The US Treasury has released the names of a series of Japanese and Eurasian crime kingpins whose assets will now be targeted. The Russian/Eurasian crooks are all linked to what USG calls the “Brothers’ Circle.” Read the full post »
Still trying to square the ‘Brother’s Circle’
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 24, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/still-trying-to-square-the-brothers-circle/
Putin’s Cossack rhetoric
I’ve just written in the Moscow Times about Putin’s assertion, in his latest policy statement on Russian military reform (especially well-analyzed here, here and here), that “the mission of the state now is to help the Cossacks, draw them into military service and educational activities for youths, involving a patriotic upbringing and initial military training.” I’m honestly skeptical about the value of Cossacks as fighting forces, and frankly the General Staff seems no more enthused given that the main “Cossack” units formed to date (the 108th and 247th Air Assault Regiments and the 205th Motor Rifle Brigade) really are no more Cossack than the British Coldstream Guards are affiliated with south-east Scotland: it is a matter of heavily-mythologized regimental history rather than anything else.
They may have some role in reinvigorating a largely-moribund ‘military-patriotic education’ system for pre-drafting training of young men (there is already a small cottage industry in ‘Cossack schools’ and ‘Cossack training’), but even then it will probably be the myth rather than the reality of Cossack tradition that matters: an interesting way in which the “theme parking” of an historical experience can be used for practical political purposes.
Beyond that, there is the inevitable concern that Cossacks, whether in direct state service or at arm’s length, hired through new Cossack private security firms, might become tools of social or political repression. I noted that following the passage of a particularly Neanderthal anti-gay law in St Petersburg, its author, local assembly deputy Vitaly Milonov suggested that it needed to be enforced by ‘morality police’ and that “Voluntary troops are a good idea. I think the Cossacks will help us… There is a law about Cossacks. Here you go, they are both a voluntary organization and believers.” Nonetheless, beyond possibly being used as local strong-arms, I don’t see there a particular market or need for them as contractors of vigilante violence and violent vigil.
Overall, then, it probably just reflects a new staple of nationalist rhetoric, akin to US politicians invoking the Founding Fathers at any opportunity, without any real reference to much of what they really thought or did. Nonetheless, the very choice of rhetorical flourished Putin is choosing to use says worrying things about the nationalist, conservative audience to which he is playing and his own sense of the situation in which Russia is finding itself. It will be interesting to see if he calms down a little after the elections next month and once he feels a little more secure.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 23, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/putins-cossack-rhetoric/
2012 and the End of the World… or at least Russia… at least to some
The past 100 days have been pretty extraordinary in Russia with the rise of a protest movement and the return of something that is beginning to look like genuine politics. I have no doubt that this a very significant moment and even if it will not lead directly and immediately to substantive change, in its own two-steps-forward-one-step-back way I think it is moving the country towards meaningful democratization. Nonetheless, I have been amazed by some of the hyperbole, not so much or just the expectations of radical change now but the presentiments of doom. Read the full post »
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 18, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/2012-and-the-end-of-the-world-or-at-least-russia-at-least-to-some/
Sukhodolsky’s ouster from the St Petersburg police: Nurgaliev’s revenge, brutal MVD politics and a suggestion of a breakdown in silovik etiquette
The outgoing Mikhail Sukhodolsky
On Friday 10 February, OMON riot police surrounded the St Petersburg police headquarters on Suvorovsky Prospekt and evicted Colonel General (Police) Mikhail Igorevich Sukhodolsky. Earlier that day, President Medvedev had signed a terse order relieving him of his duties as head of the St Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Main Internal Affairs Directorate (GUVD) on unspecified grounds. Sukhodolsky himself subsequently held a press conference in which he enumerated the successes of his force in the time since he was appointed last year. (Interestingly enough, there’s no mention on the force’s webpage.)
Why has Russia’s second most senior field police commander, a man specially moved into this position in June 2011 from the position of first deputy interior minister, been sacked just eight months later, and so publicly at that?
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 13, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/sukhodolskys-ouster-from-the-st-petersburg-police-nurgalievs-revenge-brutal-mvd-politics-and-a-suggestion-of-a-breakdown-in-silovik-etiquette/
Tracing the Faultlines within the Russian Security Community
This week I’m speaking on ‘The Security Services and Russia’s Perceptions of Security Challenges and Threats’ at What Future for Russia?, which promises to be a very interesting event put on by NUPI. Apart from castigating myself for the bad planning of agreeing to go to Scandinavia in what seems to be the midst of Fimbulwinter, and flying there via Iceland, at that, this also got me thinking about the very notion of lumping ‘the security services’ together into one camp.
Of course, there are some broad traits which unite them, from a commitment to Russian national security to a common interest in talking up the challenges to it, in order to guarantee continued budgetary priority and political privilege. However, especially now that more and more the prospect of a post-Putin era is being contemplated — not that he’s likely to be going any day now, but people are no longer blithely regarding another twelve years as inevitable — then a variety of internal faultlines become increasingly significant.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 6, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/tracing-the-faultlines-within-the-russian-security-community/
Assessing the impact of the ‘vanguard of the bourgeoisie’
A comment piece of mine of has on ‘Putin and the Challenge of the “Vanguard of the Bourgeoisie”‘ has just gone up on the splendid e-International Relations website. I conclude cravenly, by raising questions rather than answering them:
Can Putin reinvent himself? He has overseen a genuine economic and social liberalisation of much of the economy and life for most Russians is better than ever. In the process, though, he has also created the very forces now challenging him, an educated and politically-active middle class demanding a greater stake in their country. Past Russian rulers, from tsars to Boris Yeltsin, have begun reforms, only to reverse or suspend them when the threat of internal unrest arose, leaving them dangerously incomplete. Whether they would want to think of themselves as Putin’s children, and how comfortable he will be acknowledging them as his progeny, this ‘vanguard of the bourgeoisie’ represent his fundamental dilemma. Will he grudgingly embrace liberalisation and in the process begin to surrender the political privilege he and his closest allies have enjoyed for over a decade? Or will he fall back on his instincts of populist authoritarianism and strengthen his political position in the short term, but in doing so set himself against the liberalising processes which otherwise promise to break an historical vicious circle which has long held this country and its people back?
So let me come off the fence, a little. Sure, Putin’s returning to the presidency, and probably in the first round. But he and his system have, I think, taken a mortal hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is his last term in office, and think his victory in March will be the catalyst for the creation of proper political machines able to begin to mobilize against United Russia (or even some future incarnation of the Party of Power) on a national level. Just as, when it came down to it, the GKChP, the leaders of the 1991 August Coup against Gorbachev, lacked the will to use widespread force to prevent change, so too I don’t see Putin will or able to institute the kind of massive crack-down that would be needed to hold the line. He needs the technocrats, the Kudrins, the new middle class, the international investors. And in any case, my sense is that many of the people who would have to do the leg-breaking, the water-cannoning, the blackmail and the intimidation are now thinking the unthinkable, of a post-Putin end-game which might include lustration sessions, human rights tribunals and audits. Such prospects encourage a more equivocal stance on the part of would-be stormtroopers of Putinism (I suggested this in my Power Vertical podcast and the gossip I’ve heard since then has only strengthened my conviction on this), and tend to create a self-sustaining cycle of hesitation and restraint. To reprise a quote of mine from a nice piece in today’s Washington Post, “I think Putin’s going to win the election, but lose the war.”
Posted by Mark Galeotti on January 29, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/assessing-the-impact-of-the-vanguard-of-the-bourgeoisie/
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