Rusia (Continuación)

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Joseph Stalin was reported to have said, at a Bolshevik party meeting in 1923, that voting is “completely unimportant” — “what is extraordinarily important is … who will count the votes, and how.” Except for a brief democratic interlude in the 1990s, this maxim has governed the Soviet and later the Russian government’s approach to elections ever since.

It was also on full display last week as the Central Election Commission announced the official results of a recent plebiscite that waived Vladimir Putin’s presidential term limits, allowing him to remain in power until 2036. Evidently unconcerned with appearances, the commission began publishing the tallies before voting has ended.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Russia’s constitution, at least before this week’s referendum, would have required Vladimir Putin to step down from the Russian presidency in 2024, at the end of his second consecutive six-year term. Observers had long wondered: Would he stay or would he go?

Voters in Russia answered that question by approving a package of constitutional amendments this week — including changes that grant Putin the right to run for two more six-year presidential terms. Reports of irregularities were widespread. A European Union spokesperson noted concerns including voter coercion and double voting, along with intimidation of observers.

Here’s the backstory

In mid-January, Putin submitted proposals for amendments to the constitution and formed a working group to refine the legislation.…  Seguir leyendo »

Wreckage at the site of an attack in April 2019 in which three American service members were killed near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Credit Rahmat Gul/Associated Press

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Since at least February, and possibly as early as March 2019, the United States has had compelling intelligence that a committed adversary, Russia, paid bounties to Taliban-linked fighters to kill American troops in Afghanistan. American service members were reportedly killed as a result.

To this day, the president of the United States has done nothing about it.

Instead, President Trump dismissed the intelligence as not “credible” and “possibly another fabricated Russia hoax, maybe by the Fake News” that is “wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”

Mr. Trump also claimed that neither he nor Vice President Mike Pence was ever told about this critical intelligence before it was first reported in The New York Times.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman votes Thursday at a polling station in Vladivostok, Russia, during a seven-day vote for constitutional reforms. (Yuri Maltsev/Reuters)

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Russians began voting Thursday in a week-long plebiscite intended to ratify a series of constitutional amendments, the most important of which would waive presidential term limits and allow Vladimir Putin ⁠— in power for 20 years and already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin⁠ — to extend his rule until 2036. After considering more sophisticated options, such as becoming chairman of the newly constituted State Council or creating a new country through a merger with Belarus, Putin took a simpler road traveled by dictators all over the map, from Egypt to Venezuela.

Last weekend, appearing in a documentary about himself on state television, Putin confirmed that he “does not rule out” running for president in 2024, should the constitutional amendments be approved by popular vote.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina holds a press conference via video link in Moscow. Photo by Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.

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The Kremlin’s economic response to COVID-19 has been modest compared to many of its rivals. Although the government is under increased pressure to spend its ‘rainy-day fund’, it believes that doing so will ultimately undermine the fiscal stability underpinning its geopolitical sovereignty.

Since its 1998 default to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russia has been reluctant to take on sovereign debt. The 2008-09 global financial crisis, followed by the shock of the 2014-15 oil price crash and sanctions, prompted the Kremlin to boost its efforts for economic sovereignty through rouble devaluation and import substitution.

Since 2016, reserves have been rebuilt and the country now enjoys $550 billion in gold/forex and 10% of GDP in the National Welfare Fund, designed to cover budget deficits during periods of low oil prices.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Last month, Russia’s Justice Ministry registered four new political parties, giving them the right to take part in scheduled regional elections in September and potentially in next year’s national parliamentary vote as well. All the new groups fulfilled the cumbersome requirements for registration in record time — even though most of the country remains under strict quarantine measures. Registration officials voiced no concerns.

Neither the ease nor the speed should give cause for surprise: As reported in Russian media, the new parties — like most of the nearly 50 political parties now on the register — were created with the political blessing of the government.…  Seguir leyendo »

2020: el año en el que Vladimir Putin vive peligrosamente

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Tema

¿Cuáles son las consecuencias económicas y políticas de la crisis del COVID-19 en Rusia y en lo que se refiere al poder de Vladimir Putin?

Resumen

El Kremlin había hecho varios planes para el año 2020 a fin de reafirmar el putinismo como sistema político de Rusia y garantizar a Vladimir Putin mantenerse en el poder hasta 2036. Sin embargo, la combinación de la caída de los precios del petróleo y del gas, que actualmente representan el 39% del PIB de Rusia, y la crisis del COVID-19 plantean la cuestión de si el poder del presidente ruso puede erosionarse gravemente.…  Seguir leyendo »

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When the novel coronavirus pandemic began, President Vladimir Putin tried to use the crisis to burnish his reputation as a stronger leader and Russia as an effective state. At first, the Russian leader boasted that his country had escaped the worst, implicitly citing this success as yet more evidence of his own forceful leadership. State-controlled media outlets trumpeted Russia’s success while gloating over American failures. With great fanfare, including media coverage of Russian planes landing in the United States, the Kremlin declared that it had more than enough excess capacity to provide humanitarian assistance to the struggling American state. (We learned later that Putin did not give, but rather sold, this “humanitarian assistance” to American recipients.…  Seguir leyendo »

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For almost two weeks, three countries have led the rest of the world in the daily number of new Covid-19 infections: The United States, Russia and Brazil.

This makes some sense -- each is in the top 10 of most populous countries with well over 125 million people and each has a few very crowded cities. Furthermore, each country was disorganized and disbelieving as the disease settled in their region.

But one important difference separates Russia from the other two nations. As of Monday, in the United States, which has been in the midst of the pandemic for almost two months, the mortality rate from Covid-19 was 6%, according to Johns Hopkins; in Brazil, hard-hit for a month, the mortality was nearly 7%.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters clash with police in Moscow in July 2019. (Pavel Golovkin/AP)

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Last month, UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group, released a report on the upcoming election to the United Nations Human Rights Council. According to the group, governments seeking a place on the top human rights watchdog at the General Assembly session in October will include some of the world’s worst human rights abusers — among them Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Russia’s candidacy did not come as a surprise. The government in Moscow has long been eager to return to the forum, from which it was dropped nearly four years ago. In February, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used a speech in front of the council to excoriate Western democracies for “meddling in the domestic affairs of sovereign states” and imposing “highly dubious ‘values’ .…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman walks past red banners devoted to Victory Day in downtown Moscow on Wednesday. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)

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Moscow intellectuals like to joke that our dark past is in fact our bright future. Russian President Vladimir Putin certainly seems to think so — and he’s not joking.

Every year on May 9, Russia celebrates the Soviet victory in World War II with a public holiday and an ostentatious military parade. This year, the covid-19 outbreak forced the Kremlin to postpone the parade. The festivities have ended up being limited to a military flyover and traditional fireworks display.

It turns out that the present isn’t quite as easy to control as the past. For years, Putin has been relying on the glories of history to try to galvanize the masses and distract them from current social problems — above all, the declining economy, sagging living standards and the paralysis of the political system.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘When the Russian state today appeals to our heroic past, this progressive history is certainly not what it has in mind.’ A Victory Day banner on display in Moscow Photograph: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

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In the early 1990s Russia used to have a strong sense of belonging in Europe. This began to change: the post-Soviet shock therapy reforms were a punishing transition to a free-market society, when a kilogram of sausage cost about the same as a monthly pension and many families experienced malnutrition and hunger. The sudden shift to a more “westernised” way of running the economy left many impoverished, which was eventually capitalised on – after the oligarchic power wars – by a new political leader who embraced a conservative, nationalist rhetoric: Vladimir Putin.

Today, Russian television presenters feed us stories about a European continent in decay, where “aggressive migrants” run amok, where social services take children away from their parents for being “slapped”, where “sexual minorities” destroy traditional families.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Conviene estudiar las campañas de desinformación de Rusia y ser consciente que China está aprendiendo rápidamente de ellas.

Resumen

En enero, al comienzo de la crisis del COVID-19, los medios de comunicación rusos financiados por el Kremlin difundían las narrativas fabricadas por los medios oficiales chinos sobre el origen del virus. Sin embargo, a partir de marzo, cuando los países europeos empezaron a introducir medidas de emergencia, Rusia comenzó a aplicar las mismas tácticas de desinformación utilizadas en sus campañas anteriores, con el objetivo de cuestionar la credibilidad de las instituciones democráticas de la UE y de EEUU y su capacidad para gestionar la crisis sanitaria.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has a well-earned reputation as an astute tactician and a steely decision-maker. Yet over the past few weeks he has mismanaged Russia’s responses to two major crises: the collapse of the oil market and the coronavirus pandemic. Now he is facing one of the most acute challenges to his rule right at the moment when he had thought it safe to extend his term through a constitutional referendum.

The Kremlin’s first mistake came in early March, when it reacted to falling oil prices by rejecting Saudi entreaties to cut production. The Russian decision to push for an oil glut proved to be singularly mistimed.…  Seguir leyendo »

Marking the Day of The National Flag of Ukraine, a day before celebrations of the anniversary of state independence. Photo by ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images.

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First in a two-part series analysing why Ukraine’s attempts at international justice are worth taking - and outlining how the impact goes far beyond just the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Part one examines the response of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to the possibility of holding Russia accountable as a state.

The recognition by Ukraine of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider grave crimes allegedly perpetrated in its territory has led to the ICC Prosecutor’s preliminary examination identifying a wave of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There are claims of persecution, forced conscription, deportation, sham trials, enforced disappearances, and property seizure - in Crimea.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Opinion polls and authoritarian systems don’t go together. However professional or independent the pollster, any results are necessarily skewed as people weigh their responses — especially to questions about the regime — against potential consequences. Political scientists refer to this as “authoritarian bias”. A late 2015 poll by the Levada Center, Russia’s most reputable polling agency, found that 26 percent of respondents were afraid to answer political questions — and this was just those who were not afraid to admit their fear. And then there’s the perception of prevailing social trends artificially created by government monopoly on television — in Russia’s case, for nearly 17 years now.…  Seguir leyendo »

An airlifter of the Russian Aerospace Forces prepares to fly to Serbia carrying equipment and professionals during the COVID-19 crisis. Photo by Russian Defence Ministry\TASS via Getty Images.

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Both Russia and China have mounted combined charm offensives and disinformation campaigns on the back of the pandemic. Shipments of ‘aid’ – reportedly of questionable utility and quality - have gone hand in hand with a concerted effort to deflect any blame from China for the early spread, and an ongoing drive by Russia to undermine states’ confidence and have sanctions lifted.

These concurrent operations have very different objectives, as Russia seeks to subvert international order while China is continuing its bid to demonstrate global leadership - but in both cases, they are seeking long-term gains by exploiting the inattention and distraction of their targets.…  Seguir leyendo »

Rally in support of keeping Crimea as part of Ukraine. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

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Russia’s ongoing occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and support of separatist hostilities in the eastern provinces of Donbas have resulted in 1.5 million internally displaced persons, 3,000 civilians killed, and a growing list of alleged violations of international law and socio-economic hardship.

But Ukraine is struggling in its efforts to hold Russia accountable – either as a state or through individual criminal responsibility - as it cannot unilaterally ask any international court to give an overall judgment on the conflict.

So it focuses on narrower issues, referring them to authorised adjudication and arbitration platforms such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), European Court of Human Rights, UNCLOS arbitration, and the International Criminal Court (ICC).…  Seguir leyendo »

Young woman wearing a face mask in front of St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow. Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images.

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Persistent internet rumours claiming the coronavirus outbreak originated from a secret American pharmaceutical company with the aim of destroying China from within were quickly discredited. Pop culture fans recognised the supposed activities of the Umbrella Corporation as being from the famous Japanese video games series Resident Evil.

However, although fake news, it can likely be attributed to Russian trolls conducting this and other similar activities online, especially when considered within the wider context of how the Russian regime is using this worldwide crisis to further destabilize the West and test its resolve.

Russian trolls never sleep

Russia’s COVID-19 related actions first and foremost take the form of a vast information warfare campaign, with media outlets simultaneously downplaying the threat of the pandemic - ‘it is less dangerous than seasonal flu’ - while stoking fear about what is happening elsewhere in Europe.…  Seguir leyendo »

People attend a demonstration of military equipment and hardware on the Defender of the Fatherland Day in Sevastopol, Crimea, on Feb. 23. (Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

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Wednesday is the sixth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. After a hastily organized and deeply contentious referendum on March 16, 2014, following Russia’s military occupation of the peninsula, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty of accession with Crimean leaders in Moscow two days later.

An avalanche of international criticism followed. Analysts pointed out that this was the first annexation by one state of the territory of a neighboring state on the European continent since World War II. In the United Nations, 100 countries condemned the unauthorized referendum and affirmed their support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

In Crimea itself, the annexation was popular, especially among Crimea’s large population of older ethnic Russians.…  Seguir leyendo »