The State of Affairs in Russia

[Valmy]

LOL at all the hype about our massive NATO maneuvers (oh noes! The US sent a few drones to Latvia  ). Go ahead and spend all that money on the military Russia.

[Valmy]

Yeah, the Russian embassy in London trolled Cameron pretty hard on Twitter over his Corbyn remarks.

So Putin supports Corbyn...how encouraging.

[Syt]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/news-of-closure-of-american-center-in-moscow-rattles-muscovites/531609.html

News of Closure of American Center in Moscow Rattles Muscovites

News of the possible shutting down of an American culture center sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after 22 years of operation rattled Muscovites on Wednesday.

Ambassador John Tefft was the first to break the news in a statement published on the embassy's website, warning that the Kremlin was eroding ties that the two countries had managed to preserve even during the Cold War.

"The U.S. Embassy in Moscow deeply regrets the Russian government's unilateral decision to close the embassy's American Center at M. Rudomino All-Russia State Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow," Tefft said.

"These latest unilateral steps further call into question the Russian government's commitment to maintaining people-to-people ties between the Russian and American people, which continued even during the Cold War and other complicated moments in our countries' long history," the ambassador added.

Both experts and ordinary Muscovites who had used the center's services expressed unanimous concern about the move, which many suggested was political.

The administration of the Library of Foreign Literature says that the center will continue to work, and insists that voiding the agreement with the embassy is just a technicality and that a new contract will be agreed. But embassy officials claim that reshaping the way the center functions is aimed at squeezing the Americans out.

Giving Notice
The American Center in Moscow is the largest and oldest institution devoted to U.S. culture in Russia, according to its website. It was financed by U.S. Embassy funds and had a U.S. national as its director.

The center received a notice from the foreign-language library saying the library's agreement with the U.S. Embassy had been terminated and that the center's director would be replaced, as the library was taking "full control of all of the center's activities," Tefft's statement read.

The library portrayed the move as targeting the U.S. Embassy's financing of the center, rather than its activities.

Library director Vadim Duda said in his own statement Wednesday that the library administration wanted the American Center to continue its work, all its employees to keep their jobs, the center to retain the offices and facilities it had been leasing, and to preserve all of its programs.

"But we must put our cooperation in compliance with the demands of Russian law," Duda said. "A state-run federal library cannot maintain the current agreement on the financing of the American Center, which, in effect, is the lease of facilities."

The library has offered the Americans the chance to work out a "new scheme of contract relations," Duda said, adding that the library was "willing to support [the center's] activity even without financing from the American side."

The center's employees expressed dismay at the decision to shut down the American Center "as you know it."

"We are all heartbroken by the news," the center said in a statement, adding: "Many questions and details are still being resolved."

The programs scheduled for September remain in effect, but the prospects of future operations were in limbo, the center said.

No Americans?
Replacing the American director of the center with a Russian employee and announcing the library's intention of taking full control of any activities happening in the space that the American Center formerly occupied is an attempt to squeeze the Americans out of the American center, Will Stevens, a spokesman for the embassy, told The Moscow Times.

"[They] are calling this space a new 'North American Division' of the library. While we welcome the library's apparent intention to continue offering access to the former American Center's resources, they are essentially attempting to maintain a so-called American Center without any Americans," he said in written comments Thursday.

Duda, the library director, disagreed and insisted that the center will not only continue to operate, but will preserve its ties with the embassy.

"We're not planning to destroy ties [with the embassy], we're currently in contact with our American colleagues," he told The Moscow Times on Thursday. "I'm sure that when this question becomes one of business and not politics, together with our American colleagues we will immediately find a way out," he said.

The previous agreement with the embassy, according to Duda, violated Russian legislation on leasing facilities, though he did not specify how, saying only that: "The current agreement that outlined the grant [from the U.S. Embassy] had some clauses that violated legislation relevant to the matter," he said.

Duda said that the library's administration would do everything in its power to reach a new formal relationship with the embassy. "For example, [it could be] a grant for carrying out events and programs," he told The Moscow Times.

He neither confirmed nor denied replacing the center's director.

Shadow of Politics
The attempt to reshape the work of the American Center comes at a time of souring relations between Russia and the West over the crises in Ukraine and Syria.

Moscow has curtailed Western programs in the country, forced Russian nongovernmental organizations that receive funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents" and passed a law banning foreign organizations that Russia deems "undesirable."

The U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy was the first organization to get axed under that Russian law, when Moscow proclaimed the group "undesirable" this summer.

The move against the U.S. cultural center also comes a year after Russia shut down the largest student exchange program with the U.S. — the Future Leaders Exchange Program, or FLEX.

"It's very bad and shortsighted to destroy the infrastructure of academic and civil contacts. Those who are making these decisions are obviously motivated by some symbolic views [under which] 'America' today is bad in every context," said Ivan Kurilla, a professor at the European University in St. Petersburg.

"[The library's late director] Yekaterina Geniyeva who passed away deserved great respect: She was able to preserve the situation [regardless of political influences]," he told The Moscow Times in written comments Thursday. "Today we are seeing just how much can be done by certain people," he said.

Geniyeva, the renowned and respected director of the library from 1993 until 2015, said in an interview published shortly before her death this summer that Culture Ministry officials had asked her to close down the American Center.

She said she had responded that the authorities could do as they pleased, but had demanded a written order stating that the authorities were closing down the center "in connection with tense relations between the two states [U.S. and Russia]," she told the Meduza news portal.

Duda, the current director, insists the decision to terminate the agreement had nothing to do with the Culture Ministry. "This matter didn't surface just now or recently," he told The Moscow Times. "We decided for ourselves it was time to have a new agreement on cooperation [with the embassy]," he said.

Spokespeople for the Culture Ministry also said the initiative had come from the library's management. "The decision was made by the new administration of the library," they told The Moscow Times in written comments Thursday.

"The contract between the library and the embassy (or the U.S. State Department, to be more exact) — its structure, phrasing and conditions — are not in accordance with current Russian legislation that regulates the leasing of space. It should be brought in sync with the civil laws of the Russian Federation," the ministry said.

Much-Loved Space
The American Center received more than 50,000 Russian visitors and held more than 400 cultural and educational events over the past year alone, and hosted scores of prominent American speakers, including astronauts, actors, athletes, academics, politicians and authors, Tefft said in his statement.

Muscovites polled by The Moscow Times said the center was a unique facility providing a lot of useful services completely free of charge.

"I discovered the center in 2001, when I moved to Moscow. I didn't have the money to buy good books, but I did have the desire to continue my studies," Oksana Maksimovich, a frequent visitor to the facility, told The Moscow Times on Thursday.

"The center had a great selection of literature and online access to bigger library resources," as well as friendly staff members always ready to help, she said.

To use the center's services, it was enough to simply register at the library. "It was permitted to take books home from the center," Alexandra Bazhenova-Sorokina, a philologist who also used the center, told The Moscow Times.

"I often recommended events at the center to my students. It was nice to know that in the very center of Moscow a space like that existed, and it felt right to have it in the foreign language library," she said.

"I really like the center; we will try to keep it for our readers," said Duda, the library director.

[jimmy olsen]

Putin is dumb, film at 11.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2015/09/vladimir_putin_sending_russian_troops_to_syria_russia_is_intervening_out.html

Desperate in Damascus
Vladimir Putin is intervening in Syria out of weakness, not strength.

By Fred Kaplan

The presence of Russian troops, tanks, and planes in Syria isn't something to shrug off, but it's not worth a lot of worry, either—or, to the extent it might be, it's not for the reasons that the neo-Cold Warriors find so alarming.

It's true that, much as Russian officials claim they merely want to help the world fight ISIS, their main motive is to shore up the regime of their ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, those two goals are not mutually exclusive: Moscow does have an interest in crushing radical Islamist groups that might spread to the heavily Muslim regions of southern Russia. Either way, the uptick in military supplies to Syria (on top of the billions of dollars in arms sales and aid over many years) marks not an expansion of Russia's influence in the Middle East but rather a last-ditch effort to preserve its one last bastion—an extremely shaky bastion, at that.

In the past decade, Russia has lost erstwhile footholds in Libya and Iraq, failed in its attempt to regain Egypt as an ally after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, and would have lost Syria as well except for its supply of arms and advisers to Assad—whom it still may lose, despite its desperate measures.

The portrayal of Vladimir Putin as a grand chess master, shrewdly rebuilding the Russian empire through strength and wiles, is laughable. Syria is just one of two countries outside the former Soviet Union where Russia has a military base (the other being Vietnam, and its naval facility there, at Cam Ranh Bay, has shrunk considerably). His annexation of Crimea has proved a financial drain. His incursion into eastern Ukraine (where many ethnic Russians would welcome re-absorption into the Motherland) has stalled after a thin slice was taken at the cost of 3,000 soldiers. His plan for a Eurasian Economic Union, to counter the influence of the west's European Union, has failed to materialize. His energy deal with China, designed to counter the west's sanctions against Russian companies, has collapsed.

One school of thought contends that Putin is seeking a way back in to the international community—the sanctions seem to be hurting his cronies, as well as certain sectors of the Russian economy—and that his moves in Syria, along with rumors of a conciliatory speech at the upcoming session of the U.N. General Assembly, are meant to be part of this campaign. At best, though, this is only part of the story: Even if Putin joins the fight against ISIS (which is in his interest to do), and even if he's willing to let Assad go, he will want a say in choosing a successor—another reason for putting more boots, treads, and wheels on the ground.

Or maybe his motives are entirely cynical. One way to find out is to talk with him—to scope out the possibilities of cooperation (or at least of exploiting our converging interests) and to spell out the consequences if his actions turn hostile. This is clearly what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahudid when he spoke with Putin on Monday, arriving in Moscow with his top general and intelligence chief in tow. (The general and his Russian counterpart set up a coordination group to prevent unintended confrontations between the two countries during military actions over Syria.) It's what Secretary of State John Kerry did when he talked with his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, over the weekend. It's what President Obama may do if and when he talks with Putin at the U.N. next week. Max Boot laments all this as "genuflecting"; a better description would be "cautious engagement," and there's nothing wrong with that, especially since it's Putin who's holding the weak hand here.

The notion, expressed by some of the candidates at the last Republican presidential debate, that Putin might use his strengthened position in Syria as leverage to pry the Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians into his fold—how to begin toting the absurdities? His position in Syria is hardly strong; if these Sunni Arab leaders were remotely inclined to go in with Moscow (which they aren't), they would hardly find Putin's ramped-up alliance with Assad as cause to reconsider.

There are, however, three genuinely worrisome things about Putin's latest move, even assuming less-than-hostile intentions. First, after the first reports last week of Russian troops and weapons moving into Syria, a senior administration official told me that he would be concerned if those weapons included anti-aircraft missiles, since neither ISIS nor the other rebel groups have airplanes. Two days later, it turned out that the weapons did include such weapons. So who are the Russians' intended targets? If they mean to assure Assad that they will shoot down American, Turkish, Israeli, or Gulf State airplanes that try to bomb the Syrian government's assets (or Hezbollah targets), it's worthwhile to spell out, to Putin or his generals, the consequences.

Second, if the Russians do join the fight against ISIS, they are likely to fight against other anti-Assad rebels too—including rebels (among them Syrian Kurds) that the United States is supporting. If Russia really does want some form of partnership in this, it must agree not to cross certain lines in the sand; even if Putin really doesn't want to be partners, it's worth letting him know what lines not to cross, if he doesn't want to provoke a larger conflict, with us or other countries.

Third, it's possible that Russia's entry could set back the war on ISIS by galvanizing new waves of jihadists—especially from the area around Chechnya and the heavily Muslim states on Russia's southern border whose hatred of Moscow dates back to their decades of subjugation under the Soviet Union. In other words, under the best possible scenario, Putin's urge to help could, on balance, hurt. Aimen Dean, a Saudi-born security analyst with deep background in the region's conflicts, goes so far as to predict that, for these reasons, "Russia's mission creep in Syria will only produce catastrophic results across the region and beyond."

We are not seeing the resumption of a global East–West Cold War but rather the complication of a regional sectarian civil war. That very real war is intractable and tragic enough; imagining some intermingling of the two would make things many times worse.

[alfred russel]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/news-of-closure-of-american-center-in-moscow-rattles-muscovites/531609.html

News of Closure of American Center in Moscow Rattles Muscovites

News of the possible shutting down of an American culture center sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after 22 years of operation rattled Muscovites on Wednesday.

Ambassador John Tefft was the first to break the news in a statement published on the embassy's website, warning that the Kremlin was eroding ties that the two countries had managed to preserve even during the Cold War.

Someone needs to relocate that "RESET!" button.

[Solmyr]

The Grand Mufti of Russia has officially declared Russia the legal successor of Golden Horde, at the opening of the Moscow mosque. No non-Russian sources yet.

[Valmy]

Someone needs to relocate that "RESET!" button.

Sorry you only get one.

[Valmy]

The Grand Mufti of Russia has officially declared Russia the legal successor of Golden Horde, at the opening of the Moscow mosque. No non-Russian sources yet.

I do not understand what 'legal' means in this context.

[Grey Fox]

The Grand Mufti of Russia has officially declared Russia the legal successor of Golden Horde, at the opening of the Moscow mosque. No non-Russian sources yet.

I do not understand what 'legal' means in this context.

Same as with a person? Russia is the natural child of the Golden Horde?

[Valmy]

Same as with a person? Russia is the natural child of the Golden Horde?

In what sense? Just because they occupy a lot of the same territory? Russia did not even move into the Golden Horde's heartland until a few centuries after they fell. And now 500 years later they are the 'successor' in a legal sense?

[Grey Fox]

It transfers the rights, debts & obligations of the Golden Horde to Russia?

It might be an important step towards opposing Russia to ISIS in the Muslim World.

Russia is now a Khanate, no?

I don't think time & space have anything to do with the decision/announcement.

[Duque de Bragança]

The Grand Mufti of Russia has officially declared Russia the legal successor of Golden Horde, at the opening of the Moscow mosque. No non-Russian sources yet.

I do not understand what 'legal' means in this context.

Europa Universalis player going overboard?

[Valmy]

It transfers the rights, debts & obligations of the Golden Horde to Russia?

It might be an important step towards opposing Russia to ISIS in the Muslim World.

Russia is now a Khanate, no?

I don't think time & space have anything to do with the decision/announcement.

What rights and obligations does the Khan of the Golden Horde have in the Muslim World? He wasn't the Caliph or something.

[KRonn]

The Grand Mufti of Russia has officially declared Russia the legal successor of Golden Horde, at the opening of the Moscow mosque. No non-Russian sources yet.

I do not understand what 'legal' means in this context.

Europa Universalis player going overboard?

EU player writ large!

[Solmyr]

Presumably, it means Russia has a claim to all of this:



Oh yeah, and also Erdogan and Abbas were present at the mosque opening ceremony.

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150923/1027378974.html