Kermit the Frog, king of the free muppets, visits the Kremlin for some fruity negotiating with a Russian pig.

Review by Michael Averko

The thought of a re-ignited Cold War can send a chill down some people’s spines. “The New Cold War” (Carroll & Graf, New York, 2007) is about a different kind of Cold War. It’s primarily about Western lobbying efforts to establish influence in the former Communist bloc and Russia’s opposition to it. The book’s secondary theme deals with the pipeline politics involving the former Soviet Union and the West. Blended in are some personal accounts by author Mark MacKinnon. His prose is crisp and easy to follow.

The book starts off with a “Dramatis Personae” section, providing a brief description of the involved lead players and organizations. In that segment, issue can be taken with the characterization of Vojislav Kostunica as a “previously anonymous lawyer, who Madeleine Albright convinced the Serbs to rally around” (a point contradicted by Doug Schoen on page 48 of chapter 3). Albright was never in such a position to influence Serb public opinion. Among Serbs, she has been generally viewed as having a bias against them. If anything, Albright championed Zoran Djindjic, who isn’t mentioned in the Dramatis Personae segment. As per my numerous Serb contacts in Serbia and elsewhere, as well as my own research of the man, Kostunica was relatively well known in Serbia before his democratic challenge to Slobodan Milosevic. This prior knowledge of him includes academics outside of Serbia, who study that country. Before Milosevic’s political fall, Kostunica’s accomplishments include his translation of the “Federalist Papers” into Serbian.

On Milosevic’s demise, MacKinnon pays great homage to the role Western (particularly American) non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played. He later on (in the book) follows their influence in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. His book emphasizes the Western NGO favorites among Serbs. In Serbia, the George Soros supported Otpor leader Marko Markovic has never come close to matching the popularity of Kostunica or Djindjic. Unlike Djindjic, Markovic is referenced in the Dramatis Personae section. When compared to Kostunica and Djindjic, much attention is spent on the half-Croat/half-Serb Markovic (he’s described as such in the book), who acknowledges (page 46) not being opposed to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, unlike a good number of his Otpor peers and the overwhelming majority of Serbs. Markovic’s popularity with Soros funded NGOs and unpopularity with most Serbs is one of several examples putting into question the enthusiasm of certain Western activity in some areas of the former Communist bloc. For a brief period, the Serbs and Western organizations involved with Serbia had an alliance opposing Milosevic. The post-Milosevic era has seen a decline in that cooperative spirit.

The book’s concentration is on the former USSR and not former Yugoslavia. However, the understanding of smaller nations related to Russia-West relations can be quite pivotal. Getting Kostunica right leads to the contentious Russia-West row over the disputed south Serb province of Kosovo. With a good deal of Serb support, Prime Minister Kostunica and Russia are going against Western efforts to see Kosovo become independent. The issue of Kosovo relates to other disputed former Communist bloc territories. MacKinnon stays off this topic. One which can be very critical when reviewing trouble spots on Russia-West issues.

It’s not easy for an American journalist to do an even handed accounting of the disputed former Communist bloc territories. Make no mistake about how the American mass media establishment prefers Kosovo to be spun. In its reporting and op-ed section, The New York Times (”the paper of record”) makes clear that Kosovo should be independent and that Russia is being hypocritical on the matter of disputed former Communist bloc territories. On this issue, The NYT reflects what most of the leading American foreign policy politicos desire (particularly Democrats, minus Brad Sherman and a few others). The NYT seems to periodically set the tone with how some other American newspapers cover a topic like the disputed former Communist bloc territories.

Canada sees itself as both independent of and a friend of the US. MacKinnon is a Canadian journalist, who writes in his nation’s market. Considering his Canadian standing, I think that he could’ve covered the disputed Communist bloc territories issue in detail. On Kosovo and other former Yugoslav issues, Canada has some progressive souls in journalist Scott Taylor, retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie and former Ambassador James Bissett - a retort to Roger Cohen’s comment about Roy Gutman and Christiane Amanpour. Peter Brock’s book “Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting” provides great insight on the faulty coverage of former Yugoslavia.

Pages 2-3 of the Prologue describe a series of apartment bombings as the pretext for the launching of the second Chechen war of the last decade. No mention is made of Chechen separatist incursions into Dagestan (a Russian republic bordering Chechnya). Incidents which were evident in the lead up to the second Chechen war.

In chapter 1, there’s the briefly stated view that Russian media has become restricted during Vladimir Putin’s presidency. This issue has seen its share of debate with several valid points: Russians continue to have a wide range of access to different political views, Russian media during Yeltsin’s presidency wasn’t perfect, Anglo-American mass media is far from perfect.

In the same chapter, the reference to symbols seems to suggest a Soviet like turn in Russia. Mention is made of some issued non-currency commemorative coins honoring Joseph Stalin, the return of the Red Star and Soviet era anthem. For clarity sake, it would’ve been nice to see further elaboration on these references. There’s no great effort to rehabilitate Stalin in Russia. Russian society has become far removed from Stalin’s totalitarian mindset. Adulation for Stalin isn’t widely evident at the annual May 9, Victory Day holiday, commemorating the defeat of Nazism. American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged this after attending the 65th anniversary of the event in 2005. In the present, Benito Mussolini has a following in Italy. Overall, there doesn’t seem to be a great concern of Italy returning to Fascism and there’s no valid reason for fearing a Soviet relapse in Russia. A Russian friend forwarded to me a news clip with this note on October 25: “The Memorial Foundation is conducting a vigil on October 29th, at the Lubyanka Square (where the old KGB was located) in Moscow to commemorate the victims of Stalin’s repression. About 2.6 million names will be read by volunteers. Today, there’re over 500 memorials in Russia to honor the victims of Stalin’s reign of terror.” There’re other examples which contradict the belief of a relatively popular Russian affection of Stalin. Anti-Stalin/pro-Putin advocates include Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nikita Mikhalkov, the dearly departed Mstislav Rostropovich and Paul Klebnikov. Legendary Soviet ice hockey men’s coach Viktor Tikhonov flopped when he returned to coach the post-Soviet Russian national team. It’s no secret that his totalitarian manner was rebuffed by the current generation of Russian ice hockey players. Russia’s recently crowned European men’s championship basketball team was coached by American-Israeli David Blatt. A Stalinist return to Russia isn’t on the horizon. Albeit limited, admiration for Stalin can be found in his native Georgia. Noting any popularity of Stalin in Georgia is problematical in some circles because Georgia is supposedly ahead of Russia in democratic development (more on this in a bit). During Putin’s presidency, the pre-revolutionary Russian Two Headed Eagle has become more utilized. In comparison, the Red Star’s return is considerably limited and its definition has been changed to a non-Communist one. The return of the Soviet anthem is greatly influenced by its stirring appeal over the comparatively drab Yeltsin era Russian anthem. Note that the re-instituted Soviet anthem has words praising pre-revolutionary Russian symbols. Post-Soviet Russia is seeking to establish its present and future by merging the positive aspects from its Imperial and Soviet eras.

When describing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s poor command of the Belarusian language (page 62 of chapter 4), it’s not mentioned that this is true of many Belarusians, who willingly converse in Russian and identify with the Russian Orthodox Church. This contrasts with Ukraine, where there’re many Ukrainian speakers and a good sized Ukrainian Orthodox Church, independent of the Russian Orthodox Church (keeping in mind that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate remains the largest church in Ukraine). When comparing Ukraine and Belarus, the lack of popularity for the Belarusian language and an independent Belarusian Orthodox Church corresponds to why Wales is less nationalistic than Scotland. Somewhat different histories play a key role.

MacKinnon does a good job presenting the politics and history of Ukraine. One can dispute his description of why Viktor Yushchenko was sacked as prime minister by then President Leonid Kuchma (page 81 of chapter 5). MacKinnon portrays it as the work of Moscow, which (as stated by MacKinnon) didn’t like Yushchenko’s blocking “a series of takeovers of Ukrainian companies by Russian firms.” In the lead up to Yushchenko’s firing, then Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Yushchenko sparred with influential leaders in the Ukrainian (not Russian) mining and gas sectors. The dispute came to a head in a 2001 no confidence vote by the Rada (parliament). The vote passed 263 to 69, resulting in Yushchenko’s removal from office. At the time, firing Yushchenko served as good public relations for Kuchma. Since the Soviet breakup, Ukrainian politics has seen shifting geopolitical moods among the leading Ukrainian politicians of this short lived period. Yushchenko is no exception. As prime minister, he approved a number of Russian business acquisitions. This point was stated by some pro-Yushchenko supporters in an effort to win the “Russian vote” during the 2004 presidential election.

In chapter 9, MacKinnon notes how Russian support for Viktor Yanukovych came after American NGOs started backing Yushchenko. That chapter ends with a discussion between MacKinnon and Russian political adviser Vyacheslav Nikhonov on who would win the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. MacKinnon cites Nikonov saying that Yushchenko wouldn’t win despite polls claiming differently.

Chapters 10 and 11 have among the fairest of North American mass media commentary to be found about the so called “Orange Revolution.” Western pro-Yushchenko and Russian pro-Yanukovych election observers each had biases clouding their respective claims. A Yanukovych aide expresses the view (page 170) that the advice of Russian “spin doctors” like Gleb Pavlovsky was counterproductive to Yanukovych’s presidential bid. In turn, the Russian spinsters are quoted (page 175) for believing that Yanukovych’s prison record made him a tough sell. Mackinnon sympathizes with this view and references hyperbolic anti-Orange remarks made by Yanukovych’s wife. On the other hand, Yanukovych’s prison record could be marketed as an example of someone resurrecting himself. The book doesn’t mention the negative past of Yushchenko and his wife. As prime minister, Yushchenko signed a statement calling protestors of beheaded Georgian-Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze “Fascists.” Yushchenko’s wife made insensitive remarks when she belonged to an anti-Russian organization. Two contributing factors relate to Yanukovych’s political comeback after the so called “Orange Revolution”: he’s not so negative as some make him out to be and the Orange side has its own shortcomings. MacKinnon correctly views Western support for Yushchenko as being more effectively implemented to the Russian assistance given to Yanukovych.

MacKinnon’s chapters on Ukraine end in the early part of 2005. Yanukovych’s 2006 political comeback to the role of prime minister came after he hired an American public relations firm. As MacKinnon suggests (page 176), the Russian spin doctors’ role during the so called “Orange Revolution” left something to be desired. I recall one of them providing commentary for a News World International (NWI) feature on Ukraine, shortly after Yushchenko’s presidential inauguration (now defunct, NWI was a Canadian Broadcasting Company television affiliate). When asked why the Orange government was counterproductive, Sergei Markov said that its Russia unfriendly elements served to provoke a nationalist backlash in Russia. From a Russian vantage point, this wasn’t good public relations, in addition to not offering the most accurate of thoughts on the subject. Markov’s emphasis on Russia conjures up the image of a Russian not concerned with how Ukraine feels and provides fodder for the faulty notion of Russia being collectively ripe with overly aggressive nationalists. The better answer to the NWI question would note that the newly inaugurated (at the time) Orange government’s not so Russia friendly members are an anathema to many in Ukraine, who don’t view Russia with hostility. This in turn could create instability within Ukraine, which in the long run wouldn’t benefit anyone. In any event, present day Ukraine is politically murky, with Russia and the West now taking a more hands off approach on that former Soviet republic.

The chapter 6 commentary about Georgia highlights the differences between Moscow and Tbilisi, without noting the examples of willing togetherness. In 1801, Georgia sought to become part of the Russian Empire. Russia has its share of prominent Russian citizens with Georgian surnames. On page 109, MacKinnon uncritically quotes Eduard Shevardnadze’s otherwise dubious belief that Georgia “enjoyed a more dynamic democracy than Putin’s Russia.” This is supported with an uncritically referenced cite from the politicized Freedom House. There’re examples showing that if anything, the reverse is true: Russia appears more democratic than Georgia. The first post-Soviet Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia was an authoritarian nationalist. How was he more democratic than Russia’s first post-Soviet president Boris Yeltsin? Shevardnadze, the second post-Soviet Georgian president fell out of favor for being associated with an undemocratically run corrupt environment. In 2003, the current Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili won an election with a Soviet like 96% tally. His governance has exhibited instances showing a less than democratically inclined state. This past September, former Saakashvili ally Irakli Okruashvili was arrested by the Georgian government. Okruashvili is no angel and his less than angelic demeanor was evident when he was allied to Saakashvili. In comparison, there’s outrage when the Russian government arrests a dubious figure of high standing. Of recent note, are the high profile protests against Saakashvili in Georgia. This has been interpreted as Georgia having an open society. There’s also the view that Russia under Putin has been comparatively more stable than Georgia.

The book’s take on Georgia matches the way it portrays George Soros, the billionaire involved with neo-liberal and neo-conservative political activity in the former Communist bloc (on former Communist bloc issues, the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals like Soros tend to agree with each other). Laura Silber, a Soros employed advocate offers the view of a caring philanthropist favoring the little guy (page 111). Soros’ detractors (whose views of him aren’t really mentioned in the book) stress the image of a wealthy billionaire seeking to get into markets (like Russia) where his views aren’t so welcome. Georgia and the Kosovo Albanians serve as a kind of base for Soros. A point that doesn’t appear so disagreeable with many pro and anti-Soros observers. Therein lies the reason why Soros is unsympathetic to patriotically mainstream Serb views, but sympathetic to the anti-Serb nationalism evident among a good number of Albanians and Bosnian Muslims. This matches how he unsympathetically treats patriotically mainstream Russian views versus his comparatively kid gloves approach to the Russia unfriendly nationalism exhibited in parts of the former Communist bloc. Is Soros more democratically inclined than Putin? The latter has won two multi-party presidential elections and is highly regarded by his nation’s population. The former prefers the Kosovo Albanian leaders over a noticeably more democratic and multi-ethnic tolerant Serb leadership. On several issues, Soros funded organizations like the Open Society Institute and International Crisis Group are very one sided in their utilization of sources.

On the book jacket, Lawrence Martin says that MacKinnon’s book is a wakeup call to an ongoing Russia-West squabble. There’re reasons for not being so alarmist. Post-Soviet Russia has been tame. It waited at least a couple of years from when it had a reasonable basis (as far as reasons for waging war go) to wage its first war in Chechnya. The vulgar aspects of the two post-Soviet Chechen wars stem from Russia having a weakened and not always so well disciplined armed forces, combined with the brutish manner of some of the Chechen insurgents. Russia’s need to have a relatively strong conventional armed forces has been acknowledged by some Western analysts. Russia is situated in problematical neighborhoods. It’s way too simplistic to portray Russia as the bully. Tatarstan, a predominately Muslim Russian republic enjoys a good deal of autonomy. Russia’s somewhat clumsy involvement with the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election was in reply to the intervention undertaken by Western NGOs. As for the accusation of Russia using its economy as a political tool: the US has a decades long embargo against Cuba and the European Union (EU) hints that Serb membership in the EU is linked to Serbia giving up Kosovo. Big powers carry on in this manner. There’s nothing particularly special about Russia’s purported use of using its economy for political reasons. The West and Russia have curtailed political competition in Ukraine. A pro-Russian business lobby exists with some Western corporations eager to embrace the Russian market. Former American National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski sees Russia eventually moving to the West out of a future fear of China. Another school of thought sees the significant peace time global interrelationship among the current major powers as a deterrent against a World War III/Cold War type setting.

I recommend “The New Cold War” with a few thoughts in mind. It’s a good exercise for all of us to actively engage views we find disagreeable. This shouldn’t be confused with talking over those views in a way that doesn’t fully address them. While bucking some of the conventional English language mass media stances, the book generally expresses how many influential non-Russian observers view the former Communist bloc. Like it or not, that’s a reality which should be addressed; along with how North American mass media at large doesn’t always practice what it preaches in its critiques of Russian media.

******

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. His commentary has appeared in the Action Ukraine Report, Eurasian Home, Intelligent.ru, Johnson’s Russia List, Reuters, Russia Blog, Serbianna, The New York Times and The Tiraspol Times.

Just a quick heads up to let you know that there have been a few changes to Russian Visa regulations recently.

Firstly, and probably most significantly, Russian visa applications can usually only be made in the country in which you hold citizenship. The only exceptions to this are if you can present proof that you are entitled to be in that country for more than 90 days, or if you need the visa in an emergency.

I can see this causing a few problems to those who like to nip out of Russia for a few days holiday on a Baltic beach and, while they’re abroad, pop into the local consulate to renew their visa…

The second changes are to do with the rules regarding multiple entry Russian visas. Basically multiple entry visa holders will now be able to stay in Russia for any 90 days out of a 180 day period. Interestingly though, you can now only apply for a multiple entry visa if you have previously held a russian visa - otherwise you are restricted to using a single or double entry visa.

Thanks to Way to Russia for initially pointing these changes out.

Time for another quick roundup of posts that have caught my eye recently:

• Online Russian classics, translated into English
• Russians used to write on birch bark
• Kvas. Best. Drink. Ever. (Non alcoholic category).
• The next Russian President will have a fine head of hair.
• The Soviet Union, summed up in 100 photos.  My favourite is the Giant Lenin.  Via Mrs Newman.

Missing AllofMP3.com, and can’t get it’s short-lived replacement mp3Sparks.com to work?  TorrentFreak have compiled this handy list of alternative Russian music sites.

Neeka has posted translations of a couple of articles about a brute force Denial of Service attack which has temporarily closed down some of the more politically minded sections of Live Journal in Russia:

Just a few hours it was impossible to post messages that contained the following links: “ru_nbp”, “nbp_ru” [NBP is the National Bolshevik Party], “ru_politics” и “dрni” [DPNI is the Movement Against Illegal Immigration] (the last one is written with the Russian “p” because Latin script is still not being let through).

Sup, the administrators of LiveJournal in Russia elaborate:

A powerful DDoS-attack is being carried out against the LJ servers in California since Friday, June 1. The source of the attack is allegedly located in Russia. Servers are receiving 50,000 requests per second. The attack’s main goals are dрni, ru_рolitics и ru_nаzbol communities.

As a consequence, they’ve had to place filters in place which effectively stop users from posting to those communities.

Click through to the article for more, including the very funny, if slightly resigned, reaction of some users.

Just Russia boss Sergei Mironov thinks his party will soon merge with the Communist Party, creating a ‘true’ Socialist party in Russia.

The Just Russia party will walk the same road as “honest Communists” and “there are far more things that we share than those dividing us.”

Moreover, Mironov said he was extending a friendly hand to all left-wing forces with an offer to create a Socialist Party of Russia “in the historical perspective.”

According to ITAR-TASS, Mironov sees a merger as a potential way for both Parties to overtake United Russia. 

Personally, I think he’s just talking things up at the moment, keeping his name in the press.  I can’t ever see the Communists agreeing to this. 

Having said that, I’m sure there are many within the Kremlin who would like to see the influence of the Communist Party diluted still further - although they are broadly supportive of Putin at the moment, there is no guarantee that they will continue to be so if the face of Russian politics changes over the next few years.

Any thoughts on whether a KPRF / Just Russia merger will ever get off the ground?

Anyone know what’s up with Mosnews recently?

As far as I can tell, they’ve only posted one news story since the beginning of May.

Maria Sharapova’s top ten mixed doubles partners, that is:

10. Orlando Bloom
9. Bono
8. Yao Ming
7. Lebron James
6. Adam Scott
5. Christiano Ronaldo
4. Prince William
3. President Putin
2. James Bond
1. John McEnroe

Alarming choices, aren’t they?

Anyway, it’s not often I get to scoop La Russophobe when it comes to an oddball Sharapova story, so I’m going to sit back and enjoy the glory for a moment…

All through this week, BBC Radio 4 are reading a series of excerpts from the latest and best books on Russia. You can either listen live, or the shows will be archived on the BBC website.

The books include:

• Monday - The Litvinenko File: the True Story of a Death Foretold, Martin Sixmith
• Tuesday - A Russian Diary, Anna Politikovskaya
• Wednesday - Inside Putin’s Russia, Andrew Jack
• Thursday - Blowing up Russia, Alexander Litvinenko
• Friday - a second extract from The Litvinenko File: the True Story of a Death Foretold, Martin Sixmith

If you’re thinking about buying any of these books, this show is a must.

La Russophobe has updated her report which ranks various English language Russia blogs. The update refines the previous data, in order to try to give a better picture of which is the most “popular” English language Russia blog.

According to the new LR index, the top five English language Russia blogs are:

1. Russia Blog
2. La Russophobe
3. Very Russia Tochka Net
4. Robert Amsterdam
5. Siberian Light

(The LR survey lists the top 16 blogs in total, but for some mysterious reason, I only chose to reprint the top five. Wonder why….?)

The refined results seem to be more balanced than previous results although they should still be treated with due caution -  as with any statistical analysis which has a limited dataset, there are bound to be oddities that skew the results quite significantly. For example, Siberian Light is proving to be challenging to rank, as LR rightly points out.

Firstly, I had a massive surge of traffic to a single post in February, which is still skewing the Alexa rankings somewhat. This will push Siberian Light up in the rankings for the next month or so, until the Alexa ranking evens out.

But, on the other hand, SL fares poorly in LR’s new formula for ranking technorati links, which divides the number of technorati links by blog age. This is because SL is several years old, but took a one year hiatus in 2006, thus losing a lot of inbound links. So, for SL at least, I suppose it all balances out in the end.

Ever wondered what the top English language Russia blogs are, by the numbers? Well, wait no more, for La Russophobe has broken the stats down, ranking blogs by:

• The number of blogs linking to each
• The total number of incoming links
• Overall traffic
• Net worth

The stats certainly make interesting reading, and provide a pretty good overview of who is who in the English speaking Russia blogosphere. There are a couple of things I’d take issue with, though:

First, the obligatory La Russophobe “Russia is rubbish” sentence. According to LR, the fact that only 1,200 blogs are Technorati tagged Russia is “emphatic evidence” that:

the world wants little to do with Russia. That’s fitting of course, since every day Russians show they want little to do with the world — well, until they start starving, that is.

More likely, I’d imagine, is that Technorati does a generally poor job of indexing non-English language blogs, and an even worse job of indexing blogs that don’t use the latin alphabet. In fact, during 2006, the number of Russian language blogs hosted on LiveJournal sailed past the million mark.

Secondly, La Russophobe draws a comparison between the number of Google hits that Russia Blog and La Russophobe have:

LR currently has over 60,000 Google hits, while “Real Russia Project” has less than 600 (granted, LR has existed longer than RRP, but “Yuri Mamchur” has been the boss of Russia Blog from day 1 and has currently less than 13,000 Google hits. In other words, Russia Blog’s traffic is completely empty, basically a bait-and-switch charade — a classic Russophile illusion (and in that way, quite fitting).

It seems to me (please correct me if I’m wrong) that LR has run a search for “La Russophobe” and “Real Russia Project”. Drawing a comparison based on this is somewhat unfair, in my opinion. “Real Russia Project” is a new (albiet - sorry guys - somewhat dull) name for a blog which is more traditionally called simply “Russia Blog”. Indeed, even now, many people - myself included - still refer to Russia Blog by its old name.

A more useful comparison, I think, would be to run a Google search on the respective web addresses. Running a Google search for “site:russiablog.org” and “site:russophobe.blogspot.com” brings up the following results:

• site:russiablog.org - 507 hits
• site:russophobe.blogspot.com - 260 hits

(Update 30/3/07: As La Russophobe has just pointed out to me, the above analysis, based on “site:domainname” is rubbish, as it just counts the number of times google itself has indexed each site, rather than amount of times that other websites link to each site.  A bit of a daft error, for which I apologise.

What I had intended to do was use Google’s “link:” facility. So, an accurate version of the above is:

“A more useful comparison, I think, would be to run a Google search on the respective web addresses. Running a Google search for “link:russiablog.org” and “link:russophobe.blogspot.com” brings up the following results:

• link:russiablog.org - 1,080 results
• link:russophobe.blogspot.com - 482 results”

Apologies for any confusion caused).

LR also notes that Russia Blog (or, the Real Russia Project, if you will) is:

funded by a large institution […] and which likely engages in commercial traffic generation techniques.

That Russia Blog’s authors use commercial traffic generation techniques is news to me. The use of the word “likely” hints that LR is extrapolating, so I’d be interested to see any evidence of this.

To be honest, though, I’d be somewhat surprised if any paid traffic generation they engage in has a significant affect on the bottom line traffic Russia Blog receives - bringing in paid viewers costs a lot of money, and I can’t really see much value in doing that for what is, to be honest, in the grand scheme of things a pretty small scale blog.

Additionally, regardless of how initial traffic is generated, it’s returning traffic that counts - and people don’t come back to a weblog if it doesn’t add value to their daily lives in some way.

Finally, following LR’s post, I’ve realised that my stat counter is set to keep my stats private. This was an oversight, and I’ve now opened my Sitemeter account up to public viewing for anyone who wants to have a good nose around.

Yet another claim of abuse in the Russian ranks - this time that conscript soldiers are being forced into prostitution on the streets of St Petersburg by older servicemen:

A spokeswoman for the Soldiers’ Mothers, Ella Polyakova, told the BBC that in St Petersburg there was “a network of clients” who would pay for sex with soldiers.

This is - unsurprisingly - coming from an anonymous source at the moment but, given the abuse scandals that regularly disgrace the Russian military, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the claims were true.

Meanwhile, those of you with strong stomachs, English Russia has a post with diagrams of the many and varied types of abuse common in the Russian Army.

If you believe the hype, Vladimir Putin’s speech in Munich this weekend was little more than a declaration of a new Cold War.  If you look more closely, though, it’s little more than a reminder to the world that Russia’s foreign policy is based on realism - something we’ve known for a long, long time.

Seriously, apart from the tone, was there anything in this speech that actually surprised anyone?  Here’s my summary of the speech:

• Russia wants a multipolar world, and believes in realpolitik.
• Unilateral actions make Russia nervous – lets all abide by the UN Charter.
• The dominance of the US is a threat to world security, and is in danger of sparking an arms race.
• Russia wants to take an active part in the global community and the international marketplace, but feels that there is often one rule for Russia, another for the rich.
• Russia will defend its interests.

And here’s the full transcript of Putin’s speech, for those of you with time to kill.

I was actually quite impressed in a way by Putin’s assertiveness.  To me, it seemed to demonstrate that, while Putin knows that Russia isn’t the power that the Soviet Union once was and certainly lags behind the West in many ways, he is confident that Russia’s position in the world today is secure, and that it is a country on the way back up.  His conclusion, I thought, encapsulated Russia’s growing confidence and - whisper it - self awareness:

“Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always used the privilege to carry out an independent foreign policy.

We are not going to change this tradition today. At the same time, we are well aware of how the world has changed and we have a realistic sense of our own opportunities and potential.”

I also found it interesting that, in amongst the criticism Putin doled out to the United States, he also found the time to rap China on the knuckles for testing whether one of its missiles could destroy a satellite in space.

There were problems with the speech, of course.  It was very noticeable that, although Putin took care to tell the world that violence would not solve the world’s problems, he wasn’t able to come up with any constructive alternatives.  And, of course, while he was happy to stick the boot in during criticism of other countries’ military ventures and abuses, he pretty much ignored Russia’s own failings.  (But, then again, how many countries’ Presidents these days actually take pains to flagellate themselves in front of international audiences.  I can’t think of many).

Overall, though, I’m happy to see that Putin felt able to be blunt.  It’s not the start of a new cold war, but it is clear that not every country in the world shares the same worldview, and that Putin feels that Russia has the opportunity to become a standard bearer of sorts for countries who share one particular worldview. 

I actually found the speech quite refreshing.

The Heritage Foundation have released their 2007 rankings of Economic Freedom, and it will make difficult reading for the Kremlin, as capitalist Russia apparently has a less free economy than communist China.

Out of 157 countries ranked, Russia places a rather dismal 120th, and 9 of the other 12 former Soviet states ranked higher - most by quite a long way.

I’ve been racking my brains to think of something positive to say about this for Russia, and about the only thing I can think of is: if Russia has the world’s 10th largest economy, but is this unfree… imagine what it could do if it took deregulation seriously.

Anyway, for completeness, the Former Soviet countries that rank above Russia are:

• Estonia (12th) - higher than most European Union countries
• Lithuania (22nd)
• Armenia (32nd)
• Georgia (35th)
• Latvia (41st)
• Kazakhstan (75th)
• Moldova (81st)
• Tajikistan (98th)
• Azerbaijan (107th)

Ranking below Russia:

• Ukraine (125th) - a bit of a failure for the reforms promised by the Orange Revolution
• Uzbekistan (132nd)
• Turkmenistan (152nd)