Carillet’s update and headlines for March 31, 2014
From staff and friends in Crimea
Words from our graduates
Via Joel Butts, YouthReach:
Nastya Skovorodnykova: Nastya and Anya Goliakova were asked to lead worship and praise at the church of Anya’s parents, Vasily and Svetlana Goliakova. There is some disharmony over political views in that congregation. Nastya reports that “Anya’s dad asked us to come and lead worship to somehow bring peace to the congregation. So we led worship and it was beautiful because God’s presence was so wonderful and real.”
Olesya Pritchenko: (Works with SOS/Orphan’s Hope orphan ministries) “[Please pray] for my future…have no idea now what I feel for Russia and Ukraine…I became more emotionless…and I think have some symptoms of burn out [perhaps depression or PTS]…THANK YOU!!!!!!”
S. wrote: “I went to the registration office this morning to figure out what I need to do to stay in Crimea. They said to come back in two weeks, because right now they are just working on issuing new Russian passports
T. wrote: “S.: they will keep telling you to “come back in two weeks” [to reregister your temporary residence permit] over the next months. In one week, they have issues 10,000 passports. [If everyone registered in Crimea chooses to stay–]Two million people need a Russian passport or residence permit of some kind. You do the math… :-)”
From another staff member (to give you yet another letter that more than hints at the stress in Crimea, especially among those who are not retirees (the greatest promise to more money and younger retirement goes this group, including the vets that Russia settled in Crimea):
About how I feel — I feel bad and depressed. Whenever I feel a little bit more cheerful — somebody is freaking out and I feel bad again. Everyone is writing to me asking about situation in Crimea and I haven’t answered a single letter 🙁
At one point my pastor had to calm me down and tell me that we are going to have food (that was when my mom told me that people were stocking up on Ukrainian groceries and I thought that if the border is closed we won’t get any groceries from the mainland).
Things are getting more complicated every day. People are losing their jobs. Prices have increased but pensions haven’t and salaries also stayed the same.
Now I am worried about going to Poland [for the European Leadership Forum the end of May] and getting Russian passport [to give her more rights] while keeping a Ukrainian one [to enable international travel]. There are huge lines before the places where you get … passports. I also worry that with the majority of Crimeans being pro-Russian it will be hard to get visas to go somewhere because people hate us.
Another very disturbing thing for me is that people are leaving. When K. came to the office and we talked I felt like they are running to live normally and I am stupid to stay. I am scared to move and I am scared to stay. When I heard that xxxxx moved to Kiev I started doubting our future here. … Are you planning to stay in Russian Crimea or are you planning to sell your apartment?
Selected articles with some details
Here is an example of the attempt to destabilize an already off balance and struggle government and people:
SBU detains Russian provocateur believed to have planned raid on parliament, cabinet buildings
The SBU said that Bakhtiyarov, working under the guise of a civil society activist in Kyiv, had recruited some 200 people to assist in storming the buildings and had stockpiled Molotov cocktails and various tools to carry out the provocation. He was also in possession of an undisclosed amount of cash.
“O.Bahtiyarov promised participants of the assault a cash reward up to $500 each,” reads the SBU statement.
Bahtiyarov’s goal was to destabilize Ukraine and disrupt the presidential election campaigns. Elections are scheduled for May 25.
In addition, Bahtiyarov had made arrangements with various Russian television channels to produce video footage of the raids on the buildings, ostensibly to be used as propaganda, according to the SBU report.
Bahtiyarov is being interrogated by Ukrainian security services as the investigation continues, reads the SBU statement
Russia’s fifth column, including extremist groups, is on Ukraine’s soil and working systematically and at various leverls to create a pretext for Russia to invade mainland Ukraine, he said during a recent press conference in Kyiv.
Yevhen Marchuk, a retired Ukrainian general and former defense minister, said last week that he didn’t rule out the possibility of proxies – as in Crimea – first attempting to take over key government buildings and infrastructure in Ukraine before a large-scale invasion.
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Dmitry Tymchuk’s military blog: Threat recedes of imminent Russian military invasion
The main positive this weekend – that for the second consecutive day we are finally seeing discharge at the border. The number of Russian troops in the border areas of the Russia Federation remains at around 10,000 people.
… But the probability of invasion is still significantly reduced. Let’s say this: if a week ago, we assessed the likelihood of Russia’s invasion at 80%, then now – it is somewhere at 50%. And that pleases us.
Alexander J. Motyl: ‘Experts’ on Ukraine still getting it wrong
March 31, 2014, 11:17 p.m.
When the West’s leading experts get elementary facts about Ukraine wrong, blithely encourage Russian expansionism, or make illogical arguments, I worry. As should everybody. After all, these are presumably the people influencing or making policy in the United States and Europe.
… the public opinion survey showing that only 41 percent of Crimeans supported unification with Russia …
First the promises, then the vote, then the reality
Crimea parliament breaks promise on Tatar representation
Posted by Democratic Alliance On March 30, 2014
Native Muslim Tatars will not be granted [the 20%] quota in new Crimea administration following annexation by Russia, said the Crimea parliament deputy chief.
Other article – worth reading the headlines at least
New York Times: Flexing control, Russia raises pensions for Crimeans
March 31, 2014, 5:11 p.m.
MOSCOW — Moving quickly to envelop Crimea in the Russian bureaucracy and economy, the Kremlin announced plans on Monday to nearly double retirement pensions paid to the elderly on the peninsula, raising them to the average levels paid in Russia. [Prices have and will go up, too. Another benefit for more than 1/3 the population of Crimea, they can retire 5 years younger than in Ukriane.]
Reuters: After Crimea, Moldova too fears ‘unwanted’ events on road to EU
March 31, 2014, 3:12 p.m.
Russia has just offered a lifeline for the winemakers of Gagauzia, an autonomous region of Moldova whose leaders do not agree with the country’s push to join the European Union.
Associated Press: Russian Prime Minister Medvedev makes surprise visit to Crimea
March 31, 2014, 2:23 p.m.
SIMFEROPOL, Crimea (AP) — On a surprise visit Monday to Crimea, Russia’s prime minister promised to quickly pour funds into the newly annexed peninsula so residents see positive changes after the Russian takeover
Russia showers Crimea with promises of funding
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who led a delegation of Cabinet ministers on a surprise visit to Crimea, pledged that Russia will quickly boost salaries and pensions there and pour in resources to improve education, health care and local infrastructure.
Medvedev said Russia will create a special economic zone in Crimea — a peninsula of 2 million people — that will create incentives for business with lower taxes and simpler rules. Russia will also seek to develop the region as a top tourist destination and will try to ensure that plane tickets to Crimea are cheap enough to encourage more Russians to visit.
“We must create a new investment history for Crimea, which will be more successful than what it has been,” Medvedev said.
In Moscow, the lower house of parliament voted unanimously Monday to annul agreements with Ukraine on Russia’s navy base in Crimea. In 2010, Ukraine extended the lease of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet’s base until 2042 for an annual rent of $98 million and price discounts for Russian natural gas supplies.
Masha Gessen: Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world
President Obama said Wednesday in Brussels, presenting the post-Crimea world order as he sees it after consultations with other NATO leaders. “After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology.”
President Vladimir Putin would surely beg to differ. Over the past two years, a new ideology has taken shape at the Kremlin. Insistently pushed out over the airwaves of state-controlled television, it has taken hold as Russia’s national idea — and is the driving force behind its newly aggressive international posture. Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world.
Ukraine crisis: Russia carries out massive nuclear war exercise involving 10,000 troops
No room for dissent in Russia – even the hint of it can land you in jail
In RuNet many Russian bloggers write [critically] about this state of affairs. But, on the wave of patriotic enthusiasm, these sentiments with each passing day are more and more taboo .
Today, such conversations can easily pass as a “national traitor”, said Vladimir Putin in reference to the ” connection” of the Crimea. There is a call to fight “dissidents” and many officials and deputies of various calibers have literally interpreted ‘fight’, and today are only ” happy to go .” For example, in the Moscow City Duma [parliament] it was offered to punish with imprisonment everyone who discusses the Crimean issue contrary to the official line. Moscow deputies consider it inappropriate to raise the issue of social, residential or cost benefits for Crimeans and called such talk web xenophobic. They recommend to punish all offenders under the Criminal Code of extremism , which provides for a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles, or imprisonment for up to 4 years.
Andrew C. Kuchins: Does Obama really understand Putin?
April 1, 2014, 5:31 a.m.
Editor’s note: Andrew C. Kuchins is director and senior fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) — I recall being an undergraduate in Russian Studies at Amherst College when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. I was flabbergasted when then-President Carter initially expressed surprise that Leonid Brezhnev and his cronies decided to undertake that ill-fated adventure. Just the little I knew of Soviet history at that time led me to conclude that one should never be naïve about Russia. Wisely, the Carter administration soon implemented a wide-ranging and powerful set of sanctions against the USSR.
William B. Taylor, John E. Herbst, Steven Pifer: When sanctions aren’t enough
April 1, 2014, 5:06 a.m.
It should be clear now that the West has a Russian security problem. Twice in the last six years, the Kremlin has seized territory in a neighboring country on the grounds of protecting minorities or ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. In each instance, the rejoinder from the West proved to be inadequate. Now, this threat demands a broad response that goes beyond the steps taken to date, that will deter the Kremlin from further aggression.
Motyl: What Russia Can Expect in Ukraine’s Rust Belt
In their search to maintain control, Russians would quickly discover that they are in possession of economically unviable provinces that cannot survive without massive infusions of rubles. According to a detailed Ukrainian study of how much Ukraine’s provinces paid into and received from the central budget in the first half of 2013, Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhya represented an enormous drain on Kyiv’s resources: 22.82 billion hryvnia (around $2.5 billion, or 90 billion rubles). And that is only for the first six months of the year. Multiplied by two, the deficit amounts to 45.64 billion hryvnia (about $5 billion, or 180 billion rubles).
In 2014, Russia expects its budget revenues to be around 13.6 trillion rubles (around $375 billion); its expenditures are supposed to total 14 trillion rubles ($380 billion). That amounts to a deficit of 400 billion rubles ($11 billion). Even without extra development funds or the costs of an occupation, annexing Ukraine’s southeast will raise Russia’s deficit by 45 percent.
The bad news gets worse for Russia. Luhansk and Donetsk provinces are home to Ukraine’s loss-making coal industry. Kyiv spends between 12 and 14 billion hryvnia(around $1 billion–$1.5 billion, or 47 billion–55 billion rubles) annually to support these mines. Will Russia back these enterprises even as they compete with more economically produced coal from Russia’s Kuzbass? It will have to: As Kyiv knows from experience, firing thousands of coal miners could spark massive civil unrest. Moscow will also have to pay them their wages on time. In 2013, wage arrears reached a total of 135 million hryvnia (about $15 million, or 530 million rubles) in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR
Crimean journalist Valentyna Samar describes widespread intimidation & attacks on journalists in #Crimea. #Ukraine @LithuaniaUNNY
Mr Medvedev toured a children’s hospital and a secondary school in Simferopol, and held talks with Crimea’s Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov, before visiting Russia’s Black Sea fleet base in Sevastopol.
“As a result of joining Russia, not one resident of Crimea, not one resident in Sevastopol should lose anything. They can only gain,” he said. [Hmn. ‘You can keep your policy, you can keep your doctor’, you just cannot count on this being true tomorrow! After all, no one really knows the policy and what changes tomorrow will bring. :-/ ]
He announced plans for Crimea to become a “special economic zone”, designed to attract investors with lower tax rates, and to modernise the region’s hospitals which he said were outdated.
But someone in the Kremlin has made a mistake – or perhaps they slept through the speech that Putin gave which officially annexed Crimea:
- Ukraine has been hijacked by radicals.
- The West is backing the radicals.
- Russia may need to take action to protect civilians from these radicals.
- The only option for averting this is a federalized system, with autonomy in the regions.