Archive for January, 2009

Sweden wakes up to Russia

Posted Friday, January 23, 2009 by Anders Hjemdahl

By Anders Hjemdahl

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A sign of the increasingly intense debate in Sweden on Russia’s aggressive foreign policy,  a fully booked seminar at Swedish think tank Timbro titled “The new Cold War — Where is Russia going?” initiated and led by Swedish MP Mats Johansson (Moderate Party) featured three experts of Sweden’s leading experts on Russia who gave their views on the situation in Russia, its causes and the country’s likely future direction.

Chief among the subjects discussed were Russia’s use of its gas exports as a political weapon, the dismantling of the fledgling Russian democracy, the brutal repression of political dissent, Russia’s buying of political influence in the West and in its neighboring countries, the impact of the current financial crisis and falling oil and gas prices on Russia’s economy, and the future direction of Russia.

Mr. Fredik Erixon, Director of The European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, stated that “Russia’s foreign exchange reserves will, given the current state of the market, be completely depleted by June, 2010″. The other speakers were historian and author Dr. Gunilla Persson and former Swedish Radio Moscow correspondent Mrs. Maria Persson Löfgren, who provided insights from the country’s history, discussed the repression of political dissent, and the continued assassination of journalists critical of the Putin/Medvedev administration.

The seminar was also broadcast live on the Internet.

Mr. Johansson is the author of the recent book “Det nya kalla kriget” (The New Cold War) which can be ordered here.

Posted in Geopolitics, Human Rights, Russia, Security, Sweden | No Comments »

Russian destabilization in Latvia?

Posted Friday, January 16, 2009 by Anders Hjemdahl

By Anders Hjemdahl

Last year’s Russian annexation of Georgian territory and the Putin regime’s ongoing use of its gas exports as an integrated weapon to forcibly implement Russia’s strategic interests, currently directed against the Ukraine, caused several leading international security experts last year to warn that Russia’s next targets for destabilization would be the Baltic States.

Following last week’s riots, Riga is currently reeling from an outpouring of violence not seen since the struggle for independence from the Soviet occupation in the early nineties. The riots have many aspects which point to Russian involvement.

On January 13, following a peaceful anti-government mass rally accusing the government of economic mismanagement and demanding new elections, dozens of burly men, many of them masked, tried to storm the Parliament Building in Riga.  

The attackers were supported by hundreds more who threw cobble-stones and chunks of ice at government buildings and the police. According to The Baltic Times, Latvian State Police Riga Regional Department spokesman Edgars Dudko said that Riga’s entire police force, including officers from the city’s municipal, state and military units, were mobilized to calm the unrest. As the violence intensified, police were forced to use tear gas and rubber bullets to subdue the mob. Several police and miltary vehicles were destroyed during the violence.

The rioters regrouped in Riga’s historic business district in the Old Town, where they proceeded to smash government and bank windows and loot a liquor store. 

Of the 106 rioters of various nationalities who were detained by the police, around 80 % had previously been fined for disturbing the peace. One of the demonstrators had been fined 17 times for smimilar violations.

Both the Latvian government and the organizers of the anti-government mass rally, which was attended by 10,000 people, agree that the attack was organized. The Latvian security forces describe the attack as appearing to be “coordinated”.

The Security Police says two men involved in the organization of mass riots are among the detained, one person has connection with the pro-Russian Latvian National Democratic Party lead by Yevgeny Osipov, the other is a skinhead. Yevgeny Osipov earlier supervised the Latvian branch of Russia’s neo-fascist organization Russian National Unity (RNE).

10 police and military police officers were seriously wounded during the three-hour riot. 

According to the Prime Minister of Latvia, Ivars Godmanis, individuals had used foreign Internet servers to distribute calls for violent actions. The Latvian Police are expected to conduct a full investigaton of the violent attacks.

Is this merely the first step in a concerted Russian effort to destabilize the Baltic States? 

A video clip of the riot is available at the BBC News here.

Posted in Geopolitics, Russia, Security, Sweden | No Comments »

Russia Seeks Control of Ukraine’s Gas Transit System Through a Consortium

Posted Friday, January 16, 2009 by Anders Hjemdahl
 
Russia and some circles in Germany are reactivating the idea of a consortium to control Ukraine’s gas transit system. Moscow hopes to profit from the crisis atmosphere it has itself created since January 1 by stopping gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine. Blaming Ukraine in oft-inflammatory language for the stoppage, Russia is seeking to persuade Germany and the rest of Europe that Ukraine is unqualified to handle the transit of Russian gas supplies.
 
Moscow’s thesis, if accepted, would lead to two possible corollaries. One would be international backing for circumventing Ukraine with Gazprom’s pipeline projects, such as Nord Stream and South Stream, which Gazprom lacks the means to build. The other would be international acceptance of transferring control over Ukraine’s transit system from an “unreliable” Ukrainian government to a “reliable” Gazprom, under the mantle of an international consortium.    

Either solution would increase Russia’s strategic leverage over Europe. Together with Russia’s German partners, the Kremlin has proposed the consortium solution for Ukraine several times in recent years and is now reiterating it, again with Germany as its primary target audience.

Read the full article by Vladimir Socor in the Eurasia Daily Monitor at The Jamestown Foundation here.

Posted in Geopolitics, Russia, Security | No Comments »

US to “apologize” to Russia for supporting Georgia

Posted Friday, January 16, 2009 by Anders Hjemdahl

According to General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the United States must also apologize “for putting the responsibility for the events in South Ossetia on us and accusing us of unleashing aggression against Georgia and the excessive use of force during the operation in forcing Georgia to peace, although it knew pretty well who the real aggressor was” (ITAR-TASS, January 13). Such an “apology” would legitimize the Russian invasion of Georgia last August and, by implication, Moscow’s right in the future to impose its will on former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine, its so-called sphere of privileged interests.

Obama has called for active engagement of former adversaries, but can this work if the strategic intentions of the present leaders of autocracies such as Russia and Iran are basically incompatible with those of democratic Western nations?

Read the full article by Pavel Felgenhauer  in the Eurasia Daily Monitor at The Jamestown Foundation here.

Posted in Geopolitics, Russia, Security | No Comments »

Russia Hiding Gas Shortfall by Touting Multiple Export Routes

Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2009 by Anders Hjemdahl

Russia is using the gas supply crisis, which it has itself triggered, to induce a contest among consumer countries over imports of Russian natural gas. Russian-produced gas has become a commodity in short supply when measured against Russia’s internal requirements and its existing export commitments.

The shortfall had been prognosticated to set in by 2010-2011 but can already be observed. Anatoly Chubais’s public forecast in 2008 (while still head of Russia’s electricity monopoly) that the gas shortfall might occur as early as in 2009, seems on the mark. The structural cause of this shortfall is chronic underinvestment in new Russian gas fields. Compounding this factor, the recent credit crisis and falling oil and gas prices are derailing Gazprom’s investment plans in new fields and pipelines. This process will prolong the period of production shortfalls and stagnant exports of Russian gas. It will also widen still further the gap between rising European and world demand on one hand and Russia’s stagnant export potential on the other hand.

Read the full article By Vladimir Socor in the Eurasia Daily Monitor at The Jamestown Foundation here.

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Russia’s Gas Disinformation Game

Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2009 by Anders Hjemdahl

Disinformation operations, as every former KGB operative knows, can be an invaluable tool in winning a war. “Deza,” as it is called by the old boys who once worked on Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow, is an art meant to be used carefully by professionals; otherwise it can backfire and damage its disseminators.

It was therefore not a surprise that throughout the Russian-Ukrainian “gas war” of January 2009, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, along with key Gazprom officials, many of whom are suspected of having KGB backgrounds, resorted to disinformation on an unprecedented scale. What is surprising, however, is how incompetent their efforts turned out to be.

Disinformation operation one—Ukraine buys Russian gas. Gazprom and Putin have pushed the fiction that Ukraine should pay “European prices” for its purchases of Russian gas.

Ukraine, however, buys little if any Russian gas—its main supplier under the January 2006 contract is Turkmenistan with some Kazakh and Uzbek gas thrown in. Russia’s Gazprom buys this gas from the Central Asians for a much lower price than Russian gas sells for, and then resells it to RosUkrEnergo (RUE), a Swiss-based intermediary of which Gazprom owns 50 percent (the other 50 percent is owned by 2 private Ukrainian businessmen). In 2008 RUE resold this gas to a joint RUE-Naftohaz Ukrayina enterprise, UkrGaz-Energo, which was the Ukrainian domestic distributor for Central Asian gas in Ukraine.


The alleged 2009 wellhead price for Turkmen gas is $340 for 1,000 cubic meters (tcm). With transit costs added on, the price for Turkmen gas on the Ukrainian-Russian border was announced to be $380 and not the $450 Putin has demanded that Ukraine pay. According to reliable sources, however, German companies will pay an average of $280 per tcm for Russian gas in 2009. Why such a great price differential? 

Read the full article by Roman Kupchinsky in the Eurasia Daily Monitor at The Jamestown Foundation here.

Posted in Geopolitics, Russia, Security | No Comments »