November 12, 1999    
This Date's Issues: 3620 • 3621  • 

Johnson's Russia List
#3621
12 November 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
READ: My computer lost some messages sent to me yesterday so please
resend if necessary.
1. AP: ussiRan Premier To Seek Presidency.
2. Reuters: Russia says US wants to oust it from Caucasus.
3. Moscow Times EDITORIAL: Let's Have Talks, Not Vague Talk.
4. The Times (UK): Alice Lagnado, Men imprisoned and beaten, refugees say.
5. IntellectualCapital.com: Anne Applebaum, Who is the Real Renegade?
6. The Guardian (UK): Martin Woollacott, Russia's mistake is to think Chechnya can be conquered. The hardest lessons of the Caucasus have been forgotten
7. Obshchaya Gazeta: Anatoliy Kostyukov, Old Enemy Better than Two New Ones.(Kremlin Backing CPRF To Spite Primakov).
8. The Economist (UK) editorial: Russia's brutal folly.
9. Itar-Tass: West Fears lest Russia Restores Order in Northern Caucasus.(Baburin)
10. Moscow Times: Audit Chamber Glum on Taxes.
11. Financial Times (UK): John Thornhill, Rivals square up to be mayor of Moscow.
12. RFE/RL: Askold Krushelnycky, Ukraine: East-West Split Highlighted By 
Election.]


*******


#1
Russian Premier To Seek Presidency
November 12, 1999
By NICK WADHAMS


MOSCOW, Russia (AP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin confirmed today that he
will run for president next year, according to a news report.


President Boris Yeltsin tapped Putin to be his successor when he appointed
him prime minister in August. Putin said early on he would likely run, but
has since been coy about his presidential plans.


He left no doubt today about his ambitions.


``As for my nomination for president, I was asked that question on the
first day of my work in the government and I answered it positively,''
Putin said, according to the Interfax news agency. ``If you've paid
attention, you know I don't take back my word.''


Recent polls have shown Putin is popular among Russians. His high approval
ratings have been attributed to Russia's military campaign against
breakaway Chechnya.


Another top politician considered a likely presidential candidate is former
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. He said in an interview published today
that he still wasn't sure of his election plans.


Primakov said that when he was prime minister, Yeltsin had approached him
about the possibility of running for president, but that he had refused to
even discuss it.


``I was not ready for the conversation,'' Primakov said in an interview
with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. ``I was not ready and did not
want to have it.''


Primakov said he should never have taken the prime minister's post. He
criticized Yeltsin's advisers, saying they unduly influence the president's
decisions.


``He is under the influence of one-sided information, which he is getting
from his inner circle. The information is not objective,'' Primakov said.


He singled out presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin for much of
the blame, saying Voloshin had focused on setting the president against
successive prime ministers.


Yeltsin has fired four prime ministers over the past 19 months. Primakov
was fired in May after eight months and was replaced by Sergei Stepashin,
who lasted three months before Putin took his place.


*******


#2
Russia says US wants to oust it from Caucasus
By Martin Nesirky

MOSCOW, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev dramatically
raised the stakes in the Chechnya crisis on Friday, accusing the United
States of wanting to weaken Russia and control the entire energy-rich
Caspian Sea basin. 


Russia faces increasing international pressure to halt its military
offensive against Chechen fighters and start talks. Chechnya is likely to
dominate next week's Istanbul summit of the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). 
Moscow says it is hunting down Islamic ``terrorists and bandits'' and the
operation is an internal affair. The OSCE said on Friday Russia had snubbed
an offer to help resolve the war. 


In a speech at a major military meeting to review 1999 and look ahead to
2000, Sergeyev said the United States and NATO were the main culprits in
making this year ``extremely unstable'' because of the Western alliance's
new post-Cold War strategic concept and its campaign against Yugoslavia. 


``The West's policy is a challenge to Russia with the aim of weakening its
international position and ousting it from strategically important regions
of the world, above all the Caspian region, the trans-Caucasus and Central
Asia,'' he said in televised remarks. 


Chechnya lies in Russia's mountainous North Caucasus region, bordering
Georgia and close to the Caspian Sea's oil and gas riches. A vital oil
pipeline runs across Chechnya from the Caspian to the Black Sea but it is
no longer under Russian control and Moscow is building a bypass. 


Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended the last day of the three-day
meeting with senior commanders and Kremlin officials. 


PUTIN VOWS TO BOOST MILITARY MIGHT 


Itar-Tass news agency quoted Putin as saying after the meeting: ``Concrete
decisions will be taken to mobilise all resources to make the armed forces
more powerful and effective so that they can meet tasks set by the state.'' 


Sergeyev told the meeting that reliable financing was crucial, Interfax
news agency said. 


The Soviet Union made its military might a priority and geared its economy
to that end. Since Soviet rule collapsed in 1991, the armed forces have
been cut in size. 


Russia's military campaign in Chechnya has prompted the State Duma, the
lower house of parliament, to back proposals for an increase in defence
spending despite a dire economic crisis. 


Russia, humiliated by its reduced circumstances despite still having
nuclear arms, has often complained that the United States wants to exploit
its position as the only superpower. 


Russian news agencies quoted Sergeyev as saying terrorism financed and
directed from abroad had grown. He was referring to bombings in Russian
towns which prompted Moscow to start a military operation seven weeks ago
in Chechnya, where it says those responsible are holed up. Chechnya denies
this. 


``It is in the interests of Russia to finish with terrorism once and for
all, all the more because we are a nuclear power,'' Interfax news agency
quoted him as saying. 


Putin will chair a meeting of the Kremlin's influential advisory Security
Council on Saturday to discuss Chechnya. 


Interfax said the chief of General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, had also
addressed Friday's meeting at the Defence Ministry but his speech on
Russia's military preparedness was behind closed doors. Kvashnin is widely
seen as the mastermind of Russia's Chechnya operation and an increasingly
influential figure. 


*******


#3
Moscow Times
November 12, 1999 
EDITORIAL: Let's Have Talks, Not Vague Talk 


Vladimir Putin says there's no one to negotiate with in Chechnya, but Putin 
suddenly has more important tasks - Thursday he had to attend a birthday 
party in the Urals. (At least it was a war-related event: The founder of the 
Kalashnikov machine gun had turned 80.) 


With Putin away, the Kremlin deputy chief of staff, Igor Shabdurasulov, 
floats the idea of negotiating with Chechnya. In Helsinki, Russian Foreign 
Minister Igor Ivanov also talks of talks. 


True, these negotiation proposals - like Putin's, back before he decided 
there was no one to negotiate with - pile on conditions so harsh they are not 
serious. Russia is bombing Chechnya, not the other way around - and Chechen 
President Aslan Maskhadov has repeatedly called for negotiations - but Ivanov 
and Shabdurasulov insist that Maskhadov has to take even more initiative. 


In Shabdurasulov's proposal, for example, Maskhadov has to renounce Chechen 
independence. That's absurd - because the second Maskhadov does anything of 
the kind, he will simply be ousted or killed, and Russia will be left to deal 
with dictator Shamil Basayev, or some other hawkish Chechen warlord. (It is 
possible, of course, that this would suit the Kremlin fine.) 


In addition to being absurd, the Shabdurasulov proposal is also unfair. 
President Boris Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed a peace treaty in May 1997 based 
on the Khasavyurt accord, which postponed all decisions about Chechnya's 
aspirations for independence until 2001. Here it is 1999, and Shabdurasulov - 
who is just some Kremlin functionary - is tearing up that deal? 


It seems that Shabdurasulov and Ivanov are not so much seeking peace as they 
are rhetorical ammunition for next week's OSCE meeting in Istanbul, when 
Yeltsin - or his proxy - will have to explain the war. 


The West should therefore be highly skeptical and critical at this meeting of 
any vague claims about vague possible negotiations. It would be wonderful to 
see other world leaders pinning Yeltsin down and asking: Aren't you violating 
the May 1997 agreement about postponing decisions on Chechnya's status? And 
why are you still bombing? 


For that matter, we're still waiting for the new UN war crimes prosecutor, 
Carla del Ponte, to weigh in. There's plenty of work for her here. She could 
start by asking Anatoly Chubais: On what grounds have you unplugged all 
electricity to Chechnya? 


This tough line can be taken without any hand wringing about what "the 
generals" will think. "The generals" are the West's new post-Pristina-airport 
bogeymen. But a little bluster aside, they are not a serious concern. The 
army is impoverished and sullen, and the generals have no political clout. 


******


#4
The Times (UK)
November 12 1999
[for personal use only]
Men imprisoned and beaten, refugees say 
FROM ALICE LAGNADO IN NAZRAN, INGUSHETIA 


REFUGEES fleeing the war in Chechnya have alleged that Russian troops were 
kidnapping Chechen men and holding them prisoner in "filtration camps". 
Several refugees waiting at Ingushetia's border with Chechnya told The Times 
yesterday that Russian soldiers were keeping Chechen men as prisoners on 
their bases, starving and beating them. "You know what happens in prison? 
Well, that's what it's like," one man said. 


Ali Alimkhanov, 42, who arrived in Ingushetia a week ago from Grozny and was 
waiting at the checkpoint for relatives, said: "They say they need to check 
documents, then the person disappears. They beat them and they don't feed 
them." 


Vyacheslav Izmailov, a former Russian army major who is in Ingushetia to help 
refugee orphans, said: "I can't be absolutely certain that there are 
filtration camps now, but there may well be and there were in the last war." 


Dusty buses packed tight with people escaping Russian bombs arrived every few 
minutes at the border yesterday morning. Women and children carrying a few 
possessions in plastic bags streamed out on to the snow. The lucky ones were 
met by relatives, many of whom have had to wait several days at the border in 
freezing temperatures. Others tramped into Ingushetia on foot, exhausted and 
cold, to face grim refugee camps. 


One woman said of the Russians' strategy: "They are just bombing, from the 
air and from the ground. We were in the cellar every night." 


People spoke of bombs raining down on villages, sometimes concentrated on the 
outside and the centre, but always where civilians were living. 


They said that the fighters the Russians are targeting are Chechens who have 
taken up arms and they had not seen Wahhabi fundamentalists in their 
villages. They also said that they had seen no arms caches in their villages. 


Mr Alimkhanov said that the Russians bombed Chechnya's Hospital No 2 in the 
Minutka region of Grozny three or four days ago. "I met the head doctor here 
on the border and he told me," he said. He said that the hospital had some 
state-of-the-art medical equipment donated by foreign aid organisations. 


Yakha Saidulayeva, a 26-year-old nurse, standing at the checkpoint in hope of 
greeting relatives, said that a psychiatric hospital was bombed in 
Urus-Martan a week ago, killing the head doctor and injuring nurses and 
patients. She said another attack on the local market had killed two girls 
aged 13 and 14. Russian forces were not bombing the entire village, but large 
parts of it where they suspected "fighters" lived, she said. 


The refugees accuse Russia of running a smear campaign against Chechens. It 
is a commonly held view that the Russian security services organised the 
torrent of kidnappings in Chechnya, paying poor Chechens to carry out the 
attacks. They also believe that Russia was behind the apartment bombings in 
September that killed almost 300 Russians in Moscow. 


"Ask any Chechen whether they know someone who would go to Moscow and blow up 
apartments. I don't know that kind of person," Saďd Magomed said. He 
rubbished Russian claims to be staging a Nato-style campaign. "What they say 
on television is nonsense. There are no precise strikes, they are just 
hitting people. There are very many people left in Chechnya." 


Reflecting the view of other refugees, Mr Magomed was in no doubt that Russia 
would flatten Grozny, perhaps soon: "They will get drunk on New Year's Eve 
and try to storm Grozny, like in the last war. There will be a mass of young 
soldiers and Kazantsev [the general who commands the North Caucasus region] 
will sit in his base while they die." 


The refugees felt let down by some of their leaders - not Aslan Maskhadov, 
the Chechen President, who appears to have overwhelming support, but there is 
disapproval of Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord, for his assault on 
Dagestan in August. 


******


#5
IntellectualCapital.com
November 11, 1999
Who is the Real Renegade?
by Anne Applebaum (106474.1333@compuserve.com) 
Applebaum is a writer for London's Evening Standard. She is a regular
commentator for IntellectualCapital.com. 

The pictures of the corpses are horrific. The details, as an inquest heard
this week, are worse.


A telephone engineer from Devon was "deprived of food, beaten up, then
struck on the head, probably with a gun butt" in the hours before his
death. One of his colleagues, from Orpington, Kent, had suffered a
fractured skull. Another, from Thames Ditton, Surrey, had been quite wasted
from malnutrition, while the the group's unidentified kidnappers had beaten
and bashed a fourth.


Finally, those same unidentified kidnappers decapitated all four men in the
course of what the inquest variously explained as a raid by Chechen special
forces, or a fight-out between rival gangs, and left their heads in a pile
near Grozny.


Solving a quadruple murder


As the published accounts graphically illustrate, forensic pathologists can
tell us with a horrific degree of accuracy what happened to the bodies of
these four men, kidnapped while working in Chechnya. No one, however, seems
able to explain precisely why it happened -- although it is not as if there
are no clues to be found.


I picked up a few this week in Warsaw from Seilam Beshaev, the deputy
speaker of the Chechen Parliament. He and two colleagues recently fled
their country on foot, over the Dagestani mountains, in order to meet
politicians in the few countries where politicians will meet them, and in
order to tell their side of this kind of story.


Let me start from the beginning: The four men were in Chechnya on a
contract from the Chechen government. Their task was to establish a Chechen
telephone network independent from the Russian network. They were guests of
the Chechen government, and, as the inquest heard, they initially were
housed in a compound with steel gates, high walls and full-time surveillance.


Last October, however, the compound was overrun and the men kidnapped. At
first, it was assumed the kidnappers wanted money. Last December, the men
were murdered; money, it seemed, was not the issue after all. Soon
afterward, according to Beshaev, the men's heads were found not by any
Chechen group but by a unit of the Russian army. Curiously, the unit
possessed a video camera and filmed its discovery.


Now, I accept that Chechnya is not the world's most law-abiding country.
After not one but two Russian invasions in the last five years, after a
sustained campaign against civilians -- in recent months, Russian bombs
have destroyed schools, hospitals, factories and columns of refugees -- it
could hardly be otherwise. I also accept that there are renegades in
Chechnya -- bandits, thieves, rival ethnic clans, whatever -- just as there
are in most war-torn countries.


The killing of four engineers served whose interest: Chechnya's or Russia?


Nevertheless, in the case of the four engineers, the most logical question
has not been asked: In whose interest were they killed?


In the Chechen interest? Surely not. The men were there because Chechnya, a
country virtually without telephones of any kind, wanted them there. In
some bandit group's interest? Surely not that, either. Four dead bodies are
hardly going to bring professional kidnappers a big ransom, which is why so
few of the many kidnappings in Chechnya have ended in murder.


Could they, then, have died in the Russian interest? That is a more
interesting question. By killing the four engineers, the Russians (or their
agents) prevented the Chechens from building their telephone system. By
killing the four engineers, they also scored a propaganda coup. Once again,
the Chechens were shown up as "the terrorists," the perpetrators of "clan
rivalry" that the Russians claim them to be.


Indeed, Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, has not been shy about
playing the army's film of the mutilated bodies to all and sundry. This
week, it was shown to a high-level meeting of the Council of Europe, just
as the Council of Europe was, coincidentally, muttering about suspending
Russia's membership because of its behavior in Chechnya.


Or perhaps the phrase "Russian interest" is misplaced. For it is far from
clear that Russia's policy in Chechnya has been conducted either in the
interests of the Russian state or of the Russian people. The former is
virtually bankrupt; the majority of the latter are desperately poor.
Neither can afford either the $1 billion now reserved to fight the Chechens
or the equally large sums of money spent fighting and meddling in Chechnya
in the past.


On the other hand, this policy -- and now this war -- is in the interest of
Putin. He started the fighting, as you may recall, because a series of
buildings exploded across Russia. Blamed on Islamic terrorists, these
explosions began just after he became prime minister and ceased,
miraculously, almost as soon as he invaded Chechnya.


In the wake of this good anti-terrorist campaign, he also has had a good
war: Since it began, Putin -- a shadowy and virtually unknown ex-KGB chief
when he became prime minister -- has grown steadily more popular. Which
could go a long way toward explaining why the campaign continues.


Reason to doubt


Much though I would like to, I will not now connect the dots and tell you
that Putin was responsible for the deaths of the British engineers. He was
not prime minister then (merely a secret policeman). The war was not in
full swing (although plenty of Russian secret police were in Chechnya).
More to the point, it is considered unserious, impolitic and even
hysterical to accuse Russian statesmen of exploding buildings or killing
foreigners in the interests of their presidential campaigns.


Nevertheless, it might be worth remembering the parting words of my
acquaintance, the Chechen parliamentarian -- who, as I said, walked over
the Dagestani mountains to say this: Next time you read about the devious
activity of some shadowy renegade group in Chechnya, just think twice
before you believe it. 


******


#6
The Guardian (UK)
12 November 1999
[for personal use only]
Russia's mistake is to think Chechnya can be conquered 
The hardest lessons of the Caucasus have been forgotten 
By Martin Woollacott 


The hardest lessons to learn are sometimes the easiest to forget. Who would 
have believed that Russia, which seemed to have learned that Chechnya would 
never submit to rule from Moscow, would embark on a war of reconquest there? 
For that is what the campaign, which began two months ago as a response to 
Islamist incursions and terrorist bombs, has insensibly become.


The Russian army's modern history is entwined with war in the northern 
Caucasus, a place in which its commanders came to understand in colonial days 
that, while others might submit, the Chechens were perpetual rebels. Stalin's 
deportation of the Chechens only revealed more clearly their capacity for 
survival, their attachment to their land, to which they returned in spite of 
extra-ordinary obstacles, and their refusal to accept that incorporation into 
Russia was anything but an accident to be reversed. The most recent lesson 
for the Russians came with the withdrawal in 1996 of Russian forces which had 
failed to defeat the Chechens in spite of their superiority in men and 
equipment.


It now looks as if Russian officers drew precisely the wrong moral from that 
defeat, attributing it entirely to their own mismanagement of the campaign. 
Mismanagement there clearly was, but the essence of the problem was that the 
motivation of the Chechens, fighting for their homeland, was more powerful 
than that of the Russians, fighting for an imperial outpost beyond their 
ethnic frontier. The commanders of the new campaign have not repeated, so 
far, the technical mistakes of the earlier one and, in particular the 
ill-prepared ground attacks in which they lost so many men. Success has 
emboldened them. At first Russian forces attacked only a few targets which, 
rightly or wrongly, they claimed were bases used by the Islamist irregulars 
of Shamil Basayev. Then the bombing expanded to include targets all over 
Chechnya. Then the advance on the ground began with an occupation of the 
northern part of Chechnya, and now a developing pincer movement from east and 
west.


As the military pace quickened, Russia's war aims were revised upward. At 
first the talk was of putting pressure on the Chechen government to deal with 
extremists. By early October, the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, was 
asserting that Russian armed forces had the right 'to be deployed wherever 
they want on the territory of their own country'. Putin in effect cast aside 
the painfully achieved settlement of 1996, which gave Chechnya control over 
its own affairs and shelved the question of independence for peaceful 
settlement later. Then the generals running the war began to make statements 
about taking control of the whole of Chechen territory, and about their 
readiness to fight Chechen guerrillas for as long as it would take.


Finally the defence minister, Igor Sergeyev, a few days ago made the aim of 
complete occupation official. For western countries, one of the most painful 
aspects of this disastrous turn of events is that they provided a twisted 
precedent for it in the shape of Nato's Kosovo campaign.


Moscow is using as a military model the Nato campaign against Belgrade, with 
its heavy dependence on air power, in order to pursue a political policy akin 
to that which Belgrade pursued in Kosovo. More broadly, there is no doubt 
that the Russians saw Kosovo as Nato meeting a challenge on its own 
'territory', with Russia's advice and interests largely disregarded. If 
Kosovo is on Nato's side of the street, Moscow could then argue, Chechnya is 
on ours. Such thinking stiffens resistance to western advice, and, still 
more, to western attempts to force a change in Chechnya policy by withholding 
the financial aid and credit Russia needs.


None of this means that Russia was not provoked. The other side of the 1996 
settlement was that the government of Aslan Maskhadov would undertake to keep 
his extremists under control. But Maskhadov, a former Soviet artillery 
officer who had ably commanded the Chechen forces during the fighting, was 
less successful in peacetime than he had been during the war. He proved 
unable to check crime and general lawlessness, which continues unabated, with 
kidnappings for profit going on in Grozny even as the Russians bomb. Above 
all, he could not rein in the Islamist warrior chieftains like Basayev who 
had emerged during the hostilities.


Basayev, a man whose ruthlessness is only exceeded by his heedlessness of 
consequences, was prominent in the formation of a movement aimed at the 
creation of an Islamic state incorporating both Chechnya and its neighbour 
Dagestan and led an incursion into Dagestani territory in August. The 
Russians repelled it, to the relief of the Dagestan government and of most 
Dagestanis, who have little interest in a dangerous Islamist adventure and 
prefer, for prosaic reasons, to remain within the Russian federation.


The Russians took a gamble on Maskhadov, and on Chechen secular nationalism 
prevailing over the Islamists, and it did not come off. The bombs in Russian 
cities, although still not proven to have been Islamist atrocities, may have 
tipped the balance in Moscow in favour of a Caucasus campaign. Whether that 
was aimed at reconquest from the start or whether it grew in scope after 
early successes is not clear. But the Russians are now openly saying they 
will go all the way - to capture Grozny and to reincorporate the whole of 
Chechnya. In the process they are adopting techniques of population control 
that make it even less likely that Russian rule will be accepted, herding off 
the men for screening and planning, according to one Russian official, to put 
families into 'protected'' villages.


The dangers of this new war touch everyone. Chechnya could be thrust into a 
guerrilla struggle with Russian occupiers that would further brutalise both 
sides. That could lead in turn to a destabilisation of the rest of the 
Caucasus, both the independent states and the areas within the Russian 
federation. In Russia itself, the victors of the Chechnya campaign, if it 
continues without the disasters which marked the last one, could emerge as 
political winners. A worse qualification for running Russia and its armed 
forces than 'victory'' in Chechnya is hard to imagine. Relations between the 
west and Russia must suffer at a time when they are already battered. Western 
pressure on Russia is likely to be both ineffective and counter-productive.


The best hope lies in Russian common sense, for there is a basic 
contradiction underlying Moscow's Chechnya policy. The new Russia may have 
the military means to take Chechnya, but is the new Russia capable of the 
tsarist or the Stalinist ruthlessness which were the only way previous 
governments kept Chechnya under control? That is the question which Moscow 
must ask itself. 
******


#7
Kremlin Backing CPRF To Spite Primakov 


Obshchaya Gazeta
4 November 1999
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Anatoliy Kostyukov: "Old Enemy Better than Two New Ones" 


A most intriguing piece of election news: The 
Kremlin has undertaken to help the Communists. A peace pact, the 
authorship of which is imputed to Vladislav Surkov, deputy chief of the 
Presidential Staff, envisages "conditions of mutual nonaggression" and 
support from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation [CPRF] in the 
state media. The deal is secret in nature: Both sides, naturally, deny 
and will continue to deny it. 


It is, of course, an extraordinary piece of news, but it was possible, 
in general terms, to note a change in the relations between the Kremlin 
and its strategic enemy -- the CPRF -- quite a while ago now. And, what 
is more, without leaving your television set. 


The Russian Federation's citizens have become used in the eight 
post-perestroyka years to the inevitable attempts to scare them by means 
of the "Red threat," the gulag, and ration coupons for soap in the runup 
to the next election. When it started to be said in the summer that the 
president was about to close the CPRF down and that the embalmed figure 
of the Founder was to be removed any day you got the impression that the 
authorities were not averse to "allowing a spot of anti-Communism" this 
time too. But the election campaign is now under way, and the voters peer 
at their TV screens, peruse the columns of the semiofficial newspapers, 
and understand nothing. Where has the "Red threat" gone? Where are the 
bedtime stories about waiting lines for sausages? Why does Chubays not go 
and hammer the "final nail into the coffin of Communism"? The traditional 
enemy is suddenly on the sidelines of the media war. He has suddenly 
stopped being noticed, as if the powerful and awful CPRF has degenerated 
overnight into a pathetic handful of marginal figures with whom it is not 
worth being associated. It is odd: All the pollsters still rate the 
Communist Party the favorite in the parliamentary campaign and Gennadiy 
Zyuganov one of the main contenders for the throne. 


Last week the leaders of the Fatherland-All Russia bloc demanded that the 
president and his staff refrain from interfering in the progress of the 
elections. The demand was, of course, rejected, which was no special 
surprise to the Fatherland-All Russia leaders either. However, what is 
interesting here is that it is the moderate centrists rather than the 
radical opposition which have become indignant at the "unprecedented 
pressure on the electoral process." Has anyone heard Gennadiy Andreyevich 
Zyuganov complaining about pressure? Not that we have heard. The 
Communists are behaving today as if overturning the "anti-people regime" 
is not their business. 


How is this metamorphosis to be understood? Perhaps official agitprop 
simply has no time for the Communists -- all its efforts going on 
combating the Primakov-Luzhkov bloc? But this hypothesis underestimates 
the authorities' media and propaganda resources and fails to explain the 
Communists' unnatural pacifism. Therefore when the "leaks" about the 
Presidential Staff's tactical alliance with the CPRF started up, it was 
difficult not to believe them. 


It is clear that this alliance is based not on the sides' liking for 
each other but on their having a common enemy, which is what both sides 
consider Fatherland-All Russia to be. The Communists' interest is 
understandable: They need to win more seats, and only the 
Primakov-Luzhkov bloc can stymie their plans, the Kremlin is therefore 
their most desirable ally. It is far more difficult to understand the 
other side's reasons. Let us concede that the Presidential Staff has been 
very badly affected by its failure to upset Fatherland's marriage with 
All Russia, divorce Primakov from Luzhkov, and create a powerful "Kremlin 
bloc" as a counterweight to Fatherland-All Russia and is -- out of 
desperation --ready to start fraternizing even with the devil incarnate. 
It then turns out the Kremlin has decided to sin with the Communists 
solely to damage Fatherland-All Russia. This is known as cutting off your 
nose to spite your face. 


Of course, you will do anything out of desperation and a desire to get 
back at your enemy in some way. While it has forced the president's chief 
steward, Pavel Borodin, to get involved in the Moscow mayoralty campaign, 
the Kremlin understands perfectly well that it has no prospect of 
victory, but it does very much want to "prize" at least five-six percent 
of the vote away from Luzhkov! 


It does not seem, however, that the alliance with the CPRF has been 
inspired by considerations of this kind. There is more brute calculation 
than emotion here. According to Obshchaya Gazeta's information, 
cooperation with the Communists in the parliamentary campaign is only the 
first of three moves by the Kremlin, which may be described as a plan to 
prepare an acceptable rival to the official presidential contender. The 
plan, to give it its due, is not bad and does not look like the usual 
imagemaker's flimflam. 


The Kremlin has no doubts today that Vladimir Putin can get into the 
final round of the presidential election. It is highly likely that he 
will be the leading contender in the final round, winning 30-35% of the 
votes in the first round. Everything will then depend on who his rival 
is. The general characteristics of the desired rival are well-known: He 
must have an electorate which is comparable in terms of numbers 
(otherwise he will not get into the second round) but which is rigidly 
committed, self contained, and incapable of attracting any major influx 
of floating voters. Such a candidate will win almost all his expected 
votes in the first round, while the bulk of the votes redistributed in 
the second round will go to the other candidate. Judging by the data 
compiled by pollsters (the presidential Staff is the most active 
commissioner of polls) the most awkward rival for Putin is Yevgeniy 
Primakov and the most acceptable Gennadiy Zyuganov. Primakov's 
awkwardness resides in the fact that, to use one pollster's expression, 
"he straddles the whole electoral field." His supporters are extremely 
heterogeneous in their makeup and can consequently be swelled by other 
electoral groups. If he gets into the second round Primakov can pick up 
voters who support Zyuganov, Luzhkov, Yavlinskiy, and Chernomyrdin, which 
will guarantee him first prize. Zyuganov, however, cannot count on such a 
top-up, the most he can aspire to is 40% of the vote and an honorable 
second place. Which actually makes him useful. It is most convenient of 
all to get into the Kremlin on his back. But to repeat the 1996 trick the 
CPRF leader has to get into the second round. This will not be so simple 
in 2000, Primakov could now outstrip him in the first heat. Zyuganov 
therefore has to be helped. The idea is, in general terms, as simple as 
can be. First, Gennadiy Andreyevich [Zyuganov] will be helped to improve 
his ratings in the Duma election and then be carried through to the final 
round of the presidential election; what then follows is quite simple: 
Citizens will work out for themselves which is the lesser evil. Neither 
Zyuganov not his party risks anything by taking part in this 
stage-managed event. Fate offers them the chance to benefit a little at 
the "class enemy's" expense, and it would be a shame to let it slip. 
While the Kremlin partners have to be satisfied with what they can get, 
they have no other allies, anyway.


*******


#8
The Economist (UK)
November 13-19, 1999
[for personal use only]
Leader/editorial
Russia's brutal folly 
The war in Chechnya is ravaging the Chechens, destabilising the Caucasus and 
diminishing Russia. The West must try to help bring it to an end 
IT GROWS ever more serious. First, the war in Chechnya is increasingly 
horrible for the territory's civilians, some 200,000 of whom are now 
homeless, just before the onset of winter. Second, with Russia's forces 
advancing on Chechnya's capital, Grozny, and ready soon to launch an all-out 
attack on it, the death toll among the combatants on both sides looks set to 
swell. Third, the prospect of the fighting spreading to other parts of the 
combustible Caucasus is growing. Fourth, and perhaps most worrying, the war 
is threatening Russia's own rough-hewn democracy: a parliamentary election is 
due next month, a presidential one next summer, and belligerent Russian 
generals are sounding insubordinate; some have even been saying they would 
fight on if the politicians told them to stop. What can 
outsiders do to help avert a full-blown humanitarian and political 
catastrophe? 


Plainly, the West should try to persuade Russia that a peaceful settlement is 
in its own interest. A new opportunity to do this presents itself next week 
at the grand summit in Istanbul of the 54 countries that make up the 
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an outfit that includes 
the United States and Russia. In Istanbul, every western bigwig from Bill 
Clinton down should be impressing upon Russia that it stands only to gain if 
it now declares a ceasefire and opens talks with Aslan Maskhadov, the 
Chechens' leader. Had Russia been wise, it would have long since come to 
terms with him and helped him to fend off the wild men who have made his 
statelet ungovernable. 


Ideally, the Russians should also be persuaded to join an undertaking that 
would aim to bring peace not just to Chechnya but to the Caucasus as a whole. 
In the area between the Black and the Caspian Seas lie countless festering 
issues, including separatist disaffection in two parts of Georgia, a 
territorial row between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the question of a 
pipeline to carry oil to the Mediterranean via Turkey. A general conference 
is the place to discuss these questions. 


It has to be recognised, however, that Russia may not be in a mood to listen 
to the West. For the time being at least, the war is popular in most of 
Russia. The generals are eager for revenge on the Chechens who humiliated 
them in the war of 1994-96, and the Kremlin -- or parts of it --is happy to
give 
them their head. So what does the West do then? 


For better or worse, Chechnya is a part of Russia. Even so, if the West 
believed the scale of Russia's brutality to be as great as, say, that of the 
Serbs in Kosovo, it should - it might be arguedâ - issue ultimatums and, if
need 
be, then resort to bombing to drive the Russians out. But that is not a 
serious prospect. No one wants to risk a war with a nuclear power, especially 
when the Chechens, however atrociously treated, are hardly model citizens. 
Russia claims that Chechnya is a base for Islamic terrorists. The claim is 
plausible, even if the blame may partly lie with the Kremlin, the response is 
utterly disproportionate and the link between such terrorists and the recent 
explosions in Russian cities has not been at all convincingly established. 


The points of purchase 

That does not mean, however, that the West is powerless. It should make it 
clear that it will suspend most of its co-operation with Russia until it 
declares a ceasefire in Chechnya, allows international aid agencies full 
access to the refugees and wounded, and opens a political dialogue with the 
republic's leadership. Until these conditions are met, the West should not 
consider offering any further cash loans or food aid through government 
channels. And the Council of Europe, which purports to embrace only genuine 
democracies, should suspend Russia's membership. 


Meanwhile, the West could be doing much more to strengthen the independence 
of the countries that sit nervously close to Russia's trembling rim. On 
November 14th, Ukraine's voters have to decide, in a run-off, between two 
possible presidents, one broadly in favour of cosying up to Russia, the other 
against it. Moldova, where Russian troops squat illegally on a disputed 
sliver of territory, this week lost a reforming government. Russia still 
needles Georgia and Azerbaijan and hopes to use a recent outburst of violence 
in Armenia to exert its influence there too. The West can offer help to these 
countries, even as it tells the Russians that their conduct in Chechnya is 
merely losing them influence elsewhere. The western armoury is limited, but 
the stakes are high: they include not just the suffering of the Chechens but 
the stability of the Caucasus and, perhaps, of Russia itself. 


*******


#9
West Fears lest Russia Restores Order in Northern Caucasus.


MOSCOW, November 11 (Itar-Tass) - Duma Vice-Speaker Sergei Baburin believes 
that the West fears lest Russia restores law and order in the Northern 
Caucasus and stabilises the domestic political situation. This is how he 
commented to Itar-Tass Thursday on the plans of western countries to give the 
Chechen theme pride of place at the Istanbul summit, scheduled for November 
18-19. 


Baburin said that "they are used to meddling with the domestic affairs of 
other states. This is patently testified by the NATO aggression against 
Yugoslavia". "The West closed its eyes to all the act of arbitrariness in 
Russia, and to the Chechen war too, when this suited it," Baburin stated, 
adding that "there is no such war there today, but they need a conflict and 
they will fan it up". 


Baburin backed the government's actions in Chechnya. "I am afraid I'll have 
nothing to criticise the cabinet for if it continues to work in this way," he 
added. 


At the same time, Baburin said "it is regrettable that anti-Russian 
sentiments are lately predominant in Azerbaijan and Georgia and that these 
countries are continuing to drift towards the West". Commenting on the 
government's decision to ensure public security and to prevent members of 
foreign terroristic organisations from worming their way into Russia, and on 
the call to the foreign ministry to temporarily limit the issuance of visas 
to foreign citizens wishing to go to the Northern Caucasus, Baburin said he 
hoped there would be no border tensions and no aggravation of inter-state 
relations. 


"The bandits had found asylum on neighbouring territories yesterday and are 
getting it there today, too," Baburin noted. 


*******


#10
Moscow Times
November 12, 1999 
Audit Chamber Glum on Taxes 


Having examined federal revenues and expenditures over the first nine months 
of this year, the State Audit Chamber - a watchdog set up by parliament - has 
challenged official assertions that Russia is on target to collect more taxes 
than planned, officials said Thursday. 


While the 1999 budget will be "nominally fulfilled," that disguises a 
situation where the value of taxes collected this year will be equal to 
between 94 percent and 96 percent of the value of last year's taxes, Khachim 
Karmokov, the head of the Audit Chamber, said. 


"There are no grounds for the euphoria demonstrated by some representatives 
of our tax authorities. The real situation remains difficult," Karmokov said. 


The Audit Chamber boss was especially critical regarding Russia's money 
supply. At 14.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, the country's money supply 
is at best one-third of the amount needed to restore normal monetary 
circulation in the country, he said. 


"In China, the ratio is more than 100 percent, in Poland it is 50 to 60 
percent, and in the Group of Seven [leading industrialized nations] it is 
about 80 percent. The problem is that without money there is nothing to pay 
taxes with and debts are skyrocketing." 


******


#11
Financial Times (UK)
12 November 1999
[for personal use only]
RUSSIA: Rivals square up to be mayor of Moscow 
By John Thornhill in Moscow


The fight to control Russia's richest city formally started yesterday as the 
main candidates registered to contest the post of Moscow mayor.


Yuri Luzhkov, the current city boss, is the overwhelming favourite to retain 
his job but is likely to face a spirited challenge from Sergei Kiriyenko, the 
youthful former prime minister. The ballot, scheduled for December 19, could 
prove an important test of Mr Luzhkov's political durability before next 
year's presidential poll.


The stocky, leather-capped Mr Luzhkov, who won almost 90 per cent of the vote 
in the last elections in 1996, has visibly transformed Moscow from a dull 
Soviet town into a vibrant European city. But his opponents accuse him of 
running a corrupt regime for the benefit of business cronies.


Opinion polls suggest Mr Luzhkov is likely to crush the other candidates, 
winning almost two-thirds of the vote. Nevertheless, Mr Luzhkov's popularity 
has fallen sharply in recent months, under a barrage of criticism from the 
Kremlin, damaging his chances as a serious presidential candidate.


Mr Kiriyenko, who is also leading a rightwing coalition into the 
parliamentary elections on December 19, said he was determined to fight 
against "nomenklatura capitalism" run in the style of the former Soviet elite.


"The main threat to us is not the Communists," he said. "But nomenklatura 
capitalism is real and dangerous and Luzhkov is proposing the Moscow model 
for the whole of Russia."


But Mr Kiriyenko's political star has also faded and his party will struggle 
to pass the 5 per cent hurdle needed to win seats in the lower house of 
parliament.


The third notable candidate, Pavel Borodin, head of the Kremlin's 
administrative office, has been enmeshed in a tangled corruption scandal and 
appears to have little popular support. But he may well be able to call on 
the financial and organisational backing of the Kremlin, further weakening Mr 
Luzhkov's political standing.


Andrei Loginov, a senior administration adviser, said Mr Borodin was "an 
experienced manager and an excellent organiser" and would do no worse a job 
than Mr Luzhkov.


******


#12
Ukraine: East-West Split Highlighted By Election
By Askold Krushelnycky


In a run-off vote on Sunday (Nov. 14), Ukrainians will choose between 
incumbent Leonid Kuchma and Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko to be 
their president for the next five years. In the first round (Oct. 30), there 
was a distinct contrast in voting patterns between the east and west of the 
country. RFL/RL correspondent Askold Krushelnycky examines the reasons for 
the difference and the possible effect on the coming run-off vote. 


Lviv, 11 November 1999 (RFE/RL) -- Those were the voices of some 2,000 people 
in the main square in the west Ukrainian city of Lviv, who began a meeting 
last weekend by singing the Ukrainian national anthem. With its cobbled 
streets and Austro-Hungarian-style buildings, Lviv is the heartland of 
Ukrainian patriotism. It was the center of Ukrainian national re-awakening in 
the 19th century and was the engine of the drive for national independence in 
Soviet times.


For most of incumbent President Leonid Kuchma's term in office, much of 
Lviv's and west Ukraine's population has been fiercely critical of him. They 
complain he has not done enough to nurture Ukraine's national identity or set 
it on a pro-Western and market-reform path. Now, however, they are among his 
most avid supporters.


At the public meeting over the weekend, speakers from more than 20 parties 
and community organizations urged voters to support Kuchma in the race for 
the presidency between him and Communist leader Petro Symonenko. But in the 
country's East, the picture is very different.


The elections have polarized the electorate between west and east. In the 
first round in which 13 candidates competed, Kuchma and other pro-democracy 
candidates gained more than 70 percent of the votes in the west. But in the 
east, leftist candidates gained a similar share.


The voting differences reflect the different histories of the two regions. 
West Ukraine only became incorporated into the former Soviet Union during 
World War Two. Until then, it had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- 
except for the interwar years, when it was annexed by Poland.


Western Ukraine's population was fiercely pro-independence minded and always 
regarded the Communists who united them with Eastern Ukraine as an alien 
occupation force. A Ukrainian guerrilla army known as the UPA fought against 
the Nazis during the war and continued battling against what it viewed as 
Communist Russian imperialism until the early 1950s.


One veteran UPA soldier who attended the Lviv rally, 80-year-old Mykhailo 
Palyvko, told RFE/RL that Ukrainians had to do everything possible to ensure 
the Communists did not regain power. He said much blood was spilled for 
independence, and that Symonenko -- who wants to restore a Soviet Union -- 
would once more make Ukraine a colony.


Palyvko echoed the beliefs of many of the speakers at the rally, and of many 
ordinary West Ukrainians, who believe a vote for communists is tantamount to 
being a traitor to Ukraine. Palyvko:


"We don't have any other choice. We veterans of the UPA can only vote for 
Kuchma because Symonenko will bring us no good. He was a Communist, he is a 
Communist and he will always be one. He wants the same thing as [Belarus 
President Alyaksandr] Lukashenka -- to form a new Soviet Union. We did not 
fight for that, for a new Soviet Union. We fought for an independent, 
sovereign Ukraine." In contrast to the west, central and east Ukraine were in 
the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union since the 17th century and 
experienced intense Communist repression. This included an artificially 
induced famine in the 1930s that killed millions and mass executions of 
nationally conscious Ukrainians.


The region also experienced large-scale industrialization under Soviet rule. 
That brought in millions of Russian workers, which accelerated the 
Russification of its culture. While Ukrainian is the language commonly spoken 
throughout west and parts of central Ukraine, Russian is the dominant tongue 
in the east.


The area is also home to huge Soviet-era coal mines and other heavy 
industries. Most are now semi-dormant because they are no longer being 
subsidized by the state. That in turn has led to millions of workers being 
paid meager wages and in most cases having to wait months for even these 
payments. Many -- especially elderly people with unpaid pensions -- blame 
their plight on the disintegration of the Soviet Union.


In the west the main issue is independence. In the country's central and east 
what counts most is obtaining a regular wage. Ukrainians in these regions 
have been attracted by Symonenko's Soviet-era rhetoric, and the ethnic 
Russians in the region like his promise to reinstate Russian as a state 
language.


In the coal mining region of Luhansk, nearly half voted for Symonenko in the 
first round. About a quarter voted for other Left candidates. Vladimir 
Panchenk is a miner at the Barakova coal mine in Krasno Don. He tells RFE/RL 
he has not been paid for months:


"I don't trust any of them. I believed in Kuchma when I voted for him before 
but now I don't trust him at all. I don't care if Symonenko comes to power. I 
just want to be paid my salary. That's all I ask for."


Kuchma won the presidency five years ago with most of his support from the 
east of the country after promising massive injections of cash for the 
rust-belt industries there.


The first secretary of the Communist Party in the Luhansk region, Vladimir 
Zemlyakov, says people will vote for his party because they are tired of 
living in poverty. He denies his party would reinstate autocratic rule and 
says elements of privatization might be retained.


"We're not so stupid that we are going to repeat the mistakes of the past. 
Human progress began with people being intelligent enough to select the best 
things. And we are not that stupid that we are going to transfer the old 
mistakes to new times."


But by no means do all the workers want a return to Communist rule. Again, 
unlike West Ukraine, their considerations are economic rather than 
nationalistic. Many, like coal miner Yuriy Telnoy, fear a Communist return 
will cause yet more disruption and increase poverty.


"I personally will vote for Kuchma. Because if the Communists return to power 
they will begin changing things again. As in the past five or ten people will 
have to share one meal. Therefore, I will vote for Kuchma."


Kuchma hopes that desire for stability will help sway enough of the eastern 
vote. But the elections have once more demonstrated the profound differences 
between the east and west of Ukraine -- a divide which no politician has yet 
been able to bridge. 


*******