Tag Archives: Putin

The beer summit – Putin style

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Have you heard the joke about what happens when Vladimir Putin, Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini, Vitaly Mutko and a bunch of Russian football fans walk into a bar? No? Well, this is exactly what happened at the creatively named ‘Restaurant’ restaurant in St. Petersburg yesterday, according to today’s Kommersant. I am not even going to sell you with a creatively written lede, because – let’s be honest – when you put Putin, Blatter and Mutko into the same room, the story writes itself.

With that in mind, I’m just going to excerpt my favorite bits from the article (I’ve also included an Interfax article in which the quotes are probably less manipulated, but also much less entertaining):

On beer in the stadiums (currently banned – with good reason – in Russia):

- Blatter: “[Beer] is a product that is very popular among football fans.” ”Beer is something that’s a part of life! How would there be a tournament in Germany without beer?! Fans want beer! In Brazil, the organizers don’t really want it…but they need to consider to consider the fans’ opinions!” And, of course the corporate sponsors – Budweiser among them – that put money in FIFA’s pockets – BL

Blatter, on drinking in moderation: “Beer is maybe not as destructive as some think. You should drink it in moderate quantities, that’s all.” “Everything can damage your health, any product! Let’s enjoy life, enjoy the game and let’s drink beer!”

- Putin, looking on in amazement: “Yes, you should know your limit – drink your three liters and that’s fine.” He then promised to have parliament re-examine the question of drinking in stadiums.

Boozing with Putin or Obama - the eternal question

I don't know about the rest of you, but boozing with Putin would kick the shit out of a casual Miller Lite with Obama

If that bit of populism/corporate shilling wasn’t enough, Blatter clearly knew what other buttons to push with the Russian fans.

Blatter: “I began working on organizing these kinds of tournaments in 1978,” he said, “At that time, strong drinks were allowed in the stands, as was smoking. Although, CO2 is perhaps a more harmful gas for people.” Smoking in Russian stadiums, for all I know, might technically be banned, but you would never know that if you go to a game there. Blatter, you demagogue, you.

Of course, there was more.

On the elimination of daylight savings time by president Dmitry Medvedev:

Fan: “It’s very difficult for me, let’s say, when a football match (in a European tournament) starts at 9 and ends at 11; you need to get up in the morning, but you’ve lost an hour of your life [due to the time differences].”

Putin: “I’m not the author of this initiative.”

Fan: “No, but is it easy for you to get up in the morning now?

Putin: “It’s always difficult to get up.”

Again, Putin gets to throw a little more red meat to the masses (he’s just like us!) while also throwing Medvedev under the bus for making everyone in Russia stay up an extra hour to watch Rubin Kazan play Shamrock Rovers.

On the Unified State Examination (ЕГЭ – a recently instituted nationwide set of standardized tests required as an exit exam for high schoolers/entrance exam for Russian universities):

Fan: “Why are we moving to the American system of education when Americans themselves conducted IQ-test research to see if they, as a nation, were smarter or dumber and they didn’t reach 90%?” 90 percent, the fan helpfully explained “is considered a normal IQ and they didn’t get to that level. And this test, which we’ve now introduced, was created by an American scientist.”

Remember, Blatter and Platini are still in the room for both of these questions, nodding their heads and pretending to understand what the hell is going on. I can’t say for sure either, but that makes it that much more entertaining.

And finally, this gem of a line of from the Kommersant article from after Blatter and Platini left:

“Vladimir Putin was actively drinking beer, fulfilling, it was obvious, his norm (the aforementioned 3 liters -BL). The 2008 UEFA cup final in which Zenit defeated Glasgow Rangers was playing on some of the televisions in the room.

‘I’ve already forgotten what I wanted to ask’ loudly announced one fan from Rostov-On-Don after a short while.

‘So, let’s drink to that!’ proposed the prime minister.”

Just brilliant.

Return of the (Elected) Governors?

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There are certain days that certain people look forward to every year. Super Bowl Sunday, the first/last day of school, Christmas or World UFO Day might be your ticket. If, however, you are Putin-lover and/or masochist, then yesterday was your day, the one you’ve been waiting for since last December. Yes, I am referring to the increasingly-long, annual “Conversation with Putin” in which Vladimir Putin takes questions via phone, SMS, e-mail and in person from around Russia. In the four and a half hour Putinfest (the longest in the 10 years the program has aired, according to Lenta.ru), the main man addressed topics like the Bolotnaya Square rally, foreign adoptions, federal subsidies to the Caucasus, John McCain, his Internet habits (he has none) and what he thought of people booing him at an MMA fight in Moscow (he said he thoughy they were booing his face…because its on TV all the time). Heady stuff.

Before going any further, it should be noted here that I did not watch the whole show, so I’ve relied on news reports, Twitter, transcripts, etc. to write this. I didn’t watch it, because, well, I don’t get paid to do this and I wasn’t going to wake up at 4am to watch 4 hours of mostly boring political theater. 

With that awkward caveat out of the way, there was an area in his speech in which Putin opened the door to an intriguing possibility. Count me among the people thinking that the anger over the Dec. 4 Duma elections might eventually lead Putin and the Kremlin to loosen control over regional affairs, perhaps even resulting in the restoration of elections for regional governors. When Putin started on his answer to the question “Isn’t it time to return to direct gubernatorial elections?” he began what could end up being the most important (not a high standard) response of the day.

Putin talks McCain, then political reform

So I've got this idea, do you want to hear it before or after I make fun of John McCain?

In the course of his answer, Putin proposed a reformed, hybrid-type system under which governors – which are currently nominated by top party in each regional legislature and then directly appointed by the President – would be nominated by a combination of regional legislatures and the president (i.e. himself) before being put to a popular vote. Each party in each regional legislature would propose their candidate for governor, each candidate would be vetted at the presidential level and following that, each candidate would stand in a direct election by the region’s populace.

If it sounds overly complicated, it is. The biggest hurdle in the scheme is Putin’s insistence in a “presidential filter” for gubernatorial candidates. The reasons he gave for maintaining presidential oversight (read: control) over the process is that under the previous electoral regime, the people being elected governor weren’t effective or motivated by the public good. “…[W]e need to maintain this filter on the presidential level in order to keep people out of power who will rely on criminal, or God forbid, separatist forces, like in the national republics,” he said, echoing the rational he gave for abolishing direct elections the first go around. Of course, the filter as it stands now hasn’t been perfect, but we’ll leave that for another time.

Insisting on the extra step of presidential approval, however, strips the idea of much of its democratic appeal and complicates a process that has enough potential pitfalls as it is. While there isn’t anything on paper to study – at least not publicly – the potential mechanics of the process could cause trouble. Presumably, each party would choose its candidate before regional elections, but subjecting them to separate vetting processes – first at a regional party level (with input from the national party) and then by the president – would take an awful lot of time and energy, particularly when it would come to regions with 3 or more parties in the legislature.

Moreover, the presidential filter idea completely ignores the problems posed by party. The temptation (or the suspicion of such a temptation) on the part of the president to disqualify the strongest candidate from an opposition party would be always there. Aleksey Makarin of the Center of Political Technologies raised a similar point in Gazeta.ru, “What would happen if the presidential filter blocked the candidacy of a regionally popular opposition figure and the population stood up in his defense? It’s a destabilizing factor.” It’s impossible to separate the political nature of the presidency from its functionality, which is what this proposal in its earliest stage seems to assume is possible. This is why the ‘filter’ idea should be ditched if the reform is aiming at a reasonable degree of logic.

There are several benefits, however, to returning to some sort of direct elections to governor, some political, some administrative. An immediate short-term benefit for Putin is that rolling out a return to a system featuring some kind of direct gubernatorial election might soothe some of the rough waters roiled by the Duma elections. It seems almost certain that the idea had been bandied about in some capacity prior to Dec. 10 – Medvedev prevaricated on the topic in June, for example – but it is also a reasonable assumption that any potential plan in this direction was brought into sharper focus because of the protests.

In the longer term, direct gubernatorial elections could serve to make governors more politically viable and give them more freedom to solve local problems. United Russia bigwig Yuri Shuvalov told Vzglyad in an interview that while the decision to abolish direct elections for governors had been necessary, “On the other hand, we see, that governors don’t always have authority amongst the people in the region.” While in many cases, that authority comes from the support of local elites rather than directly from the population, direct elections would end the practice of parachuting in outsiders to serve as governor only to see them isolated once they come into office.

Coming soon to a gubernatorial election near you? (photo courtesy of rbc)

While keeping this ‘filter’ and maintaining the president’s ability to remove governors at will legally impinges on the independence of regional leaders, direct elections would still reduce individual governors’ reliance on direction from the Center to a certain extent. In Russia’s federal system, local officials often don’t have the authority to act or aren’t capable of functioning independently when they need to. An example of this can be seen in the response to the 2010 wildfires, in which local authorities either did not act to control the fires or could not because of a lack of capability. Would reinstituting gubernatorial elections have stopped the wildfires? Not by itself, but this example and others demonstrate the limitations of centralized political power in a country as diverse as Russia.

Of course, elections are not a silver bullet. Local elections can be rigged just as easily as federal ones; indeed, gubernatorial elections prior to their abolishment were never renowned as paragons of virtue. Even once in office, there is no guarantee an elected official won’t be as graft-happy or effective as an appointed one. For example, Sergey Darkin (now rumored to be on the chopping block after his region Primorsky Krai was singled out for its crime and corruption during Putin-palooza yesterday) was elected in 2001 and he hasn’t kept an exactly squeaky clean image since then. He’s certainly not the only example. More to the point, there are deeper problems in Russia’s regional administration than a lack of democracy.

The obvious issues aside, the very idea that Putin and co. are considering bringing back gubernatorial elections should be seen as positive step for federalism in Russia, which in turn would a positive step for Russia politically. The threat of separatism has largely faded and it is fairly clear that abolishing the election of governors has done nothing to deter terrorism, as was the alleged reasoning behind the abolition after the Beslan tragedy in 2004. In part due to the political marginalization of Russia’s governors, the Russia’s political system has become too centralized, both politically and administratively. Injecting some small degree of energy into Russia’s federal system via gubernatorial election could be the first step to correcting this imbalance. Allowing greater participation in sending regional representative to the upper house of parliament, the Federal Council – a twin initiative I have not discussed here – is a similar move in the right direction. Giving a little more power and prominence to regional governors will do a couple of things; 1) Provide a little more autonomy for regional leaders 2) Deflect part of the regional political dissatisfaction that would otherwise be directed at the Kremlin and 3) Possibly make regional leaders more accountable to their population at large. As it stands on the drawing board, the ‘filter’ concept is the only thing keeping this from being a major story and a real reform. Whether real reform is what Putin wants is an entirely different story.

Could the Duma elections actually help Putin? All signs point to…

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If there’s a better way to jump start a blog than a good, old-fashioned polemic, then I (obviously) can’t think of one. That’s partly why I’ve decided to write about Greogry Feifer’s op-ed in today’s Washington Post, but also to refute an argument I find, well, befuddling. Feifer writes that, contrary to popular belief, the Dec. 4  Duma election results in Russia – when United Russia’s vote total dropped about 15% from the 65% of all votes cast – actually represent a strengthening of Vladimir Putin’s political position. This flies in the face of the collective wisdom that holds that the drop in the official count (to say nothing of the unofficial count, which many believe to be as much as 10-15% less) shows that Russians are growing tired of Putin. And because it flies in the face of what we all collectively “know,” I really wanted to like what Feifer wrote. I wanted to like it because it adds some balance to the Washington Post’s largely anti-Kremlin and anti-Putin editorial page. But, I just couldn’t.

The reason why I can’t get behind Feifer is that he is being too clever by half. As someone guilty of this on occasion (and more frequently, being not clever by more than half), I sympathize with Feifer, but I have to disagree with him here. Sometimes, the collective wisdom is right and this happens to be one of those times. His argument that United Russia’s loss is Putin’s gain ignores a pretty basic truth about the elections. The vast majority of people who voted against United Russia (and this is the dominant reason for its drop as opposed to anything the other parties did) were casting a vote against Putin and the system he has fostered over the last 11 years. If you accept this to be true, then Feifer has to be wrong.

Feifer’s arguments against this line of thinking largely uncritically accept the comestic and

semantic distance Putin has put between himself and the party. The fact that Dmitry

Everyone knows Putin didn't get stronger from the election, but what this presupposes is, maybe he did?

Medevedev and not Putin headed the national party list misses the point, as does mentioning that Putin is technically not even a member of the party. United Russia, as the ‘party of power,’ wholly exists as an extension of Putin’s personal authority and the authority of the system of governance he heads. It is difficult to really, honestly separate the two, regardless of Putin’s ineffectual efforts to create distance between himself and the ‘Part of Crooks and Thieves.’ Tellingly, these efforts have been basically ignored by Russians, who are not so stupid as to not see through it no matter what they think of Putin.

This is the dagger in the heart of Feifer’s argument – whether or not Russians were technically voting for or against Putin, they believed they were. This perception that a vote against United Russia was a vote against Putin manifests itself when crowds chant things like ‘Putin is a thief.’ A lessening of popular support does not translate into a strengthening of his political position no matter which way you slice it. Feifer tries to get around this by arguing that by weakening United Russia and, by extension, parliament’s say over government policy, Putin is strengthening his institutional position as president.

To make this argument, however, is to lend too much credence to a purely mechanical reading of how Russian politics are structured. Sure, Putin can rule as President purely by decree or without much reference to parliament, but the whole reason behind creating United Russia was so that he did not have to. In any event, the actual structure and institutions underpinning and legitimizing Putin’s power are of secondary importance to Putin’s personal authority, as Feifer basically acknowledges at the end of the piece. The Duma election results – since United Russia is so closely tied to Putin in the minds of most people – have to be read as a blow to that authority.

If all this is obvious, then I half-heartedly apologize. The basic point to be made here is that, no matter how various analysts try to spin it, Putin cannot be happy with the way things have turned out. How it actually affects his hold on power is not at all clear, but it seems to me there is a long-term threat to him here. Putin has maintained his power in large part due to his ability to unite the country’s major political cliques behind him.  His authority in doing this stems from a combination of economic success (including the personal economic success of the elite), his political gravitas and a general consensus that as helmsman of the country, he charted the correct course out of the 1990s. If some of these political elites – such as the more liberal clique cultivated during Medvedev’s presidency – start to sense cracks forming in Putin’s personal authority (for example, if they start to agree with anti-Putin factions that he is no longer leading the country in the right direction) then that could become a major, if not existential, challenge to his political future. Whether the Duma elections and their aftermath represent the first crack, it is far too early to tell, but it should start becoming more clear in the next weeks and months.

Someone was bound to go there…

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It was only a matter of time before someone tried to somehow direct some of the blame for the Dec. 11 riot towards the liberals and, thank God, Vladislav Surkov ended the suspense surrounding the question of who was going to do it. Surkov, everyone’s favorite behind-the-scenes-but-not-really Kremlin official, told Izvestiya in an interview published Dec. 16 that “after all, it’s the ‘liberal’ public putting unsanctioned rallies into fashion and Nazis and goons are going to continue this fashion.”

Surkov blames liberals

It's the liberals' fault, can't you see!?

He added, “The 11th [of December] occurs from the 31st” a snappy reference to Strategy-31, a group that gathers on the 31st of every month to draw attention to Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which lists the right to peaceful assembly. A somewhat clever line, but why give all the credit to Vladislav Yurevich for pointing out this linkage when there are other people making the same connections?

President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, the man with the golden gun, also slammed Russia’s liberals for paving the path to the progrom in a press release on the Chechen government’s website, saying the “irresponsible opposition paved the way for such a social explosion.” He went on to damn liberals for an “aspiration at any price to cause chaos in the country, achieve massive disorder, [and] the growth of a mood of protest in society.”

Putin, during his 4.5 hour ‘chat’ with the country yesterday, didn’t exactly lay the blame for the riots at the feet of the liberals, but he wasn’t particularly nice to them, either

“Our society, including the liberals, must understand that there must be order. Otherwise, our liberal intelligentsia may have to shave off their beards, put on helmets and head out to fight the radicals themselves,”

Not a bad suggestion, actually, but it just tries to cloud what seems to be a pretty clear picture.

Sure, it’s possible to argue that civil society groups engaging in unsanctioned rallies subvert the rule of law, but when people already mistrust or ignore legal remedies for reasons of their own, like many of the people at Manezh seem to have done, then the example of defiant civil society activists seems irrelevant.

Taken at their word (for better or for worse), many of the participants in the various rallies and riots are turning out because they believe the police have mishandled the investigation into Sviridov’s death. If you’re questioning the police’s ability to enforce the law (keep suspects in custody), then it seems logical that you would be a lot more defiant in the face of police power.

Even assuming they would have looked to Strategy-31 for inspiration (unlikely it seems to me) I highly doubt that they found have found it in the organization’s monthly meetings (read Oleg Kashin’s article on the May 31, 2010 meeting in translation on A Good Treaty) which have almost always been quashed by police. The people at Manezh would have shown up regardless of the activities of liberals or Strategy-31 or whoever.

Nemtsov blames Surkov

It's all Surkov's fault, can't you see!?

Try as I might, I can’t quite see how the liberals are to blame for people beating the shit out of dark-skinned people in central Moscow. So, with that in mind, let’s see what the liberals had to say.

We’re not to blame! It’s all Surkov’s fault! As you know, Surkov is one of the founders of nationalist party Rodina, Surkov has ties to nationalist and football fan groups and members of Surkov-inspired youth groups were allegedly present at the Manezh riots: “Surkov has to answer for all of this” wrote liberal opposition figure Boris Nemtsov on his blog.

You know what, on second thought, I just give up….

Putin zings America, gives boring interview

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Mr Prime Minister, it's been emotional, informative, interesting, but most of all, it's been f-cking awkward (photo courtsey of Kremlin.ru)

Vladimir Putin appeared on Larry King for an interview last night that was at times awkward, annoying, joking, prodding (Putin to speak English that is) and ended with Putin saying ‘Long Live the King.’ For those of you non-Americans, Larry King is a pioneering, influential, seven-times married, egomaniacal, suspenders-wearing talk show host on CNN who is retiring later this month. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the interview so I think I’ll just try to make fun of it. A quick note, I used the RIA Novosti transcript for those parts I didn’t have exact quotes for since my shorthand has gone seriously downhill since my days covering the Marquette men’s tennis team my first year of college. For even further disclosure, the picture above is from an earlier Putin interview on Larry King.

My first reaction to the interview was to hit the mute button. I mean, listening to Putin’s translator was like having to listen to the voice caller ID on my girlfriend’s phone every time she gets a text message (I am not directly saying I hate either of those things, for the record). But then I came to my senses and decided to actually listen to what was being said.

One of the first things Larry King asked Vladimir Vladimirovich was about the Wikileaks cables about him and Russia and Putin seemed none too pleased about some of the comments. He responded to King’s question about U.S. defense secretary Henry Gates’s comments that ‘Russian democracy has disappeared’ and run by security service members by pointing out that Gates himself was a career CIA officer and now the head of the Defense Department. “If he also happens to be America’s leading expert on democracy, I congratulate you,” he said, shortly thereafter pointing out how some U.S. presidents were elected without winning a majority of the popular vote. Chalk up a couple of zingers for Volodya.

He also apparently wasn’t fond of the Batman and Robin comparison of his and Medvedev’s relationship (you can guess who’s Batman), although I still think he secretly enjoyed it. Still, even though he said some of the cables were ‘unethical’ or insulting, he also brushed off the controversy as not constituting a ‘catastrophe.’ Phew, at least that’s settled.

Putin managed to land a few more zingers. King asked him about the 10 spies deported from the U.S. over the summer and Putin told him that ‘such people are to be respected’ – if cashing in on your celebrity by posing for Russian Maxim gives you respect – before saying,

By the way, the methods employed by our special services differ in a good way from those used by US special services. Thank God, neither the agents in question or any other Russian intelligence officers are known to have been involved in creating secret prisons, kidnappings, or torture.

Dammit, that’s 2-0 to Putin; that is, assuming that you’re not one of those people convinced that the Russian secret services killed Aleksandr Litvinenko by slipping radiation into his tea in 2006 (although I suppose that technically isn’t any of those three nefarious deeds he alluded to).

The only really newsworthy comments he made,  I thought, were his apparent clarification of the Russian stance on missile defense, something which garnered a lot of attention in the wake of the NATO summit in Lisbon a week and a half ago. He re-iterated the position that Russia would deploy short-range nuclear missiles on its border if U.S. plans for missile defense sites in Eastern Europe go forward, something the Wall Street Journal reported on earlier this week. He also sought to preemptively put the blame on the U.S., saying such a step would only be a reaction to U.S. threats to Russia. He did point out that Medvedev had made ‘concrete proposals’ in Lisbon, but the overall thrust of his comments suggested that he was skeptical that any real progress on that front had occurred.

The rest of the interview was just kind of awkward, with King cutting off Putin several times in a rush to get to commercial, Putin rambling on about his athletic prowess in response to a question about the World Cup and King’s decidedly odd reaction to Putin’s praise for him at the end of the show (I thought King was getting choked up, but he was actually just staring at his desk). King’s self-proclaimed most original (read: pointless) question was about whether gays can openly serve in the Russian military to which Putin eventually answered that there’s no barrier, but I’d guess those who’ve experienced the joys of dedovshchina would have a different answer.

In the end, the sole really interesting thing he said was that he’s learning English, in part, by singing songs with his teacher. Now, if only Wikileaks could get their hands on those tapes…