So much for the Russian Spring: “skewed” campaigning, an alleged drop of Botox and a reported bit of voting magic, and Vladimir Putin is back as Kremlin boss. Putin owes much of his victory to the Caucasus, and, already, the congratulations are coming in from territories and countries in the Russian-owned, Russian-occupied or otherwise Russian-preoccupied region.
First to the north, where Chechnya’s flamboyant strongman Ramzan Kadirov even burst into a little dance at a polling station to display his support for his patron. The Chechen cha-cha-cha seems to have worked. Within Russia’s federal borders, Putin garnered most of his votes in tightly ruled Chechnya, and the least votes in skeptical Moscow, according to preliminary results.
South of the Caucasus ridge, separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both safely tucked inside a wall of Russian arms, reported 90 percent support for Putin among registered Russian voters. The separatist chiefs of these territories, both existentially dependent on Moscow, did not opt for an interpretive dance, but did cast their votes for Putin and encouraged their electorates to follow suit.
During a trip to Moscow last weekend, when Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev said his country doesn’t need Russian bases on its soil, some thought his talk was just political theater. After all, Atambayev generally enjoys rosy relations with Russian leaders and had just succeeded in getting them to cough up some overdue base rent. But could he have missed his cues?
Shortly after meetings with Prime Minister/President-to-Be Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, Atambayev launched a volley of complaints that suggests something didn’t go right in Moscow. His accusations, followed by a sharp Russian rebuke, have brought back memories of the Kremlin’s role in Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s swift fall almost two years ago.
Regularly featured in Atambayev’s Moscow meetings are the stalled negotiations over the sale of Kyrgyz energy infrastructure to Russia’s state-run gas monopoly, Gazprom, and – connected, perhaps? – Moscow’s unfulfilled promise to help Kyrgyzstan’s economy back on track with a large infusion of cash. This time, after his meetings, Atambayev told Kommersant that Kyrgyzstan would no longer beg for aid (Bishkek already owes Moscow almost $500 million).
With the Russian government agreeing to finally pay Kyrgyzstan rent for the military facilities that Russia operates there, pressure is increasing on the Kremlin to pay up for the other military bases it operates in the former Soviet Union.
Just days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to pay his Kyrgyzstan counterpart Almazbek Atambayev $15 million in back rent for the Kant air base and other facilities, Tajikistan is signaling that it, too, intends to pay hardball. The two countries agreed in principle back in September to extend the lease of the base for Russia's 201st division for another 49 years. But the issue of payment was left until later, and on Tuesday Dushanbe's ambassador to Moscow suggested they would drive a hard bargain, in an interview with RFE/RL:
"[N]o one in the world today intends to give up even a small plot of their land for nothing." The Tajik ambassador said, "our country should keep this in mind, whether there should be payment of some $300 million or compensation through providing military-technical aid," adding "nobody will say thank you to those who give up their land for free to others."
The $300 million figure has been mentioned in Tajikistan but Dostiev conceded that even 10 percent of that amount of money would be acceptable.
Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev may be returning from Russia with a promise of $15 million in outstanding rent for the Russian base at Kant – “measly,” he’s called it – but at home there’s more shock than celebration. Somehow the new president managed to upset both nationalists and the more liberal minded during his trip.
First, during the unveiling of a statue for Kyrgyz mythic hero Manas in Moscow on February 24, which Atambayev personally helped finance, the president said that Manas, in whatever distant past he inhabited, was “an ethnic Russian” because he and the ancestors of the Kyrgyz both originated in Siberia.
"Manas never divided people by ethnicity and this was his strong point. The monument to Manas is a symbol of the unity of our nations,” the KyrTAG news agency quoted him as saying. “We have common history and, certainly, a common future.”
That’s nice, but at home Manas is a rallying point for ethnic Kyrgyz identity, and has been boosted in the post-Soviet period to help coalesce the nation. “Manas mania” has gripped the country since ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in 2010, with a costly new statue of Manas erected in Bishkek’s central square and some calling for the capital itself to be renamed Manas. In this climate, suggesting the hero of the eponymous epic was not an ethnic Kyrgyz sounds heretical.
The presidents of Russia and Kyrgyzstan, Dmitry Medvedev and Almazbek Atambayev, meet in Moscow.
Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev has something to bring home from his visit to Moscow: $15 million in past due rents for the various military facilities that Russia operates in Central Asia. From RIA Novosti:
Both Russia and the United State have important military bases in the country. However, Washington has paid its lease "without any delays," Kyrgyz media said.
Russia has not paid "the measly rent" for its Kant air base for four years, Atambayev told Ekho Moskvy radio.
He also complained that Russia did not meet its obligations. "They should be training our pilots. Well, they're not," he said.
Russia also is looking at forgiving some of Kyrgyzstan's $500 million debt to Moscow, reports Bloomberg:
Russia’s government understands the former Soviet state is facing a “severe financial and economic situation” and is ready to look at alternatives, it said....
Kyrgyzstan hopes to repay part of its debt to Russia by transferring shares from defense company OAO Dastan, Russian news agency Interfax reported, citing an interview with Kyrgyz Finance Minister Akylbek Zhaparov.
That would be an intriguing turn in the saga over Dastan, which has been a bargaining chip between Russia and Kyrgyzstan but more recently was the subject of interest from India, so that will be something to keep an eye on.
Atambayev seems to be playing the same sort of hardball with Russia as he is with the U.S. and its Manas air base, and while in Moscow publicly suggested that Kyrgyzstan didn't need any Russian military facilities, reports ITAR-TASS:
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili visits Afghanistan Feb. 20
A top Pentagon official is visiting Tbilisi this week, and high on the agenda will be hammering out the details of the much vaunted "new level" of defense cooperation between the U.S. and Georgia. As was the case during President Mikheil Saakashvilil's recent visit to Washington, there was a rhetorical disconnect between the U.S. and Georgian sides about what is the way ahead for military ties between the two allies.
The Georgian side again focused on the concept of "self-defense capabilities," i.e. weapons. “The United States is very much interested in increasing Georgia’s self-defense capabilities,” said Nino Kalandadze, the deputy foreign minister.
The American side, by contrast, focused on more institutional reforms in the Georgian military, as could be seen in the speech the Pentagon official, Celeste Wallander, gave at Georgia's National Defense Academy. While Wallander said that the two sides are "advancing our relationship into new areas of cooperation," she spent far more time lecturing the cadets on the need for the military to be apolitical, suggesting that was more important than any hardware:
A Russian Foreign Ministry official has said that the U.S. might use its air base at Manas to attack Iran. At a Moscow briefing today, spokesman Alexander Lukashevich echoed the recent claim of Kyrgyzstan's President Almazbek Atambayev that a U.S.-Iran war could embroil Kyrgyzstan:
"It cannot be excluded that this site could be used in a potential conflict with Iran," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters. "We hope that such an apocalyptic scenario will not be realised...."
Lukashevich said using the airbase as a launch-pad to strike Iran would require "changes or rather violations" to the lease agreement between Washington and Bishkek.
"The statements from Washington which do not rule out a military solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis have caused serious worries in the Central Asian region," he said.
"The worries are shared not just by Kyrgyzstan -- where a debate has erupted about the risk of a retaliatory strike from Iran -- but other Central Asian countries," he added.
Now, if the U.S. wanted to attack Iran, it would have no shortage of launching pads. It has an air base in neighboring Turkey, an entire naval fleet in Bahrain, and of course a substantial military presence in Afghanistan. Why they would choose to use distant Kyrgyzstan, which would require crossing at least two other countries' airspaces along the way, instead of those far easier options, is something that neither Atambayev nor Lukashevich have explained.
Recall that the Iranian ambassador to Bishkek spoke out publicly to quash such speculation when Atambayev first voiced it. When it's the Iranian official who is the voice of reason, well...
Russia has reportedly convinced its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization not to participate in a new U.S. counterdrug program in Central Asia, apparently concerned that it would give the U.S. too much leverage over the regional governments. The program, called the Central Asia Counternarcotics Initiative, would promote regional cooperation in countering drug trafficking by setting up task forces in all five Central Asian countries and hooking them up with similar task forces in Afghanistan and Russia.
But Russia has apparently taken a dim view of the proposal, reports the Russian newspaper Kommersant:
Moscow is convinced that the main objective of this initiative is strengthening the military and political presence in a region that Moscow regards as its area of special interests. As a result, Russia has managed to persuade the CSTO members to not participate in it.
The key problem, according to Kommersant's sources:
As planned by the United States, the task forces must have very wide powers, and most importantly, full access to secret operational information supplied to law enforcement agencies and intelligence services of the Central Asian countries. Moscow feared that this would give the U.S. an opportunity to gather sensitive information and then use these data to blackmail the governments in the region.
RFE/RL spoke with American diplomats involved in the effort, who confirmed that it was blocked:
A U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed that Washington's delegation was unable to reach a final agreement at the meeting but said the plan has not been rejected.
Still, the official described the outcome as "a big surprise."
The Russian military base in South Ossetia will soon include a battalion for Ossetians, which government officials say will act as a "forge" to build a capable military in the quasi-independent country, but which looks just as much like a blow against the territory's fragile sovereignty. The government news agency RES quotes Ministry of Defense of South Ossetia spokeswoman Galina Guchmazovа:
"The citizens of South Ossetia, who want to continue to serve in the army, now will be provided with opportunity to acquire new knowledge, learn military discipline and matériel at a level consistent with the Russian armed forces. - Ossetian battalion of the Russian military base will be the forge of professional military personnel for the Republic of South Ossetia."
Emphasis added. What does it mean, those who want to "continue to serve"? Does that imply that South Ossetia's own defense forces are to be discontinued?
The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded quickly, connecting the creation of the battalion to a more general militarization of the territory and the Russian military threat:
[T]he Russian Federation is continuing to build up its military forces, to strengthen its military infrastructure and to deploy offensive weapons in Georgia's occupied regions. These regions have, in fact, been turned into large military bases and their inhabitants are either employed in the Russian military bases themselves or are serving with the Russian occupation troops, as most recently attested by the fact of the creation of the so-called "Ossetian battalion".
Nobody seems to know where he came from, but over the last day or so, a man calling himself Tolibjon Kurbankhanov has become an online sensation in Russia.
Kurbankhanov, supposedly a Tajik migrant worker living in Moscow, is the star of a music video called “VVP” -- short for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin -- which extols the virtues of Russia’s former, and, likely, future president, as no other before it. The song suggests Prime Minister Putin was sent to Russia by God, and at just the right time.
“Let’s sit and remember together those years / When he wasn’t here, we had just fear / A nation in peril, a suffering people / And at this time, God sent him to us,” the song begins. It eventually breaks into a jubilant refrain:
VVP – he saved the country
VVP – he protects us
VVP – raised up Russia
And development just keeps on going.
One YouTube commentator called the apparent propaganda “so thick, it’s refined.” But Russian bloggers were quick to point out the song is so ridiculous, it could, in fact, be a play to discredit Putin, whose initials happen to be the Russian abbreviation for Gross Domestic Product. (The video was posted by YouTube user SergeiRaevskii, who appears to have no other YouTube activity, and went viral when opposition presidential candidate Aleksei Navalny called attention to it on his blog.)
The steady stream of comments reflects – at best – Russians’ ambivalence toward migrant workers. Some, however, suggest the singer is either a drug dealer or is somehow in Moscow illegally.
