#navalny was one of the main russian political opponents to putin | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

popolitiko · 4 years

Text

Most Dictators Self Destruct. Why?

In most cases, democratization has followed an authoritarian ruler’s mistake.

BloombergLeonid Bershidsky

With authoritarian rulers ascendant in many parts of the world, one wonders what must happen for their countries to liberalize. The likes of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey or Xi Jinping in China are entrenched, experienced and not unpopular — so should their opponents simply resign themselves to an open-ended period of illiberal rule?

According to Daniel Treisman, a UCLA political scientist, that's not necessarily the case. For a recent paper, he analyzed 218 episodes of democratization between 1800 and 2015 and found they were, with some exceptions (such as Danish King Frederick VII's voluntary acceptance of a constitution in 1848), the result of authoritarian rulers' mistakes in seeking to hold on to power. The list of these errors is both a useful handbook for authoritarians and a useful reminder that even the most capable of them are fallible, with disastrous consequences for their regimes.

According to Treisman, deliberate liberalization — whether to forestall a revolution, motivate people to fight a foreign invader, defeat competing elite groups or make a pact with them — only occurred in up to a third of the cases. In the rest, democratization was an accident: As they set off a chain of events, rulers didn't intend to relinquish power. Some of them — such as Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president — have admitted as much.

Treisman's list of mistakes is worth citing in full. There are five basic ones:

Hubris: An authoritarian ruler underestimates the opposition's strength and fails to compromise or suppress it before it's too late. King Louis Philippe of France was deposed in 1848 after, as Treisman puts it, turning "a series of reform banquets into revolution by refusing even mild concessions." Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was making a routine speech when he realized he was being overthrown. Indonesian President Muhammad Suharto believed he could get the country under control right up to the moment of his resignation.

Needless risk: A ruler calls a vote which he "fails to manipulate sufficiently" (like Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1988, when he lost a plebiscite on whether he should be allowed to stay in power) or starts a war he cannot win (like Leopoldo Galtieri in Argentina with the Falklands conflict of 1982).

Slippery slope: That's Gorbachev's case: a ruler starts reforms to prop up the regime but ends up undermining it.

Trusting a traitor: This is not always a mistake made by the dictator itself, although it was in the case of Francisco Franco in Spain, who chose King Juan Carlos, the dismantler of fascism, as his successor. In Gorbachev's case, it was the Politburo — the regime's elite — that picked the wrong man to preserve its power.

Counterproductive violence: Not suppressing the opposition when necessary can be a sign of hubris in a dictator, but overreacting is also a grave mistake. The example Treisman gives is Bangladeshi President Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who was forced to resign by an uprising that started after police shot an opposition activist at a rally. But the error was also made by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2013, when his riot police descended on a few hundred peacefully protesting students and brutally beat them, setting off the much bigger protests that resulted in Yanukovych's ouster.

These are all very human errors of judgment. Dictators are people, too, and sometimes they'll act on imperfect information or erroneous gut feeling. But Treisman makes the point that they may be prone to such errors precisely because they are dictators. They'll be fooled by polls which people don't answer sincerely, taken in by their own propaganda (like Malawi ruler Hastings Banda, who called and lost a referendum in 1993 because he'd been impressed by the high turnout at rallies in his support even though people had been forced to attend them). And sometimes they'll rule for so long that their mental faculties will be less sharp than at the outset.

I have a particular interest in watching Putin for any of the errors on Treisman's list. So far, it's as if he'd read the paper before Treisman wrote it. His suppression has been timely and cleverly measured, his election manipulation always sufficient, his temporary successor, Dmitri Medvedev, avoided the liberal slippery slope, and he's only started wars against much weaker rivals. He helps his regime's propaganda by treating it as truth, but he doesn't buy it to the point of losing vigilance. In the 2018 election, he kept his main opponent, Alexei Navalny, out of the race, mindful that modern technology allows a rival to loosen media restrictions -- something Treisman notes can lead a hubristic dictator to an electoral loss.

But even Putin, after 17 years in power, is in danger of making a miscalculation one day, perhaps finally misreading the mood of the increasingly cynical Russian public that keeps registering support for him in largely worthless polls. It's easy to imagine the choleric Erdogan getting into an armed conflict Turkey cannot sustain or using disproportional violence as Turks' patience with his reprisals wear thin. It's a possibility, although a remote one, that, after Xi's power consolidation, the Chinese Communist Party will opt for a more liberal successor and he won't be able to hold the reins as tightly.

Treisman notes that in 85 percent of the episodes he studied, democratization was preceded by mass unrest. Sooner or later, people tend to get tired of regimes in which they have little say. Then, it only takes a misstep from the one person at the center of such a regime. Dictators often overestimate the external danger to their power, the plots of foreign or exiled enemies. In the final analysis, they are the biggest threat to themselves.

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/most-dictators-self-destruct-why?utm_source=pocket-newtab

More Stories from Pocket 📷Don’t Fear the Russian Military 📷The True Story of the Death of Stalin 📷Would You Stand up to an Oppressive Regime or Would You Conform? Here’s the Science 📷A New Cold War Has Begun 📷‘It’s a Place Where They Try to Destroy You’: Why Concentration Camps Are Still With Us

#Dictators #Self Destruct

6 notes · View notes

newstfionline · 4 years

Text

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Getting creative to help the homeless (AP) After three years on the streets, Tiecha Vannoy and her boyfriend Chris Foss plan to weather the pandemic this winter in a small white “pod” with electricity, heat and enough room for two. Portland this month assembled neat rows of the shelters, which resemble garden sheds, in three ad-hoc “villages”—part of an unprecedented effort unfolding in cold-weather cities nationwide to keep people without permanent homes safe as temperatures drop and coronavirus cases surge. “We just get to stay in our little place. We don’t have to leave here unless we want to,” said Vannoy, wiping away tears as they moved into the shelter near a downtown train station. “It’s been a long time coming. He always tells me to have faith, but I was just over it.” ... “Those (are) folks who would under normal circumstances maybe come into a drop-in center to warm up, or go into the subway to warm up, or go into a McDonald’s to warm up—and just not having those options available to them. What then?” asked Giselle Routhier of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City.

Raise your mittens: Outdoor learning continues into winter (AP) Cindy Soule’s fourth graders in Maine’s largest city have studied pollination in a community garden. They solved an erosion problem that was damaging trees. They learned about bear scat. Then came a fresh layer of snow and temperatures that hovered around freezing—but her students were unfazed. Bundled up and masked, they scooted outside with their belongings in buckets. They collected their pencils and clipboards, plopped the buckets upside down in the snow, took a seat and went to work. The lesson? Snow, of course, and how snowflakes are formed. Schools nationwide scrambled to get students outdoors during the pandemic to keep them safe and stop the spread of COVID-19. Now, with temperatures plummeting, a smaller number of schools—even in some of the nation’s most frigid climes—plan to keep it going all winter long, with students trading desks in warm classrooms for tree stumps or buckets.

Explosion in Nashville that damaged 20 buildings, injured 3 people an ‘intentional act’ (USA Today) Authorities believe an explosion that occurred in downtown Nashville early Christmas morning and was felt for miles was an “intentional act” sparked by a vehicle. Police responded to reports of a suspicious vehicle parked outside the AT&T building just before 6 a.m. Upon arrival, police said an officer “had reason” to alert the department’s hazardous devices unit, which was en route, when a “significant explosion” happened. Three people were hospitalized with injuries, police said. At least 20 buildings were damaged, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said. The sound of the explosion could be heard from miles away, and people reported windows shaking from South and East Nashville. “It looks like a bomb went off,” Cooper said. The downtown area will be “sealed off” for further investigation and to make sure everything is “completely safe.”

US to require negative COVID-19 test from UK travelers (AP) The United States will require airline passengers from Britain to get a negative COVID-19 test before their flight, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced late Thursday. The U.S. is the latest country to announce new travel restrictions because of a new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading in Britain and elsewhere. Airline passengers from the United Kingdom will need to get negative COVID-19 tests within three days of their trip and provide the results to the airline, the CDC said in a statement. The agency said the order will be signed Friday and go into effect on Monday. “If a passenger chooses not to take a test, the airline must deny boarding to the passenger,” the CDC said in its statement. The agency said because of travel restrictions in place since March, air travel to the U.S. from the U.K. is already down by 90%.

Many just want a hug for Christmas this year, Queen Elizabeth says (Reuters) All many people want for Christmas this year is a simple hug, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth said in her annual festive message, saying it would be hard for those who lost loved ones to COVID-19 pandemic or were separated by curbs on social mixing. In her traditional pre-recorded Christmas Day address to the nation, the 94-year-old monarch repeatedly spoke of hope for the future whilst acknowledging millions of Britons would be unable to have their usual family celebrations this year. “Of course for many, this time of year will be tinged with sadness; some mourning the loss of those dear to them, and others missing friends and family members distanced for safety when all they really want for Christmas is a simple hug or a squeeze of the hand,” Elizabeth said. “If you are among them, you are not alone. And let me assure you of my thoughts and prayers.” “Remarkably, a year that has necessarily kept people apart has in many ways brought us closer,” said the queen, adding the royals had been inspired by stories of those who volunteered to help others in need. “In the United Kingdom and around the world, people have risen magnificently to the challenges of the year and I’m so proud and moved by this quiet indomitable spirit.”

For the European Union, It’s a Pretty Good Deal (NYT) The European Union emerges from fraught negotiations with Britain over its exit from the bloc with a sense of satisfaction—that it has maintained its unity and its core principles, especially the integrity of the single market of now 450 million consumers that is the foundation of its influence. And it is now looking ahead to its life without Britain. The final deal is a free-trade agreement that recognizes Britain’s desire to leave the single market and the customs union while preserving tariff-free, quota-free trade in goods with the European Union. To that end, Britain agreed to a mechanism, with arbitration and possible tariffs for violations, that would keep its regulations and subsidies roughly in line with those of Brussels, to prevent unfair competition. But the deal will require inspections of goods to prevent smuggling. The deal also covers many mundane but crucial matters of visas, health insurance, and air, rail and road travel. It treats Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, as within the E.U. customs area to prevent the need for a hard border on the island, but requires some checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland. And the deal reallocates fishing areas and quotas, given that Britain is now an independent coastal state.

Pope Francis celebrates low-key Christmas Eve Mass amid coronavirus restrictions (Fox News) Pope Francis celebrated Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday night amid coronavirus restrictions that reduced a normal crowd of as many as 10,000 congregants to a group of fewer than 100 people, according to reports. During his homily, the Roman Catholic leader urged followers to reach out to the needy, noting that Jesus Christ was considered an outsider. “The Son of God was born an outcast, in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God,” the pope said. May the Child of Bethlehem help us, then, to be generous, supportive and helpful, especially towards those who are vulnerable, the sick, those unemployed or experiencing hardship due to the economic effects of the pandemic, and women who have suffered domestic violence during these months of lockdown,” he said.

Turkey debates law that would increase oversight of NGOs (Reuters) Turkey’s parliament began debating a draft law on Friday that would increase oversight of non-governmental organisations and which, according to rights campaigners, risks limiting the freedoms of civil-society groups. The government says the measure, covering “foundations and associations”, aims to prevent non-profit organisations from financing terrorism and to punish those who violate the law. Civil-society groups, including Amnesty International and the Human Rights Association, said terrorism charges in Turkey were arbitrary, and that the draft law would violate the presumption of innocence and punish those whose trials were not finalised.Investigations based on terrorism charges have been launched against hundreds of thousands of people under a crackdown following a failed coup in 2016. Hundreds of foundations were also shut down with decrees following the coup attempt.

Half of Russians sceptical Kremlin critic Navalny was poisoned (Reuters) Half of Russians believe that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was either not poisoned, as he and Western governments contend, or that his poisoning was stage-managed by Western intelligence services, a poll showed on Thursday. The poll, released by the Levada-Center, shows how hard it remains for Navalny to shape public opinion in Russia even as his case attracts wide media attention in the West and his own slickly-produced videos of what happened to him this summer rack up millions of views online. Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critics, was airlifted to Germany for medical treatment in August after collapsing on a plane in Russia. Germany has said he was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder him, an assertion many Western nations accept. The poll by Levada, which is regarded as more independent than state counterparts, showed only 15% of Russians believed what happened to Navalny was an attempt by the authorities to rid themselves of a political opponent. By contrast, 30% thought that the incident was stage-managed and that there was no poisoning, and 19% said they believed it was a provocation orchestrated by Western intelligence services.

Hong Kong street refrigerator keeps giving (AP) Most people who head to Woosung Street in Hong Kong’s old-school neighborhood of Jordan are visiting its popular restaurants serving everything from curries to seafood. Others may be headed for a lone refrigerator, painted blue, with a sign that reads: “Give what you can give, take what you need to take.” The door of the fridge sitting outside a hockey academy opens to reveal it is stuffed with packets of instant noodles, biscuits, tins of food and even socks and towels for anyone who may need them. Ahmen Khan, founder of a sports foundation on the same street, said he was inspired to create a community refrigerator after seeing a film about others doing the same thing. He found the refrigerator at a nearby refuse collection point and painted it blue. “It’s like a dignity, that when you go home, you open your fridge to get food,” Khan said. “So I want the people to just feel like that. Even if it’s a street, it’s their community, it’s their home, so they can simply just open it and then just put food there, and collect the food.” Khan’s blue refrigerator project went viral on social media and people have been dropping by to leave food inside.

Israeli jets fly over Beirut, explosions reported in Syria (AP) Israeli jets flew very low over parts of Lebanon early Friday, terrifying residents on Christmas Eve, some of whom reported seeing missiles in the skies over Beirut. Minutes later, Syria’s official news agency reported explosions in the central Syrian town of Masyaf. Other Syrian media said Syrian air defenses responded to an Israeli attack near the town in the Hama province. The Syrian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying Israel “launched an aggression by directing a barrage of rockets” from the north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli towards the Masyaf area. Israeli jets regularly violate Lebanese airspace and have often struck inside Syria from Lebanese territory. But the Christmas Eve flights were louder than usual, frightening residents of Beirut who have endured multiple crises in the past year, including the catastrophic Aug. 4 explosion at the city’s port that killed over 200 people and destroyed parts of the capital.

#headlines #news

3 notes · View notes

androgynousbarbarianarbiter · 4 years

Text

Father and son: one is a military man, the other is a GRU officer. Navalny’s family

Many Russians are wondering who is the political figure Alexey Navalny, what family is he from, why does the Russian state radio station (Echo of Moscow) often invite him on live?

Echo of Moscow, owned by Gazprom-Media, supports Alexey Navalny

The “oppositional” radio station Echo of Moscow is owned (66% of the shares) by Gazprom-Media, which belongs to the Russian state. Echo of Moscow is known for the fact that it often invites Russian politician Alexei Navalny, who positions himself as an opponent of the Kremlin.

Why the state radio station supports Alexei Navalny? Because it is a big policy of covering up the Russian GRU (the Main Intelligence Directorate) officer Alexey Navalny, who devoted his life to the work of Intelligence agencies of Russia, penetration into the opposition and broadcasts data to the security structures of the Russian Federation.

About Alexey Navalny’s family and work for the Intelligence agencies of Russia

Alexey Navalny is a GRU officer who grew up in a military family. It is known about his father that Anatoly Navalny is a professional military man working in Moscow, who has dedicated his life to serving the Motherland. The popular encyclopedia Wikipedia (Russian article) writes: “father (Anatoly Navalny) … after graduating from the Kiev military school of communications received an appointment near Moscow.” More information about the father is not known in which military unit he works, but it is obvious that he is protecting the security of Russia.

And how can son Alexey go against serving his father’s Homeland? No, he can not. The father graduated from the military school of communications, and the son went even further, he applied communication technologies, becoming an officer of the GRU, whose task was to transmit data about the opposition of Russia and foreign ill-wishers of the Russian Federation.

Alexey Navalny is known for:

purposefully in 2017 held a debate with the Russian FSB officer (1996–2013) Igor Strelkov and published on his Youtube channel “Navalny LIVE”;

helped colleagues from the GRU Petrov and Boshirov, taking all the attention of the media in Russia, releasing emotional appeals together with the head of the Russian Guards Viktor Zolotov the day after Petrov and Boshirov’s unsuccessful interview with Margarita Simonyan. It got public attention and then Navalny’s colleagues from the GRU was forgotten by Russian mass medias and they no longer appeared in other interviews (more in the Russian article “How Navalny saved Petrov and Boshirov” / «Как Навальный спас Петрова и Боширова»);

achieved and contributed to the disappearance of the influence of the non-system opposition in Russia, the failure of rallies, the change of the Constitution, the re-election of Vladimir Putin for another term;

organized a platform for transferring contact information left by Russians on the “Smart Voting” (Умное голосование) website to the security structures of the Russian Federation;

performed many other cases, committed secretly and in the interests of the Russian special services.

The tactics by which Alexey Navalny is acting is to mislead the Russians, in particular the opposition, by infiltrating their circles with the words “Look, I’m yours, let’s cooperate.” Then the cooperation of the opposition with Navalny ends with their mysterious disappearance, elimination and strengthening of the current government.

The state media of Russia, represented by federal TV channels, newspapers, news agencies, provide powerful support to the GRU agent “oppositionist” Alexey Navalny: they actively publish information that he is certainly an enemy of the Kremlin, a foreign mercenary, so that many people believe this, fell into the trap of Russian state, contacted with Navalny, completely gave him their contact details, and then mysteriously disappeared.

Father and son Navalny served their Homeland well. Russian opposition rallies have either completely disappeared or are being held to no avail. All this is the merit of the Navalny’s family — the greatest agents of the Intelligence agencies of Russia in modern times.

#navalny #opposition #russia

1 note · View note

nebris · 4 years

Text

Most Dictators Self Destruct. Why?

Treisman's list of mistakes is worth citing in full. There are five basic ones:

Slippery slope: That's Gorbachev's case: a ruler starts reforms to prop up the regime but ends up undermining it.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/most-dictators-self-destruct-why?utm_source=pocket-newtab

0 notes

thecryptoreport · 5 years

Text

Russian Opposition Leader Raises $3 Million in Bitcoin Donations

Bitcoin has become a significant funding source for one of Russia’s leading political dissidents.

Alexei Navalny, a politician believed by many to be President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent, has attracted more than 591 BTC in donations over the last three years, worth about $3 million at current prices, public blockchain data shows.

The donations became a flashpoint this week when a pro-Putin…

View On WordPress

#coindesk #News #Political Donations #TCRNews #thecryptoreport

0 notes

cryptobitnews · 5 years

Photo

Russian Opposition Leader Raises $3 Million in Bitcoin Donations Bitcoin has become a significant funding source for one of Russia’s leading political dissidents. Alexei Navalny, a politician believed by many to be President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent, has attracted more than

#Bitcoin #Donations #Leader #Million #Opposition #Raises #Russian

0 notes

ericfruits · 6 years

Text

Fresh challenges for Vladimir Putin in his supposedly final term

THE sensation of Vladimir Putin’s presidential re-inauguration was his car. A vast Russian-made black limousine with a defensive-looking narrow front window, it made a change from his usual stretch Mercedes. On May 7th it safely carried Mr Putin a few yards from his office, without venturing outside the walls of the Kremlin, to a gilded hall where tsars were once crowned. There, he swore to respect Russia’s constitution, which says that this is his last presidential term. The vehicle, “cooler” than Donald Trump’s “Beast”, as one of his 5,000 guests cooed, was supposed to illustrate the main message of Mr Putin’s speech: thanks to his leadership, Russia is becoming a modern, self-reliant superpower. (Look! In our own fancy cars, we can overtake the world!)

Now that “security and defence capabilities are reliably assured,” Mr Putin said, the country was destined for a “breakthrough” and would be able to achieve “heights…unattainable to others”. Omitting any mention of the West, Mr Putin concentrated on domestic affairs: “I strongly believe that only a free society…is capable of achieving these breakthroughs,” he said. His words mocked thousands of young people who had demonstrated two days earlier under the slogan “He is not a tsar to us”.

Get our daily newsletter

Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.

In Moscow, the demonstrators had been met not just by riot police but by whip-wielding Cossacks and members of NOD, a militant nationalist movement clad in St George ribbons adopted as a symbol of the Soviet victory in the second world war. Within minutes, riot police had (yet again) detained Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who organised the protest, while the Cossacks and the police hit unarmed protesters. Some 1,600 people were detained across the country. Many remain in police detention; some were beaten up.

Patriotic ruffians

The use of paramilitary thugs marked an escalation of violence. It was probably also political theatre. By having people dressed as Cossacks, as well as the police, beat up the protesters, the aim was to show that real Russians are furious with Mr Navalny’s supporters. If the Russian people were to unite, as Armenians just have to oust their own leader, Mr Putin would be worried. Happily for him, Russians are far from united. As scattered protesters in Moscow moved past Prada and Louis Vuitton boutiques chanting “Russia will be free!”, patrons on the terrace at Tekhnikum, a swanky bistro, clinked glasses of white wine and chuckled, raising a toast of their own: “Russia is already free.”

An odd mix of violent traditionalism and European-style urban modernisation—both financed by the government—is a key element in Mr Putin’s political edifice. It allows him to appeal both to the middle class in large cities and to the conservative and ill-paid population of small-town and rural Russia. He won 77% of the vote, the highest ever scored by a post-Soviet president. His thumping victory supports his image as the supreme national leader and the only person who can keep Russia together.

In fact, his only serious opponent, Mr Navalny, was barred from taking part in the election in March, on spurious grounds. The opposition were constantly harassed. Public employees and staff at state-dependent firms were more or less coerced to turn out to vote. Pro-Putin forces bombarded voters with messages urging them to come to the polls, especially in big cities where turnout has often been low. Kirill Rogov, a political analyst, says the result signals a shift to a harder authoritarianism in which the power of the ruler is maintained mainly by violence rather than money and propaganda.

Mr Putin’s previous presidential term was built around confrontation with the West: the war against Ukraine in 2014, the intervention to prop up Syria’s despot and the meddling in democratic elections in Western countries. These actions were carried out by Mr Putin on the assumption that the West was too distracted, divided or indifferent to push back. But his aggressive tactics have backfired.

In America they have produced a massive backlash against Mr Putin, and personal sanctions against his cronies and tycoons, regardless of their formal affiliation with the state. The use of a military-grade nerve agent to poison a renegade spook produced a similar result in Britain, pushing the government to close the country’s financial system to questionable Russian money. Further escalation with the West now seems both risky and unlikely to help Mr Putin much. According to polls, the most popular complaint among the Russian public about the Kremlin is that it pays too much attention to foreign policy, and thus neglects domestic problems.

As a result, Mr Putin’s main message—both in his pre-election state-of-the-nation address and in his inauguration speech—was a promise to concentrate on technological modernisation, while maintaining tight control over politics. Not wanting to look like an ageing dictator, Mr Putin, who is 65, posed with young activists. On camera, they thanked him for all the opportunities he is offering them. In the first decree of his new term, Mr Putin ordered his government to improve health care and education and to raise living standards. That may be tricky, given the handicaps of economic stagnation, sanctions and endemic corruption, though rising oil prices will now help.

His decree copies the goals outlined in a reform programme drafted by Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and a licensed liberal in Mr Putin’s entourage. However, it does not mention the means Mr Kudrin thinks his plans would require, such as political competition and an overhaul of the judicial system to foster the rule of law. Mr Putin gave no indication that his new administration will be much different from the old one on any of these counts. On the contrary, he reappointed his pliable sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, as prime minister. This left the Russian elite none the wiser as to whom he might be grooming as his successor if he really plans to step aside when his term ends in 2024.

Muddling through until then will be increasingly difficult. Economic rents have shrunk, thanks to stagnation, and rich Russians find it harder to shelter their assets and children in the West. As a result infighting within the elite is likely to intensify; regional powerbrokers feel increasingly alienated and vulnerable. Growing political instability seems likely. Even in his shiny new bulletproof car, Mr Putin faces a bumpy ride.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Six more years"

https://ift.tt/2rwGdvK

#IFTTT #Feedly

0 notes

knowinng · 4 years

Text

As world leaders condemn Russian aggression, Trump says he and Putin 'get along'

As Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his efforts to exert his personal influence around the globe and meddle in American democracy and is accused of using a nerve agent to poison one of his main political opponents, President Donald Trump broke his recent silence on Russia and the attack on Alexey Navalny, calling it "tragic" but emphasizing that he has a good relationship with the Russian leader. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204427 https://ift.tt/2QURTWe via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204427

0 notes

dizzedcom · 4 years

Text

World leaders condemn Russian aggression. Trump says he and Putin 'get along'

World leaders condemn Russian aggression. Trump says he and Putin ‘get along’

As Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his efforts to exert his personal influence around the globe and meddle in American democracy and is accused of using a nerve agent to poison one of his main political opponents, President Donald Trump broke his recent silence on Russia and the attack on Alexey Navalny, calling it “tragic” but emphasizing that he has a good relationship with the…

View On WordPress

0 notes

actutrends · 5 years

Text

Putin’s Russia, 20 years on

Marc Bennetts is a Moscow-based reporter and author of “I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives: Inside Putin’s War on Russia’s Opposition” (Oneworld, 2016).

MOSCOW– Boris Yeltsin had a reputation for the marvelous and the unforeseeable, from buying tanks to shell a rebellious Russian parliament to drunkenly hunting for pizza in Washington in his underclothing. He saved perhaps his most significant surprise for last.

Twenty years ago this Brand-new Year’s Eve, with six months to go till completion of his last term, an ailing Yeltsin addressed Russia in a special noontime broadcast. “I am leaving. I have actually done all I could,” he said, his words slurred by disease and alcoholic abuse. “A new generation is coming. They can do more, and better.”

Later on that night, as the Kremlin clock ticked down the final minutes of the 1990 s, a dour-faced representative of that “brand-new generation” appeared prior to the country as Russia’s acting president.

” Like you, I intended this night to listen to the New Year greetings of President Boris Yeltsin,” stated Vladimir Putin, the previous state security service chief who had been called prime minister simply 4 months previously. “But things turned out otherwise.”

Life under Boris Yeltsin had been a mixture of the surreal and the monstrous.

I was in Britain that significant Brand-new Year’s Eve, but I ‘d been residing in Russia since 1997, catching the tail end of Yeltsin’s chaotic presidency. There were obviously no Twitter storms or YouTube videos of the handover of power. Rather, I found out about Yeltsin’s decision to bless Putin as Russia’s brand-new leader hours after it had occurred, via Ceefax, a now-defunct teletext info service.

I flew back to Moscow later on that week: If someone had actually possessed a crystal ball, I’m unsure what I would have been more stunned to find– that I would still be residing in the Russian capital 20 years on, or that Putin would still remain in the Kremlin.

Life under Yeltsin had actually been a mixture of the surreal and the monstrous. The Communist ideology that had actually dominated life for 7 years had actually been tossed onto history’s trash dump, leaving Russians to adjust to an odd brand-new monster called commercialism.

It was a task lots of were just not up to: Suicides increased, life cost savings were lost in wild pyramid plans, and crime rocketed. State staff members typically went unsettled for months. In August 1998, Russia defaulted on its foreign financial obligation, setting off financial collapse.

Vladimir Putin, left, with Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin in 1999|Pool photo by TASS/EPA

Soviet propaganda had portrayed life in the West as relentless misery for all but the really richest, and the 1990 s appeared to show the communists were.

Putin understood what his fellow citizens longed for.

Over the next eight years, assisted by soaring rates for oil– Russia’s main export– Putin approached doing just that. By May 2008, towards completion of his second term in workplace, salaries were not only being paid on time, but they were higher than ever. The streets of major cities began to fill with advertisements for simple loans, and individuals long accustomed to frugality suddenly found they could manage foreign holidays, brand-new cars and plasma-screen TVs.

Although political freedoms were being curtailed, independent media strangled, and money that needs to have been utilized to build up important infrastructure simply siphoned out of the country, many Russians remained quiet. After all, it seemed churlish to grumble about such things when you could invest 2 weeks a year at a Turkish Black Sea resort and after that come back to your brand-new house entertainment center.

” Putin acquired a ransacked and bewildered nation, with a poor and demoralized individuals” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident author

” People agreed on a pact with the devil,” said Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights company. “They stated, ‘We will avoid of the social and political procedure and concentrate on our private lives– simply do not touch us and leave us a small piece of the profits from your oil booty.'”

It was, as Russian intellectuals like to state, a case of “sausages in exchange for freedom.”

Sausages won out.

” What good is freedom of speech if my refrigerator is empty?” a senior female asked me in the main city of Voronezh in2007 I wasn’t sure what to reply, so I mumbled something about how, in an ideal world, she would have both. My answer stopped working to encourage her. “Both?” she stated. “Who is going to provide me both?”

It was toward the end of his 2nd term that the sale of Putin souvenirs went overboard– stores were suddenly full of clocks, mugs and even wall carpets bearing his image.

Putin got praise from unlikely quarters. “Putin acquired a rummaged and mystified country, with a poor and demoralized individuals,” said Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer. “And he started to do what was possible– a slow and gradual repair. These efforts were not noticed, nor valued, immediately.”

Solzhenitsyn was not the only fan.

Vladimir Putin souvenirs on sale in Moscow|Mladen Antonov/AFP by means of Getty Images

” I want a guy like Putin, loaded with strength/ I desire a guy like Putin, who doesn’t consume/ I desire a man like Putin, who will not upset me/ I desire a man like Putin, who will not flee,” went the lyrics to an contagious hit by a female pop duo. It was simply the very first of a variety of pop and rap songs to eulogize the Kremlin strongman.

It ended up being progressively hard to escape Putinmania.

In 2008, Russia’s military defeated neighboring Georgia in a five-day war over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

Putin’s hold over Russian politics throughout the 2000 s was outright. However as his 2nd term of workplace struck the midway point, he had to make possibly the most crucial decision of his presidency. The Russian constitution stated plainly that no president might serve more than two ” successive” terms. Putin had no strategies to give up power.

In May 2008, Putin moved to the post of prime minister while Dmitry Medvedev, his previous election project supervisor, became president.

As part of Medvedev’s much-heralded program of “modernization,” the Kremlin oversaw the reinvention of RIA Novosti, a state news agency, as a modern-day, censorship-free media outlet. In 2011, I became its very first full-time English-language reporter. This was no Kremlin propaganda outfit– RIA Novosti had total editorial independence and I spent my days speaking with opposition figures and listening to accusations of high-level corruption.

Vladimir Putin utilized Dmitry Medvedev to keep his chair warm at the head of the Kremlin|Yuri Kadobnov/AFP by means of Getty Images

Yet despite Medvedev’s tentative reforms, no one was any under illusions as to who was pulling the most essential strings.

Rather, Putin made a return to the presidency in May 2012 for a third term. As soon as safely re-installed in the Kremlin, Putin set about rolling back Medvedev’s meager reforms. In 2013, RIA Novosti was dismantled and the agency’s boss, Svetlana Mironyuk, dismissed.

Putin changed her with Dmitry Kiselyov, a well-known television presenter known for his anti-Western tirades.

It was a wake-up call for those Russians who had actually bought into Medvedev’s promises of reform. However things will get much darker.

The Kremlin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 activated an outbreak of aggressive nationalism. Putin, in a keynote speech, implicated opposition political leaders of being “nationwide traitors,” a term that his critics kept in mind had actually once been used by Adolf Hitler.

Unexpectedly, everyone in Russia wished to talk politics. It became progressively challenging to avoid getting sucked into heated conversations about the “fascist junta” in Ukraine– as Russian state media had actually taken to calling the new pro-Western federal government in Kyiv.

Later on that year, I saw a mother scream at her adult daughter that she was “betraying her homeland” because she applauded investigations by Alexei Navalny, the opposition political leader, into alleged corruption by members of Putin’s inner circle.

” There is no Russia today if there is no Putin” — Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian parliament

This environment of unchecked nationalism was encapsulated perfectly by the Night Wolves, a motorcycle gang that received around EUR1 million in state funds to promote anti-Western ideas and “traditional” Russian values.

The leather-clad gang staged performances for kids that depicted the West as intent on ruining Russia.

Amidst the stand-off over Ukraine, Putin was transformed into the living, breathing personification of Russia. As Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament, put it: “There is no Russia today if there is no Putin.”

The anniversary of Putin’s second decade in power has been accompanied by a concrete cooling of Russia’s enthusiasm for the ex-KGB officer who has currently lasted longer than 3 U.S. presidents and been accused of assisting put a fourth into the White Home.

In May, Putin’s trust scores fell to a 13- year low of just 31 percent as discontent simmered over a boost to the pension age, widespread hardship and ruthless allegations of corruption versus the political elite. Putin came to power promising stability, however his opponents are significantly drawing comparisons with Yeltsin’s “wild” 1990 s.

In my trips across Russia, far fewer people seem going to applaud Putin and his policies. Instead, anger and frustration are far more common.

Residents at a market in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Across the nation, appreciation for Putin appears to be more irregular|Mladen Antonov/AFP by means of Getty Images

” They tricked us for a while with Crimea,” Konstantin, an out of work man in Russia’s far north, told me last year. “Today he’s revealed his real colors with the pension reforms.”

This year has likewise seen a significant uptick in demonstrations over issues ranging from election scams to poisonous garbage discards The authorities are obviously so worried that in September they deployed around a dozen armed officers to detain a Siberian shaman who had vowed to amazingly expel Putin from workplace.

State-sponsored commemorations of the anniversary of Putin’s ascent to the presidency have actually been low-key. Indeed, state media has actually hardly mentioned that it is now 20 years considering that Yeltsin turned over the secrets to the Kremlin.

Konstantin Gaaze, a political expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center, recommended the silence is due to the fact that Putin is uncomfortable of memories of precisely how he ended up being president. “On 31 st December 1999, Putin was just an item of Yeltsin’s will. And he wants to forget about this,” Gaaze said. He also stated the Kremlin may be cautious about advising Russians of precisely how long Putin has been in power, especially if he intends to lengthen his guideline beyond May 2024, when his last term of workplace is because of expire.

For how long will Putin’s stranglehold on Russian politics last?|Alexey Nikolsky/AFP through Getty Images

Speculation has currently started that Putin is looking for to craft a method to stay in power. Heading a Union State with surrounding Belarus might be one option, as might another stint as prime minister.

It’s not likely, naturally, that Putin will handle another 20 years as Russia’s leader. And even if he does, it’s extremely unlikely that I will still be in Moscow to report on it.

Just a fool, nevertheless, would entirely rule out either circumstance.

The post Putin’s Russia, 20 years on appeared first on Actu Trends.

0 notes

newstfionline · 3 years

Text

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Arizona third-grader holds food drives to help in pandemic (AP) Neighbors walked by during their morning stroll, passing families waved from their bikes and drivers slowed down long enough to read the hand-drawn sign—“Dylan’s Food Drive.” The poster was taped to two PVC pipes that were stuck inside construction cones for support. It was a typical scene for 8-year-old Dylan Pfeifer, who has been staging food drives from his home in metro Phoenix in response to the pandemic. Each drive is the culmination of hours of work that involves drawing posters, going door-to-door to hand out flyers and working with his mother to post information on Facebook. Dylan has hosted three drives from his home in Chandler, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Phoenix. He said he is planning his next one in June, when summer vacation begins. Dylan says he has collected more than 1,000 cans and boxes of nonperishable food and more than $900 in donations. On its website, St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix says it can convert $1 into seven meals, meaning Dylan has been able to provide more than 6,500 meals on just monetary donations. “It’s rare that you see kids at Dylan’s age who have a handle on what the problem is in their community, the people around them who are affected by it, and have the courage to do something about it,” said Jerry Brown, director of media relations at St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. Erin Pfeifer said the best part for her, as his mother, has been watching Dylan grow.

Verdict heard around the world: Global reactions to the George Floyd case (Washington Post) The conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd resonated globally, with foreign dignitaries and community leaders reacting to a verdict that revived calls for an international reckoning on racial inequality in justice systems around the world. Chauvin, who is White, was found guilty Tuesday of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd, a Black man he pinned down outside a Minneapolis grocery store last year. Foreign media outlets ran live coverage, showing how the trial resonated far beyond its national context, and highlighting the outsized role the U.S. racial justice conversation plays internationally, as the rest of the world is forced to grapple with its own race relations. Floyd’s killing in May proved to be a moment of reckoning not only in the United States but also across the world, as protesters took to the streets calling for justice in his case and pointing to what they saw as parallels in their communities. In Japan, crowds last year gathered in Osaka holding signs that read “Black lives matter,” while in Germany, protesters took to the streets of Berlin holding placards that said “White silence is violence” and “I can’t breathe.” In Britain last year, they chanted for Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old who was shot by police during his attempted arrest in 2011. In France, they said the name Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old who died in police custody in 2016. In Australia, where Floyd’s death last year spurred a resurgence in activism over Indigenous people’s deaths in police custody, the guilty verdict led to fresh calls for authorities to scrutinize more than 400 Aboriginal deaths in custody.

Surveillance Nation (BuzzFeed News) A controversial facial recognition tool designed for policing has been quietly deployed across the country with little to no public oversight. According to reporting and data reviewed by BuzzFeed News, more than 7,000 individuals from nearly 2,000 public agencies nationwide have used Clearview AI to search through millions of Americans’ faces, looking for people, including Black Lives Matter protesters, Capitol insurrectionists, petty criminals, and their own friends and family members. BuzzFeed News has developed a searchable table of 1,803 publicly funded agencies whose employees are listed in the data as having used or tested the controversial policing tool before February 2020. These include local and state police, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Air Force, state healthcare organizations, offices of state attorneys general, and even public schools. In many cases, leaders at these agencies were unaware that employees were using the tool. Such widespread use of Clearview means that facial recognition may have been used in your hometown with very few people knowing about it. The New York City–based startup claims to have amassed one of the largest-known repositories of pictures of people’s faces—a database of more than 3 billion images scraped without permission from places such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you’ve posted images online, your social media profile picture, vacation snapshots, or family photos may well be part of a facial recognition dragnet that’s been tested or used by law enforcement agencies across the country.

Violence erupts as Mexico’s deadly gangs aim to cement power in largest ever elections (The Guardian) Violent clashes between rival Mexican criminal groups—and their alleged allies in the security forces—are escalating ahead of mid-term elections in June, triggering a string of political assassinations and the forced displacement of thousands. With more than 21,000 posts in local, state and national government up for election—including 15 state governorships—the 6 June polls are the largest in Mexico’s history, and criminal groups see the elections as an opportunity to further their interests. Much of the recent fighting has focused on the western state of Michoacán, where the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (Jalisco New Generation cartel) has stepped up its conflict with an alliance of local groups calling themselves the United Cartels. The violence has forced more than a thousand people to flee the area, feeding the flow of migrants heading to the US to seek asylum. “They are leaving because they get caught in the crossfire, because their homes have been destroyed, [and] because the main roads into [the area] have been carved up to stop the advance of the Jaliscos,” said Gregorio López, a Catholic priest who has sheltered refuges in the nearby city of Apatzingán. The Jalisco cartel, Mexico’s fastest-expanding criminal network, considers Michoacán, rich in international trafficking routes and extortion markets, a key building block in its bid for national criminal hegemony. But its decade-long attempt to take over the region has so far been frustrated by the local opponents’ deep political and social roots. With neither side able to impose its designs on the other or willing to back down, more than 15,500 homicides have been recorded here from January 2011 to February this year.

In Putin’s Standoff With Navalny, Many Russians Put Faith in President (WSJ) Thousands of demonstrators are expected to take to the streets in many Russian cities Wednesday in support of Alexei Navalny, the jailed opposition leader who has galvanized popular discontent with the long rule of President Vladimir Putin. But even as the opposition leader stirs dissent, Mr. Putin can count on the support of many Russians who either trust in his leadership, fear the uncertainties of political change or disapprove of Mr. Navalny and his protest movement. “If it were up to me, Putin would stay another 20 years in power,” said fashion designer Irina Larkina from her home in a drab apartment block in this Russian city on the Baltic sea. “He’s the one who has boosted our living standards and given us respect for ourselves again.” Even amid falling living standards and Western sanctions, Mr. Putin continues to enjoy enviable approval ratings. Sociologists say while few may feel deep support for Mr. Putin, the Kremlin can continue to count on approval ratings of around 60%. “There’s a point at which popularity won’t fall any further,” said Lev Gudkov, head of independent polling organization Levada Center. “The country has fallen into two camps, but the Kremlin knows there is a wealth of support it can still draw from within the population, even though it’s fallen in recent years,” he added.

Indian hospitals buckle amid virus surge (AP) Seema Gandotra, sick with the coronavirus, gasped for breath in an ambulance for 10 hours as it tried unsuccessfully to find an open bed at six hospitals in India’s sprawling capital. By the time she was admitted, it was too late, and the 51-year-old died hours later. Rajiv Tiwari, whose oxygen levels began falling after he tested positive for the virus, has the opposite problem: He identified an open bed, but the resident of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh can’t get to it. “There is no ambulance to take me to the hospital,” he said. These tragedies are now everyday occurrences in the vast country, which is seeing its largest surge of the pandemic so far and watching its chronically underfunded health system crumble. Tests are delayed. Medical oxygen is scarce. Hospitals are understaffed and overflowing. Intensive care units are full. Nearly all ventilators are in use, and the dead are piling up at crematoriums and graveyards. India recorded over 250,000 new infections and over 1,700 deaths in the past 24 hours alone, and the U.K. announced a travel ban on most visitors from the country this week. Overall, India has reported more than 15 million cases and some 180,000 deaths—and experts say these numbers are likely undercounted. “The surge in infections has come like a storm and a big battle lies ahead,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an address to the nation Tuesday night.

Further evidence in case against Indian activists accused of terrorism was planted, new report says (Washington Post) An unknown hacker planted more than 30 documents that investigators deemed incriminating on a laptop belonging to an Indian activist accused of terrorism, a new forensic analysis finds, indicating a more extensive use of malicious software than previously revealed. The report will heighten concerns about the controversial prosecution of a group of government critics under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Known as the Bhima Koregaon case, the prosecution is considered a bellwether for the rule of law in India. Human rights groups and legal experts view the case as an effort by the government to clamp down on critics. The space for dissent has diminished in Modi’s India, where journalists, activists and members of nongovernmental organizations have faced arrest and harassment. The activists accused in the case deny the charges against them. They include a prominent academic, a labor lawyer, a leftist poet, a Jesuit priest and two singers. All are advocates for the rights of the country’s most disadvantaged communities and vocal opponents of the ruling party. Many of them have been jailed for nearly three years as they await trial.

Community pantries offer reprieve from covid-19 hardships in the Philippines (Washington Post) They were of different ages, genders, and walks of life. Some had been there since sunrise. A number carried umbrellas and canvas bags. Hundreds stood in a line that stretched three blocks on Wednesday, all waiting for their turn to stock up on donated food. The community pantry, as it is known, bore a sign: Give what you can, take what you need. A week after the initiative began as a humble cart with free vegetables and canned goods, over 300 similar donation-driven efforts have popped up across the Philippines. The grass-roots action underlines the economic pain Filipinos are experiencing as they battle one of Southeast Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks and a harsh lockdown. The idea began when a small-business owner teamed up with local vegetable vendors and farmers who offered their produce to those in need. Within days, it grew into a multi-sector effort encompassing a variety of food and essential items—bread, eggs, fruit, rice, water, noodles—donated by rich and poor alike.

Iran Rattled as Israel Repeatedly Strikes Key Targets (NYT) In less than nine months, an assassin on a motorbike fatally shot an Al Qaeda commander given refuge in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist was machine-gunned on a country road, and two separate, mysterious explosions rocked a key Iranian nuclear facility in the desert, striking the heart of the country’s efforts to enrich uranium. The steady drumbeat of attacks, which intelligence officials said were carried out by Israel, highlighted the seeming ease with which Israeli intelligence was able to reach deep inside Iran’s borders and repeatedly strike its most heavily guarded targets, often with the help of turncoat Iranians. The attacks, the latest wave in more than two decades of sabotage and assassinations, have exposed embarrassing security lapses. Most alarming for Iran, Iranian officials and analysts said, was that the attacks revealed that Israel had an effective network of collaborators inside Iran and that Iran’s intelligence services had failed to find them. “That the Israelis are effectively able to hit Iran inside in such a brazen way is hugely embarrassing and demonstrates a weakness that I think plays poorly inside Iran,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House.

With most adults now vaccinated, Israelis are busting loose (Washington Post) Israel is partying like it’s 2019. With most adults now vaccinated against the coronavirus and restrictions falling away—including the lifting this week of outdoor mask requirements—Israelis are joyously resuming routines that were disrupted more than a year ago and providing a glimpse of what the future could hold for other countries. Restaurants are booming outside and in. Concerts, bars and hotels are open to those who can flash their vaccine certificates. Classrooms are back to pre-covid capacity. The rate of new infections has plummeted—from a peak of almost 10,000 a day to about 140—and the number of serious coronavirus cases in many hospitals is down to single digits. The emergency covid-19 ward at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv resumed duty as a parking garage, and waiting rooms are suddenly flooded with non-covid patients coming for long-deferred treatments.

Rebels threaten to march on capital as Chad reels from president’s battlefield death (Reuters) Rebel forces set their sights on Chad’s capital N’Djamena on Wednesday following the battlefield death of President Idriss Deby, threatening to bring more disruption to a country vital to international efforts to combat Islamist militants in Africa. Schools and some businesses were open in N’Djamena on Wednesday but many people had opted to stay home and the streets were quiet, a Reuters witness said.

#headlines #news

1 note · View note

courtneytincher · 5 years

Text

Moscow Cops Raid Offices of Putin Opponent Alexei Navalny, But Alexei Navalny Just Won’t Quit

Oleg Nikishin/Epsilon/GettyMOSCOW—At about 8 o’clock Thursday night, days before municipal elections, police special forces—men in black uniforms with faces hidden under black balaclavas—broke the door to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, stormed in and confiscated pretty much everything: computers, cameras, film lights, cell phones, clothes, food, as well as thousands of documents important for independent election observers. Two hours later police detained nine of the foundation’s members in different corners of the Russian capital.During the raid Navalny, famous for his cool resistance and extraordinary stamina, took a video of his team’s lawyers playing soccer in the office, as if nothing unusual was happening. In the past decade Russian authorities have put Navalny behind bars dozens of times for hundreds of days.Alexei Navalny on Standing Up to Putin and His Murderous MinionsNavalny has risked his life in a political environment where many opponents and critics of President Vladimir Putin have been killed or died under suspicious circumstances. Last month somebody tried to shut him up in jail with a mysterious poison. Although Navalny and several other key opposition politicians spent weeks of their summer behind bars, thousands of protesters came out to the streets—showing the movement could live without leaders. Random Moscow residents demanded fair and free elections and an end to political repression. People marched on Moscow’s streets chanting: “Russia will be free!”In an interview with The Daily Beast earlier this year Navalny said, “We are fearless and unstoppable, no matter how harsh the pressure is from Putin’s thuggish government.” If Navalny is calm and stable, Russian authorities have demonstrated hysterical behavior during the weeks of the election campaign: nearly every weekend police grabbed thousands of peaceful protesters at anti-government rallies, threatening children and parents, releasing some political prisoners and locking up others for long terms. “This is the most chaotic and messy strategy; obviously Russian authorities miscalculated the opposition’s explosive potential force,” Tanya Lokshina, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, told The Daily Beast. “Nearly every weekend police units block Moscow streets for pedestrians and injure dozens of peaceful people, who exercise their constitutional right; at least five opposition activists have been sentenced to shockingly long terms--two, three, four years in prison.” An estimated 30 percent of Moscow’s protesters are young people, age 20 to 35, many of them are students at Russia’s best universities, and the opposition student movement is growing, participants sign letters demanding to free political prisoners, collect money for defense lawyers, organize peaceful rallies and discussions. “We are a positive movement, our main strength is solidarity, we are sincere, we unite against indifference, cynicism and the unfairness of government actions,” 21-year-old student Nikita Ponarin told The Daily Beast on Friday.Send The Daily Beast a TipPonarin is in his fourth year at the Higher School of Economics, one of Russia’s leading state universities. He studies political science and as with many well-educated young Russians is critical of the Kremlin’s politics. Day after day before the elections municipal services wash Moscow’s central streets with soap, paint façades of the buildings, fix roofs and install fancy street lighting while police grab the future Russian professional, the new generation of liberal politicians all over these streets. “We have no lack of access to information about the wars in Ukraine or Syria, we are not afraid of fines or dozens of days in jail as punishment for our participation in protests; but we are concerned about long prison terms,” Ponarin admitted to The Daily Beast. While police raided Navalny’s office on Thursday night, a Moscow court sentenced one more opposition activist, 34-year-old IT specialist Konstantin Kotov to four years in prison for participating in several unsanctioned protests this year. Hundreds of people chanted Freedom for Kotov! Freedom for political prisoners! Russia will be free!” outside of the court at a spontaneous protest. “The Russian Constitutional Court ruled that peaceful protesters should not be put in jail even for a minute, if they do not constitute a threat to society and yet they sentenced Kotov to a shockingly long term, four years in prison,” Lokshina told The Daily Beast after examining the court’s verdict. Earlier this week police detained our colleague Ilya Azar, a journalist for the independent Novaya Gazeta, right outside of the unlocked door to his apartment. Just like Kotov, Azar was accused of attending unsanctioned protests. The journalist explained to police that his 2-year-old daughter was alone in the apartment but the state officials did not want to hear anything about any private issues and took Azar away from his baby. When Azar’s wife arrived half an hour later, the door to the flat was unlocked. Luckily, the baby girl was sleeping peacefully.By arresting peaceful activists, Russian authorities risk turning politically passive citizens into opponents who will be joining rallies to demand their constitutional right. University students refer to this strategy as “shortsighted,” and Russian lawmakers appear oblivious to their domestic mistakes. Instead, a special commission has been created to look for foreign enemies to blame for the protests. A member of the State Duma, or parliament, Vadim Dengin, said he still suspected the West, especially the United States and Germany, of helping to develop the growing anti-Putin movement. “Somebody helped the opposition to create professionally made banners like ‘Moscow, come out!’ Just imagine something like ‘Washington, come out!’" Dengin said. “Russian domestic politics is only Russia’s affairs. Nobody has a right to call for the change of power, a revolution. Soon we’ll publish the documents to show who was behind the revolt.”Alexei Navalny ‘Poisoning’ Comes at a Critical Moment in Moscow Protests(Americans concerned about the well-documented Russian interference in U.S. politics will no doubt see the irony in these claims.)By now every small and big bureaucrat working at the Kremlin’s administration and Moscow city hall must realize that no arrests, no threats can put an end to the anti-Putin rallies and to the newly emerging political class. For 15 days before the Moscow elections, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation had been publishing reports about shadowy schemes plotted by President Vladimir Putin’s federal and municipal government members.The latest investigative reports came out on Friday, just a few hours after police confiscations and detentions at Navalny’s office. In one simple illustration Navalny showed photographs of Alexander Beglov, the acting governor of St.Petersburg, wearing watches worth more than an average Russian’s annual salary, 10 million Rubles ($15,127). Navalny wondered where Beglov found money to buy the unaffordable-for-any-bureaucrat timepieces. Or, hm, did Beglov take the watches as bribes? Navalny’s team also explained the anatomy of corruption at Moscow’s mayoral office, including dubious real estate schemes for more than $100 million. The corruption fighters showed Moscow Deputy Mayor Natalya Sergunina’ five huge residences, giving details of offshore real estate deals registered on Sergunina’s sister, husband Lazar Safaniyev and Safaniyev’s British and Austrian companies. “Honest, competent people should be managing Moscow but they will never appear if we are going to sit on the couch,” the report concluded. “We have neither a right to voluntarily give up on Moscow city hall, nor on St. Petersburg municipality or any other institution with power.” Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

September 06, 2019 at 09:40PM via IFTTT

#Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

0 notes

jennywboman · 4 years

Text

US, EU impose sanctions on Russia over Navalny poisoning, jailing

US, EU impose sanctions on Russia over Navalny poisoning, jailing:

FILE PHOTO: Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny attends a listening to to contemplate an enchantment towards an earlier court docket choice to vary his suspended sentence to an actual jail time period, in Moscow, Russia February 20, 2021. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions to punish Russia for what it described as Moscow’s try and poison opposition chief Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent final 12 months, in President Joe Biden’s most direct problem but to the Kremlin.

The sanctions towards seven senior Russian officers, amongst them the top of its FSB safety service, and on 14 entities marked a pointy departure from former President Donald Trump’s reluctance to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, 44, fell sick on a flight in Siberia in August and was airlifted to Germany, the place docs concluded he had been poisoned with a nerve agent. The Kremlin has denied any function in his sickness and stated it had seen no proof he was poisoned.

Navalny was arrested in January on his return from Germany following therapy for poisoning with what many Western nations say was a military-grade nerve agent. He was jailed on Feb. 2 for parole violations on what he says have been politically motivated fees, and despatched to a penal colony on Monday.

“The (U.S.) intelligence community assesses with high confidence that officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) used a nerve agent to poison Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated, discussing the sanctions.

Among these blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury Department have been Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB; Andrei Yarin, chief of the Kremlin’s home coverage directorate; and deputy ministers of protection Alexei Krivoruchko and Pavel Popov.

The Treasury additionally stated it blacklisted Sergei Kiriyenko, a former prime minister who’s now Putin’s first deputy chief of workers; Alexander Kalashnikov, director of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service; and Prosecutor-General Igor Krasnov.

As a consequence, all property of the seven beneath U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and U.S. individuals are typically barred from coping with them. In addition, any foreigner who knowingly “facilitates a significant transaction” for them dangers being sanctioned.

It was unclear whether or not the seven had U.S. property, making it arduous to guage whether or not the sanctions have been greater than symbolic.

“We also reiterate our call for the Russian government to release Mr. Navalny,” stated the spokeswoman.

Psaki defended the choice to not sanction Putin or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence believes accepted an operation to seize or kill murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, saying this mirrored a necessity “to be able to maintain a relationship moving forward.”

Navalny, a critic and political opponent of Putin, was focused for elevating increase questions on Russian corruption and was the newest instance of Russian efforts to silence dissent, U.S. officers instructed reporters on a convention name.

“Russia’s attempt to kill Mr. Navalny follows an alarming pattern of chemical weapons use by Russia,” a senior U.S. official instructed reporters on a name, referring to the March 2018 poisoning of former Russian army intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England with a military-grade nerve agent.

In addition 14 entities related to Russia’s organic and chemical agent manufacturing, together with 13 business events – 9 in Russia, three in Germany and one in Switzerland – and a Russian authorities analysis institute, have been hit with punitive measures.

The United States acted in live performance with the European Union, which on Tuesday imposed largely symbolic sanctions on 4 senior Russian officers near Putin, a transfer agreed by EU ministers final week in response to Navalny’s jailing.

The EU sanctions apply to Alexander Bastrykin, whose Investigative Committee handles main legal probes and stories to Putin; Viktor Zolotov, head of Russia’s National Guard who threatened Navalny with violence in 2018; in addition to to Krasnov and Kalashnikov.

The EU sanctions fall in need of calls by Navalny’s supporters to punish rich businessmen round Putin often called oligarchs who journey commonly to the EU.

Unlike Western sanctions imposed on Russia’s economic system in 2014 in response to its annexation of Crimea, journey bans and asset freezes have much less affect, consultants say, as a result of state officers would not have funds in EU banks or journey to the EU.

Further sanctions are probably because the United States assesses the Russian function within the huge SolarWinds cyber hack and allegations that Russia sought to intrude within the 2020 U.S. election and supplied bounties to Taliban fighters to kill American troopers in Afghanistan, U.S. officers stated.

Biden has taken a more durable strategy to Putin than Trump.

“We expect this relationship to remain a challenge,” stated a U.S. official, saying Washington would work with Moscow when it served U.S. pursuits. “Given Russia’s conduct in recent months and years, there will also undoubtedly be adversarial elements.”

Before the U.S. announcement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated Moscow would reply in variety to any new U.S. sanctions over Navalny, the Interfax information company reported.

Speaking after the announcement, Russia’s envoy to the European Union, Vladimir Chizov, stated Moscow would reply to the newest spherical of EU sanctions, RIA information company reported.