No thank you, OSCE

Last week Russia did something apparently unprecedented. In a letter to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Russian leadership, at this particular time represented by the Central Election Commission, made an attempt to dictate the size (i.e. make it very small) and composition of the team of election monitors that would be monitoring the coming parliamentary elections. Since the OSCE has no possibility of forcing its will upon the Russians, it seems likely there will be either a diminished OSCE mission going to Russia, or none at all. The Russians are hoping for the latter.

Russia’s reasons for attempting this scheme are several. For years it has been fighting what it sees as the OSCE focusing more on domestic democracy issues than regional security, failing to see the connection. On a number of occasions it has voiced its concern and criticized this development and, in the light of these past events, this is nothing but a natural escalation of the conflict. By trying to reduce the number of observers to as little as 70, Russia is in effect making it impossible for the election monitors to come up with any kind of definitive conclusion, even thought the mere fact that this is happening should serve as evidence that something is a bit fishy. Not that the United Russia party will have to cheat in order to bring home the election trophy, especially not after President Putin’s announcement that he will head their ticket. Opinion polls show there will be a landslide victory, much thanks to Putin’s now even closer affiliation to the party, which also seems to have been the reason for his candidacy in the first place. 

The thing is the OSCE does not only monitor the actual elections, but also whether campaigns are conducted freely. This is from where most of the alleged criticism would stem. There will basically be no ordinary election campaign; most of the televised debates will even be hidden from the public eye on time slots that could only with the maximum amount of generosity be referred to as prime time. Coverage of the United Russia, though, will as always be extensive, while the remains of the opposition will have severe difficulties getting their message out. Harassments are also likely; only last week the regional branch of the FSB in Novosibirsk conducted an investigation into the distribution of Communist Party leaflets (even though the Central Election Commission firmly rejected the security service’s claim that election laws had been violated). The treatment of the opposition movement Another Russia’s attempts to voice their opinions at city rallies also should not have gone unnoticed. An OSCE mission would recognize all this.

Despite the fact that most Russians love their present president and would vote for anyone or anything he would tell them to, opinion polls do show that they also value their right to choose. The Russian opinion does not seem very interested in returning to a truly autocratic dictatorship but would prefer to be able to cast their votes now and then. Therefore, the illusion of a democratic process remains important to the Kremlin. An OSCE report would without a doubt be critical and a blow to this illusion. That is why Russia is hoping its monitors will not show up at all, under the pretext that they would not be able to conduct their work anyhow.  

Russia and the West

This week we have been reading senior leadership quotes about foreign management and western spies. First it was President Putin, who in a speech in front of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, wanted Russian companies within the energy and raw material sector to rely less on foreign management. Later, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolai Patrushev, told the readers of weekly Argumenty i fakty that western intelligence operatives were actively trying to influence the outcome of the coming parliamentary and presidential elections by trying to influence protests and demonstrations. According to Patrushev, the goal of Western governments is to dismember the Russian Federation. Some analysts see this as nothing but electoral propaganda, but I disagree. It is more of a sincere belief that the world is still bi-polar and international politics a zero-sum game being expressed. This sort of opinions has been voiced regularly for quite some time and not only when the country is approaching elections. E.g., in 2004 after the awful terrorist act aimed at a school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, President Putin went on the air to tell the Russian people that foreign powers that still considered Russia a threat, being a nuclear power, were aiding the terrorists to tear off a large piece of Russia.

While nobody is better at spotting a conspiracy than the Russians, regardless of whether there is one or not, it should be interesting to consider whether there is any proof to all this. No doubt were the Rose Revolution in Georgia and its orange counterpart in Ukraine supported, morally and financially, by Western powers. But on the other hand, there are strong indications that Russia assisted yesterday’s Ukrainian regime in poisoning then opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko. Now, if that is not meddling, I do not know what is. 

NATO enlargement has also given Russia a sense of becoming more and more surrounded by enemies and, thanks to growing self-esteem that comes from its increasing wealth, the fight to retain its influence of what used to be the Soviet Union has become more intense; hence the struggle to keep Georgia and the Ukraine out of NATO.

It is not difficult to see from where Russia gets its ideas of a Western conspiracy, but we should put one thing straight: no Western government would like to see Russia dismembered, with all the chaos that would stem from such a development. That very senior Russian government officials still claim this is seems to be because they see Western intrusions in what they consider to be Russia’s sphere of influence as a sign that Russia itself is up for grabs. Frankly, there seems to be confusion about where the boundaries of Russia really go. That neighbouring countries are invited to join NATO is not proof of any conspiracy against Russia, but rather of a desire among these countries to distance themselves from their past, when they were either members or satellite states of the Soviet Union. That they no longer feel a connection to Russia is basically Russia’s own fault, even though they are masters at failing to admit this. We should also look upon this in the light of Russia’s own actions in Moldova and Georgia, where so called Russian “peacekeepers” are in effect supporting the rulers of non-recognised states that have broken away from the central government of these countries. Now, if that is not dismembering, I do not know what is. 

Putin’s remarks, too, should be read in the light of this sense of conspiracy. Putin wrote his doctoral thesis on the use of natural resources as a strategic tool for governments (even though there are doubts about whether he actually wrote it himself) and he has proven ready to use this weapon on several occasions. With the continuing consolidation of energy suppliers within the hands of the government, there should come as no surprise that foreign (read: Western) management is not very appreciated.

Russia still does not trust the West. It will never do so as long as it continues to see the former Soviet Union as being present day Russia’s sphere of influence and as long as Western criticism of the troubling state of Russian democracy is seen as meddling within its internal affairs. And sensing this conspiracy, whether real or not, Russia will continue to carefully guard its most powerful tool of exercising influence. And no doubt will they continue using it. 

Vote Lugovoi

Today we learnt that the former officer of the KGB Andrei Lugovoi, who has been accused of being an accomplice in the murder of also ex-KGB Aleksandr Litvinenko in London last autumn, will stand for election representing the rather bizarre Liberal Democratic Party (which is neither particularly liberal nor democratic). Some newspapers have been arguing that Lugovoi in this way might be seeking protection from being extradited to the United Kingdom, since members of the Russian parliament are immune from prosecution. That does not seem to be the case, since Lugovoi anyhow would be protected by the Russian constitution, which apparently (I must admit I have not read it myself) makes it illegal to extradite Russian nationals. Also, even the parliamentary immunity, according to the newspaper Izvestiya (http://www.izvestiya.ru/politic/article3108355/), is known to have been lifted when deemed necessary. Thus, a political career would offer no more protection for Lugovoi than he already enjoys. The move by the Liberal Democrats (LDPR) should rather be seen as an attempt to gain a mass media momentum before parliamentary elections this year. According to the same article in Isvestiya, the LDPR is balancing on the 7% threshold to win seats in the Duma. They hope Lugovoi will act as a pull-factor for the part of the constituency that might sympathize with the somewhat original (mostly obscurely nationalistic) views of their party, but does not really care too much about voting. At the party congress, leader Vladimir Zhirinovski portrayed his new recruit as a victim of British imperialism and said that the whole murder story was an MI6 plot.

Speculations about whether the Russian government ordered the Litvinenko murder have been abundant since the story broke, while it does not seem probable. Consider the method. By killing their victim with the help of radioactive poisoning (thus actually committing the first case of nuclear terrorism ever), the perpetrators committed probably the most indiscreet killing in the history of mankind. Not only was the poison especially torturous, they also left a radioactive trace covering large parts of a foreign capital and the aeroplane on which they flew in from Moscow. Now, if you were a government and you wanted to kill someone on foreign soil, why would you not choose some method less obvious? Would it be so difficult to organise an automobile accident or a mugging-went-wrong? Also, it is the question of timing. Ever since Litvinenko accused the Federal Security Service (FSB) of organising the terrorist bombings of two apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999, he was detested and hated by his former colleagues. It should not be ruled out that revenge was indeed the motive behind the killing, but why would the Russian government dispose of him now and draw even more attention to something long buried? This is not the same as saying that the men of the Kremlin are sorry about what happened. It does not necessarily mean that they do not know who were behind it. I just do not think they ordered it.

Obviously though, the murderers were well connected; getting your hands on polonium-210 most likely is not the easiest thing to pull off. The question is whether it is floating around the black market or if the perpetrators actually received it from a source within the government. If it is the latter, and the Kremlin disagreed with the need to dispose of Litvinenko, then we should have seen some re-organisation among the top echelon of the security and intelligence community. So far, we have not. This would imply that, even though the polonium probably once originated from within the government, it has been out of there for some time. Like Lugovoi, by the way.

There is, however, a message in all of this. Since the organisers behind the murder could not possibly have underestimated the reaction that would follow killing someone the radioactive way, they must have wanted everyone to notice what happened. There was a message, but to whom? Exile oligarch Boris Berezovski, who was Litvinenko’s guardian? Someone sitting on information that, according to some sources, Litvinenko was using to blackmail people in Russia? No clue. Honestly.