February 2016 Publications Round-Up

As ever, a quick summary for those interested:

‘Ramzan Kadyrov: the Kremlin’s Public Frenemy Number One,’ ECFR commentary, 1 February 2016

‘Why the Litvinenko Enquiry Was Not a ‘Farce’‘, Russia!, 1 February 2016

‘What Putin’s Security Appointments Say About How Russia Works‘, War On The Rocks, 9 February 2016

‘Free Sergei Lavrov!‘, Foreign Policy, 17 February 2016

‘Welcome to the stagnation of Retro-Brezhnevism,’ Business New Europe, 17 February 2016

‘Imagining 2030: Taking the Trans-Siberian to Moscow,’ PS21, 21 February 2016

‘Don’t Buy the Hype: Russia’s military is a lot weaker than Putin wants us to think,’ Vox, 23 February 2016

‘No Easy Fix for Syria,’ Moscow Times, 25 February 2016

‘Shadowy Spec Ops,’ AK-47 and Soviet Weapons, 2016

Kadyrov the Terrible? Is he really going, or is this just a curtain call?

Time for Kadyrov to do the decent thing?

Today, on the anniversary of Boris Nemtsov’s murder — almost certainly at his orders or else retrospectively blessed by him — Chechen warlord-ruler Ramzan Kadyrov has said that it is time for him to go, that “my time has passed” and “The nation’s leadership needs to find another person so that my name isn’t used against my people.” Yes, it’s goodbye. Gosh. This certainly comes as a surprise, albeit an inordinately welcome one, but raises a range of questions, first and foremost quite why, and why now?

Read the full post »

2 Comments

by Mark Galeotti on February 27, 2016 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 27, 2016

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/kadyrov-the-terrible-is-he-really-going-or-is-this-just-a-curtain-call/

Russia under pressure: more crime, more petty

According to the MVD’s latest figures, January saw total numbers of recorded crime rise by 4.6% on last year’s (to almost 172,000) but the proportion of serious crimes fall by almost 3%. Some quick and preliminary thoughts:

The absolute level of serious crime is still up–yes, it fell as a proportion, but of a total that rose even faster–yet much less so than other crimes. These other crimes tend to be low-level instances of unpremeditated inter-personal violence and petty theft such as shoplifting. In other words, crimes which are often a pretty good indicator of underlying levels of social and economic pressure on the general population.

Last year overall, the crime rate was 8.6% up. In part, I think this reflects continued improvement in actually recording offences, cutting down on so-called “latent crime” (despite all the challenges, there is still progress), but in the main I think this is a genuine rise, even if not quite as high as that figure suggests.

So, does the January figure actually reflect an improvement? Maybe, but looking month-by-month, January tends to be a less “elastic” month anyway, perhaps because of holidays, higher levels of street policing in the main cities, etc. It’s too soon to say for certain, although it is also worth noting that there is considerable anecdotal evidence of a resurgence in petty police corruption because of the direct and indirect economic pressures on them (I talk about this a little here), which could also lead to renewed under-reporting. It will be interesting to see how the February and March figures pan out.

Taking the Trans-Siberian to Moscow in 2030

moscow_future_by_konstantinbratishko-d7dav63

“Moscow.future” by Konstantin Bratishko http://konstantinbratishko.deviantart.com/art/Moscow-future-445605195

The PS21 Project for the Study of the 21st Century has an interesting little series of thought experiments, short fictionalised narratives imagining aspects of the world in 2030.

I jotted down a quick account of a trip on the new high-speed Trans-Siberian to Moscow, via Zabaikalsk, Novisibirsk and Kazan, for their latest, complete with some general thoughts about Russia’s political evolution (as I’ve speculated before, Putin to kleptocrat to reformer), its economic place in the world, and the rise of the ‘novy gipster’…. It is a rather different Moscow from that in the picture on the left I should add:

The Trans-Siberian Express isn’t just a train, it’s a metaphor. Once, a metaphor for the Tsarist empire’s determination to claim Siberia and the Russian Far East. And now? The double-headed eagle proudly glitters on the bullet-nose of the new, high-speed trains, and the conductors on the Moskovskaya strelka, the ‘Moscow Arrow,’ wear uniforms derived from those of their imperial forebears. But the CRH-49 locomotives are a Chinese design, built in the now Chinese-owned Uralvagonzavod works with a loan from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, running along a new track built by a Russo-Chinese consortium, and largely by Uighur labourers.

That said, the proud and pricklish days when Moscow thought it could pivot east yet remain the ‘elder brother’ are long gone. When Putin’s stroke delivered power into the laps of kleptocrats who had never had any real enthusiasm for his imperial project, they eagerly looked to rebuild relations in Asia and the West alike. This was just the last hurrah of Russian ‘wild capitalism’—lenders were too canny, opportunities elsewhere were more appealing, and the oligarchs and bureaucrat-entrepreneurs behind President Shuvalov’s figurehead government soon fell to feuding amongst themselves.

Read there rest here.

I’m a great believer in this kind of practical daydreaming; we absolutely may not — probably won’t — get it right, especially not in detail. But it provides us a way of considering the might-bes, the black swans, the surely-nots and the wonder-ifs. Given how unpredictable the future is, either we throw up our hands and stick to reading the newspaper, or else we might as well embrace the fact that we are really in the business of creating the most plausible science fictions we can…

2 Comments

by Mark Galeotti on February 22, 2016 • Permalink

Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 22, 2016

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/taking-the-trans-siberian-to-moscow-in-2030/

A Quick and Provisional GRU Update

Update: the afternoon I wrote this, it was announced that Lt Gen Igor Korobov has been appointed. Needless to say, I take full credit for forcing the Kremlin’s hand😉. Meanwhile Dyumin, perhaps as a consolation prize, perhaps because his position at the defence ministry had thus become untenable, moves across to become acting governor of Tula. So the military win this round – but apparently not easily.

A month ago tomorrow, military intelligence chief Igor Sergun died of heart failure in the suburbs of Moscow (not in Lebanon, not anything exciting…). That the announcement of his successor would be delayed because of the long Christmas-to-Orthodox-New-Year holidays was expected. But despite a couple of times hearing suggestions that a name was about to be announced, no one yet.

It’s bad enough that we don’t even know what the agency should be called — it’s traditional form, the GRU, that even Putin uses, or the more anonymous GU (“the Main Directorate”) in official parlance? I talk a little about this in War On The Rocks here. But as the leadership vacuum continues to resist being filled, it is hard not to assume this is because the appointment is proving contentious. As near as I can tell–and all this needless ought to be taken with caution, as the people who really know aren’t going to tell–there is a three-cornered, asymmetric fight:

Steady As She Goes. The obvious stakeholders want the obvious choice: defence minister Shoigu, CoGS Gerasimov (probably) and the bulk of the GRU itself want one of Sergun’s deputies to succeed: Vyacheslav Kondrashev, Sergei Gizunov, Igor Lelin, or most likely, Igor Korobov. Obviously the new director’s interests and personality would have an impact, but essentially this is the continuity choice. Read the full post »