Tag Archives: moscow

As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes

by Myrna Posted on September 18, 2014

A small but growing movement is working to make it easier to recycle household waste, and advocates say Moscow’s brimming landfills could use the relief. Visit link:   As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes ; ; ;

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As Moscow’s Landfills Near Limits, Recyclers Do Whatever It Takes

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Russian Sanctions Mostly Hitting Russian Consumers

by TandyChavers Posted on August 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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The BBC reports on how those Russian sanctions against Western food have put the squeeze on European and American suppliers:

Moscow officials say frozen fish prices in the capital’s major supermarkets have risen by 6%, milk by 5.3% and an average cheese costs 4.4% more than it did before the 7 August ban took effect. Russia has banned imports of those basic foods, as well as meat and many other products, from Western countries, Australia and Japan. It is retaliation for the West’s sanctions on Russia over the revolt by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

And it is not just Moscow. On the island of Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east, officials say the price of chicken thighs has soared 60%. Before the sanctions these were among the cheapest and most popular meat products in Russia.

Oops. Sorry about that. It’s actually Russian consumers who are paying the price. And for now, that seems to be OK:

Polls show that the vast majority of Russians approve of the sanctions against Western food. They have been told by government officials and state-controlled TV that the embargo will not affect prices, and that it will actually allow Russia’s own agriculture to flourish. And that message is being believed.

At a guess, Russian consumers aren’t very different from American consumers. Nationalistic pride will work for a while, as people accept higher prices as the cost of victory against whoever they’re fighting at the moment. But that won’t last any longer in Russia than it does in America. Give it a few months and public opinion is likely to turn decidedly surly. Who really cares about those damn Ukrainians anyway? They’re just a bunch of malcontents and always have been, amirite?

This is why Vladimir Putin needs a quick victory. The fact that he’s not getting it will eventually prompt him to either (a) quietly give up, or (b) go all in. Unfortunately, there’s really no telling which it will be.

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Russian Sanctions Mostly Hitting Russian Consumers

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The Scorecard in Ukraine Is Murkier Than Most Pundits Think

by VirginiaGwl Posted on May 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Doyle McManus says that Vladimir Putin has played a shrewd game in Ukraine:

Here’s the score card: Putin has pocketed Crimea, the first territory in Europe to be seized by force since World War II. (On paper, the United States and the European Union are still demanding that he give the peninsula back to Ukraine, but in private, their leaders concede that’s unlikely to happen.) He has forced the European Union to put the brakes on Ukraine’s progress toward membership in the Western economic club. He has kept most of Russia’s business with the West intact and signed a big new natural gas deal with China. Now all he has to do is wait for Western attention to Ukraine’s travails to wane, as it probably will.

….”Even Petro Poroshenko is saying it’s time for normalization with Moscow,” she noted. “He knows who’s going to call the shots over Ukraine’s future: not Brussels, not Washington. It’s Moscow.”

This isn’t a ridiculous read of the situation, but I think it’s missing something key: compared to what? Sure, Putin might have found a way to salvage his disastrous intervention in Ukraine, but the right way to look at this is to compare Russia’s situation now to its situation in, say, October of last year. It’s true that Putin scuttled Ukraine’s free-trade deal with the EU, but look at the fallout. In order to turn things around after his incompetent diplomatic efforts failed, Putin was forced to intervene so clumsily that it inspired the Maidan protests that ended up causing Ukraine’s president to flee. He massed troops on Ukraine’s borders and used Russian special forces—again, disguised so clumsily that no one was fooled for even a second—to try to force a secession of the east. When that failed, Putin was forced to back down. He can pretend that he never had any intention of using military force in the first place, but no one takes that seriously and he knows it. His threat failed because the Russian military is weak and the American/EU sanctions had already begun to bite. He was hoping for a bloodless takeover, but he miscalculated badly and failed to get it.

So what’s the scorecard? On the plus side, Putin has Crimea. Maybe all by itself that was worth it—and if he’d been smart enough to stop there he might have come out ahead. But on the downside, Putin has demonstrated once again that Russia isn’t a reliable supplier of natural gas and will use it as a club whenever it feels like it. He’s earned the enmity of most of his neighbors. He’s gained nothing in Ukraine except the end of the EU association agreement, which was never a huge threat in the first place and will probably end up being implemented piecemeal over the next few years anyway. He’s damaged the Russian economy and set back relations with Europe. And sure, Poroshenko is saying it’s time for normalization with Moscow, but Putin had that back when Viktor Yanukovych was president.

So….Crimea. And possibly a slowdown in the pace of Ukraine’s integration with the West. That’s about it. But I wouldn’t underestimate the cost of this to Putin. Threats of military force are flashy, but unless you’re willing to back them up regularly, they do a lot more harm than good. I’m not sure why so many people who are generally clear-sighted about the drawbacks of military action suddenly get so smitten by it when it’s wielded by a thug like Putin. Hell, he doesn’t even use it well.

When the dust settles, it’s hard to see Putin gaining much from all this in the places that count. Regardless of the brave face they put on it, I’ll bet there aren’t many people in the inner sanctums of the Kremlin who think of the past six months as much of a triumph for Russia.

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The Scorecard in Ukraine Is Murkier Than Most Pundits Think

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Paradox

by 0ge7rota Posted on May 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Fareed Zakaria is the latest columnist to acknowledge that although President Obama’s foreign policy decisions have been largely correct, they’ve been sadly unaccompanied by any magic powers:

President Obama has not made a major mistake. He has done a skillful job steering the United States out of the muddy waters he inherited — Iraq, Afghanistan — and resisted plunging the country into another major conflict.

….Obama’s strategy of putting pressure on Moscow, using targeted sanctions and rallying support in Europe is the right one — and might even be showing some signs of paying off.

….From the Asia pivot to new trade deals to Russian sanctions, Obama has put forward an agenda that is ambitious and important, but he approaches it cautiously, as if his heart is not in it, seemingly pulled along by events rather than shaping them. Once more, with feeling, Mr. President!

I’ll concede that as a political partisan, maybe I’m cutting Obama too much slack. But I still wonder what all these critics want. I don’t mean the Bill Kristols and John McCains of the world. I know what they want: maximum confrontation, maximum bluster, and maximum military intervention. But what about the others? Like Zakaria, they sort of grudgingly recognize that Obama’s actual foreign policy actions have been about as good as they could have been, and yet they’re still unhappy. They want inspiration, dammit! They want the rest of the world to fall immediately into line. They want victory! That’s how it happens in the movies, after all. The president gives a big speech, and everyone swoons.

I wonder: Has any president in history been so widely criticized for doing everything right but not crowing loudly enough about it? I mean, it’s nice to think that a silver tongue would have gotten congressional Republicans to support intervention in Syria and Germans to approve harsher sanctions against Russia, but it’s just not so. I think everyone knows this perfectly well, but we find it so frustrating that we blame Obama for it anyway. It’s as if we’re all five-year-olds.

Which, come to think of it, maybe we are. We want this circle squared—triumph on every front but without any actual exercise of military power—and when we don’t get it we demand someone to blame, logic be damned. Before long we’re going to be holding Obama responsible for the fact that pi doesn’t equal three.

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Paradox

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No, Our Oil and Gas Production Did Not Give Us an Advantage During the Crimea Crisis

by TeddyAraujo Posted on April 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Of all the preposterous, irresponsible headlines that have appeared on the front page of the New York Timesin recent years, few have exceeded the inanity of this one from early March: “US Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin.” The article by normally reliable reporters Coral Davenport and Steven Erlanger suggested that, by sending our surplus natural gas to Europe and Ukraine in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the United States could help reduce the region’s heavy reliance on Russian gas and thereby stiffen its resistance to Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior.

Forget that the United States currently lacks a capacity to export LNG to Europe, and will not be able to do so on a significant scale until the 2020s. Forget that Ukraine lacks any LNG receiving facilities and is unlikely to acquire any, as its only coastline is on the Black Sea, in areas dominated by Russian speakers with loyalties to Moscow. Forget as well that any future US exports will be funneled into the international marketplace, and so will favorsales to Asia where gas prices are 50% higher than in Europe. Just focus on the article’s central reportorial flaw: it fails to identify a single reason why future American LNG exports (which could wind up anywhere) would have any influence whatsoever on the Russian president’s behavior.

The only way to understand the strangeness of this is to assume that the editors of the Times, like senior politicians in both parties, have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in oil and gas production that they have lost their senses.

As domestic output of oil and gas has increased in recent years—largely through the use of fracking to exploit hitherto impenetrable shale deposits—many policymakers have concluded that the United States is better positioned to throw its weight around in the world. “Increasing US energy supplies,” said then-presidential security adviser Tom Donilon in April 2013, “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.” Leaders in Congress on both sides of the aisle have voiced similar views.

The impression one gets from all this balderdash is that increased oil and gas output—like an extra dose of testosterone—will somehow bolster the will and confidence of American officials when confronting their foreign counterparts. One former White House official cited by Davenport and Erlanger caught the mood of the moment perfectly: “We’re engaging from a different position with respect to Russia because we’re a much larger energy producer.”

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No, Our Oil and Gas Production Did Not Give Us an Advantage During the Crimea Crisis

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Conflict in Crimea: Russia Boosts Intervention in Ukraine Prior to Referendum

by AntoineRuggles Posted on March 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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This article is being updated as news breaks. Click here for the latest.

Russia has deployed 10,000 troops to multiple locations along the Ukraine-Russia border, deepening fears that the simmering crisis in the Crimean peninsula is about to escalate into full-scale warfare. In London on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to broker a last-minute deal with Russia’s foreign minister to ratchet down the crisis, but their talks “ended inconclusively,” according to the New York Times. This weekend, voters in Crimea, an autonomous region of about 2 million in southeastern Ukraine, will vote on a referendum that would give citizens the option of asserting independence from Ukraine, or becoming part of Russia. (Remaining part of Ukraine isn’t an option.) The United States and European Union leaders have called the referendum illegal; Russia backs it. If Crimea votes to join Russia—which the Obama administration expects it to do—Russia could then use the results as justification for using force in the region. On Friday, Kerry said that Russia should respect the results of the referendum without proceeding with “back-door annexation,” which would bring international consequences. Here’s what you need to know about the current state of play. Check back frequently, since we’ll update this post as events unfold.

Western leaders are furious: On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly slammed Russia’s actions, warning Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he continues intervening in Ukrainian affairs, “It will cause massive damage to Russia, both economically and politically.” She also accused Russia of breaking international law by deploying troops and warned that “the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not up for discussion.” President Obama also warned Russia that “if it continues on the path that it is on, not only us but the international community, the European Union and others will be forced to apply a cost to Russia’s violations of international law.” This week, a US Senate panel approved legislation that would impose strict sanctions—including freezing assets and denying visas—on Russians and anyone else involved in undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty. Those sanctions could be enacted as early as Monday, if Crimea chooses to secede.

If Crimea joins Russia, it could take Ukrainian gas and oil reserves with it: Russian exports account for about one-third of Europe’s gas consumption and those pipelines run smack through Ukraine. As Mother Jones‘ James West points out, “Russia has long been able to use Ukraine as an energy choke point.” On Thursday, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported that authorities in Crimea have been securing offshore gas and oil in the region. Crimean parliamentary speaker Vladimir Konstantinov reportedly said: “These deposits and the platform fully become the property of the Republic of Crimea…We have guarded them. These are our fields and we will fight for them.”

Putin is cracking down on Russian press: Julia Ioffe reports in The New Republic:

What began just days before the Olympics with a Kremlin attack on Dozhd, the last independent television station in Russia, has now extended to Lenta.ru, arguably the best news site in Russia. On Wednesday, the site’s editor-in-chief was fired and replaced with a Kremlin loyalist, and the whole staff quit in protest. Yesterday, the Kremlin went full-China on the Internet, the holy of holies of the Russian opposition. Using some flimsy legal pretexts, it banned access to various oppositional news sites, to the website of Moscow’s biggest radio station, and to the blog of Alexey Navalny, who is currently under house arrest.

Russia maintains that it’s not going to invade: Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is not planning to annex Crimea and he would leave it up to citizens in the region to determine their future. He also said force would only be used as “a last resort.”â&#128;&#139; As recently as Friday, Russian officials have maintained that an invasion is still off the table:

But Western leaders aren’t optimistic that Putin will back down from annexing Crimea, after the referendum vote. According to the New York Times, “As of Friday, there had been no sign that President Vladimir V. Putin was prepared to take the ‘off ramp’ that the Obama administration has repeatedly offered.â&#128;&#139;” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov declared on Friday that Russia and the United States “have no common vision” about the crisis.

UPDATE, March 14, 2014, 3:00 PM EDT (Dana Liebelson): The Pentagon is sending 25,000 ready-to-eat meals to Ukraine, according to the Associated Press. Two US representatives have asked President Obama to put names of Russian officials responsible for human rights abuses on the Magnitsky list, a public list of Russians created in 2012 as part of the Magnitsky Act, to punish Russian officials who have committed human rights violations. Members of the list are prohibited from entering the US or using the US banking system.

UPDATE 2, March 14, 2014, 3:35 PM EDT (Hannah Levintova): Mimicking the language used to justify their invasion of Crimea, the Russian foreign ministry has issued a warning that they reserve the right to intervene in the city of Donetsk to protect lives after a series of clashes Thursday night led to at least one death and dozens of injuries.

Donetsk is a primarily Russian-speaking city in eastern Ukraine, not far from the Russian border. The clashes began yesterday after hundreds of demonstrators chanting Pro-Russian slogans broke through a police cordon and stormed a separate group protesting Russia’s invasion of Crimea and calling for “a united Ukraine.”

Here’s video of the incident heating up:

UPDATE 3, March 14, 2014, 8:06 PM EDT (Eric Wuestewald): Another two people were reportedly killed and five injured during clashes in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv Friday. There have been conflicting reports over who was injured and who was responsible for the attack, but many are alleging armed pro-Russian groups or the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector may have provoked the attack.

Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city after Kiev, and historically, was the country’s first Soviet capital. Like Donetsk, it’s also close to the Russian border. As a result, large pro-Russian rallies have been common, which some are predicting could become a litmus test for the future direction of the country.

Update 4, March 15, 2014, 4:15 PM EDT (Dana Liebelson): 60 Russian troops in six helicopters have crossed into Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, taking control of the village of Strilkove and leading to the first reports of Russian invasion outside of Crimea. The New York Times reports that troops also seized a gas plant and “the action was Russia’s most provocative since its forces took over Crimea two weeks ago.” Ukraine’s acting leader Oleksander Turchinov said: “The situation is very dangerous. I’m not exaggerating. There is a real danger from threats of invasion of Ukrainian territory. We will reconvene on Monday at 10am.”

Update 5, March 15, 4:45 PM EDT (Hannah Levintova): Earlier today, 50,000 people took part in a “peace march” in Moscow against Russia’s intervention in Crimea. Protestors marched waving both Russian and Ukrainian flags, and then gathered on the Prospect Sakharova, where massive anti-Putin rallies took place in 2012. Some protestors chanted: “The main enemy is the Kremlin. No to fascism, no to imperialism.”

Here’s a Russian-language newscast showing the march:

Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who stepped down from his post in February, wrote a statement today about the situation in Ukraine on Facebook. Here’s an excerpt:

Putin’s recent decisions represent a giant step backwards. Tragically, we are entering a new period with some important differences, but many similarities to the Cold War. The ideological struggle between autocracy and democracy is resurgent. Protection of European countries from Russian aggression is paramount again. Shoring up vulnerable states , including first and foremost Ukraine, must become a top priority again for the US and Europe. And doing business with Russian companies will once again become politicized. Most tragically, in seeking to isolate the Russian regime, many Russians with no connection to the government will also suffer the effects of isolation. My only hope is that this dark period will not last as long as the last Cold War.

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Conflict in Crimea: Russia Boosts Intervention in Ukraine Prior to Referendum

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How US Evangelicals Helped Create Russia’s Anti-Gay Movement

by IolaHopkins Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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In November 2010, Russia’s Sanctity of Motherhood organization kicked off its first-ever national conference. The theme, according to its organizers, was urgent: solving “the crisis of traditional family values” in a modernizing Russia. The day opened with a sextet leading 1,000 swaying attendees in a prayer. Some made the sign of the cross, others bowed or raised their arms to the sky before settling into the plush red and gold seats of the conference hall at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.

On the second morning of the conference, the only American in attendance, a tall, collected man, stepped up for his speech. Larry Jacobs, vice president of the Rockford, Illinois-based World Congress of Families (WCF), an umbrella organization for the US religious right’s heavy hitters, told the audience that American evangelicals had a 40-year track record of “defending life and family” and they hoped to be “true allies” in Russia’s traditional values crusade.

The gathering marked the beginning of the family values fervor that has swept Russia in recent years. Warning that low birth rates are a threat to the long-term survival of the Russian people, politicians have been pushing to restrict abortion and encourage bigger families. Among the movement’s successes is a law that passed last summer and garnered global outrage in the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics, banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,” a vague term that has been seen as effectively criminalizing any public expression of same-sex relationships.

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How US Evangelicals Helped Create Russia’s Anti-Gay Movement

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Thai tourist paradise wrecked by oil spill

by Steven Posted on July 30, 2013

Thai tourist paradise wrecked by oil spill

By John Upton

LisaRoxy

Coconut Bay before the oil spill.

What could be lovelier than a vacation at Thailand’s Coconut Bay?

Right now, just about anything.

Thousands of gallons of crude gushed from a ruptured pipeline into the Gulf of Thailand over the weekend, blackening shorelines that had recently been bustling with tourists. Some beaches have been closed; others have simply been deserted.

Chemical dispersants have been dumped from airplanes over the slick, which should be helping to break up the oil but also potentially sickening workers, visitors, fish, and other wildlife.

The paradise-like island of Koh Samet, a tourist hub that’s four hours by bus and boat from Bangkok, has been hit hard. An official told reporters that tourism there had been impacted in “an extreme way.” Officials fear that the slick could reach central Thailand. From Reuters:

Worst hit was the beach at Ao Prao, or Coconut Bay, but tourists elsewhere on the island were getting out.

“We’re staying on another beach but we’re not taking any chances. We are checking out,” Daria Volkov, a tourist from Moscow, told Reuters.

Koh Samet, known for its beaches and clear, warm sea, is thronged by domestic and foreign tourists, thanks to its proximity to Bangkok.

“Tourists are leaving, some have cancelled their bookings,” said Chairat Trirattanajarasporn, chairman of the provincial tourist association.

Pipeline owner PTT Global Chemical Pcl, which is part of state-controlled PTT Pcl, Thailand’s biggest energy firm, has apologized for the spill and says the cleanup could take several more days. That prediction seems as ludicrous as its claim that just 13,000 gallons of oil spilled from the pipe. If the cleanup is stopped after just several days, there will be a lot of oil left behind on sandy shorelines.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Thai tourist paradise wrecked by oil spill

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