The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

[gmd]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Yep, correct.

But for some reason, they also do want Armenians to march into Baku. Same goes for Iran.

Typically in war, you always want to finish off your enemy. Russians and Iranians stopped our side from doing so.

I figured Russia does not want Armenian's gaining too much power. Along those same lines does anyone know how many Armenians were in the Soviet nuclear program and where they are today?

[gmd]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia and China create their own orbit
By M K Bhadrakumar

While interacting with a select gathering of "Russia hands" from Western academia, media and think tanks recently, President Vladimir Putin ventured onto the topic of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in terms, as he put it, that would be a "revelation ... something probably I have never said to anyone before".

Putin, known for his reticence and choice of words, revealed that the Kremlin did not "plan" for the SCO's present standing, but had only set its sights on the organization's potential to resolve the
"utilitarian question of settling borders" between China and its post-Soviet neighbors. SCO includes China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

He continued, "After all, to be honest, I know that somewhere within the depths of various governments and intelligence services there are people thinking that Russians and Chinese are up to something here, that they have got some kind of secret mechanism and are planning something."

Putin summed up explaining SCO's raison d'etre. "It's simply that after the collapse of the bipolar world, there was a real need for the emergence of centers of influence and power. This is simply an objective reality."

Curiously, Putin was speaking just ahead of the sensational "revelation" in Moscow last week that the first-ever joint military exercise of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO - Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) and the SCO would be held next year.

Code-named Peace Mission Rubezh, the CSTO-SCO exercise will be staged in Chebarkul in Russia's Volga-Urals area. Significantly, the heads of state of the participating countries - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Armenia - are expected to witness the exercise. Russian commentators have speculated that the attendance of SCO observer countries (Iran, Pakistan and India) cannot be ruled out.

In essence, this becomes a military exercise involving Russia and its select band of close Commonwealth of Independent States allies plus China. Equally, this will also be the SCO's first full-scale exercise involving all its member countries. China is expected to display, for the first time abroad, its latest battle tank, as well as its latest FC-1 multi-role fighters powered by Russian AL-31FN/FNM1 engines. Both China and Russia are expected to participate at battalion strength.

The exercises are ostensibly aimed at countering "terrorist and extremist networks in this world of ours" (to quote a Russian commentator) and are not targeted at any country - "definitely not NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] or the United States or any other bona fide entity".

But speculation is bound to arise as during the exercises the chiefs of staff of the participating countries will gather in Urumchi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Without doubt, there is much political symbolism in the forthcoming event. The announcement in Moscow on November 3 was itself just about 25 days ahead of the NATO summit scheduled to take place in the Latvian capital of Riga, which of course will be the first time that the trans-Atlantic Alliance holds its annual summit meeting on the territory of a former Soviet republic. The Riga summit is expected to be a landmark event that may well end up formalizing NATO's transformation in the post-Cold War era into a security organization with global reach - something that Washington has been assiduously seeking.
Furthermore, the summit may take up the next round of NATO expansion plans in the Eurasian region. To be sure, Russia is greatly perturbed about NATO's intentions. On the one hand, Moscow is far from convinced that NATO's continued profession of good intentions toward Russia and its interest in developing cooperative sinews with Russia is to be taken at face value. On the other hand, Moscow is taking note that a possibility still exists, remote though, that through such steady enlargement, NATO may become unwieldy to a point that it may well end up as a hot air balloon.

Certainly, Moscow continues to cherish a vague hope that the manifest reluctance of the countries of "Old Europe" to fit into the US straitjacket of global security may yet come in the way of defining NATO's role as an aggressive bloc. The great hope has always been that somehow NATO may meander into a conceptual impasse as it steps out of its traditional European periphery.

Meanwhile, not a trace remains, even by way of a residue, of the categorical assurance held out by the Ronald Reagan administration to Mikhail Gorbachev in the dying days of the Cold War that NATO wouldn't advance eastward from its existing European borders ("not an inch", as then-secretary of state James Baker would have said). All that Moscow had to do was convince East Germany's Erich Honecker about the unification of the two Germanys - which Gorbachev duly did, and thereafter proceeded to disband the Warsaw Pact unilaterally.

Having said that, there is great uneasiness in Moscow about the specter of Russia having to share borders with NATO member countries. With the NATO countries' refusal to ratify the treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, the ground reality is that Russia is at a serious disadvantage with regard to the strength of its conventional forces, and with each passing day it widens. Russia is eager for ratification of the treaty to extend its applicability to the territories of the Baltic states, which are not covered by the existing treaty's ceilings on force deployments.

Russian deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has repeatedly voiced Russian concerns. "During the first wave of NATO expansion [in the mid-1990s], we [Boris Yeltsin's Russia] were given solemn assurances that there would be no NATO military infrastructure in the new members' territory. We were simply duped," Ivanov said on November 1 while on a visit to Norway, a key NATO power.

He asked: "We don't see why NATO's military infrastructure is getting closer to our borders. Do we pose a threat to anyone?" Ivanov reiterated that nonetheless, Russia would take at face value the potentials of developing a cooperative relationship within the framework of the Russia-NATO Council. But a spate of Russian statements in recent months indicates that the two sides' interests are diverging to a point of extensive disagreements. As Fedor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, wrote recently, "After a decade and a half of pretensions, Russian politicians are once again reaching for their pistols when they hear the word 'NATO'."

The former head of Russian intelligence, General Leonid Ivashov, told Radio Russia recently that the US and NATO "helped to mastermind the provocative measure" involving a recent Russian-Georgian spy scandal since they needed a "new platform in the North Caucasus, which is an extremely important strategic corridor for them". He said the intention was to create an "arc of insecurity" around Russia, by involving the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia.

Ivanov also alleged that some NATO countries were supplying arms to Georgia. Moscow has no doubt taken note that it was right in the middle of Russia's spy scandal with Georgia that the US Congress took the decision to provide financial assistance to Tbilisi for upgrading Georgia's military capability to a level that speeded up its NATO accession.

Watchful eye on NATO
NATO's enlargement is increasingly becoming a matter of shared concern for Russia and China. In a commentary in mid-June, the People's Daily noted that "with its tentacles stretching further and further ... NATO's forces are exceeding the 'defensive mode' and are going hand-in-hand with the US global strategy ... NATO's great ambition draws concern."

In another commentary in September, the People's Daily was more specific. It noted, "The emergence of NATO troops in Afghanistan and the rapid expansion in the scope of its moves have shown a new trend in the process of its hastening shift toward globalization, and this has drawn extensive concern of people worldwide."

The commentary added, "NATO has intensified its interference in the affairs of major 'hot-spot' regions in recent years ... The frequent appearance of NATO troops in the 'hot-spot' areas is closely related to its strategic functions ... Equipping itself with such a raid deployment force, NATO will naturally step up its efforts to expand its domain and the scope of its moves ... It is the US that provides the biggest driving force behind NATO's worldwide overreach."

Most significantly, the commentary took note of NATO's imminent appearance in the Asia-Pacific region. It said NATO "plans to propose at the [Riga] summit in November a plan for global partnership, which is aimed at enhancing its cooperation with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, while seeking an expansion of the parameters of its cooperation with such 'democratic nations' as Brazil, India, South Africa and the Republic of Korea".
[continued...]

[gmd]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Without doubt, both Moscow and Beijing will be keenly watching the US's ambitious plans to deploy a network of anti-missile systems across the world, ostensibly to safeguard against threats from "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea, but which Moscow and Beijing see as a direct challenge to their security. As Russian Defense Minister Ivanov said, "The announced purpose is the interception of Iranian inter-continental ballistic missiles, which do not exist and will not exist in the near future. I think everyone understands against whom they [anti-ballistic missile defense systems] can be used."

Ivanov could have been echoing China's concerns, too, when he criticized that the US deployment constituted a "destabilizing element and an attempt to shift the strategic balance".

The point is, by December a new threshold is fast approaching for both Russia and China. The US has scheduled full-scale tests of its interceptor missiles in that month, and if they prove successful, that leads to the deployment of ground and space-based elements of the missile defense program in full.

Russia is planning an "asymmetric response" to the deployment of an American missile defense system in the NATO countries bordering Russia. On the one hand Russia is developing its Topol-M (SS-27) and Bulava missile systems with a uniquely short boost phase, which helps the missiles avoid interception when their engines are firing.

For example, whereas the boost phase at present lasts five minutes (which is sufficient time for a missile launch to be spotted from space), the new systems aim at cutting down the burning time to 130 seconds, which provides hardly any lead time for kinetic interceptors to hit the missile. Besides, Russia is resorting to such other "asymmetric responses" like coating missile surfaces with reflecting materials or generating radio noise to confuse the interceptors or deploying interceptor killers near the Russian border.

But China faces a far more daunting challenge. The US missile system threatens to simply wipe out the Chinese strategic capability. China will be virtually left with no alternative but to build up its nuclear forces by massive deployments of multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles.

That is to say, both Moscow and Beijing realize by now that the US is provoking a potential full-scale nuclear arms race. In a statement on October 3, the Russian Foreign Ministry underlined the gravity of the situation. It warned, "We regard negatively the US plans to deploy an anti-missile defense system in Europe, and we believe that with the possible deployment of the European NATO missile defense system, it would have a negative impact on strategic stability, regional security and inter-governmental relations."

Last week, Russian Air Force commander-in-chief General Vladimir Mikhailov further warned that the potential of external threats to Russia was increasing in the nature of the improvement and acquisition of more strategic and tactical cruise missiles by NATO countries. "Not only are NATO countries buying large quantities of missiles, such as the Storm Shadow, KEPD-350, JASSM and SLAM-ER, for their air forces, but they are also energetically promoting their export, including to Russia's next-door neighbors," he said.

Again, in the medium term, the majority of NATO aircraft will be in the category that are difficult to detect by air defense systems. NATO countries may also acquire hyper-sound air-to-surface missiles. Mikhailov revealed that during the war in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, the combat use of the range of NATO's new arsenals of high-precision, difficult-to-detect armaments was tried out. "An analysis of exercises in the West shows that plans for such strikes [as in Yugoslavia and Iraq] are being actively developed. And the amount of air attack forces and the means available to NATO makes us believe that the purpose of their use under certain circumstances may be strategic disarmament of the enemy or the destruction of the enemy's command system," he said.

Putin himself drew attention to the growing threat perception last week in a major speech at the Russian military intelligence headquarters in Moscow. Putin said the potential for conflict was on the increase and Russian military intelligence must remain vigilant. Without naming the US, he singled out "stagnation in disarmament", "threat of the emergence of destabilizing weapons such as low-charge nuclear weapons and strategic missiles equipped with non-nuclear warheads", placement of nuclear weapons in space, and development of offensive weapons systems as the contentious issues.

"The international community finds itself in a situation in which factors of force are dominating in international relations, a situation where relations are being undermined by unilateral actions ... and by attempts by some countries to unceremoniously impose their positions without taking into account at all the legitimate interests of other partners," Putin said.

Keeping pace with the incipient trends in this direction, however, starting in 2005, the Kremlin has begun initiating steps aimed at building up the CSTO alliance - which embraces Russia's most reliable allies - on the international arena. Thus, CSTO has gained observer status in the United Nations and it has been "recognized" by the SCO.

At a meeting of the CSTO collective security council in Moscow in June last year it was decided to create a military component to the organization. A plan to develop an integrated air defense system for the member countries was also discussed. Putin listed that CSTO's priorities would include cooperation in air defense, manufacturing of weapons, preparation of military personnel and peacekeeping activities. (CSTO's air defense system presently comprises 20 command control units and 80 combat units.)

From Washington's point of view, the worst-case scenario would be if an alignment were to formally take shape between CSTO and the SCO, which could become a mission analogous to NATO as a security organization. In the words of Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, "The inter-operability of the Russian and Chinese forces would constitute a great force multiplier in the event of a major military confrontation, and the possibility of a coordinated action is viewed by the Pentagon with great suspicion. Such inter-operable forces do not threaten the US presence in the Far East - yet. However, the Russian units outnumber American forces deployed in Central Asia. Military cooperation between Russia and China, under the guise of counter-terrorism in Central Asia, has the potential to set off alarms in the planning rooms of NATO and the Pentagon."

This is why Washington sees the SCO as detrimental to US geopolitical interests in Central Asia. But the American strategy toward the SCO is highly nuanced. On the one hand, Washington strives to gain observer status in the organization so as to be in a position to modulate its orientations from within SCO forums. On the other hand, taking advantage of the huge upswing in its relations with India, Washington recently come up with a "Great Central Asia" strategy that aims at drawing the region toward South Asia - away from Russia and China. This is predicated on the assumption that New Delhi and Islamabad (and Kabul) will cooperate to become engaging partners for land-locked Central Asian countries.

Meanwhile, Washington will continue to harbor the hope that there is scope to encourage the Central Asian countries to play Russia against China within the SCO forum itself. Of late, American strategic analysts have attempted to persuade Beijing that Moscow is attempting to drag it into an anti-American bloc, which would be harmful to China's long-term economic interests.

Washington also hopes to use the oil price issue as a wedge between Russia and China. Some American analysts have taken pains to explain that the geopolitical interests of the US and China do not necessarily clash in the Central Asian region. Conceivably, Washington's priority at the present stage will be to isolate Russia (being the only power on earth with the thermonuclear capability to destroy the United States within 30 minutes) and leave it to a future date to deal with China, once the Russian "pretender" has been sorted out.

All indications are that Moscow and Beijing have seen through the arrogance and cultural insensitivity underlying Washington's miscalculation on this score. The role of the SCO as a significant geopolitical player; the shift in the terminus of Russia's Eastern Siberian oil and gas export pipeline from the Pacific coast to China; the expanding coordination between Russia and China at the UN; accelerating Chinese investments in Russia; Russia's increased readiness to transfer state-of-the-art weapon systems to China; the two countries' growing energy cooperation - all these signal that Washington's stratagem to "divide and rule" Central Asia has not worked.

Putin recently said, "Our relations with China today are better than at any other point in our history ... Our relations are not dictated by opportunism but by the political balance in the world and global development trends, and these trends are such, in my view, that they will make it imperative to maintain a high level and quality of relations for a long time to come. We have common political interests and we also have common economic interests."

The announcement regarding the CSTO-SCO joint military exercise, therefore, signifies that the Sino-Russian alliance is advancing to a qualitatively new level. Admittedly, for both Russia and China, their respective relationship with the US will remain a matter of crucial importance, But the growing Sino-Russian alliance is no longer to be regarded as their bargaining chip or a scarecrow vis-a-vis Washington to be flaunted selectively when the going gets tough in their partnership with the US.

The Sino-Russian alliance is becoming a vital component of the policies of the two great powers, based on substantive strategic, diplomatic and economic considerations. Russian diplomatic and economic policy that has been traditionally anchored in the West is unmistakably turning east, though the primary direction still remains European. It is as much a challenge to European diplomacy as to Russian diplomacy whether Russia's Asian alliance incrementally supplants or merely complements Russia's European alignment.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK11Ag01.html

I had not heard prior to this article of the joint excersises and the nations that may be invited as observers.

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia to spend 11 bln dollars on upgrading army equipment next year

Russia's defense spending will total 820 billion rubles (31 billion U.S. dollars) next year and 300 billion rubles (11 billion dollars) of it will be used to upgrade equipment in the armed forces, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday.

Ivanov, who is also deputy prime minister, said the money would be used for purchases of new military equipment as well as for research, design and testing in the military field, the Interfax news agency reported. Russia's defense spending has been increasing in recent years but its percentage in gross domestic product (GDP) has remained stable at not more than 3 percent, he said. The military industry has provided many Russians with well-paid jobs, he added. Russia's arms export totaled 6 billion dollars last year, Ivanov said.

Source: Xinhua http://english.people.com.cn/200611/...20_323251.html

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Conflict in the Caucasus - First battleground in the new Cold War?

As world attention is fixed on events in the Middle East, particularly the continuing meltdown of the American occupation in Iraq, another crisis brews. It is the coming showdown between the U.S. and Russia, centered in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Relations between Russia and Georgia, never good, degenerated recently when members of Georgian opposition parties were arrested, along with four Russian military officers, and charged with espionage. The Russians retaliated by ending commercial ties, deporting Georgians living in Russia, and closing the border.

To begin with, a little context: when the Soviet empire imploded, the various pieces were left to themselves, and in most cases the old Communist elite merely reasserted itself in the form of a local autocracy. Eduard Shevardnadze, the suave Soviet diplomat who served as the last Soviet foreign minister, seized power in a coup against elected Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and charmed the West into supporting his post-Soviet dictatorship. Georgia was put on a path to NATO membership and became the second largest per-capita recipient of U.S. aid – after Israel, of course – but Shevardnadze didn't toe the line completely, so he had to go. "Shevvy," as U.S. officials called him, lost out, as Gwynne Dyer notes, when he defied Washington on a crucial matter: "When Shevardnadze signed a deal last year with the Russian gas giant Gazprom, Washington went ballistic. Bush's energy adviser Steven Mann flew in to warn Shevardnadze not to go ahead with the deal, Mikhail Saakashvili denounced it – and Shevardnadze signed it anyway."

With plenty of help from George Soros, Georgia's "Rose Revolution" gave birth to the Saakashvili regime, which, like its predecessor, has degenerated into outright repression: arrests of opposition leaders, the closing of independent media outlets, harassment of political opponents – all of this culminating in a demagogic campaign against a supposed pro-Russian "fifth column" in the opposition ranks. The jails are filled with Mikheil Saakashvili's critics, and human rights organizations confirm that the bloom is long gone from the Rose Revolution. When a domestic crisis threatens the power of the leader at home, the age-old solution is to provoke some foreign trouble to divert attention away from the real problem and drum up support for the government. In Georgia, this tactic means vowing, once again, to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia – two autonomous regions that have declared independence. Saakashvili's defense minister recently boasted that Georgian troops will celebrate the New Year in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital city.

In the case of South Ossetia, which recently voted overwhelmingly in a referendum in favor of independence, the ethnic Russians who make up the majority population of this region want reunification with Russia. They were forcibly prevented from doing so until South Ossetian rebel forces drove out Shevardnadze in the 1990s. Georgian efforts to bully the Ossetians are supported by the Europeans, who have discounted the referendum results in advance, and by such American bigwigs as Sen. John McCain, who visited Tskhinvali in August, and used the occasion to declare:

"Because there was not a direct response to our questions about why OSCE has been blocked from doing its job; why there has been no progress on peace initiatives from Georgia, from the UN, from the OSCE, from other organizations – there has been no progress. I think that the attitude there is best described by what you see by driving in [Tskhinvali]: a very large billboard with a picture of Vladimir Putin on it, which says 'Vladimir Putin Our President.' I do not believe that Vladimir Putin is now, or ever should be, the president of sovereign Georgian soil."

Is it really the role of a U.S. senator to decide what is and is not "sovereign Georgian soil"? Surely there is a limit to even McCain's arrogance. After all, the question of exactly where the boundaries of post-Soviet states should be drawn in order to make some sense, and at the same time ensure justice, is so incredibly complex that even experts on the region come away perplexed. Yet here is McCain, sanctimoniously echoing the rabidly nationalistic rhetoric of Saakashvili and his followers as if it were undisputed fact.

The rebellion of tiny Abkhazia is even more complex: the Abkhazians seek to establish their own independent republic, and have resisted Georgian efforts to reincorporate them into Georgia proper. Ethnic Abkhazians form a distinct national minority within Georgia, with their own language, a long history – Abkhazia is the ancient kingdom of Colchis, land of the Golden Fleece – and, now, a functioning democracy that has clearly expressed the will of the people. Yet no country anywhere recognizes Abkhazia, not even the Russians, who are nevertheless championing their cause in a number of ways, including issuing passports to Abkhazian (and Ossetian) nationals. A recently passed UN resolution clearly puts the onus on Georgia, which has been the most belligerent party, to put an end to the conflict. The text "once again urges the Georgian side to address seriously legitimate Abkhaz security concerns, to avoid steps which could be seen as threatening, and to refrain from militant rhetoric and provocative actions, especially in upper Kodori valley."

The Georgians have been aggressive of late, invading the disputed Kodori Gorge and using it as a base from which to attack the Abkhazians. Saakashvili and his government are clearly intent on provoking some sort of conflict, and the only question is whether they will receive U.S. backing. Recent statements by Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, cited by the Moscow Times as being "adamantly opposed to a military option on the part of the Georgian government," cast doubt on the possibility, but with this administration you never know.

The anti-Russian rhetoric coming out of John McCain's mouth, dutifully echoed by the White House, is not just talk. The playing of the "Great Game" in Central Asia involves a U.S. strategy to lock the Russians out of the oil bonanza and claim the area as an alternative source of energy, i.e., an alternative to the Middle East. This may have something to do with why the regime-changers have their sights set on the former Soviet Union, demonizing Vladimir Putin as the alleged reincarnation of Joseph Stalin and targeting Russia as a renewed threat to the West.

The Russians are using the Ossetian and Abkhazian examples as counterpoints to the recent suggestion by the Western occupiers of Kosovo that the formerly Serbian province be granted formal independence. The Kosovars are demanding it, and why, after all, did the U.S. and its European allies fight a war to "liberate" Kosovo from the former Yugoslavia, anyway? Yet if Kosovo deserves independence, then why not Abkhazia and South Ossetia? This riposte is meant to stick in the craw of the Europeans, who have made a special point of taking the Georgian side in this dispute.

Russian "peacekeepers," OSCE "observers," South Ossetian troops, and the U.S.-trained-and-equipped Georgian military are facing off along ill-defined borders, with renegade "rebel" bands supporting one side or the other running wild in the no-man's land in between. This is a recipe for disaster, and an armed confrontation is bound to occur, with the distinct possibility of escalating into all-out warfare. The Russians would soon be drawn in, and the U.S. could not escape being dragged into this particular vortex – with fateful consequences all 'round. I can just hear McCain barnstorming the country in '08, denouncing "Russian imperialism" and demanding that we "stop Putin" in the Caucasus before Russian troops cross the Bering Straits.

Whether or not Abkhazia deserves independence, or South Ossetia should be part of the Russian Federation, are questions that Washington should take no position on, because no legitimate American interests are involved. We have no business meddling in Russia's "near abroad." We should, however, recognize the de facto governments of these two breakaway regions, simply as a matter of diplomatic convenience: we can't understand what is happening if we don't have people on the ground. We should also use our considerable leverage with Saakashvili to get him to back off: his inflammatory rhetoric during Georgia's recent election campaign, and the statement by his defense minister that Georgian troops would have a New Year's party in the capital of South Ossetia, does not inspire much confidence.

What seems like a small, obscure dispute could balloon into a major crisis because of the stakes involved. The rising amount of U.S. aid to Georgia greatly aids Saakashvili's military buildup: his belligerence begs for a stern rebuke, perhaps an aid cutoff. It's time to rein in this would-be Napoleon-of-the-steppes and nip Georgian imperialism in the bud – before it destabilizes what is, after all, a volatile region. If John McCain, George Soros, Anne Applebaum, and the usual neoconservative suspects have their way, Georgia may be the first battleground of a revived Cold War. The problem is that the conflict may turn hot with frightening swiftness.

Link: http://antiwar.com/justin/

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Intrigue Swirls in Ex-K.G.B. Man’s Illness

LONDON, Nov. 19 — The British police said Sunday that they were investigating the suspected poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko (pictured above), a Russian former K.G.B. operative living in exile in Britain who had been inquiring into the killing of a journalist in Moscow last month.

The Russian authorities had no immediate comment on suggestions in news reports that the Russian secret service had poisoned Mr. Litvinenko, who is hospitalized and seriously ill, because he had criticized former colleagues and President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Litvinenko is depicted by fellow exiles as a prominent opponent of the Kremlin, and he had told them he was looking into the killing on Oct. 7 of Anna Politkovskaya, who had made her name as a critic of the government’s policies in Chechnya and who was gunned down at her apartment building.

Details from the police and news reports had some of the hallmarks of a spy thriller in the cold war vein of John le Carré. The Sunday Times of London said the former agent had met Nov. 1 with an Italian contact identified only as Mario in a central London sushi bar. Last week, Mr. Litvinenko told reporters he began to feel sick within hours of the meeting with Mario.

“I ordered lunch, but he ate nothing,” Mr. Litvinenko said, according to The Sunday Times, which apparently interviewed him after he began to feel ill but before his condition deteriorated. “He appeared to be very nervous. He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read right away.”

“It contained a list of people, including an F.S.B. officer, who were purported to be connected with the journalist’s murder,” he said. The F.S.B., or Federal Security Service, is the successor to the K.G.B. “I do feel very bad,” Mr. Litvinenko told The Sunday Times. “I’ve never felt like this before — like my life is hanging on the ropes.”

In a telephone interview, Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon who has had a long association with Mr. Litvinenko — dating from the late 1990s when, he and Mr. Litvinenko contended at the time, Mr. Litvinenko had balked at orders to assassinate Mr. Berezovsky — said he had visited Mr. Litvinenko in the hospital and found him “damaged terribly.”

Mr. Berezovsky said Mr. Litvinenko had been granted British citizenship, so the poisoning was “a terror attack against a British citizen in Britain.” The incident, he said, could create a problem for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has sought to cultivate close ties with Mr. Putin. A police spokeswoman, speaking on the condition of anonymity under police rules, said specialist police officers were “investigating a suspicious poisoning.” She described Mr. Litvinenko’s condition as “serious but stable.”

John Henry, a clinical toxicologist who has been treating Mr. Litvinenko, told the BBC: “He’s got a prospect of recovering. He’s a got a prospect of dying.”

Mr. Henry, who in 2004 treated President Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine, who was poisoned with dioxin, identified the suspected poison in the Litvinenko case as thallium, a toxic metal used in rat poison and insecticides. “It is tasteless, colorless and odorless,” he said. “It takes about a gram to kill you.”

Andres Virchis, a physician at Barnet Hospital in north London where Mr. Litvinenko was first treated, said Sunday that Mr. Litvinenko’s bone marrow had failed and that he was not producing any normal immune cells or white cells. As Mr. Litvinenko’s condition worsened, he began to lose his hair, Dr. Virchis said.

Mr. Litvinenko was granted asylum in Britain in 2001 after leaving Russia six years ago. In 2003 he published a book, “The F.S.B. Blows up Russia,” accusing the Russian secret service of orchestrating a wave of explosions in apartment houses in 1999 that led to the second Chechen war. He also claimed familiarity with the techniques of the Russian secret service. At the time of Mr. Yushchenko’s poisoning, Mr. Litvinenko said that a secret K.G.B. laboratory in Moscow, still operated by the F.S.B., specialized in the study of poisons.

“The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol,” said Mr. Litvinenko, who served in both agencies, from 1988 to 1999. “It’s not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool.”

The accounts of intrigue could not be confirmed. Alex Goldfarb, a friend who had visited Mr. Litvinenko in the hospital, told the BBC that doctors had told him that he had only a 50-50 chance of surviving. “He looks like a ghost,” Mr. Goldfarb said.

Speaking later to reporters outside London’s University College Hospital, to which Mr. Litvinenko had been transferred, Mr. Goldfarb said the British police interviewed Mr. Litvinenko on Sunday.

“He is in a fighting mood,” Mr. Goldfarb said. Asked why Mr. Litvinenko might have been the target of an attack, Mr. Goldfarb said, “He is one of the top public enemies of the Russian F.S.B. and of Putin, particularly because of his book.”

He added that Mr. Litvinenko belonged to “the so-called London émigré circle, which was branded by Russia as a terrorist cell on British soil.”

Mr. Goldfarb called the poisoning “very scary — it means there’s no limit.”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/wo...html?ref=world

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Some Thoughts on the Killings in Armenia – Who did it and Why?

The slaying of 8 prominent politicians in Armenia on 27th October including the prime minister, Vazgen Sarkisian, and speaker of the parliament, Karen Demirchian, took the Western media completely by surprise. Experts seemed to be thin on the ground – CNN provided a young lady from the Economist Intelligence Unit who squirmed in discomfort when asked about the complexities of Yerevan politics; editorial staff from a leading US newspaper was surprised to learn that 'Karen' Demirchian was not a woman.

Yet, while such a drastic scenario was impossible to predict, some glitch in Armenia's political life could have been predicted. The reason is this: a solution to the ongoing problem of what to do with Nagorno Karabakh seemed to be on the horizon. Although fighting between the neighbouring republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia ended in 1994, the permanent status of the small Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh situated within Azerbaijan itself remained unresolved. An OSCE-sponsored peace initiative, the Minsk Process, had made little progress with different solutions put on the table at various times – the one seeming to favour Baku while yet another benefited Yerevan, and vice versa.

Since 1994 the United States has become more entrenched both economically and politically in the Caucasus region. But investments in the oil-rich Caspian remain insecure as the pipelines needed to get the oil and gas out to the West transit Russia to the north or go through Georgia to the north-west. Both logistics and financing call for a more direct route, ideally through Armenia and on to Turkey. Investors themselves would also be more enthusiastic if regional squabbles, like Karabakh, were to be settled once and for all. It goes without saying that they care little whether Armenia or Azerbaijan are the winners in this particular struggle as long as the problem goes away.

However, it looks very much as though somebody, somewhere does not want the problem of Karabakh to go away, not yet, that is. In February 1998 when it looked as though a previous deal was about to be struck, Armenia's president, Levon Ter Petrosian, was removed from office by, it was assumed, hardline supporters of Karabakh independence, including the murdered Vazgen Sarkisian and the then-prime minister, Robert Kocharian. Kocharian himself was a former president of Nagorno Karabakh. Kocharian stood and won the presidency in elections that took place in Armenia in March 1998 but only a after a strange and unsatisfactory campaign. Out of the blue, he was challenged for the post by the country's last Communist leader, Karen Demirchian, who had resigned in 1988 when the Karabakh protests were at their height. Since then Demirchian had pursued a career as a businessman running the Armelektromash factory in Yerevan, presumably without the faintest intention of returning to the political fray.

But his candidacy was heavily promoted by the West, the US in particular. The 'plan' was obvious: to shoe the maleable Demirchian into the presidency so that negotiations on Karabakh's future could be resumed from where Ter Perosian left off. It was generally assumed that Armenians would likely go for the nostalgia vote: Demirchian a reminder of the old Soviet days of plenty as against the younger Kocharian, a by-word for the present miserable standard of living. One American journalist was told not to bother going to Yerevan for the election as it was "all sown up – Demirchian is going to win"

But things did not go according to plan. While many older Armenians may have associated Demirchian with happier times, others saw him as the old Communist boss who, among other things, had presided over the construction of the thousands of shaky high-rise buildings that had collapsed in the terrible earthquake of December 1988. On top of this, Armenians had developed a passionate hatred for Ter Petrosian during his 8 years in power. Kocharian was not only perceived as being younger and more dynamic than Demirchian he was also regarded as a refreshingly honest successor to the former president and his regime.

When it became obvious that Demirchian was not going to win as easily as expected a vast array of American 'election observers' descended on Yerevan from where they fanned around the small republic and, allegedly, found evidence of huge electoral fraud perpetrated by the supporters of Robert Kocharian. Despite the fact that over 80% of the official OSCE observer team reported no such irregularities, a cleverly organized beat-up by a number of vociferous, mainly American observers, managed to taint the conduct of the election in the eyes of the world. So, with the Armenian presidency in the hands of the reputedly 'hard-line' Kocharian another year was to pass before progress on the Karabakh question could be attempted again. The next opportunity presented itself with parliamentary elections that took place at the end of May this year.

In the previous twelve months the loser in the presidential election, Karen Demirchian, had formed a new political party with a vague leftist agenda. In February 1999 the party joined forces with the hard-line, nationalist Republic Party under Defence Minister, Vazgen Sarkisian, to form the Unity Bloc which became the largest and most effective party in the parliamentary elections. Unity won the largest number of votes with 44.67% of the poll after an election plagued, this time , by genuine irregularities. President Kocharian made Sarkisian prime minister in the new government, Demirchian effectively became his deputy as speaker of parliament.

The cooperation between Sarkisian and Demirchian was an unlikely one – at first sight anyway. But astute commentators in Armenia had noted that Sarkisian and his Republican Party would not necessarily be unresponsive to the blandishments of the West. This has proved true. In the last three months negotiations have seemed to be up and running again over the status of Karabakh. The Americans have been pushing hard hoping to announce a deal at the upcoming OSCE summit in Istanbul.

President Kocharian has met Azerbaijan's Haider Aliev on four separate occasions, but more importantly Sarkisian has visited the US and received substantial backing from both the World Bank and IMF to, presumably, reinforce his helpful line on sorting out Karabakh. Relations with Turkey were even beginning to get back on track, thanks to American mediation. So much, then, for the theory that Sarkisian was a hard-line nationalist. It is probably true to say that like many people in the former Soviet Union he too had his price. But could he have expected that he and Demirchian were to pay with their lives for their dealings with the Americans? Ter Petrosian had merely been toppled, they were slaughtered. Who might have been responsible ? Who benefited?

THEORIES

Although the killers claimed to be taking revenge for the corruption and graft of Armenia's political class, this is unlikely to be the reason for the killings. Armenia is much less corrupt than many other post-communist countries, if only because it is so much poorer and has had much less foreign investment to steal. Anyway, with the fall of Ter Petrosian the country has probably become marginally less corrupt.

Domestically, there has been a spate of political/mafia killings over the past few years but never in the centre of political life like the parliament. However, the parliamentary chamber has one thing in its favour as a venue for these assassinations – the intended victims would be without bodyguards and weapons. Sarkisian, in particular, went everywhere with a bunch of weapon-touting heavies. It was also the one place where both Demirchian and Sarkisian would likely be in the same place at the same time. Although media commentators have insisted that the killers only meant to kill Sarkisian out of their eight victims, it was important for them to also get Demirchian. Both are associated with the negotiations over Karabakh.

Nevertheless, it is Western nonsense to say that Sarkisian was 'popular'. A certain nonchalance about any threat to his person could explain the ease with which the gunmen got into the parliament which is situated in large grounds behind high railings with various layers of security. It is important to remember that this parliament had been under siege before in recent times. After Ter Petrosian claimed victory in the 1996 presidential election angry crowds stormed the building in protest. Yet despite the urgency of the situation TV pictures on the night of 27th October showed Armenian police, relatively relaxed, facing outwards. They seemed to be unperturbed for their own safety at the hands of the gunmen still, apparently, trigger-happy somewhere in the building behind them.

AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT

Both deputy Secretary of State, Stephen Sestanovich and Strobe Talbott have shuttled to and fro between Yerevan and Baku recently. Talbott met Sarkisian and Kocharian shortly before the assassination took place and has since been ordered back to Yerevan by an anxious Madelaine Albright. It is hard to see why the US should have promoted the kind of violence that occurred later in the day – the American team was obviously optimistic about a deal on Karabakh. Nor can the United States treat Armenia like Kosovo and lead a NATO intervention to occupy the country under the guise of stopping regional violence and instability – there are around 14,000 Russian troops in Armenia who are unlikely to follow the Serb lead and depart meakly north of the border when told to do so. Added to which, if investor confidence is part of the reason for seeking a regional peace deal high-profile assassinations are unlikely to do the trick.

RUSSIAN INVOLVEMENT

Armenia has always been Russia's closest ally in the Caucasus. There seem to be no internal conflicts over this nor any domestic pressure to remove Russian troops from the country. In the last year the Armenians have also updated their missile defence system, for example. Although Russia allowed NATO to call the shots in Kosovo it is debatable whether she would allow the United States to take control of the Caucasus republics and their valuable trade routes to the West. If the thorny problem of Karabakh's status was solved the need for routes to be taken northwards through Russia would recede and with them valuable revenue.

Whether or not these considerations led someone or the other at the behest of some faction or the other in Russia to order these assassinations is an unknown. One thing is certain: woe betide anyone who becomes too closely involved with settling the Karabakh problem . Even though the Americans are still hoping that some kind of deal can be stitched up in Istanbul next month, the parties to such an agreement might well look over their shoulders with some anxiety.

Find this article at:

http://www.antiwar.com/stone/?articleid=1875

[Artsakh]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

who's read that book "russia: 2010"?

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

who's read that book "russia: 2010"?

I have not. If you have, give us a summery.

[Artsakh]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

I have not. If you have, give us a summery.

It pretty much talks about how Russia is this vast country with all these resources and how its destined to make a comeback by 2010.

But the part that interested me was this stupid prediction regarding Azerbaijan that there was going to be a second war with the armenians where azerbaijanis oil wealth would bring them easy victories.

I read it years back when I was a young Pro-Russian finatic who hated America and wanted to restore the soviet union.