|
Some excerpts from different sources (my tr.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Rome, 06/11/2003 18:42 - Adnkronos Berlusconi defends Putin on Chechnya and Yukos [...] Silvio Berlusconi defends decisively the position of Russia on Chechnyaand the Yukos issue, talking at the press conference which concludedthe Russia-EU summit at Villa Madama. "Excuse me", he said [after hisdefence] for being so long in his intervention and then taking directlyto Putin he added, "I will send you my parcel of one euro as your nonrequested defending lawyer". "I will pay it with pleasure", said Putin. On Chechnya, Berlusconi defends vehemently Putin: "Now really, as afriend of the Russian Federation, but especially as personal friend andestimator of Putin, let us refrain from spreading out legends and letus look upon facts", because only in this way "a correct interpretationof things can be done". [...] -------------------------------------------------------------------- ASCA - Berlsuconi defends Putin and attacks the [Italian] press: Prodi disputes. During the press conference which closed the Russia-EU summit, ajournalist asked the president of the Russian Federation and the EUheads to value the rule of law in Russia after the Yukos case, with its"excellent" [of VIP's] arrests, and the situation in Chechnya.Berlusconi does not leave any time to Putin to answer, stops himplacing his hand on the Russian President's one and attacks the press,which is guilty of "expressing judgments not based on facts". [...] With reference on the political situation of the [Caucasian] regionBerlusconi remembered that "there has been a referendum where not 10,20 or 30%, but even 80% of the population has expressed their favor" tobe dependent from Moscow. "Eventually we, as EU, should have sentinspectors, if there was an uncertainty in the correctness of theelection", said Berlusconi and added: "But this haven't been done". [...] [Accusations to the Italian press which is "hostile" to him follows.Prodi answers from distance: "I hope that he is better informed on thesituation in Russia than the Italian one".] ------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday November 06, 2003 at 05:33 PM La Repubblica [through indymedia] [...] On Chechnya Berlusconi has no doubts: "In Chechnya there was aterrorism activity with many attacks against Russian citizens without acorrespondent answer". On the contrary, says Berlusconi, the RussianFederation organized a democratic referendum. It is the international press which gives a falsified image of theChechen situation. According to the premier we must stop "the diffusionof legends and look at the reality of facts", because there has been areferendum where 80 per cent of the voters "decided democratically tobecome part of the Russian Federation". [...passage omitted on press freedom in Italy: the press is againsthim, etc. But in connection to this....] The same problem emerges in Russia - he added looking at Putin andmaking reference to the Yukos case - because the international pressmedia speak about an intervention against the rule of law. "Instead inthat country some oil industries did not respect the laws. For thisreason the Russian Federation is showing a great effort of transparencythat finds an outcome in the action of the magistracy". "In thisinitiative - added Berlusconi - I see from side of Moscow the will ofmaintaining the rule of law of liberty and free market". [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 Nov. 2003, 13:59 (Nap/Gs/Adnkronos) Chechnya: Putin asks help to the EU The [Italian EU] presidency is open to a political solution Roma, 6 nov. (Adnkronos) - President Vladimir Putin asked help to the EU to find a solution forthe Chechen issue, an issue, he said, which is born from a non Chechenterrorist aggression of nearby nations. This is what sources of the EUpresidency said, during the summit with Russia in Rome. Putinunderlined that "now in Chechnya things are going better, there is nowar, there has been an important referendum , but in order to lookforward Europe must help us". The EU presidency, after havingunderlined that from the referendum a clear answer emerged, confirmedEurope's attention on the development of the situation and is availablefor a peaceful and agreed solution. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment: Always I believe we have touched the bottom, and always I discover howI was wrong. I only ask myself if Berlusconi, besides from being acriminal fascist, is also stupid. Does this man really want to beremembered in future history books as Petain and Chamberlain... or evenworse?? M.M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Berlusconi, there is no politcal use by the magistracy "PUTIN HAS A VERY CLEAR CONCEPT ON THE DIVISION OF POWERS" Roma, 5 nov. (Adnkronos) - "You know how I always myself use to battle against a political use of the magistracy. But in this case, that of Yukos, one can not speak about a political use of it". This is what Silvio Berlusconi underlined in a press conference with Vladimir Putin at Tempio Adriano. The premier said that during the meeting with the Kremlin's leader also the case of Yukos was discussed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment: If Berlusconi would have to do today with the "clearness of concept on the division of powers" of the juridical system he is now praising he would have been buried 100 meters under earth by the very same system. M.M. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ciampi: Putin's reforms feed the democratic progress in Russia From an excerpt of "At the eve of the Italian-Russian summit, Putin and Ciampi [Italian President] pass over Yukos", by Roberto Landucci. ROMA (Reuters) - 13:17 "Russia made significant progresses in the developments of its own economy", said today Ciampi in front of journalists, reading a declaration after his meeting with the Russian President. These results "would not have been possible without the profound reforms advocated by president Putin. Their success feeds the economic, social and democratic progress of Russia." Wednesday, November 5 2003, 19:21 (Vam/Gs/Adnkronos) Italy-Russia: Berlusconi, Putin is a secure guide for Moscow "I'M TIED TO THE LEADER OF THE KREMLIN BY A TRUE AND PROFOUND FRIENDSHIP" RomE, 5 nov. (Adnkronos) - "It is a pleasure to meet president Putin, to whom I acknowledge a great humanity, a great sageness and a capacity to look forward into the future. I think that the Russian people are very lucky in having found a secure guide in Putin that can lead the Russian Federation towards wealth". Silvio Berlusconi confirms his feeling with Vladimir Putin. And he did so in a press conference with the leader of the Kremlin at the Adrian Temple, after a long meeting of the plenary session in the frame of the Italian-Russian summit at Chigi palace (the Italian prime minister palace). ---------------------------------------------------- Comment: It seems that after Bush we have here another one who is able to look in Putin's "soul". M.M. ---------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, 5 Novembre 2003, 19:15 (Sip-Nap/Rs/Adnkronos) Putin: "BERLUSCONI MAKES UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS, BUT WITH A BALANCED APPROACH" Vladimir Putin anticipates "a little criticism" on Chechnya to the EU which, according to him, "doesn't do enough to contribute for a solution of the crises". At the eve of the EU-Russia summit of tomorrow [today 6] in Rome, the Russian President does not point his finger against all the 15 EU countries, but against a minority of the member states, which Italy does not make part of: "Some political forces use Chechnya as a mean of influence on Russia for matters different than Chechnya". On Italy, he remembered that Berlusconi has made him always "uncomfortable questions" on the situation in Chechnya, but using "a balanced approach". --------------------------------------------------------------- Comment: Where on earth Berlusconi ever made officially any "uncomfortable question" on Chechnya to Russia remains a total mystery. It is clear that there has never been nothing alike and that, behind the scenes, they simply agreed to say what the have said. M.M ---------------------------------------------------- Statement of Senator John McCain on the situation in Russia November 4, 2003 Mr. President, a creeping coup against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia is threatening the foundation of the U.S.-Russia relationship and raising the specter of a new era of cold peace between Washington and Moscow. The new authoritarianism in Russia is more than a test of America's ability to defend universal values that have taken shallow root since the Soviet empire collapsed. It presents a fundamental challenge to American interests across Eurasia. The United States cannot enjoy a normal relationship, much less a partnership, with a country that increasingly appears to have more in common with its Soviet and czarist predecessors than with the modern state Vladimir Putin claims to aspire to build. On October 25, masked Russian security agents from the FSB, the successor to the KGB, stormed Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky's private plane during a stop in Siberia. He now sits in prison awaiting trial, accused of tax evasion, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. Russia's richest man, founder and chief executive of its most successful private company, a leader in incorporating Western principles of accounting and transparency into business practice, and a generous donor to charity, Khodorkovsky had committed what in the Kremlin's eyes is the worst crime of all: supporting the political opposition to President Putin. Such an alternative center of power could threaten the Kremlin's supreme political control. Upon assuming power in 2000, President Putin announced a now-famous ultimatum to Russia's top business leaders, whose fortunes were made by acquiring control of Russian assets privatized at fire-sale prices in the 1990s. President Putin said to them: stay out of political life and keep your fortune, or risk it by engaging in political activity. Most of the oligarchs chose to remain quiet. Three did not. Business tycoons Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky were forced into exile as a result of their support for opposition political parties and free media. Mikhail Khodorkovsky actually attempted to exercise basic political freedoms guaranteed, in theory, for all Russians. He has been thrown into jail as a result. Admittedly, Messrs. Gusinsky, Berezovsky, and Khodorkovsky may not provide to proponents of democracy and free markets in Russia the most laudable personal histories upon which to wage a resolute defense of our democratic principles. But failure to defend them would acknowledge exactly what the Kremlin cynically alleges: that they are being prosecuted because of the way they made their money. What has caused these three Russian tycoons to be singled out are their activities in support of opposition political parties and free media. In reality, a concerted campaign to clean up Russian politics and society would reach into every corner of the Kremlin and every boardroom in Russia, but that is not happening. For better or for worse, there is a consensus in Russian society that the past should remain in the past as Russia moves forward. If Russian business and government leaders are in fact going to be prosecuted for their conduct a decade ago, then perhaps the former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin who assisted Stasi leaders and Eric Honnecker in oppressing the German people should answer for his crimes. Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest, like the politically motivated indictments of Berezovsky and Gusinsky, should be seen not as prosecution for financial dealings done a decade ago - which would implicate thousands of Russian businessmen and political figures - but as part of a larger contest between the forces of statist control and a liberal-oligarchic elite. Who wins will go a long way towards determining whether Russia reverts to the traditions of its czarist-imperial past or charts a new course as part of an integrating, liberal international order. The consequences of this struggle, for both the Russian people and the world, will be profound. For the Russian people, President Putin's rule has been characterized by the dismantling of Russia's independent media, a fierce crackdown on the political opposition, and the prosecution of a bloody war against Chechnya's civilian population. The ascent of former KGB officers throughout Russia's ministries and in the Kremlin has enabled Putin to use the long arm of the state to crush internal dissent, silence opposing political voices, and subdue free media. During the First Chechen War, more Russians got their news from Vladimir Gusinsky's independent NTV than from state media. Today, there is almost no free media in Russia. Intimidation, coercion, assassination of journalists, and armed raids by the security services have put most independent media outlets out of business. Beatings and assassinations of journalists recall not the new Russia but the dark legacy of the Soviet past. Those independent media outlets that remain feel forced to practice the kind of self-censorship that characterized the Soviet Union. Today, most Russians who read newspapers or tune into television or radio hear only the voice of the Russian state - as they did under totalitarian rule. In a land where financial support for opposition political parties comes largely from business, the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, like the indictments of Berezovsky and Gusinsky, sends a chillingly clear message to Russia's business community that their assets are safe only if they steer clear of politics. Putin himself made this same threat to the oligarchs in 2000; it is clear that his government is carrying it out, and that Khodorkovsky is the latest victim. Political assassinations also demonstrate the risk of speaking out against state power. Earlier this year, State Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov, who had been investigating potential connections between the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings and the start of the Second Chechen War, was killed outside his Moscow apartment. State Duma deputy Yuri Shendoshokhtin, who had been looking into the role of the FSB in the Moscow bombings as well as a scandal surrounding the involvement of FSB officers in illegal trade, was also killed in mysterious circumstances. Both crimes remain unsolved. In today's Russia - as in Soviet Russia, as in czarist Russia - the state uses its power to suppress political dissent. The arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky fits in a long tradition of political arrest and persecution stretching across the vast dictatorial tundra of Russian history. Under President Putin, Russian citizens in Chechnya have suffered crimes against humanity at the hands of Russian military forces. It was during Mr. Putin's tenure as Prime Minister in 1999 that he launched the Second Chechen War following the Moscow apartment bombings. There remain credible allegations that Russia's FSB had a hand in carrying out these attacks. Mr. Putin ascended to the presidency in 2000 by pointing a finger at the Chechens for committing these crimes, launching a new military campaign in Chechnya, and riding a frenzy of public anger into office. Since then, between 10 and 20 thousand Chechen civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by Russian security forces. At Putin's direction, the Kremlin recently stage-managed an "election" in Chechnya that put Moscow's hand-picked candidate in power. The principal voters were Russian conscripts forced to serve in Chechnya. Moscow has made no effort to address the political grievances of a population increasingly radicalized by the brutality of Russian rule. Yes, there are Chechen terrorists, but there are many Chechens who took up arms only after the atrocities committed by Russian forces serving first under Boris Yeltsin's and then Putin's orders. In short, Mr. President, I am worried that what we are seeing in Mr. Putin's government is a continuation of 400 years of autocratic state control, and repression. Since the end of the Cold War, many Western observers have optimistically argued that the way Russia is governed has fundamentally changed. Sadly, this appears not to be true. Whether ruled by the czars, Stalin, Brezhnev, or Putin, the Russian state has remained supreme within Russian society. It seeks fundamentally to control society, not to answer to it. The people serve the government, not the reverse. This is not the behavior of a modern European nation; it is a form of unenlightened despotism cloaked in the mantle of international respectability, which Russia derives principally from its relations with other great powers - particularly the United States. The ascent of former KGB officers to positions of power throughout the structures of the Russian state underscores this trend. Apparently KGB veterans Igor Sechin and General Viktor Ivanov, both deputy chiefs of presidential administration in the Kremlin, masterminded the assault on Mr. Khodorkovsky. I'd like to congratulate the KGB for arresting one of the most pro-Western business figures in Russia today - someone whose personal and corporate behavior, through charitable giving and adopting Western standards of business, have brought more credit to Russia in the last three years than anything the Russian government has done. Meanwhile, the FSB has been unable to solve the murder of leading independent journalists. It has failed to bring to justice any suspects in the murder of democratic politicians. It has not been able to identify a single case of corruption inside the Russian government. Not a single Russian has been held to account for committing crimes against humanity in the Soviet Gulag. The FSB can't do any of that - but it can arrest Mikhail Khodorkovsky. What brave men they must be to kick down the doors of a private airplane and arrest an unarmed man. The FSB's dominance in the Russian government has renewed the specter of the imperial temptation that has guided Russia's external relations for centuries. For too many of Russia's neighbors, it's like the old Beatles song: "Back in the USSR." Under President Putin, Russia has refused to comply with the terms of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. Russian troops occupy parts of Georgia and Moldova. Russia has effectively annexed the Georgian province of Abkhazia, which it has occupied for a decade. Moscow has supported attempts to overthrow neighboring governments that appear too independent of Russia's embrace. Russian naval forces recently attempted to assert control in the channel connecting the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea from Ukraine. Russian secret services are credibly accused of meddling in elections in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Russian agents are working to bring Ukraine further into Moscow's orbit. Russian support sustains Europe's last dictatorship in Belarus. And Moscow has attempted to cynically manipulate Latvia's Russian minority and enforced its stranglehold on energy supplies into Latvia in order to squeeze the democratic, pro-American government in Riga. Under President Putin, Russia has pursued a policy in its "near abroad" that would create an empire of influence and submission, if not outright control. On October 9, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov declared that Russia reserves the right to intervene militarily within the Commonwealth of Independent States in order to settle disputes that cannot be resolved through negotiation. At the same press conference, President Putin declared that the pipelines in Central Asia and the Caucasus carrying oil and natural gas to the West were built by the Soviet Union, and said it is Russia's prerogative to maintain them in order to protect its national interests, "even those parts of the system that are beyond Russia's borders." In the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, President Putin was given great credit for "allowing" the United States to use the military facilities and airspace of sovereign countries in Central Asia. But Russia has no more right to speak for these countries than we do. The Putin Doctrine, asserting a right to imperial intervention in Russia's "near-abroad," coupled with the ascendancy of the FSB, recalls a discredited Russian imperial past whose victims number in the millions. Russia's assertion of political control over its neighbors speaks not to a modern vision of Russian reform and renewal, but appears to reflect a czarist impulse to dominate neighboring populations. It is the international dimension of rising state control at home. The dramatic deterioration of democracy in Russia calls into question the fundamental premises of our Russia policy since 1991. American leaders must adapt U.S. policy to the realities of a Russian government that may be trending towards neo-imperialism abroad and authoritarian control at home. It is time to face unpleasant facts about Russia. Russia is moving in the wrong direction - rapidly. While the United States undertakes a necessary and comprehensive review of our policy, I believe Russia's privileged access to critical Euro-Atlantic institutions should be suspended. This access was obtained with the understanding that President Putin was committed to free markets, the rule of law, pluralist democracy, journalistic freedom, and the lawful constraint of the intelligence and security services. These now appear to be false premises. The Russian government is not behaving in a manner that qualifies it to belong in the club of industrialized democracies. The United States is hosting the next G-8 Summit at King Island, Georgia, in June 2004. Russia has been invited to participate and has been working its way in, but President Putin's conduct at home and abroad has worked Russia out. Putin's Russia should have no place at the next G-8 Summit. Congress should not consider the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment for Russia. It would be incomprehensible to consider easing a law created in response to Soviet repression when the Russian government is continuing a similar pattern of behavior. I will oppose any effort to repeal Jackson-Vanik as long as Russia is moving in the wrong direction. To any American businesses contemplating investment in or trade with Russia, I would simply say that this is not a place where the rule of law and Western codes of conduct prevail. You invest at your peril. Many Members of Congress have heard from U.S. businessmen who have lost money in Russia due to the absence of the rule of law. The American business community should consider itself warned: the Kremlin's recent behavior is a clear signal that your investments are not safe. I call on my own government, including the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, to cease all guarantees of investment in Russia due to the unacceptable risk of state interference and expropriation, as demonstrated by the Russian government's actions. American taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize U.S. investment in Russia as long as the rule of the FSB prevails over the rule of law. Clearly, in personal meetings, the President of Russia attempts to reassure the President of the United States that he is a fellow democrat. An accumulation of evidence forces me to draw the opposite conclusion. I hope I am wrong, but I am increasingly concerned that in Mr. Putin's soul is the continuity of 400 years of Russian oppression. Under President Putin's leadership, Russia looks to the West for prosperity, technology, and modernity, but seems to be striving in every way to keep the values of the West out of Russia. Far from having a vision for Russia in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive, I fear President Putin may have a vision for Russia in which the capricious power of the police at home, and the menacing weight of subversion and intimidation abroad, guide the state. Administration policy must recognize the cold realities of Putin's Russia. The responsibilities that follow from this are clear: it is time for a hard-headed and dispassionate reconsideration of American policy in response to the resurgence of authoritarian forces in Moscow. It is time to send a signal to President Putin's government that undemocratic behavior will exclude Russia from the company of Western democracies. The wholesale suppression of free media and political opposition cannot be ignored. American policy must reflect the sobering conclusion that a Russian government which does not share our most basic values cannot be a friend or partner and risks defining itself, through its own behavior, as an adversary. |