Russian Realpolitik: Inside the Arms Trade with Syria
At an arms bazaar outside Moscow, military hardware and geopolitics are on display.
By Simon Shuster / Moscow | July 1, 2012 | Time Mag
“This weapon is perfect for close-quarters combat, house to house,” the Russian arms dealer explains, gently passing a silencer-equipped assault rifle, the AK-104, to the official from Syria, who brings the gun’s sight level with his eye and aims it across pavilion C3 of Russia‘s semi-annual arms bazaar. Serving as their translator is Colonel Isam Ibrahim As’saadi, the military attache at the Syrian embassy in Moscow, who chaperones the three officials in town from Damascus for a bit of military shopping. It is a rare opportunity for them. With their country sinking into a civil war, most of the world’s top arms-dealing nations have banned sales to the Syrian government. So the delegates enjoy themselves in Moscow. They spend more than an hour talking to the Kalashnikov salesman, Andrei Vishnyakov, head of marketing for Izhmash, the company that created the AK-47. Then they stroll over to other displays spread out across the giant Zhukovsky airfield near Moscow. They peruse tanks, touch rocket launchers, study cruise missiles and other heavy artillery, all of which stand gleaming in the summer sun like so many sports cars at a dealership. All of it is for sale.
Welcome to Russia’s premier weapons expo, the deceptively titled Forum of Technologies in Machine Building, a military smorgasbord for the dictators of the world that Russian President Vladimir Putin opened in 2010. Delegations from Iran, Zimbabwe, Bahrain, Pakistan and Uganda, among many others, came to the fair last week, but the Syrian presence was the most controversial. Since the 1950s, when it first became a client state of the Soviet Union, Syria has purchased almost all of its weapons from Russia, making it a cherished customer. Over the past 16 months, Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have used these weapons to brutally crush a homegrown rebellion, with the death toll now estimated at 14,000, including thousands of women and children. The rest of the Arab world has joined with the West in condemning these massacres, but that has not stopped the flow of Russian arms. Indeed, the Kremlin seems willing to jeopardize its relations with Europe and the U.S. in order to defend Assad and continue to sell him weapons.
In diplomatic terms, there is nothing frustrated Western officials can do to stop them. Russia has a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, and it has repeatedly used its veto power to block any discussion of an international arms embargo against Syria. Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in May that the Russian arms sales to Syria are “reprehensible,” but they are not illegal. Diplomatic and moral pressure from the West, like the claim that Russia is aiding the murder of civilians, has not changed many minds in Moscow. “These are the guys we are rooting for,” an official with Russia’s state arms dealer, Rosoboronexport, told TIME on Thursday while showing the Syrian delegates a set of truck-mounted rocket launchers.
1-3
The Syrians seemed impressed, even climbing into the truck to look around before warmly shaking hands with the Russians and moving on to the other exhibits. Apart from Col. As’saadi, the military attache, the Syrian delegates refused to give their names or answer TIME’s questions. The man whom As’saadi identified as the head of the delegation would only say that he had flown in from Damascas specifically to attend the fair. “That shows a serious intention to buy,” says Hugh Griffiths, an arms trafficking expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks the global weapons market. It was, however, impossible to tell what if anything the Syrians purchased. Those deals are struck behind closed doors. But if they did end up buying the assault rifles or armored vehicles that they spent hours studying on Thursday, it would cast serious doubt on the official line from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which has said that only defensive weapons, like anti-aircraft missiles, are being sold to Syria, none of which could be used against civilians. The “house-to-house” capabilities that Vishnyakov touted at the Kalashnikov exhibit undermined the Ministry’s claim.
The organizer of the arms expo, which included a “tank ballet” choreographed by the Bolshoi Theater, is the Russian weapons and engineering conglomerate Russian Technologies. The company is headed by Sergei Chemezov, an old friend of Putin’s from the KGB. In the 1980s, both men worked as KGB spies in the East German city of Dresden, and after Putin became President in 2000, he gradually transferred Russia’s largest state-owned machine-building and weapons firms to Chemezov’s corporation. Russian Technologies now controls around 600 companies and thousands of factories, producing everything from cars and planes to military hardware. But the jewel in its crown is Rosoboronexport, the only company in Russia that can legally sell arms abroad. Last year, the company sold more than $11 billion in arms worldwide, making Russia the world’s second largest weapons dealer after the United States. As of 2011, Russia had about $4 billion in outstanding weapons contracts with Syria, including sales of Buk-M2E surface to air missiles, Pansir-S1 rocket complexes and Mig-29 fighter jets.
“This is one of our traditional markets,” says Anatoly Isaykin, the general director of Rosoboronexport, who spoke to TIME at the arms expo. Isaykin, who was also a career KGB officer before becoming Russia’s top arms dealer, says the Syria issue is being blown out of proportion, perhaps as part of a western conspiracy to blacken his company’s name. “Around these hotspots, efforts are made to present our organization, Rosoboronexport, as some kind of evil genius who is trying to pour kerosine on the fire,” Isaykin says. “I think this is part of the political game.” All of the West’s efforts to stop Russia from selling weapons to Syria, he says, amount to nothing more than unfair competition. “Of course I mean competition in the broadest sense,” Isaykin says. “It always existed and it will continue to exist. So if Russia loses a market, its competitors have a chance to gain.”
Alexander Golts, a military expert in Moscow, says this Manichean view of the world is what drives Russia to arm Assad. “The root motivation here is ideology, not finances,” Golts says. “It is the ideology of Cold War realpolitik, where you had two sides sitting at the chessboard and moving pieces around. That is how Putin still sees the world.” As for the Syrians, they have lots of reasons to keep buying Russian arms even if they don’t really need them. “They’re desperately trying to keep Russian on board as a partner by channeling more cash to the Russians and building on that relationship,” says Griffiths.
2-3
Russia seems eager to play along, as much for the cash as the geopolitical dividends. Throughout the Arab Spring revolts, which many in Moscow saw as a U.S.-led conspiracy to carve up the Middle East, Putin grew increasingly angry over western meddling in the region. In 2010, when Putin opened the first ever arms bazaar at the Zhukovsky airfield, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh flew in to attend, and Putin personally showed him around. As they passed the display of the T-90 tank with reporters in tow, Putin turned to Saleh and said, “That’s what you’ve got to buy.” He did not do this with the aim of making a profit, Golts suggests, but to cement Russia’s influence in Yemen. A weapons deal is not a simple cash-and-carry arrangement. It requires the buyer and seller to maintain stable relations, so that the weapons can be installed, serviced and repaired. The seller will often provide ammunition and training for years. “This is a serious bond,” Golts says.
The bond between Russia and Yemen was put at risk by the Arab Spring revolts, which erupted in Yemen a year after Putin’s stroll with Saleh through the arms bazaar in 2010. That revolution quickly turned violent, and Saleh ceded power soon after he was wounded in a rebel rocket attack last June, costing Putin one of his allies — albeit a country that played on U.S. ties and anxieties
in the Arab peninsula as well. months later, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, another client of Russian arms dealers, was killed by rebels who had support from NATO bombing raids. Putin was outraged, especially after images of Gaddafi’s bloody corpse appeared in the media. “Who gave them the right to do this?” he snapped at a press conference in Denmark, referring to NATO’s role in the Libyan revolution. “Why did they have to get involved in this armed conflict? What, is there a shortage of crooked regimes in the world? Are we going to interfere in every domestic conflict? … You have to let people resolve their own problems.”
After the war in Libya, Russia drew a line. It began blocking all U.N. efforts to force Assad down the same road as Gaddafi and Saleh, and as foreign countries began arming rebels in Syria, Russia continued supplying Assad. “None of these events will influence our relationships with our traditional markets in any way,” says Rosoboronexport’s Isaykin. Judging by the crowd at the arms bazaar — packed with military men from Asia, Africa and the Middle East — Russia still has plenty of loyal customers around the world. As Russia’s tanks performed their ballet in a mock battle field on Thursday, the foreign delegates looked on, happy patrons of the art of war. That evening, after two long days of shopping, the Syrian delegates walked toward the parking lot with bags full of pamphlets and promotional videos for Russian military hardware. No doubt they were imagining how useful it could be back home.
3-3
ロシア社会と日本の社会はあまり違わないことにきずく。ただ神道の儀式を、パンクバンドが宗教と政治の癒着を抗議のために妨害したという話を聞かない。笑
****
Russia's "Pussy Riot" on trial for cathedral protest
A supporter of female punk band ''Pussy Riot'' waits outside the court where three members of the band are on trial in Moscow July 30, 2012. =写真
By Alissa de Carbonnel
MOSCOW | Mon Jul 30, 2012 4:02pm EDT
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Three women who protested against Vladimir Putin in a "punk prayer" on the altar of Russia's main cathedral went on trial on Monday in a case seen as a test of the longtime leader's treatment of dissent during a new presidential term.
The women from the band "Pussy Riot" face up to seven years in prison for an unsanctioned performance in February in which they entered Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral, ascended the altar and called on the Virgin Mary to "throw Putin out!"
Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, were brought to Moscow's Khamovniki court for Russia's highest-profile trial since former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was convicted for a second time in 2010, in the same courtroom.
Supporters chanted "Girls, we're with you!" and "Victory!" as the women, each handcuffed by the wrist to a female officer, were escorted from a police van into the courthouse.
"We did not want to offend anybody," Tolokonnikova said from the same metal and clear-plastic courtroom cage where Khodorkovsky sat with his business partner during their trial.
"Our motives were exclusively political."
The stunt was designed to highlight the close relationship between the dominant Russian Orthodox Church and former KGB officer Putin, then prime minister, whose campaign to return to the presidency in a March election was backed clearly, if informally, by the leader of the church, Patriarch Kirill.
The protest offended many believers and left the church leadership incensed. The church, which has enjoyed a big revival since the demise of the Communist Soviet Union in 1991 and is seeking more influence on secular life, cast the performance as part of a sinister campaign by "anti-Russian forces".
The women, who have been charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility, have said many times they meant no offence.
1-3
In opening statements read by a defense lawyer, who sometimes struggled with the handwritten texts, they said they were protesting against Kirill's political support for Putin and had no animosity toward the church or the faithful.
"I have never had such feelings towards anyone in the world," Tolokonnikova said in her statement, describing the charge of religious hatred as "wildly harsh".
"We are not enemies of Christianity. The opinion of Orthodox believers is important to us and we want all of them to be on our side - on the side of anti-authoritarian civil activists," she said. "Our performance contained no aggression toward the public - only a desperate desire to change the situation in Russia for the better."
Pussy Riot burst onto the scene this winter with angry lyrics and surprise performances, including one on Red Square outside the Kremlin, that went viral on the Internet.
The band members see themselves as the avant-garde of a disenchanted generation looking for creative ways to show dissatisfaction with Putin's 12-year dominance of politics.
"I thought the church loved all its children, but it seems the church loves only those children who love Putin," Alyokhina's statement said.
The women looked thinner and paler than they did when they were jailed following the performance in late February, shortly before Putin, in power as president from 2000-2008 and then as prime minister, won a six-year presidential term on March 4.
"She looks like she has been on a long hunger strike," Stanislav Samutsevich said of his daughter. "I think this is like an inquisition, like mockery."
A reporter on state-run TV presented a different picture, focusing on occasional smiles and chuckles, by the women, who whispered to each other as a prosecutor read the charges.
"Look at their faces; they are laughing and joking," the reporter said on the news, adding that a viewer might think they were "continuing the action" they carried out at the cathedral.
Prosecutors asked for the trial, which was streamed live on the Internet, to be closed to the public and the media. The judge rejected the motion but ordered live streaming shut off during witness testimony and some other proceedings.
A group of conservative Russian writers called on Monday for tough punishment. Kremlin opponents, rights activists and the defendants say the charges are politically motivated.
The prosecution marked "the start of a campaign of authoritarian, repressive measures aimed to ... spread fear among politically active citizens," Samutsevich said in her statement, read out by defense lawyer Violetta Volkova.
2-3
The performance was part of a lively protest movement that at its peak saw 100,000 people turn out for rallies in Moscow, some of the largest in Russia since the Soviet Union's demise.
The prosecution dismissed accusations of political motives.
"This is not a question of our parliamentary or presidential elections, but a criminal case about ... banal hooliganism with a religious motive," said Larisa Pavlova, who represents Lyubov Sokologorskaya, one of several people who work at the cathedral and are appearing at the trial as "victims" of Pussy Riot.
Sokologorskaya, who described herself as a "profound believer", said only clerics were allowed at the altar and that the defendants' bare shoulders, short skirts and "aggressive" dance moves violated church rules and offended the faithful.
"When I talk about this event, my heart hurts. It hurts that this is possible in our country," she said. "Their punishment must be adequate so that never again is such a thing repeated."
The trial comes as Putin, who is 59 and has not ruled out seeking another term in 2018, tries to rein in opponents who hope to reignite the street protest movement this autumn.
On Monday, Putin signed a law enacting stricter punishment for defamation. That follows recent laws tightening controls on foreign-funded civil rights groups and sharply raising fines for violations of public order at street rallies.
Opposition leaders including anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny and socialite Ksenia Sobchak have had their homes searched and faced repeated rounds of questioning over violence at a protest on the eve of Putin's inauguration on May 7.
Lawyers for Navalny say investigators are preparing to charge him, in a separate case, with a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. He was summoned to the federal Investigative Committee on Monday and told to return on Tuesday.
Amnesty International said the Pussy Riot performers "must be released immediately" and that the prison terms they face if convicted are "wildly out of all proportion."
"They dared to attack the two pillars of the modern Russian establishment - the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church," regional program director John Dalhuisen said in a statement.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev dismissed criticism of the case in remarks published on Monday, saying the trial was a "serious ordeal" for the defendants and their families but that "one should be calm about it" and await the outcome.
Whether the group's performance crossed the line from a "moral misdemeanor" to a crime was "up to the court to decide," Medvedev, in London for the Olympics, told the Times newspaper in an interview posted on the Russian government website.
A defense lawyer for the musicians, Nikolai Polozov, said Medvedev's comments were aimed at putting pressure on the court to "punish blasphemers".
"The court is being very one-sided, slanted towards the prosecution, which of course in our view is motivated exclusively by political bias in this case," he said.
Few Russians believe the country's courts are independent, and Medvedev acknowledged during his 2008-2012 presidency that they were subject to political pressure.
(Additional reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, Writing by Steve Gutterman, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Peter Graff)
3-3
Russia stripped of Beijing 2008 4x400m women's silver medal
Fri Aug 19, 2016 9:52pm BST Reuters
Members of Russia's women's 4 x 400 relay team pose with their silver medals during the medal ceremony of the athletics competition in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 23, 2008. The members of the team are Yulia Gushchina, Liudmila Litvinova,... REUTERS/Mike Blake (CHINA)
By Karolos Grohmann | RIO DE JANEIRO
Russia have been stripped of the 4x400m women's relay silver medal from the Beijing Olympics after Anastasia Kapachinskaya tested positive for a steroid in a re-test of her sample, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Friday.
"Re-analysis of Kapachinskaya’s samples from Beijing 2008 resulted in a positive test for the prohibited substances stanozolol and dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (turinabol)," the IOC said.
Jamaica were third and Belarus finished in fourth place in the Beijing race.
"The IAAF (international athletics federation) is requested to modify the results of the above-mentioned events accordingly and to consider any further action within its own competence," the IOC said.
Kapachinskaya was also disqualified from her 400m run where she had placed fifth.
Her Russian team mates Alexander Pogorelov, who was fourth in the decathlon, and shotputter Ivan Yushkov also had their Beijing Games results canceled out after testing positive for the same substance.
Yushkov was 10th in his event eight years ago.
Earlier this week Russia were ordered to return their gold medals from the 4x100m women's relay from the same Games after Yulia Chermoshanskaya also tested positive in a re-test.
The IOC stores samples for a decade to test with newer methods or for new substances. The ruling body conducted targeted re-tests before the Rio Olympics.
A total of 98 samples were positive in reanalysis of samples from both the Beijing Games and the 2012 London Olympics as the IOC attempted to root out cheats and stop them from going to the Rio Games.
Russia's track and field team, with the exception of one athlete based in the United States, were banned from the Rio Games over what the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said was a state-backed doping program.
