MOSCOW, Nov 16 (AFP) -
Russia is sitting on an AIDS time-bomb with the number of people carrying the HIV virus which causes the disease likely to spiral out of control unless urgent action is taken, a top UN official said Thursday.

Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, issued this stark warning at an international conference to discuss measures to combat the alarming spread of AIDS in Russia, which has the world's fastest-growing number of new carriers.

"The Russian Federation is facing an explosive HIV situation. At the end of last year 130,000 were infected with HIV. By the end of 2000, there will be 300,000, more than a doubling in just one year," he said.

Piot conceded that less than one percent of Russia's population is infected with HIV, but added: "What matters is the rate of growth."

In October nearly 1,000 new infections were detected in Russia's second city Saint Petersburg, a statistic that Piot described as "really very worrisome."

Russian deputy prime minister, Gennady Onishchenko, told the conference that the government was concerned about the spread of the disease.

But he pointed to a lack of funds for supporting programmes to educate Russians about safe sex and the dangers of sharing needles for intravenous drug use.

"Russian society is not sufficiently aware of the problem of AIDS. Some governors even think it's a non-existent problem, something just invented," Onishchenko added.

Piot warned that if the spread of HIV continued at the present rate, the number of cases in Russia would increase tenfold. "And then we can really talk about a major epidemic," he said.

UNAIDS announced that it would be joining forces with the Russian health ministry and the World Bank (WB) to fight the spread of AIDS throughout Russia's 11 times zones.

A WB representative said the Bank hoped to negotiate a 150-million-dollar loan to the Russian government at the beginning of next year as part of a "multi-pronged effort" to avert the AIDS crisis.

Announcing the loan, the Bank's Russia representative, Michael Carter, said the country was fortunate because it had diagnosed the AIDS problem at an early stage of development.

"AIDS is a serious problem among young people, so really it's a problem for Russia's future," he said.

The World Bank loan will help sponsor education and preventative programmes among drug users, commercial sex workers and the prison population, which he described as the "vulnerable groups," in addition to a number of treatment programmes.

Nearly 40,000 Russians have contracted HIV since the beginning of the year, the UN's Moscow office announced Wednesday, with the number of registered cases rising from 61,240 to 69,120 in October alone.

The sufferers are mainly young people aged between 18 and 25, and about 90 percent are drug users. About 7,000 cases have been registered among Russia's jail population.

The World Health Organization recently issued a warning about the spread of AIDS in Russia, saying the real number of HIV sufferers was 10 times that indicated by official statistics.

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#2
Moscow Times
November 17, 2000
EDITORIAL: A Monster That Will Be Hard to Kill

The Russian Security Council's adoption on Nov. 9 of an ambitious reform plan for the military-industrial complex was welcome news indeed. There can be no doubt that this burdensome monster has been a serious drag on the country's overall political and economic progress for the past nine years.

The plan envisions cutting 600,000 defense-sector positions over the next five years and streamlining the services according to Russia's realistic defense needs. Potentially, this reform package could result in a more efficient and cost-effective national defense.

President Vladimir Putin's personal commitment to realizing this reform is also encouraging. By pushing it, he is boldly going head-to-head against one of the country's most formidable and entrenched interest groups. He further demonstrated his resolve with a concrete proposal to the United States on Monday to reduce each side's strategic nuclear arsenal to just 1,000 to 1,500 warheads.

Now, as they say, it is just a matter of getting the deed done. This is far from the first military reform proposal to emerge over the years and none of its predecessors made much of a dent in the problem. Although the council adopted the plan unanimously, it is certain that many people do not share Putin's commitment. The council debated the proposal heatedly for months before adopting it under pressure from Putin.

Opponents have many ways of undermining such a reform and much incentive to do so. Russia and the world must now be extremely wary of "provocations" on the part of the Russian military, seeking to demonstrate the country's security demands a larger, rather than a leaner, military.

The Russian navy, for instance, continues to insist without evidence that the submarine Kursk was sunk by a collision with a NATO submarine. On Wednesday, the navy boasted that its planes had been buzzing the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan. While these incidents were apparently insignificant, the Russian navy's glee in publicizing its "achievement" f even including a pledge to decorate the fliers f is alarming.

Most ominous, though, is recent Russian military activity in Afghanistan. In October, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev met openly with Afghan rebel leader Ahmad Shah Masood in Tajikistan. The Russian army has been actively supplying Masood with weapons for some time now, and recently there is evidence that Russian combat aircraft have been flying support missions for his fighters.

This is exactly the kind of provocation that could easily derail Putin's attempt to reform the military. Worse, it could plunge the country and the region into a bloody chaos from which it will not soon emerge.

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#3
Moscow Times
November 16, 2000
DEFENSE DOSSIER: A Reform That Doesn't Hurt
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Last week the Security Council approved in principle a plan of military reform that includes significant cuts in military personnel. Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov disclosed recently that there are more than 2 million servicemen and roughly 1 million civilian employees in multiple armies. According to the reform plan, up to 470,000 servicemen and 130,000 civilians will be discharged by the end of 2005.

The Defense Ministry will be reduced by 365,000 staff positions. Not men, you will note, but staff positions. Since tens of thousands of positions are not occupied at present and since the cuts will be spread over five years, there will be no immediate mass discharges.

The Defense Ministry has up to 700,000 civilian personnel on its payroll and up to 40 percent of the 365,000 reductions will be civilians. Initial reactions coming from division commanders of the army suggest that the announced draconian cutbacks in military personnel are in fact superficial.

Last week the commander of Russia's airborne corps, or VDV, General Georgy Shpak, told me that "the VDV will not be cut much at all." Only peacekeeping units in Kosovo, Bosnia and Abkhazia are to be withdrawn by 2004 f an insignificant casualty since these divisions are specially formed task forces that have no home base in Russia.

Last Friday, General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, commander of the Interior Ministry troops, announced that his service will lose 33,000 men, but that "this cut is insignificant, because it will be restricted to logistical and supply staff, while combat units will be not affected."

Last week at least one important structural reform was approved at the Security Council meeting: All military supply units will merge to form an interdepartmental logistical and technical assistance service for all of Russia's multiple armies. Military academies will also be pooled together into a joint interdepartmental military education system.

A centralized Soviet-style supply and technical assistance service for all will inevitably increase the possibility of large-scale theft, create chaos in logistics and no doubt end in disaster with Russian troops provisioned for even worse than today. But for the time being the move solves a lot of problems: Russia's multiple armies will hand over their supply trains to a newly created interdepartmental entity, and complete their personnel cutbacks while actually discharging almost no one.

However, not all will be so lucky. The Strategic Missile Forces, or RVSN, will be genuinely cut back. This week the RVSN chief general, Vladimir Yakovlev, told reporters that by 2006 the RVSN will discharge 60,000 men f more than 50 percent of its present strength.

Aging Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles equipped with multiple-warheads f SS-18s, SS-19s and SS-24s f will all be scrapped in the coming decade. With the demise of its most potent land-based weapons, the RVSN will also cease to exist as an independent branch of the armed services. But Yakovlev also told journalists that "the international situation may change," and the planned cuts may be reversed. If the United States begins to build a national missile defense in violation of the 1972 ABM treaty, Russia may be compensated by Washington allowing it to retain multiple-warhead land-based ICBMs that are banned by the START II arms control treaty, said Yakovlev.

Speaking on the same day, President Vladimir Putin made an official statement on arms control that did not agree with Yakovlev's remarks. Putin offered to cut the number of Russian and U.S. strategic warheads to 1,500 each, or even less. But Putin insisted that Washington should not build the NMD.

It's obvious that Yakovlev is seeking a pretext to keep the RVSN as strong as possible. Putin, supported by some army generals, does not consider the United States at present a prime enemy and wants to boost conventional forces. But mostly for domestic political reasons, Putin wants reassurance from Washington that the inevitable cuts in Russia's nuclear arsenal will not be unilateral and that a semblance of a Cold War strategic parity will be maintained in the future.

The concept of military reform has clearly not been worked out and the discord inside the ruling elite continues. But despite the continued fray over nuclear and conventional arms priorities, all seem to be united behind the concept of keeping a multimillion-strong standing army (or armies), and the notion that Russia should somehow militarily "balance" the mighty United States f hardly a sound basis for effective reform.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst based in Moscow.

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#4
Defense News
November 20, 2000
[for personal use only]
One On One
Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev
Commander, Russian Strategic Missile Force

Vladimir Yakovlev commands a potent force that he says has contributed greatly to protect Russia's sovereignty, even though the force has not seen combat in its 40-year existence.

Steadily, he climbed the hierarchy of Russia's Strategic Missile Force to become the youngest commander of an armed forces branch in 1997 at the age of 42. Yakovlev widely is credited with keeping his force combat-ready despite a chronic lack of funds.

He spoke to Defense News Correspondent Simon Saradzhyan recently at the military Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

Q. How many Topol-M ICBMs are scheduled for combat duty this year?

A. Less than 10.

Q. Are you satisfied with the first launch of a Topol-M from a mobile launcher? When are further tests?

A. This first test has brought quite successful results, which allows us to say that we are close - for the first time in the history of missile-building -to commissioning a unified system that will be used both in stationary and mobile variants. There never have been such systems in either in Russia or other countries. These are quite serious achievements that allow us to seriously reduce the duration of research and development of the mobile variant. We now only have to complete tests of the mobile variant in order to complete tests of the entire Topol-M system.

Q. Will there be money to put this system into serial production?

A. I believe that the question of financing is beyond our department. We are ready to efficiently use allocated funds.

Q. What role do you foresee for the Strategic Missile Force in Russia's nuclear triad, if the next U.S. president decides to deploy a National Missile Defense?

A. We should maintain a certain balance of nuclear forces, both if we do not leave the framework of the [Strategic Arms Reduction] START-1, START-2 and START-3 treaties and if we have to abandon our treaty obligations for some reason. This balance is not achieved merely by having a certain quantity of missiles and warheads on combat duty. It is achieved with the help of such a command-and-control system that, among other things, ensures use of these forces. We can choose from many variants in such a case.

Q. How many strategic nuclear warheads does Russia need?

A. This quantity has been determined by the president, and it totals 1,500 warheads. It is the most acceptable threshold both from the point of view of combat efficiency and economy, but how events will develop will depend on the next U.S. administration's position on [the Antiballistic Missile treaty].

Q. Are there any problems with the scrapping of old ICBMs?

A. Here we need a legal basis. We have yet to decommission 26 launchers in accordance with START-1, but there are certain problems in the sphere of negotiations with the United States, and we are also somewhat concerned with the quality of dismantling.

Q. President Vladimir Putin has come up with an initiative on preventing militarization of space. Can it be implemented?

A. Undoubtedly, this is a key direction along which negotiations between states should evolve. We realize perfectly well that deploying arms in space can influence early warning systems to some extent, and any impact on the early warning systems deployed in space can lead to catastrophic consequences [in the] use of nuclear arms. If a leadership has neither ears nor eyes, it will not stabilize the situation.

Q. How satisfied are you with implementation programs to transform ICBMs into launchers?

A. We have four such programs. We will launch the third from the Svobodny Cosmodrome [this month].

Q. What prospects are offered by the program to move launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome [in Kazakhstan] to Plesetsk?

A. This is the most burning question we face. We are trying to ensure that this program will preserve its federal status and lay its financial foundation.

Q. What is happening with the joint U.S.-Russian missile early-warning center?

A. It is set to begin functioning in full force on July 4, 2001. It is important as presently only Russia, the United States and Norway notify each other of planned launches [of ICBMs and spacebound rockets].

Personal Notes

Favorite music: Russian pop and foreign rock music.

Military heroes: Peter the Great and Alexander Suvorov.

Favorite book: "Psychology of Soldiers," by Norman Coupland, a gift from another military leader, his father.

Childhood interest in military? "No, I was going to become an athlete or an architect."

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#5
MSNBC.com
November 5, 2000
[for personal use only]
Russian spy case a 'power play'
As Clinton pressures Putin, Edmond Pope's lawyer criticizes case
By Dana Lewis NBC NEWS

MOSCOW, Nov. 15 - The case against alleged U.S. spy Edmond Pope is a show of power by Russia's security services, emboldened by the election of a president from their ranks, Pope's lawyer told NBC News in an exclusive interview. The accusation came as President Bill Clinton stepped up pressure on his Russian counterpart to free the ailing U.S. businessman jailed in Russia for over seven months on espionage charges.

THE UNITED STATES has lobbied the Russian government to release Pope, a former naval intelligence officer turned businessman, since his arrest on April 3. Pope's trial on charges of obtaining classified weapons information began on Oct. 18.

Washington maintains that Pope, who suffers from a rare form of bone cancer, is innocent and has called for his release on humanitarian grounds.

During a 75-minute meeting on Wednesday between Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of an Asian economic summit in Brunei, the U.S. president "expressed his concern about Mr. Pope's condition, in particular his health," a senior U.S. official told reporters.

"The Russians understand that we won't rest until Edmond Pope is home (and) that we are deeply concerned about his condition," he added. "We think President Putin understands these concerns and hope he acts on them as soon as possible."

Pope's lawyer told NBC News that help from Putin, who has said that the case should proceed without Kremlin interference, couldn't come too soon. Pavel Astakhov said his client is seriously ill and has been denied regular access to a Western doctor.

"Mr. Pope is a very sick person," Astakhov said. The trial is taking place behind closed doors and has on several occasions been postponed due to Pope's illness. Pope, Astakhov and the White House have complained that court officials have denied a U.S. embassy doctor regular access to Pope. Treatment he has received from prison doctors has been "inadequate," Astakhov said.

On Tuesday, a U.S. consular officer visited Pope for the first time in more than a month, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.

'LACK OF EVIDENCE'

Pope's Russian lawyer maintained the prosecution lacked credible evidence in the case against Pope, the first foreigner formally brought to trial in Russia in 31 years. Pope could face 20 years if convicted of spying.

"Edmond Pope is not a spy, was not a spy, and there is no evidence in this case offered to prove he is a spy," Astakhov said. Tthe Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, a successor to the KGB, is watching its case go up in smoke, he said.

Last week, the FSB's key witness retracted statements made to the prosecution. Anatoly Babkin, a professor at a Moscow's State Technical University, accused FSB officials of pressuring him to make statements implicating Pope. Babkin's court testimony ultimately helped Pope when the professor said he had never given the American secret documents or personally taken money from him.

According to Astakhov, material the FSB accuses Pope of obtaining illegally was received by Pope four years ago. "There are many articles and books about this torpedo which are unclassified," Astakhov said, referring to a Russian torpedo on which Pope is accused of trying to acquire information. "Mr. Babkin ... wrote these reports [with] information from open books, from books not secret, not classified," Astakhov said.

This week, Astakhov will ask another court to dismiss the case on the grounds the judge overseeing it has shown bias.

Astakhov said the accusations against Pope boil down to politics. The election this year of Putin, a former KGB officer, was a boost in moral for the beleaguered security services. Astakhov said the FSB decided to "build this case and to make Pope a spy to show the world and society in Russia [that] the security service has big power."

In the many alleged espionage incidents that have made headlines during the Soviet era and since the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, Washington and Moscow have swiftly expelled alleged spies and diplomats in tit-for-tat retaliation. Analysts say this time those inside the FSB have put their own careers on the line by pushing so hard for a trial on Russian soil. The Pope trial, expected to last several more weeks has already damaged U.S. Russian relations.

NBC's Dana Lewis is based in Moscow. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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#6
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
November 17, 2000
Mir set to tumble in February
Russia says space station that has circled Earth for 14 years will become fireball and spread debris over 10,000 kilometres
GEOFFREY YORK

MOSCOW -- The world's longest-surviving space station has been given a death sentence that will send it plummeting to Earth in a spectacular ball of fire in February.

The announcement yesterday by the Russian cabinet will dash the dreams of Russian patriots and U.S. space entrepreneurs, who wanted to keep Mir orbiting for many more years.

The 14-year-old space station was almost completely privatized this year, and American investors had spent $40-million (U.S.) to keep the station alive. They planned to earn profits for their privately owned MirCorp by sending wealthy tourists and film crews to the orbiting station.

The first "Citizen Explorer" -- U.S. businessman Dennis Tito -- has already spent $1-million on training for a planned sightseeing flight to Mir next year. Now his $20-million junket will be scrapped, the Russians say.

Another American entrepreneur was intending to lease Mir for a space version of the Survivor television series. That dream, too, has been killed.

"Nothing can last for eternity, even Mir," Russian space agency chief Yuri Koptev told reporters yesterday after the cabinet meeting.

He said it would be dangerous to keep the aging 120-tonne station in orbit. "We cannot continue this game . . . which I call Russian roulette. We simply don't have the right to do that, because we are a government agency responsible for the safety of Mir."

Mr. Koptev also alleged that MirCorp was failing to provide enough money to keep Mir orbiting -- a charge denied by the company.

Under the new Russian plan, Mir would be steered into a fiery descent from orbit next Feb. 27 or 28. It would be aimed at a remote spot in the Pacific Ocean, between 1,500 and 2,000 kilometres from Australia.

But as it plunges, the station will break into thousands of fragments, some as heavy as 700 kilograms, possessing enough force to smash through two metres of reinforced concrete. The debris will be scattered over a 10,000-kilometre-long swath, mostly in the Pacific Ocean, but possibly also on land.

Descents from space can be unpredictable. In 1978, a Soviet military satellite crashed into Canada's Northwest Territories, scattering radioactive fragments over a large area of wilderness.

Mir has endured a troubled history of accidents, fires, collisions and computer crashes. But it has also established every record for endurance in space, exceeding all expectations for the station's life span. One cosmonaut spent a remarkable 438 days on the station. The United States, unable to build its own long-lasting station, eventually sent its own astronauts to ride on Mir.

Yesterday's announcement is a huge blow to MirCorp, which had planned a stock-market offering to raise $117-million in financing to keep Mir aloft.

The Amsterdam-based company, chiefly financed by two wealthy American entrepreneurs, acknowledges that it recently failed to make a $10-million payment to Russia. Global stock-market problems were the main reason for the missed payment, it said, but it vowed that it would pay the $10-million by next month.

Instead of waiting, though, Moscow pulled the plug. MirCorp responded with a terse two-sentence statement, saying it was "aware" of the announcement about a "possible deorbiting" of Mir next February, but it was "awaiting official notification" of the decision.

James Oberg, a former U.S. space agency engineer who is now an independent consultant and author in Houston, said the private investors in MirCorp are the victims of backroom intrigues involving the American and Russian space agencies.

"I'm sure they feel bushwhacked," Mr. Oberg said in an interview yesterday. "But they knew they had these enemies. There was major behind-the-scenes pressure."

He said the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration believed Mir was distracting the Russians from their commitments to the ambitious $60-billion International Space Station. As a result, he said, the agency was putting intense pressure on Mr. Koptev to get rid of Mir. "NASA has made it clear to Koptev that Mir must die," Mr. Oberg said.

The argument about the safety of Mir is simply an excuse to get rid of the station, he said. "It's a scare tactic. There is no new hazard. In fact, Mir has been improving over the past two years."

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#7 Nezavisimaya Gazeta
November 17, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PERSHINGS REINCARNATED
Moscow to Accuse USA of Creating Banned Intermediate-Range Missiles
By Sergei SOKUT

Russo-American relations will be most probably darkened by another scandal soon, created by violations of the 1987 treaty on the liquidation of short- and intermediate-range missiles. According to our information, Moscow plans to publicly accuse Washington, for the first time in quite a few years, of violating the key provisions of that treaty, which had contributed to the end of the Cold War and opened a new stage in the disarmament process.

Russia demands that the USA should stop the creation and flight tests of the Hera ballistic missiles and liquidate all such missiles. The Ballistic Missiles Protection Organisation, which is a Pentagon division, is actively using Hera as a Scud imitator during the testing of two ABM systems, the THAAD and the Patriot PAC-3. Both are theatre missile defence systems and are not limited by the 1972 ABM Treaty.

Moscow regards Hera as a land-based ballistic missile of intermediate range, whose creation, production and deployment are prohibited by the treaty on the liquidation of short- and intermediate-range missiles. Under it, Russia liquidated its RSD-10, R-12, R-14 and several shorter-range missiles in 1987-91 (including the Oka, which Gorbachev surrendered without a valid reason). Overseas, the same was done to the Pershing-2 and several other missile systems.

Washington describes Hera as a booster system permitted in Point 12 of Article 7 of the treaty. The said point permits the use of missile stages, which existed at the moment of signature of the treaty and were not short- or intermediate-range missiles, for testing new payloads of, say, geophysical equipment. However, Subpoint 12(b) says "such booster systems are used only for research and development purposes to test objects other than the booster systems themselves."

Meanwhile, Hera is a fundamentally new booster system. Although made of the second and third stages of obsolete Minuteman-2 missiles that had been removed from combat duty, it is rumoured to be equipped with the control and targeting systems of Pershing-2. The USA removed such equipment from the Pershings slated for liquidation and stored it for later use. It should be said that the Pershing's targeting system is rather sophisticated. It compares the radar image of the target with the model image stored in its memory, which ensures a CEP of barely a few metres. No country in the world has ballistic missiles with such characteristics.

Consequently, Hera is a full-fledged intermediate-range missile weighing 10.8 tons and with a range of over 1,000 kilometres. The Pentagon, which describes it in its documents as an intermediate-range target, stresses that Hera's warheads have no explosive materials. It has admitted, though, that its size and physical characteristics make it comparable to an armed warhead. By the way, this demand - to make it indistinguishable from an armed warhead -can be found in the technical order for the creation and production of Hera, issued by the Pentagon to Coleman Research, Orlando, Florida.

It should be also said that Hera was initially tested independently, outside the framework of ABM experiments. Its first, unsuccessful, launch took place at the White Sands range on November 17, 1997, and the successful launch was made in March 1998. As of today, Hera was launched more than ten times.

It is apparent that whatever Washington may be saying, it is still testing and improving a missile prohibited by the INF treaty. The Pentagon would not need much time to deploy about 200 such missiles in any part of the world. There are several hundreds of second and third stages of Minuteman-2s in the Pentagon's warehouses and the bulk of the 234 targeting blocks from Pershing-2s.

The planned Russian demarche will revive the practice of the 1970s and 1980s, when Moscow and Washington accused each other of violating disarmament treaties and agreements. And this time the USA has nothing to hurl back at Russia. According to our information, US spokesmen admit that Russia is strictly complying with all effective documents. It is interesting that secret polemics on Hera has been going on for some time, but it is only now that the Russian Foreign Ministry has become ready to make its complaints public. It appears that Russian diplomats have come against a tough US stand on this problem during consultations behind closed doors, and simply have to make their accusations in public.

On the other hand, the leak about US violations of the INF treaty could be a sign of a nascent diplomatic and propaganda offensive, launched by Moscow to present Washington in ungainly light and thus force the new US president to review plans of burying the ABM treaty and the entire system of disarmament agreements.

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#8
Anonymous
World News: UN FOCUSES ON TURMOIL IN AMERIKISTAN

After two decades in which social and financial inequalities widened amidst unsustainable speculative development, the country of Amerikistan held presidential elections this week.

The two leading candidates were both drawn from a tiny elite, both spent vast sums on propaganda, and both have claimed victory. Experts on Amerikistan recall the history of violent revolution, civil war and more recent political violence and assassinations, resignations, impeachments, sexual scandals and corruption in this emergent republic, and recommend that the UN supervise its elections until the country stabilizes.

"It is struggling to emerge from years of political polarization and turmoil" said a World Trade Organization spokesperson, "and its long-suffering people deserve our support."

"One side of the country declared results before voting had finished in another part" he explained. Moreover, he went on to spell out that the southern province of 'Floridia,' in which the leadership struggle is being fought, is run by the brother of one of the candidates, whose father had previously ruled the entire country, having risen through his control of the nation's intelligence/security apparatus. Their family is based in a part of the country in which secessionist feelings have long run strong and which was only incorporated into Amerikistan after a border war.

Experts on Amerikistan argue that the UN should go in to run education programs, disarm the population, relieve the malnutrition and environmental problems caused by adherence to a staple diet of cheese and burgers, democratize the police forces and above all halt the further development of war machinery.

"This country has used dangerous weapons in the past and often threatened to do so again. But with our help, modernization, and a stress on human development, it may have a more stable future and join the ranks of the civilized international community" he said.

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#9
St. Petersburg Times
November 17, 2000
Editorial
Russia Can Learn From U.S. Vote

EVEN as the votes in the state of Florida are being recounted and the result of the U.S. presidential election remains up in the air, Russian politicians have been quick and joyful in pointing out the supposed flaws in the American system. No doubt some in the State Duma are regretting that they voted overwhelmingly last month not to send observers to monitor the election, especially since the proposal presciently focused attention on "Texas, California and other territories forcibly annexed to the United States," which would certainly include Florida.

The chairman of the Central Elections Commission, Alexander Veshnyakov, who was in the States observing the voting, drew this lesson: "Our presidential elections are conducted in a more democratic fashion and are more easily understood by voters."

President Vladimir Putin couldn't resist joking during a visit to Rostov that, "if necessary, [Veshnyakov] can tell his American colleagues how best to act."

Such remarks could be taken in good fun if not for the sorry state of elections in Russia and the role that Veshnyakov, Putin and many others in power locally and nationally have played in perpetuating that state.

In September, The Moscow Times published compelling evidence of massive fraud in Putin's March election victory. The only response to that investigation from Veshnyakov's commission has been to remove the vote results in question from the CEC Web site and to dismiss the story as an obvious manipulation. Likewise, there has been precious little response to the more than 2,000 complaints and 200 lawsuits that have been filed in connection with this vote.

Hrair Balian, head of the election section of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which observed the March election, has said that "the issue deserves a thorough investigation and a credible accounting." Putin and Veshnyakov, quick with jokes about the U.S. Electoral College, have been silent on this matter.

What lessons should Veshnyakov bring back from his trip to the States? He should note that he is seeing a system that has earned the confidence of the public in the past and therefore is able to weather this close election without creating a national crisis. He should notice that aggrieved citizens and political parties are getting a timely and thorough hearing in the courts. He should notice that the election itself was held when it was supposed to be held and not when it was more convenient for one or another of the candidates.

And when he returns to Russia, Veshnyakov should devote himself to earning the credibility that his commission will need to conduct the next election here.

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#10
Trud
November 16, 2000
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
MILITARY REFORM A MUST
Sergei ISHCHENKO, Trud military analyst

In the next few years, the Russian power departments will slash 20%, or 600,000, of their personnel. Will this make Russia stronger?

Here are some initial data for the current stage of military reforms. This year's military budget amounts to only 7 billion dollars, as against 270 billion dollars in the USA, despite a comparable strength of their military organisations. The average length of cruises made by the Russian warships is about 10 days a year (200 days in the USA). The share of modern communications in the Russian armed forces is barely 20% and industrial problems will prevent the improvement of the situation until 2010-2015, even in conditions of rhythmical financing.

Since 1995, only 1,500 graduates of flight schools have come to the armed forces. Of these, only 32% are more or less ready for combat operation, while over 400 of them have not made a single independent flight.

President Vladimir Putin is facing the challenging task of reviving the national defences. He decided not to hurry. To begin with, the Security Council admitted a bitter fact that Russia would not be able to wage a large-scale conventional war against any opponent until the year 2010. Only nuclear weapons can prevent a major invasion of the country. And this umbrella will be used to launch large-scale military reforms, the Security Council decided last week, said Colonel-General Vladimir Potapov, deputy secretary of the Security Council.

He said the main distinguishing feature of the nascent reforms is their careful financial substantiation, based on the macroeconomic development forecasts for 2001-2010. Proceeding from them, a certain annual financial basis has been determined for each power department, a basis that nobody would dare reduce.

If some minister would want to release money for the purchase of new weapons and hardware, he would have to reduce maintenance allocations. This can be done only by reducing troops. How large can these reductions be? The president has determined that the armed forces should be slashed by 365,000 troops, while other departments should reduce 105,000 of their servicemen and 130,000 of their civilian personnel.

There is such a boring accounting figure as the amount of resources per serviceman, meaning the sum annually spent on each man and officer. If the plans of the president and the Security Council are implemented, this figure will double by the year 2005 and triple by 2010, General Potapov says. The pilots will fly, the seamen will make cruises, and the artillery crews will fire regularly then. In fact, this is the goal of the military reform.

Initially, the logic of these plans was opposed by quite a few. This is why the first attempt to launch the reforms fell through last August. During the August session of the Security Council, the ministers of the interior and emergencies and the director of the Federal Frontier Service joined forces to demand that their departments must be left intact. Vladimir Putin decided that the question was not prepared well enough then and ordered that the session be regarded as a mere conference.

Since then, the expert commission on the military reform met 17 times. Here is the simple argument that convinced the stubborn ministers: You will not get more than planned anyway. Figures in hand, the experts told Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo that if the strength of the Interior Troops remained intact, their resource provision would grow by 50% at the best by the year 2005. This convinced him. Now Colonel-General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, Commander of the Interior Troops, suggests that his regiments and divisions should be slashed by 33,000, and their tasks should be overhauled.

We should not expect the military reform to proceed without a hitch now. The trouble is that it will hit too many people, because the state cannot provide sufficient social insurance to the reduced personnel. But there is no other way for Russia, and time is quickly running out.

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#11
Russia: No hope of retrieving papers, secret equipment from Kursk Interfax

Moscow, 16th November: The Russian Defence Ministry takes the view that any documents that were onboard the nuclear-powered submarine Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea on 12th August, are unlikely to be found.

"All ship documents which might shed light on the reasons for the Kursk's death, were destroyed by the great blast on board," a source in the armed forces General Staff told Interfax on Thursday [16th November].

Studies of the Kursk interior by the divers who entered her, deep-water apparatus and video cameras have shown "the most serious destruction of the bow, including the central command post that contained the log-books and charts registering all aspects of submarine activity. Everything in the totally ruined compartments could not have lasted physically," the source said.

It is apparent that the secret equipment in the vessel's forward section, namely ciphering, communications, navigation, reconnaissance and control machinery and weapons, was also destroyed.

The source said the work to raise the Kursk to the surface will be done next year, because it will impossible to learn the real reasons behind the disaster without a detailed analysis of the sub itself. "Before the operation, the Kursk will be guarded by warships, aviation and other means of the Northern Fleet, as NATO submarines keep cruising near the sub in the Barents Sea," he said.

The holes that have been cut through the submarine's hull "will facilitate the raising of the Kursk instead of hampering it",

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#12
Russia unwilling to discuss rejoining NATO's Partnership for Peace programme Interfax

Moscow, 16th November: Moscow regards as "somewhat early" the discussion of the resumption of Russia's involvement in the NATO Partnership for Peace programme, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeniy Gusarov told Interfax on Thursday [16th November].

According to media reports, head of the Partnership for Peace coordinating group Boleslaw Izydorczyk currently visiting Bishkek had said he hopes that Russia will resume active participation in this NATO programme, adding that there are some prerequisites for the resumption of such cooperation.

Meanwhile, Gusarov said Russia's attitude towards Partnership for Peace "takes into account the nature of this programme", implying that, in Moscow's opinion, the Partnership for Peace agenda is chiefly oriented towards countries aiming to join NATO.

Gusarov also noted that Russia's position towards its cooperation with the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), composed of NATO member-countries and states participating in Partnership for Peace, has not changed.

"We have participated and will participate in programmes within the framework of the EAPC, which we believe to be beneficial to and of interest for Russia," the deputy foreign minister said.

Russia froze its relations with NATO and simultaneously suspended cooperation with the EAPC after the Alliance launched the military operation against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999.

In May 2000, the first EAPC ministerial session after the crisis in the Balkans in which Russia participated was held in Florence. Gusarov represented Russia at that session.

Observers then noted that Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who was also in Florence at the time to take part in a session of the Russia-NATO Joint Permanent Council, did not attend the events within the framework of the EAPC.

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#13
Bankruptcy saga at Mil helicopter firm fuels intrigue, suspicions

MOSCOW, Nov 17 (AFP) -
The story of the descent into virtual bunkruptcy of Mil, Russia's leading helicopter manufacturer, includes all the elements of a thriller -- emptied bank accounts, a director beaten up and "disappearing" executives.

Add in media speculation that a big American competitor, which owns a stake in Mil, might be behind the Russian company's problems and you have a plot twist.

To come up with a happy ending, Mil's court-appointed director Vladimir Bogotcharov must come up with a rescue plan by the middle of December to pull the company out of its financial difficulties.

"The situation is serious but not catastrophic," Bogotcharov told a news conference on Wednesday here. "If we succeed in solving our problems, no competitor will be a match for us."

The scenario started in November 1998, when a small Russian company, Roubej, began the process of putting Mil into bankruptcy, for non-payment of a 12,000-dollar debt, a tiny amount in view of the millions of dollars of assets owned by Mil.

The bankruptcy filing must have been a humbling experience for the once-mighty Mil, named after its engineer founder, Mikhail Mil, who built up the firm over half a century to supply 90 percent of the Russian army's helicopters and garner a quarter share of the world market.

The Russian press reported that "for reasons unknown," Mil refused to pay Roubej and a court appointed the first of a series of temporary directors last year.

Mil's debt continued to mount up and Bogotcharov puts them at 11.4 million dollars.

The then court-appointed director Leonid Zapolski was fired in October. The court said he had sold helicopters without the creditors' approval and had invested in "doubtful financial instruments."

Meanwhile, Mil's main creditor, Russian bank MIB, believes former director Zapolski had done nothing wrong and has appealed against the decision to fire him.

A few days later, Zapolski's deputy, Igor Tchmykhov, was beaten up by unidentified attackers and hospitalised.

Around that time, Mil's finance director and its spokesman left Moscow and "disappeared", Bogotcharov said. The company's foreign currency accounts had been emptied, he added.

A MIB official said that the Mil executives who had left had been worried and that Zapolski had received threats.

The local media asked whether the Mil saga was just another everyday Russian story of the theft of assets by former company executives, or a plot by a foreign company looking to eliminate a Russian competitor.

Sikorsky, the US helicopter maker and part of the United Technologies Corp. industrial conglomerate owns nine percent of Mil.

Russian business daily Expert wrote: "the (Mil) factory's problems began with the arrival of foreign shareholders." That was a view shared by several Russian politicians who believed that the state should hold a majority ownership in large aerospace concerns.

Mil was partially privatised in 1992 and the state retained a 31 percent stake but had no money to invest or make large orders for more aircraft.

"Mil is a direct competitor" to Sikorsky and its bankruptcy would help the US company, Expert reported.

Sikorsky officials were not available for comment.

Nadejda Mil, the daughter of the founder told AFP; "Sikorsky has nothing to do with this story."

Bogotcharov is due to meet Sikorsky representatives soon and has said that cooperation with the US company would continue and that Russian investors were ready to step and save Mil.

"We have always been and will remain a competitor of Sikorsky but it is the only partner which helps to finance our work," Mil's chief engineer Alexei Samoussenko said.

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#14
Moscow Times
November 15, 2000
ESSAY: The School Where Putin's People Learn to Rule
By Gleb Pyanykh
Gleb Pyanykh is a correspondent for the magazine Vlast, for which he wrote this essay.

There can be no doubt that in order to survive in today's rough-and-tumble political arena, one needs the highest level of professionalism. Finally, someone has appeared on the scene who understands this problem. A few weeks ago, a notice appeared on the Internet announcing the creation of a new institute of higher learning for would-be politicians, to go by the mysterious Russian acronym VPSh. I decided to check it out and see exactly who studies there and what they are learning.

I was immediately disappointed to learn that the VPSh, or Advanced Political School, is not really called VPSh anymore. Instead, it is now the ShPP, or School of Professional Politics. School administrators explained to me vaguely that "difficulties arose when we tried to register the name 'Advanced Political School.'" Nonetheless, this pseudonym is still widely used there and obviously much beloved.

The school rents two floors of a modern business center on Balakirevsky Lane in Moscow. Its rector, Arkady Shvartser, told me that the school has already enrolled two groups of 20 students each, two-thirds of them being Muscovites and the rest coming from the regions. The school offers dormitory space to students from other cities, but most of them prefer to live in hotels. Tuition at the school ranges from $5,000 to $8,000 for a two-month course. The average age of the students is 28.

When I asked what, concretely, the students study there, the rector answered that such information was "a commercial secret." He explained that students are required to sign a "confidentiality agreement" that obligates them not to reveal what they learned at the school. And, indeed, I found out that this is true when I approached a pair of perfectly decent-looking students and asked them about the school. Both politely refused to answer, citing the confidentiality agreement.

A third student, who identified himself as Sergei, agreed to talk. Sergei works in the press office of a regional governor and was sent to the school on a "voluntary/mandatory" basis. He explained that the school holds lessons three days a week for three hours a day. Plus there is one full-day session devoted to "practical work."

"Our teachers don't have a very high opinion of the Russian people," Sergei explained to me. "The people are just pagans who can only think one step ahead. Their brains are dominated by myths and theatrics. For the Russian electorate, politics is nothing but theater and a politician is just an actor who is giving a performance here and now. He has no past and he has no future. Therefore, if Boris Berezovsky or the Family stands behind a particular politician f as they did for instance with Putin f that doesn't mean that the people won't vote for him."

"Putin, for instance, performed a miracle," Sergei continued. "He won the war in Chechnya in 1999. And the people believed in this miracle. They'll believe in any other miracle as well. So, here they teach us how to manage the choices of such a people."

After talking to Sergei, I was able to lay my hands on a copy of the school curriculum dated Sept. 2. It bore the signature of Sergei Markov, a well-known political scientist and the director of the Institute of Political Research. The school's two-month program bears the ominous title, "Managing Human Choice." The curriculum carefully laid out how many hours students would spend studying each topic, which ranged widely and included things like "The Nature of Power," "Managing a Politician's Reputation," "Information and Psychological Wars" and "Story Therapy."

I took this paper directly to Markov who, for some reason, agreed to meet me not at the school itself but in the office of the Internet newspaper Strana.ru (which, incidentally, is where I first learned about the school). We met in the office of Gleb Pavlovsky.

"Pavlovsky is allowing me to use his office while I am working on a special project for him f a foreign-language version of Strana.ru. It doesn't have anything to do with the school," Markov explained. "The school was founded by a group of private individuals who have been working in the field of political technology for a long time now. However, I can't tell you precisely who they are."

Markov talked quite openly about what, in his opinion, the school's program should be. In his opinion, society now badly needs a trained and qualified new generation of politicians. Putin's elite is now coming in to replace the old Yeltsin elite. Markov said that deputies and politicians who were hurriedly thrown together into the Unity party for the State Duma elections last winter particularly need training now.

"And did the Kremlin play a role in the creation of the school?" I asked.

"No," Markov answered sincerely and then immediately added, "and our school has its enemies. You most likely understand that there are many factions within the Kremlin. Of course, if you ask me specifically who our enemies are, I won't answer you."

I showed Markov the curriculum that I had found. "That is not my signature," he said. He grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbled something on it and said, "That's my signature."

But then he read the paper I'd given him and began speaking carefully. "But, by the way, what is written here ... yes, this is one of the working documents and it is quite close to the final version. Are you surprised by its cynicism? It isn't really that cynical. Machiavelli was right about a lot of things, but not about everything. Politicians can't do whatever they want. For example, if a Russian politician criticizes the Orthodox Church, he is committing a fatal mistake."

And then Markov began reading me a long lecture on politics. He focused mostly on "political technologies," the most interesting of which was something called "story therapy." In this course, students are asked to write a story featuring themselves as the protagonist. Then the stories are studied carefully by an experienced psychologist, who uncovers in them a wealth of hidden complexes. The psychologist then helps the student rewrite the story and thus to create for himself a new "life myth." "If you change the myth, you change fate," is something that they teach at the school.

As I left Markov, I couldn't help but wonder whether one can really grasp fate like that. But in Russia it is pretty easy to find people who think that by spending two months and $8,000 one can rewrite one's fate and learn how to manage the choice of the people. But it is hard for me to believe that it is so easy. It seems to me that thinking this way is about the same as thinking that one can take a two-month judo course and then be ready for an international competition. Or for a hard-hitting job in the Federal Security Service.

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