu, who served as Israel’s prime minister in total for 13 years, last visited Ukraine in 1999. He said Ukraine has changed a lot and he expects better times ahead.

“I saw that since your election, the country started to develop almost twice faster. And I think this is not just a coincidence,” Netanyahu told Zelensky.

Russia, which has seized 7 percent of Ukraine’s territory and is waging a six-year war that has killed 13,000 people, came up in the discussion — but only in passing.

Zelensky and Netanyahu discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine. Zelensky wants to learn from Israel how to better defend its territory.

“We as a state have to learn a lot from Israel, especially in security and defense questions, and we will definitely do it,” he said.

Israel is emerging as a key trading partner for Ukraine. Ratification of a free trade agreement is expected in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, after the Sept. 17 election. The agreement, it was announced on Aug. 19, will include the service sector and not only trade in goods. Reader more about the bilateral agreement here.

If the agreement will be ratified in Israel’s parliament, Zelensky said it will boost turnover between the two nations. Trade has hit the $1 billion mark annually already.

In addition, Netanyahu expects that Kyiv and Jerusalem will open high-tech development centers. “This will help a very fast development,” he said. “We will share our technologies and involve Ukrainians in our high-tech industry.”

Zelensky invited Israel companies to Ukraine to invest into health and education projects, energy efficiency and the information technology center. He also encouraged investment in roads and other infrastructure.

Zelensky also said that progress has been made in the high rate of refusal for Ukrainian citizens trying to enter Israel.

“Citizens of both states should take advantage of a visa-free regime, and thousands of Ukrainian citizens should not be detained at the border,” he said.

Signed documents

During the meeting, three bilateral documents were signed by Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine Joel Lion and Ukrainian officials.

The first document was an agreement on promoting the study of Hebrew in Ukraine and the study of the Ukrainian language in Israel.

An agreement between the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and The Israeli Ministry of Education was signed by Lion and Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel Hennadii Nadolenko.

A memorandum of cooperation in the agrarian sector was signed with Acting Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Olga Trofimtseva.

And the third one was a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine and Israeli Patent Office signed by Lion and Oleksii Perevezentsev, state secretary of the economic development and trade ministry of Ukraine.

77th memorial to second largest mass murder of Jews from the FSU FJS-FSU | August 19, 2019

On Sunday, August 11, was the 77th anniversary of the second largest mass execution of Jews in the FSU by the Nazi invaders. The largest mass murder took place in Baby Yar. On August 11-13, 1942, the Nazi’s murdered more than 27,000 men, women, and children from Rostov-on-Don. The Nazi’s marched the Soviet and Jewish citizens out of Rostov- on-Don to Zmievskaya Balka where they were penned up like animals and murdered viciously through various means including being shot, poisoned and gassed.

This year, the memorial of this horrific tragedy coincided with the memorial of the destruction of Jerusalem of old along with the holy temple. This mournful day, which is marked by fasting and lamentations every year, was significantly more poignant this year.

“Memorial events are a necessary moral obligation that we owe not only to the victims of Nazism but also to our children and our future. Today this is especially true as we observe how, in several countries, history is being ‘rewritten’. The preservation of our historical memory is a kind of vaccine against destructive errors. The Zmievskaya Balka memorial complex is a place that everyone should visit. It makes such a strong emotional impression – there is a physical, frightening silence to it – it is impossible not to think about the great value that it holds, its maintenance depends on each of us,” said Rabbi Alexander Boroda, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) at the memorial ceremony.

The memorial, which was first constructed in 1975, was designated as a memorial to ‘Soviet citizens’, not clearly stating that the majority of the victims were Jews. In 2004, the Jewish community added a plaque to the memorial stating that the victims of the tragedy were mostly Jews. Sadly, the plaque was removed by Rostov city hall. In 2014, the Chief Rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar helped get a new plaque set up. It now reads: “Here, in Zmievskaya Balka, in August 1942, more than 27,000 civilians of Rostov-on-Don and Soviet prisoners of war were exterminated by the Nazi invaders. Among the dead are representatives of many nationalities. Zmievskaya Balka is the largest place in the Russian Federation of the mass extermination of Jews by fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War.”

In August of this year, the legal designation of the memorial was reduced by two-thirds. This means that the memorial ground is designated as a preserved site, but the actual burial place of most of the victims, which is near the site, is no longer designated as preserved. The Governor of the Rostov Region, Vasily Golubev, is apparently taking care of this issue.

Seeking democracy on the streets of Russia Will Englund The Washington Post | August 17, 2019

MOSCOW — It was cold, but not too cold. The streets were cleared of snow. By the thousands, Russians gathered at the big statue of Lenin in October Square until finally they set off along the Garden Ring road to what was then called Prospekt Kalinina. A river of people filled streets made broad to give tanks room to maneuver.

We called them Soviets back then — it was February 1990, my first time in Moscow, the first time I would write a news story about Russians seeking democracy and a chance to live in what they always called “a normal country.”

Nearly 30 years later, Russians are still at it.

Protests in Moscow this summer were ignited when independent candidates for the city council in next month’s elections were stricken from the ballot for various implausible reasons. Demonstrators are calling for a genuine, democratic choice. Every weekend since mid-July, they have turned out to press their cause.

It’s a familiar story, though one that has taken on different hues over the past three decades. The marchers of 1990 were filled with disgust at the system, but not anger. A dominant group were middle-aged, typically well-educated Muscovites who remembered the thaw of the 1960s and still had hope for the brighter future it seemed to promise.

They were unembarrassed by their earnestness. I was squeezed in among them. I remember a particular sort of Soviet aroma, of wet fur hats and that pungent soap people used, and the smell of pickled vegetables on their winter breath. I stood out as a foreigner because of my eyeglasses; anyone looking down would have noticed my unmistakably foreign well-made shoes. It wasn’t quite a march, and it wasn’t quite a stroll. Everyone was talking.

Hundreds of thousands of people filled Manezh Square, just outside the Kremlin walls. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, on the speakers’ stand by the Moskva Hotel, read one of his poems.

Today he is dead, and the Moskva has been torn down and rebuilt, so it looks almost the same. Manezh has been turned into a shopping mall.

Those marchers won, in a way. The police let them be, the press and TV gave them extensive coverage, the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight the following year. Public opinion mattered, even in the U.S.S.R., especially given the cynicism and loss of faith in communist dogma that reached all the way to the top. Possessing neither ideals nor fervor, the Soviet leaders were pushed along by the crowd.

Russia declared itself a democracy, and it took some years to find a way to hold on to the outward forms of a democratic system while hollowing out the substance.

But public opinion still matters. Until now, it has been the source of President Vladimir Putin’s success, because he has kept the majority of Russians on his side.

The crowds this summer have been younger, more raucous, edgier than in that long-ago time. Their clothes look like clothes the world over. They’re jaded, but angry. The police are a lot less sympathetic. Protesters I’ve spoken with are curiously pessimistic, yet committed. Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, told me they don’t expect the government to listen to reason, as that ’60s generation did. They’re looking to force change through numbers.

So where does Russian public opinion stand? Denis Volkov, of the independent Levada polling organization, told me that while support for the protests is strong in Moscow, they haven’t made a substantial impression on the majority of Russians.

Nationwide, nevertheless, support for the authorities has been trending downward. Putin’s party, United Russia, has less than 30 percent support, and some candidates for local office are running away from it.

Law enforcement officers detain Muscovite Daria Sosnovskaya after a rally to demand authorities allow opposition candidates to run in the upcoming local election. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters) Today’s protesters think in terms of the dignity of free elections and free speech. For a lot of other Russians, Volkov pointed out, dignity means a decent job and living wage, and they’re more apt to look to the government for help than to rally against it. Discontent can be complicated.

The demonstrators who railed against Putin in Moscow in 2011 and 2012, when he reassumed the presidency, never found the language that would let them communicate with the rest of Russia, and the protests petered out. And yet they pushed the Kremlin into reinstituting the election of governors, who had been appointed by Moscow. Elections can be rigged, of course, but Volkov said some governors are more popular in their regions than Putin is because they have to attend to their voters.

In 1990, I stayed at the brown and dreary Kosmos Hotel. The city, with no commercial signs, was astonishingly dark. Moscow’s dimness was literal back then.

There was something in the air, though.

The demonstrators, in their respectable Soviet coats, wanted to restore good sense and logic to their country. The newspapers were full of ideas. In Pushkin Square, strangers would argue over politics — lively, creative, passionate.

Public opinion was moving, and with it moved Russia. That’s the test now: Where will public opinion take this country?

The grandson of Ukrainian strongman Stepan Bandera reckons with his family legacy of Nazi collaboration Sam Sokol JTA | August 21, 2019

(JTA) — The rabbi appears serious, with just the barest hint of a smile behind his long white beard. Standing beside him, a stocky, unremarkable man with a thick black mustache grips a smartphone, his arms held straight at his sides. He also has a subtle smile.

The scene is both pedestrian — and remarkable. Tweeted from the sidelines of the Ukrainian Jewish Forum, a gathering of representatives of the post-Soviet state’s Jewish organizations, the photo shows Yaakov Dov Bleich, chief rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine, with Stepan “Steve” Bandera, the eponymous grandson of one of Ukraine’s most notorious Nazi collaborators.

“Met up with my good friends … for breakfast,” Bleich tweeted, tagging Bandera as well as Ukrainian Health Minister Ulana Suprun and her husband, Marko.

During World War II, the older Bandera had served as Providnyk — a title analogous to the German Fuehrer — of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a brutally violent and authoritarian Ukrainian ultranationalist organization that had collaborated with the Nazis.

Formed from a merger of fascist and far-right groups, the OUN, as it is known colloquially, had engaged in a sustained campaign of terror and political assassination during the interwar period, when western Ukraine was under Polish control. By 1940, the organization split and the elder Bandera took over the larger faction, OUN-B, which subsequently adopted a 1941 manifesto calling on its members to “liquidate undesirable Poles, Muscovites, and Jews.”

The OUN collaborated with the Nazis and its members served in various German formations taking part in the Holocaust, but eventually turned against the Nazis when Berlin refused to recognize its declaration of Ukrainian independence. Bandera was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (two of his brothers would die in Auschwitz) — he was later released and resumed his collaboration.

Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary).

In 2019, however, with the rise of nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine, Bandera is being rehabilitated in the country as a patriotic, anti-Soviet hero. And his grandson is at the center of the debate over his legacy, reaching out to Jews and expressing sadness over the Holocaust while defending his grandfather’s reputation and feuding with historians who insist Stepan Bandera has Jewish blood on his hands.

Steve Bandera, a journalist and Canadian citizen, has steadfastly maintained for years that his grandfather, and the Ukrainian nationalist movement in general, are innocent of perpetrating war crimes against Jews. It’s a viewpoint that some historians see as Holocaust revisionism.

Bandera said he was unable to tell from firsthand experience what his grandfather thought about Jews. However, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in “the anti-Soviet activism of my dad there were a lot of Jewish colleagues and allies” and his father “made an effort of reaching out and working together with Jews that were on the same page.”

Bandera insists that anti-Ukrainian propaganda by the Russians has distorted the historical record.

“The Bandera moniker became a symbol and was used very much in Soviet propaganda to demonize” Ukraine, he said in a video interview from that country. “Bandera even sounds like bandit. It sounds bad, right? And so I came to see how the Soviet propaganda used it and that became part of the popularization, if you will, of bringing it into the discourse. Putin and Russia still use it today as a way, as a moniker, as a term of denigration.”

Over the years, Bandera has had numerous run-ins with historians of Ukrainian nationalism and the Holocaust, repeatedly asserting that his grandfather had been “cleared” of all wrongdoing and that those writing about the issue were (as he wrote in a 2010 letter to the Edmonton Journal) attempting “to smear our family name.”

Per Anders Rudling, a Swedish researcher who has written extensively on narrative formation in the Ukrainian diaspora, has accused Steve Bandera of revealing “the mindset of fascist apologists.”

Bandera refers to Rudling as a “hack pursuing a political agenda under the guise of Holocaust studies.”

The cult of Bandera

Stepan Bandera was murdered by the KBG while living in exile in Munich in the 1950s, and his widow moved to Canada, where there is a large Ukrainian diaspora community. She arrived with her three young children, including Steve’s father, Andrii. Born in Winnipeg in 1970, Steve Bandera grew up in a Ukrainian nationalist milieu in Toronto, attending a Ukrainian school, participating in Ukrainian youth groups and accompanying his father (a political activist and the editor of The Ukrainian Echo, a leading Banderite publication) to anti-Soviet demonstrations.

His father died in his early 40s, leaving Steve the bearer of the Bandera name. When Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, he immediately flew to Kyiv, or Kiev in the conventional English spelling. Voters had to ratify the independence declaration in a referendum and he was determined to do his part for “the fight and the struggle.”

“We actually brought over three offset printing presses from Canada and we set up a printing press in a factory on the outskirts of Kyiv,” he said. “We started pumping out leaflets and materials that the message was to vote for Ukrainian independence.” He would continue to travel there, developing a career in journalism on both sides of the Atlantic, including stints at the Kyiv Post and a variety of North American diaspora outlets.

In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine, annexing the Crimean peninsula and launching a proxy war in the country’s industrial east. In response, Kiev launched a new campaign to sever its historical bonds with its neighbor, creating a new national historiography that lauded and rehabilitated “anti-Soviet” figures such as Bandera’s grandfather.

The younger Bandera has traveled Ukraine teaching about his family history, and on several occasions attended the dedication of statues of his grandfather. To a certain degree, he said, such glorification makes him uncomfortable.

“For me personally, the monuments and that business smacks of Sovietness, but that’s coming from a Canadian background,” he said. “I really believe that if in Ukraine and in the West, if there was as strong a condemnation of Lenin and Stalin as there is of Hitler, then the demand for the Bandera monuments would fall dramatically. The whole monument thing would cease to be an issue.”

Such monuments, in his view, constitute an attempt by Ukrainians to say “hey, we have our history, this is who we think are our heroes.” It is also, he said, a way of saying “Bandera’s not only about that manifesto from 1941, there is a lot to that history and we have our own history as well.”

Asked about the present-day Ukrainian Jewish community, which has come out strongly against his grandfather’s rehabilitation, Bandera called for dialogue and blamed his family name’s bad reputation on “propaganda.”

“If I get into polemics, we get into the what-about side of things, then I can talk about Menachem Begin or I can talk about Irgun or I can talk about Stern,” he said, referring to Jewish militant figures and groups that fought an underground war against the British in Mandatory Palestine.

Despite his spirited defense of his grandfather’s legacy, however, Bandera stressed that “the only real thing I can do or we can today is to make a pledge that this shouldn’t happen again and it cannot happen again.”

“Insofar as Bandera remains a symbol to this day,” he said, “I think it’s also important to stand up and be seen with the Jewish community to say, hey, we can stand together.”

Openness and blind spots

Steve Bandera’s contradictions divide observers and historians.

According to Mark Freiman, a Canadian lawyer and board member of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, an organization that seeks to create common ground between Ukrainians and Jews, Bandera has “a blind spot.”

Growing up in Canada, he holds many liberal North American values and “has a benign view of Jews and Judaism,” Freiman said.

He accompanied Bandera to the Ukrainian village of Sambir a decade ago. The village had been the site of a massacre during the Holocaust, but instead of erecting a memorial to the murdered Jews, local residents put up three 15-foot crosses on the site. The two hoped to reach a compromise that would honor the Jews’ memories.

A statue of Stepan Bandera stands in Ternopil, Ukraine. (Mykola Vasylechko/Wikimedia Commons)

While Bandera’s efforts were rebuffed, “he was greeted everywhere as a living god,” Freiman recalled. “He has always been a pleasant fellow and well disposed to our project, but I don’t think he’s re-evaluated his grandfather or his grandfather’s views of Jews,” Freiman said, describing what he believes to be a “whole class of Ukrainian nationalist intellectuals” who are trying to “set aside racist concepts and overcome any traditional anti- Semitism” but are not yet ready to let go of a “nationalist past they’ve inherited.”

“Given who he is and where he came from, I was very impressed by his openness and warmth and his attempt to be helpful, which was genuine and sincere,” he said.

Bleich, who met Steve Bandera two decades ago during the early post-Soviet period, also had positive things to say.

While he described Bandera as an acquaintances rather than a close friend, the Brooklyn-born rabbi said that he immediately formed a bond with him.

“I found him to be open and, so to speak, respectful of the same things that I am. Living in Ukraine as a U.S. expat, when you meet English-speaking people you start to identify with them before you learn who they are,” Bleich said. “I find him to be an objective guy as a journalist and a Western-oriented guy. it happens to be he has the pedigree he has.”

Asked whether he believed that Steve Bandera was a Holocaust revisionist, the rabbi said that the two never discussed the issue and that he believed “eventually there will be an objective history written by historians and not a political history.”

“I’m not a historian,” Bleich asserted. “You have to get a historian who knows exactly what his grandfather did do and know what he’s trying to do, and then you can describe him as a Holocaust revisionist or not.”

This did not sit well with Rudling, the Swedish researcher.

“I don’t think history is like the Jewish side or the Ukrainian side. I’m a historian,” he told JTA. “Bandera’s legacy? I think it’s pretty well documented what Bandera thought about the Jews.”

Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, a historian of a massive political biography of Stepan Bandera, also is critical of his grandson, saying he “was involved in the propagation of the cult of his grandfather” in the 1990s and 2000s.

“He participated in numerous ceremonies devoted to the glory of Bandera, such as unveiling of monuments and receiving awards from President Viktor Yushchenko. He attacked scholars who investigated the OUN and UPA and expressed many neo-fascist and anti-Semitic ideas in nationalist Ukrainian and diaspora newspapers,” Rossoliński-Liebe told JTA.

“In my opinion, it is a mixture of emotional attachment to his grandfather, the climate of the diaspora environment and his nationalist views that motivated him to propagate the Bandera cult in post-Soviet Ukraine.”

For his part, Bandera said that Rossoliński-Liebe’s book contains “scandalous claims” and complained that the German- Polish scholar never consulted with him while researching the work.

Among other Jews in Ukraine, not everybody is as ready as Bleich to embrace Bandera’s grandson.

Inna Ioffe, the CEO of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, with which the chief rabbi is affiliated, told JTA in no uncertain terms that her organizations have “no ties with [Steve] Bandera.” She insisted that his presence at the Jewish Forum had nothing to do with the umbrella group and he was there only in the capacity of a personal guest of the rabbi.

And while Ioffe said that Bandera was not responsible for his grandfather’s crimes and she did not object to his relationship with Bleich, she made it clear repeatedly that there were “no contacts between Stepan Bandera’s grandson and the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine.” Dialogue and reconciliation

While the legacy of the Second World War has been a bone of contention between Jews and Ukrainians, Bandera believes that the Russian-Ukraine conflict may hold the key to reconciliation between the two groups.

“It’s not a total war like it was in World War II, but you see Ukrainians and Jews and other groups fighting an authoritarianism coming from the north in the person of Putin,” he said. “So in that sense it’s easier to find common ground and commit to being allies [because] there’s a common enemy now.”

Bandera also held up the recent success of Jewish politicians in Ukraine like Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying that they are a convincing proof against “this notion that Ukrainians are somehow genetically anti-Semitic.”

(Bandera himself has been critical of Zelensky, a comedian turned politician, recently writing on Facebook that opposition to Zelensky stemmed from what Bandera described as his “anti-Ukrainian cultural offerings.”)

“The president and the prime minister aside, there’s also a tremendous amount of wealth in Ukraine concentrated in Jewish hands, the oligarchs,” he continued. “You have Pinchuk, Kolomoisky [and] Bogolyubov,” referring to the Ukrainian billionaires Viktor Pinchuk, Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov.

“If Ukrainians are so anti-Semitic, what about these guys? Nobody’s going around taking them out or forcing them out of the country. Jewish-Ukrainian relations are so important for making Ukraine a success, so I think it’s a good thing.”

Bandera believes that he has “grappled” and “resolved” how he sees the racial component of his grandfather’s legacy.

Anti-Semitism, he explained, “was unfortunately a part of the political discourse at the time. That doesn’t justify any crimes. Any and all crimes against innocent civilians need to be researched, punished to the extent that they can still be punishable and a pledge has to be made that, y’know, never again.”

Explaining Trump’s belated Russia sanctions Maximilian Hess Riddle.io | August 16, 2019

Last August, US President Donald Trump found Russia had used nerve agents in the March 2018 attack on ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Trump’s response was to label Russia a violator of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW ACT), thereby formally barring the US from directly loaning to Russia or selling it arms and national-security sensitive goods and technology. The CBW Act also calls for the president to impose a series of additional sanctions within three months unless the president certifies to Congress the designated state has changed its behaviour.

Trump failed to impose the measures within three months, nor did he offer any such certification. For an Administration that has long faced coordination challenges, this was by no means unsurprising, but many took it as an indication Trump would refuse to comply with the CBW Act’s stipulations and that no further such action would be forthcoming. As a result, when he belatedly issued an executive order announcing the Treasury Department would implement the additional sanctions on 1 August 2019, it caught many off guard, particularly as it came just a day after a phone call allegedly initiated by Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The move spurred a tumble in the ruble the following day, as it raised the spectre of some rather serious sanctions – the CBW Act offers a menu of six options in in Section 307 (b)(2) from which the President must chose at least three – which could cut off a targeted government from US bank loans, cut off almost all exports, or even allow the President to suspend bilateral diplomatic relations. Trump’s executive order mentioned only two of these measures – the ban on US bank loans to the Russian government and formalizing the US policy of barring international financial institutions’ (IFI) loans to Russia. The second measure had already effectively been in place since the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, after which the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development halted loans to the country. Uncertainty therefore lingered over the extent of the bank ban and the potential third measure.

Shortly before midnight the next day, the measures were laid out in a statement by the US State Department. The announcement also revealed the third measure: additional “export licensing restrictions of Department of Commerce- controlled goods and technology.” As with the IFI loan ban, the US has already been de facto observing such a ban since 2014.

OFAC also issued a new directive as a result of the Executive order that lays out the measure restricting US banks. As with the other two measures, it effectively adds nothing new to the US’ sanctions regime on Russia. It merely bars US banks from dealing in the primary issuance of non-ruble denominated loans and bonds to the Russian government, its agencies, ministries, wealth funds, and Central Bank – notably it does not exclude them from loaning to Russian state- owned enterprises, although some, such as Rosneft, have been subject to their own debt financing restrictions, the core of the measures introduced by former President Barack Obama known as “sectoral sanctions,” since 2014.

The new sanctions will bar US banks and other financial institutions from participating in Russian government Eurobond issuances, however, such issuances are formally sold in Europe, and for the last three years, Russia’s state-owned VTB has handled the underwriting and book-building. Last November the Russian sovereign also started to again sell such bonds denominated in Euros rather than US Dollars. Like a dentist ripping out teeth, OFAC also excluded ruble debts from the sanctions, and noted that banks outside the US, and foreign entities linked to US banks, were not subject to the loan ban. The ban also only refers to the primary market, meaning secondary trading of new issuances will likely able to continue. The impact on Russia’s sovereign debt market will therefore likely merely be that US investors and financial institutions cannot subscribe to initial bond sales.

Russia’s financial position is also healthy enough that it has little need to actually sell such debt – though Russia’s sovereign debt chief Konstantin Vyshkovsky had earlier this year explained a flurry of Russian debt sales as a tool to mitigate against sanctions. The recent deposit of US$64 billion of above-budget oil revenues into the National Wealth Fund, with a view towards spending it from next year, emphasizes the Kremlin’s relative independence from foreign funding.

While the White House’s latest sanctions measures are best seen solely as the formalization of de facto sanctions already in place, this does pose an interesting question about Russia’s place in the global financial framework. Cut off from all Western-led IFIs, the Kremlin now has more reason than ever to cooperate with Beijing on such efforts through alternative institutions such as the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) or the New Development Bank, formerly known as the BRICS Bank. Furthermore the event Russia faces another sovereign debt crisis – though highly unlikely at present, it was only 21 years’ ago Russia infamously defaulted on its domestic debts – it will no longer be able to turn to the IMF as it did in 1998 without first securing a removal of these sanctions from Washington.

It is unclear what spurred the Trump Administration to take this action nearly nine months late, though the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee senior members did send the White House a letter threatening action if the White House failed to do so days before. The fact it was done in a manner that has little change on the status quo raises the prospect it may be an attempt to head of renewed push in Congress to legislate additional sanctions on Russia, which have been supported by Republicans otherwise prone to defend Trump such as Senator Lindsey Graham who nonetheless remain befuddled by Trump’s timidity and obsequiousness when it comes to dealings with Putin.

Though the most wide-ranging Russian sanctions bill introduced to Congress – the Defending American Security From Kremlin Aggression Act of 2019, also known as DASKA – remains mired in committee, Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman secured passage of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA) on 12 July that bars all trading of Russian sovereign debt by US persons. That bill must still be reconciled with the version of the act passed by the Republican-held Senate once Congress’ summer recess ends in September. These latest sanctions are therefore best seen as a negotiating tool, as by arguing that Trump has already acted on Russian debt it may help ensure the NDAA that is approved by both houses of Congress does not include a Russian sovereign debt ban as strident that included in the Sherman amendment.

Netanyahu’s praise of Kyiv’s Holocaust remembrance only tells part of the story Sam Sokol Times of Israel | August 21, 2019

On Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at Kyiv’s Babi Yar ravine with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s recently elected Jewish president, and praised the former Soviet republic for what he said was its commitment to memory.

More than 30,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis at the site over a period of two days in 1941.

“I thank you President Zelensky, and I also thank the Ukrainian government, for your efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said. “You are continuing your efforts in the war against anti-Semitism.”

While Ukraine has indeed made efforts to commemorate the Holocaust in recent years, especially at Babi Yar, its record on memory is far more complicated than Netanyahu’s statement indicated.

In 2014, Ukrainians took to the streets of Kyiv, deposing pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych and sparking a Russian military intervention that saw Moscow annexing the Crimean peninsula and fomenting an ongoing separatist uprising in the eastern Donbas region.

The following year, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a series of bills known collectively as the Decommunization Laws, meant to sever the country’s ties to its Russian and Soviet past. One of the bills prohibited what it called the “public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for independence of Ukraine in the twentieth century.”

In practical terms, these bills paved the way for the rehabilitation of Ukrainian ultranationalist figures like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its offshoot the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), respectively. Both men and their organizations had collaborated with the Nazis and their followers were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.

Thousands of Ukrainian nationalists hold a torchlight procession across Kiev in honor of Stepan Bandera, a World War II anti-Soviet insurgent, on January 1, 2015 (photo credit: AFP/Genya Savilov)

Over the last several years, streets all over the country have been named after the far-right figures and steps have been taken to rehabilitate their images, casting them as fighters for democracy whose followers saved Jews from the Germans.

During this period, several efforts were also made to revise the history of Ukrainian participation in the Holocaust that directly involved Babi Yar, the very site where Netanyahu delivered his praise of Ukrainian Holocaust memorial efforts this week. In early 2016, Jewish groups harshly criticized Ukraine over an architectural competition aimed at revamping the site that sought to fix the “discrepancy between the world’s view and Jewry’s exclusive view of Babi Yar as a symbol of the Holocaust.”

Less than a year later, at the official commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the massacre, a sign was erected memorializing Ukrainian journalists who the authorities claimed had been killed at the site. They had worked for an OUN-linked newspaper which had actively called on Ukrainians to turn Jews over to the Gestapo. In 2018, then- president Petro Poroshenko appointed the leader of the OUN’s current incarnation to a committee tasked with planning for the future of the site. Netanyahu’s comments are part of a larger pattern of declining to confront revisionism among Israel’s Central and Eastern European allies, who he sees as a counterbalance to the EU’s more critical members.

PM Netanyahu, his wife Sara and Ukrainian President Zelensky lay wreaths at a monument for Jewish victims killed at Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine, August 19, 2019 (Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)

Historians like Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt have been especially critical of the approach. In an interview with The Times of Israel last month, she asserted that Netanyahu should not “go play with the Poles and the Hungarians and the Lithuanians, and then claim for yourself the mantle of being the main address for fighting anti-Semitism in this world.”

In many ways, Ukraine has made strides in raising awareness of the Holocaust, especially compared to the Soviet period when mention of the genocide was prohibited. One of the ways it has improved can be seen in its support for a project promoted by former Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky, which seeks to build a Holocaust memorial center at Babi Yar.

Netanyahu referenced this during his speech when he said that he Zelensky had spoken with “Sharansky about the possibility of establishing a heritage center here that would be a symbol to all of humanity. A symbol and a monument.”

This is indeed a positive development, but Netanyahu’s praise only tells part of the story.