The dead spy and the oligarch

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Alastair Grant/ AP

More than four years after Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with radioactive polonium-210, the drama surrounding his mysterious death in Britain continues. On March 10, Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky won a libel suit in London against Russian state television, which claimed he masterminded the killing.

Berezovsky lives in Britain after being granted political asylum in 2003. He is wanted on a variety of charges by Moscow, which Kremlin opponents see as attempts to discredit and ultimately silence an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The current court case was launched after a 2007 story aired by Russia’s state TV claimed Litvinenko was murdered on orders from the billionaire because he had witnessed a drugged man make a false statement that bolstered Berezovsky’s claim for asylum.

The billionaire vehemently denied the charges, stating that, in fact, Litvinenko, a former spy turned Putin critic, had saved his life on more than one occasion. “He had helped me and I him,” Berezovsky testified. “Fundamentally, we shared the same enemy.” Litvinenko’s widow, Maria, backed Berezovsky in court: “I knew that the accusation against Boris was propaganda.” While Russian TV refused to defend itself in the libel case, several state prosecutors helped the defence of the media firm’s co-accused, Vladimir Terluk, who had claimed Berezovsky drugged him.

In the end, Justice David Eady ruled definitively for Berezovsky and awarded him $230,000. “I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr. Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr. Litvinenko,” Eady stated. “Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it.”

British investigators have long since come to the same conclusion. In 2007, they requested the Kremlin extradite former Russian spy Andrei Lugovoi, a Putin ally, to stand trial for Litvinenko’s murder. Moscow refused.

Top 10 worst moments at the Vancouver Olympic Games

By macleans.ca - Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 9:00 PM - 13 Comments

The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili is notably absent from this list. We at Maclean’s felt that such a tragic event had no place in such a lighthearted recap. Please see our magazine article, Who’s to blame, for our report on Kumaritashvili.

What are the Games without a figure skating scandal?

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, February 19, 2010 at 7:43 PM - 17 Comments

With a column titled “The Night They Killed Figure Skating,” Canadian figure skating legend Elvis Stojko joined critics—including Russian prime-minister Vladimir Putin—in slamming Evan Lysacek’s gold, calling the decision to award Russian Evgeni Plushenko the silver, “ridiculous.”

He said Lysacek’s program was on par with a junior program, and it was no more developed than what gold-medallist Brian Boitano did in 1988.

For days, debate has been boiling away over the quadruple jump (who can do it, who can’t, whether you need to land it to take gold), and whether the new scoring system is killing the sport. The so-called Code of Points system, which replaced the old, 6.0, was brought in after the infamous judging scandal at Salt Lake; it is said to have shifted the focus away from jumping, to a more balanced program.

But Stojko says the International Skating Union has taken the risk out of figure skating, and it makes him sick.

“Figure skating gets no respect because of outcomes like this. More feathers, head-flinging and so-called step sequences done at walking speed—that’s what the system wants.” Stojko also said he was going to watch hockey where “athletes are allowed to push the envelope—a real sport.”

“Just doing nice transitions and being artistic is not enough because figure skating is a sport, not a show,” Plushenko told a Russian TV station; he too has slammed Olympic judges, and has threatened to quit the sport over the outcome in Vancouver.

That, and they look kind of silly, TV to the rescue and Semi-naked ambition

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 29, 2010 at 9:10 AM - 3 Comments

That, and they look kind of silly
Russian champion ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin wowed European judges with their program based on Australian Aboriginal music and dress, but they face an uncertain welcome at Olympic competition in Vancouver. Their costumes, dark-toned bodysuits decorated with paint, eucalyptus leaves and red loincloths, have enraged Australian Aboriginal leaders. Spokesmen for the four Olympic host First Nations in B.C. have already said they want to meet with the skaters to discuss issues of cultural sensitivity.

Dream job
The photo of sleeping Toronto Transit Commission fare collector George Robitaille has become, it must be said, the sleeper hit of the Internet. Since the picture taken by Jason Wieler was posted online and then displayed on the front of Friday’s Toronto Sun, Photoshoppers have had a field day with the “TTC Sleeper”: having him nap with Homer Simpson at the Springfield nuclear plant, inserting him into the iconic painting of the Last Supper, replacing his head with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s. Robitaille blamed medication for a heart procedure and said he was sorry if he embarrassed his fellow workers and the TTC.

Every Rose has his thorn
Has Axl Rose taken his feud with ex-bandmate Slash to a new level? The gossip site TMZ reports fans attending a Guns N’ Roses concert in Regina last Wednesday were told by security to turn Slash T-shirts inside out, and to leave his signature top hats outside. Later, Rose’s camp issued a denial that any sort of apparel was banned. Still, there’s bad blood aplenty. When Slash recently floated the idea of an earthquake relief fundraiser, an angry Rose twittered: “Pretty low n’ selfish usin’ the devastation in Haiti 2 start (false) reunion rumors.”

Lost, and found
David Idlout has a missing snowmobile and a big satellite phone bill, but odds are he won’t complain. The Inuit hunter from Resolute, Nunavut, spent almost four days on a crumbling ice floe drifting toward the Northwest Passage. He’d set out to retrieve a snowmobile that broke down while he was scouting for seals when the floe broke away from the ice pack. He used a satellite phone to reach his wife, who called search and rescue. A military plane dropped supplies, but equipment problems and bad weather delayed the rescue by a helicopter crew from CFB Greenwood, N.S., until Monday.

Tinker, Taylor, diplomat, spy
Those Austin Powers-style glasses should have been a clue. Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, was hailed as a hero for sheltering six Americans in his official residence after they avoided capture when militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Now it turns out Taylor’s role went far beyond smuggling the Americans out of Iran in 1980 on false Canadian passports. He also spied for the Americans, gathering intelligence for a planned U.S. rescue of hostages trapped in the U.S. Embassy, according to Our Man in Tehran, a new book by Robert Wright. Taylor served “as the de facto CIA station chief in Tehran,” says Wright. “It was extremely dangerous work,” he writes.
TV to the rescue
American network medical correspondents, at least those who are also certified doctors, have pulled double duty while covering the earthquake in Haiti. Dr. Nancy Snyderman of NBC treated a man with an infection, trying to keep him alive until a necessary amputation could be performed. And CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, treated several patients, even operating to remove debris fragments from a 12-year-old girl’s brain. “Yes, I am a reporter,” he said, “but a doctor first.” In a different vein, actor and Scientologist John Travolta, another camera-friendly face, underwrote the cost of a plane to Haiti, staffed with food, medics and 80 volunteer Scientology ministers to assist with “spiritual first aid”—and maybe administer some of those personality tests.
Maybe Don Cherry can make peace
Ron MacLean is supposed to be the reasonable half of the Hockey Night in Canada tag team. But his Jan. 16 attack on Vancouver Canuck forward Alex Burrows inspired the entire team to boycott CBC on-air interviews last Saturday night. MacLean accused Burrows of being a chronic diver to draw penalties, and discredited Burrows’s claim that referee Stéphane Auger threatened to take revenge on Burrows for making him look stupid with a previous call. MacLean declined to apologize, so when Vancouver hammered the Chicago Blackhawks 5-1 last Saturday, none of the three stars, Canucks Roberto Luongo, Henrik Sedin and Ryan Kesler, would be interviewed. It’s not clear if they’ll carry their boycott to Toronto on Saturday, when they play the Leafs as part of CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada.
A Cardinal? A Padre? Nope, a priest.
Outfielder Grant Desme was a top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, with a solid reputation as a home-run hitter despite a plague of injuries. But Desme is aiming higher than the outfield fence. Last week the 23-year-old announced he was quitting baseball to enter a Catholic seminary. He now sees his injuries as “blessings” that helped sort out his priorities. His theological studies will take about 10 years, he says. “I desire and hope I become a priest.” The sudden career change is a bit, he added, like “re-entering the minor leagues.”
Semi-naked ambition
Senator-elect Scott Brown arrived in Washington carrying the weight of Republican expectations, but perhaps not so many clothes. Brown, who toppled the Massachusetts Democrat dynasty of the late senator Ted Kennedy, famously posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine as a law student in 1982. His equally photogenic wife, Gail Huff, strutted in and out of a microscopic black bikini in a 1984 music video. The leaked images only helped his cause with voters. Also generating bipartisan interest among Americans is a skin-intensive Internet photo of Brown’s bikini-clad daughters Ayla and Arianna—though calling them “available” during his acceptance speech was a bit over the top. “I want a chastity belt on this man,” said right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck. “I want his every move watched in Washington. This one could end with a dead intern,” he said, cryptically.
And for his 21st, a small country
Rapper Sean “Did­dy” Combs has set a scary new standard for 16-year-old birthday bashes. He rented a hot New York bar for his son Justin Dior’s party and invited 1,000 friends. Guests included cast members from Jersey Shore and performances from the likes of Lil’ Kim and Trey Songz. MTV cameras filmed the event for an episode of My Super Sweet 16. As for prezzies, they included US$10,000, and a chauffeur-driven Maybach car worth $360,000. In a classy move, Justin donated the cash to Haitian earthquake relief.
Local hero
Li Shiming was a much unloved Communist party official in Xiashuixi, China, who used corruption and hired thugs to grow rich and hold power. When he was stabbed to death in 2008, the village set off fireworks in celebration. But last Wednesday his admitted killer, Zhang Xuping, 19, was sentenced to death. Zhang was paid about $150 to do the killing by a farmer whose land was stolen by Li. A petition of 20,000 signatures asking for leniency was ignored during sentencing. Zhang’s lawyer has filed an appeal. “I wanted to kill Li myself,” said one villager, “but I was too weak.”
All the news  that fits, in a D cup
The New York Times has admitted it did Mad Men star Christina Hendricks wrong. Its fashion writer had said of the low-cut, ruffled gown Hendricks wore to the Golden Globe awards: “You don’t put a big girl in a big dress.” It compounded the sin with a photo that made her even more voluptuous than the reality. It later conceded the photo was distorted “due to an error during routine processing.” No word, though, about its swipe at the “big,” all-natural Hendricks, though several siliconed starlets escaped a similar slagging.
Vlad the paler
Russian PM Vladimir Putin may be the very image of a macho man of action, but it wasn’t always so, says Tatyana Yumasheva, the daughter of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Yumasheva, a former presidential aide, says in her increasingly popular blog that Putin was nervous and “troubled” when Yeltsin said unexpectedly he would hand over power to him on New Year’s Eve in 1999. “It was not easy for Putin to become accustomed to the thought that in two days the responsibility for the whole country would be on his shoulders,” she says. Yumasheva may be building her profile for a return to politics. She is almost certainly enraging Russia’s most powerful man.
Trouble down under
Tennis phenom and clothing designer Venus Williams came close to stepping over the line at the Australian Open this week, but it wasn’t her feet at fault. It seemed that Williams had broken the event’s prohibition against revealing clothing by playing in a low-cut outfit without underwear. Closer examination by, oh, about every male tennis fan on earth proved she was more modestly dressed than first impressions indicated. “My dress for the Australian Open has been one of my best designs ever,” she said. “It’s all about the slits and V-neck. I am wearing undershorts the same colour as my skin, so it gives the slits in my dress the full effect!” Play on.

Newsmakers '09: Feuds

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 1 Comment

	PALIN vs. JOHNSTON Call it the tussle on the tundra: America’s most famous Alaskans have been at each other’s throats ever since Levi Johnston left the Palin family home shortly after the birth of his son, Tripp, to Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol. In interviews and a tell-all article for Vanity Fair, Johnston paints a portrait of Sarah as a lazy, tempestuous, money-hungry egomaniac. Palin, meanwhile, has dismissed Bristol’s relationship with Johnston as a “mistake” and accused the 19-year-old newly minted Playgirl model of being a deadbeat on a “quest for fame, attention, and fortune.”
	PORT vs. COHEN The Skanks in NYC blog was never destined for greatness. And yet its musings about Canadian-born model Liskula Cohen (right) made headlines after Cohen went to court to force Google to identify the anonymous blogger. Cohen eventually dropped her US$3-million defamation suit against Rosemary Port, the 29-year-old fashion student in question. Port, though, launched a US$15-million suit against Google, which she claims should have upheld her right to call someone a “psychotic lying whore” online.
	INDIA vs. SCOTLAND It’s a fixture in Indian restaurants, but Glasgow chef Ahmed Aslam Ali says chicken tikka masala isn’t Indian at all—it’s Scottish. In fact, the 64-year-old founder of the Shish Mahal restaurant claims he invented it in the early 1970s. A Scottish MP is now taking the Scot’s claim one step further, trying to secure “protected designation of origin” status for the dish. Indian foodies have dismissed Ali’s claims as “preposterous,” and say chicken tikka masala is an “authentic Mughlai recipe” that’s been passed down for generations.
	VLADIMIR PUTIN vs. UKRAINE When Ukraine missed a US$500-million payment for Russian gas in November, Russian PM Vladimir Putin was incensed. His Ukrainian counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko, stepped in and negotiated a deal to guarantee gas deliveries. But Putin has since suggested Ukraine’s payment “problems” could be met with significant supply “problems.” And should Ukraine decide to siphon gas from shipments meant for Europe rather than buy it from Russia, he threatened, “we will cut supplies,” a tactic he already used last January.
	SEPARATIST vs. THE NATIONAL BATTLEFIELDS COMMISSION When Quebec’s hard-core separatist fringe threatened to disrupt a re-enactment of the battle on the Plains of Abraham, Canada’s National Battlefields Commission simply cancelled the event altogether. “We don’t want it to become a clash,” André Juneau, then commission president, said by way of explanation. “There was one in 1759 and we don’t want another.” History, it seems, isn’t written by the winners, but by the whiners.
	BECKHAM vs. FANS David Beckham probably knew better than to expect a warm welcome when he returned to L.A. for his first home game with Major League Soccer’s Galaxy. Despite his US$250-million contract, the star had skipped the Galaxy’s first 17 matches of the season, opting to play for an Italian club. But the reception was enough to leave Beckham wishing he’d stayed in Italy. Fed up with the taunts and boos, he tried to climb a barrier to get at an angry fan. Beckham claims he just wanted to shake hands; he was fined US$1,000 for the goodwill gesture.
	ATHEISTS vs. UNITED CHURCH Last winter, Canadian atheists announced they would be buying ad space on buses to promote their message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Rather than try to censor the message, the United Church of Canada opted to run a cheeky reply of its own: “There’s probably a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Whatever impact the ads may have had, the real message may very well have been, “There’s probably no point arguing about religion on the sides of buses.”
	AMERICAN APPERAL vs. WOODY ALLEN Woody Allen isn’t the first name that comes to most people’s minds when the topic of fashion models comes up. Still, no one was as surprised as Allen himself when his frumpish mug found its way onto an American Apparel billboard in 2007. Allen sued over the ad, which showed him dressed as an Orthodox Jew, with a caption, in Yiddish, calling him “the high rabbi.” They settled out of court in May for US$5 million.
	CHINA vs. RIO TINTO Last July, Chinese officials arrested four employees of Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, accusing them of stealing state secrets. The arrests followed a failed bid by Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese manufacturer, to invest US$19.5 billion in the company. Rio Tinto, along with Australian officials, is still working to free Stern Hu, the company’s chief iron ore negotiator, but Chinese officials say their investigation isn’t complete.

Medvedev's speech: breakthrough or decoy?

By Paul Wells - Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 9:11 AM - 15 Comments

Russia’s president — that would be the guy who isn’t Putin — gave a truly remarkable speech to the country’s parliament this week, decrying the country’s decline, its “humiliating” reliance on natural resources, its sham democracy, its reliance on the Soviet legacy, its failure to make the transition to a knowledge economy. Vlad Putin squirmed in the front row as his nominal boss essentially called him a failure.

Most of the coverage has been like this Reuters piece, which points out all of Medvedev’s most provocative statements. Could this be a turning point? A power struggle at the top in a fragile and dangerous Russia? Maybe not. In Foreign Policy, Julia Ioffe suggests it was all for show. One example out of many:

And then came the real zinger. “Strengthening democracy does not mean weakening the social order,” he said, adding that “any attempts, under democratic slogans, to … destabilize the government and fracture society will be intercepted.” It sounded chilling enough to negate all prior talk of political thaw.

Tickle Trunk diplomacy

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 2:30 PM - 49 Comments

As our forefathers foretold, the North shall be controlled by he who stages the manliest of photo opportunities.

So shall it be Mr. Putin without his top?

Or Captain Harper preparing for takeoff?

(More of the Prime Minister on Arctic parade is available here.)

Putin on a show

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 6 Comments

You can say this much for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s manipulation of his public image: it’s not subtle.

The appearance of official photos of the fit and muscular Russian leader strutting around topless in some wilderness locale has become an annual summer event—broken up for variety last year by footage of Putin stalking a Siberian tiger and allegedly saving a television crew from being mauled by shooting the beast with a tranquilizer dart.

In a country where most men don’t live past the age of 60, and where that grim statistic can be explained in large part by rampant alcoholism, Putin’s apparent strength, sobriety, and stability strike a popular chord with Russians. As he celebrates 10 years in the Kremlin this summer—first as prime minister, then as president for eight years, and now as prime minister once again—a poll carried out by the Levada Centre shows that 63 per cent of Russians think it is good for the country that power is concentrated in Putin’s increasingly autocratic hands. Continue…

Take your shirt off

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 24 Comments

Margaret Wente makes a simple plea.

So which nation’s leaders are missing from this pin-up calendar of political hunks? You guessed it! Canada’s last athletic prime minister was Pierre Trudeau, who canoed, climbed mountains, dived the oceans and sired a child in his dotage. By contrast, neither Stephen Harper nor Michael Ignatieff would dare be caught in public without their shirts on. They prefer to stay indoors and think. Mr. Ignatieff may be attractive, in a certain New York Review of Books kind of way. But you get the feeling that neither of them goes outside unless he has to…

To be honest, I wouldn’t really want a ruthless KGB man as prime minister of Canada, or a sex-crazed old goat or a narcissist with a Napoleon complex. All I’m saying is, we could sometimes use a break from endless stories about federal-provincial relations and employment insurance. A little sex appeal in Ottawa might perk us up. And what could be so wrong with that?

Week in Pictures: July 30th – August 7th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 7, 2009 at 1:01 PM - 2 Comments

Newsmakers of the week

By Lianne George - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Phelps gets smoked

At the Santa Clara Grand Prix in California last Sunday, Vancouver’s Brent Hayden finished the men’s 100-freestyle race in 48.44 seconds, a meet record, beating eight-time Olympic gold medallist Michael Phelps by a full half-second. “I was really excited,” Hayden told the Canadian Press. “Michael is such a great competitor and every time I get up and race him, it’s such an honour.” Phelps—newly mustachioed, and recently back after a three-month suspension by USA Swimming for getting caught smoking marijuana on film—won two of his four races at the meet. “I’m ready to go home and sleep in my own bed,” he said.

Here’s your visa, Mr. Rae. You’re not welcome.

Last week, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae was turned away at a Sri Lankan airport, allegedly for being a Tamil Tigers supporter and a “security risk”—and an Ontario resident may be to blame. According to the Toronto Star, Irangani de Silva, a Sri Lankan expat who lives in London, Ont., wrote an opinion piece in the June 8 issue of The Island, a major Sri Lankan newspaper, in which she counselled Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona to revoke the visa that had been issued to Rae for a three-day visit. She also denounced Rae for having suggested in the Commons recently that Canada ought to look into human rights violations committed by Sri Lankan officials over the course of the bloody 25-year civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. “We are sure that [Rae] will return with a damning report on the government of Sri Lanka and push for war crimes investigations, publish media reports that there is discrimination, etc.,” de Silva wrote. Granting a visa to Rae, she said, was an “act of foolishness.” In Sri Lanka’s state-owned Daily News, the anti-Rae vitriol continued after his departure. One columnist argued that Rae is pandering to the large faction of Tamil expats he represents in Canada “who are not just vocal but openly violent in their support for the cause of terrorism in Sri Lanka.” In his statement, Rae called the charges made against him “absurd” and “a lie, pure and simple.” Continue…

Agitprop

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 2, 2009 at 1:38 AM - 2 Comments

Suffice it to say, Dan Gardner is unimpressed.

I’m not excusing the many abuses of the Putin regime. But yesterday, the censored and harried Russian media got the story right while the free Canadian media acted like the compliant propaganda arm of a manipulative, chauvinistic government.

'Hook, line and sinker'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 3:01 PM - 9 Comments

David Pugliese counters yesterday’s “news.”

The Russians have been doing such sorties for the last year and a half. In August 2007 Russian President Putin announced to the world that such sorties would begin again. “Starting in 1992, the Russian Federation unilaterally suspended strategic aviation flights to remote areas,” Putin said at the time. “Regrettably, other nations haven’t followed our example. That has created certain problems for Russia’s security.”

Yesterday’s incident prompted some amusement at NDHQ about how gullible some in  the news media can be and how easily some journalists swallowed the government’s bait hook, line and sinker.

However, that laughter was somewhat tempered by mid-afternoon when TV newscasts started linking the Arctic sovereignty issue and the Russian sortie. NDHQ types started getting worried that journalists would later start asking about what was happening with the Arctic training base, the Arctic patrol ships and the new icebreaker that were promised by the Harper government. The answer to what’s happening with those projects is “very little,” said one DND insider.

A silver lining for Russia

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 8 Comments

Amid the global financial bloodbath, few have been as hard hit as some of Russia’s oligarchs: the Kremlin-friendly super-rich. Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, Russia’s richest man, has lost $16 billion in a month. Rumours suggest Deripaska—also embroiled in a political scandal in London—has sacked his servants, replacing them with cheap help from the provincial town of Tula. Russian No. 2, Roman Abramovich, who owns Britain’s famed Chelsea Football Club, has lost half his fortune. The word is he’s postponed his wedding to 26-year-old ex-model Daria Zhukova. Since the market peaked in May, Russia’s 25 richest men have lost a combined $230 billion, 62 per cent of their total worth; when the dust eventually settles, some will have been made “formergarchs,” forfeiting their metals, mining and telecommunication empires.

But it’s not just the oligarchs who are suffering. At a time when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Moscow has been flexing its global muscle, the economic crisis could substantially weaken Russia and help curb its aspirations. At first glance, the country appears to be in deep trouble. Its two key stock indexes have lost over two-thirds of their value, wiping out nearly $1 trillion in wealth. Capital flight is running at over $12 billion a week. And the price of oil, crucially important to the Russian economy—and Russian power—has tumbled more than 50 per cent from a record high of $146 per barrel just three months ago. This week, it hit $64 a barrel, its lowest level in over a year.

In fact, the Kremlin has been forced to adopt a $200-billion rescue plan to shore up its troubled banks and companies. It’s unclear, however, whether the average Russian knows about these elite-level discussions, or, indeed, about the financial crisis itself (less than three per cent of Russians have mortgages or invest in the market). According to the English-language newspaper Moscow Times, Russia’s three main channels—Channel One, Rossia and NTV—have either played down or completely ignored the collapse of the main stock market, the RTS, which halted trading for the fourth time last week, after stocks took another plunge. Ekho Moskvy, Moscow’s independent radio station, says the Kremlin has banned state media from using the words “financial crisis” and “collapse.” (Russians do know, however, that Putin—whose personal popularity, one month into the crisis, has risen to 83 per cent—received a tiger cub for his 56th birthday this month, and that the prime minister, a marshal arts enthusiast, has released a judo DVD.)

Rather than financial ruin, however, some experts are predicting that Russia could emerge strengthened from the global meltdown—and in a position to exert even more pressure on its neighbours and others. The country is cash-rich, thanks to $1.3 trillion in oil and gas revenues over the past eight years, and the Kremlin is sitting on a $500-billion cash reserve: the world’s third-highest hard currency reserves. As well, Russia is largely debt-free (at 8.5 per cent of its GDP). The price of oil, meanwhile, is still double what was considered high just a few years ago. “Here in Russia, officials and experts see the crisis as much as an opportunity as a danger,” says Harvard University Russia expert Henry Hale, reached in Moscow. “They see opportunities to play a stabilizing role in the world economy, and to expand Russian influence.”

Indeed, while state media have downplayed Russia’s financial crisis, they have covered the West’s economic problems; ordinary Russians know that when Iceland was tottering on the brink of financial ruin, it turned to Moscow—not the International Monetary Fund, Washington, London or, indeed, any Western capital—a telling indication of Russian might. (At press time, Reykjavik, which last week agreed to a $2.1-billion loan from the IMF, was continuing discussions with Moscow for a loan worth as much as $5 billion.) And Russia has since announced a $2-billion loan to Belarus, a part of the former Soviet Union still within its sphere of influence. In return, Minsk has pledged to resume common currency negotiations with Moscow, edging it one step closer to all-out union with Russia.

But across the former Soviet sphere, where Russia has stoked separatist fires in recent months—handing out Russian passports in the Ukrainian republic of Crimea, and invading Georgia over the issue of breakaway South Ossetia—banking systems are teetering on the brink of collapse, making those countries more susceptible to the influence of their cash-rich neighbour. So far, they have gone elsewhere for aid. This week, Ukraine, whose stock market has fallen nearly 80 per cent this year, and which recently saw a panic run on deposits, received a $16.5-billion, two-year loan from the IMF; Hungary, its neighbour to the immediate southwest, whose currency and stock market are in free fall, will also receive a “substantial financing package,” from the institution.

Megapundit: What's good for the Balkans is bad for the Caucasus

By selley - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 1:02 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Marcus Gee and George Jonas on the Georgia situation.

Russia awakes
We should have seen it coming, and it’s unlikely to end well.

Nobody should be surprised by recent developments in Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia, Marcus Gee argues in The Globe and Mail. Russian leaders have been complaining about “being encircled, encroached upon and disrespected by an arrogant West drunk on the taste of its Cold War victory” since the days of Yeltsin, he notes, and more recently, Vladimir Putin served notice that he considered the West’s recognition of Kosovo sufficient precedent for Russia to recognize South Ossetia, Abkhazia and heaven knows how many other Caucasian backwaters. The main difference, Gee contends, is that Moscow now has the financial and military resources to redress its many perceived humiliations.

George Jonas, writing in the National Post, is unimpressed with George W. Bush’s condemnation of Russia’s incursion into Georgia given how recently the United States “has bombed and invaded sovereign countries, not only potential threats like Iraq or Afghanistan, but countries that couldn’t threaten America or its allies by any stretch of the imagination—such, for instance, as Serbia.” And speaking of Serbia, Jonas argues that while Mikheil Saakashvili is a pro-western democrat and Slobodan Milosevic was “a communist-turned-chauvinist, a thug and no friend of the West,” this does not explain the binary distinction many observers seem to draw between the Georgia/South Ossetia and Serbia/Kosovo situations—which are, he contends, conceptually identical. “Putin seems ready to pull a Sudetenland in Georgia,” Jonas concludes. “I’m afraid NATO may have empowered him by pulling one in 1999 in Kosovo.”

Continue…