Occupy Pravda: MSM Pretends Putin Faces Revolution

Boris Nemtsov-opposition leader, former deputy prime minister

PJ MEDIA-By Kim Zigfeld/

As former Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov looked out over a crowd of between 30,000 and 100,000 Russians (depending upon who was counting) on Christmas Eve in Moscow — just before calling for the ouster of Vladimir Putin — he saw a sea of tricolor black, white, and yellow flags before him, and a second sea of red flags.

The tricolor is the flag of the Russian Nazis, the skinheads who want to liquidate anyone who is not “Rooski” — the Russian word for “Russian” meaning white, Slavic, and Orthodox. Their poster boy is Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

The red flag represents the Communist Party, led by Gennady Zyuganov. Both men have sizeable contingents in the Russian parliament. Nemtsov doesn’t have a single seat, nor has he ever been allowed to place his name on the presidential ballot.

Nemtsov must have wondered why these two groups have played such a leading role in opposing Putin’s neo-Soviet dictatorship, rather than democratic-minded folks like himself. But he should know the answer, having probably recognized that his “organization” was incapable of accurately counting the members of the crowd, or of reporting with one voice in English why they were assembled or what they planned to achieve.

The crowd started booing Nemtsov.

Just days before the protest, tape recordings undoubtedly collected by operatives of the successor to the KGB — the FSB — had been played on a Kremlin-friendly TV network. The tapes revealed Nemtsov brutally criticized other members of the hodgepodge group that organized the protest, hurling all manner of personal abuse at them. The tapes were  an obvious attempt to discredit Nemtsov among his peers.

Nemtsov’s comments about his peers were perfectly justified, even somewhat measured — I was thrilled to read them. Due to its pernicious infighting, the opposition to Putin has been unable to agree on an achievable agenda, a leader, or even a name for their group. Yet: the fact that Nemtsov needed to make them — and didn’t realize he was being recorded — tells you pretty much all you need to know about the prospects of this so-called movement.

Which is just as well, because if you relied on the reporting of the mainstream media for this information, you’d be out of luck. The mainstream reports on the demonstrations against electoral fraud in Putin’s Russia have been nauseatingly wrong.

Granted, it’s hard being a Russia correspondent. You spend most of your time frozen, worried about getting brutalized or murdered, hated by the local denizens (who are famous for  xenophobia), and writing about a country most people couldn’t care less about. So when you get a whiff of a story that might thrust you onto the front pages, you’re pretty desperate to tell it.

Even if there isn’t really any story at all.

Architect of Putin's System of Politics Is Reassigned

Vladislav Surkov [L] and Putin

msnbc.com

MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Tuesday announced the reassignment of Vladislav Y. Surkov, the "gray cardinal" who has overseen Russia's domestic political scene for more than a decade. The reassignment, made in the midst of a new protest movement against Vladimir V. Putin, Russia's paramount leader, suggested that Mr. Putin is prepared to make changes in the tightly controlled system that emerged during his first and second presidential terms.

Mr. Surkov, the deputy head of the president's administration, is considered the architect of the system under Mr. Putin and his protégé and successor as president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, which Mr. Surkov christened "sovereign democracy." He will now oversee modernization and innovation as a deputy prime minister, but will take no role in domestic politics. Russia's political system has come under unprecedented pressure this month from protesters who complain that elections offer them no alternative to Mr. Putin's rigid model. Former finance minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, who this month presented himself as a potential leader for disgruntled liberals, said the move affecting Mr. Surkov suggests "political reforms are going to continue."

"I consider him one of the designers of the system," Mr. Kudrin said in an interview with Kommersant-FM. "Now, the system is being reconsidered. Other organizers are needed, with other views on the political system."

Mr. Surkov, an advertising prodigy who was brought into government toward the end of the Yeltsin era, has argued for years that centralizing power in the Kremlin was a matter of survival after the 1990s. He acknowledged last year that "centralization has reached the limits of its capacity," but attempts to cultivate new parties were often discontinued if they showed signs of slipping out of Kremlin control.

Asked by a journalist on Tuesday why he was leaving, Mr. Surkov responded: "Stabilization devours its young." He went on to say that he had requested a reassignment. Asked whether he would take a role in settling down the protests, Mr. Surkov said no.

"I am too odious for this brave new world," he said, in a short interview with the Interfax news service. He then summed up his achievements at the reporter's request.

"I was among the people who helped President Yeltsin realize a peaceful transfer of power," he said. "I was among those who helped President Putin stabilize the political system. I was among those who helped President Medvedev liberalize it." More >>

Did Russia Help Iran Down Drone?

DEBKAfile/

Iran's electronic trap for snaring the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, one of the world's most secret drone programs in almost perfect condition, must be accounted a huge military and intelligence coup and a landmark in the long tussle over Tehran's nuclear program. It may have acquired the technology for its cyber attack from Pakistan, China, or even Russia.
Read more >>

South Korea icebreaker arrives to rescue Russian fishing boat

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50,000 Strong: Massive 'vote fraud' rally in Moscow

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Dec 24, 2011

Tens of thousands gathered in central Moscow to protest against this month's Parliamentary election results. The mass rally was organized by opposition groups who claim the vote was rigged. 30 thousand people are reported to have turned up to demonstrate according to official data, but the opposition say the number is more than a hundred thousand. It's the second such protest - two weeks ago tens of thousands took to the streets to have their say. RT's Anissa Naouai reports from the scene of the demonstration.

Huge rally increases pressure on Putin

msnbc.com news services/

MOSCOW — Tens of thousands demonstrators rallied in the Russian capital Saturday in another massive protest against election fraud, signaling a growing outrage with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's 12-year rule.

The demonstration in Moscow was as large as the one two weeks — the largest show of discontent the nation has seen since the 1991 Soviet collapse — although rallies in other cities in the far east and Siberia earlier Saturday drew much smaller crowds.

Rally participants gathered on a broad avenue some 1.5 miles from the Kremlin on a snowy day.

A stage at one side of the avenue featured placards reading "Russia Will be Free" and "This Election is a Farce".

Recent protests in Moscow and other cities have dented Putin's authority as he seeks to reclaim the presidency in next March's vote. The Kremlin has responded by promising a set of political reforms that would liberalize election rules.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More >>

Report: Russian spy chief joins nuclear missile firm

Col. Gen. Alexander Shlyakhturova

RIA Novosti/

The chief of Russia’s military intelligence (GRU), Col. Gen. Alexander Shlyakhturov, resigned from his post on Saturday, the Kommersant business daily reported.

According to the newspaper, Shlyakhturov, 64, will in the near future head the board of directors of the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering (MIT), the developer of the Bulava ballistic missile and other strategic missile systems.

Now it is led by the head of Russia’s Federal Space Agency Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin. His coming resignation is due to the fact that President Dmitry Medvedev said in April 2011 he wanted all government ministers to give up their seats on the boards of some of the country's biggest state firms.

Kommersant’s source in the General Staff said earlier that Shlyakhturov has the confidence of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. His appointment as a head of MIT is presumably aimed at resolving the conflict between the military authorities and producers around the state defense procurement.

Shlyakhturov has led the GRU since April 2009. The public knows nothing about General Shlyakhturov's biography and service record. Such tight secrecy implies that he is a career intelligence operative.

The name of the future chief of Russia’s military intelligence is not known yet.

The Glazov Gang - Putin's Power

In Russia, lost generation of science

The Washington Post/ By Will Englund

PUSHCHINO, Russia — For the past decade, Russia has been pouring money into scientific research, trying to make up for the collapse of the 1990s, but innovation is losing out to exhaustion, corruption and cronyism.
In a rut and out of favor, the labs are barely wheezing here at Pushchino, once one of the brimming engines of Soviet science, a special closed city devoted to prestigious biological research. The government has turned its focus to newer ventures.

But the result has been like a great deal else in this country: expensive, flashy and largely hollow. Shot through with back-scratching and favoritism, the government’s science program has tripled its spending in the past 10 years — and achieved very little. The number of papers published in scientific journals is the same as it was in 2000 and as it was in 1990, even while the rest of the world’s output has exploded.

The impact could extend even to the United States, which depends on Russian rockets, troubled by engineering failures, to carry astronauts to the international space station.

Twenty years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, a generation of scientists has been lost, young scientists say, and another is on the way out. Many are lining up to escape abroad, just as in the dark, poverty-stricken 1990s.

Science had prestige and plenty of support in the U.S.S.R. The Soviets wielded a formidable nuclear arsenal, put the first satellite into space, then the first man into space. Dedicated biologists nurtured what may have been the world’s foremost seed bank, ensuring its survival even through the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad. Nine Nobel Prizes for physics and one for chemistry acknowledged Soviet achievements. More >>

The Putin System - Documentary

Top Documentary Films

The Putin System is a documentary chronicling Putin’s rise to power in Russia along with the implications for ordinary Russian people.Russia is once again flexing its muscles. This time its weapons are not the Red Army or its nuclear arsenal, but the huge energy resources lying under the Siberian tundra.

Vladimir Putin is the man responsible for the reemergence of Russia as a global power, but how much is really known about him and his ascendance? This film explores his journey to the highest echelons of the Kremlin and contextualizes his rise against a newly belligerent Russia nostalgic for the past glories of the Soviet empire.

This investigative documentary covers 30 years in the history of Russia through the personal history of Vladimir Putin: a man who has single-mindedly played all the rules of the game to reach the throne of power.

 

Russian oil rig sinks: 4 dead, 49 missing

Russian fishing boat stuck near the Antarctic

Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Dec 17, 2011[Al Jazeera's Roza Kazan reports].

A Russian fishing boat is stuck near the Antarctic. Underwater ice tore a hole in it which caused water to rush in. 32 crew members were on board the ship but most of them are now on lifeboats waiting for help.

Oil-drilling rig with 76 aboard overturns in Russia's Far East

An oil plattform east of Sakhalin Island/ Reuter

By msnbc.com staff

An offshore oil-drilling rig with 76 people on board overturned in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East, Russia Today reported Sunday.

There was no word on survivors, the news channel said.

A distress signal was sent while the platform was being towed by an icebreaker through high seas and strong winds, Russia Today said.

The platform was about 125 miles off Sakhalin Island.

Inside Story - Russia's Syria stance

Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish

Is Moscow buckling under international pressure, or is it trying to lessen the impact of a future resolution on Syria? With guests: Sergei Strokan, Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, and Christopher Swift.

Russia welcomed to the World Trade Organization, after 18 years of talks

#Russia - Billionaire Prokhorov picks a fight with Putin

Soviets spied on Canada

The old Soviet Union may have been just as familiar with Canada's Arctic waters as Canadians.

Sections of Cold-War-era nautical charts obtained by The Canadian Press suggest that Russian mariners have for decades possessed detailed and accurate knowledge of crucial internal waterways such as the Northwest Passage.

Those charts, which may offer the first documentary proof of the widely held belief that Soviet nuclear submarines routinely patrolled the Canadian Arctic during the Cold War, are still in use by Russian vessels. In some places, they are preferred to current Canadian charts.

"In some cases the Russian charts are more detailed than the Canadian ones and the navigators have them out on the chart table beside the Canadian ones in order to cross-reference any questionable soundings," said Aaron Lawton of One Ocean Expeditions, an adventure tourism company that charters the Russian-owned ship Academik Ioffe for Arctic cruises.

"I have travelled on the Ioffe in the Canadian Arctic for (many) seasons and have generally found that the vessel has always cross-referenced the Russian charts," Lawton said in an email from on board the Ioffe off the Antarctic coast.

The Ioffe is owned by the Moscow-based P.P. Shirsov Institute of Oceanography. Vladimir Tereschenkov, head of marine operations, said the Russian charts were published by the Russian Hydrographic Service.  More >>

Gorbachev: Annul Russian election results, hold new vote

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By msnbc.com news services

MOSCOW - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged Russian authorities to annul the results of the scandal-marred parliamentary election and hold a new vote, Russia's Interfax news agency reported Wednesday.

The news came a day after thousands of Russians rallied in Moscow and St. Petersburg and faced off with police and Interior Ministry troops, who detained and arrested hundreds of protesters, including journalists.

"The country's leaders have to admit that there were numerous falsifications and rigging and the results do not reflect the will of the people," Gorbachev told Interfax, according to the AFP.

"Therefore I think they can only take one decision — annul the results of the election and hold new ones."

Thousands of security forces were out in the Russian capital and helicopters roamed the sky Wednesday in a show of force following the protests over the election that saw Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party struggle to keep a majority. More >>

Hundreds arrested as thousands protest Russia's vote [Video]

The parliamentary election results have left opposition supporters in an angry mood. Moscow has seen crowds of up to 10,000 take to the streets; over 300 have been arrested, reports RIA Novosti news agency. Police have counted 2,000 demonstrators, but unofficial estimates say up to 10,000 people made their way to Chistye Prudy Park to attend a meeting staged by the opposition movement "Solidarnost" (Solidarity). "Shame!" chanted the crowd. The demonstrators claimed the United Russia party had rigged the voting results. Meanwhile, as the Central Election Commission has almost done its counting, United Russia is coming in with almost 50 per cent of the vote. Police had already cordoned the area off for a meeting, which only 700 people had been authorized to join. As the stream of people increased, the designated area overflowed and the crowds spilled into a neighboring area. When they started to block the traffic, police began arresting protesters. 

#Russia - Putin party suffers setback in Russia vote

msnbc.com staff and wire services

Updated at 6:30 a.m. ET: Reuters reports that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling party lost 77 seats in parliament in an election held on Sunday, according to projections made by the Central Election Commission based on preliminary results.

Updated at 5:40 a.m. ET: European monitors said that Russia's parliamentary election has been tilted in favor of the ruling party and marred by violations, The Associated Press reports.

The monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other European institutions highlighted issues including limited political competition and a lack of fairness.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party saw its parliament majority weaken sharply in Sunday's vote despite allegations of widespread violations.

The European observers said the vote was tainted by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including serious indications of ballot box stuffing.

Earlier, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov dismissed the official results as "theft on an especially grand scale." His party made big gains in Sunday's election.

However, Zyuganov told Reuters that police had barred Communist monitors from several polling stations and "some ended up in hospital with broken bones".

Updated at 4:50 a.m. ET: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia received nearly one-third fewer votes than in 2007, Reuters reported.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganovm, whose party was on target to increase its representation from 57 to 92 in the Duma, alleged that some ballot boxes were stuffed before voting began.

"The country has never seen such a dirty election," he added. 

Updated at 4:40 a.m. ET: With about 96 percent of precincts counted, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia was leading with 49.5 percent of the vote, Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov told The Associated Press.

He predicted that it will get 238 of the Duma's 450 seats, a sharp drop compared to the previous vote that landed the party a two-thirds majority in the Duma. The Associated Press described the result as a "humiliating setback" for Putin, "who has steadily tightened his grip on the nation for nearly 12 years."

About 60 percent of Russia's 110 million registered voters cast ballots, down from 64 percent four years ago.

"Sunday's vote badly dented (Putin's) carefully groomed image," The AP's Vladimir Isachenkov wrote. "It reflected a strong public frustration with the lack of political competition, ubiquitous official corruption and the gap between rich and poor, which will pose a growing challenge to Putin's power."

By msnbc.com's F. Brinley Bruton -- published at 3 a.m. ET: Vladimir Putin's ruling party lost its crucial two-thirds majority in parliament in Russian elections held on Sunday, a damaging setback for the country's prime minister who is running for president once again next year. More >>