Downtown Moscow near the Kremlin
Photo by: Yuri Mamchur

Newsweek Interactive, the consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs have published an index of the world's top global cities in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. The FP is a publication of the Washington-D.C. based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

According to the A.T. Kearney survey, a global city is defined as an urban center that "excels across multiple dimensions" of human achievement, with different rankings for leading cities in business, finance, education, and governance. Some cities came off better in the rankings due to their historic position as global economic hubs, such as New York, London, and Tokyo, while others offered more lifestyle attractions, such as Toronto and Los Angeles. But all of the established megacities in the developed world have increasing competition from emerging market boomtowns like Beijing, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, and Shenzhen. As the capital of the Russian Federation, Moscow found its spot in the combined rankings at #19 out of 60 global cities, situated in between Vienna and Shanghai.

Click on the extended post to read more.

Bloomberg news Moscow bureau chief near the Kremlin, 2007

Moscow scored highest on "the best cities to get culture" ranking, at no. 6, and no. 15 on "the best cities to get a degree". While the cultural category may seem subjective, depending on one's definition of culture, the educational rankings are based on objective criteria such as the percentage of inhabitants with university degrees, and the number of international students, international schools, and top global universities in each city. Moscow State University (MSU) and other institutions in the Russian capital have attracted large numbers of foreign students, particularly in engineering and medical sciences.

In recent years Moscow's retail, industrial, service and construction industries have drawn thousands of expats from Europe and hundreds of thousands of migrants from Russian regions to the city. According to the 2006 census, the number of legally registered residents in Moscow city limits exceeded 10.4 million people. The actual population, including undocumented workers from the former Soviet republics, could be substantially higher. The Moscow region surrounding the city has 6 million inhabitants.

Of cities ranked by A.T. Kearney in the U.S., New York (still no. 1 in spite of the financial crisis), Los Angeles (6), Chicago (8), Washington (11), and San Francisco (15) scored the highest in the overall rankings.

You can read more about the methodology A.T. Kearney used to generate their rankings here. Click on the photos section of Russia Blog to view more photos of the Russian capital.

A Russian soldier in Georgia

The International Herald Tribune has done some of the best reporting about Russia in recent months, including C.J. Chivers recently published analysis questioning many initial reports from the August 2008 war in Georgia. The Georgia War revealed that the Russian military still has sharp teeth - at least when fighting an inferior opponent on its own borders.

However, the war also revealed that even the Russian Army's elite formations were fielding 1980s vintage equipment, and did not have night vision goggles or Global Positioning System (GPS) devices like some of their Georgian opponents. The lack of unmanned aerial vehicles also led to a Russian Air Force Tupolev bomber getting shot down on a routine reconaissance mission over Georgia, with the loss of the entire crew. Russian army commanders, like the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, were reduced to issuing battlefield orders over easily intercepted cellphone lines due to a shortage of secure radios.

In late October the IHT reported on large Russian military exercises then taking place across all eleven time zones of Russia, complete with ICBM tests (hat tip: former Sovietologist and blogger Thomas P.M. Barnett). The IHT added that most American officials in the Pentagon and Bush Administration considered these changes in the Russian military's organization to be routine and not a cause for alarm in the West. If anything, President Medvedev's ambitious plans to modernize the armed forces may have to be scaled back due to a weak ruble, falling oil prices, and declining tax revenues into the Russian federal budget.

Click on the extended post to read an excerpt from the IHT article. Click on the Human Rights section of Russia Blog to read more about the problems of brutal hazing (dedovshina) and low morale in the Russian army.

Russian armored vehicles driving through Moscow during Victory Day 2008

Russia striving to modernize military, U.S. notes with interest, not alarm
By Thom Shanker
Monday, October 20, 2008

WASHINGTON: As they tracked Russian military maneuvers in recent days, the American government's career Kremlin-watchers might have been forgiven for wondering if they were seeing recycled newsreels from the worst of the bad old days.

A huge exercise, called Stability 2008, spread tens of thousands of troops, thousands of vehicles and scores of combat aircraft across nearly all 11 time zones of Russian territory in the largest war game since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There was no specified enemy, but the Russian forces appeared to be enacting a nationwide effort to quell unrest along Russia's southern border — and to repulse an American-led attack by NATO forces, according to experts in Moscow and here.

In a grim finale, commanders launched three intercontinental ballistic missiles, the type that can carry multiple nuclear warheads. It was a clear signal of the drastic endgame the Kremlin might consider should its conventional forces not hold. One of the missiles flew more than 7,100 miles, allowing Russian officials to claim they had set a distance record.

If these images of Russian power projection appeared drawn from the dark decades of Dr. Strangelove, the response from Washington was anything but.

When asked to assess what seemed to be a Russian resurgence, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have provided the same sanguine response, echoed down through the ranks of government analysts who have spent years reading obscure Russian military journals and scrutinizing classified satellite photographs.

The Russian military fell to third world standards from neglect and budget cuts in the turbulent years when Boris Yeltsin was president, they say. The new Kremlin leadership is working to create a force that can actually defend the nation's interests.

The military has embarked upon a program to buy modern weapons, improve training and health care for troops, trim a bloated officer corps and create the first professional class of sergeant-level, small-unit leaders since World War II.

Which is not to say that the United States will stop judging Russian behavior in light of what it considers a clumsy, ill-advised and unnecessary invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Yet policymakers also say the Kremlin's efforts at military modernization should not prevent cooperation on mutual concerns, including countering terrorism and halting nuclear proliferation.

Even a high-profile speech three weeks ago by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, ordering a military modernization program and the largest increases in defense spending since the death of the old USSR, was viewed here as short on substance and designed more for a domestic political agenda.

Medvedev declared that by 2020, Russia would construct new types of warships and an unspecified air and space defense system. Military spending, he said, will leap by 26 percent next year, bringing it to 1.3 trillion rubles (about $50 billion), its highest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union — but still a small fraction of American military spending.

Medvedev pledged that Russia would shore up its nuclear deterrence and upgrade its conventional forces to a state of "permanent combat readiness."

American experts were unimpressed. "Russia is prone to make fairly grandiose announcements about its military," said a Defense Department official who discussed government analyses on condition of anonymity. "These programs have long been in the works. They are not new plans. They are not new programs."

Even so, veteran analysts of Russian military affairs acknowledge that a military renaissance would allow the Moscow leadership to increase political pressure on former Soviet republics, now independent, as well as former Warsaw Pact allies that embraced NATO after the collapse of communism.

"What the Russian leadership has discovered is proof of an old maxim: that a foreign policy without a credible military is no foreign policy," said Dale Herspring, a scholar on Russian military affairs at Kansas State University.

Eugene Rumer, of the National Defense University here, said events of recent weeks were "not a sign, really, of the Russian military being reborn, but more of a Russia being able to flex what relatively little muscle it has on the global scale, and to show that it actually matters."

One example is how Russia's navy is seeking to display global reach. A flotilla of warships, including the nuclear battle cruiser Peter the Great, is under sail for exercises next month with Venezuela.

Russia has also announced more than $1 billion in new arms deals with the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez.

"This Venezuela adventure is basically Russia's payback for what they consider the humiliation of American ships' operating in the Black Sea during the war in Georgia," said Mikhail Tsypkin, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. "This is to annoy the United States."

Some of the steps undertaken to wrench the Russian military out of mediocrity resemble changes in the American military over several decades.

Russia plans for its ground forces to move to a system designed for the deployment of brigades, rather than bulkier division or corps headquarters — nearly copying the United States Army's approach.

The Russian military also plans to offer pay and housing incentives to attract noncommissioned officers -- the valuable class of sergeants -- to make a long-term career of military service.

While not as drastic as the move by the post-Vietnam American military to switch from the draft to an all-volunteer force, the plan would shift Russia further from reliance on one-year conscripts, who are not in uniform long enough to master even basic skills.

Just last week, the Russian military leadership announced it would further reduce the number of people in uniform, to about 1 million from the current 1.1 million, far below the 4 million-strong military at the end of the cold war.

Most significant, according to American government officials, is a four-year plan to reduce to 150,000 a Russian officer corps that now numbers 400,000, a shrinking that is certain to produce significant opposition within the senior ranks.

The Russian General Staff will be trimmed, and the number of generals is planned to fall to 900 from the current 1,100. But in an acknowledgment that the general officer corps can slow the pace of change throughout the military, most of those reductions will occur through retirement.

The Kremlin knows that its military bureaucracy is riddled with corruption, Pentagon officials say.

Experts here say that audits ordered after Vladimir Putin took over from Yeltsin in 2000 found that 40 percent of the budget for some weapons programs and salaries was lost to theft and waste.

Click here to read the rest of the story over at the International Herald Tribune website.

Daniel Craig and Olga Kurylenko starring in the new Bond film Quantum of Solace

The new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is facing a great opening weekend. The previous Bond film, Casino Royale, gained significant attention of the female audience, compliments of shirtless Daniel Craig coming out of the ocean. The new 007 film is guaranteed major success with the male audience, not only because of the numerous car chases and explosions, but mainly because of the Ukrainian model and actress Olga Kurylenko. Coincidentally, November 14 is Olga’s 29th birthday! Even though the Communist Party of the Russian Federation condemned Olga and called her “a traitor,” all she’s betraying is her real identity. In the movie she is a Bolivian, not Ukrainian, and a fighter, not a model.

Olga Konstantinovna Kurylenko (Ольга Костянтинівна Куриленко) was born on November 14, 1979, in Berdyansk, Ukraine, Soviet Union. Her mother, Marina Alyabysheva, divorced her father, Konstantin Kurylenko, soon after her birth. After the divorce, her mother struggled to survive as an art teacher. Young Olga Kurylenko was brought up by her mother and her grandmother, Raisa. During her youth, Olga had a humbling experience of living in poverty; she had no choice but to wear rags and had to darn the holes on her sweater. During the years in Ukraine she studied art, languages, did 7 years of musical school studying piano and went to a ballet studio until 13.

At age 13, Olga and her mother made a trip to Moscow. There she was scouted by an agent who approached her at a subway station and offered a job as a model. Initially, Olga's mother was suspicious, but eventually Olga made a good career choice and took training as a model in Moscow. By age 16, she was ready for the next step. She moved to Paris, learned French in six months, and was signed by the Madison agency. At age 18, Olga appeared on the cover of Glamour, then she graced magazine covers of Elle, Madame Figaro, Marie Claire, and Vogue, and also became the face of Lejaby lingerie, Bebe clothing, Clarins and Helena Rubinstein cosmetic companies.

In 1999, Olga married her friend, French photographer Cedric Van Mol and divorced him 3,5 years later. One day Olga presented herself to an acting agency. Eventually, she swapped the catwalk for celluloid, and her acting career took off. In 2005 she made her film debut as Iris, a sensual beauty in L'Annulaire (2005) by director Diane Bertrand.

Olga's cinematic roles have been notably steamy, and her natural beauty and explicit nudity attracted the attention of the male audiences. She appeared opposite Elijah Wood in Paris, je t'aime (2006) and as Le Sofia in Serpent (2006), then co-starred as Russian beauty Nika Boronina opposite Timothy Olyphant in Hitman (2007). She also appears as Mina Harud in the indy surveillance-thriller Tyranny (2008) and is billed as Camille, the Bond girl in Quantum of Solace (2008), a sequel to Casino Royale (2006).

Olga Kurylenko with Timothy Olyphant in Hitman

When she arrived for her initial audition in Paris last year, Kurylenko realized the script she had been given in advance ''wasn't the right one, not the text they were using that day.'' In order to play catch-up, the actress let others audition in front of her. ''All I could do was listen and try to pick up the correct lines, but in the end I really had to improvise a lot.

''Maybe because of that, it made me relax, knowing I had nothing to lose -- figuring there was no way I'd get the part since I was so clearly unprepared.''

Olga Kurylenko in Kiev, Ukraine

Imagine her surprise when she got a callback for a second audition, and then a third one -- ultimately doing a scene with Daniel Craig in London. ''By that point I was really nervous, because you know you're close to getting it, but you still haven't got it. You suddenly get your hopes up but don't want to want it too much, in case they pick someone else.''

An added challenge for her was the fact her character ''is a Bolivian, and I knew I was competing with actresses who were Hispanic. Spanish was their first language. ''They didn't have to fake the accent. To make sure I was convincing as a Bolivian, I worked hard on my accent every day for two weeks before I had to audition with Daniel.''

Olga Kurylenko and Daniel Craig on a Bloomberg outdoor deck in Moscow

After she got the good news she had won the role of Camille, Kurylenko underwent intensive stunt training -- to prepare her for several scenes involving rough fighting.

''The funny part is I have a big fight scene with Joaquin [Cosio, who plays the corrupt and very vicious Bolivian General Medrano] -- and he's such a teddy bear in real life, a real sweetie! Even though the stunt coaches spend months teaching you how to do certain movements so you don't get hurt, at the end of the day, certain things you have to do for real.''

In a climactic struggle with Cosio, Kurylenko said her co-star really did throw her around the room, violently pulling her hair. ''It did hurt, especially because you have to do about 20 takes of each scene. It's not the first time you fall that's so bad. It's when you fall on that same bruise, over and over again. That's the hard part, but it's what makes it all look real. When you hurt for real, you can communicate that pain in your acting.''

President-Elect Barack Obama taking a phone call.

The cold shoulder President Medvedev gave President-Elect Obama a few days ago seems to be warming all the time. The Washington Times reports:

Russian leaders are offering an olive branch to the incoming Obama administration in hopes that it will scrap a planned missile-defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russian President Dimitry Medvedev told French journalists that he had spoken by phone with President-elect Barack Obama and that they hoped to meet as soon as possible.

"I hope ... we'll be able to find a way out of these [difficult] situations, which we haven't been able to do with our current colleagues," Mr. Medvedev said in the interview, which was broadcast Thursday.

Please visit the extended post to read the entire article.

Moscow reaches out to Obama on missiles
Medvedev seeks talks with new U.S. leader
By Martin Sieff
United Press International
Friday, November 14, 2008

Russian leaders are offering an olive branch to the incoming Obama administration in hopes that it will scrap a planned missile-defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev told French journalists that he had spoken by phone with President-elect Barack Obama and that they hoped to meet as soon as possible.

"I hope ... we'll be able to find a way out of these [difficult] situations, which we haven't been able to do with our current colleagues," Mr. Medvedev said in the interview, which was broadcast Thursday.

Within hours of Mr. Obama's election last week, the Russian president threatened to base short-range missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

An Obama transition official confirmed that the two spoke Saturday morning.

"They both expressed a desire to meet early in the new administration and the president-elect underscored the need to collaborate on the financial crisis, nuclear proliferation, including in Iran and North Korea, and in fighting terrorism," the official said.

"The issue of missile defense did not come up in the phone call," the official said, talking on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution.

Mr. Medvedev suggested in Thursday's interview that Russia would change course if the U.S. abandoned plans for a European missile defense.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he was perplexed by the Russian threat.

"Quite frankly, I'm not clear what the missiles would be for in Kaliningrad. After all, the only real emerging threat on Russia's periphery is in Iran and I don't think the Iskander [Russian] missile has the range to get there from Kaliningrad," Mr. Gates said Thursday in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

"Why they would threaten to point missiles at European nations seems quite puzzling to me," added Mr. Gates, who was in Europe to attend a NATO meeting.

The Russian threat was the latest move in a protracted dispute over U.S. plans to base 10 interceptors in Poland and a missile guidance radar in the Czech Republic. The U.S. insists missile defenses are needed to protect Europe from Iran.

Undersecretary of State William Burns and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow earlier this week, agreed to hold the next round of security and missile-defense talks in December, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.

The two also discussed "the global economic crisis and the need for coordinated action during this weekend´s summit meeting of G-20 leaders in Washington," Mr. Wood said.

Russia has been hard hit by the crisis and the accompanying plunge in oil prices. Its stock market fell more than 12 percent on Thursday.

Toby Gati, a Russia analyst and former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, said the Russians perceive a chance to improve relations.

"Whenever there's a new president, there's always a new opportunity," she said.

"The Russians were surprised by the impact of the financial crisis. They thought their hard currency reserves of half a trillion dollars were a Maginot line," she said. "They didn't realize that they can't be aggressive in foreign policy and make nice in economic affairs. Interdependence creates interdependence."

Mr. Medvedev is to attend the weekend financial summit in Washington.

Russia has called for a major overhaul of the global financial system that would give emerging economies a bigger voice in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions.

Ms. Gati said the Obama administration should make a decision on missile defense based on U.S. interests, not on how the Russians will react.

Mr. Obama said during the campaign that he supports missile defense when the technology proves reliable.

Medvedev’s statement regarding the deployment of Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad Region in response to the US intention to station Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic was hardly among the Kremlin’s most fortunate moves. Considering that Obama himself was not a great supporter of that project--with its dubious technological efficiency and exorbitant cost--it would probably have been more expedient to let the new US president freeze or even bury this idea of the Bush Administration.

The timing for making such a statement, with Obama only just emerging victorious from a grueling race, also was rather less than perfect. After Obama’s election was secured, a phone call to congratulate the new White House resident and wish him success in his difficult mission might have been more fitting. Memorably, Putin’s phone call to Bush on 11 September 2001 was instrumental in establishing a personal friendship between the two presidents that exerted some restraint on the zeal of the Cold War Warriors.

Ironically, it was none other than Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski who came to Medvedev’s rescue by over-reaching, ascribing to Obama enthusiastic support for the missile shield on Polish territory – support that Obama had never expressed. Obama’s response was instantaneous; he flatly refuted Kaczynski’s statement through Denis McDonough, his senior aide for international affairs.

This is far from the first gaffe Kaczynski has been known to make. His appeal at an August rally in Tbilisi for setting up an anti-Russia coalition had to be withdrawn as well, that time by Poland’s own foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, who announced that President Kaczynski’s speech had been an “extemporization.” “That was the President’s own proposal and its content was not known to the Foreign Ministry,” Sikorski said then.

It would be better if the Kremlin did not just feel smug over the Polish president’s propensity to exaggerate, but instead took notice of Obama’s refutation and treated it as a first and singularly important step toward Russia. Now the ball is in Moscow’s court, and a suitable response for it to make is only too obvious.

Obama has repeatedly said that, if elected to the White House, he would start phasing out US troops from Iraq while focusing on fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Military matters are improving anyway in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan. At this point, even token help from Russia to NATO would be gratefully received in the West. It would be better still if that help were more substantial, similar to what Russia did for America in 2001-2002. That assistance, incidentally, did not cost it a single soldier’s life.

Back then, everyone in America was singing praises to Russia, calling it a strategic partner and even an ally. Naturally, one could lament the fact that Bush repaid Russia by scrapping the ABM treaty, continuing NATO eastward expansion, promoting the project for deploying BMD elements in Eastern Europe, and so on. On the other hand, helping the West would not be a mere charitable act on Russia’s part. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are no less a threat to Russia than they are to the US and Europe, and combating them is a common cause that is a must to all.

As soon as cooperation in this area becomes a fact, the powerful anti-Russia lobby in the United States would find itself in isolation. By way of the next step, the Russian leadership could raise the issue of freezing NATO expansion and creating a new security system in Europe that would involve Russia. From there it is not so far to go to forging a new partnership and even alliance with the United States and Europe.

Some on both sides may dismiss these ideas as naïve and utopian, but the skeptics would do well to consider the alternatives. I am confident that they would be hard put to it to come up with something more attractive.

Edward Lozansky is President of the American University in Moscow. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Real Russia Project or Discovery Institute.

Image by: Expert.ru

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Russian stocks on average are trading at slightly more than four times earnings on the MICEX and RTS stock exchanges. This level is down from thirteen times earnings at the market's peak. Overall, compared to fellow BRIC economies, Russia's stock market is down 72 percent off its 2007 peak, compared to 59 percent for Brazil, and 62 percent for India and China, according to statistics compiled by The Asia Times.

Lower commodities prices and the global credit crisis are hitting the Russian economy hard in the last half of 2008. However, unlike in 1998, when Russia's banking system and the savings of middle class Russians were wiped out, Russia has a huge stockpile of hard currency reserves to leverage as collateral in maintaining financial stability. The ruble has lost ground versus the dollar since hitting its peak in the early summer of 2008. However, the ruble has not collapsed into hyperinflation, as it did 10 years ago, and the Russian government is allowing it to depreciate against other world currencies. There are some signs that Russia can ride out the crisis -- if Western credit markets remain open to lending to Russian firms, and the West remains attractive to Russian and other sovereign wealth fund investments.

Click on the extended post to read more.

Roman Abramovich and other Russian oligarchs have lost billions due to the Russian market meltdown

The Fallout from the Global Credit Crisis in Russia

Whether Moscow and Washington like it or not, Russia is now thoroughly integrated into the global economic system. Regardless of where the financial crisis began (and most analysts agree that it originated with a worldwide glut of money issued by central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve), Russia's problems cannot be separated from those of the West. The Russian government has attempted to address the crisis by cutting interest rates, and injecting cash from Russia's $500 billion in hard currency reserves into loans for major companies, including one of the largest banks in the country, Vneshtorbank (VTB). Russia's major electric utilities and automakers, just like American carmakers in Detroit, are also publically declaring that they may need government assistance. Time magazine is reporting that assembly line workers are being laid off or having their wages slashed in Nizhny Novgorod and other regional economic hubs. Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has warned that not all Russian banks and corporations should count on loans from the state and that they ought to prepare for slower growth in 2009.

Ukraine and the Energy Price Crunch

Russia still seems to have more natural resources and currency reserves to withstand the economic shocks than some of the smaller, richer European economies, like Iceland and Hungary (both members of NATO, and the latter a member of the European Union), and nations in the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine. The collapse in prices for steel and coal, Ukraine's two most lucrative exports, have made an already shaky political situation in Kyev even more acrimonious.

If Gazprom finds itself short on Western capital for drilling and modernization, the state-owned monopoly will always find it more politically acceptable to boost the artificially low gas prices it charges Ukraine and Belarus than to squeeze domestic utilities and consumers in Russia. Western governments may dislike these actions and once again accuse the Kremlin of bullying Kyev, but they should follow the money. The harsh reality is that natural gas (and the steel made with it, whether in Russia or Ukraine) must at some point reflect the true costs of getting the raw material out of the ground in Siberia and Central Asia and shipping it to points east and west.

The former Soviet republics, as well as the Russians themselves, cannot continue to pay half or less of what Western Europeans pay for the same natural gas indefinitely. Free market economists ought to be applauding such a reckoning rather than dismissing it as "Russia using energy as a weapon". While Russia will continue to subsidize natural gas prices for its own people for some time, unlike other major energy producers such as Saudi Arabia, it does not subsidize dirt cheap gasoline at the pump. In fact, even as gasoline prices have fallen in the U.S. since reaching their peak in July 2008, Russians continue to pay more at the pump than Americans.

Can the West Keep its Own Commitment to the Ideals it Demands of Russia?

For long-term investors who remain cash-rich and liquid, the global financial crisis may present an unprecedented buying opportunity. Many smaller Russian and Ukrainian companies may end up selling for a fraction of their pre-crisis value.

Russia has not yet undergone the wholesale nationalization of its banking or financial sector, as has already occurred in many Western economies. But the question remains: can Russia and Ukraine maintain their commitment to free trade and market economics, even as these concepts are being maligned and blamed for economic failure in the West? Time will tell.

Shirtless Putin and Obama (Compilation by Publius Pundit)

Reality is catching up fast for the Russian Federation, which begun to slowly orient its expectations towards Barack Obama's win about two weeks prior to November 4. As the Russian government and its policy analysts expected, Obama's nascent presidency will have mixed results for US-Russia relations, though cautious optimism is starting to take hold. One issue that is already grabbing headlines in Russia is the American attitude towards anti-missile shield in Europe.

As reported by the Daily Vzglyad, Obama reiterated his commitment to the Patriot missile batteries in Poland, signed earlier in August by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. The paper commented on Western Europe's desire for a "new beginning in relations between Russia and the US," but remained convinced that President-elect's desire not to deviate form the previous administration's plans signaled that major changes in US-Russia relations are not expected to take place anytime soon.

This attitude is highlighted by another analysis in Vzglyad, in which Russian foreign policy specialists are openly saying that they do not hope, at present, for any warming in US-Russia relations. Mikhail Margelov, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Duma Senate (upper chamber of the Russian Parliament) is quoted as saying that major changes will not take place because "too many disagreements have piled up between our countries. ... We are expecting that the US will continue the policy of selective cooperation with Russia, particularly in the area of nuclear non-proliferation and anti-terrorism initiatives." He also called on his colleagues not to "take [Obama's] election promises seriously, since they were only declarations, which are primitive in context - while the reality is always more complex."

An even more direct opinion was voiced in the same article by Alexander Hramchikhin, director of analysis at the Center of Political and Military Studies: "Obama is inexperienced in foreign policy, and will have to heavily rely on his advisors, like Senator Biden, who is more of a hawk than McCain. ... Obama himself is a "black box" - we are not talking about the color of his skin, but about the lack of knowledge on what he will be like as President, since he has absolutely no relevant experience."

Still, there was some cautious optimism voiced by the Russian political establishment. In the same article, Konsantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Duma (and counterpart to Congressman Berman of the House Foreign Relations Committee) stated that "Obama's victory gives hope for a new reality in US-Russia relations, but it's premature to predict when that would actually take place. Obama will be under pressure from his team of advisors, whose approaches to Russia do not differ significantly from that of the Bush Administration." On the other hand, Mr. Kosachev highlighted Obama's biggest advantage in foreign policy: "Obama's thinking is not influenced too much by the Cold War. Senator Obama did not engage in openly hostile rhetoric towards Russia, which gives hope for the strengthening of our cooperation on key issues." More cautious optimism was also voiced by Sergey Markov, Duma Deputy, who stated that he "could actually imagine a personal friendship between Presidents Obama and Medvedev, since they belong to the same generation. ... They are both Internet users, and probably listened to similar music and watched similar films."

Daily Izvestia reminded its readers that Barack Obama was more popular in Russia than John McCain, citing the polling numbers by the official Levada Center. The polls were conducted in late October in eight largest cities across the Russian Federation, and 27% of Russians were favorable towards Senator Obama, while 15% were favorable towards Senator McCain. More than half of the Russian respondents could not say with which American political party can Russian government better deal with; 39% stated they prefer the Democratic party, while only 11% named Republicans.

Daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta attempted to predict that Obama's policy towards Russia will be constructive and will revolve around issues such as nuclear non-proliferation. Assistant Director of Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Kremenyuk stated that the "starting point in US-Russia relations is now very low, and its up to the leadership of America and Russia to raise our relations to a new level. With Obama as President, both sides can continue working on issues laid out by President G. W. Bush."

Kremenyuk stated that Obama will pay attention to Russia' internal processes, but will not seek to interfere in them. On the other hand, Sergey Karaganov, Chairman of Foreign and Defense Policy at the Duma Senate stated that real changes in US-Russia relations could take place no earlier than in half a year from now. He also stated that "there will be positive changes, but Russia too will have to work hard to escape this "confrontational spiral."

This article was originally published at RealClearPolitics

Yevgeny Bendersky specializes in research and analysis of Eurasian affairs. His previous work includes position as the Senior Strategic Advisor at Jenkins Hill International, LLC. Prior to working at Jenkins Hill, Mr. Bendersky was the Foreign Affairs Legislative Assistant for Congressman Curt Weldon (Member of Congress 1987-2007).

Russia Blog Editors extend their warmest wishes to our Veterans. Thank you for defending our countries and freedoms and making this world a safer place!

The opposition in Georgia finally found its voice, thanks to the international investigations into Saakashvili's policies and attention from the Western media (Photo by Spiegel)

What really happened to provoke the recent crisis in the Caucusus--a crisis that gravely set back Western relations with Russia--is bound to get more scholarly scrutiny with the passage of time. This latest report, in any event, is not going to help the Georgian picture.

Regardless, isn't it amazing how things have changed since August? The price of oil collapsed, and with it the urgency over pipeline routes and prices in Central Europe. Because of the financial panic, Russia's sense of invulnerability has been set back. Public perceptions of the Kremlin leadership may be deteriorating along with the market--though Russia is not yet in a recession like America is experiencing. And the U.S. has a new president-elect. President Medvedev's challenge to that new president-elect has not gone down as well in Russia as might have been expected. In short, hardly anyone is really thinking about Georgia now. What a shift!

International Herald Tribune reports:

Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression. Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia's inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

Visit the extended post to read the IHT article.

Georgia's claims on war with Russia questioned
By C. J. Chivers and Ellen Barry
International Herald Tribune
Friday, November 7, 2008

TBILISI, Georgia: Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia's inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia's insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Saakashvili's main justifications for the attack.

Senior Georgian officials contest these accounts, and have urged Western governments to discount them. "That information, I don't know what it is and how it is confirmed," said Giga Bokeria, Georgia's deputy foreign minister. "There is such an amount of evidence of continuous attacks on Georgian-controlled villages and so much evidence of Russian military buildup, it doesn't change in any case the general picture of events."

He added: "Who was counting those explosions? It sounds a bit peculiar."

The Kremlin has embraced the monitors' observations, which, according to a written statement from Grigory Karasin, Russia's deputy foreign minister, reflect "the actual course of events prior to Georgia's aggression." He added that the accounts "refute" allegations by Tbilisi of bombardments that he called mythical.

The monitors were members of an international team working under the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE. A multilateral organization with 56 member states, the group has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in the 1990s.

The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belorussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both.

Details were then confirmed by three Western diplomats and a Russian, and were not disputed by the OSCE's mission in Tbilisi, which was provided with a written summary of the observations.

Saakashvili, who has compared Russia's incursion into Georgia to the Nazi annexations in Europe in 1938 and the Soviet suppression of Prague in 1968, faces domestic unease with his leadership and skepticism about his judgment from Western governments.

The brief war was a disaster for Georgia. The attack backfired. Georgia's army was humiliated as Russian forces overwhelmed its brigades, seized and looted their bases, captured their equipment and roamed the country's roads at will. Villages that Georgia vowed to save were ransacked and cleared of their populations by irregular Ossetian, Chechen and Cossack forces, and several were burned to the ground.

Massing of Weapons

According to the monitors, an OSCE patrol at 3 p.m. on Aug. 7 saw large numbers of Georgian artillery and grad rocket launchers massing on roads north of Gori, just south of the enclave.

At 6:10 p.m., the monitors were told by Russian peacekeepers of suspected Georgian artillery fire on Khetagurovo, an Ossetian village; this report was not independently confirmed, and Georgia declared a unilateral cease-fire shortly thereafter, about 7 p.m.

During a news broadcast that began at 11 p.m., Georgia announced that Georgian villages were being shelled, and declared an operation "to restore constitutional order" in South Ossetia. The bombardment of Tskhinvali started soon after the broadcast.

According to the monitors, however, no shelling of Georgian villages could be heard in the hours before the Georgian bombardment. At least two of the four villages that Georgia has since said were under fire were near the observers' office in Tskhinvali, and the monitors there likely would have heard artillery fire nearby.

Moreover, the observers made a record of the rounds exploding after Georgia's bombardment began at 11:35 p.m. At 11:45 p.m., rounds were exploding at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between impacts, they noted.

At 12:15 a.m. on Aug. 8, General Major Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in the enclave, reported to the monitors that his unit had casualties, indicating that Russian soldiers had come under fire.

By 12:35 a.m. the observers had recorded at least 100 heavy rounds exploding across Tskhinvali, including 48 close to the observers' office, which is in a civilian area and was damaged.

Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that by morning on Aug. 8 two Russian soldiers had been killed and five wounded. Two senior Western military officers stationed in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they work with Georgia's military, said that whatever Russia's behavior in or intentions for the enclave, once Georgia's artillery or rockets struck Russian positions, conflict with Russia was all but inevitable. This clear risk, they said, made Georgia's attack dangerous and unwise.

Senior Georgia officials, a group with scant military experience and personal loyalties to Saakashvili, have said that much of the damage to Tskhinvali was caused in combat between its soldiers and separatists, or by Russian airstrikes and bombardments in its counterattack the next day. As for its broader shelling of the city, Georgia has told Western diplomats that Ossetians hid weapons in civilian buildings, making them legitimate targets.

"The Georgians have been quite clear that they were shelling targets — the mayor's office, police headquarters — that had been used for military purposes," said Matthew Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state and one of Saakashvili's vocal supporters in Washington.

Those claims have not been independently verified, and Georgia's account was disputed by Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain who was the senior OSCE representative in Georgia when the war broke out. Grist said that he was in constant contact that night with all sides, with the office in Tskhinvali and with Wing Commander Stephen Young, the retired British military officer who leads the monitoring team.

"It was clear to me that the attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation," Grist said. "The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town."

Grist has served as a military officer or diplomat in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Yugoslavia. In August, after the Georgian foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, who has no military experience, assured diplomats in Tbilisi that the attack was measured and discriminate, Grist gave a briefing to diplomats from the European Union that drew from the monitors' observations and included his assessments. He then soon resigned under unclear circumstances.

A second briefing was led by Young in October for military attachés visiting Georgia. At the meeting, according to a person in attendance, Young stood by the monitors' assessment that Georgian villages had not been extensively shelled on the evening or night of Aug. 7. "If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn't," Young said, according to the person who attended. "They heard only occasional small-arms fire."

The O.S.C.E turned down a request by The Times to interview Young and the monitors, saying they worked in sensitive jobs and would not be publicly engaged in this disagreement.

Grievances and Exaggeration

Disentangling the Russian and Georgian accounts has been complicated. The violence along the enclave's boundaries that had occurred in recent summers was more widespread this year, and in the days before Aug. 7 there had been shelling of Georgian villages. Tensions had been soaring.

Each side has fresh lists of grievances about the other, which they insist are decisive. But both sides also have a record of misstatement and exaggeration, which includes circulating casualty estimates that have not withstood independent examination. With the international standing of both Russia and Georgia damaged, the public relations battle has been intensive.

Russian military units have been implicated in destruction of civilian property and accused by Georgia of participating with Ossetian militias in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Russia and South Ossetia have accused Georgia of attacking Ossetian civilians.

But a critical and as yet unanswered question has been what changed for Georgia between 7 p.m. on Aug 7, when Saakashvili declared a cease-fire, and 11:30 p.m., when he says he ordered the attack. The Russian and Ossetian governments have said the cease-fire was a ruse used to position rockets and artillery for the assault.

That view is widely held by Ossetians. Civilians repeatedly reported resting at home after the cease-fire broadcast by Saakashvili. Emeliya B. Dzhoyeva, 68, was home with her husband, Felix, 70, when the bombardment began. He lost his left arm below the elbow and suffered burns to his right arm and torso. "Saakashvili told us that nothing would happen," she said. "So we all just went to bed."

Neither Georgia nor its Western allies have as yet provided conclusive evidence that Russia was invading the country or that the situation for Georgians in the Ossetian zone was so dire that a large-scale military attack was necessary, as Saakashvili insists.

Georgia has released telephone intercepts indicating that a Russian armored column apparently entered the enclave from Russia early on the Aug. 7, which would be a violation of the peacekeeping rules. Georgia said the column marked the beginning of an invasion. But the intercepts did not show the column's size, composition or mission, and there has not been evidence that it was engaged with Georgian forces until many hours after the Georgian bombardment; Russia insists it was simply a routine logistics train or troop rotation.

Unclear Accounts of Shelling

Interviews by The Times have found a mixed picture on the question of whether Georgian villages were shelled after Saakashvili declared the cease-fire. Residents of the village of Zemo Nigozi, one of the villages that Georgia has said was under heavy fire, said they were shelled from 6 p.m. on, supporting Georgian statements.

In two other villages, interviews did not support Georgian claims. In Avnevi, several residents said the shelling stopped before the cease-fire and did not resume until roughly the same time as the Georgian bombardment. In Tamarasheni, some residents said they were lightly shelled on the evening of Aug. 7, but felt safe enough not to retreat to their basements. Others said they were not shelled until Aug 9.

With a paucity of reliable and unbiased information available, the OSCE observations put the United States in a potentially difficult position. The United States, Saakashvili's principal source of international support, has for years accepted the organization's conclusions and praised its professionalism. Bryza refrained from passing judgment on the conflicting accounts.

"I wasn't there," he said, referring to the battle. "We didn't have people there. But the OSCE really has been our benchmark on many things over the years."

The OSCE itself, while refusing to discuss its internal findings, stood by the accuracy of its work but urged caution in interpreting it too broadly. "We are confident that all OSCE observations are expert, accurate and unbiased," Martha Freeman, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. "However, monitoring activities in certain areas at certain times cannot be taken in isolation to provide a comprehensive account."

The Akula class submarine has been marketed by Russia to India's Navy

The Russian Navy has witnessed three high profile fatal accidents at sea in the last ten years: the 2000 sinking of the Kursk in the Barents Sea; the 2003 sinking of a retiring sub that went down with 11 sailors on board; and now another mishap on board an attack submarine in the Pacific Fleet this weekend, which suffocated 20 Russian sailors and left 21 others hospitalized.

The incident happened Saturday as the Nerpa, a (NATO designated) Akula II class nuclear-powered attack submarine, was undergoing its first major sea trials after leaving its base near the Russian Far East port of Vladivostok. A freon fire control system unexpectedly activated, suffocating crew members who were caught in the affected compartments. Apparently the crew members did not have access to or were not trained to use their emergency respirator devices to breathe.

Construction on the Akula boat reportedly began in 1991 and funds only became available to complete the submarine in the last few years. Russia's Navy remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor, with poor crewmember pay and thin to non-existent budgets for training in the past fifteen years taking their toll on a service that the Putin/Medvedev Administration seeks to reconstitute. In October 2008 President Medvedev proposed that Russia build new aircraft carrier battle groups, complete with aircraft, support ships and submarines. But this vision seems to be little more than a fantasy, in light of the global economic crisis and falling oil export revenues undercutting the Russian federal budget.

Click on the extended post to read an excerpt from the Associated Press story about this tragedy.

Port of Vladivostok near the Sea of Japan in Russia's Far East

Accident on Russian nuclear sub suffocates 20
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW – The fire safety system on a brand-new Russian nuclear submarine accidentally turned on as the sub was being tested in the Sea of Japan, spewing chemicals that suffocated 20 people and sent 21 others to the hospital, officials said Sunday.

The Russian Navy said the submarine itself was not damaged in Saturday's accident and returned to its base on Russia's Pacific coast under its own power Sunday. The accident also did not pose any radiation danger, the navy said.

Yet it was Russia's worst naval accident since torpedo explosions sank another nuclear-powered submarine, the Kursk, in the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 seamen aboard.

The victims suffocated Saturday after the submarine's fire-extinguishing system released Freon gas, said Sergei Markin, an official with Russia's top investigative agency. He said forensic tests found Freon in the victims' lungs.

Seventeen civilians and three seamen died in the accident and 21 others were hospitalized after being evacuated to shore, Russian navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said. None of the injuries were life-threatening, he added.

"The submarine's nuclear reactor was operating normally and radiation levels were normal," he said, adding the accident affected two sections of the submarine closest to the bow.

Markin's agency, the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General's office, has launched a probe into the accident, which he said will focus on what activated the firefighting system and possible violations of operating rules.

Lev Fyodorov, a top Russian chemical expert, said the freon pushed oxygen out, causing those inside to die of suffocation. But he said the limited information released by the government was making it difficult to understand exactly what happened. He wondered specifically about the individual breathing kits that everyone on board is supposed to have.

"People on board the sub may have failed to use their breathing equipment when they found themselves in an emergency," he told the AP.

Igor Kurdin, a retired navy officer who heads an association of former submariners, told Ekho Moskvy radio that the high death toll probably resulted from shipyard workers who lacked experience in dealing with breathing kits.

A siren warning the crew that the firefighting system was turning on also may have failed, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an unidentified navy official as saying, so those on board might not have realized that Freon was being released until it was too late.

The submarine returned to Bolshoi Kamen, a military shipyard and a navy base near Vladivostok. Officials at the Amur Shipbuilding Factory told Russian news agencies the submarine was built there and is called the Nerpa.

Overcrowding may have been a factor. Dygalo said the submarine had 208 people aboard, including 81 servicemen, and was to be commissioned by the navy later this year. Yet Amur factory officials told news agencies that a submarine of this type normally carries only a crew of 73.

Construction of the Nerpa, an Akula II class attack submarine, started in 1991 but was suspended for years because of a shortage of funding, they said. Testing on the submarine began last month and it submerged for the first time last week.

The U.S.-based intelligence risk assessment agency Stratfor said the Akula is an established design, with the Nerpa being the 11th ship of the class.

"Such a catastrophic accident calls into question the way the Russian navy has sustained its institutional knowledge in terms of design expertise, not to mention issues of quality-control both in fabrication and inspection," Stratfor said.

Saturday's accident came as the Kremlin is seeking to restore Russia's naval reach, part of a drive to show off the nuclear-armed country's clout amid strained ties with the West. A naval squadron is heading to Venezuela for joint exercises this month in a show of force near U.S. waters.

Despite a major boost in military spending during Vladimir Putin's eight years as president, Russia's military is still hampered by decrepit infrastructure, aging weapons and problems with corruption and incompetence.

Gennady Illarionov, a retired submarine officer, told RIA Novosti that the accident appeared to reflect the loss of crucial skills in conducting sea trials, since the navy has commissioned only a small number of new ships since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

"During the Soviet times, we commissioned from three to five submarines a year, and now we get just one in five years," Illarionov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying. "People forgot caution and lost their skills."

Click here to read more about this story from the BBC world service.