The Kremlin is offended. The conflict must go on. It is not worth quoting the classics. The penultimate of the Mohicans
February 10, 2022
The Kremlin is offended
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted unexpectedly sharply to a statement by the chief of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, who warned of a possible “strong alliance of two authoritarian regimes” after China backed Russian demands for security guarantees from the United States and NATO.
“We absolutely disagree with the assessment that we are talking about authoritarian regimes,” Peskov said, adding that Russia and China are “large sovereign countries with their own political system and their own system of the state structure.” What political terms can be used to describe Russia’s political system and the system of the structure of the Russian state, Peskov could not say.
The Arctic needs aviation
The Russian government approved the action plan for the construction and reconstruction of landing grounds in the Arctic, which will be used for civil, sanitary, and state aviation needs. The road map was prepared as part of the action plan to implement the Arctic Development Strategy, approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2020.
The document includes 13 tasks to be implemented within the next two years. In the first place (within six months), the route network of socially important air transportation—passenger and cargo—must be approved.
The borders of the Arctic zone of Russia were established in 2014; the area exceeds 21.5% of the territory of the whole country, and about 2.5 million people live there. The main oil and gas production area and significant economic centers (Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Norilsk, and Vorkuta) are located within the Arctic zone. In most of this territory, huge distances and the absence of railroads and automobile roads make air communication a non-alternative option for most of the 160 small settlements.
The conflict must go on
Although the United States accepted Vladimir Putin’s blackmail demanding talks on strategic security and outlined topics on which it was ready to begin negotiations immediately, this did not bring the two sides closer to a compromise over the number of staff in their diplomatic missions.
Last September, the U.S. demanded that Russia repatriate 55 diplomats who had worked at the embassy for more than three years. Twenty-seven of them left Washington in late January; the rest had to leave until June 30. Moscow’s response was immediate, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow continues to reduce its diplomatic personnel according to Russian demands, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
“I record that the American side is following our instructions. Unfortunately, the process of staff cuts on both sides continues. It is not our choice, but people from the American embassy in Moscow are leaving in accordance with the requirements that we have put forward.”
Further escalation of this conflict could come in April: The U.S. State Department has promised to demand the departure of the Russian ambassador to Moscow if Russia does not issue entry visas to the U.S. ambassador’s security staff in Moscow.
It is not worth quoting the classics
A court in St. Petersburg fined Alexei Filippov, a Communist, 10,000 rubles ($130) for reposting in 2017 an online poster containing Jean-Paul Sartre’s aphorism “Any anticommunist is a bastard.” A lawsuit under the article “incitement of political hatred” was filed by the prosecutor’s office, demanding punishment for degrading the human dignity of the social group “anticommunists.” Filippov could face up to five years in prison if he re-offends under this article. It is the first case of the punishability of citing literary classics in Russia.
In addition, the prosecutor’s office asked the police to find all the people who posted this Sartre quote on social networks. A total of 28 people were found to have posted the phrase in Russia.
Generals in the dock
In Moscow, the trial of two high-ranking military officers—three-star General Khalil Arslanov, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff, and one-star General Alexander Ogloblin, one of the heads of the Main Communications Department of the Ministry of Defense—has started. According to the investigation, they signed contracts to supply communications equipment at inflated prices, on the condition of kickbacks in their favor. The investigator claimed that General Arslanov had thus stolen 6.7 billion rubles (more than $200 mln. at the time of the crime) and General Ogloblin over 1.6 billion rubles (more than $50 mln.).
General Ogloblin made a deal with the investigation, which the court is considering. In his testimony, the general pleaded guilty and testified against his boss, calling him the organizer of the embezzlement. General Arslanov did not plead guilty and continues to familiarize himself with the criminal case materials.
The trial of the generals is a small part of a large-scale criminal case of embezzlement in the supply of telecommunications equipment for the Ministry of Defense, which has been investigated since 2012. More than a dozen high-ranking military officials and executives of Voentelecom, a monopoly consolidator in the supply of telecommunications goods and services to the Ministry of Defense, were on trial.
The penultimate of the Mohicans
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the 75-year-old leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR), has been admitted to the hospital amid COVID-19 with 50%-75% of his lungs affected and has been placed on a ventilator.
Along with Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky is an old-timer in Russian politics. A charismatic man, he has found his way to the heart of the lumpenized electorate, which has become his steady support. Zhirinovsky’s most notable achievement was the LDPR’s first place in the 1993 Duma elections when his party received almost 23% of the vote. After that, Zhirinovsky’s popularity declined considerably: In the presidential elections, he took fourth out of five places, getting 6%-9% of the vote; in the parliamentary elections, the LDPR received 6%-13%. Although the LDPR has had its faction in every State Duma since 2000, the Kremlin has not needed its support for the vote.
Zhirinovsky has never been in confrontation with the Kremlin, although from time to time, he has allowed himself to be sharply and caustically critical of the government and its decisions. However, there was no doubt that such criticism would not have any political consequences. He often made provocative political statements, which many experts regarded as “test stones” to be thrown by the Kremlin to determine how public opinion reacted to its initiatives.
If Zhirinovsky leaves, the LDPR might fall apart, because the LDPR leader has no successor, and no one in the party leadership can match Zhirinovsky in terms of energy and charisma. On the other hand, the Kremlin could use the LDPR in its political calculations, picking a replacement for Zhirinovsky in a much-needed role—that of a politician, accumulating the support of poor, embittered Russian voters who have no prospects for success.
No interest in fighting
According to experts from the Higher School of Economics, the share of illegal, strong alcoholic beverages in Russia in 2021 was 27%. The primary consumers of unlawful alcohol (samogon, homemade vodka, alcohol-containing liquids) are 20% of Russians with low incomes (less than 15,000 rubles per month per person).
The problem of alcoholism in Russia is not new and is well known. Although the official statistics say that only 1% of Russians drink alcohol daily, every third Russian mentions alcoholism as one of the main problems in their community. More than 50,000 Russians have died in 2020 being drunk. In recent years, the Russian authorities have made serious efforts to fight alcohol: Time and age restrictions were introduced for the sale of alcohol, and minimum alcohol prices were set. This has born some fruit: According to the World Health Organization, registered alcohol consumption in Russia has dropped by almost 40% since its peak in 2008. The share of illegal alcohol in the early 2000s was approaching 40% and began to decline after 2005.
However, the problem of illegal alcohol is not a priority for the authorities, although most of the negative consequences are related to it. The government’s primary efforts are to control the turnover of legal products, which, in my opinion, has turned from a tool to combat alcohol consumption into a source of income for people close to power.
Since the mid-90s, there have been excise stamps on alcohol and tobacco in Russia, a reliable tool to protect the market from illegal products, but it cannot be a revenue source. The idea of commercializing control over alcohol was born in the depths of the FSB, which began to develop a national information system to track the flow of alcoholic beverages from production/import to retail sales. However, the FSB could not implement this excellent idea, and the project was transferred to the Tax Service. The entire system started working in 2016, but according to experts, it did not bring any positive results, neither in terms of tax collection nor in combating illegal alcohol. At the same time, the system itself was modified several times, resulting in costs to businesses to purchase new equipment. Since 2018, the information control system has been supplemented by another type of stamp (in addition to excise), which producers (importers) of alcohol must buy from government agencies.
But it is difficult to monetize the control of the alcohol movement. Therefore, the initiative has passed into the hands of a public-private partnership. A company called the Center for Development of Advanced Technologies (CDPT) was created. It is owned by USM Holdings of Alisher Usmanov (50%), Rostec State Corporation (25%), and Elvis-Plus Group of Alexander Galitsky (25%). Since 2016, this company has been pushing through the Russian government to create a National Goods Tracking System aimed at collecting information on the purchase and sale of every single item of goods from the list approved by the government. Currently, this system gathers data on tobacco, perfume, shoes, car tires, cameras, flashbulbs, outerwear, linens, and pharmaceuticals. Control over dairy products and bottled water is in the initial phase. Nearly half a million Russian companies have been required to purchase equipment and software to participate in the system and are required to pay for its services.
At the end of January, the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed an experiment marking certain alcoholic beverages—including wine, vermouth, spirits, and liqueurs, from June 1, 2022, to August 31, 2023.
Nothing is more permanent than the temporary. I am confident that the results of this experiment will prove positive for the authors of this idea, and nothing and no one will be able to transform the experiment into a permanent practice.
“What about illegal alcohol?”—the reader will ask. Fighting it does not bring in any revenue. Moreover, it requires the state to spend money. Therefore, the government has been unable to find public-private partnerships which could deal with this topic. But the government doesn’t want to.