The International Flavor of Kremlin Propaganda

By Richard Arnold

Russia-watchers have noted the Kremlin’s domestic deployment of propaganda, which attempts to harness Russian society’s support for its imperialist project in eastern Ukraine (see EDM, May 1), but the efforts being made by the Kremlin to change international opinion have received less attention. Of note has been the focus on Putin’s allies in the European Far Right (http://jamestownfoundation.blogspot.com/2014/03/vladimir-putins-allies-in-european-far.html). The widely expected strategy is for Russia to promote far-right parties like the Front Nationale (France), Jobbik (Hungary), and the British National Party (United Kingdom) ahead of the European Parliament elections due in May 2014. A good showing by these parties, which are fundamentally opposed to the European project as it currently stands (though not against the idea of racialized European Union—see Richard Arnold & Ekaterina Romanova, “The White World’s Future,” 2013), could have dire consequences for the future of Europe. Yet, Russian plans to remake the map of Europe also have other international dimensions.

In particular, unofficial Kremlin mouthpiece Vladimir Zhirinovsky wrote an open letter to Poland, Hungary and Romania suggesting that they annex (by referendum) the western portions of Ukraine (http://www.mk.ru/politics/article/2014/03/24/1002686-zhirinovskiy-ofitsialno-prizval-polshu-podelit-zapadnuyu-ukrainu.html). According to Zhirinovsky, the two halves of Ukraine have “different mentalities,” which makes living together very difficult. Indeed, “when left for many years, mutual dislike, accompanied by open conflict, often turns into bloody carnage.” Zhirinovsky proposed that the Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia, Volyn, Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankisk, and Rovensky regions should all hold referenda on whether they would rather be part of neighboring countries rather than remain within Ukraine. The regions were incorporated into Ukraine during the Soviet era, something Zhirinovsky described as a “historical mistake.” The plan would have little legal foundation in international law, but would give Russia’s own “referendum” on Crimean sovereignty a more solid legal base. Of course, there is no sign that the Western countries would cooperate on such a proposed bargain. Notably, Poland said the plan was a product of Zhirinovsky’s “sick mind” and called it “ridiculous” (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/poland-rejects-zhirinovskys-proposal-as-product-of-sick-mind/496890.html). At least through conventional political channels, then, such proposals to change the international political scene are somewhat lacking.

But this has not stopped the Kremlin from trying to present such an image to the rest of the world. For example, the Kremlin’s English-language Voice of Russia service featured an article about how ethnic Poles in the Zhitomir region of Western Ukraine are demanding a referendum of their own (http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_24/Ukrainian-territories-used-to-belong-to-Poland-turned-into-base-for-the-nationalistic-movement-7324/). According to the article, which cites a number of supposed “experts” on the ethnic situation in Ukraine, the “referendum” was initiated due to the divisive issue of the memory of the 1943 Volhynia massacre where Ukrainians killed between 50,000 and 100,000 ethnic Poles. This Voice of Russia story follows attempts by the Kremlin to use ethnic minorities throughout the former Soviet space to achieve Russian national goals—such as the Rusins in western Ukraine (see EDM, April 8). Overall, this creates an impression of Russia as a historically revisionist power, bent on fundamentally changing some of the milestone treaties on which the current world order is based. Rather than just revisiting the Belovezh’a accords of 1991, which dismantled the Soviet Union, Russia seems to want to turn the clock back even further.

That Russia should be trying to sway international public opinion is not surprising, given the magnitude of international norms its president broke by ordering the annexation of Crimea and promoting instability in eastern Ukraine. The vision of Europe that the Kremlin projects is one that promotes the importance of ethnicity in international relations. This is hardly unexpected given the contentious debates over the place of ethnicity in the multi-ethnic Russian Federation and the fact that Russia experienced a different historical development of nationalism to the Western European states. 

Russian Neo-Nazis Mark Hitler’s Birthday With Violence

By Richard Arnold

Every year on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, neo-Nazis around the world engage in actions designed to “celebrate” the Fuhrer’s entry into the world on April 20. Russian neo-Nazis have been no exception to this trend and, in the past, have engaged in a number of attacks against ethnic minorities during this day. In 2013, for instance, Russian neo-Nazis killed a non-Slav in a racially motivated attack in St. Petersburg, and a number of soccer teams unveiled banners congratulating the Fuhrer on his birthday or held up signs with other provocative slogans (see EDM, April 29, 2013). Violence on Hitler’s birthday was at its peak between 2006 and 2009, so unsurprisingly the more recent drop in intensity of violence mirrors the general decline in the skinhead movement in Russia and its shift toward merging with soccer hooligan groups. However, April 20, 2014, promised to be interesting given Russian military adventures in Ukraine.

With regard to Ukraine, April 20 saw the killings of pro-Russian activists supposedly by Ukrainian far-right Pravvyi Sektor militants who left a “calling card” announcing their responsibility (see EDM, April 24). While many argue that these killings were orchestrated by the Kremlin, the fact that they happened on April 20 lends at least slight credence to the Kremlin’s protestations. On the other hand, this could also have been why April 20 in particular was chosen as the day for the Kremlin to put its controlled groups to work in Ukraine. Similarly, while both sides in the Ukrainian conflict have accused the other of being anti-Semites, one openly Nazi organization in Slovyansk allied itself with Russia by criticizing the Kyiv “Zionist Junta” and celebrating the detention of an African American journalist (http://vnssr.my1.ru/news/slavjansk_v_den_rozhdenija_gitlera_pojmali_zhidvku_atamanshu_kievskoj_sionistskoj_khunty_chernozhopoj_amerikanskoj_obezjany_irmu_krat/2014-04-21-20733), supposedly a spy sent to Ukraine by the “American paymasters.” This claim, along with the false allegation that Jews would be forced to register in eastern Ukraine (http://www.inopressa.ru/article/18Apr2014/time/jew.html), fits a Russian pattern of provocative actions which are designed to blacken the name of the Kyiv authorities. Such moves suggest the Russian government is impatient for developments in Ukraine that would justify further aggression. Thus it may be inferred that the momentum of the crisis is clearly important to the Russian authorities.

Within Russia itself, the most widely publicized report of a crime on Hitler’s birthday this year was attempted arson on a police station in Chelyabinsk. Skinheads threw two Molotov cocktails at the police prefecture (http://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/racism-nationalism/2014/04/d29385/). The choice of this target fits a broader redirection of neo-Nazi attacks toward the state itself rather than ethnic minorities that the state is judged to be protecting. While this shift in focus goes back at least two years, it may also be a consequence of the fact that the national government has increasingly occupied the ideological space of the ethno-nationalist right. As the regime’s legitimating ideology is now nationalism, neo-Nazi groups have to create some difference between themselves and the regime or risk fading into irrelevance. A lesser-reported attack by skinheads on Hitler’s birthday came in Moscow’s Yasnevo region when 150 youth performed a pogrom on the market stalls of between 17 and 20 traders from Azerbaijan (http://newsbabr.com/?IDE=62366). Ten of the traders have since been reported as injured, although none has needed to go to the hospital.

Hitler’s birthday in 2014 may not have seen a large number of neo-Nazi attacks, and certainly nothing to justify the pre-emptive moves providing protection for ethnic minorities in years past (see EDM, April 15, 2013); but this does not mean the neo-Nazi threat has vanished from Russia. Indeed, many observers note that people with these sentiments have joined violent soccer fan groups. Whatever the truth, Russian neo-Nazis are sure to be invigorated by the ethnically discriminatory policies of the Russian state as it continues to instigate agitation in the eastern portion of Ukraine.

Non-Russian Countries Growing Ever More Non-Russian, Reducing Moscow’s Soft Power Options

By Paul Goble

Moscow has sought to rely on ethnic Russians and some non-titular nationalities in the former Soviet republics as a means of exerting influence on the governments of those now independent states. But that “soft power” option is increasingly less available as these countries become more ethnically homogeneous with the exit or dying out of the ethnic-Russian communities, the growing share of the population formed by the titular nationalities, as well as the ever greater role played by neighboring states whose own majority nationalities form co-ethnic minorities in these countries. All these trends—and the fact that they are leaving Moscow with fewer options besides economic power or the direct use of coercive force—are suggested by newly released data from and about Kyrgyzstan.

According to Kyrgyzstan’s Statistics Committee, the population of that country has grown by 8 percent over the last five years and now stand at approximately 5.7 million. The share of ethnic Russians has declined slightly; and the fraction occupied by Uzbeks and certain other nationalities has gone up. Meanwhile, the ethnic-Kyrgyz share of the population has continued to increase, rising from 71 percent in 2010 to 72.6 percent at the beginning of this year (kyrtag.kg/news/detail.php?ID=118294&sphrase_id=2943).

Over this five-year period, Kyrgyzstani officials said, the number of ethnic Kyrgyz increased by 10 percent, slightly more than the population as a whole and slightly less than the 14 percent increase registered by ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan but in stark contrast to the ethnic Russians there whose numbers continued to decline, albeit less rapidly than in the 1990s, and now stand at 375,400. Moreover, the Russian community increasingly consists of older people rather than those of working age and thus is less influential than it was in the past.

The rise of ethnic Uzbeks is especially striking and has given Tashkent—but not Moscow, as was the case in Soviet times—significant leverage on Bishkek. Indeed, one cannot make sense of the unrest of the last several years in the southern portion of the country without taking into account the rise of the Uzbek minority and Uzbekistan’s interest in using it in order to extract more water and deference from Kyrgyzstan.

According to the Bishkek statisticians, there are also five other ethnic groups who now make up part of the Kyrgyz Republic’s citizenry: 63,000 Dungans, 51,000 Uighurs, 40,000 Turks, 49,000 Tajiks and 33,400 Kazakhs. The first three of these, along with the Chinese who reside in Kyrgyzstan but are not citizens and thus were not counted in this enumeration, are deeply involved in Bishkek’s relationship with Beijing, often creating problems for the former and sometimes offering opportunities for the latter. The Tajiks and Kazakhs, in turn, often look to Dushanbe or Astana and are influenced by those capitals. They do not look to Moscow as they might have in the past.

Demography, of course, is not destiny except in the very long term, but such changes over the last five years are having an impact on power relations and especially in the current climate on Moscow’s apparent interest in using hard power now that its soft power options are declining.

Ukrainian Crisis Update: Special Operation Shows Promise

By Maksym Bugriy

The central government’s counter-terrorism operation against separatists in Ukraine’s southeastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions has shown the first signs of success. Notably, Ukrainian government forces, which included the military as well as police and security agencies special forces, were able to defend the airfield in Kramatorsk against separatists attack. During the operation, a Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet circled over the airfield and opened fire on the attacking pro-Russian militants. The resoluteness exhibited by the Ukrainian military and police must have had a visible effect as the separatists reportedly left the seized Kramatorsk police station building and will probably also leave the town administration office to avoid further police assaults (http://tsn.ua/ukrayina/radikali-po-tihomu-zdayut-poziciyi-v-kramatorsku-345501.html).

The Ukrainian force involved in the counter-terrorism operation employed security professionals to streamline the management of the response. Such was the appointment of former KGB veteran terrorism expert and operative General Vasily Krutov, one of the first senior officers of the Ukrainian Security Service’s (SBU) elite “A” counter-terrorism unit (http://fakty.ua/180099-antiterroristicheskij-centr-pri-sbu-vozglavil-vasilij-krutov). General Krutov knows his trade well: he is KGB-trained and also participated in an operation to free 22 Ukrainian hostages from Somali pirates in 2005. Previously, he has served as president of the International Counter-Terrorist Unity organization, which brought together many former Soviet KGB and GRU (Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense) special forces officers. Thus, General Krutov’s current appointment is also a deterrence signal to his former peers at Russia’s security services.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian counter-intelligence leaked an April 14 recording of an alleged GRU officer in Slovyansk with his Moscow coordinator, which suggested that “reinforcements” to eastern Ukraine were expected. According to the audiotape, the Moscow handler tasked his Slovyansk operative with achieving two new political objectives: 1.) immediate governor elections to replace the pro-Kyiv governors currently in place in eastern Ukraine; and 2.) banning the Ukrainian parliament from being allowed to attract international loans without consent from regional governors (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVDx-TqeWj4). This is a clear case of attempted economic warfare aimed at preventing Ukraine from receiving vital International Monetary Fund (IMF) financing. Remarkably, Ukrainian Pravda identified the Moscow-based coordinator as possibly a Russian political consultant who was involved in Russia’s Crimean operation (http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/04/14/7022426/). This draws a direct connection between what is currently happening in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s previous tactics in Crimea.

Further Russian moves should be expected. On April 15, Vladimir Putin had phone conversations with the leaders of Israel (http://kremlin.ru/news/20791) and Germany (http://kremlin.ru/news/20790) as well as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (http://kremlin.ru/news/20789). In all these conversations, Putin lambasted the Ukrainian government’s counter-terrorism operation in its eastern regions and the Russian leader issued warnings about a brewing “civil war” in Ukraine. Politically, Russia may try to present a strong case against Ukraine during the Geneva four-party talks scheduled for April 17. Further unconventional and provocative military operations by Russia against Ukraine are, of course, also possible. But any such moves would entirely preclude the possibility of holding the Geneva negotiations this week.

A Russian Flag Over Gagauzia

By Paul Goble

A group of pro-Moscow Gagauz activists have raised the Russian flag in their capital city of Komrat, on March 15, in support of the Crimean “referendum” Moscow organized and are insisting that Gagauzia—an autonomous region of Moldova populated by the Gagauz, an Orthodox Christian Turkic people—should have the same right as Crimea or Kosovo to hold a referendum on independence, especially given that the Moldovan government is pursuing a pro-Western and anti-Russian policy that closely resembles the Ukrainian Maidan and against which the Gagauz like the people of Crimea have protested. 

One Gagauz leader, Ilya Uzun, a deputy in that nationality’s Popular Assembly, told the group that he was “glad that such an enormous country [as Russia] has a president like Vladimir Putin. Everything that there is in our land was built by the Russian people and by our people,” not the Moldovans. And consequently the Gagauz have every right not only to speak in defense of the Crimean people and their choice but to demand a referendum on their own future status (regnum.ru/news/polit/1778586.html).

That is all the more so, he and other speakers at the weekend meeting said, because Chisinau has repeatedly declared that it “does not recognize” the Crimean vote, that it considers it “illegal,” and that it supports “the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

When analysts focus on separatist challenges to Moldova, they not surprisingly devote almost all of their attention to the breakaway republic of Transnistria, an enclave with a Slavic majority, even though Moldovans outnumber either ethnic Russians or ethnic Ukrainians there, and one that has by its alliance with Moscow and its selling off of Soviet-era arms dumps to various groups around the world sustained itself since 1991.  The Gagauz are mentioned, if at all, only in passing.

In addition to the political resources of Tiraspol, there are three reasons for this. First, the Gagauz are far smaller in number, with a total population estimates at around 200,000. Second, they live not in a single compact area but are dispersed among other ethnic groups, including Moldovans, in a region about 130 kilometers southeast of Chisinau. And third, their political activism has almost perfectly tracked that of Trans-Dniestria, simultaneously highlighting the extent to which the Gagauz are very much a Moscow project directed against the Moldovan state and justifying in the minds of many ignoring this group.

But now that Putin has thrown the dice in Crimea and signaled that he has no intention of respecting the sovereignty and integrity of any of the former Soviet republics or then-occupied Baltic states, there are three reasons why the Gagauz should receive more attention.  First, because they can be so easily put in play, Moscow may use them to overload the capacity of Chisinau to respond in a crisis. Second, because they are a Turkic people, the Russian authorities may use declarations of support for them to cover a new wave of repression against the Crimean Tatars.  And third, because Turkey thus far has not been able to do very much for the Crimean Tatars, Ankara may want to do even more for the Gagauz, a group with which it has close ties.  That sets the stage for the kind of conflict that could easily get out of hand.

Vladimir Putin’s Allies in the European Far Right

By Richard Arnold

One of the stories that in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis has escaped the notice of journalists and analysts alike is Vladimir Putin’s attempts to build support amongst the European Far Right. Perhaps the most notable instance of this was the meeting in January 2014 of the leader of the French Front Nationale Marine Le Pen and senior figures in Russia politics Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Dmitry Rogozin (http://www.imrussia.org/ru/russia-and-the-world/645-putins-far-right-friends-in-europe). The meeting with Rogozin was particularly noteworthy as in the past Rogozin served as the Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and currently holds a senior position in the government, overlooking the defense industry. In the meeting, Le Pen argued that “France is not a democracy” and praised Putin for saving Bashar al-Assad in Syria. While Le Pen has been generally thought of as trying to make the Front Nationale respectable as a way into politics in France, such flirting with the enemy is sure to damage her career.

However, Le Pen is not the first European far-right politician to have had contact with the Russian establishment. The Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik is also known to have links to the Kremlin. In 2013, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona met with Eurasianist ideologue and sometime fascist Alexander Dugin (http://www.jobbik.com/g%C3%A1bor_vona_had_lecture_lomonosov_university_russia; http://www.academia.edu/197900/Aleksandr_Dugins_Neo-Eurasianism_The_New_Right_a_la_Russe). Dugin was an advocate of Ukraine’s dissolution into a confederation and the absorption of certain parts, like Crimea, into Russia (http://maidantranslations.com/2014/02/11/anton-shekhovtsov-does-the-hungarian-and-polish-far-right-anticipate-ukraines-downfall/). The recent events in Ukraine do indicate that Dugin’s star is rising in the Kremlin. “Observers” from the European Far Right (including Spanish far-right leader Enrique Ravello, Bela Kovacs from Jobbik, and three members of the Dutch party Vlaams Belang) were present at the Crimean referendum, purportedly to ensure its neutrality (http://iwpr.net/report-news/far-right-recruited-crimea-poll-observers). In 2011, British far-right leader Nick Griffin, famous for his denial of the Holocaust and currently suspended from a two-year prison sentence for inciting racial hatred, also visited the Kremlin. Griffin visited three polling stations in Russia and found the vote there to be democratic. Likewise, former member of the Polish Sejm from the nationalist-populist agrarian “Self-Defense” (Samoobrona) party Mateusz Piskorski visited Russia in 2007, ostensibly to observe the Duma elections (http://www.imrussia.org/ru/russia-and-the-world/645-putins-far-right-friends-in-europe). It is also worth remembering that Norwegian far-right mass murderer Anders Bering Breivik praised Putin lavishly. Russia, it seems is becoming the hope and focus for extreme nationalists all across Europe.

Indeed, this was the hoped-for outcome of the 2006 conference “on the future of the white world” which was held in Moscow and had white supremacists and extremist nationalists from all across Europe and even David Duke from the United States in attendance (Richard Arnold and Ekaterina Romanova, “The White World’s Future” in Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 2013). While there was no suspicion of Kremlin involvement with this conference at the time, in light of later events it seems very convenient that such a conference was held. The conference was organized by the far-right organization Atheneum and concluded by calling on Russia to unite the Aryan race under “white Eurasia.” The statement on Crimea from the Alliance of European National Movements (http://aemn.eu/2014/03/05/ukraine-official-statement/) indicates that someone in this movement is taking seriously the construction of a pan-European racist organization.

In light of all this, the Kremlin’s denunciation of Svoboda and Pravyi Sektor, the Ukrainian far right-wing movements involved in the ouster of Viktor Yanukovich, is all the more noteworthy. After all, one would assume that the Ukrainian far right would be welcome in a pan-European alliance of far-right movements. On the other hand, Svoboda have been largely outside the process of European racist collaboration and the anti-Russian content of their ideology prevents them from being natural bedfellow for the Russians.

Cossackia Re-Emerges as an Issue

By Paul Goble

Few subjects were addressed so furiously by Soviet propagandists as any mention of Cossackia, or “Land of the Cossacks,” in the United States’ 1959 law on captive nations. The Soviets referred to US support for Cassackia as an indication of what they described as the absurdity of support for all the nationalities of the USSR, which, according to Moscow, already lived in a state of “friendship of the peoples.” A major reason Soviet officials attacked the idea of Cossackia was that their reports on it were often picked up by and enjoyed the support of Western analyst and commentators.

On the one hand, many in the West and even more in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) accepted the Hollywood version of the pre-1917 Cossacks as a kind of proto-fascist and anti-Semitic force that deserved to be thrown into the dustbin of history, even though that characterization was inaccurate and tendentious in the extreme. And on the other, more knowledgeable people pointed out that there was no obvious “Cossack land” because there were Cossack communities spread out across the Soviet Union from Ukraine to the Pacific. How, many asked, could one unite them, especially since they were officially a “social stratum” and not a “nationality?”

But three developments since the collapse of the USSR in 1991 have led to the re-emergence of Cossackia as an idea and even a goal. And these developments have been exacerbated by Vladimir Putin’s moves toward the Anschluss of Ukraine’s Crimea and the extent to which that has highlighted divisions among people that many in both Moscow and the West have assumed can be collectively grouped as Russians (sibpower.com/publikaci/sibirskaja-derzhava-i-kazakija-kak-otvet-kremlyovskoi-yekspansi-v-ukrainu.html).

First of all, the Cossacks have re-emerged as a public force. The 12 voiskas or “armies” are not only seeing the coming out of many who never forgot their Cossack roots despite Soviet oppression, but also the emergence of a neo-Cossack movement among Russians who look to the Cossacks as a model of discipline. Second, Moscow has not handled the Cossacks in a sophisticated fashion. As long as the Cossacks are prepared to be an ethnographic curiosity willing to do what the center wants, the Russian authorities tolerate or even support them; but when the Cossacks advance their own agenda, Moscow has been unprepared to meet them even half way. And third, an increasing share of those who call themselves Cossacks say they are not just a “social strata” as Moscow insists but rather a nation in their own right and that they have the right to national self-determination up to and including the formation of their own republic or republics.

Putin’s Crimean adventure has intensified such feelings and made it obvious that an increasing fraction of Cossacks today do not view themselves as part of the Russian nation but rather see themselves as a nation of their own that has rights and is ready to reach out to other nations within and beyond the borders of the Russian Federation to gain support. They may not succeed, but they can no longer be dismissed by anyone as simply figments of their own imaginations or a joke. Instead, they bear watching.