Center for Defense Information
Research Topics
Television
CDI Library
Press
What's New
Search
CDI Library > Johnson's Russia List

Johnson's Russia List
 

 

December 12, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4682  4683

 

Johnson's Russia List
#4683
12 December 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Stalin anthem brings down the curtain on Putin's mercurial year.
2. Reuters: Spanish police arrest Russian media magnate Gusinsky.
3. BBC Monitoring: Russia's Putin sets out political credo.
4. Interfax: Putin defends constitutional reform.
5. RIA: Gorbachev hails Russian President Putin.
6. Amy Knight: re:Wayne Merry on the Pope case.
7. Financial Times (UK): Robert Corzine, SURVEY - KAZAKSTAN: Pouring oil on troubled Caspian waters: RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA: With Russians comprising almost a third of the population, and amid new interest from Putin's Moscow, relations.
8. Interfax: NATO Moscow bureau on hold over disagreement on status.
9. AFP: Siberian city faces threat of full-blown AIDS epidemic.
10. Bloomberg: Putin Calls for Improved Russia-Cuba Links, End to US Embargo.
11. The Boston Globe Magazine: Ruth Daniloff, A doctor without borders. (re Chechen surgeon Khassan Baiev)]

******

#1
Stalin anthem brings down the curtain on Putin's mercurial year

MOSCOW, Dec 12 (AFP) -
It is a sign of how Russia has changed since Vladimir Putin assumed power on
December 31, 1999, that 12 months on, the Kremlin bells will ring in the New
Year with Joseph Stalin's Soviet anthem.

An ex-KGB spy, Putin has reached deep into Russia's dark but dependable
Communist past to concoct a symbolic remedy for a nation still hung over from
the erratic, corruption-charged, vodka-soaked years of his predecessor Boris
Yeltsin.

Plucked from obscurity by his mentor, Putin witnessed his popularity soar on
the back of a brutal crackdown in Chechnya, Russians hailing his efforts to
impose a "dictatorship of law."

"Russia is never going to be another USA or England, where liberal values
have deep historic roots," warned Putin just days before Yeltsin's dramatic
resignation.

"The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as
required," he said.

Cynics feared Putin had been, literally, "put in" the Kremlin to shield the
outgoing president from a raft of corruption charges, an impression he did
little to dispel by granting Yeltsin immunity from prosecution in the first
document he signed as president.

Yet most Russians preferred to see in the inscrutable judo black-belt a
reflection of their own aspirations.

Reformers were encouraged by his forward-looking pronouncements, economic
liberals by his apparent commitment to the free market, unreconstructed
Communists by his authoritarian style.

At the same time, nationalists marveled at his steely determination to crush
the separatists in Chechnya in a 14-month war that began with Putin's
famously crude vow to "piss on the terrorists while they sit in the outhouse."

Drafting only a vague manifesto, the acting president romped home to victory
in March 26 elections amid promises to restore Russian patriotism and pride.

With the trademark cunning of a Soviet apparatchik, Putin exploited his
widespread popularity to launch crusades against the two key groups that had
helped smooth his Kremlin path.

No sooner was his inauguration over than the new leader stripped Russia's
unruly local governors of their seats -- and votes -- in parliament, uniting
the country's 89 unruly regions into seven super-districts overseen by his
own appointees.

If that brought murmurs of liberal protest, then a wave of police raids on
the few independent media organisations that had voiced criticism of the
Kremlin drew howls of outrage from press watchdogs and human rights groups
world-wide.

Ignoring the catcalls, Putin vowed to curb corruption, starting with the
so-called "oligarchs," extravagantly wealthy and reviled businessmen whose
fortunes ballooned out of privatisations that often resembled insider trade
deals.

Never mind that the tycoons who bore the brunt of Putin's ire, Boris
Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky - both of whom ended the year as self-styled
"political exiles" -- just happened to run the country's most popular and
outspoken television channels.

But with Russia's economy purring along on the back of soaring world oil
prices, there was enough optimism to silence the critics.

By midsummer, with a grip on power unparalleled since the height of
Stalinism, Putin gave the impression of sailing through trouble-free waters.

Then tragedy struck.

The Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, in which 118 sailors died, saw Putin
crucially misjudge the nation's mood, failing to cut short a summer holiday
until all hope was lost for the seamen trapped at the bottom of the Barents
Sea.

Grieving Russians lashed out at the naval authorities for reverting to the
worst Soviet excesses -- either lying about the rescue efforts, or hiding
behind a cloak of secrecy.

The August 12 disaster not only highlighted Putin's inability to lead or
comfort his people at a time of national crisis, but also revealed the depths
to which Russia's Soviet-era machinery and weaponry had plunged.

Trying to recover lost initiative, Putin announced in September that the
armed forces would be cut drastically by 600,000 over the next five years,
making way for a leaner and and more effective force.

Russia's cash-strapped defenses were a key factor in Putin's long-running bid
to dissuade the United States from deploying a national missile defence
shield -- one that Moscow could ill-afford to duplicate or fight against.

Putin's statements on arms control won some plaudits from international
observers.

But there was also evidence of the Kremlin's readiness to make mischief in
world affairs, Putin becoming the first Russian leader to visit such isolated
former Soviet satellites as North Korea, Mongolia and even Cuba.

In defiance of Western calls to back reform in the Balkans, Moscow only
jettisoned its support for beleaguered Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
two weeks after his election defeat.

And the year ended with Putin risking US sanctions by announcing that Russia
was set to continue selling arms to Iran.

Perhaps most seriously, Russia's profile in the Middle East declined over the
course of Putin's year, its waning significance cruelly underlined by
Moscow's absence from the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in the autumn.

An enigma on the world stage, Putin seemed to revel in this complex image --
part old-style Soviet, part media-savvy politician in the Clinton mold --
though it was his softer, gentler side he paraded for Western audiences.

"I believe that all of us have come to this world to do good," Putin told
CNN's Larry King show in September. "And most importantly we will achieve the
ultimate goal, which is comfort in our own heart."

******

#2
Spanish police arrest Russian media magnate Gusinsky
 
MADRID, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Spanish police on Tuesday arrested Russian media
magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, who is wanted in his home country for alleged
embezzlement, a police spokesman said.

Gusinsky was arrested in the luxury beach resort of Sotogrande near the
southern city of Cadiz, the spokesman said.

"Members of the national police arrested Vladimir Gusinsky in his residence
in Sotogrande at 0010 local time (2310 GMT)," the spokesman said.

Gusinsky was being held in a police station in the Spanish town of La Linea,
next to British colony Gibraltar, pending a decision by Spain's High Court
whether to press ahead with extradition proceedings.

Russian authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the financier
earlier in December after he failed to appear for questioning in November.

Gusinsky has said the charges against him are politically motivated after his
independent Media Most group criticised the Kremlin.

Gusinsky left Russia after being jailed briefly in June and aides have said
he has spent time in Britain, Gibraltar, Israel and Spain, where his family
lives.

******

#3
BBC Monitoring
Russia's Putin sets out political credo
Text of report by Russian Ekho Moskvy radio on 12th December

[Presenter] President Vladimir Putin will aim in his actions to meet the
interests of a majority of the Russian people. This is the approach most
useful for the state, the president has said in a wide-ranging interview
with a group of Cuban journalists.

He said that much had still to be done in terms of society's consolidation,
for positive trends to acquire a sustainable nature.

Asked by reporters whether he regarded himself as a left-wing or right-wing
politician, the president answered with a proverb:

[Putin] Call me a pot but heat me not. My view is that it is due to no
accident that left-wing political leaders in our country today agree with
and basically advocate market transformations, while the supporters of a
liberal economy back the president's action to strengthen Russian
statehood. There is a reason for all this because it has become obvious
over the past many years that one cannot exist effectively without the other.

******
 
#4
Russia: Putin defends constitutional reform
Interfax

Moscow, 12th December: "To live according to the constitution and the law
is not only a necessity and civic duty" but also "the privilege of free
people who know the value of their rights and recognize the same rights for
others", Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

"Only when the constitution is really in force do the authorities not dare
to experiment on the state and people," Putin said at a Tuesday [12th
December] ceremony marking Russia's Constitution Day at the Kremlin.

"Those who serve the state must maintain the state machine in working
condition and not let it come loose, spin its wheels or run idle and,
finally, guarantee that this sophisticated and expensive machine not
overturn on steep political turns," the president said. It is also
necessary to "guarantee that its steering wheel not fall into the hands of
political shady dealers and reckless adventurers", he said.

"The freedom and dignity of our people is truly a matter of Russia's
national security," Putin said.

The president noted that a lot of people had harshly criticized the
constitution even before its adoption, later demanded that it be revamped
and overhauled, and also "said that it was dictated by spur-of- the-moment
reasons of expediency and therefore had no prospects or future".

But time has "put everything in its place", Putin went on. "Our
constitution not only reflects the spirit of long-awaited changes. It has
also become a firm basis for the stable development of the country."

Addressing the federal reform being carried out in Russia, the renewal of
the Federation Council and the establishment of the seven federal
districts, the president underscored that these actions "lie strictly
within the firm framework of the constitution".

"We just had to pull ourselves together. We are obliged to assemble the
state. And we are doing it," he said.

******

#5
Gorbachev hails Russian President Putin
Russian news agency RIA

(?Louveigne-la-Nev), Belgium, 11 December: [Russian President] Vladimir
Putin has "normal and healthy ambitions" and wants "to lead his country out
of the crisis", [former Soviet President] Mikhail Gorbachev said today in a
lecture at the Catholic university of Louveigne-la-Nev in Belgium. He
devoted his lecture to the relations between Russia and the EU.

President Putin is "a man of a new generation" and "a well-educated
person", Gorbachev said. The former Soviet president called the West to
support Putin's efforts. He said that "in Russia Gorbachev and 72 per cent
of the citizens are on Putin's side".

Gorbachev said that "what the press is writing about Putin is not always
true". Many [Russian] media outlets belong to oligarchs, whom Putin has
"pressured and restricted", he said.

Gorbachev has said that Putin is trying to improve people's well-being and
at the same time guarantee property rights and encourage foreign investors.
This is a very complicated task and one should not expect quick results.
Moreover, Putin inherited poor legacy, Gorbachev said.

At the same time Gorbachev has said that he does not support Putin
"unconditionally". He will do it "until Putin's policy serves the interests
of the majority", Gorbachev said.

******

#6
From: Aknight613@aol.com (Amy Knight)
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000
Subject: re:Wayne Merry on the Pope case

Wayne Merry's observations about the FSB and Pope lend a new and much needed
perspective to the Pope case.  In the view of the FSB, once an intelligence
officer, always an intelligence officer.  Given the FSB's obsession with
secrecy, it is not difficult to see why they wanted to make an example of
Pope.  I would add that the statute of the Russian criminal code under which
Pope was convicted has a very loose interpretation of espionage.  It covers
not just the transfer of state secrets, but also, in the case of foreigners
acting on behalf of foreign intelligence agencies, the collection of "other
information used to the detriment of the foreign security of the Russian
Federation."  Thus the information gathered does not even have to be secret
if the foreigner in question works for an intelligence agency.  At least that
is my interpretation, based on the 1995 version of the criminal code. (I was
not able to locate anything more recent, but I doubt that the definition of
espionage has changed.)

******
 
#7
Financial Times (UK)
December 12, 2000
SURVEY - KAZAKSTAN: Pouring oil on troubled Caspian waters: RELATIONS WITH
RUSSIA by Robert Corzine: With Russians comprising almost a third of the
population, and amid new interest from Putin's Moscow, relations
By ROBERT CORZINE

Kazakhstan's relationship with Russia and the ethnic Russians who make up
the biggest minority in one of the most multi-ethnic countries in Central
Asia is based on a common history and to an extent a common culture.

Almaty, the commercial and financial capital, was one of imperial Russia's
most remote military garrisons in the 19th century, and Russian is still
the lingua franca in the country.

The country's policy goal is to have "a predictable and positive
relationship with Russia," according to Kasymzhomart Tokayev, the Kazakh
prime minister, who notes there are 4.5m ethnic Russians in a country of
almost 15m people.

The presence of so many ethnic Russians means Moscow has always taken a
special interest in Kazakhstan, although the government of former the
president, Boris Yeltsin paid little attention to the region as a whole.

But that has changed with the arrival of the President Vladimir Putin's
administration in Moscow. Kazakhstan is sensitive about its independence
and relationship with Russia. As a senior Western diplomat observes: "This
is the most Russified country in the region."

Many Russians were shocked when Kazakhstan opted for independence, as
before the break-up of the former Soviet Union the country was seen as
almost an extension of Russia.

In the first few years of independence there were rumblings of possible
Russian intervention if the large Russian population in the north of
Kazakhstan felt unsure of their status or safety in the new country.

Many ethnic Russians have left, but those that remain appear to have
accepted the changes, although some fear they will not have the same
opportunities as ethnic Kazakhs, especially when it comes to government jobs.

Kazakh officials stress that the new relationship between the two countries
is one based on equality, although they concede that Russia still has vital
interests in the region.

"Russia understands the importance of equality," says Mr Tokayev. "It is
pursuing its own strategic interests. Historically Russia has asserted
itself in the region as a big power."

Western diplomats and Kazakh officials say the Putin government has taken
that assertiveness to new levels in recent months: "There is a clear
emphasis on relations with its immediate neighbours," says Yerlan Idrisov,
Kazakhstan's foreign minister. "The Russians are very pragmatic. We're
happy to see the new leaders in Moscow pragmatically shaping their own
interests in the region."

Western diplomats say Russia's new focus on the region is reciprocated by a
greater interest on the part of the Kazakh government to secure a better
relationship with Russia: "The government is paying more attention to
Russia as well, in part because of security concerns stemming from
Afghanistan. But it has has always had a close relationship with Russia.
Culturally and demographically it's the most Russian country in Central
Asia."

The legal status of the Caspian Sea is the most important issue for both
Russia and Kazakhstan, given the huge potential of world class oil and gas
reserves in the northern Caspian.

Although the two countries have reached agreement on a demarcation between
the Russian and

Kazakh sectors of the northern Caspian, a wider agreement with the three
other littoral states remains stubbornly elusive: "I don't believe the
process will be easy," says Mr Tokayev, who concedes it could take "a long
time" to hammer out an agreement that will take account of widely differing
positions.

Iran is sticking to its stance that any division of the Caspian should be
done on an equitable basis, with each of the five littoral states receiving
a 20 per cent share of the seabed.

The bilateral agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan has given foreign
investors a degree of confidence that there will not be any legal
challenges to any large-scale offshore energy projects. But Kazakh
officials admit that some residual risks remain so long as a comprehensive
solution to the Caspian's status remains outstanding.

"It is important for Kazakhstan to have the additional confidence in
place," says Mr Tokayev.

That view is echoed by the foreign minister, who admits that "in the long
run many investors would prefer that the comprehensive status of the
Caspian Sea was fully spelled out". Some foreign observers believe the
recent oil developments in the northern Caspian will test Russia's
pragmatism.

The Kashagan discovery is likely to prove to be the biggest such find for
the past 30 years or so.

Russia has repeatedly warned about environmental dangers of large-scale
development of the ecologically-sensitive area, although many see such
opposition as politically inspired.

Mr Idrisov confirms that "Russia is watching closely developments at
Kashagan". Some western oil executives have long speculated about how
Russia might respond if it sees billions of dollars worth of foreign
investment poured into northwest Kazakhstan.

Some believe Moscow's eventual political response will probably depend on
whether nearby Russian regions receive a material economic benefit from
such developments.

Although Russia is promoting its pipeline system as the best export outlet
for Kazakh oil, some western diplomats believe Moscow will not actively
oppose the alternative favoured by the US, which wants Kazakh oil to be
shipped across the Caspian to boost throughput on the proposed
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey. "I don't
think the Russians will oppose BTC," says a senior Western diplomat.

"The CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium line from the Tengiz field in
northwest Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk on Russia's Black Sea coast) will be
finished next year and it will be a success. And the Russians themselves
may want a back door to the Mediterranean for their own oil."

******
 
#8
Russia: NATO Moscow bureau on hold over disagreement on status
Interfax

Moscow, 12th December: The opening of a NATO information bureau in Moscow
remains on hold because of the two sides' disagreements on its future
status and functions, sources with the Russian Foreign Ministry told
Interfax on Tuesday [12th December].

Russia confirms its "principled agreement" with NATO on setting up a
representative office in Moscow, but regards as "overstated" NATO's
proposals to turn this body into a kind of diplomatic mission authorized to
hold negotiations, the sources said.

The initial agreement on setting up the information bureau was achieved at
a session of the Russia-NATO Joint Permanent Council at the level of
foreign ministers, which was held in Florence in the spring, the sources
said. This session prompted the gradual thawing of Russia's relations with
NATO, which were suspended in March 1999 in protest against the alliance's
military operation in Yugoslavia.

Russia agreed to establish this bureau, in particular, "taking into account
that this is stipulated by the Russia-NATO Founding Act", the sources noted.

Moscow believes, however, that the future representative office should not
enjoy the status of a diplomatic mission or to serve as "a structure for
negotiations", and the range of its functions should be limited, according
to its name, "to the information sphere".

Disagreements between the two sides had come up even before the Joint
Permanent Council's session in Florence, and, "unfortunately, they haven't
been overcome yet" in the run-up to the next session of the council, which
is expected to take place in Brussels on 15th December and be attended by
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, the sources said.

The session in Brussels can still put an end to the "long-drawn out
argument", the sources said, adding that "negotiations on this issue are
actively continuing, and the Russian side expects a positive resolution in
Brussels".

Interfax sources at NATO headquarters have noted that the location of the
future information bureau "on the territory of a Western embassy in Moscow"
is being considered among other options, and the Belgian diplomatic mission
is seen as one of the most probable locations for the bureau.

The Russian side has "no objections" to this proposal, especially since the
Russian ambassador to Belgium represents Russia in NATO, in Brussels, where
the alliance's headquarters is located, the sources said.

In any case, if the NATO information bureau is opened in Moscow, the
alliance will have "a higher level of its representation in Russia than it
did before the relations were frozen", both western and Moscow sources told
Interfax.

Before NATO launched the operation against Yugoslavia, it was represented
in Moscow by an information group, the experts noted. The group was based
at the German embassy, which at that time also played the role of the
alliance's contact diplomatic mission to Moscow. After the start of the
NATO operation in the Balkans, the Russian side closed this representative
office.

*******

#9
Siberian city faces threat of full-blown AIDS epidemic

IRKUTSK, Russia, Dec 12 (AFP) -
A week ago Masha, a 19-year-old heroin addict, found out that she is HIV
positive. Now she fears she may have passed on the deadly virus to her
boyfriend when he was back on army leave last summer.

"We had such a beautiful romance that month, I even stopped injecting drugs.
I just don't know what do to. Maybe I infected him. One time we didn't use a
condom," the thin dark-haired girl despaired.

"I can't write to him there about my condition. Who knows what that might
drive him to," she said staring down at the white hospital floor.

On the outskirts of the historic Siberian city of Irkutsk lies a sprawling
red-brick complex where a small AIDS centre and clinic are battling with a
frightening explosion in HIV cases among young injecting drug users who
transmit the illness to each other by sharing contaminated needles.

Doctor Yulia Rakina, whose team of 36 physicians is responsible for testing
incidence of HIV among the three million people who live in Irkutsk and the
surrounding region, said they were struggling to cope with the outbreak.

"We don't have the proper resources. The authorities don't appear to have
realised that the scale of the problem has changed dramatically," she said.

Unknown here before 1992, 37 cases of the HIV virus that leads to AIDS were
registered by January 1 last year.

Twenty-three months later more than 7,500 people have been tested HIV
positive -- a staggering 10,000 percent increase -- and the figure is
forecast to rise by another third before the end of the year 2000.

But because of fear and self-denial among addicts, who represent 95 percent
of all HIV cases in Irkutsk, the real statistics are actually six times
higher because few of them are volunteering for tests, according to Doctor
Rakina.

A region where an estimated one quarter to a third of young people aged from
15-25 are using drugs, Irkutsk lies third behind the Moscow region and the
Russian capital in the nation's HIV league table.

Like other big cities where drug abuse is closely tied to HIV, the fear is
that the disease could soon begin to spread much faster through unprotected
sex, with condoms rarely used by Russian youth who nowadays experiment with
multiple sexual partners.

"We must learn how to deal with this situation. It's of vital urgency,"
admitted the head of Irkutsk's regional health committee, Ludmilla Kitova.

But the health chief insisted that the authorities' long-standing policy of
directing their budget towards testing for new HIV cases and treatment,
leaving little money to fund vital prevention measures, would be maintained.

"We have very limited resources. Our programme is purely medical. We are
ready to work with international organisations in this sphere but we would
need a great deal of money (from them)," she said.

Top officials from the United Nations' anti-AIDS programme, which is helping
to launch prevention campaigns in 17 Russian regions but has been rebuffed in
Irkutsk, say this attitude is disastrously short-sighted.

"A lot of money is going down the drain. Money is there which they are
spending on testing. They have to rethink how to reallocate resources to
prevention," said the UN programme's coordinator Tatyana Shoumilina.

Despite 20 million tests a year in Russia, which pointlessly target low-risk
groups, only 70,000 HIV cases have been identified, she pointed out.

The money should instead be spent counselling young people how to avoid
sexually transmitted diseases and HIV infection, providing addicts with clean
needles and distributing free condoms.

International organisations for their part are not willing to assume the
responsibility for mounting such a campaign because the aim is to foster
local initiative which will prove sustainable in the long-term, she explained.

"This is typical of the fear and withdrawal that we have observed in Russia
in relation to HIV and AIDS," commented the UN official.

Doctor Rakina agreed, complaining that in post-Soviet Russia, hostility
towards a section of society seen as delinquents and misfits made it hard to
persuade decision-makers to spend scarce resources on working with drug
addicts.

"It is very hard to win over the general population and those who don't work
in this sphere, even the regional administration. You have to make people
understand that the key task is not even treatment but prevention," she said.

******

#10
Putin Calls for Improved Russia-Cuba Links, End to US Embargo
 
Moscow, Dec. 12 (Bloomberg)
-- Russia and Cuba should rebuild their once strong economic and
political relationship and the U.S. should lift its embargo on the Caribbean
island, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

``Russia is right to be paying more and more attention now to the Latin
American aspect of its foreign policy,'' Reuters quoted Putin as saying in an
interview on Cuban television. ``Cuba's role has been great and extremely
important for us.''

His comments came on the eve of his visit to Cuba, the first by a Russian
leader since President Mikhail Gorbachev visited in 1989 before the
dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Moscow was Havana's biggest trading partner before their relationship soured
after the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow ended its $4 billion-$6 billion
annual subsidies to the Communist island nation located 60 miles (100
kilometers) to the south of the U.S.

Cuba owed Moscow about $20 billion as of 1998. The money was lent went when
ties were stronger.

Putin will use the visit of the Russian delegation, which includes Defense
Minister Igor Sergeyev and Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov, to sound
out opportunities for Russian arms exports and atomic energy assistance,
Agence France-Presse said.

Renewing Russian military sales to Cuba will be ``one of the most important
subjects discussed,'' AFP quoted an unnamed Russian defense ministry official
as saying. ``Moscow's current position ... creates conditions that allow
Russia to re-arm the Cuban army.''

Russia cut off all military aid to Cuba by 1993, the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency said.

Nuclear Power

Adamov's inclusion may also mean Russia is considering helping Cuba to finish
building the Juragua nuclear reactor, a move which will almost certainly be
opposed by the U.S., AFP said.

Putin said he will also use the meeting with Cuba's President Fidel Castro to
pursue ways to repay Cuba's outstanding debt through reconnecting Russia
commercially and restarting enterprises stalled since ties cooled.

``Who, if not us, can take part in rebuilding or restoring these enterprises
and thinking together about their future?'' Putin said. ``I am absolutely
convinced that we can achieve very significant results in this area.''

One such enterprise is the construction of the Las Camariocas nickel smelter
in Cuba, which was suspended in 1991. Russian company RAO Norilsk Nickel,
which produces 20 percent of the world's nickel, this week said it will
restart work on the project in cooperation with Cuba's state-run General
Nickel Company, AFP said.

Norilsk wants the profits from the venture to go directly to the Russian
government to pay off Cuba's debt, AFP said.

Commodity Supplier

The Soviet Union once supplied nearly all Cuba's oil and oil products, basic
foodstuffs and machinery and bought most of the island's sugar, citrus
fruits, nickel and cobalt in subsidized deals.

Russia is still Cuba's largest export market, accounting for 25 percent of
Cuba's exports in 1999, though Russia's share of Cuban imports has slipped
below 7 percent.

Putin renewed Russian criticism of the U.S. economic embargo on the island.
The 39-year long embargo was imposed in January 1961, after the Cuban
government confiscated U.S. companies' assets in Cuba without compensation.

``We believe Cuba must be freed from the regime of unilateral sanctions as
quickly as possible,'' Putin said in the television interview. ``I do not
believe that such a policy will produce successes of any sort or yield any
political or economic dividends.''

Putin's visit to Havana comes after he made a number of visits to other
former allies of the Soviet Union since his election in March this year. He
visited North Korea in July, hosted Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz
and has pledged to visit Libya. He also met with Castro during the United
Nations millennium summit in New York in September.

After the visit to Cuba, which begins Wednesday, Putin will fly on to Canada
for a three-day visit from Dec. 17-19.

******

#11
The Boston Globe Magazine
December 11, 2000
A doctor without borders
By Ruth Daniloff

Khassan Baiev hates to be alone. That's when the memories start. The Chechen
surgeon was living by himself in a room in Washington, D.C., when he first
arrived in the United States in April. "I thought I was going crazy," he
says. "I kept hearing the cries of the wounded and the dying back in
Chechnya."

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he would walk the streets of the nation's
capital with the screams from his hospital in Alkhan-Kala pursuing him in the
darkness. And what memories: flesh mangled by mortar fire, severed limbs, a
childhood friend dying on his operating table, the hair of a 7-year-old boy
turning white on half of his head, a nurse weeping because she had no food
for her three children.

Then that terrible day last February, when some 4,000 Chechen fighters, led
by rebel field commander Shamil Basayev, walked into a minefield while
retreating from the Chechen capital of Grozny. Some fighters who volunteered
to open a trail were blown apart when they stepped on mines. In all, 300
wounded men landed at Baiev's hospital. That day, the corridors of the
ramshackle building ran with blood and reverberated with the groans of the
wounded. The hospital couldn't accommodate all of the wounded, so many lay on
mattresses in the snow, waiting for Baiev. He worked 48 hours nonstop and
then passed out. The nurses dragged him outside and rubbed him down with
snow, so he could continue.

For six months, until April, Baiev was the only doctor serving 100,000 people
spread out over six villages. For 2 1/2 of those months, Russian artillery
shelled continuously. In November 1999, a group of doctors and nurses from
his hospital in Grozny had accompanied him to his new hospital in his
hometown of Alkhan-Kala. But few could take the shelling or what a round of
mortar does to a human body, he says. Only eight of his original 20 nurses
stuck it out, and none of the doctors stayed.

Baiev, who is 38, does not look like someone back from hell. His shirt is
dazzlingly white, his navy trousers immaculate. Only a few white strands mark
his dark, wavy hair. He has the compact physique of a man born in the
mountains of the Caucasus, a man who had been a champion wrestler. In
Chechnya, toughness is a national characteristic. With him it needed to be:
Without the stamina of an athlete, Baiev probably could not have withstood
the sleepless nights and foodless days.

That's not to say that the doctor emerged unscathed. Talk to him long enough,
and you notice that his eyes sometimes lose focus, and his fingers, which
once performed 60 amputations in a single day, tremble. The finger muscles
are visibly enlarged from all the sawing. Now his hands are smooth, but when
a team of doctors from the humanitarian organization Physicians for Human
Rights first met him in Ingushetia, a neighboring republic where Chechen
refugees fled the fighting, they were blistered and swollen.

Baiev is healing now. On November 14, he was one of five people to receive
awards presented annually by the Human Rights Watch at a ceremonial dinner in
New York. Then it was on to Los Angeles for another dinner in his honor and
more speeches. But perhaps more important than all the accolades is that he
is free. Or as free as one can be knowing that the Russian government
monitors his moves and that his extended family is still in Chechnya.

For some 400 years, on and off, Chechens have fought Russia in the name of
freedom, and when they weren't fighting Russia, they fought among themselves.

Over the centuries, blood invariably accompanied Chechnya's struggle to drive
invaders from the small, mountainous nation. Their desire for freedom is like
a stream that flows down from the snow-covered peaks of the Caucasus:
Sometimes it gushes, and sometimes it trickles, but it never dries up. The
people have inhabited the region for thousands of years and speak a distinct
language. In Chechnya, located at the crossroads of East and West, of Islam
and Christianity, fighting has become a way of life. "When will blood cease
to flow in the mountains?" asks a local proverb. "When roses grow in the
snow."

The current confrontation between Chechnya and Russia was triggered in 1991
when Jokhar Dudayev, a pint-size Chechen who was also a former Soviet Air
Force general and a strategic bomber commander, was elected president. But
Dudayev declared independence as the Soviet Union collapsed and misjudged the
Kremlin's reaction. Moscow hard-liners argued that Chechen independence would
herald the breakup of the entire Russian Federation, that other regions would
follow.

Nor did Dudayev take into account the newly discovered Caspian oil fields
being developed by Western nations. Russia considers the Caucasus its
backyard and feared Western inroads into the region. If Chechnya became
independent, Russia could lose control of the lucrative oil pipeline running
from Baku through Chechnya to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black
Sea. Last, but not least, Chechnya had become an illegal free trade zone, a
convenient place for organized crime, both Russian and Chechen, to operate.
Money was laundered, narcotics sold, weapons peddled to rogue countries or
shady operators in the Middle East. Dudayev made several attempts to
negotiate a political arrangement with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin,
but it was too late.

In December 1994, an ill-prepared Russian army invaded Chechnya. Twenty
months later, Chechen fighters drove out the Russians, reinforcing their
reputation as some of the world's fiercest guerrilla fighters.

After a 1997 peace agreement, the second Chechen war began in August 1999,
when the rebel leader Shamil Basayev invaded neighboring Dagestan with the
mistaken idea that factions in the republic would support Chechnya against
Russia. At the same time, massive explosions rocked two apartment buildings
in Moscow, killing several hundred people. Blaming the Chechens, the Russians
launched another blitzkrieg against Chechnya.

To date, no one has been charged with the Moscow bombings. There is
widespread suspicion in Russia and abroad that the Russian government itself
may have laid the explosives to provide an excuse to intervene in Chechnya
and ensure the election of a strongman in Russia's presidential elections
last March - Vladimir Putin.

Today, Grozny is largely rubble, as are many towns and villages throughout
Chechnya. According to the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner
for Refugees, half the Chechen population - 400,000 people - either lost
their homes or fled to refugee camps in neighboring Ingushetia.

An estimated 42,000 civilians died in the first Chechen war, and almost the
same number have died in the second. Multiply the dead by four, and you have
an idea of how many needed treatment from the few doctors like Baiev who
refused to leave.

"What the Russians want is Chechnya without the Chechens," says Magomedkhan
Magomedkhanov, an ethnographer in neighboring Dagestan and a specialist on
the hundreds of ethnic groups in the Caucasus.

This was not how Baiev thought his life would turn out. He never imagined
being forced to consider political asylum in the United States. He never
imagined not being able to support his extended family of 13 people, to
practice his profession, to find his way in the Washington Metro because he
couldn't read the station signs.

The youngest son in a family of six, Khassan Baiev grew up in a small village
in the mountains near Vedeno, a region so beautiful, he says, that people
call it "Little Switzerland." His father was a schoolteacher who fought in
the Soviet army against the Germans in World War II and was wounded twice.
Despite many Chechens' service on the Russian side, Premier Joseph Stalin
thought they were collaborating with the Germans. He deported the entire
population to the wastes of Central Asia. Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev
granted amnesty to the Chechens in 1957, but the deportation is imprinted on
Baiev's memory, as it is on the collective memory of the Chechens.

Back home, his father, a strict man, insisted his son follow local
traditions, including respect for elders and the obligations of Chechen men
toward family and community. Like that of many traditional Chechens, Baiev's
marriage in 1992 to a graduate of a technical institute was arranged. He and
his wife, Zara, have three young children.

Growing up, Baiev dreamed of becoming an athlete. Like many things in his
life, chance played a role in his decision to become a doctor. He happened to
be in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for an athletic competition and saw a
building with "Medical Institute" written over the door. "I asked someone
what went on there. When they explained, I decided that was what I wanted to
do. I was the only Chechen at the medical school," he says. "I didn't mix
much with the others, because I spent all the time on my studies and working
out in the gym."

After graduating from Krasnoyarsk Medical School in 1985, he gained
recognition as a specialist in oral and facial surgery, operating on people
injured in car accidents or treating children with birth deformities such as
cleft palates or nasal defects. He earned good money, and what's more, he
says, he loved reconstructing bones. His reputation spread: The Saudis
invited him to operate on several members of the royal family.

Baiev had dreamed of opening his own clinic. "I had traveled to Moscow and
purchased a lot of the equipment and set money aside," he says. "Then when
the war broke out, I put everything into the hospital at Alkhan-Kala. What
else could I do? I couldn't just keep it when there was such need."

Khassan Baiev must have been the kind of doctor the Greek physician
Hippocrates had in mind when he outlined a code of ethics for the medical
profession more than 2,000 years ago: Serve whoever crosses your doorstep.
Baiev didn't distinguish between Chechens and Russians. He only saw the
wounded. For that, he says, both the Russians and Chechen religious
extremists pursued him with a vengeance.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit warring parties from targeting hospitals
and interfering with the work of medical personnel. But those guidelines are
honored more in the breach. As conflicts mushroom around the world because of
the collapse of communism and colonialism, more and more medical personnel
find themselves in the line of fire. Relief convoys, health clinics, and
medical personnel have become targets. In December 1997, seven Red Cross
workers were murdered in Chechnya. No one was ever tried for the crime;
Chechens and others, again, suspect the Russians. "It was a trauma for
Chechnya," Baiev says. "These people had come to do good; everyone knows what
happened. It was a knife in the back for us."

It's happening outside Chechnya as well. In 1998, several Kosovar Albanian
physicians were either tortured, prosecuted, or murdered for treating
so-called terrorists, according to Physicians for Human Rights officials. In
Bosnia, Serb paramilitary forces deliberately shelled hospitals and clinics.
Health professionals and their patients have also been targeted in East
Timor, Rwanda, Somalia, El Salvador, Israel, Kashmir, and Mexico, the group
says.

Mention the Geneva Conventions, and Baiev laughs bitterly. He had placed a
Red Cross flag on the roof of his hospital. "Hospitals should be away from
conflict," he says, "but mine was the center of it. The flags signaled to the
pilots where to bomb."

Each day, women, children, and old people arrived at his hospital with
shrapnel or gunshot wounds. In despair, Baiev took a white flag and walked
more than a mile to the Russian Command Post to demand a stop to the
shelling, because there were no fighters in the village. "The general
promised, but by the time I returned, they were shooting again. When I
complained, the general's face became red, and he apologized. He said it was
the drunken kontraknikii [mercenaries] who had done it," Baiev says. "They
were a law unto themselves. They come to Chechnya to get rich, to plunder and
maraud."

Baiev's policy of treating anyone who was wounded put him in an untenable
position, with both Chechen extremists and the Russian military accusing him
of being a traitor and threatening to kill him. The Russian military brought
him their wounded, because their field hospital was too far away, and the
seriously injured would have bled to death before reaching it. This enraged
the Wahhabis, a small faction of Islamic extremists who want to establish an
Islamic state in Chechnya similar to the one in Afghanistan. On several
occasions, they burst into the hospital demanding death to the surgeon who
was saving the lives of infidels.

One day, "they started shooting near my feet and at the ceiling above my
head, yelling, 'Why have you opened a hospital for the Russians here?' "
Baiev says. "I told them I had opened a hospital for the wounded, and there
is no difference. They talked it over and decided to execute me. Only when I
reminded the commander that I had operated on one of his relatives did he
call it off."

That was one of several close calls for Baiev. The Russians also became
enraged when they found him treating the Wahhabis or the regular Chechen
fighters. They called him the "terrorist doctor" and ordered him arrested.
When they found out that he had amputated the leg of the Chechen rebel leader
Shamil Basayev, they went berserk, raining bombs on the town. The hospital
took a direct hit.

"I was doing another amputation, and the blast blew me out of the window into
the courtyard," Baiev says. "I picked myself up, but by the time I got back,
my patient had bled to death."

Since neither the Russians nor the Wahhabis respected medical neutrality,
Baiev often had to evacuate his patients to safety. When the Wahhabis
surrounded the town, he had to move the Russian soldiers from his hospital.
And that terrible day when he treated the Chechen fighters vacating Grozny,
he helped organize buses to get them out of town before the Russians moved
in. The villagers hid some of the injured in their cellars and others in the
basement of the hospital.

But some could not be saved. "When I returned from finding the buses," Baiev
says, "my nurse told me that she had found seven people, including an old
Russian woman, lying shot in the basement."

Many times, Baiev says, he wanted to put down his scalpel and reach for a
gun. He almost did during the second war, when Russian soldiers rolled up to
his house in an armored personnel carrier. "They took everything, down to the
smallest items, including the parquet flooring," the doctor says. "Then, for
a week, 50 soldiers lived in the house, eating our food. They were too lazy
to use the toilet and just went on the floor. It is a disgrace for the
Russian army to behave in this manner."

But it was the needless deaths that have affected him most, none perhaps more
than the murder of the 75-year-old Russian woman in the hospital basement.
"She had been hit by shrapnel," he says. "For three months I had struggled to
keep her alive, performing several operations, then, just like that, they
killed her. It was traumatic for me. Such cruelty! It is so easy to kill
someone and so hard to keep them alive."

Surrounded by so much death, Baiev doesn't understand how or why he survived.
He was always prepared for death, he says, but fate somehow intervened to
save him. He was wounded twice and nearly executed on several occasions. One
time, the Wahhabis spared his life only because they needed his medical
skills to save their own wounded. He recalls what they said: "While we need
him, let him operate, and then we will execute him." For 48 hours he was held
prisoner in his hospital. Once, when the Russians wanted to shoot him, the
villagers formed a shield around him, saying, "If you shoot our doctor, you
will have to shoot us first." The Russians backed down.

Later, Baiev was arrested by the Russians and thrown into a boxcar with bars
instead of doors or windows. "I spent the night in that cold box," he says.
"I was very lightly dressed, and in the morning when they told me to get out,
I couldn't move, I was so cold." Because he was wearing civilian clothes, the
Russians didn't realize that he was the surgeon who had operated on the rebel
commander Basayev. "While in the wagon," Baiev says, "I overheard the colonel
on the walkie-talkie giving orders for my arrest."

He was taken to the Command Post for more questioning. The Russians let him
go after village women mounted a protest. But Baiev realized that his luck
had run out, and with the help of friends who bribed border guards, he
crossed into Ingushetia.

Baiev sees his survival as a miracle and feels guilty that so many others
died. He attributes his escapes to religious faith and to the talisman he
wears around his neck. "God wasn't ready to take me," he says. Although a
Muslim, he often uses the word God instead of Allah. They are really one and
the same, he says. His only precaution was never to drink any alcohol during
the war, because if he died with alcohol in his body, he would consider it a
sin. He says that after the first Chechen war, he suffered severe depression,
and the only thing that helped was religion. The mullahs had suggested he go
to Mecca. Before the second war began, he did: "I felt a lot better when I
returned."

He opens his shirt and pulls out the talisman, a small package wrapped in
black plastic that an Islamic scholar gave to him when he was in his third
year of medical school. He says his life is written in Arabic on a long,
folded piece of paper inside the package. "A fortuneteller once told me that
I would have a long and interesting life," he says, "and it would take many
different turns."

One turn Baiev's life has taken is into the emergency room of the Washington
Hospital Center as an observer. He shakes his head in amazement at the
sophisticated instruments. "Fantastic," he says. "But I told the American
doctors at the hospital that all the instruments won't help you unless God is
on your side."

In Alkhan-Kala, Baiev believes, God was on his side. He worked without gas,
electricity, or running water. His only anesthetics were local, which he had
managed to save from the first war. "Without them," he says, "it would have
been a catastrophe." When dressings for wounds ran out, he used sour cream or
egg yolks.

He laughs. "The American doctors have so much time to work. It takes them two
hours to prepare for a tracheotomy. I did them in five minutes."

Khassan Baiev is not one of those Chechens who vow revenge on Russia. "I have
a debt to Russia," the doctor says. "They taught me everything I know about
medicine. I have many Russian friends." Baiev doesn't like the politics of
the Kremlin any more than he likes those of the Islamic fanatics who believe
they are fighting a holy war in Chechnya and criticize him for drinking a
glass of beer.

All Baiev asks is an end to the suffering of civilians in Chechnya and some
help for his ravaged country. "Chechnya is a medical disaster area," he says.
Vaccinations for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, or measles are not available.
Dysentery, leukemia, intestinal diseases, and birth defects are common.
Tuberculosis is rampant. Babies are dying because stress has dried up their
mothers' milk. Most of the Chechen doctors have left the country; most of the
hospitals and clinics have been destroyed.

"The second war was so much more brutal than the first," Baiev says. "In the
first, we had some outside aid from the Red Cross and Doctors Without
Borders. Now we have nothing. The aid disappears into a hole and never
reaches the people." He fears that the conflict has become a guerrilla war
that will drag on for years.

"The more victims, the more there is a psychological reaction," he says. "You
can't forget this tragedy. It is not one person who is dying but whole
families, and that will be remembered for a complete lifetime."

The only time Baiev's voice rises in anger is when he talks about the Russian
propaganda campaign to paint the Chechens as bandits, terrorists, and
killers. "If they are terrorists and killers, then so am I," he says. "The
information war is as terrible as the bombs, because it makes everyone
frightened of Chechens. In one day in Moscow, I was taken to the police
station seven times."

"Most of the Chechen fighters are ordinary people, not terrorists or
religious fanatics," Baiev says, describing a physician friend. "A bomb fell
on his house, and every one of his family - all eight of them - died. He had
no one left. After he gathered up the pieces of his relatives and buried
them, he picked up a gun and joined the fighters."

In the United States, Baiev tells his story to anyone willing to listen:
congressmen, human rights organizations, aid organizations, physicians,
journalists. He talks nonstop. He assumes he is being monitored by Russian
security. His story contradicts the Russians' claims that no atrocities took
place in Chechnya, which makes him fear for the safety of friends and
relatives. Still, he knows it is important to tell his story. He wants to
call on the international community to live up to the Geneva Conventions and
protect doctors like him from being forced to take sides.

Questions from his audiences are invariably repetitive, but he answers them
all.

"So where is your family?"

"In Chechnya."

"How many children?"

"Three children; the youngest is 18 months."

"Are they in danger?"

"Yes."

Every time he tells his story, he relives the memories: the screams, the
sadness, the loss, the fear for family and friends. Exhausted by the war, he
sees a murky future. He does not speak English and could not practice
medicine without recertification, a grueling undertaking. Returning to
Chechnya is not an option. "At least one Chechen field commander has sworn on
the Koran to kill me," he says, "and the Russian military still have my
picture posted at guard posts in Chechnya."

To remain in the United States means he will not see many of his relatives,
his friends, or the mountains again. "Being a Chechen is hard," the exiled
surgeon says.
 
******* 

CDI Russia Weekly:  http://www.cdi.org/russia

Johnson's Russia List Archive (under construction):  http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson

 

Return to CDI's Home Page  I  Return to CDI's Library