Fledgling Democracies

Russia celebrated Victory Day yesterday with a military parade through Red Square, and the NY Times coverage of the event focuses on the wonderful paradoxes the spectacle provided, as Soviet-era symbolism was trotted out to march for a Russia determined to modernize.

The reporter does a great job setting the scene, and also provides useful background info, but the last several paragraphs absolutely make the story. Warning: gentle mockery of the physical condition of Russian soldiers (and their equipment) follows.

But the parade, broadcast on television here as a national triumph, also offered sights of the mixed condition of the once vaunted armed forces under Kremlin command. Several of the infantry units, including marine and airborne units, were staffed with lean and fit young men who marched with bearing and precision. Others included troops who appeared to be in only fair condition, and several of the officers leading formations past the two Russian leaders were visibly overweight.

The United States expressed no alarm over the parade. Russia has become a leading global arms exporter again, but its wares are almost all items designed decades ago. A Pentagon spokesman, echoing a view common among military analysts, had characterized the planned military review as a hollow show of dated gear bearing fresh coats of paint.

‘If they wish to take out their old equipment and take it for a spin and check it out,’ said the spokesman, Geoff Morrell, ‘they’re more than welcome to do so.’

The Prague Watchdog has a really intriguing interview with former journalist Timur Aliyev, who has joined the (pro-Moscow) administration of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, regarded by many as a ruthless war criminal.

Aliyev’s situation, and the subsequent interview, are confounding since he advocated an independent Chechnya for many years. The interviewer takes him to task for accepting a position with the very regime that seeks to quell the independence movement using all means of brutality, and presses him to explain what could’ve prompted such a change of heart.

Aliyev’s responses are disheartening for anyone with some faith in the power of NGOs. He said:

And for about one and a half years now my own experience has been telling me that at present it’s impossible to change anything in the situation that has developed both in Chechnya and in Russia as a whole if one remains within the sector of non-governmental organizations. In other words, that sector is a resource with limited possibilities, and its impact on society and the power of government tends towards zero. I’ve long believed that it has exhausted itself, and about a year and a half ago I started to think about finding new and more effective methods of influencing public life and the state.

There’s more:

I’ve been associating with our [NGO] activists for quite a long time, I know them well, have worked in that sector myself. In the people who concentrate there I never saw a desire to influence anything – and not only that, but even an idea that might make such social forces and organizations necessary.

Many simply used the NGOs as a platform to promote their own personal careers, and working with such people made it difficult to achieve results of any kind.

Ouch.

In what could be a bad sign of things to come as Dmitry Medvedev settles in as President, the State Department revealed yesterday that Russia has expelled two Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, though they offered no public explanation as to why.

From the International Herald Tribune: “No one at the State Department would speculate about the reasons for the expulsions, although the United States has reportedly expelled a handful of Russians in recent years in little-noted diplomatic dust-ups.”

RIA Novosti (Russian News & Information Agency) political commentator Maxim Krans offers an interesting commentary on a recent World Public Opinion poll that found 44 percent of Russians believe the authorities have the right to control the media to preserve stability, while 69 percent consider Russia’s press to be free. Pollsters even found a significant number of respondents who believe the country’s media has too much freedom.

The United States’ plans to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic have come under fire from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who doesn’t buy Washington’s justification that its intent is only to counter threats from the likes of Iran.

From the AFP story: “The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently,” he told the Daily Telegraph in an interview conducted in Paris. “Every US president has to have a war.”

There was no mention of Gorbachev’s thoughts on the perceived anti-democratic measures Putin, et al have taken.

Moscow is preparing to inaugurate incoming president Dmitry Medvedev in a ceremony at Red Square Wednesday.

[Medvedev is the subject of a great photo essay on the Discovery Institute's Real Russia Project blog. Take a look - really nice shots.]

This Moscow Times story has a rundown on what the inaugaration ceremony and Victory Day parade (scheduled for Friday) will consist of.

Interesting tidbits:

• “Once Medvedev has assumed his duties, one of his first acts as president is expected to be the appointment of his old boss, Vladimir Putin, to the position of prime minister.”

• “One diplomat who plans to attend is outgoing U.S. Ambassador William Burns, according to a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman. Last week, Burns had his confirmation hearings for his appointment as undersecretary of state for political affairs — the No. 3 job in the U.S. State Department — and he is holding his going-away party Tuesday night. By chance, Burns’ attendance at the inauguration will be one of his last acts as ambassador to Russia.”

• “Georgia has no plans to snub its invitation to the ceremony, despite rising tensions with Moscow over the breakaway republic of Abkhazia, a senior Georgian diplomat said. ‘We are a normal government, and we do not need to resort to this kind of protest,’ Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told Interfax on Friday. ‘There are plenty of other ways to express protest, unease, dissatisfaction and demands.’”

• “Intermittent showers have been forecast for Wednesday, but planes armed with special chemicals are ready to stop rain from spoiling the ceremony, as well as Friday’s Victory Day parade.”

A handful of former Soviet republics are mentioned in Jonathan Fryer’s nice summary of the Freedom House presentation to the Association of European Journalists on Thursday (Fryer’s blog focuses mainly on European politics).

Freedom House uses a point system to rank countries’ media independence and categorizes them as “free”, “partly free” or “not free.”

Three guesses as to where Russia landed this year…

See Fryer’s post or the Freedom House site for more info.

En route to London last week for international meetings re: Kosovo and the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice addressed Russia’s recent announcement that it will send additional peacekeeping troops to Georgia. Amid already tense relations between the two countries over Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s desired independence (from Georgia), Rice said the deployments don’t seem to violate specific peacekeeping agreements, but are “not militarily necessary.”

Essentially, as Russia does its best to stand in the way of most everything Georgia wishes to accomplish, the West is asking Russia to respect Georgia’s sovereignty.

Said Rice (in a Voice of America story):

“What the Russians are doing is part of a peacekeeping mission that they’re involved in. But given the tensions between Russia and Georgia, it would certainly be helpful if Russia and Georgia maintained direct contact. They have from time to time. This is not a time to excite the environment, and so we were very concerned about the movement of those forces. I’ve talked to both Georgians and Russians to say: let’s not let any of this get out of hand.”

A Russian NGO had its appeal to overturn the government’s ruling that it must dissolve thrown out of court this week, the Coalition for Democracy in Russia has reported. Sodeystvie (translation: “Assistance”), which helps refugees and forced migrants integrate into society, was found to be non-compliant with the ultra strict (and equally controversial) 2006 law regulating NGOs.

Critics call the law a front for government officials bent on extending broad powers meant to “weaken critical voices.” Oversight of groups who receive foreign funding is particularly stifling, as I alluded to in this earlier post. Groups can be dissolved for filing documentation “improperly,” a distinction so intentionally vague it includes typos.

The 2006 NGO law and it’s implications are likely to be recurring topics on this blog…it’s another example of how Russia’s boldness in what the West considers highly dubious moves towards authoritarianism are snowballing and really starting to impact Russian society.

A report by Human Rights Watch has probably the most thorough critique of the mandate and documentation of its effects thus far. So you get the gist of it, here’s the opening statement:

Over the past eight years, the Russian government under President Vladimir Putin has engaged in efforts to weaken beyond recognition the checks and balances inherent in a truly democratic political system. A recent aspect of these efforts has been a policy to subject Russia’s vibrant civil society to greater scrutiny and control, through a 2006 law that gives the government broad powers to regulate the activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The government has also used other measures, such as the amended 2002 anti-extremism law and a variety of administrative regulations, to target organizations that work on controversial issues, may be capable of galvanizing public dissent, or that receive foreign funding. This report documents the corrosive impact the 2006 law and other government measures have had on civil society in Russia. It demonstrates how these policies are aimed at weakening critical voices in Russia and have profoundly undermined independent activism.

A great interview has appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations website with an expert on Georgia and the Transcaucasus region, Elizabeth Fuller.

She does a good job explaining the motives behind Russia’s stance on Georgia and a number of the other already- or possible-breakaway republics, including (once again) the Georgia/Russia/Abkhazia spy plane saga. Of Russia/Georgia she says:

Russia will do anything to weaken Georgia without caring how the international community responds. But at the same time, the Russian leaders have a very cool head. They know exactly how far they can go in baiting Georgia and there is a red line beyond which it would be counterproductive to proceed.

It’s a substantial article and very much worth reading for anyone with an interest in the ever-changing region. And it’s really hard not to respect someone like Fuller who has a good handle on so many complex relationships there.