There has been yet another IED attack in Russia on the rail system. After Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia is one of the ‘hottest’ place for IED attacks and yet many go unreported in the mainstream news. Most target critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines or transportation.

My immediate thought is whether the future of Russia may one day look like Nigeria. With dozens of ethnic groups, religions and a history of separatism and Islamic extremism it’s not unthinkable. Combine that with the country’s increasing reliance on its oil and gas industries for both economic and political power, and key elements are there for such a campaign.

“… they also have large corporate parties down here.”

Stalin-themed corporate parties? Pleasant. From Tsar Podcast.

Russia oil production overtakes Saudi Arabia
Russia is extracting more oil than Saudi Arabia, making it the biggest producer of “black gold” in the world, figures show.

The statistics, from the OPEC, reflect a trend that has seen the Russians periodically surpass the Saudis as the world’s biggest oil producers on and off since 2002.

These latest figures are being hailed in Russia as evidence that such periodic production spikes are not one-offs though and that Moscow really does have a right to lay claim to the No 1 spot.

According to OPEC, Russia extracted 9.236 million barrels of oil a day in June, 46,000 more than Saudi Arabia.

Russia has surpassed Saudi Arabia in energy exports for years, thanks to its large exports of natural gas. Now it even surpasses Saudi Arabia in terms of oil exports alone.

It’s become a common occurrence, an event so regularly reported that it’s not longer shocking. Another critic of the Kremlin, specifically with regards to Russia’s conduct in Chechnya, has been murdered. Natalya Estemirova, a human rights lawyer and activist who won numerous international awards for her work, was bundled into a car as she left her home on Wednesday, and her body was later found by the side of a road in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia, with two close-range gunshots to the head.

She was a single mother in her early 40s and the seventh opponent of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to have been murdered in the past 10 months.

A Fistful of Euros comments:

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes. There have been some hints that the Kremlin is a little tired of Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov. He’s a thug and embarrassingly corrupt; more to the point, his one claim to legitimacy in the Kremlin’s eyes — bringing peace and order to Chechnya — is looking a little frayed around the edges, especially since a lot of the trouble in Chechnya just seems to have moved next door to Ingushetia. (Ms. Estemirova’s killers kidnapped her in Chechnya, but dumped her body over the border in Ingushetia. This looks like a crude attempt to blame the crime on the Ingush resistance. Which would be totally consistent with Kadyrov’s character and M.O.) In theory, the Kremlin could use this — the killing of a photogenic ethnic Russian woman — as a sharp stick to poke him.

But I doubt that will happen; while Medvedev may be getting a little weary of Kadyrov, there isn’t a plausible replacement on the horizon.

[Fabled to be founded by Alexander the Great, the Tajik city of Khojand is a mishmash of Soviet and Islamic ideas. Dorzhiev reports from the front. (See his earlier post here) – YH]

Could the clash of civilizations be resolved by a beard growing contest?

Khujand is the capital of Tajikistan’s northern Sogd province that presides over the country’s share of the Fergana Valley. The Fergana has a reputation as a Central Asian flashpoint owing to the convergence of multiple countries, ethnicities, and ideologies that cohabitate within its gerrymandered borders. In the past months it has grabbed headlines for skirmishes between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that escalated into violence. Additionally there have been several IMU related incidents in the nearby Uzbek cities of Khanabad and Andijan fueling speculation of the repatriation of insurgents feeling the squeeze in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. Elsewhere in Tajikistan the apparent return of warlord Mullo Abdullo in the Rasht Valley has sparked fears that civil war era malcontents are regrouping in the Gharm region. Fueling the trend, officials announced June 24th the arrest of 40 alleged extremists in Dushanbe. Given these recent developments one might be tempted to think of Khujand as a potential Kandahar or Peshawar. Such fears are stoked when we read that in recent months police in Khujand have rounded up at least two dozen members of Hizb Ut-Tahrir — an outlawed political party who encourages the re-establishment of the Caliphate. Read the rest of this entry »

In Part 1, I looked at the rapid breakup and reassembly of the Russian Empire during the Russian Revolution. This post portrays with maps the breakup of the Soviet Union from 1989-1991. Again, the primary source of these maps is the wikipedia article Timeline of Russian History (20th century).

(East Germany is excluded—I didn’t have room on the map.)

Compared against the Russian Revolution, we see that many of the areas that broke apart—Ukraine, the Baltic States, the Caucasus, southern Central Asia—were the same “problem areas” during the Russian Revolution. I also find it interesting that Belarus and Kazakhstan were the very last to go independent, and the decision to separate from Mother Russia was controversial with many of the institutions and domestic powers-that-be at the time.

Looking at the geography of these two regions is, I believe, relevant to understanding the geographic dilemmas to Russia’s near future—to be addressed in Part 3.

The Russian Security Council has recently released a new paper outlining its strategy out to 2020. Their website is here but only in Russian. So far, I’ve been unable to find an English version of it (Russian version here I think) and would really appreciate if any readers know of how to find one, or speak enough Russian to add to this conversation. Compiled from a wide variety of news reports found through Google, the new strategy notes the following:

– The US will remain Russia’s primary strategy rival through 2020
– Russia wants to be seen as an equal to the US and NATO (pass me that crack pipe)
– Russia has overcome the “consequences of the systemic political and socioeconomic crisis of the late 20th century”
– America’s increase in its nuclear arsenal (what???) and ballistic missile defense programs are dangerous and may start an arms race.
– Russia will not engage in such an arms race
– Russia expects energy competition to increase and specifically Middle East, Barents Sea, the Arctic Region, Caspian Sea and Central Asia
– Russia will seek a multipolar world.
– To this end, it will increase its G8 participation and improve ties with Brazil, India, China and the CIS.
– Russia will seek a “highly professional community of Russian secret services”

Based on that, it would seem Russia sees the following as major threats:

– US missile defense
– NATO expansion and any kind of global role for NATO
– Moves to diversify energy resources by the US and EU
– US global hegemony

The great challenge here is developing a new relationship with Russia and not resorting to our comfortable Cold War ways. This in no way suggests Russia will become a friend as that is unlikely. However, it is both wrong and dangerous to assume that our interests will always clash. Recent examples of ad hoc cooperation like the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism provide proof cooperation is possible, but may in fact be most successful on such a basis. Given that all four items listed as major threats to Russia are important US policy goals, it indeed seems difficult to imagine large scale cooperation. Lastly, given the poor state of Russia and its lack of attractive power, what means are a Moscow’s disposal to achieve its goals and defend against its threats? Energy blackmail? Nuclear forces? A new series of ‘client states’ (Abkhazia, S. Ossetia, Transdniester etc.)?

So where does this leave the US-Russia relationship?

Russia’s use of its natural resources and their delivery systems for both tactical and strategic leverage is well known by now. Thus, it is interesting to read this NYT article about Russia stockpiling diamonds and surely no coincidence that the Russian company involved is mostly state owned and working with a subsidiary of the infamous Gazprom.

Russia quietly passed a milestone this year: surpassing De Beers as the world’s largest diamond producer. But the global market for diamonds is so dismal that the Alrosa diamond company, 90 percent owned by the Russian government, has not sold a rough stone on the open market since December, and has stockpiled them instead. As a result, Russia has become the arbiter of global diamond prices.

Read the rest here.

One of the threats that has been exaggerated by the echo-chamber media is Russia. Contrast this article with wild fears about Russia landing rusting Cold War museum pieces in Cuba and Venezuela. We’ve discussed this several times in posts here, here, here and here.

Russia’s military was over 4 million strong during the USSR, has dropped to approximately 1.13 million and is slated to be decreased below a million. The fact of the matter is Russia can neither afford to maintain, much less upgrade its conventional military forces. Therefore, it has been and will continue to increasingly rely on its strategic forces. As Russia continues to deteriorate, this will lead to Russia’s more quickly climb up the escalation ladder in potential conflicts. As has been said at tdaxp many a time, Russia is merely a regional power with nuclear weapons. It cannot really project power globally, has no attractive ideology and little to offer allies except domination and backwardness.

Taras Bulba is a Russian classic, based on Ukrainian folk mythology, written by the famous writer Nikolai Golga. It is a brutal, quasi-historical tale about a bloody Cossack revolt in the Ukraine fighting against invading forces from Poland. When the book was republished in 2003, Robert D. Kaplan wrote the introduction, and a similar version of that text appeared in an article in The Atlantic titled Euphorias of Hatred. There, Kaplan warned:

The novel has a Kiplingesque gusto that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly evil violence that is far beyond anything Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like Taras Bulba, to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Kaplan’s warnings about the “emotional wellsprings” have turned out to be like much of what he writes—prophetic. Five years later, Russia and Ukraine are vigorously fighting over which country has claim to the heritage of the violent tale. Russia has financed a $20 million dollar epic film of the story, produced over the course of three years, in a Lord of the Rings-esque epic, and is the latest salvo in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine culture war (the previous chapter of which was covered here).

What’s the big issue? Taras Bulba has long been adopted as a Ukrainian national hero. Ukrainian nationalists conveniently ignored the fact that he spoke Russian, was fighting an enemy invading from the West, and acting as a proxy for the Czar and the Orthodox faith. Russia’s purpose in making the film is explicit. The director has said that he wants to show that “there is no separate Ukraine… When two drops of mercury are near each other, they will unite. You’ve seen this. Exactly in the same way, our two peoples are united.” Fighting words directed at the heart of the Orange Revolution.

Kiev’s political elite is naturally furious, accusing Russia of “borrowing” heroes when it has none of its own, and issuing a film that smacks of propaganda reminiscent of Soviet times—but many Ukrainians have already said that they admire the film and sympathize with its themes and the call for Pan-Slavic unity. Putting that aside, the real concern for the peoples of the civilized world is that two countries are fighting for title to this shamelessly glorified violent tale. To quote Kaplan writing in 2003:

As one Cossack declares, “I need hardly tell you that a young man cannot exist without war.” In such a world the notion of a rational “balance of power” with the Catholic Poles or the Islamic Tatars is not a pragmatic goal but a corrupting and effeminate conceit. Those outside the marrow of Orthodoxy exist only to be annihilated, or to be converted en masse to the faith.

The rare breaks in the fighting are given over to “spellbinding,” prolonged drunken orgies. “The inns in the suburb were smashed,” Gogol wrote, “and the Cossacks helped themselves to mead, vodka and beer without payment, the innkeepers being too glad to escape with their lives.” Hearing stories of Catholic victories to the west, and of Jewish collusion in those victories, the Cossacks take murderous revenge on local Jews, whom they toss into the river.

We will have to watch and see how this emotional wellspring will affect the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.

ENDNOTE: Here’s the trailer: