In this issue:

Russian Expert: Common Interests Possible with Kerry

Russia Protests Pentagon Claims

Rising Tensions Precede Vote in Ukraine

Russian Depopulation Is National Security Threat

Putin Pledges To 'Save' Russian Academy, But Cuts Run Deep

From Volume 3, Issue Number 44 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 2, 2004
Russia and the CIS News Digest

Russian Expert: Common Interests Possible with Kerry

Interviewed in a late-October issue of Novaya Gazeta (No. 78), Sergei Rogov, director of the USA-Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, criticized the widespread assumption that the reelection of George W. Bush would be good for Russia. Rogov cautioned, "Actually, we should ask ourselves exactly what we want and expect from America. My impression is that we still don't know." He said that the behavior of a second Bush Administration would be unpredictable.

Rogov warned that nobody should assume they know how a President Kerry will act: "In fact, not everything is clear about Kerry's policy, either. On the one hand, his foreign-policy team includes Clinton's people. We all remember how they liked to appoint our Prime Ministers, and promoted privatization in Russia in the early 1990s. Hence, the anti-American trends in Russian society. Should Kerry win, we will hear a lot of rhetorical rebukes." But, added Rogov, "Kerry is criticizing Bush for acting unilaterally, disregarding international law, abandoning international agreements like the ABM Treaty, and refusing to ratify the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. These are also the points on which Russia is critical of Bush. That means we could find some common interests with a Kerry Administration."

Also speaking out on Russia's posture toward the U.S. campaign, with a certain subtlety, was ex-Prime Minister and foreign affairs expert Yevgeni Primakov, in one of the many interviews he gave on the occasion of his 75th birthday (Oct. 29). Speaking Oct. 24 to RTR state television, Primakov was asked about President Putin's recent remarks in Tajikistan, which the interviewer characterized as saying "that a defeat for Bush would mean a victory for international terrorism." Primakov rejoined, "This is not quite what he said. This is not what he said. He said terrorist attacks were on the rise in Iraq, and these were clearly aimed at preventing a Bush reelection. This was what he said. It is not the same thing. Some thought he voiced his support for Bush. It can of course be construed that way."

RTR then asked, "Who is harder to work with, the Democrats or the Republicans? The popular myth is that it is easier to reach agreement with the Republicans," to which Primakov responded, "It all depends on who represents the Democrats or the Republicans. In theory, if you wish, we have always found it easier to agree with the Republicans because they never feared any attacks from the left.... But ultimately, it all depends on who represents one or the other."

Russia Protests Pentagon Claims

Claims made by John Shaw, a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security, first circulated in the Financial Times of London and then proliferated by the Washington Times, have caused a furore in Moscow. "The Russian Ministry of Defense summoned the U.S. military attaché in Moscow to express a resolute protest in connection with the comments by Shaw," Interfax quoted an anonymous source at a Russian Defense Agency, on Oct. 29. Shaw's allegation was that Russian soldiers spirited away hundreds of tons of explosives from a site in Iraq, just before the U.S. invasion.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov dismissed the allegation with the comment, "You can't really take statements like this as anything but far-fetched. I can officially confirm that the Ministry of Defense and the organizations that report to it could not have taken part in the disappearance of the explosives, since Russia's servicemen and military specialists left Iraq 12 years ago."

Rising Tensions Precede Vote in Ukraine

The lead-up to the Oct. 31 Presidential election in Ukraine was marked by some violence, accusations of foul play, and warnings and scenarios about provocations and more violence, up to and including a so-called "Chestnut Revolution," on the model of the "Rose Revolution" that brought Michael Saakashvili to power in Georgia at the end of last year. International circles typified by the Wall Street Journal would like to see opposition candidate Victor Yushchenko as "their man"—the Saakashvili of Ukraine. Russia, meanwhile, rooted for Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych, with final, none-too-subtle backing coming from President Putin, who spent Oct. 26-28 in Kiev. Yanukovych is the one whom outgoing President Leonid Kuchma prefers as his successor.

On Oct. 22, a member of Yushchenko's parliamentary bloc, Volodymyr Stretovych, alleged that Kuchma was arranging "a strong-arm scenario," under which Yushchenko would be framed up for instigating violence, and a state of emergency would be declared. On the other side, pro-Yanukovych Russian operatives, such as spin-doctor Gleb Pavlovsky, have been loudly warning about the Chestnut Revolution scenario, under which Yushchenko would fall short in the voting, but move to seize power. Andrei Kokoshin, chairman of the Russian State Duma's Committee for CIS Affairs, in a TV interview called Ukraine and the whole CIS "spheres of Russian strategic and vital interest," ... and then arrived in Kiev as part of a Russian delegation of election-monitors.

The race has been presented in the Western media as merely a contest between the "pro-Western" Yushchenko and "pro-Russian" Yanukovych. Really, the correlation of forces is messier than that, and is entwined with the brutal clan politics and control of the Ukrainian economy by clannish business interests, which came to dominate the country during the destructive neoliberal reforms in the first post-Soviet years. (Ukraine's rates of HIV/AIDS, drug addiction and trafficking of women into forced prostitution, outstrip even those in Russia.)

The most recent violence led some observers to ask if a so-called third force were not acting to provoke clashes among the political tendencies, and between western and eastern Ukraine. (Eastern Ukraine is traditionally Orthodox, with large Russian ethnic and Russian-speaking population.) On Oct. 23, the largest political rally since Ukrainian independence in 1991—with the crowd estimated at between 50,000 and 150,000—took place in Kiev, to support Yushchenko. As the rally was ending, and the candidate had already left the scene, a gang of leather-jacketed toughs started smashing the windows of the Central Election Commission offices. Yushchenko's staff quickly denied responsibility, while London-exiled financier Boris Berezovsky's Moscow Kommersant newspaper headlined, "Kiev Is Preparing for a Falsification of the Vote," blaming the attack on Kuchma.

On Oct. 25, Kommersant ran a full-page, alleged transcript of a conversation between Kuchma and Yanukovich, full of obscenities against the opposition, and sourced to the fugitive Ukrainian intelligence Major Mykola Melnichenko—who in 2001 orchestrated the release of tapes purporting to implicate Kuchma in the murder of journalist Gongadze.

At a conference of political scientists in Kiev Oct. 27, Russian analyst Sergei Markov warned about possible "serious and possibly bloody disorders" in Kiev on election day, adding, "That [the Oct. 23 incident] was a rehearsal of a coup d'etat. Why are we pretending that nothing is happening?"

Putin arrived in Kiev as Kuchma's guest on Oct. 26. That night he did a one-hour call-in interview on Ukrainian national TV. While remaining diplomatically correct, regarding Ukraine's sovereignty, Putin hailed the process, which he said was gathering force, of "finding forms of interaction and integration" between Russia and Ukraine. On Oct. 28, Putin was in the reviewing stand for a parade to mark the 60th anniversary of Kiev's liberation from the Nazi occupation.

Russian Depopulation Is National Security Threat

On Oct. 21, the Russian State Statistics Committee (Goskomstat) announced that the country's population declined by another 504,000 people in the period January-August 2004, due almost entirely to the excess of deaths over births. A TV-Tsentr report, monitored by RFE/RL Newsline, quoted Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov, who said that Russia's population is already "insufficient for a country with such territory and long borders." TV-Tsentr also cited Victor Ishayev, the governor of Khabarovsk Territory, who said that only 8 million people live in East Siberia and the Russian Far East, right across the border from hundreds of millions in China.

On Oct. 18, Zurabov spoke at a conference on the Spiritual and Moral Fundamentals of Russia's Demographic Development, convened by the Russian Orthodox Church. There he reported that Russia's population is down to 144.2 million. The number of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation has fallen by 9 million since 1992; the natural loss of population was somewhat offset by immigration from other former Soviet republics, producing a net population loss of 6 million in those 12 years. Zurabov also said that Russia currently has 600 non-working-age people (children and retirees) for every 1,000 work-capable population. This ratio is already "an unbearable economic burden, which affects the prospects for economic development, public incomes, and living standards," RIA Novosti reported him saying. The current mortality rate, he announced, is 16.4 per 1,000 population and rising, after a short dip in 1995-99. It features a 40% rise in adolescent mortality in the recent period, and absolute numbers such as 233,000 deaths of working-age people last year (33,000 of alcohol abuse, 30,000 in auto accidents).

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II told the forum, "We are already faced with a choice: Either our Fatherland will exist in the future or it will not." He and other Church speakers focussed on the moral corruption of Russia, its "spiritual ill-being." "Russia has gone through harder times in economic terms," Alexi II said, "but, as they were morally healthy, people saw the family as the absolute value and, despite difficulties, had many children and responsibly raised them." Another Church spokesman denounced the media for promoting "immorality, selfishness, the cult of profit-making, and freedom from morality."

Zurabov, who told the conference that nearly one-third of Russian children are born out of wedlock (as against 14.6% in 1994), outlined an array of economic incentives being offered for family formation, in various regions of Russia.

Putin Pledges To 'Save' Russian Academy, But Cuts Run Deep

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Oct. 26, in the framework of his Council on Science, Technology and Education, with Academy of Sciences leaders who are reeling from the Ministry of Education's plan to cut off funding to hundreds of research institutes. "No one is going to ruin the Academy," Putin tried to reassure them, "Our task is to preserve the Academy and prevent it from disappearing in the turmoil that has caught all of us." Nonetheless, Putin endorsed the Ministry plan, which provides for a 50% increase in federal spending on science over two years (to 70 billion rubles, or $2.4 billion, as against $19 billion for foreign debt service in 2005), while cutting the number of state-funded institutions from 2,388 down to 800. Putin confirmed, "We are planning effective restructuring of the state-run scientific sector, based on the principles of the state's participation in scientific organizations only in the interests of public tasks, above all, to provide the development of key scientific trends." Other scientific institutes and projects will have to make their way in the marketplace.

An example of the kind of unique facility that may disappear, came in mid-October reports that the Omsk Road Research Institute is facing legal action for failing to meet payroll, and may have to close its doors. It has designed unique road-laying technologies for use in Siberian marshes and the permafrost of the tundra—the terrain of what should be the great development frontier of North Central Eurasia.

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