
An article in the September 10th issue of Nezavisimaya gazeta highlighting opposition by Transdniestria and Gagauzia to the pro-EU protests in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau is another indication that some in Moscow are hoping to use these two groups in the north and south of that country to block any further Moldovan moves toward Europe.
The Moscow paper’s Svetlana Gamova writes most of those taking part in the demonstrations in Chisinau are “oriented toward the integration of the country in the European Union” while many in the Slavic-majority Transdniestria in the north and the Christian Turkic Gagauzia in the south favor integration with Russia.To judge from Gamova’s article, some in Moscow must be thinking that they could only gain if they set Transdniestria and Gagauzia against him.
-- Paul Goble
Moscow has “shifted from the logic of a dispute to the logic of isolation” and is seeking to convince Russians that Western sanctions imposed following the Crimean Anschluss and Russian invasion of the Donbas have nothing to do with those events but rather reflect permanent Western hostility to Russia, Nezavisimaya gazeta says.
And in foreign policy terms, Rybkov’s statement may have a double purpose. On the one hand, it may lead some in the West to call for a reduction in sanctions in order to show Russia that the West doesn’t “always” hate it. And on the other, if sanctions are loosened or cut back, the new logic now on offer in Moscow will allow the Kremlin to take credit.
-- Paul Goble
In an effort to get the West to end its sanctions on Russia, Vladimir Putin will continue to sharply reduce pro-Moscow military actions in the Donbass over the next month, Vitaly Portnikov says; but even as he does so, the Kremlin leader will do everything he can to destabilize and thus discredit Ukraine from the inside.
-- Paul Goble
The enormous number of weapons in the Donbas as a result of the actions of pro-Moscow forces in that Ukraine region are already casting a shadow on the rest of Ukraine, something Vladimir Putin probably welcomes, as well as on adjoining areas of the Russian Federation, something he certainly does not.
Meanwhile, illegal weapons are flowing into the Russian Federation. (For background, see "Returning Donbass Veterans Bring War Home to Russia With Them").
In today’s Yezhednevny zhurnal, commentator Dmitry Oreshkin suggests it poses a serious problem for the Russian authorities.
-- Paul Goble
Ramzan Kadyrov vitriolic reaction to a decision by a Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk court to declare a book containing verses from the Koran extremist has sparked widespread anger and debate about the reach of Russia’s anti-extremism law, but it has also highlighted the fact that in Russian jurisprudence, there is no system of precedent.
Until that happens, one or more of the hundreds of courts like that in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk will find books extremist on the flimsiest of pretexts not because they have received a telephone call or telegraph from the Kremlin but because declaring materials extremist allows the authorities in the easiest possible to look good in the eyes of those above them, Evzhayev says.
-- Paul Goble