Sovereign Xenophobic Biopower

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Putin Talks about Collection of Biological Samples from Russians
RBC
October 30, 2017

During a meeting of the Presidential Human Rights Council, which took place in the Kremlin on October 39, Vladimir Putin claimed that “biological samples” were being collected from people living in Russia. The meeting was broadcast on TV channel Rossiya 24.

The president’s remarks were preceded by remarks made by Igor Borisov, president of the Russian Public Institute for Voting Rights. He said that on the last nationwide election day, September 10, around a million views of video broadcasts from polling stations “were undertaken from foreign IP addresses.” Borisov asked, “Why are so many people interested in watching our elections and recording them, that is, in recording images of people? What will they be used for down the road?”

“I am personally concerned images of my fellow citizens have fallen into the wrong hands. It is unclear how and to what end they are being held there,” Borisov added.

Putin responded.

“Forget about the images. Do you know biological samples are being collected nationwide, moreover from the different ethnic groups and people who inhabit different parts of the Russian Federation. That is the question: why is it being done?”

The collection of biological samples has been implemented professionally, added the president.

“Russians are the focus of very great interest,” he said.

“Let them do what they will, and we must do what we must,” the president concluded.

When this article went to press, this exchange was missing from the transcription published on the Kremlin’s website. The Human Rights Council had discussed state policy on memorializing the victims of political repression and specific measures that have been taken in this regard, as well as environmental issues.

Igor Borisov told RBC that he had drawn the president’s attention to the “heightened interest not only in our elections but also generally in Russia citizens” on the part of foreign powers.

“During the last elections, just under a million views and recordings were undertaken from addresses located abroad, outside the Russian Federation. It’s clear this information was collected for some purpose,” he said.

According to him, interest in Russia and the Russian nation [sic] is heightened.

“Material that could be used in the future is being collected,” added Borisov.

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Onishchenko Urges Oversight of Invitro Biological Sample Collectors
Yevgeny Kalyukov
RBC
October 31, 2017

The MP talked about a draft law on the biological security of Russians, pointing to the dangers represented by collecting of their “fluids, organs, and tissues.”

Russian authorities must adopt laws dealing with the biological security of Russians and take oversight of foreign companies carrying out clinical studies in Russia, said Gennady Onishchenko, the country’s former chief sanitary officer and deputy chair of the State Duma’s education and science committee.

The MP noted that Invitro [it is not clear what company MP Onishchenko and RBC have in mind — TRR] and foreign laboratories operating in Russia have access to “the most intimate things,” which threatens the country.

“They conduct research and do quality research, but they have huge opportunities for studying this matter in our country and sending the data overseas. I have on several occasions alerted the secret services to the fact this must be stopped or seriously monitored,” Onishchenko said on TV channel Rossiya 1.

The MP noted the needed to strengthen biological security at all levels, since the evolution of biotechnology paved the way to the production of genetic weapons.

“The fact that today the fluids, organs, and tissues of our fellows are being collected is nothing more than an indication that the US has not ceased its offensive military program,” Onishchenko explained.

The MP said that a law bill on Russia’s biological security, which is being drafted by the government, could be tabled in the State Duma as early as December.

RBC has sent a request for commentary to Invitro’s press service.

On October 30, during a meeting of the Presidential Human Rights Council, President Putin claimed that foreigners were “deliberately and professionally” collecting “biological samples” from people living in Russia.

“Do you know biological samples are being collected nationwide, moreover from the different ethnic groups and people who inhabit different parts of the Russian Federation. That is the question: why is it being done?” said the president

On October 31, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained that the collection of “biological samples from Russians” had been recorded by the secret services.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy of ITV

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Criminal Hysteria the TV Should Ignore and the Police Should Quash

Russian riot police paddy wagon parked in downtown Petersburg, 11 November 2016. Photo by the Russian Reader

Putin Calls for Assessing Police Actions at Protest Rallies
Natalya Demchenko and Pavel Kazarnovsky
RBC
October 30, 2017

The president argued that instead of organizing protests, critics of the authorities should ensure their presence [sic] on the internet and in the media. He also said that “disrupting life in big cities” was wrong, but that freedom [sic] must be guaranteed.

During a meeting of the Presidential Human Rights Council, Vladimir Putin suggested analyzing the actions of law enforcement agencies vis-à-vis protesters, noting that freedom must be guaranteed. The president’s address was broadcast live by TV channel Rossiya 24.

“Freedom must be guaranteed. I completely agree with you. We must always analyze established practices in our country,” he said in reply to a question from council member Nikolai Svanidze.

According to Putin, however, “some groups of protesters” and rally organizers deliberately aggravate the situation “in order to attract attention,” whereas in order to “state their position and criticize the authorities” it suffices to secure a presence on the internet and in the media [sic].

“I can imagine that the authorities drive these protests over the hill since they have no desire whatsoever to show them up and close. But deliberately interfering with life in the big cities, deliberately triggering aggression, is also wrong. We must work with both parties to this process,” said Putin.

According to him, hysterical outbursts occur from time to time in Russia due to protest rallies.

“Outbursts happen. Look at what has been going on in the US. There are hysterics there,” noted the president.

According to him, these outbursts are a natural phenomenon. There is no need to expect complete calm.

“There never was such a thing and there never will be.”

It is necessary, however, to minimize the negative aftermath of the outbursts.

A series of anti-corruption rallies, organized by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, were held this past March in Russia. The events were authorized [sic] by the authorities in 24 cities, although organizers advertised events in a hundred cities across Russia. The best attended rallies took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, and Vladivostok.

In Moscow, a protest on Tverskaya was not agreed by the authorities, who did not propose an alternative venue to the organizers [as required by law]. Navalny thus announced that, in according with a Constitutional Court ruling, he considered the protest rally authorized and encouraged his supporters to come to Tverskaya. Consequently, according to OVD Info, over a thousand people were detained by police. (According to official police figures, the number was around 500.)

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said the Kremlin respected people’s civic stances and the right of Russians to voice them in a manner agreed with the authorities, but the March protest rally on Tverskaya had been a provocation.

When asked why the national TV channels did not cover the anti-corruption rallies in Moscow and other Russian cities, Peskov said the TV channels showed what they considered “important and meaningful.”

Translated by the Russian Reader

There is actually no evidence the Russian authorities have any respect for such basic human freedoms as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, as guaranteed by the Russian Constitution and the international conventions to which Russia is a signatory.

Here are the highlights of my coverage of the recent clashes between Russian protesters, many of them young people, and Russia’s “lawlessness” enforcers, encouraged by the “legal anarchy” on display once again in President Putin’s remarks earlier today, as quoted above. TRR

The Treacherous Path

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London’s Biteback Publishers have announced that this coming spring they will be publishing an autobiographical memoir, described below the fold, by Vladimir Yakunin, one of the most corrupt men in Russia.

It’s due in no small part to the large-scale, palbable treachery of Yakunin and his ilk (i.e., the current Russian elites) that the country finds itself in such a sorry state.

But Vladimir Yakunin is made of slightly different stuff than your run-of-the-mill Putin crony because a) he has been working overtime recently to launder his ill-gotten goods squeaky clean so his family members can live comfortable lives in the west; and b) for the past fifteen years he has been running an extensive active measures operation, Dialogue of Civilizations, for coopting, suborning, and otherwise neutralizing as many top-flight international academics, decision-makers, opinion leaders, and IR experts as he possibly can.

Previously focused on eponymous annual gatherings of these VIPs, under Yakunin’s generous patronage, in Rhodes, Yakunin has now transformed Dialogue of Civilizations into a so-called reseach institute, headquartered in downtown Berlin.

He was able to do this, in part, because the EU, unlike the US, has not placed him on its sanctions list. This would be inexplicable were it not for Yakunin’s furious gladhanding of god knows how many European officials and otherwise influential people over the years.

So, he is free to run amok in the EU and UK, a hardcore Russian Orthodox nationalist and “former” KGB officer (as Putin once famously said, there is no such thing as a “former” KGB officer), ultrarich and corrupt to the gills, to boot, pretending to be interested in dialoguing with movers and shakers from the remnants of the democratic world.

“A publishing house is nothing without top class authors,” Yakunin’s latest pack of enablers (useful idiots) write without apparent irony on their website.

I wonder how much Yakunin has paid them to publish the book.

Yakunin’s previous vanity press outing, 22 Ideas to Fix the World: Conversations with the World’s Foremost Thinkers, was published by New York University Press.

Although I don’t know how much that more subtly conceived pail of whitewash cost Yakuin (although that he did indeed pay for the book from his own pocket is frankly acknowledged by the book’s editors right up front), it did do the job of elevating the “former” KGB officer and now-former head of Russian Railways to the ranks of the world’s alleged “foremost thinkers,” as he was one of the twenty-two people with whom the editors conversed at length, alongside such leftist luminaries as Mike Davis and Immanuel Wallerstein.

In case you were wondering, I have never found a single review of the first book questioning the propriety of marshaling so many previously respectable figures and entities for the miserable task of making one of Vladimir Putin’s made men appear to be a respectable member of the world intellectual community.

Mum’s the word when Russian oligarchs and “former” KGB officers are footing the bill. Everyone wants to get paid and get along in life, right? TRR

Photo by the Russian Reader

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The Treacherous Path
By Vladimir Yakunin

In 1991, Vladimir Yakunin, a Soviet diplomat and KGB officer, returned from his posting in New York to a country that no longer existed.

The state that he had served for all his adult life had been dissolved, the values he knew abandoned. Millions of his compatriots suffered as their savings disappeared and their previously secure existences were threatened by an unholy combination of criminality, corruption and chaos. Others thrived amid the opportunities offered in the new polity, and a battle began over the direction the fledgling state should take.

While something resembling stability was won in the early 2000s, today Russia’s future remains unresolved; its governing class divided.

The Treacherous Path is Yakunin’s account of his own experiences on the front line of Russia’s implosion and eventual resurgence, and of a career – as an intelligence officer, a government minister and for ten years the CEO of Russia’s largest company – that has taken him from the furthest corners of this incomprehensibly vast and complex nation to the Kremlin’s corridors.

Tackling topics as diverse as terrorism, government intrigue and the reality of doing business in Russia, and offering unparalleled insights into the post-Soviet mindset, this is the first time that a figure with Yakunin’s background has talked so openly and frankly about his country.

Source: Biteback Publishing

Valery Dymshits: Petersburg as Mistletoe

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Valery Dymshits
Facebook
October 26, 2017

In May 2016, the Akhmatova Museum hosted an event entitled Debates on Europe, featuring all sorts of outstanding people. I don’t know why, but I was invited, too. We were asked to talk about Petersburg and its place in Europe. I was also part of a special panel, entitled “How Do We See History? How Do We Deal with the Past?” I spoke my mind honestly. Today, I came across the two talks on my computer and thought I mostly agree with myself, so why not post them. So I am posting them. This is the first one, about Petersburg.

The City as Mistletoe
I probably will not be saying anything new if I note that Petersburg was originally built as the world’s largest cargo cult site. Peter the Great and his heirs firmly believed that by reproducing certain forms—and only the forms!—of European architecture and town planning, they would create a great country, a country that would rival or surpass Europe’s best countries.

When I went to Amsterdam, I was amazed by Petersburg’s resemblance to it. (Yet Amsterdam does not look at all like Petersburg, just as children resemble their parents, not vice versa.) In Amsterdam, I noticed that most of the buildings in the historic center had been built in the mid seventeenth century: the dates they were built were displayed on the façades. The entirety of Amsterdam’s huge historic center had been developed literally over twenty to thirty years. It was then I understood Peter the Great’s choice. It was not just the case that Amsterdam was among the magnificent, rich cities of Europe, but unlike Paris and other cities, it had been built not over the course of centuries, but in a few decades. Peter the Great realized that if he built another Amsterdam, so to speak, there was a chance of not only creating a hotbed of European civilization in Russia but also of living to see the project completed. This, of course, is a pure manifestation of the cargo cult.

An airplane hewn from the trunk of a palm tree may never fly, but it can be the pride and joy of an ethnographic museum’s collection. Russia did not become Europe, but Petersburg and its environs came to be a wonderful artwork, a huge artifact. I mean the Petersburg of the palaces and parks, cathedrals and embankments.

But there is another Petersburg, the one were we live. This is the city of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, built after the launch of Emperor Alexander II’s great reforms. It is the city of huge tenement houses, lush façades, and endless courtyards. This Petersburg was not a frozen magic crystal nor a miraculous receptacle supposed to attract the spirits of Europe with its outward shapes. It was a city of banks and factories, shops and slums: a normal city. We love it no less than we love the city of palaces. The loading cranes in the port and factory smokestacks dominate the city’s skyline as much as its domes and spires do.

But this city, in turn, woud not have emerged if the the first city had not been built. (And it was certainly built on the bones of its builders: animist religions involve human sacrifice.) A cargo cult is a religion and, as such, is no worse than any other religion. A religion’s truth is defined by the fanaticism of its adherents. The Russian cargo cult fashioned a great, artifact-like city. Like a colony of honey fungus inhabiting an old stump, another city sprang up from the first city, and this second city was real.

In fact, the Slavophile critics of Petersburg and the Petersburg period of Russian history were right when they argued that substantial homegrown grounds were needed to really build a great country, not empty, borrowed shapes. But by the time this criticism had become widespread, from the Populists on the left to the Black Hundreds on the right, it had already lost its main justification. Petersburg had become a natural, organic phenomenon, something that had sprung from the culture, not from the soil. As second nature, culture is no worse than nature per se.

Petersburg resembles mistletoe, a parasitic plant that grows on the branches of other trees. Mistletoe is quite beautiful. Since antiquity, it has been a symbol of life, and it was used as an amulet. The Romans and the Celts believed in mistletoe’s miraculous powers. It was a symbol of peace among the Scandinavians. It was hung on the outside of houses as a token travelers would be provided shelter there. If enemies happened to meet under a tree on which mistletoe grew, they were bound to lay down their weapons and not fight anymore that day. Mistletoe protected houses from thunder and lightning, from witches and maleficent spirits.

I would argue it is productive to compare Petersburg with mistletoe, with a beautiful, sacred, safeguarding parasite. We know that people do not quarrel under the mistletoe, but kiss and make up. Petersburg did not make Russia Europe, but the city has become a place where Russia can meet and talk with Europe. This is more or less understood by everyone, by the Russian regime and by its opponents.

Every country, region, and city tries to develop by relying on its own resources. Our resource is distilled culture, cut off from all soil. Let us imagine the Hermitage Museum is a typical mineral deposit, something like an oil well. It differs from other major museums since it is not a cultural feature of a major country and major city, as the Louvre is a a cultural feature of France and Paris. On the contrary, to a certain extent Petersburg is a feature of the Hermitage. I am not speaking of tourists. They have places to go besides Petersburg. I am arguing that, having emerged as the shrine of a cargo cult, Petersburg gradually turned into a condensed expression of European cultural know-how, projected onto a wasteland. The know-how was all the more important, since European cultural shapes have been purged, in Petersburg, of all ethnic specificity. It is a generalized Europe.

The question of how to fill these shapes is open. It is open to everyone: to Europeans, Russians, and Petersburgers alike.

Photo and translation by the Russian Reader. I would like to thank Valery Dymshits for his kind permission to let me translate his essay and publish it here.

Keep It Like a Secret

Delovoi Peterburg, a business daily, has just published its ranking of Petersburg’s alleged ruble billionaires.

It is no surprise that Putin’s cronies Gennady Timchenko (I thought he was a Finnish national?) and Arkady Rotenberg topped the list of 304 capitalists, with alleged net worths of 801.5 billion rubles and 294 billion rubles, respectively. (That is approximately 11.8 billion euros and 4.3 billion euros, respectively.)

Screenshot, from Delovoi Peterburg, showing Putin cronies Gennady Timchenko and Arkady Rotenberg in the number one and two slots of the business daily’s 2017 ranking of Petersburg’s ruble billionaires

There are lots of other pals of Putin and Medvedev in the top fifty, but I was disappointed to see the personal fortunes of my own favorite Russian super villain, former head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, had faded a bit in the past year. He has dropped to the number twenty-six spot in the ranking, claiming a net worth of a mere 37.07 billion rubles, which means that in Old Europe, where Yakunin is now dispensing Russian softpowerish wisdom to decision-makers and academics via his newly opened Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, in Berlin, he would be a regular old euro millionaire, with a measly net worth of 548 million euros.

But we should recall the exposés of Yakunin, his family, and their weath, carried out by the only person in Russian unfit to run for president, Alexei Navalny, and his Anti-Corruption Foundation. In short, Herr Doktor Yakunin, who once had himself declared among the twenty-two “foremost thinkers in the world,” is very nimble when it comes to parceling out his assets to family members for safekeeping, so to speak, and then hiring “cleaners” to make his deservedly bad reputation go away. So who knows how much he is really worth.

Screenshot, from Delovoi Peterburg’s website, showing Yakunin’s number 26 spot in its list of Petersburg’s ruble billionaires.

Another thing that struck me when I surveyed the list was the signal lack of women among the city’s ruble billionaires. Women appear on the list only towards the very bottom, which means they are not really billionaires, but dollar or euro millionaires, at most, and maybe not even that. And there are no more than ten such women in a list of 304 names.

So, the Delovoi Peterburg ranking is not only more evidence of Russia’s extreme wealth inequality—which is a matter of elite practice, if not of explicit government policy—but of the fact that this extreme wealth inequality has an even more extreme gender bias.

Even if Putin crony and Russian oligarch Vladimir Yakunin had named his newish Berlin think tank the “Vladimir Putin Institute for Peace and Freedom,” this would have had no effect, I am afraid, on all the decision-makers and academics who are prepared to rush into Yakunin’s embrace at the drop of a hat, forgiven, as it were, by the squirrelier name he has has chosen, Dialogue of Civilizations.

Yesterday and today, DOC Berlin has been holding a bang-up conference, dealing, like all conferences these days, with the centenary of the October Revolution.

The conference is entitled “Inequalities, economic models and Russia’s October 1917 revolution in historical perspective” and features some speakers whose names you might recognize, people you would never have suspected of wanting to shill for the Putinist soft power machine.

Speakers:

Georgy [sic] Derluguian, Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, New York University Abu Dhabi

Michael Ellman, Professor Emeritus, Amsterdam University

Domenico Nuti, Professor of Comparative Economic Systems, University of Rome “La Sapienza”

Vladimir Popov, Professor, DOC RI Research Director and a Principal Researcher in Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Beverly J. Silver, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Director of the Arrighi Center for Global Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

Andres Solimano, International Center for Globalization and Development

Vladislav Zubok, Professor, Department of International History, London School of Economics, UK

Kevan Harris, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California-Los Angeles, USA

But they are there, holding forth on “revolution” on the Putinist dime, while Yakunin, who clearly loves these powwows (there are tons of videos from past DOC gatherings on YouTube and elsewhere in which this is appearent), and is eager to show he is running the show, laughs his silent “former KGB officer” laugh.

While you are at it, check out this rogues’ gallery of useful idiots. Even if you have only a few toes in the world of academia, as I do, you will immediately recognize several of the people serving Yakunin on his think thank’s “supervisory board” and “programme council.”

Screenshot from the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute website

But what about the quality of the research supposedly underway at this so-called research institute? Here is a little sample, the abstract of a paper, downloadable for free, entitled “Church and politics: Russian prospects,” written by someone named Boris Filippov.

The paper is an attempt to make a brief overview of the Russian Orthodox Church’s state in the Post-Soviet Russia. Author notes, that the Church’s role in building civil society in Russia is potentially very considerable, since the Orthodox community’s ability to self-organize is rare for the post-Soviet Russia. He provides abundant empiric material illustrating Christian Orthodox community’s high capacities to contribute to building a prosperous society, for, as he shows, believers have gone much further on the way of consolidation than Russian society as a whole.

Is everyone who is speaking at today’s conference in Berlin and everyone who serves on Yakunin’s supervisory board and programme council kosher with obscurantist Russian Orthodox nationalism masquerading as scholarship? Do all of them know that “Russian Orthodoxy” (as interpreted by Patriarch Kirill and his intemperate followers) is now being used in Russia as an ideological battering ram to quash dissent and difference and reinforce Putin’s seemingly endless administration, as “Marxism-Leninism” was similarly used in the Soviet Union?

Do they know that their generous benefactor Vladimir Yakunin, in one of his other guises, wholeheartedly supports just this variety of aggressive Russian Orthodox nationalism?

The merging of political, diplomatic and religious interests has been on vivid display in Nice, where the Orthodox cathedral, St. Nicholas, came under the control of the Moscow Partriarchate in 2013.

To mark the completion of Moscow-funded renovation work in January, Russia’s ambassador in Paris, Aleksandr Orlov, joined the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, for a ceremony at the cathedral and hailed the refurbishment as “a message for the whole world: Russia is sacred and eternal!”

Then, in a festival of French-Russian amity at odds with France’s official policy since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the ambassador, Orthodox priests, officials from Moscow and French dignitaries gathered in June for a gala dinner in a luxury Nice hotel to celebrate the cathedral’s return to the fold of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Speaking at the dinner, Vladimir Yakunin, a longtime ally of Mr. Putin who is subject to United States, but not European, sanctions imposed after Russia seized Crimea, declared the cathedral a “corner of the Russian world,” a concept that Moscow used to justify its military intervention on behalf of Russian-speaking rebels in eastern Ukraine. Church property from the czarist era, Mr. Yakunin added, belongs to Russia “simply because this is our history.”

—Andrew Higgins, “In Expanding Influence, Faith Combines with Firepower,” New York Times, September 13, 2016

This entry has the title it does, not because I wanted an excuse to insert a recording by a beloved band of my salad days, which I did anway, but because when I draft editorials like this on Facebook, as I often do, I usually endure stony silence from my so-called friends and readers after I post them. It is not that they are usually so garrulous anyway, but I do know they read what I write, because they are capable of responding enthusiastically to other subjects.

Writ large, this stony silence is what has helped Vladimir Yakunin operate his Dialogue of Civilizations hootenanies (usually held annually in Rhodes until the recent upgrade and move to Berlin) under the radar for nearly fifteen years with almost no scrutiny from the western and Russian press and, apparently, no due diligence on the part of the hundreds and maybe thousands of non-Russian academics, politicians, experts, and other A-league movers and shakers who have attended and spoken at these events.

So can we assume, for example, that Georgi Derluguian, Anatol Lieven, Walter Mignolo, and Richard Sakwa (I am only picking out the names of scholars with whose work I am familiar) condone the Kremlin’s occupation of Crimea, the Kremlin’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin’s downing of Flight MH17, the Kremlin’s repeat invasion and wholesale destruction of Chechnya, during the early day of Putin’s reign, and the Kremlin’s extreme crackdown on Russian dissenters of all shapes and sizes, from ordinary people who reposted the “wrong” things on social networks to well-known opposition politicians, journalists, and activsts shot down in cold blood for their vocal dissent, including Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov, and Stanislav Markelov, a crackdown that has been intensifying with every passing year Putin has remained in power?

A resounding “yes!” would be refreshing to hear, but we will never get any response from the members of Vladimir Yakunin’s semi-clandestine fan club. It is their dirty little open secret, and only someone who is uncouth, someone unfamiliar with the ways of the world’s power brokers and their handmaidens and spear carriers, would even think about asking them to reveal it. TRR

Patriotica

Marat Street, Central District, Petersburg, 21 October 2017
Photo by the Russian Reader

Dmitry Borisov, Russian Political Prisoner

Valery Zen
Facebook
October 21, 2017

A couple of days ago I met Dima Borisov’s mother. Dima is the young man facing trumped-up charges for, allegedly, kicking a policeman. Dima now faces up to five years in prison. I don’t want to be a pessimist, but it’s highly likely that he will be sent down and sent down for a long time. But the topic of political prisoners has, apparently, has ceased to interest the opposition crowd.

Do you remember the hullabaloo over the Bolotnaya Square defendants? Nothing even remotely like that has been happening for the guys arrested in connection with the June 12 and March 26 protests. Yet, some of them, by the way, have already been handed sentences twice as long—five years in a penal colony—as the sentences handed out in 2012 and 2013 for the exact same charges.

Realizing that people are unable to free an innocent person on their own or in small groups, I asked Dima’s mom (Irina Andriyevskaya) what could be done to alleviate his plight. She said that people could repost stories about the case. If they couldn’t attend his court hearings, they could tell other people about Dima.

Guys, let’s just support Dima. Let’s show that we know about his misfortune and are not ignoring it. It’s not likely to change anything, but at least Dima and his mom, who is basically fighting this fight alone and certainly has it rougher than we do, will feel that they are not alone, that they have not been abandoned. Especially since nowadays absolutely anyone in this country can become a political prisoner.

I’m not making any demands or blaming anyone. I’m just asking decently.

движение 14%-дмитрий борисов (20.10.17) — Dmitry Borisov in court on October 20, 2017

Moscow City Court Denies Borisov’s Request to Be Released from Police Custody
Tivur Shaginurov
Kasparov.ru
October 2, 2017

Moscow City Court has refused to release Dmitry Borisov, an activist with the 14% Movement. As our correspondent reports, the court heeded the arguments of police investigators, who claimed that Borisov was a flight risk or could influence the investigation.

A reinforced brigade of court bailiffs and two plainclothes policemen were present at Borisov’s appeals hearing. Ultimately, the court extended his term of detention for a month.

Investigators argue that Borisov’s guilt is confirmed by a videotape they have in evidence, adding that the accused has not admitted his guilt and, allegedly, resisted arrest. The accused claims he was resisting unknown men in uniform.

[In the videotape, inserted below, it is clear the police officers who detained Borisov were not wearing badges, as requiredd by the Russian law on police conduct—TRR.]

In turn, the defense argue Borisov is not a flight risk since both his foreign travel and domestic internal passports have been confiscated, and he is not a national of any other country. Borisov’s movements could be tracked with a special bracelet issued by the Federal Penitentiary Service. Nor, according to the defense, could Borisov influence witnesses, especially as the alleged victim and witnesses are police officers.

The defense likewise denied that Borisov had a prior conviction. Borisov explained himself that criminal charges had been filed against him due to a conflict with a drunken man who had insulted his mother. The defendant’s mother, who was present in the courtroom, confirmed her son’s story.

After a heated argument, Borisov’s relatives were removed from the courtroom along with a reporter from the publication Sota [?] who photographed the incident.

They were charged with administrative violations. We should note that the reporter was accredited and had the court’s permission to take pictures. However, court bailiffs argued their actions were justified because she had taken pictures of their faces.

Boris’s attorney noted that the requirements for keeping a defendant or suspect in police custody, as stipulated in Article 97 of the Criminal Procedural Code, were not contained in the prosecution’s demand that Borisov be kept under arrest.

In the video that police investigators cite as evidence of Borisov’s guilt, it is not apparent when and how Borisov kicks a police officer.

Borisov’s supporters plan to organize a flashmob during which they will submit appeals to the Prosecutor General, asking him not to approve the charges against Borisov.

Dmitry Borisov has been accused of twice kicking a police officer in the head when police dispersed a peaceful grassroots protest on March 26, 2017, in Moscow.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade NE for the heads-up. Photos courtesy of Kasparov.ru and the 14% Movement.

The next hearing in Dmitry Borisov’s case is scheduled for 4 p.m. on November 1, 2017, in the Tverskaya District Court in Moscow. Borisov was arrested on June 6, 2017, and has been recognized as a political prisoner by Memorial’s Human Rights Center.

Live Target Practice in Syria

Defense Ministry to Take Delivery of 24 “Flying Tanks” for Testing in Syria
Inna Sidorkova
RBC
October 19, 2017

In November, the Russian Defense Ministry will receive the first batch of improved Night Hunter helicopters from Russian Helicopters. The new choppers will cost the Defense Ministry at least 400 million USD. The helicopters should alter aviation tactics in Syria.

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Russian Night Hunter combat helicopter. Photo courtesy of Russian Helicopters/RBC

For Syria
By 2020, the Defense Ministry will take delivery of twenty-four modernized Night Hunter Mi-28UB combat training helicopters, Andrei Boginsky, general director of Russian Helicopters, a subsidiary of state corporation Rostek, told RBC. He stressed the Mi-28UB was designed with its future use in Syria in mind.

The first batch of helicopters—up to ten units—will be delivered to the Defense Ministry in November of this year. Two choppers will be delivered to the 334th Center for Combat Training and Army Flight Crew Retraining in Torzhok, Vadim Barannikov, deputy manager of Russian Helicopters Rosvertol plant, told journalists on October 19.

“Currently, the Defense Ministry is the Mi-28UB’s only buyer. However, similarly configured Mi-28-like helicopters will be delivered to foreign customers,” said Boginsky.

He added that the coming online of the chopper’s combat training version opened up “practically unlimited” opportunities for improving the training of Mi-28N pilots.

“The chance to train on a real combat helicopter, rather than on a simulator, is a huge advantage for our combat pilots in comparison with their counterparts from other countries,” said Boginsky.

Boginsky declined to tell RBC the cost of the contract with the Defense Ministry and the price of a single helicopter. However, as two of RBC’s sources in the aviation industry noted, the cost of the Mi-28UB would be a “little higher” than the basic model due to the improved design and other features. According to AircraftCompare.com, a website specializing in collecting and analyzing information on aviation equipment, the cost of the Mi-28N ranges from 16.8 million USD to 18 million USD. The sum of the contract with the Defense Ministry for delivery of the helicopters should be at least 400 million USD.

The delivery of twenty-four Mi-28 combat training helicopters is Russian Helicopters biggest contract with the Defense Ministry since 2015, the company’s press service told RBC. For the first time in history, the Russian army will get its hands on combat training helicopters with dual piloting systems.

The Mi-28UB
The design of the Mi-28 combat training helicopter, the improved Night Hunter, is based on the Mi-28N night attack helicopter, which was added to the army’s arsenal by presidential decree in 2009. Its maximum speed is 300 kilometers/hour, its dynamic ceiling, 5.6 kilometers, and its takeoff weight, nearly 11,000 kilograms. The Mi-28UB is armed with Ataka-V air-to-surface and Strelets air-to-air guided missile systems, a nonremovable mobile 30mm automatic cannon, and B-8V20A mounts for C-98 80mm caliber rockets and C-13 130mm caliber rockets.

The main difference between the Mi-28UB and the Mi-28N is the dual piloting system, as RBC was informed by Russian Helicopters press service. The chopper can be piloted both from the commander’s cockpit and the system operator pilot’s cockpit, which expands its capacity for training combat pilots. In addition, during emergency combat circumstances, control of the helicopter can be assumed by the second crew member. The helicopter is also outfitted with a simulator for training student pilots to deal with in-flight equipment failure.

The Mi-28UB is outfitted with modernized integrated onboard radioelectronic equipment. The cockpit has been expanded, the area covered by armored glass has been increased, and visibility from the system operator pilot’s cockpit has been improved. The Mi-28UB has an automatic landing system. A state-of-the-art laser defense station has been installed onboard to defend the helicopter from heat-seeking missiles.

Why a “Flying Tank” Is Needed
The Mi-28UB has been added to the arsenal to adjust the tactics used by Russian aviation in Syria and other hotspots in the future, said the military experts interviewed by RBC.

The army lacks combat pilots, noted Colonel Viktor Murakhovsky (Reserves), chief editor of the magazine Arsenal of the Fatherland. During a speech in the State Duma in February, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that, as of 2016, the Aerospace Forces (VKS) lacked 1,300 pilots.

When the VKS launched its Syrian campaign, the Defense Ministry called up officers from the reserves and even introduced accelerated pilot courses for servicemen working in different jobs, such as aircraft technicians, Murakhovsky recalled.

“In this sense, it means a lot to train pilots on helicopters with dual piloting systems,” said Murakhovsky. “Thanks to the system, an experienced pilot will be able to prompt the trainee and take over the helicopter in emergencies. Pilots will be trained twice as quickly.”

The combat training version of the helicopter was initially designed to train cadets to fly the Mi-28. Previously, rookie pilots had to undergo initial training on stimulators or other helicopters, and then retrain on the Mi-28. This took time, argued Colonel Andrei Payusov (Reserves). The modernized Mi-28 will be used to train graduating cadets and retrain serving pilots, he believes.

The Mi-28 combat training helicopter will facilitate running young flight crews through their paces and nurture combat pilots, Colonel Sergei Yefimov (Reserves), a combat sniper pilot, told RBC. The Mi-28 gives the army the chance to change combat tactics, and the improved visibility and armored glass will help crews feel more confident in the cockpit.

“The modernized integrated onboard radioelectronic equipment will make searching, detecting, identifying, and eliminating targets more effective,” said Yefimov.

But in addition to accelerated training of combat pilots, the Mi-28 faces yet another task, said Colonel Sergei Gorshunov, senior navigation inspector in the Fourth Army’s aviation wing and the Southern Federal District Air Defense. In modern combat, it is hard for a single member of the crew to pilot a helicopter properly while tracking the enemy and aiming at a target, stressed Gorshunov.

“So the Defense Ministry asked for a helicopter with a dual piloting system,” said Gorshunov.

According to Gorshunov, the Mi-28UB can be used not only to support infantry but also to cause tangible damage to the enemy’s armored units.

“We might say it’s a flying tank. If the guided missiles are deployed, a couple of helicopters can disable from four to eight tanks,” concluded Gorshunov.

The first prototype of the Mi-28UB was manufactured by Rosvertol in 2013. The helicopter was put into mass production in late 2015, RBC’s source in the aviation industry said.

“The helicopter was tested for a very long time. All the tests have been passed, including tests in Syria. Now it is a matter of delivering the first batch,” he explained.

Translated by the Russian Reader

UPDATE. Russian Helicopters was listed in a White House document of Russian companies and entities that may be considered for further sanctions. The New York Times published the unclassified document on October 26, 2017.

Cass Sunstein Stayed Out Too Long in the Sunshine

DSCN0667 — A sunny late afternoon in downtown Petersburg. Do you see any Marxism or Marxists in this picture? I see only individuals going about their business and going home from work. According to the distinguished US legal scholar Cass Sunstein, however, “the Russians” are, in fact, busy “heightening the contradictions” in US society, which is a time-honored “Marxist strategy.” Photo by the Russian Reader

Cass Sunstein: “As the Russians know, heightening the contradictions is dangerous for the American people. Here’s a much better idea: E pluribus unum.”

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything sillier in my life.

First of all, “heightening the contradictions” has been the American way since our rickety but powerful country was founded four score and seven years ago or a bit longer than that. We haven’t been trying to create a 330 million-strong army of biorobots who think and act identically. Or have we?

Second, “heightening the contradictions,” pace the considered opinion of Samantha Powers’s power husband, is not a “Marxist strategy” per se, but a time-honored political tactic. Read Machiavelli. Read Thucydides. Read Suetonius. Read Robert Caro’s stunning masterpieces about Robert Moses and LBJ. Read anything.

Third, the Kremlin is currently inhabited by people who have no truck with Marxism in any way, shape or form.

Fourth, Marxism is not a set of tricks for sowing foment, dissent, discord, and chaos. It’s something else, but what it might be is too gnarly and boring for folks who take the Sunstein approach to cheap op-ed point-scoring.

Fifth, if the Kremlin’s current inhabitants meddled in the 2016 US presidential elections and have continued to play on the alleged contradictions in US society the election exacerbated, they have done this without any reference to or inspiration from Marxism, a political economic theory about which Cass Sunstein literally has no idea whatsoever.

I won’t be bothering to link to Mr. Sunstein’s original piece on the Bloomberg website, because that would mean inadvertently promoting Bloomberg, whose editors are so thick-witted they have taken on a pro-Kremlin provocateur as a full-time op-ed writer, and nobody noticed, even though I see lots of people quoting said provocateur (Leonid Bershidsky) all the time.

This is not to mention that whipping up an anti-Marxist panic in a world where Putin crony (and rabid anti-Marxist) Vladimir Yakunin has for years been co-opting western academics and decision-makers into his so-called Dialogue of Civilizations powwows on a wholesale basis right out in the open, but there has never been a single article about these particularly effective Russian active measures all this time in any reputable western newspaper or magazine, seems misguided, to put it mildly.

Finally, Russia has not been a socialist country, a communist country or a Marxist country (whatever that would mean) for twenty-six years. If its elites are messing with the internal politics of other countries, they are not doing so as Marxists, but as gangsters who want to skew the international geopolitical game in their favor as much as possible. Like true gangsters, their only ideology is what is good for them is good for them, and everyone else be damned, including their own countrymen.

This has nothing to do with Marxism.

P.S. While we are at it, let’s stop this “the Russians” business. There are 144 million Russians. They are as pluribus and pluralist as any other society. They are not the Borg.

The Russian Reader

“Rate This Translation”

I didn’t ask for the wildly inaccurate translation, screenshotted below. It just showed up on my Facebook newsfeed from RBC as is, yet inadvertently hinting at the real state of affairs in the Kingdom of Denmark.

I wonder how Google Pixel Buds are going to do anything but confuse the hell out of the people who wear them if their translations are similarly brilliant.

Believe me, only trained, experienced human interpreters and translators are capable of making sense out of nonsense.