September 8, 2000

#2
Moscow Times
September 7, 2000 
DEFENSE DOSSIER: Reactions to NMD Deferral 
By Pavel Felgenhauer 

Last week, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that he would not go ahead 
with the development of a national missile defense system, or NMD, deferring 
any decision to his successor. 

Russia was quick to heap on the applause. "Clinton's decision is seen in 
Russia as a well-thought and responsible step," an official statement quoted 
President Vladimir Putin as saying. "There is no doubt this step will lead to 
strengthening strategic stability and security in the world, and will 
strengthen the authority of the United States in the eyes of the 
international community," the statement continued. 

But it soon turned out that Putin was misinformed: In the eyes of our 
military, the United States did not in fact gain much credit by postponing 
NMD. The official defense spokesman, three-star General Valery Manilov, first 
deputy chief of staff of the armed forces, told reporters that Clinton's NMD 
postponement was "a false-bottomed suitcase." 

It has been reported that many U.S. State Department and National Security 
Council officials had been pressing the Clinton administration to postpone 
NMD deployment so as to avoid serious strains within NATO. Sources in the 
Pentagon say that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff are not enthusiastic about 
NMD, since an expensive missile defense would drain dollars from more 
realistic defense programs. It has also been reported that many in Washington 
were in fact relieved that a NMD interceptor test failed in July. It was 
proven that NMD is still technically unfeasible, so it was easy for Clinton 
to make a decision to postpone deployment. 

In Moscow, by contrast, the military was not so pleased. A decision to 
postpone NMD came just as the Defense Ministry is fighting to increase its 
2001 budget. At the same time, Clinton's announcement impeded Defense 
Minister Igor Sergeyev's attempts to fend off continuous assaults by hostile 
military forces inside his own ministry (led by his first deputy, General 
Anatoly Kvashnin) that are aimed at reducing the nation's nuclear forces and 
redistributing defense funds toward conventional weapons. 

After speaking to Russian defense officials involved in strategic planning 
and arms control negotiations, I have learned that our military 
representatives are not afraid of U.S. missile defense plans; they know that 
waterproof missile defense is technically unfeasible today and will remain so 
for a decade or two. Our military chiefs know that the United States cannot 
nullify our nuclear deterrent, that relatively inexpensive countermeasures 
deployed on intercontinental missiles can fully negate the most robust NMD 
the United States might muster. 

At the same time, though, a U.S. NMD plan is a powerful weapon to frighten 
the Russian public into sacrificing more for its defense. It is no surprise 
that Manilov actually denounced Clinton's decision to postpone NMD. 

Since 1991, the Defense Ministry has maintained a Soviet-style armed force, 
with thousands of nuclear weapons and heavy weapons on a par with the United 
States, hoping that the bad years of neglect and pro-Western reforms will 
end. Military chiefs dreamed of the day when the nation would turn around and 
pump all available resources into defense. 

Last year, unwarranted NATO bombardments of Yugoslavia caused a public outcry 
here, and Putin was elected to the Kremlin on a nationalistic platform of 
"restoring" our military greatness. The present war in Chechnya (portrayed by 
official propaganda as a resounding success) has caused a surge of 
pro-militaristic sentiment. And this year, the uniform military was expecting 
a windfall budget. 

But the boom didn't materialize. The military's growing bitterness was 
evident during the tragic Kursk saga, when rank and file officers openly 
accused the Kremlin of neglecting the armed forces. At the same time, the top 
brass did its best to whip up anti-Western sentiment by implying, without 
solid evidence, that the Kursk was done in by a NATO sub. 

After the Kursk disaster, Putin called for military reform that would produce 
a "compact, modern, well-paid army" that the country can support. But the 
same words f verbatim f have been coming out of the Kremlin since 1991, and 
to no effect. Is Putin serious, or is talk of comprehensive military reform 
as double-dealing as previous statements? 

Putin is trying to promote economic liberalism and authoritarian nationalism 
at the same time. But inherent Russian militaristic anti-Western policies are 
totally incompatible with liberal reforms f or, for that matter, with massive 
Western investments. Putin wants it both ways. Which will he get in the end? 

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst. 

******

#3
Russian military to shed 400,000 troops by 2003: reports

MOSCOW, Sept 7 (AFP) - 
Russian defence chiefs plan drastic measures to slim the country's outsize 
armed forces, with 400,000 service personnel -- a third of the total -- to be 
shed by 2003, news agencies quoted a senior military official saying Thursday.

The first phase of the unprecedented cut in Russia's 1.2 million-strong armed 
forces is expected to begin next year, the official told the AVN military 
news agency.

It is planned to reduce the land forces by almost 180,000 servicemen, the 
navy by over 50,000 and the air force by roughly 40,000, the Interfax news 
agency said.

Other power structures will also be downsized, the source said, with the 
number of elite troops attached to the interior ministry being cut by over 
20,000, and corresponding reductions in the federal border guard and special 
units such as railway troops.

The scale of the likely troop reductions surprised military analysts who had 
been predicting a more gradual approach to the crisis in Russia's outsized 
armed services.

"We had been expecting a reduction, but a much smaller one, to the level of 
just under a million perhaps and over a longer period of time, to 2010," AVN 
military expert Yury Gladkevich told AFP.

"The Kursk submarine catastrophe had a role to play in this decision," he 
added.

The Strategic Missile Force (SMF) will also see a reduction of some 10 
missile divisions by 2006, while the space missile defence troops and the 
space military forces will be transferred to the Russian general staff, 
Interfax cited the official saying.

The SMF is expected to be transformed into an independent arm of service in 
2002, and to be included in the Russian air force by 2006, the agency said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to reform Russia's demoralised armed 
forces in the wake of the sinking last month's of the Kursk nuclear submarine 
but he has resisted calls from hardline Communists in parliament for a hike 
in defence spending.

The draft budget, to be debated by the Duma on September 26, earmarks 206 
billion rubles (7.2 billion dollars, 8.3 billion euros), or 2.66 percent of 
GDP, for the security forces, as opposed to 107.3 billion rubles (or 1.38 
percent of GDP) to be spent on social measures.

But Kremlin critics have already pointed out that the 206-billion-ruble 
figure, which represents almost a fifth of Russia's total budget, is still 
not enough to maintain an army of 1.2 million troops.

The rumoured plan to cut service personnel by a third over the next three 
years would seem to furnish evidence that Russia's defence establishment has 
conceded the point.

Last month, in the aftermath of the Kursk disaster, Putin surprised defence 
analysts by authorising a 20 per cent increase in armed forces wages, due to 
take effect from December 1.

The long-term burden on state coffers of honouring such a pay increase would 
be lessened by a drastic cut in the number of armed servicemen, analysts said 
Thursday.

The low level of salaries was often cited as a cause of low morale in the 
armed services in the wake of the Barents Sea tragedy, in which all of the 
Kursk's 118 crew were killed.

Ordinary Russian soldiers and sailors earn about 35 dollars a month, with the 
monthly wage for officers being 70 dollars on average, according to Ministry 
of Defence figures.

Russia's defence ministry, the army general staff, the finance ministry and 
the ministry for industry, science and technologies are currently calculating 
how much the planned reforms will cost, Interfax reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, Russia's once-mighty army was steeling itself for yet another 
innovation, it emerged Thursday, with a government plan to let the 
cash-strapped military raise extra funds in the commercial sector.

The enterprising scheme, laid out in article 74 of the 2001 draft budget, 
will permit Russia's defence ministry to undertake "profit-making activities 
... on the basis of contracts" in the private sector.

The experiment first piloted in the early 1990s was soon discredited amid 
tales of Red Army generals siphoning off millions of dollars to build 
themselves luxury mansions.

The army was "eaten up by corruption, as if by rust," former president Boris 
Yeltsin declared in 1996, shortly before he sacked then defence minister 
Pavel Grachev.

******

#4
Millennium Summit to Give UN Second Breath Russian-Expert. .

MOSCOW, September 7 (Itar-Tass) - A Russian expert in US studies said the 
Millennium Summit being held in New York is an attempt to give the United 
Nations a second breath and a manifestation of global solidarity in solving 
burning international problems. 

"What the UN needs is a thorough revamp. One is now investing in what he gets 
profit from, while the UN is devouring more and more money with scant 
return," Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute for 
US and Canada Studies, told Tass on Thursday. 

Kremenyuk sounded highly critical of the United Nation's lack of efficiency 
during the Kosovo events, when NATO took action against Yugoslavia in 
circumvention of the international body. 

"The Yugoslavia crisis was a blow at the UN prestige and role, and Russia 
alone was unable to do anything to remedy the situation," he said. 

The Russian expert also criticised the UN for being overstaffed. "It is a 
kind of global superstructure, with thousands or probably tens of thousands 
of retired officials receiving pensions," he said. 

However, he praised the UN role in the decolonisation period and during the 
Cold War, when it was a "mechanism for balancing the interests of leading 
countries". 

"But things have changed drastically since then, which is why the UN needs 
reform. UN officials themselves admit it," he said. 

Another expert of the Institute for US and Canada Studies, Valery Mazeng, in 
charge of the military policy department, said the UN was a unique 
organisation capable of solving international disputes. 

"Despite all of its shortcomings, nothing better than the UN has ever been 
created to keep the world from breaking apart," Mazeng said. 

Asked whether the UN might disband League-of-Nations-style, he said it all 
depended on what attitudes all countries would take towards it. 

"Countries should consolidate their efforts and extract lessons from history 
and experience to improve the UN performance," he said. 

"A multi-polar world will certainly come some day, if not today then 
tomorrow, because a single country cannot dominate global development," 
Mazeng added. 

*******

#5
US Navy provides Russia with assessment on Kursk explosions

WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (AFP) - 
The US Navy has told Russia it believes the Kursk submarine was sundered last 
month by back-to-back explosions, the second one equivalent to a force of 
between one and five tonnes of TNT, a US official said Thursday.

Admiral Vernon Clark, responding to a Russian request for information, sent 
an unclassified memorandum to his Russian counterpart August 31 summarizing 
what the US Navy knew about the events that sank the Kursk in the Barents Sea 
on August 12, the official said.

National security adviser Sandy Berger submitted a copy of Clark's letter to 
his counterpart at the Millennium Summit in New York Wednesday and another 
copy was sent to Moscow through diplomatic channels, the official said.

The memorandum "gave some assessment information based on data available to 
us, and we're not indicating where that data came from, but none of the 
information we provided was classified," the official told AFP.

It provided what the Navy assessed to be the time of the explosions, their 
magnitude, and the approximate location of the source of the explosions, the 
official said.

The explosions were two minutes, 16 seconds apart -- first occurring at 
0728:26 GMT on August 12, and the second at 0730:42 GMT, the official said.

"The second explosion was considered to be 45 or 50 times greater than the 
first explosion," the official said.

The date and time correlated with press reports that said the Kursk, an Oscar 
II-class attack submarine, had gone down in the frigid Barents Sea with its 
118-man crew, the official said. No survivors were recovered.

"We gave the approximate location as 69 degrees 38 minutes north and 37 
degrees 19 minutes east," he said.

"We don't know what depth the Kursk may have been at, but depending on the 
depth of the submarine, the equivalency of explosions would be between one 
and five tonnes of TNT," the official said.

He said the assessment did not characterize the source of the explosions, 
which other US officials have said occurred inside the submarine and were not 
consistent with a collision.

Some Russian officials have advanced the theory that the explosions may have 
been triggered by a collision, possibly with a foreign submarine or a World 
War II mine.

"We don't know what caused the accident, and we reconfirmed that there were 
no US ships or submarines involved in the incident," the defense official 
said.

He said it was unlikely that Clark's memo provided information that the 
Russians didn't already know from their own sources.

Nevertheless, the sharing of information was unusual because submarine 
activities have traditionally been among the secrets most closely guarded by 
the former Cold War adversaries.

The defense official said the navy's assessment was drawn from "all sources," 
including such open sources as seismographic data and government and press 
reports.

The official said no acoustical data was turned over to the Russians. But the 
assessment would almost certainly have drawn on acoustical and other data 
collected by the two US submarines and a surveillance ship that other 
officials have said were in the general area to monitor Russian navy 
exercises.

The Russian request for information on the incident came in the form of an 
official communique August 25, the defense official said.

*******

#6
Moscow Times
September 7, 2000 
The Price of Humanity's Hubris 
By Lloyd J. Dumas (ljdumas@utdallas.edu) 
Lloyd J. Dumas is a professor of political economy at the University of 
Texas, Dallas. He contributed this article to the Los Angeles Times.

The sinking of the pride of the Russian submarine fleet, the Kursk, is not 
just another tragic loss of life at sea. It added two more nuclear reactors 
and perhaps nuclear warheads, as well, to the more than half-dozen reactors 
and nearly 50 nuclear warheads already on the bottom of the sea. No one knows 
just how much ecological damage this nuclear graveyard is generating or when 
its latent threat to human life will become manifest. 

Blaming the deteriorating condition of Russia's military forces for the Kursk 
tragedy obscures a key point. Similar accidents have happened before, under 
different conditions. When the U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarine Thresher 
sank with 129 men and two nuclear-armed SUBROC missiles aboard, it was 1963, 
and the Cold War was at its height. When a Yankee-class Russian submarine 
carrying 16 missiles, each armed with two nuclear warheads, sank 960 
kilometers northeast of Bermuda in water 4.8 kilometers deep, it was 1986, in 
the heady, early days of glasnost and perestroika. Eight years later, Russian 
scientists told U.S. experts that the sub had broken up. The warheads and 
missiles, they said, were "badly damaged and scattered on the sea floor" and 
were surely leaking plutonium and uranium. In 1993, the Russians warned that 
plutonium from the nuclear submarine Komsomolets, which sank in the Norwegian 
Sea in 1989 with two nuclear torpedoes on board, was in danger of leaking and 
poisoning important fishing grounds. 

All told, there are two U.S., one French and five Russian submarines in the 
underwater nuclear graveyard. But that is not the end of the story. The Kola 
Peninsula, off of which the Kursk sank, has become a junkyard for 100 
Soviet-era nuclear-powered subs that are rusting away with their nuclear 
reactors still on board. The 50,000 nuclear-fuel assemblies from the reactors 
are sitting in storage tanks, some of which are probably leaking and in 
open-air bins on military bases and shipyards. At present rates, it will take 
decades to transport them to permanent storage. 

The Kursk tragedy, in which 118 Russian sailors died, is the latest in a long 
line of nuclear military accidents. During the 45 years before the Kursk was 
built, there were at least 89 publicly reported military accidents involving 
nuclear weapons: 59 American, 25 Soviet/Russian, four French and one British. 
In addition to submarines, the accidents involved fighter planes, bombers, 
missiles, nuclear-waste storage facilities and surface ships. They occurred 
despite the best efforts of first-rate designers, careful manufacturers and 
well-trained crews. What lesson can be drawn from all this? 

We live in an age dominated by the advance of technology. The clash between 
our growing technological power and our enduring fallibility has laid us open 
to disaster on an unprecedented scale, by accident or design. 

Despite the end of the Cold War, there are still tens of thousands of nuclear 
weapons around the globe. U.S. nuclear forces remain on high alert. Two more 
nations, India and Pakistan, have joined the nuclear club within the past two 
years. Yet, nuclear weapons are not the only technology that threatens us. 

Chemical and biological weapons, whether in the hands of hostile governments 
or terrorists, can kill large numbers of people. Then there are technologies 
designed for benign purposes but capable of doing enormous damage if things 
go dramatically wrong. Two of the worst accidents in the 20th century 
involved such technologies: the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown on 
April 26, 1986, and the release of a cloud of toxic chemicals from a 
pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on Dec. 3, 1984, which killed 2,000 people 
and injured 200,000 more. 

There is no way to eliminate risk from the world and we would be foolish to 
try. But there are less-risky technologies, more forgiving of human 
fallibility, that are either on the shelf or within reach. One of the most 
heavily subsidized energy technologies, nuclear power can be replaced by a 
variety of alternative energy sources, from solar and wind power to biomass 
conversion. If a concentrated and well-funded effort is necessary to lower 
cost and increase efficiency, it is a social investment worth making. For 
other dangerous technologies, a mix of technological and nontechnological 
alternatives might be more effective. 

In the mid-1990s, military figures such as General George Lee Butler, the 
commander in charge of all U.S. strategic nuclear weapons from 1991 to 1994, 
and General Charles Horner, head of the North American Aerospace Defense 
Command, called for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. They were 
joined in late 1996 by nearly 60 retired generals and admirals from the 
United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, who signed a statement at 
the United Nations endorsing the idea that nuclear weapons can and should be 
eliminated. They believe conventional-weapons technologies are more than 
adequate for military needs today. 

The nuclear reactors and weapons arsenal littering the bottom of the sea are 
out of our control. As with the Kursk, it is risky to try to retrieve them. 
That is not an acceptable state of affairs. We cannot blithely assume that 
all these weapons and reactors will remain stable indefinitely and do no 
harm. It's important that studies be done on the feasibility and desirability 
of retrieving them, and equally important that the results of these studies 
be made public and subjected to open criticism and debate. The Kursk is a 
good place to begin. 

Cold War habits of thinking die hard. But there is no room in this situation 
for secrecy, arrogance or national pride. 

When we have found the best approach, whichever nations can most effectively 
contribute to implementing it must be mobilized in a timely and concerted 
joint effort. Surely, we have learned that much from the sinking of the 
Kursk. 

In a larger sense, the Kursk is the most recent reminder of our own 
imperfectability and the limitations of the technological devices we have 
developed. We must learn to take more seriously the boundaries created by our 
unavoidable fallibility, or we will do ourselves terrible damage some day. 

*******

#7
The Russia Journal
September 2-8, 2000
When fear becomes part of daily routine
By Tatyana Matsuk
Many different kinds of fear pervade everyday life in Moscow. 
(Tatyana Matsuk is a regular columnist for The Russia Journal and a former 
researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences.)

Scientists say the average person can't survive more than 10 years living in 
continual fear. This century, Russians have lived through many successive 
waves of fear, each marked with its own distinctive qualities. One might peg 
the begining of the latest wave with the dissolution of the Soviet system, 
when state-sponsored fear was exchanged for the fear of anarchy, brought on 
by a dilapidated Russia unable to protect its citizenry.

Today, people are afraid for their lives and for those of their loved ones. 
They are afraid of being left with nothing, not even a crust of bread, of 
ending up in prison or falling ill. They are afraid of change and lack of 
change, natural disasters and political and economic crises. They are afraid 
of everything and everyone. I know through my own experience that these fears 
are justified.

Unlike our parents' generation, the generations born after Josef Stalin's 
death didn't drink in fear with their mothers' milk. I first learned what 
fear was 10 years ago when, coming home one evening while it was still light, 
a teenage boy grabbed my bag in the entrance to my building. I remembered his 
face well and saw him later in our courtyard, but the police didn't show the 
slightest interest. That was when I understood that crime in this country was 
beginning to reach catastrophic proportions, and that was when I began to 
feel afraid to leave my own house. Friends and family thought I was 
exaggerating until they too fell victim to crime.

A tramp tried to take my mother's bag in the metro in the center of Moscow. 
He sprayed something in her eyes. My colleague was robbed as he was taking a 
cake to his grandsons. A friend, experienced in hand-to-hand combat and 
decorated with two military medals, was beaten in his own home by three armed 
men, one of whom was the son of some local bigwig. Only two of the three were 
later sent to court and given ridiculously light sentences, and the victim 
was told he provoked one of the men - a bandit recently released from prison 
- by buying a flat next to that of the bandit's wife. 

One of my school friends was stabbed to death in the street, another was 
raped in the entrance to her parents' house a few minutes' walk from the 
Kremlin. After all this, I hardly notice the frequent burglaries in my 
building, and take it for granted that my wallet will be taken from my bag at 
least once every six months. 

We began to feel afraid to go to the theater or to concerts at night because 
it was dark and few people were around. But more serious fears soon pushed 
the fear of crime into the background.

In August 1991, I was staying at a cardiology sanitarium near Moscow. The 
announcement that there'd been a coup came as a shock. We had only official 
information the first two days and couldn't get any calls through to Moscow. 
There was a military airfield nearby, and the roar of plane engines filled 
the gloomy sky. We could hear the rumble of military vehicles rolling along 
the military road hidden behind the forest. It all gave a terribly real and 
frightening impression of a military takeover.

But the events of October 1993 were even more terrifying. My mother lives not 
far from the White House, and at one point during the shooting there, she had 
to take refuge in the bathtub. The windows of the floor below were hit by 
automatic rifle fire. A former neighbor, who once shared a communal apartment 
with me, never returned from the military registration office where he'd been 
ordered to go. His body was later found in the entrance to some building. 
Looking through the list of those killed in the White House, I came upon 
another familiar name, that of someone who had organized a conference on the 
quality of life, a perfectly moderate nationalist, it seemed, who had ended 
up in the White House out of hopelessness, as I was later told.

Later, many repeated Shakespeare's words "a plague on both your houses." 
People turned their backs on politics and went into business instead, but 
business turned out to be no less dangerous.

Almost all businesspeople I know began to fear for their lives once they 
achieved a certain level of success. Some have had to hide from racketeers, 
thuggish competitors and those with a penchant for settling scores 
criminally. Others, along with the emerging middle class, found themselves 
repeatedly ruined by the state's economic policies. And the tales told of 
events during the privatization period send a chill through the body. As for 
those who hoped for shelter under the state's wing, they soon saw their wages 
dwindle away and would go for months without being paid.

But it is the war in Chechnya that has caused the greatest fear and largest 
number of victims. Russia discovered the horror of terrorism. At first, 
people were afraid to frequent crowded places and use public transport, and 
then they were afraid even to sleep in their own homes. The scars of the 
first and the second Chechen wars will stay with us for a long time. It seems 
now that no place in the whole country is safe.

Like many today, I don't know what will happen to me tomorrow. A few days 
ago, the local administration finally installed a new lock and code on the 
old door to my building. But by evening, it was impossible to open the door 
from the street. Now, we're obliged to keep our door open round the clock. 
The residents had asked for the door to be changed. The officials took action 
but only made things worse, though at least now they can tell their bosses 
that they did something.

It seems to me that the government's inability to rescue the crew of the 
Kursk exemplifies the problem. Those sailors were left to face their deaths 
in terrifying solitude. And after 10 years of lawlessness, something in that 
resonates with our own own experience; for it seems that we too have only 
ourselves to rely on. 

*******

#8
Booming economy leaves Russia confident ahead of OPEC meet

MOSCOW, Sept 6 (AFP) - 
Buoyed by soaring oil prices, Russia's economy will post year-end results 
undreamed of a few months ago, leaving Moscow confident ahead of any 
production hike agreed at Sunday's OPEC meeting.

While Western consumer economies are feeling the strain of higher prices, oil 
producing states are gleefully rubbing their hands at the revenue windfall.

Oil exports earned Russia 12.8 billion dollars in the first six months of the 
year, almost seven billion dollars more than for the same period in 1999.

Analysts continue to revise their forecasts upwards, while warning of 
inflationary pressures as the petrodollars generated by the oil boom feed 
back into the economy at large.

Finance houses UFG and Troika Dialog say Russia's trade surplus, which hit a 
record 33.2 billion dollars last year, could hit around 50 billion dollars 
this year.

Analysts expect gross domestic product, which rose 3.2 percent in 1999 as 
Russia recorded growth for the first time in the post-Soviet era, to soar six 
percent this year, a shade above the 5.5 percent government forecast.

The oil boom has also had a positive knock-on effect on government coffers: 
the federal budget should be in surplus this year, including debt payments, 
another post-Soviet first.

Thus Moscow, for the moment, is sitting pretty despite the International 
Monetary Fund's continued refusal to disburse hundreds of millions of dollars 
in promised loan tranches.

"Russia was one of the major beneficiaries of the March 1999 decision by OPEC 
member countries to cut production and force the price up," the Troika Dialog 
investment house said in a research note.

Oil prices have continued their remorseless rise towards a new 10-year high, 
benchmark Brent light crude selling for 32 dollars a barrel.

And even if oil ministers from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting 
Countries agree production increases in Vienna on Sunday, experts say low 
winter stocks mean prices are nevertheless likely to remain high for some 
time.

"The price could drop by two dollars," said Yury Maslyukov, a former Russian 
economy chief who now chairs the industry committee in the State Duma lower 
house of parliament.

"(But) there's no danger of an economic catastrophe," he told the Vlast news 
weekly.

In the medium term, however, the picture is less rosy.

Alexander Zhukov, chairman of the Duma's budget committee, warned on Moscow 
Echo radio that world oil prices could plunge as quickly as they had risen, 
although the average 21 dollars a barrel price pencilled into the draft 2001 
budget was prudent.

However, Russia's economic health remains too dependent on external factors, 
he said, warning that debt could again put pressure on government finances a 
few years down the road.

"High prices have never really been a good thing" for Russia, commented the 
Kommersant business daily. "While prices soar and money pours in, the 
authorities brag about how well they are running the economy," the paper 
noted, sapping the will to force through much needed structural reforms.

Despite the oil boom, the wages of most working people remain static and 
government ministers admit revenues are only a fraction of those generated by 
Western states.

Economists say the authorities should use the benign economic climate to 
grasp the nettle of structural reforms needed to underpin long-term economic 
growth.

Rising consumption, which experts said is vital to economic growth in the 
coming years, remains too weak and the rise in industrial output is petering 
out after the boom inspired by the 1998 ruble devaluation.

"Will we make good use of this gift of the gods?" asked the Sevodnya daily 
Wednesday. "Will we throw (the petrodollars) into making new weapons or a war 
in Chechnya, or will we set modernising our hopelessly outdated industry?"

******

#9
BBC
7 September, 2000
Russia's gang warfare
By Russian affairs analyst Steven Dalziel in Moscow 

The Moscow grenade attack which injured 16 seems to bear the hallmarks of the 
continuing struggle in Russia's underground world of sleaze and gang warfare. 

Bombings and shootings linked to Russia's criminal underworld are so 
commonplace these days that they barely even feature in news bulletins. 

This latest attack in Moscow is the third such incident in Russia this week. 

On Monday, three people were killed by a bomb in a market in Ryazan, about 
200km south east of Moscow; and, on the same day, an explosive device was 
thrown into a boutique in St Petersburg, damaging property but causing no 
injuries. 

For good measure, there was also a shooting in Moscow on Wednesday, as a 
result of which a businessman lies critically ill in hospital. 

Recent phenomenon 

Ten years ago, when the Soviet Union still existed, any one of these 
incidents would have been headline news. 

Ten years before that, news of such events would have been suppressed by the 
Soviet censor. 

But the point is that such attacks were virtually unheard of, and are a 
direct result of the way in which Russia's crony capitalism has developed in 
the post-Soviet era. 

There are two main reasons for this. 

Economic collapse 

Firstly, the collapse of the command economy was so sudden and uncontrolled 
that it led to a belief for many Russians that capitalism simply meant the 
freedom to do as one liked, without the acceptance of any social 
responsibility. 

This led to the crudest form of survival of the fittest, including the 
development of gang warfare. 

Taboos of the Soviet era surrounding the sex industry collapsed. 

In Soviet times, prostitution was supposed not to exist; everyone knew that 
it did, but it was kept under wraps. 

Now, when pornography is openly displayed, there is little attempt by 
prostitutes or their controllers to hide their business. 

Lawlessness 

Secondly, the development of this crude and often vicious underworld has been 
accompanied by the collapse of any effective system of law and order to keep 
it under control. 

One reason for this is that the police are so badly paid that they are open 
to bribery. 

When police officers can be openly hired by rich businessmen - who may well 
have made their wealth in illegal ways - it doesn't make the people believe 
that the number one concern of the law enforcement authorities is the 
protection of their interests. 

Many cynics believe too that the lead in illegal business was given by 
Russia's politicians, many of whom are clearly far richer than would be the 
case were they to live simply by their parliamentary salaries. 

Breakdown 

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the attack on the prostitutes is that it 
is the type of incident which has become so commonplace that many Russians - 
in the capital, at least - now accept such things as routine. 

It will take a great deal of re-education to make people believe that their 
society does not have to develop along such lines, and that they are, in 
fact, a sign of the breakdown of normal social order. 

******

#10
>From the Kennan Institute
Russia and a Post-Divided Europe
"A Post-Divided Europe: Principles and Precepts for American Foreign Policy" 
(July 19, 2000) Lecture at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for 
Scholars, Washington, D.C.

"The following are excerpts pertaining to Russia from a lecture on 
post-divided Europe and its implications for American foreign policy given by 
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, at a Woodrow Wilson 
Center Director's Forum on 19 July 2000. The remarks were delivered without a 
prepared text.

...We tend to define the post-communist decade of the 1990s in a very 
undifferentiated fashion, failing to note fundamental differences between 
what happened in Central Europe and what transpired in the former Soviet 
Union. In Central Europe, the post-communist decade involved the rejection of 
communism, the organic rejection of something alien; the rejection of 
something imposed from the outside. This transformation was spearheaded by 
spontaneous national movements that were able to consolidate a critical mass 
of new political leaders capable of undertaking the process of 
democratization and reform.

In Russia, we are not dealing with an organic rejection of communism. Rather, 
we are dealing with the collapse, from exhaustion, of an inefficient 
totalitarian state that overreached in its global competition with the United 
States. That competition precipitated the Soviet Union's collapse. It was not 
produced by a democratic movement; it was not the consequence of popular 
unrest. Indeed, the implosion of the Soviet Empire was a collapse of will, 
imagination, and of power stemming literally from physical exhaustion. That 
collapse left behind a political elite that, while realizing the need for 
change, is still very much a product of the preceding system. This is 
especially true of the current leadership. Just think of this: there is not a 
member of President Vladimir Putin's government who was ever associated with 
any dissident activity. What is more, there is not a member of Putin's 
government, including Putin himself, who could not be in the Soviet 
government today if the Soviet Union still existed.

...That brings me to my third point: namely, how the Russians perceive 
themselves, and how we treat them. Putin recently said that "we are not 
seeking to make Russia a great world power because Russia is already a great 
world power." This point was reiterated in the statement on Russian foreign 
policy just issued a week or so ago, which explicitly stated that Russia is 
"a great power; one of the most influential centers of the modern world."

It is worth noting that Russia's GDP of today is one-tenth of America's, 
one-half of India's, and less than that of Brazil.... The UN recently ranked 
Russia's health system 131th, just ahead of Sudan's. Finally, Russian 
population in the last decade has decreased from 151 million to 146 million, 
with deaths exceeding births by slightly more than 50 percent. So much for 
Russia being one of the most influential centers of the modern world.

On top of that social and demographic crisis, Russia is not in a very 
favorable geopolitical position. To the east is a country with a population 
eight times that of Russia and an economy five times larger--and economy that 
is growing far more dynamically.... To the west is an increasingly integrated 
Europe with a GDP ten times larger that Russia's--a Europe Central European 
countries wish to join. And finally, to the South of Russia, there are 
three-hundred million Muslims whose goodwill the Putin government is now 
fostering through its policies in Chechnya.

In conclusion, ...an un-divided Europe is really unfinished business, and 
there are certain areas where a persistent strategically minded sense of 
direction is needed.... It is almost obvious, and many of the strategic 
issues are very clear-cut. First, if we want post-divided Europe to be stable 
and eventually to be whole and free, then there must be a sustained expansion 
of both the EU and NATO. The absence of the expansion of either institution 
leaves a large portion of Europe in a state of ambiguity. The expansion of 
the two together helps to reinforce the transatlantic relationship by 
deepening the scope of the security while widening the span of post-divided 
Europe.

Second, ...we should help consolidate the independent states in the former 
Soviet space, primarily because their very existence helps to consolidate 
positive change in Russia. If the new independent states in the former Soviet 
space are stable, then Russia is encouraged to redefine itself in a more 
basic and fundamental way...

Finally, we have to keep the European option open for Russia.... That option 
must be held open if Russia is at some point to exercise a choice--a choice 
in favor of reality rather than nostalgia for a status and for a capability 
that is not within Russia's reach. The notion of Russia as a center of the 
modern world is unrealistic unless Russia becomes more like Europe...a more 
advanced, more developed modern democratic state. It cannot do that by 
exercising a domineering role in the former Soviet space, or by blocking 
Central European membership in Europe and NATO as it is currently seeking to 
do vis-Ö-vis the Baltic states. This strategy has a broader purpose. The 
option for Russia must be held open while the external geopolitical 
conditions become so stable and consolidated that integration with the 
transatlantic community is Russia's only logical choice.

These are the challenges in our relationship with Europe that we will face in 
the course of the next administration. During the past decade we spoke of a 
Europe whole and free. That is still our objective and there are clear ways 
of reaching it.

******

#11
The Global Beat Syndicate 
The danger of Russia's decaying defenses
By Capt. Vladimir Mariukha 
September 7, 2000
Vladimir Mariukha is a captain with the Russian navy and an expert on naval 
affairs. 

MOSCOW -- The tragic loss of the nuclear submarine Kursk and its crew 
revealed to the world not only the alarming state of the Russian military but 
the lengths to which it leaders will go to conceal its failures. 

Of course, such accidents, and high-level efforts to cover them up, are 
nothing new. As early as 1961, a nuclear-reactor malfunction on board the 
submarine K-19, killing 10 sailors. Later, the sub was nicknamed "Hiroshima," 
because it remained contaminated and continued to slowly kill its crew 
members. In 1969, the same sub collided with a U.S. submarine, killing 29 
crew members. In 1967, 39 men died in a fire on board the submarine K-3. In 
1973, the submarine K-56 collided with Soviet surface ship: 27 crew members 
were killed.

Such accidents have continued right into the 1990's, and while the causes 
have been unique, each has resulted in the same cover-up.

In 1994, I was on board a Norwegian frigate during Russian-NATO naval 
exercises when I learned that a Russian sub returning to its home port had 
collided with a surface vessel. Once I returned home, I was stunned to hear 
from Admiral Igor Kasatonov, then first-deputy to the Navy commander-in-chief 
and a longtime friend of mine, knew nothing of the accident -- one that was 
as potentially dangerous as the one that lead to the sinking of the Kursk.

Even when naval officials have acknowledged problems within the service, 
their concessions are framed in terms of optimistic solutions. Navy 
Commander-in-Chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov today says that he issued a 
warning three years ago that rescue capabilities were inadequate. But when I 
spoke to him following his appointment, all I heard was how the numerous 
problems the Navy was facing were soon to be overcome.

Obviously, corrective measures were not taken soon enough.

The Navy's budget is inadequate to provide for proper and regular training of 
its personnel. And much of the equipment at the Navy's training centers is 
worn out. The commanding officer of the Kursk, Capt. Ghennady Lyachin, and 
especially his executive officer, appointed to the post at the age of 30, 
were too young and had far less experienced than their predecessors.

Submarines and missiles remain in service long after they should be retired. 
The Navy lacks the funds to perform adequate maintenance on the fleet and 
spare parts are in short supply. All this leaves those in command of Russia's 
warships wondering about the status of their own vessels. Was the Kursk sunk 
by a collision caused by a faulty sonar system? Did an obsolete torpedo on 
board blow up? Capt. Alexander Astapov, a Hero of the Russian Federation who 
commanded the Oryol and Omsk submarines similar to the Kursk, recalls how he 
felt as if he was going to war every time he headed out to sea. Might the 
next voyage might be the last for him and his crew?

Inadequate training, maintenance and command have placed the safety of 
Russia's weaponry in question. Indeed, given the gradual decay of the Russian 
armed forces, their weapons may pose a greater threat to themselves than any 
potential enemy.

And yet, the Ministry of Defense seems unconcerned. Russia, it seems, has 
many submarines, sailors and soldiers. It's much simpler to mourn the death 
of a few and call them heroes than to correct the situation.

*******

#12
Voice of America
DATE=9/7/2000
TITLE=U-N / CHECHNYA (L-O)
BYLINE=LISA SCHLEIN
DATELINE=GENEVA

INTRO: The U-N refugee agency says tens-of-thousands 
of Chechen refugees are due to spend a second harsh 
winter in the neighboring Russian republic of 
Ingushetia. Lisa Schlein in Geneva reports the agency 
says resentment against the Chechens is growing among 
the local Ingush people.

TEXT: The U-N refugee agency says the situation in 
war-torn Chechnya remains unstable. It says the more 
than 170-thousand Chechen refugees who fled to 
Ingushetia are reluctant to go home, and are likely to 
remain in Ingushetia for the foreseeable future. 

U-N-H-C-R spokesman Kris Janowski says there are 
growing signs that the refugees are over-staying their 
welcome and are under pressure to go.

/// 1ST JANOWSKI ACT ///

We have had a few dozen cases of people who have 
actually been evicted either from private homes 
by their host families. Or people who have been 
evicted from various premises that they have 
illegally occupied - some old factories or 
abandoned offices or halls - and these people 
are being now are being pushed out. Some of 
them have already been evicted. Some are under 
the threat of eviction. 

/// END ACT ///

Mr. Janowski says the U-N-H-C-R is trying to mediate 
with the host families to keep the refugees. He says 
the agency is offering them incentives, such as food 
and other aid. He says resentment against refugees 
from local communities is a worldwide phenomenon, and 
evictions have occurred in many places. 

But the spokesman says this is the first time refugees 
have been evicted by their hosts in Ingushetia. He 
says he hopes the incentives being offered to Ingush 
families will put a stop to this.

/// 2ND JANOWSKI ACT ///

Often people who host refugees are refugees 
themselves, and they have to even put up with 
even more hardships when they host refugees, and 
that is why we have to help them. In the case
of the displaced people from Chechnya, we're 
facing a similar problem. It's not a large-
scale problem so far. Nonetheless, it's there, 
and one has to deal with it. 

/// END ACT ///

About half of the Chechen refugees are living in tents 
and makeshift accommodations. The rest are staying 
with private host families.

Mr. Janowski says the U-N refugee agency is in the 
process of building a tent city, for 12-thousand 
people who will have to spend the winter in tents. He 
says winter in the north Caucasus is very harsh, and 
the agency is trying to ease the difficulties the 
refugees will face. He says the agency is helping to 
revamp the water supply system in Ingushetia and make 
other improvements in the republic's infrastructure.