Russia & CIS

Last Tuesday, 25 September 2018, saw the launch of a joint exhibition ‘Symphony of Caspian Treasures’ by Caspia Contemporary Gallery and Azerbaijani Women’s Association in the UK at the Embassy of Azerbaijan in London. The event was opened by remarks of the Founders of Azerbaijani Women's Association and Caspia Contemporary Gallery.

Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR and the Chinese company BGP Inc, which is a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corporation, signed an agreement on the establishment of a joint venture, SOCAR said on Oct. 2.

The visit will last until October 5

The STAR refinery will produce naphtha, diesel fuel with ultra-low sulfur content, aviation kerosene, petroleum coke, liquefied gas and other products

The suicide bomber attacked the crowd at a parliamentary election headquarters in a region in the province of Nangarhar

Pakistani delegation will take part in the exchange of experience on Psychological Training and Public Relations

"The inventions being honored this year have revolutionized laser physics"

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s 17th Autumn Meeting will take place in Bishkek on 3-6 October

The 411-million euro project is to be launched next year

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says despite delay in schedule, Manbij deal between Turkey, US still works

Under the presidential order, the Azerbaijan Highway State Agency is allocated 10.7 million manats for the construction of the road

The meeting participants emphasized the special importance of the EU Eastern Partnership Program in terms of ensuring peace, security in the region

"Our agencies closely cooperated with Russia during the World Cup"

I wrote the following book review for Oxford’s CCW Russia Brief, Issue 3. These Russia briefs from Oxford’s changing character of war program feature some of the top experts and are worth reading cover to cover. The most recent issue also includes articles by Richard Connolly, Michael Kofman, Nazrin Mehdiyeva, and Andrew Monaghan.

It can be reasonably argued that over the last decade, the Russian government has had no higher priority than restoring its military as a potent force that can both strike fear into its adversaries and be capable of being used to achieve state goals in an armed conflict. In Russia’s Military Revival, Bettina Renz sets out to explain the reasons for this focus on rebuilding its military. In doing so, she moves well beyond the common narratives that focus on improvements on hardware and training or, less commonly, on strategy and doctrine. Although an overview of all of those things is provided, the real focus is on the purpose of the revival, rather than its technical details or the means with which Russia is planning to fight.

In writing the book, Renz seeks to correct three misguided assumptions about the “timing, purpose, and scope” of Russia’s drive to rearm: 1) the idea that the drive to rearm signals a “paradigm shift” in Russian policy, 2) the notion that rearmament is being driven by “an expansionist and aggressive foreign policy”, and 3) the view that “Russian military capabilities now rival those of the West” (p. 11). The book is devoted to disproving these assumptions. In doing so, Renz shows that since Russia became an independent country in 1991, its government has consistently sought to maintain, use, and whenever possible strengthen the military instrument of its power. She also shows that despite significant improvements in capabilities in recent years, the Russian military remains far weaker than those of the West and Russia’s military power is not sufficient to “guarantee victory in all cases” or even to “create substantial new opportunities for the achievement of objectives that were not achievable before” (p. 12).

Renz focuses the first chapter of the book on countering the idea that Russia is pursuing an aggressive foreign policy. She argues instead that Russia’s foreign policy has four main drivers: great power status, sovereignty, imperial legacy, and multilateralism. Most critically, Russian foreign policy is driven by an effort to restore its great power status and to have that status recognized by the international community and by the leading powers in the international system. This recognition is necessary for Russia to achieve its second goal, of having a right to sovereignty in its decision-making. Russian understandings of sovereignty differ somewhat from those common in the West. Most importantly, “The Kremlin believes that its sovereignty to conduct internal affairs without outside interference can only be preserved if it can also pursue an independent foreign policy abroad” (p. 34). This linkage of the internal and external components of sovereignty, together with the fear that its adversaries are infringing on its sovereignty through regime change efforts, has resulted in a belief that a strong military is needed to secure Russian sovereignty. The belief that a sphere of influence is a sign of being a great power, together with an understanding of sovereignty as pertaining to great powers but not necessarily to smaller states, encourages Russian political elites to pursue the legacy of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union by seeking to dominate its former territories in the “near abroad,” though generally without asserting direct territorial control. Finally, the Russian leadership sees the solution to problems in the international sphere in great-power multilateralism, a sort of renewed version of the 19th century Concert of Europe wherein the great powers work together to ensure international peace and security.

It is Russia’s perceived inability to convince other major powers, and especially the United States, of the benefits of this type of international system that has led its leaders to focus increasingly on ensuring their country’s security through unilateral means, including through the revival of its military and security forces, expansion of their use domestically and especially abroad, and the development and refinement of non-military and quasi-military means designed to achieve Russian foreign policy goals. The rest of the book is devoted to describing these developments, beginning with chapters on the reform and strengthening of the Russian military and on militarized components of other Russian government agencies.

No book is perfect, and these two chapters are arguably the weakest part of this one. The chapter on military reform begins promisingly, with a discussion of the origins of the reform effort, and generally seeks to contextualize the strengths and weaknesses of the reform effort. In doing so, unfortunately, Renz tends to overstate the constraints on Russia’s ability to carry out the reform and to strengthen its military. While this is not the place for a full discussion of these issues, I would note that the Russian military has in the last five years largely solved its manpower problem through a combination of decreased deferments for conscripts and improvements in recruitment of professional soldiers. Recruitment should become even easier in the coming decade due to an increase in the number of draft eligible young men in the population.

Similarly, while economic problems and international sanctions have created difficulties for the production of new weapons over the last five years, Russia has largely weathered the storm without suffering an economic collapse and has found alternative sources, both domestic and foreign, for components that it used to import from European states. Finally, Russian military planners have impressed in how they have worked around the constraints imposed by defence industry gaps and financial limitations. For example, the Russian Navy has dealt with the shipbuilding industry’s inability to provide it with new large ships in a timely manner by developing a strategy that focuses on the installation of small numbers of highly effective cruise missiles on a large number of relatively small ships. These ships can then be used to deter attack by threatening the adversary from the relative safety of enclosed seas where the ships can be protected by shore-based defence systems. This is not to negate the author’s larger point that Western analysts face the risk of overstating Russian military prowess, simply to highlight that it is very difficult to achieve precision in the balance between overstatement and understatement.

The chapter on Russia’s “second army” – the various agencies and ministries other than the Ministry of Defence that have armed formations under their command – suffers from a very different flaw. It falls into the descriptive trap, wherein the author spends numerous pages describing the various agencies and the forces they control, but without explaining their purpose. The reader would have been better served had the chapter cut out much of this description in favour of a more detailed set of explanations of how these agencies promote the themes that connect Russian military revival and Russian foreign policy, as spelled out in the rest of the book.

The last two chapters return to the book’s core strengths, discussing situations in which Russia has used its military forces and developments in Russian military thought in the post-Soviet period. In both chapters, as in the book as a whole, the dominant theme is continuity. Renz shows that Russia’s recent use of military power abroad comes from largely the same foreign policy sources as its actions in the 1990s. Similarly, she shows that the concept of warfighting that has been labelled hybrid warfare in the West has largely grown out of existing concepts, both in Russia/the Soviet Union and in the West, that have been extended based on new developments in technology and military thinking in recent years. The key point, though, is that these concepts do not provide a fool-proof winning formula for Russian aggression in the near abroad or elsewhere in the world.

Overall, Russia’s Military Revival makes a convincing argument that Russia is not a ‘revanchist’ state that, “enabled by better military capabilities, is seeking to forcefully expand the country’s influence in the CIS region and to confront the West in a bid for domination” (p. 157). Instead, the key takeaway from this well-written and cogently argued book is that Russian foreign policy goals have been largely consistent since the early 1990s, but that the change in Russia’s relative power vis-à-vis its main competitors in the international sphere has resulted in the changes in foreign policy behaviour that we have observed over the last decade.

 

On Wednesday, September 26, the Russian parliament, the State Duma, gave the second reading to the government bill on the pension reform. Officially, it goes about a move to improve the pension law. In fact, however, the authorities prefer not to talk about the "improvement" as it basically raises the retirement age in Russia. Three hundred and twenty-six out of 450 MPs supported the bill. Only 59 voted against it and one abstained. Here is some more food for thought in numbers. The ruling United Russia party counts 342 MPs. Obviously, their votes would be enough to approve the document. Communists come second - 42 MPs. LDPR is next with 39 MPs. Just Russia counts 23 deputies, two others are exempt from parliament factions. All the three opposition factions were originally opposed to raising the retirement age in Russia. However, 59 out of 104 opposition MPs voted in favor of the bill. Forty-five others did no find such an opportunity for themselves.Moreover, prior to the vote on the bill, the MPs approved nine of Putin's amendments to it. One of them lowers the retirement age for women from 63 to 60 years. After the vote, the leader of the United Russia faction, Sergei Neverov, noted with satisfaction that no one voted against president's amendments. "Presidential amendments were supported by representatives of all political factions in the State Duma: 385 voted for them, no one either abstained or voted against the amendments," the official said. "It is also very important that all factions without exception supported the ratification of the International Labor Organization Convention (415 votes for), and issues of medical examination of persons of pre-retirement age (419 votes for)," also noted Neverov.State Duma deputy from the Communist Party faction, Leonid Kalashnikov, explained the paradoxical behavior of his faction to Pravda.Ru. According to Communists, there is no paradox here - the faction cares about the people. "We believe that we can make people's lives easier, at least with the help of the draft law that we have here. We can not vote against it if these amendments suggest making people's lives easier. They do help in the draft. In general, we vote against the law about the pension reform. However, United Russia will adopt it anyway, so we vote to make people's lives easier, at least a little," Leonid Kalashnikov told Pravda.Ru. Also read: Putin: I don't like the idea of the pension reform

Spokespeople for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation commented on the expansion of US sanctions against Russia because of the alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. According to Russian officials, there is already a round number of anti-Russian restrictions. "We continue watching the United States practicing sanctions against our country. It appears that it has turned into some kind of national fun there, because yesterday's anti-Russian measures have become the 60th since 2011," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. Ryabkov noted that Washington continues to introduce new sanctions because old ones bring no results. "We can also see the excitement that has engulfed American politicians, many of whom, being prisoners to their beliefs of their own "exceptionalism," hope that they need to take a little bit more effort before they can start dictating their conditions to Russia," Ryabkov said. "No one will succeed in this ever," the official continued. "Washington operators of the sanctions machine ought to get acquainted with the history of Russia, to stop the unnecessary fussing," he added. He also noted that the Americans "thoughtlessly rock global stability by escalating tensions in the Russian-American relations.""It's stupid to play with fire, because it can become dangerous," the deputy head of the department said. On September 29, Washington announced the imposition of sanctions on 27 physical and six legal entities from Russia, whom the US administration links with intelligence services and defense institutions. The sanctions were introduced as a response to Russia's alleged interference in the election of the American president in 2016.In particular, the United States imposed sanctions on PMC Wagner, the St. Petersburg Agency for Internet Research (known as the "troll factory"), Evgeny Prigozhin's companies Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering. Prigozhin himself, who is dubbed as "Putin's chef," also appears on the sanctions list. The list also includes alleged employees of the "troll factory" and employees of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation accused of interfering in the 2017 presidential vote in the US: First Deputy Head of the GRU Vladimir Alekseev, Deputy Chief of the GRU Sergei Gizunov, GRU supervisor Igor Korobov, Deputy Chief of the GRU Igor Kostyukov.The list of sanctioned companies includes Defense Ministry's logistics company Oboronlogistics, an aviation plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, MiG aircraft-building corporation and Tupolev aviation design bureau. Also read: US sanctions to kill Russian banks and sovereign debt

The results of gubernatorial elections in Russia's Primorsky region (Far East) have been canceled. However the situation remains too vague to hope for its coming resolution. The head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, said on Wednesday that the results of the gubernatorial election of the Primorsky region are to be abolished. According to the law, it is up to the regional election commission to make the decision. If the regional commission does not cancel the results of the vote, the Central Election Commission will do it instead, Pamfilova said. New elections will take place in three months, she added. For some reason, though, both regional Governor Andrei Tarasenko and Communist Party candidate Andrei Ischenko decided that this would be a third round of elections for them. The Russian legislation does not envisage such an option, though. At first, United Russia party candidate Andrei Tarasenko said that he would not participate in the new elections. Some time later, he changed his mind and announced at a meeting of his supporters that he would participate. When the meeting was over, he said that he would not take part in the elections. At the same time, a rumor started saying that Tarasenko was stepping down as acting governor. Putin's spokesman stated that the rumour was not true because acting governor can be appointed by president's decree. Communist Party candidate Andrey Ischenko said that it was absurd to abolish the elections because he had won the vote. According to the information from the election committee of the Primorsky region and the CEC, Tarasenko came only 1.5 percent ahead of Ishchenko. Communists say that the margin of 1.5 percent was made possible as a result of falsifications, which automatically makes  Ishchenko the winner. The communist candidate said that he was ready to participate in the new elections. For the time being, it remains unknown whether it goes about a new election and new candidates, or a third round that would come contrary to the Russian legislation. The regional election commission will make an announcement on September 20. Anton KulikovPravda.RuRead article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru

Here’s a text on the lost Russian aircraft, published in Russian by the New Times.

A Russian Il-20M reconnaissance aircraft disappeared from radar screens late in the evening on September 17. All 14 crew members are presumed lost, and some reports indicate that remnants of the aircraft have been located by a Russian navy auxiliary ship that was in the area. Initially, the Russian Ministry of Defense blamed a nearby French frigate, accusing it of firing rockets at the aircraft. Subsequently, the ministry accepted that the aircraft was downed as a result of friendly fire by Syrian S-200 air defenses. At the same time, the Russian MOD transferred blame to the Israeli Air Force, which was conducting air strikes against Syrian military facilities in the Latakia area at the time of the incident. Supposedly, four Israeli F-16 strike aircraft were using the Il-20 as cover while conducting strikes on Syria from international airspace. The whole operation can be seen in the map below provided by the MOD in its official briefing on the incident.

While the Russian government’s reaction included a strongly worded condemnation of the Israeli Air Force for its role in the incident, the reality is that the Israeli aircraft would not have had the ability or need to use a large, slow Russian turboprop aircraft as cover. They carried out their strikes and almost certainly had departed the area before the Syrian forces had realized they were under attack and activated their air defense systems. The Syrian military has a history of launching air defense missiles late, after incurring damage from hostile forces. The same tactic was used in response to NATO missile strikes on suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities in April 2018. One suspects that this is done so that Syrian military officials can report to their leaders that they “did something” in response. In April 2018, the response allowed Syrian and Russian officials to make false claims that the air defenses had neutralized a large number of NATO cruise missiles. Whereas the response in that case was in reality completely ineffective, in this case, unfortunately, the late response resulted in an unintended casualty of an allied aircraft.

The political consequences of this incident are likely to be limited. Both Israel and Russia are keen to limit the damage to what has in recent years become a relatively comfortable relationship. The Israeli military not only expressed condolences for the loss of life, but took the almost unprecedented step of publicly discussing an Israeli military operation. The statement noted that Israeli aircraft had already left the scene by the time the Syrian missiles were launched, thus confirming that the Israeli attack on Syria took place. At the same time, it firmly assigned blame to the Syrian forces that launched the missiles, thus rejected any claims of Israeli responsibility for the incident.

Furthermore, the Israeli prime minister highlighted the importance of Russian-Israeli security coordination while confirming Israel’s intent “to prevent Iranian military entrenchment in Syria and Iranian attempts to transfer to Hezbollah lethal weapons against Israel.” He also offered to send the commander of the Israeli air force to Moscow to provide to Russian officials all information Israel has collected on the incident. On the Russian side, President Putin warned against making any facile comparisons to the shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkish forces in 2015, since this time the plane was shot down by Syrian forces. He called the incident “a chain of tragic accidental circumstances” and noted that the result will be additional security measures for Russian military personnel based in Syria. In short, initial calls in the State Duma for a tough response against Israel will vanish quickly and once the condolence calls on the part of Russian officials to the families of those who lost their lives are completed the entire incident will be forgotten in short order.

The second round of gubernatorial elections in Russia's Primorsky Krai (the Far East) will go down in history of Russia's political life. During the elections of the governor of the Primorsky region, one of the candidates was winning the vote by a significant margin. All of a sudden, it turned out that the winner of the race has lost the election. The advantage of Communist candidate Andrei Ishchenko over acting governor Andrei Tarasenko was not striking, but it was larger than the number of uncounted ballots. In other words, if all the uncounted ballots had been added to Tarasenko's favor, Ishchenko would have still remained the winner. However, the announcement from the Central Electoral Commission made after counting 99.03% of the ballots said that acting governor Andrei Tarasenko won the election having left his rival only 0.5 percent behind. The head of the CEC, Ella Pamfilova, stated in the morning that her department would not rush to finalise the results of the elections in Primorsky Krai. If any violation are found, the results of the second round of the vote are likely to be canceled, she said, urging the supporters of the two candidates to file complaints.The candidates themselves accuse each other of fraud and falsificationы. For example, representatives of regional authorities claim that the team of communist candidate Andrei Ishchenko  delayed the entry of disadvantageous ballots into the electronic GAS "Vybory" system to overblow  a scandal afterwards. Ischenko's supporters claim that his opponent was "given" several tens of thousands of votes.At first, Andrei Ishchenko called to put up tents and threatened to go on a hunger strike. He changed his mind later after he talked to Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Russian Communist Party.  Instead, Ishchenko invited his supporters to come to the building of the administration of the Primorsky region every day at 6:00 p.m. and stay there till late at night. LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky suggested his own solution to the problem. "Gubernatorial  elections in Russia are absolutely unnecessary and nerve-racking. There is no real competition, because candidates of one and the same party take all posts anyway. It is the president who should directly appoint the governors, because they represent the executive power. However, the head of state can appoint representatives of different parties as governors. If a representative of the pro-government party fails, he then appoints a representative of the parliamentary opposition. This would preserve governance and let the steam out," Zhirinovsky wrote on his social media page. Gubernatorial elections were abolished in Russia from 2004 till 2012, when governors were approved by legislative assemblies on the basis of proposals from the president. Afterwards, gubernatorial elections were reinstated. Gubernatorial elections will be held in Russia in Khakassia, Khabarovsk and Vladimir regions on September 23. One can hardly imagine a situation that can eclipse the one in the Primorsky region. Anton KulikovPravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru

Andrei Kostin, the head of VTB Bank, shared his plans for the future of foreign currency in the Russian Federation. During the Eastern Economic Forum, Kostin, who is ranked one of Russia's most prominent bankers, suggested legal addresses of Russia's largest holding companies should be transferred under Russia's jurisdiction. According to him, foreign registrations of Russian legal entities makes the fulfilment of subsequent tasks more complicated. Kostin pointed out the need to place Eurobonds on Russian platforms and abandon the primary depository in the form of Euroclear. Many experts believe that such suggestions would take Russia towards self-isolation.The head of VTB also pointed out the need for all participants of the stock market to adhere to "unified rules." Some assumed in Russia that Mr. Kostin thus wanted to punish the Americans for the sanctions that they had imposed on him. In a nutshell, Andrei Kostin offered President Putin a plan to refuse from the US dollar. The plan is not very original: Kostin suggests making Russia an outcast country, in which dollar settlements would be excluded. Iran and Venezuela had taken such measures for their economies some time ago, but neither Iran nor Venezuela have showed an economic breakthrough yet. Quite on the contrary, the two nations suffer from declining national currencies and a plethora of restrictions. Some suggested Mr. Kostin could go to Venezuela or Iran to learn a few lessons there. Earlier, Andrei Kostin caused quite a stir in Russia, when he said that Russian citizens' dollar deposits could be converted at market value into rubles.Experts were more restrained in their assessment of Kostin's suggestion. Maksim Shein, the chief investment strategist of BCS, told Pravda.Ru that it makes no difference what currency banks choose to return deposits to clients - the most important thing is to have foreign currency deposits converted into rubles at market value.  The problem of Andrei Kostin's statements and reactions to them is about the radical presentation of such information. It is clear to all in Russia that the national market will grow increasingly national and ruble-oriented against the backdrop of sanctions and Russia's course to economic sovereignty. Mr. Kostin tries to hold common people accountable for the economic crisis in the country. Many people in today's Russia still remember the attitude to foreign currency in the USSR. However, the Soviet Union used to have a developed social system. All the recent moves of the Russian authorities in relation to the retirement age indicate that Russia is taking a sharp liberal turn in economy. Currency restrictions do not fit into liberal reforms. Clearly, Russian banks need to develop and grow under the conditions of economic and financial restrictions, especially when President Putin talks about the need for a major economic breakthrough. The people, however, are not happy about the fact that the breakthrough is going to be made at their expense. This gives rise to panic and scathing comments about Mr. Kostin and his suggestions. It is wort mentioning that the amount of transactions signed within the scope of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok totalled nearly three trillion rubles. Perhaps it is too early to put a cross on the Russian economy and expect dark years to come. Also read: Russian government prepares to get rid of US dollar in economy