Window On Eurasia: Putin’s Plan For All-Volunteer Military Not Working Out, Officials Say
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posted by eagle on July, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 17 – Insufficient financing, some but not all the result of the economic crisis, and the active hostility of commanders and defense ministry officials, who prefer working with draftees, has blocked almost every step toward the all-volunteer military President Vladimir Putin called for more than five years ago, according to the Accounting Chamber.
The findings of this review, Viktor Yuzbashev writes in the issue of “Novoye voennoye obozreniye” released today, are “not reassuring” about either the ability of the armed services to reform themselves or the willingness of the political elite and the population at large to demand that they do and support them (nvo.ng.ru/forces/2009-07-17/1_kontraktnik.html?mright=0).
At the outset of this reform effort, Putin called for professional soldiers to receive 15 to 20 percent more pay than the average pay in the private sector, and he suggested that by 2008 no less than 50 percent of the soldiers in the ...
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Window On Eurasia: Closing Moscow Markets Threatens Social More than Ethnic Explosion
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 18 – Many observers have pointed to the risk that the closure of the Cherkizov market at the end of June and others like it in the near future could trigger ethnic conflicts not only because so many non-Russians will be thrown out of work but because Russian officials have played the populist prejudices to justify their actions.
But there is an equal or even greater danger, one Moscow commentator suggests, that the closing of these markets will trigger a social explosion both because many Russians will also lose their jobs and because these markets helped an even larger number of them weather the economic difficulties of the last two decades.
In a commentary on the Kasparov.ru site yesterday, Aleksey Lapshin calls attention to this possibility by arguing that even now in Russia “a market is more than a market.” It is “a wave of life for hundreds of thousands ...
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Window On Eurasia: What Could The Kremlin Do If Kadyrov Was behind Estemirova’s Killing?
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 18 – If as many believe but no one has yet proved, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov was behind the murder of journalist and rights activist Natalya Estemirova, Moscow would face a serious dilemma, according to “Yezhednevny zhurnal” commentator Leonid Radzikhovsky.
If it attempted to bring Kadyrov to justice, he writes, it could do so only at the risk of starting a new Chechen war, given that Kadyrov has a personal guard of several “tens of thousands” of armed men and given that anyone Moscow might impose on that republic would likely behave in much the same way to provide the “stability” the center wants.
But if it attempted to suppress or ignore evidence linking Kadyrov to this crime, then the consequences would be almost as bad: Moscow would in effect be “yet again LEGALIZING this ‘order of things’” and “yet again showing Kadyrov his COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE from the ...
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Window On Eurasia: Russia, China Stage Military Exercise On The ‘Uyghur-Chechen Scenario,’ Moscow Paper Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, July 21 – For the third time in the last four years, Russia and China are conducting joint military exercises, this time in contrast to earlier ones directed not at imposing order on the territory of another state (2005), which many viewed as about Taiwan, or suppressing terrorism in Central Asia (2007) about countering separatist challenges.
The maneuvers, which begin tomorrow and will involve approximately 3,000 officers and men from the Far Eastern Military District and the Peoples Liberation Army, will begin in Khabarovsk and then shift to the Tao Nang base in the Shenyang military district of the Chinese Peoples Republic.
As military observer Vladimir Mukhin points out in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” the joint maneuvers with their focus on suppressing separatist challenges not only reflect the common concerns of the two countries but also provide a stronger basis for cooperation between their respective militaries (www.ng.ru/politics/2009-07-21/2_uchenia.html).
And while none ...
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TIME: Alexander Lebedev: Rich Advice
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Alexander Lebedev: Rich Advice
Lebedev, a potent symbol of Russia's huge inequities, says Moscow needs to change MAX NASH / AFP / Getty Images
Alexander Lebedev is telling the story of how he met his girlfriend, Elena Perminova, who is 22 and heavily pregnant. We are sitting in the dining room of Lebedev's house in the ultra-exclusive enclave of Rublyovka, just west of Moscow, early this year. The house includes an underground pool with a cherub-laden fresco on the ceiling, Italian marble floors and a huge ovoid window onto a grand staircase that, Lebedev says, is typical of classical Italian architecture. Outside, there are four or five guards milling around in the driveway. Former President Boris Yeltsin once lived beyond the trees on the other side of a nearby tennis court, now covered in snow. A black BMW with tinted windows, its engine running, sits next to a wall that wraps around the compound. Lebedev, 49, dressed in jeans and a white ...
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