Russia Discussion

antihenry said:
Majority of Russians wouldn't know who Dugin is. Just because you read an article in Foreign Affairs, doesn't mean it has anything to do with reality. Dugin is in no way affiliated with Putin or Russian government and I doubt they'd be interested in his harebrained ideas. Once again, reading stuff on the Internet doesn't make you an expert. Stick with what you know first hand.
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Russian politics has always been opaque so lack of public knowledge of a particular person is irrelevant. I doubt many Russians outside certain areas of Moscow and St Pete knew much about Surkov and Pavlovsky (most just follow the "good tsar" narrative on state-controlled TV) but both were very influential in the previous decade.
 
MoskvaRed said:
Russian politics has always been opaque so lack of public knowledge of a particular person is irrelevant. I doubt many Russians outside certain areas of Moscow and St Pete knew much about Surkov and Pavlovsky (most just follow the "good tsar" narrative on state-controlled TV) but both were very influential in the previous decade.
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Surkov is still highly influential behind the scenes and is actually well known. I doubt Pavlovsky ever was a serious player when it comes to decision making.

Dugin is just a nut, no one takes his ramblings seriously.
 
And why is it even important? What are we supposed to think , well Ukrainian oligarchs are at war so annexing Crimea was OK?
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
And why is it even important? What are we supposed to think , well Ukrainian oligarchs are at war so annexing Crimea was OK?
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Just throwing it out there in the hopes it may change the focus of the thread from Russian misdeeds.
 
Sir Matt said:
Are you going to repost the same article every few days? Same article by the same author on different sites.
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Sorry, I didn't realize I had already posted it earlier. This is a number one topic in Ukraine now, but it's difficult to find decent links from western sources and it's pointless to post links to Russian or Ukrainian sites here since I assume most posters on the thread don't speak either language despite seemingly knowing everything there's to know about the situation.

Raoul said:
Just throwing it out there in the hopes it may change the focus of the thread from Russian misdeeds.
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You read me like a book Raoul. With your powers of perception you should work for a psychic network, not waste your valuable time on some football forum.
 
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Ukraine Government Tries to Rein In Oligarch Ally.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-government-tries-to-rein-in-oligarch-ally-1427144794

"The attempt to tame the oligarchs has received unusually vocal support from U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, who said in a radio interview Friday that tycoons can’t go back to old ways.

After a meeting Friday with Mr. Kolomoisky, the ambassador said: “I think he understands, as do most political leaders today, that the environment has changed and that the law of the jungle, which is what existed under Yanukovych, is a recipe for disaster in Ukraine.”

Mr. Pyatt said control of Ukrtransnafta should be decided by the law, “as opposed to muscle.”

Good thing, these local savages can rely on US Ambassador to sort out their troubles and teach them the civilized way of doing business.
 
Raoul said:
Far-right politicians come to Russia to support Putin

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/far-right-politicians-come-to-russia-to-support-vladimir-putin/

Nazis anyone ? Apparently the likes of Nick Griffin and his European far right friends have gone to Russia to support Putin.
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The german "NPD", the Greek "golden Dawn", the Italian "Forza Nuova" and many more joined them. Right-wing-nuts United. I guess that’s L'Internationale of nationalists. It’s also a sad attempt from Putin to gain influence in Europe.
 
PedroMendez said:
The german "NPD", the Greek "golden Dawn", the Italian "Forza Nuova" and many more joined them. Right-wing-nuts United. I guess that’s L'Internationale of nationalists. It’s also a sad attempt from Putin to gain influence in Europe.
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Yes he seems to be keen on using the European far right nutters to break Euro solidarity on Russian sanctions. Doubt it will work without a proper withdrawal from Ukraine.
 
It is reported that Russia funds various far right neo-fascist parties in the EU (in between inventing fascist bogeymen in Kiev).
 
well. In most countries these parties are isolated or powerless. The one scary exception is the front national. The only reason they didn’t join those other nutjobs is, that there were elections. Considering the situation in France, they won’t just go away and they could win a major election in the next ten years.

Anyway. Even the tin-foil hat brigade should understand that Putin/Russia is closely associated with extreme right-wing nationalists. So scaremongering that fascists take over in Kiev doesn’t make any sense. They already have significant influence in Russia.

A couple of days ago the “Spiegel” published an interview with “Igor Strelkov” (dunno why he agreed). This guy is bad shit crazy and received support from Putin.
 
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PedroMendez said:
well. In most countries these parties are isolated or powerless. The one scary exception is the front national. The only reason they didn’t join those other nutjobs is, that there were elections. Considering the situation in France, they won’t just go away and they could win a major election in the next ten years.

Anyway. Even the tin-foil hat brigade should understand that Putin/Russia is closely associated with extreme right-wing nationalists. So scaremongering that fascists take over in Kiev doesn’t make any sense. They already have significant influence in Russia.

A couple of days ago the “Spiegel” published an interview “Igor Strelkov” (dunno why he agreed). This guy is bad shit crazy and received support from Putin.
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The Strelkov interview was quite remarkable. Shows how Putin's logic, if taken to its extreme, involves a complete Russian invasion and annexation of Ukraine, including Kiev and all other parts.
 
This is a pretty interesting read, a Russian shill tells all.....

One Professional Russian Troll Tells All
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March 25, 2015
Dmitry Volchek and Daisy Sindelar
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"All the curtains are kept closed," says former professional Russian troll Marat Burkhard. "We're all forbidden from going out on the street during the day."
More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online.
There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia's most famous "troll factory," the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg's Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work grinding, 12-hour shifts in exchange for 40,000 rubles ($700) a month or more.
St. Petersburg blogger Marat Burkhard spent two months working at Internet Research in the department tasked with clogging the forums on Russia's municipal websites with pro-Kremlin comments. In the following interview, he describes a typical day and the type of assignments he encountered.
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Marat Burkhard

RFE/RL: Marat, you wrote on your blog that your time at Internet Research gave you enough material for an entire book. Why did you decide to write there? Entertainment? Adventurism?
Marat Burkhard:
Yes, adventurism is the right word. Because in my opinion, this kind of work doesn't exist anywhere else.
RFE/RL: Was it hard to get the job?
Burkhard:
Yes, it was hard. You have to write sample texts first, and then they decide if you're suitable for the work. They weed people out that way.
RFE/RL: What kind of texts?
Burkhard:
First they make you write something neutral -- Vegetarianism: Pros And Cons. After that, the assignments start to get more to the point -- for example, what do I think about humanitarian convoys in Donetsk?
RFE/RL: Were you forced to hide your real beliefs?
Burkhard:
Yes, I'm pro-Western. That's natural for me and for them, of course, it's not. I didn't write anything about my views. Otherwise, they wouldn't have hired me; they would have thrown me out immediately. They're constantly running ideological checks on everything you write. I got caught a couple of times; I had some irresponsible moments.
RFE/RL: Did they immediately offer you a salary of 45,000 rubles, or did you get gradual raises before you reached that point?
Burkhard:
No, I got it immediately -- as long as I met my quota. It's a real factory. There are production quotas, and for meeting your quota you get 45,000. The quota is 135 comments per 12-hour shift.
RFE/RL: How many departments are there at Internet Research?
Burkhard:
It's a modern building, four floors. There's a LiveJournal department, a news department, a department where they create all sorts of images and demotivators (Editor's Note: Demotivators are satirical graphics that tend to undermine their subject matter), a department where they make videos. But I was never in those departments. Each of them has its own office, tables, and computers, and no one prowls around from place to place. Everyone stays in their spot.
RFE/RL: How many people were in your department?
Burkhard:
Twenty.
RFE/RL: Did you work 12 hours a day?
Burkhard:
Yes. There were daytime and nighttime shifts.
RFE/RL: Did you need to sit in the office or was it possible to work from home?
Burkhard:
There's no working by remote. At night, a different shift comes in. I worked the day shift.
RFE/RL: So you sit in an office for 12 hours without ever going out? Why such gigantic shifts?
Burkhard:
It's two days on, two days off. So they figure that you need to work 12 hours at a time instead of eight.
RFE/RL: So what did your department do?
Burkhard:
Our department commented on posts. Every city and village in Russia has its own municipal website with its own comments forum. People would write something on the forum -- some kind of news -- and our task was to comment on it. We did it by dividing into teams of three. One of us would be the "villain," the person who disagrees with the forum and criticizes the authorities, in order to bring a feeling of authenticity to what we're doing. The other two enter into a debate with him -- "No, you're not right; everything here is totally correct." One of them should provide some kind of graphic or image that fits in the context, and the other has to post a link to some content that supports his argument. You see? Villain, picture, link.
RFE/RL: So all three of you sit together, agreeing on who's going to do what in this performance?
Burkhard:
Yeah, that's the kind of absurdity that goes on. We don't talk too much, because everyone is busy. A single comment isn't supposed to be less than 200 characters. You have to just sit there and type and type, endlessly. We don't talk, because we can see for ourselves what the others are writing, but in fact you don't even have to really read it, because it's all nonsense. The news gets written, someone else comments on it, but I think real people don't bother reading any of it at all.
So in this way, our little threesome traverses the country, stopping at every forum, starting with Kaliningrad and ending in Vladivostok. We create the illusion of actual activity on these forums. We write something, we answer each other. There are keywords, tags, that are needed for search engines. We're given five keywords -- for example, "Shoigu," "defense minister," "Russian army." All three of us have to make sure these keywords appear all over the place in our comments. They can't even be conjugated or declined. Sometimes it's very hard to write when you can't use any declensions!
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Much more at the link:

http://www.rferl.mobi/a/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html
 
The Moment That Made Putin

Vladimir Putin, then a KGB agent, was caught up in dramatic events as East Germany collapsed. He saw crowds take control as communist power collapsed, and had to defend his KGB office in Dresden as demonstrators tried to break in. Chris Bowlby explores how this experience shaped Putin's career and behaviour today - his determination to restore Russian power, his fear of demonstrations, his sense of the power of nationalism. We learn too about the network of colleagues and friends he began to assemble in Germany and how it aided his rise to power and wealth. And we discover the quirkier side too of Putin's love of German order and his enthusiasm for German beer, cake and Western consumer gadgets. Understanding Putin is more vital than ever given current events in Europe. The story of his German years reveals much about where his strongest ambitions - and deepest fears - come from.

Listen on-line :: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nsd2b
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Not particularly surprised that the Mafia State is engaging in such corrupt practices. On the other hand, it shows that Putin is willing to bankroll far right European groups to undermine European sanctions solidarity, much like he fomented the uprisings in Crimea and Donbass.
 
Putin condemns Kiev over 'blockade' of east Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Ukraine's government is "cutting off" defiant rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine through an economic blockade.

He was addressing a huge Russian audience in a live televised phone-in.

He also insisted "there are no Russian troops in Ukraine". Moscow denies Western charges that it is directly arming and reinforcing the rebels.

Later he said those who had ordered the murder of Boris Nemtsov - one of his leading critics - might never be found.

Mr Nemtsov, a prominent opposition politician, was shot dead on 27 February near the Kremlin.

Five suspects, all of them Chechens, are in custody. Mr Putin condemned the murder as "disgraceful".

Ukraine 'blockade'

It is Mr Putin's 13th such annual phone-in with the Russian public - and usually they last about four hours.

Mr Putin denied reports that Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko had offered to let Russia have the rebel-held areas in the Donbas region.

The rebels reject Kiev's rule and are getting humanitarian aid from Russia, which annexed Ukraine's Crimea region last year.

"There are many problems there and we do not see the current Kiev authorities wanting to restore the social sphere, or the economy of Donbas," Mr Putin said.

"We see a total blockade of Donbas. One can say that the current Ukrainian authorities are cutting off Donbas by their own hand. That is the problem and tragedy."

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32332433
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32214981
Pro-Russian journalist killed in Kiev
 
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Ukrainians and Russians are one people - this sums up Putin's mentality quite well. He has zero respect for Ukraine, its internationally recognized- sovereign territory, including Crimea and Donbass, or for its citizens.
 
Unfortunate Russian soldiers vacationers in Ukraine are captured and taken to Kiev.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/us-ukraine-crisis-military-idUSKBN0O30TE20150518

antihenry said:
In Ukraine, Corruption Concerns Linger a Year After a Revolution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/w...ns-linger-a-year-after-a-revolution.html?_r=0
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So they haven't fixed the high level of corruption that was rampant and encouraged by Russian-backed rulers in 1 year? Shocking. If only they didn't have to deal with constant involvement from Putin and his cronies both in western Ukraine and militarily in eastern Ukraine. While it may still linger, at least it isn't on the scale of Yanukovych ($32bn to $325m).
 
Sir Matt said:
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So they haven't fixed the high level of corruption that was rampant and encouraged by Russian-backed rulers in 1 year? Shocking. If only they didn't have to deal with constant involvement from Putin and his cronies both in western Ukraine and militarily in eastern Ukraine. While it may still linger, at least it isn't on the scale of Yanukovych ($32bn to $325m).
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The level of corruption in Ukraine was always high, long before Putin came to power. The new rulers of Ukraine that are backed by the US are just as corrupt as the ones before them, so in that respect nothing has changed. I'd also like to know how you plan on "fixing" the corruption problem in Ukraine since you seem to know so much about the country and its people.
 
The corruption can be fixed quite rapidly with a combination of an economic stimulus, governance reforms, and a complete withdrawal of Russian agitation in all of Ukraine, which let's face it, is sending the Ukrainian economy into a downward spiral. I'm sure that's precisely what Putin wants in order to maintain Russian influence in Kiev.
 
Raoul said:
The corruption can be fixed quite rapidly with a combination of an economic stimulus, governance reforms, and a complete withdrawal of Russian agitation in all of Ukraine, which let's face it, is sending the Ukrainian economy into a downward spiral. I'm sure that's precisely what Putin wants in order to maintain Russian influence in Kiev.
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Exactly. Look at the former Soviet states that are a part of the EU. The level of corruption is no where near that in Russia or other Russia-aligned states.
 
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