During the highly choreographed production, the prime minister told the country not to hold its breath for his departure from politics, expressed interest in running for president again in 2012, accused jailed Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky of murder, blamed the United States for preventing Russia’s inception into the World Trade Organization, and expounded upon the subtleties of understanding Stalin, among other things.

The Crisis

Even before Putin began to speak, host Maria Sittel took the floor and exalted the government for its handling of the economic crisis. “We all know perfectly well how the year of the crisis began: millions of Russian citizens feared poverty; tens of thousands expected to be fired; business calculated future losses,” she said. But instead of throwing its citizens to the “mercy of fate,” she continued, the government “laboriously, step by step…scrutinized the affairs of individual companies, made agreements with businesses, and helped our national manufacturers.”

Putin himself turned out to be pleased with his work on the crisis. He assured viewers that “the peak of the crisis has been overcome,” although “turbulent phenomena in the world economy, and consequently also in Russia, do remain.”

Despite a nearly 9 percent fall in GDP, a 13 percent fall in industry, and growing inflation, Putin listed a 0.5 percent growth in agriculture and a rising birth rate as commendable compared to the government response to the economic crisis in 1998.

Putin on Terrorism

In the wake of last week’s bombing of the Nevsky Express luxury train, which authorities are calling a terrorist attack, Putin addressed the problem of terrorism in Russia on the whole. “We’ve done a lot to ‘break the spine’ of terrorism, but the menace has not yet been eliminated.”

“It raises the question,” he said, “can we prevent crimes of this type? Our country is enormous, our territory is large, and there is a lot of infrastructure. Nevertheless, we need to work effectively. We need to be on the advance.”

Putin Saves Pikalevo, Again

Among sites chosen to host camera teams to field questions live to the prime minister was Pikalevo, one of Russia’s so-called “mono-towns” dependent on a sole industry – in this case, aluminum. The majority of the town’s 21,000 residents lost their jobs when all three plants were shut down last winter, and the city shut off all heat and hot water in May. A massive protest erupted when the long-unpaid citizens blocked off a nearby federal highway and demanded Putin’s personal intervention. The Prime Minister responded with an embarrassing public chastisement of Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch owner of the largest of the three plants, and ordered him to negotiate a decision that would reopen the factories.

During the broadcast, a manager of the largest of the plants asked the prime minister whether he would return to the town. The reason that this might be necessary, he said, was that the promised negotiations had not yet been signed.

In response, Putin promised that he would travel to any place in Russia where he was needed. “If the situation demands it, I will go to you again, or to any other place at any different point in the Russian Federation – that is my duty,” That aside, Putin said he currently saw “no such necessity.” He promised, however, that the government had control of the situation and an agreement would soon be written.

Indeed, even before the end of the broadcast, reports came in that the agreement between Pikalevo and the company had been signed.

The United States and the WTO

At one point, host Ernest Matskyavichyus told the audience that many questions had come in regarding Russia’s inception into the WTO. In response, Putin abruptly pounced on the United States, blaming it for not annulling the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a piece of Cold War-era legislation intended to help Soviet dissidents and religious minorities emigrate to America. Russia now criticizes the amendment as anachronistic and harmful for trade relations.

Putin said the amendment is used by “representatives of various lobbies in the United States Congress” for “decisions of rather narrow and selfish sectoral economic problems.”

“Entry into the WTO remains our strategic goal, but we get the impression that, due to motives that we are aware of, several countries – including the United States – are hindering our entry into the WTO,” he concluded rather sharply.

Love for Belarus

One question focused on recent angry remarks that the totalitarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had aimed at Putin. “You were harshly criticized by Belarusian President Lukashenko. You don’t answer him. Why?” a viewer asked.

“Maybe it’s love?” Putin replied.

The prime minister added that he has very kind, warm feelings for the Belarusian people, and especially for its government. The Russian government, he said, imports nearly all Belarusian agricultural products and has given the country 3.5 billion dollars over the past two years.

Putin Clarifies his Relationship with Tymoshenko

The prime minister’s position on upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine turned out to be less ambiguous than four years ago, when the Kremlin supported Viktor Yanukovych.

“Why do you support Yulia Tymoshenko in the presidential elections in Ukraine?” one viewer asked.

“I do not support Yulia Tymoshenko in the presidential elections in Ukraine,” Putin replied. “I am cooperating with Yulia Vladimirovna Tymoshenko as the prime minister of the Ukrainian government,” stressing his role as a “humble servant” while also misstating his Ukrainian counterpart’s patronymic (which is actually Volodymyrivna).

Recent agreements concerning Russia’s sale to Ukraine of natural gas have raised speculation that the Kremlin would back Tymoshenko in the upcoming Ukrainian elections.

The Police

A recent slew of high-profile incidents has brought a renewed wave of criticism on Russia’s police forces, and one of the key questions in Thursday’s broadcast reflected this concern.

“The police are now out of favor, and every day there are reports of police attacks on citizens…Maybe, [we should] just dissolve them and create a police force from scratch?”

Putin began his response by saying that no police reform would occur in Russia as has occurred in Georgia and Ukraine.

“In Ukraine, our neighbors and friends have already had this experience. They dissolved what we call the GAI, the road services – nothing good came from this. Bribes increased, and there came to be less order on the roads,” elaborating no further on the situation in Georgia.

In general, Putin said, the police should not be excessively slandered. “I consider it unnecessary to smear all police officers with red paint,” he said, but noted that the reaction to police offenses should be “especially critical, fast, and severe.”

Media attention to problems with the police, which have long plagued Russia, was renewed in April when police chief Denis Yevsyukov killed three people and wounded six in a Moscow supermarket while drunk. Novorossiysky Major Aleksei Dymovsky drew unprecedented media attention in November when he posted two YouTube videos of himself discussing corruption that he had seen in the police force.

Khodorkovsky and Murder

For the first time since the 2005 arrest of oligarch and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin allowed himself to comment on the controversial case. Khodorkovsky’s trial, in which he was sentenced to eight years in prison for oil embezzlement in the sum of 900 billion rubles (approx. $31 billion), is criticized as highly flawed and politically motivated. Until Thursday, no questions on the subject had been posed during a live broadcast.

“When will Khodorkovsky be released?” a viewer asked via text message.

“This well-known figure is in prison by the sentencing of the court. And the problem is not when he will be released,” Putin stressed, “but so that crimes of this type are never repeated among us,” referring to economic crimes.

The prime minister went on to say that the money resulting from the case went a housing and communal services reform fund that has helped 10 million Russian citizens. “If at some point this money was stolen from the people, it needs to be returned to those same people,” he asserted.

In an unexpected additionally commentary, Putin went on to accuse Khodorkovsky of murder.

Referring to chief Yukos security official Alexey Pichugin, currently serving a life sentence for conspiracy in several murders, Putin remarked that “nobody remembers, unfortunately, that one of the leaders of the security services of the Yukos company is in prison. What, you think that he acted on his own discretion, at his own peril and risk? He had no concrete interests. He is not the main shareholder in the company. It is clear that he acted in the interests and by the instructions of his bosses,” implying that Khodorkovsky had ordered the murders.

Putin for President, Again

Two questions were posed in regards to speculation that Putin might run for a third term as president in 2012.

“Don’t you feel like leaving politics with all its problems and live for yourself, your children, your family, and finally rest?” one viewer asked. “If that’s it, I’ll take your place, just give me a call.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” the prime minister replied.

The second question was from a St. Petersburg student, who directly asked whether Putin was planning to participate in the 2012 presidential elections.

“I’ll think about it,” replied Putin. “There’s plenty of time.”

Approximately an hour after this statement, an Italian reporter asked Russian President Dmitri Medvedev whether it was possible that both he and Putin would run for president in 2012.

“Prime Minister Putin said that he isn’t ruling out this possibility, and I’m also not ruling out this possibility,” replied Medvedev, who was at a press conference in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

“We can agree in what way not to elbow each other, and make a rational decision for our country,” he asserted.

Putin and Stalin

At the end of the program, Putin answered a number of questions that he said he had chosen himself. One of these turned out to concern Stalin.

“Do you consider the activities of Stalin on the whole to be positive or negative?” the question asked.

Saying that he understood the “subtlety” of the question, Putin qualified his answer by saying that there were both positive and negative qualities to the dictator’s reign. “One cannot, in my view, make a judgment on the whole,” said Putin. He praised Stalin for successfully changing the country’s focus from agriculture to industry, and said that victory in World War II was Stalin’s achievement.

At the same time, he continued, these positives “were nevertheless reached at an unacceptable price.”

Putin called Stalin’s repressions, which killed an estimated 30 million people, “a fact,” saying that “millions of our fellow citizens suffered from them. Such a means of managing the government to achieve a result is not acceptable.”

“Here, Thank God, There Aren’t Any Elections”

Putin’s most significant slip of the tongue came the prime minister was asked whether his recent appearance in the hip-hop contest “Battle for Respect” was motivated by his falling ratings.

“Ratings have absolutely nothing to do with it. Here, thank God, there aren’t any elections,” he responded.

Elections in Russia are notoriously fraudulent. Regional elections on October 11 delivered sweeping wins for Putin’s leading United Russia party across Russia, continuing the political monopoly it has held since its conception in 2001. Observers noted massive electoral violations, including ballot stuffing and multiple voting with the same absentee ballot, much of which has been statistically documented. Medvedev himself has admitted that the elections were flawed and chastised United Russia for “backwardness.”

Compiled from reports by Gazeta.ru.

Simply put, “We do not accept NATO’s claims,” said Rogozin.

According to NATO spokesperson James Appathurai, the Zapad-2009 (literally, West-2009) war games were “the largest since the end of the Cold War.” He also said that the 28 NATO member states were displeased that Russia failed to invite observers to the exercises, which the alliance considers to be a violation of the Vienna accords.

“There was the general sense that the political message of the exercise was incongruous with the general improvement in political relations and practical cooperation which is under way between NATO and Russia,” Appathurai said.

In a letter to the NATO General Secretary on November 12, Polish Interior Minister Radoslaw Sikorski expressed concern that the war games between Russia and Belarus were taking place too close to the Polish border.

“It’s unclear to us what’s behind these exercises, what information Russia wants to send the world, conducting the largest exercises on NATO’s borders since the moment of the fall of the Soviet Union,” said Sikorski.

In his statements on Wednesday, Rogozin dismissed concerns about the location of the exercises. “They are held on our western border because Belarus is there,” he said. “We cannot hold Russian-Belarusian exercises in Belarus somewhere in the Far East. There is no Belarus there.”

Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, had previously dismissed the concerns of the Polish Interior Minister, saying that his letter “presents Russia in the capacity of aggressor” and has a negative effect on relations between the two countries.

The Zapad-2009 war games took place this past September and involved approximately 6,000 Russian troops, 6,500 Belarusian troops, 103 aircraft and helicopters, 470 armored vehicles, 228 tanks, and 234 self-propelled and towed artillery guns, mortars and missile salvo systems.

President Dmitri Medvedev said that the exercises were defensive in nature and would be held in the future “on a regular basis.”

The statements follow an agreement signed in October by hard-line Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to join the rapid reaction force of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which would extend Russia’s anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems to Belarus. “Militarily speaking, it is virtually a shield against NATO,” said Pavel Borodin, State Secretary of the Union of Russia and Belarus.

The CSTO, formed in 2002 and made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, is considered to be Russia’s post-Soviet response to NATO.

A milk war is brewing.  After Russia banned the import of milk products from Belarus on June 6th, relations between the two countries have become increasingly strained.  The situation escalated when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko withdrew from attending a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization on Sunday, a group idealized by Russia as a counterweight to NATO.

Defense expert Aleksandr Golts examines the conflict, delving into its roots and questioning Russia’s intentions and need for a regional alliance like the CSTO.  The article first ran in the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper.

A Meat and Milk Defense
Aleksandr Golts
June 15, 2009
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Do you remember the old joke, how in the Red Square, after the intercontinental rockets, a column of people with deer-skin hats and briefcases in their hands march out, walking in step.  “And here are the Gosplan workers,” the announcer triumphantly declares, “our most destructive weapon.”  As recent events show, now, after the rockets, people in white lab coats with technical regulations tucked into their arms –our health inspectors—should be sent in the parade.  Even before now, I knew that [Chief Sanitary Inspectors] Gennady Onishchenko was an incredibly influential, and most importantly, independent civil servant.  Fighting for the health of people under his jurisdiction, he prohibited the import of Moldovan wine and Georgian Borzhomi [mineral water] without compromise.  And to the fact that these bouts of fighting for the nation’s health only made an appearance when Vladimir Putin was taking offense at the Moldovan and Georgian president– well, this was certainly just a random coincidence.

And now Gennady Grigoryevich’s commitment to health threatens to do more than just complicate Russia’s relations with its neighbors.  With one stroke of his pen, Onishchenko put the existence of the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO] at risk –one of the Kremlin’s most important diplomatic projects.  Not long ago, everything was just marvelous: Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were improving their collective security day and night.  Establishing a Collective Rapid Reaction Force (CRRF) was on the agenda.  “Just as good as NATO,” as [Russian President] Dmitri Medvedev announced at the last summit.  And the fact that Belarus was supposed to chair the CSTO merely raised hopes of an improvement of military integration of the seven states.  Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko directly promised this a month ago: “In the period of the Belarus presidency, the work of the CSTO has always been stepped up.  We would wish for this revitalization to continue the next time Belarus chairs the organization.”

And all this would be wonderful, if not for the overly-principled Gennady Onishchenko.  After Lukashenko called for his ministers to stop sucking up to Russia and promised to reorient [the country] towards markets in other countries, the head of Rospotrebnadzor [Federal Service for Supervision in Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare] (by a random coincidence) banned the importation of all milk products from Belarus.  And this accounts for more than 90 percent of Belarusian milk exports.  What started then in Minsk was what Dmitri Medvedev later called “milk and meat hysterics.”

Lukashenko refused to come to Moscow and “step up” the work of the CSTO.  The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) announced: “The reason for our non-participation in the current session of the CSTO is Belarus’ categorial disagreement over adopting CSTO decisions aimed at reinforcing military and political security, under conditions and while the economic security of one of the Organization’s members is openly undermined.  In this case – the Republic of Belarus.”

And when, despite the absence of a Belarusian delegation and an objection from Uzbekistan, five governments signed documents defining the system of how the CRRF would function, be formed and implemented, Minsk clearly and explicitly declared, that the adopted resolutions were illegitimate, since they were adopted without consensus, contrary to the [CSTO] charter.

In reality, this is a condemnation of the CSTO.  Minsk, in a state of extreme aggravation, somehow managed to say the bare truth: the ability to receive money from Russia is much more important to Belarus then any collective work to repel some mythical military threat.

Two types of security organizations exist.  On the one hand, there is a military alliance.  The necessary condition is a common military threat to all participants, whose presence smoothes out internal conflicts.  NATO was created on these principles, and as soon as the USSR fell apart, the North-Atlantic alliance faced an identity crisis.  Members of the CSTO have different threats. Armenia has Azerbaijan.  The Central Asian governments have the expansion of radical islam from Afghanistan.  As well as the internal instability of weak authoritarian regimes.  And whatever resolutions about rapid response forces may be adopted, it is still impossible to imagine Kazakh commandos fighting on Armenia’s side against Azerbaijan, or Belarusian paratroopers deploying into Uzbekistan.

The second option is an agreement between countries that are suspicious of each other’s intentions.  The OSCE can serve as an example of such an alliance.  In this case, the participants should agree on common rules of conduct, measures of mutual trust.  It must be said, that the mutual relations of the CSTO member-states are far from perfect.  Literally a week before the summit, Uzbekistan began to raise seven-meter-tall [23 foot] walls and digging a trench on its border with Kyrgyzstan.  And in earlier times, Uzbekistan mined all of its borders with Tajikistan.  Nevertheless, the question of measures of mutual trust has never been put before the CSTO -it isn’t customary for allies to openly speak about their mistrust for each other.  As result, the CSTO is not too useful for repelling an external threat and pointless for supporting domestic security.

In actual fact, the CSTO is a reflection of the hang-ups that Russian leaders have.  Those cursed “Yankees” have scores of allies—anyone wants to form an alliance with Washington.  But Moscow has no one, and consequently needs to force the former Republics of the USSR to enter into an allied relationship with Russia.  The presence of actual threats is not important, and neither is geographic location.  As result, states that are thousands of kilometers apart have ended up in the CSTO.  Setting up military interaction with them is physically impossible.  The CSTO in essence represents a set of two-sided agreements between individual countries and Moscow.  Fundamentally, these agreements are not at all about security threats.  They simply show the readiness of these states to play out a ritual gesture of homage to the Kremlin leadership in exchange for Russian money.

Alexander Lukashenko worked out what was in his mind the ideal system of relations with Russia.  He regularly declared a readiness to reinforce joint defense against NATO, receiving billions from Russia in return.  Concurrently, the money went to subsidize Belarusian industry, which then sold to the same Russia at artificially lowered prices.

The crisis, however, somewhat changed the situation.  Russia had less, much less money.  And Moscow tried to at least somewhat control the billions of dollars being sent to Minsk.  As result it received milk and meat hysterics.  In truth, Lukashenko was honestly keeping his end of the bargain, reciting his intention to resist the non-existent NATO threat.  And the Kremlin didn’t wish to pay for it.  And “batka” [a slang word for Lukashenko, lit. father] immediately showed that milk and meat relations were far more important for him than all of this rubbish about joint defense.  Read once more into the Belarusian statement: It is pointless to adopt resolutions about reinforcing military and political security, while Belarusian economic interests are suffering.  I haven’t read such an honest political statement in a long time.

Equally egoistic is the approach of Uzbekistan, which refused to sign the CRRF agreement.  Tashkent is very concerned that these agreements will open the doors for interference in Uzbekistan’s internal affairs, where as is plainly evident, a social implosion is imminent.  And the possibility of such interference, frankly speaking, is Russia’s only rational interest in the realm of security.  Internal conflicts in Central Asia can result in an enormous amount of refugees, and at the same time a sharp growth in the illegal trade of narcotics and arms, as well as armed gangs entering onto Russian territory.  To answer these real threats, Russia would do well to negotiate articulate, mutually binding two-sided agreements with the problem states.

And as for the CSTO, then as an extremely artificial construction, it will live only as long as Russia can pay its partners without demanding money in return.  I suspect that in the near future, Onishchenko will have plenty of occasions to demonstrate his world-famous commitment to principles.

translation by theotherrussia.org