All posts for the month September, 2012

Good Times for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SKRF)

The Investigations Committee (SKRF) under Alexander Bastrykin has emerged as the focus of the maximalist, hardline school of thought within the Russian elite as regards the new protest movement. It is by no means a line universally shared, but if we were wondering how well it is playing to those who finally make the decisions, it is worth looking at the provisions of a new draft law.

A solid analysis in Izvestiya outlines how the law, snappily titled “On amendments to some legislative acts of the Russian Federation in connection with improving the structure of preliminary investigation,” will:

Give the SK prime responsibility for investigating some 2 million crimes a year.
Grant the SK wider powers to investigate VIPs: judges, prosecutors, parliamentarians, even siloviki from the military, intelligence services, police, even the FSB.
Transfer investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) to the SK
See the SK expand from its present strength of 23,000 to some 60,000 investigators and staff. (As a corollary, it will have to acquire new premises, too.)
Increase the SK’s budget by 97.5 B rubles ($3 B).

The law has been passed from the Presidential Administration on to the government (showing the Kremlin’s support for it) and is meant to be fully in force by 1 January 2013. The MVD and FSKN will not lose all their investigators, but to rub in the current change in their fortunes, the SK will cherry-pick those it wants. The MVD will lose all its regional investigations units, while the FSKN is to lose some 5,200 staff by 2016, around 12% of its total complement.

So, the SK will acquire a particular role in deciding when criminal cases will be opened on serious charges, especially members of the opposition… and members of the elite. Obviously potential doesn’t always equal intent, but it does mean that the SK is becoming what Bastrykin appears to want to make it, the universal Kremlin enforcement, Putin’s Swiss army knife.

That said, Bastrykin ought not to be popping champagne corks quite yet. Progress in transferring investigators to the SK is moving more slowly than anticipated. In part this probably reflects a rear-guard action by the MVD and FSKN, as they hope this initiative can be foiled, delayed, diluted or reversed somewhere down the line. It is also because recent pay hikes for MVD staff mean that where once they were the badly-paid poor cousins (meaning that most people jumped at opportunities to move into more elitny and better-paid agencies like the FSB and SK), now they fear that they will actually suffer a pay cut.

Nonetheless, the SK is definitely on the rise. Combined with the recent elevation of hardline Moscow police ‘anti-extremism’ chief Timur Valiulin, then insofar as one can read anything from developments amongst the siloviki, the Kremlin seems to be preparing for a crackdown. The 15 September protests will be an interesting test case.

New head of the MVD’s anti-‘extremism’ “special branch” – GUPE

Col. Timur Valiulin

No sooner do I write on the panoply of political police agencies in Russia, including the so-called ‘E Centers’ of GUPE, the Interior Ministry’s Glavnoe upravlenie po protivodeistviyu ekstremizmy, Main Directorate for Combating Extremism, that GUPE gets a new boss. Today a presidential decree appointed Colonel Timur Samirovich Valiulin to the position, replacing Yuri Kokov, who has become head of the MVD’s All-Russian Institute for Advanced Training.

Previously, Valiulin had been head of the Moscow city police anti-extremism staff, so he was in charge of its E Centre and, presumably, would have played some role in such recent decisions as the prosecution of Pussy Riot. Although the E Centers have a pretty bad reputation in general, Moscow’s has seemed especially heavy-handed (Ilya Yashin has called it the “most radical” of all — and not as a compliment), so it is hard to be especially uplifted by this news.

Before then, he was head of Moscow police’s directorate for combating organized crime (UBOP) until that was abolished in line with Medvedev’s decree of September 2008. Previously to that, he had been head of the economic crime team in Moscow’s central okrug (district) and deputy chief of the 16th Division of the Moscow GUVD’s Directorate for Combating Economic Crime (UBEP)

As another Moscow appointee, Valiulin is presumably if not a protege of new Interior Minister (and former Moscow police chief) Vladimir Kolokoltsev, at least someone with a certain connection to him. This certainly fits a general trend of the rise of ‘Muscovites’ within the MVD. Viktor Golovanov, for example, was Kolokoltsev’s deputy and interim successor at the Moscow GUVD, before becoming head of GUUR, the MVD’s Main Directorate for Criminal Investigations. Likewise, Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Gostev was formerly chief of staff of the Moscow GUVD.

Valiulin also appears to be on the more active, hardline side of the debate as to how to respond. Combine that with his background in economic crime investigations, and it helps explain why individuals like Alexei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak increasingly seem to be being attacked through their bank accounts and business activities.

Is Medvedev Putin’s nemesis?

“Consider this my notice, Vladimir Vladimirovich.”

It’s easy to be dismissive, even derisory, about poor Dmitry Medvedev, the little engine that ultimately couldn’t. Installed as chair-warmer-in-chief by Vladimir Putin, to occupy the president’s office in the Kremlin until bis patron was ready to reclaim it. For a while, in 2010-11, I wondered if the experience of being behind the big desk had changed him, whether he was nerving himself up to challenge Putin. I suspect he was contemplating it, not least given that he started tentatively to occupy spaces which had largely been Putin’s turf, such as talking tough on the Kurils. We know that people like Surkov wanted him to serve another term, although as part of a deal with Putin rather than through a contested election. But it didn’t happen; Dima blinked and Vova came back. And Dima had to tell everyone how much better Vova was then him. Poor guy. And, to be honest, the rising volume of chatter in Russia about a possible dismissal from his consolation-prize prime ministerial position is probably also well-founded. When he was appointed I thought he had six months before he’d be moved out, and that comes up in November. We’ll see.

However, one of the reasons why I love taking part in the indispensable Russian politics wonkfest that is the Power Vertical podcast is that it helps me marshal my thoughts, and through yesterday’s conversation with Brian Whitmore I came to realize that when the histories of this turbulent era come to be written, it may well prove to be Medvedev who is credited for being the agent of Putin’s downfall: not Navalny, not Udaltsov, not even that wicked Mike McFaul and his coffers of State Department silver. Why? Because the challenges facing and ultimately possibly beating Putin today and to a large extent the products of policies and processes initiated under Medvedev. If the protesters of today are Putin’s children, they are also Medvedev’s foster-kids.

In the podcast, we discussed both the importance of Medvedev’s rhetorical and — more unusually — genuine commitment to a rule-of-law state as well as the economic and social developments which took place on his watch. There’s more, though. In no particular order or depth, I’d add:

Medvedev’s move to force government officials to step down from boards of state corporations; this may not really have stuck (or done much to rein in Sechin) but it was a significant statement of the need to disentangle politics and business.
Medvedev was far more overtly positive on the need to address environmental issues, allowing the further rise of movements which acquired an increasingly political dimension. (Let’s see what happens in the Khimki mayoral elections where Evgenia Chirikova is standing.)
It was Medvedev who sacked Moscow mayor Luzhkov in 2010, a particular example of how individuals can challenge the state but not necessarily be on the side of the angels. As a symbol that no one is untouchable, that mattered — and it is hard to overstate the importance of Moscow and its governance in modern Russia. Besides which, Luzhkov’s successor, Sergei Sobyanin, might prove an interesting future power-broker or even successor to Putin, a technocratic insider who could offer ‘Putinism without Putin’…
The 2008 Georgian War asserted Russia’s coercive power within Eurasia but also created a legacy of mistrust that Putin is ill-equipped to address. It might have been Dima’s war (kinda), but it is still Vova’s problem.
Medvedev’s 2009 modernization program, Again, easy to deride, and a lot is just overheated “white heat of technology” rhetoric that would have done Harold Wilson proud, but a serious drive towards modernization is inevitably problematic for a regime built on rent-seeking exploitation of primary exports and a controlled society. Russia’s modernization will depend on and empower the new metropolitan middle class — the very people most opposed to Putin.
Meaningful reform of higher education, including the creation of the National Research Universities and, especially, opening up the system to greater exchange of students, faculty and ideas with the West. This will inevitably also create new constituencies critical of the status quo.

There is no doubt more, but for a range of reasons (and certainly not with any Grand Plan), I do think that we can credit Medvedev with playing a key role in the rise of the forces now so troubling Putin and his chums.