From [TBC] To The Polar Lands - Rolling Russia / "Near Abroad" News Thread

http://i.imgur.com/XVEiAYC.jpg

Netrebko unlikely to win many friends back at the Met like this. She's probably the closest thing to a prima donna assoluta around at the moment so I'd be surprised if it severely hurt her career though.

http://rusemb.org.uk/consnews/29

British and Irish citizens now need to have fingerprints taken to get a Russian visa, meaning you have to physically go to the visa office yourself. Not a nuisance for me, as it is on my way to work, but will be a nightmare for most of the people I send there for business. There's one in London, one in Edinburgh and one in the Dublin suburbs, that's it. As they point out though, any Russians coming to the UK need to do the same thing (Moscow, SPB, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk being the only options).

New low for the Rouble today - hitting 90 to the Pound.

If you'd had $1000 worth of Roubles in January, they'd be worth $579 now.

If you'd have $1000 worth of Ukrainian Hryvnia they'd be worth about $500 now.

You can see why there has been so much investment (much of it illegal) in Cyprus, London, etc, especially in property over the years.

wow, good time for a trip to the Hermitage on foreign currency, no?

Yes, absolutely. Moscow has always been horrendously expensive and should now be pretty reasonable. Everywhere else will offer some pretty great bargains.

New low for the Rouble today - hitting 90 to the Pound.

101 to the GBP now.

122! This is ridiculous.

103 to the GBP now. I was tempted to invest in Roubles at 120 yesterday in the belief they'd bounce back to 100 today but i had no idea how to go about that so didn't. There's no logical reason the currency should have devalued more than the Ukrainian Hryvnia. Of course, i wouldn't bet against it going back to 120 by lunchtime.

What the hell is this!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xai7ttzbx5M

what the hell, indeed!

Makes me wanna invade somethin' ...

Haven't seen it yet but it's his big national press conference today. Should be interesting.

The leaders of Dagestan's insurgency have sworn an oath of loyalty to ISIS. Not entirely sure what the implications would be but they are probably the most consistently troublesome of Russia's various terrorist groups.

Navalny's fraud trial is coming to an end, and working on the reasonable assumption he's going to be convicted, protesters pre-emptively organised a gathering via Facebook. 12,000 signed up before the page was blocked, by Facebook, for all users in Russia. This seems to be the first time they've removed information about peaceful protests without any public justification at the request of the government.

Ukraine's parliament has voted 303 to 8 to end non-aligned status and work towards membership of NATO. This has traditionally been one of the most divisive issues in the country. Around a year ago support for the proposal was in the mid-thirties, percentage-wise, and now it's closer to the mid-40s but it's clearly not an overwhelmingly popular idea and is likely to alienate Russia and ethnic Russian Ukrainians even further.

Looks like Navalny's verdict will be delivered tomorrow rather than on the 15th, possibly in a futile bid to catch protesters on the hop. There's speculation that he'll be convicted and 'magnanimously' pardoned within days but i'm not sure where that's coming from. The original date clashed with the next round of Ukraine / Russia peace talks.

Things have been crazy in Ukraine over the last week. Someone threw a grenade at an MP in Kyiv and two people (one probably a politically-motivated vandal and one a suspected robber) managed to blow themselves up in separate incidents in the South. The latter was initially reported as a suicide bombing but seems to have been an idiot trying to hold up a currency exchange with an explosive vest. Ukraine has always had a certain number of mysterious bombings, even during peace time, but the proliferation of weapons over the last year seems to have made things worse.

The liberal / Maidan-affiliated opposition to the actions of the Ukrainian parliament seems to be growing, with Hromadske - a press agency which is part-funded by the governments of the US and Netherlands and part-funded by George Soros, doing a surprisingly good job of highlighting the deficiencies. The Rada voted at 4:30 this morning local time in favour of an austerity budget which none of its members had seen but which seems to have been a condition for receiving further IMF funding.

Alex Navalny has been found guilty and given a suspended 3.5 year term but his brother Oleg has been jailed for the same duration. He's calling this a 'hostage-taking' and urging street protests.

Reportedly around 3k protesting in central Moscow, including Navalny who is meant to be under house arrest, now. Might be more if it wasn't 18 degrees below zero.

Interesting piece on Khodorkovsky by Julia Ioffe in the New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/12/remote-control-2

Looks like the suicide bombing in Istanbul on Tuesday may have been carried out by a Russian member of a Turkish Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation. Turkish terrorist cells and their links to the 'deep state' have always been confusing.

http://www.todayszaman.com/latest-news_sultanahmet-bomber-identified-as-russian-citizen_369205.html

If the interpretation in the press is correct, Russia appears to have banned pretty much everyone with what the government deems to be personality disorders from driving. This includes, but is not limited to, gamblers, kleptomaniacs, people who have received treatment for substance abuse, voyeurs, fetishists and, most notably, trans ppl. There might be clarification pending, idk, but I'd be surprised if this wouldn't fall foul of Russia's domestic and international human rights obligations.

11 civilians dead in an apparent separatist shelling of a checkpoint in Eastern Ukraine.

In other horrifying news, ISIS has released what purports to be a video of a ten or eleven year old Kazakh kid 'executing two Russian spies' .

Another bus hit my mortar fire, this time in central Donetsk.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/donetsk-bus-stop-shelling-kills-13

*by mortar fire*

Had a surreal moment coming out of the metro to see central Madrid for the first time and emerging straight into a Svoboda / Pravii Sektor demonstration, a minute ago.

The civilian casualties are mounting again with at least thirty dead in Mariupol yesterday. Almost certainly the separatists this time. It doesn't look like either side is actively targeting civilians at the moment but they are both so technically incompetent they can't keep their heavy artillery to the intended targets, which is almost inevitable when you give irregulars hugely powerful weapons and tell them to get on with it.

Old-school spy ring fun!

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-holder-announces-charges-against-russian-spy-ring-new-york-city

Just want to say thanks for this thread, interesting stuff.

Long piece on corruption in Ukraine:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/04/welcome-to-the-most-corrupt-nation-in-europe-ukraine

It focuses on healthcare but could be applied to pretty much everything at every level in the Ukrainian state sector.

There's not much sign that anything has changed since the overthrow of the previous government. Ukrainian papers were leading on stories of billions of Dollars having been stolen after the revolution.

The Merkel / Hollande proposal for a DMZ while talks continue about autonomy / status seems sensible, although whether it will work any better than the original Minsk agreements remains to be seen. Merkel has clearly stated that she doesn't support supplying more weapons to Ukraine and has echoed Poroshenko's original position that there is no military solution to the crisis.

A leaked German intelligence report has suggested the death toll might be closer to 50,000 than 5,000 but its not clear what that is based on.

THe Ukrainian parliament seems to have gone temporarily nuts with new laws this week that authorise the execution of army deserters and corporal punishment for any soldiers found drinking alcohol. They have also banned all Russian films made after 2013 from being distributed in Ukraine - meaning even the likes of Leviathan, which is widely seen as being critical of the Russian state, can't legally be screened. The security services have just arrested a journalist critical of the "Anti-Terror Operation" for treason.

In context, especially given the failure to transition away from corrupt factionalism, George Soros' statement that "Ukraine is now what the EU should aspire to be - a participatory democracy" seems ludicrous - particularly to many of the pro-Maidan liberals he had initially backed. Even Hromadske, the news agency that he partially funds, was critical.

http://tchaykovsky.ru/rusphobi_1/simon_heffer.jpg

Ukraine has finally stopped trying to prop up the Hryvnia, with the market rate falling from 24 UAH to 38 UAH vs the GBP, over the last three days.

The last time i was there before the crisis, it was around 12.

There's confusion over exactly what is going on in Minsk at the moment. The Guardian was reporting an hour ago that Poroshenko had rejected Russian conditions for an agreement but some fairly reliable journalists on Twitter are suggesting that a deal was agreed between all the leaders eventually and the separatists have said no.

The IMF has agreed a $17.5bn bailout deal, though, with talks on restructuring debt to follow.

http://www.ft.com/fastft/276661

Developments!

Ceasefire to start on the 15th.
Heavy weapons to be withdrawn to fixed lines.
POWs, including Nadiya Savchenko, to be released.
Some form of constitutional reform agreed to placate East.

No mention of Crimea, as far as i can tell. Not sure whether separatists have agreed but Putin and Poroshenko seem on the same page.

http://i.imgur.com/usGTPQi.png?1

Not even a mention of there not being a mention of Crimea in the deal. Perhaps a fait accompli at this stage.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_2QY2S_czQ2k/Tbk2QTsmMII/AAAAAAAABpc/_6WfLDFwp6k/4_Portrait_of_Giovanni_Arnolfini_and_his_Wife_detail_1_Renaissance_Jan_van_Eyck_thumb%5B9%5D.jpg?imgmax=800

https://twitter.com/vpkivimaki/status/565652936962084865

Also good value from that link: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9me_43IQAE0Sl1.jpg

do you watch any of this series

https://news.vice.com/show/russian-roulette

I haven't seen many but probably should catch up with them. Vice's reporters are a mixed bag but Harriet Salem is consistently good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rnSF4h22XU

The UAH is still collapsing, despite the peace accords and IMF funding agreement:

http://i.imgur.com/lXLnTR0.png

Nov 2013: 12 UAH to the GBP
Jan 2015: 22 UAH to the GBP
Feb 2015: 50 UAH to the GBP

The decline against the USD is probably even worse, and more relevant as debt is largely paid, and gas largely bought, in Dollars. Horrific situation.

Yesterday: Russia agreed to provide stabilisation loans to Cyprus.

Today: Cyprus has agreed to let the Russian navy use its ports

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31632259

"Our friendly ties aren't aimed against anyone," President Putin said. "I don't think it should cause worries anywhere"

Yep, let's see how that works out.

boy i sure hope there aren't any other countries in that part of the world desperate for a loan on favourable terms

This morning alone the UAH went from 50 to the GBP to 43 and then back up to 53. Property is typically priced in USD and a lot of people took out Dollar mortgages when the currency was stable. I can't imagine living with that level of uncertainty.

http://www.euronews.com/2015/02/18/dollar-mortgage-crisis-in-urkaine/

Currently reading an extraordinary story about a Russian guy who ran away from an orphanage in the 1980s and was given a passport in 2004 despite not having a birth certificate. He was arrested in 2013, accused of using false documents, and has been in jail ever since. The Russian police have apparently used an expert in facial matching from photographs to accuse him of being a Ukrainian bank robber / murderer who is thought to be on the run in Russia. Nobody knows where the real criminal is, or if he's still alive, and the dude in prison has no way of proving that it's not actually him. Russia plans to extradite him.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fopenrussia.org%2Fpost%2Fview%2F2974%2F&edit-text=

rip boris nemtsov, shot dead in the street

Footage from the scene showed police experts examining the corpse of a man, dressed in jeans and lying on the tarmac, with the domes of St Basil’s in the background.

My wife: "God, they're so obvious about everything." Me: "The obviousness is the point."

“Putin noted that this was a cruel murder and bears all the signs of a contract killing which appears exclusively provocative,” Peskov told ITAR-TASS.

Blimey. For context, he was an extremely marginal figure in electoral terms these days but a very well known activist / critic. Pretty much zero chance that the government was directly involved but entirely plausible the political atmosphere at the moment might have have prompted someone on the fringes to do it. The murder of critics isn't condoned but their demonisation as enemies of Russia is.

Peskov / Putin statement pretty much translates to 'someone did this to make us look bad', which is the line taken by the rabid pro-Kremlin bloc online. The idea that Putin ordered the killing, dominating a lot of the chatter outside Russia, is equally unlikely and misses the point.

Given the timing, there is a strong probability this relates to his organisation of protests against Russia's position on Ukraine / Crimea. Those protests would probably have drawn a couple of thousand people (though more now) which is tiny in the context of a country that is, for the most part, supportive of reclaiming Crimea, etc. However, you can't give tacit approval to a legion of bikers, Cossacks, 'orthodox jihadis', military fantasists, rabid nationalists and assorted other cranks and malcontents to fight over the border, stand by while people like Zhirinovsky, the anti-Maidan protesters, and sections of the right-wing press describe their critics as traitors, and then be surprised when they start picking up guns on their return.

There has been a lot of talk about what happens in Ukraine when the neo nazi battalions stop fighting the rebels. Less about what happens in Russia when their nutcases stop fighting with them.