Tensions mount between Russia and Latvia

Tensions between Moscow and the Baltic states have been running at a heightened level since Russia last year annexed the Crimea, and a civil war broke out between Moscow-backed separatists and the Ukrainian state in the easternmost regions of Ukraine. Ever since the three Baltic states gained their independence with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the large ethnic Russian minority populations within their territories have been a source of disquiet for the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian governments. This unease has been reinforced by Putin’s willingness to instrumentalise the Russian diaspora issue as a means of exerting pressure on the small republics, just indeed as Stalin had intended, when he settled large numbers of Russians upon their territories during the final stages of World War II and shortly after, to ensure that the Baltic republics – independent from 1918 to 1940 – were firmly cemented to the USSR.

An article in today’s Izvestia – a newspaper strongly supportive of the Putin administration – expresses the dissatisfaction of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Latvia’s State Language Centre, following the latter’s recommendation that only Latvian should be used in workplaces, including in informal discussion, rather than Russian or any other language. This has prompted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to accuse the Latvian authorities “of discrimination against the Russian-speaking population.” However, Riga has responded by stating that this approach is only a “recommendation” rather than being binding.

Aleksandr Lukashevich, the Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contends that with this recommendation the Latvian State Language Centre is in contravention of the internationally recognised rights of minority populations “to preserve and develop their language.” Given Latvia’s small population, which was reckoned to be a little below two million in 2014, and the relatively large size of the resident ethnic Russian population – some 26.9% of the total in 2011 – it is no wonder that Latvia feels vulnerable, and that many Latvians wish to institute special measures to preserve their own native language and culture. The growls of discontent emanating from Moscow thus illustrate that many in the upper echelons of power in Russia still find it hard to accept that the states of the ‘Near Abroad’ – particularly the Baltic states – are now fully-fledged independent nations. Thankfully, unlike in Ukraine, it is highly unlikely that tensions between Russia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will escalate into violence.

Mitt Romney: the Defeat of a Russophobe

Whatever your opinion of Obama and Romney, one thing is clear following Obama’s re-election as US President: we may breathe easily insofar as Romney’s potentially disastrous approach to foreign affairs will not now be realised. The Cold War will not be reanimated.

Romney posed as a patriot, and yet he had been instrumental in the mass offshoring of US jobs; he presented himself as the international strongman, advocating significant increases in defence spending, whilst undermining the US economic base through his promotion of globalism and domestic deindustrialisation. Romney either lacked the intellectual capacity to recognise that Russia is not the US’s “main foe”, or cynically used Russia as a convenient bogey, attempting to whip up a pointless Russophobia as a means of harnessing the sense of domestic disquiet over the US’s geopolitical decline. 

Mitt Romney has failed in his presidential challenge. The nations of Europe will be safer as a consequence. 

Russian Ultranationalists in Coup Trial

Mitt Romney has the peculiar idea that Russia is the US’s “number one political foe”, which is, as matters stand, outlandish. However, had a small group of conspirators based in the city of Ekaterinburg realised their grandiose ambitions, then Romney’s position would possess merit, rather than representing a fossilised attitude lingering long after the end of the Cold War rendered it redundant.

Yesterday, Izvestia brought to its readers’ attention the trial of a group of Russian ultranationalist plotters in the city of Ekaterinburg. Arrested on 19 July 2011, they stand accused of planning a coup designed to sweep Putin from power and to restore what they perceive to be Russia’s lost superpower status. Had they been successful their vision for Russian foreign policy would have been ruinous for their country, including as it did the belief in a near inevitable nuclear war between Russia allied with Iran on the one side, and the US and Israel on the other. Thankfully however, the plot itself drew little support and never stood any chance of success. Indeed, the man initially identified as its leading light – entrepreneur Aleksandr Ermakov – suffers from schizophrenia, which possibly accounts for military expert Aleksandr Gol’tz’s characterisation of the coup plot as the product of “monstrous delirium”. Following his arrest, the court ordered that Ermakov be put on compulsory anti-psychotic medication.

At the time of their arrest, the plotters possessed only 50,000 roubles (in today’s exchange rate somewhere in the region of £1,000), a large quantity of “specialist literature” dealing with the use of explosives, setting booby-traps, blowing up railway lines, bridges and the electricity supply, as well as general tactics of partisan warfare. A quantity of ammunition and explosives is also said to have been found at the time of the arrest. They had not got around to calculating the quantities of weapons and ammunition that they would require to realise their plans, and it was intended to stage a series of bank robberies – in the manner of the pre-revolutionary Bolsheviks – to fund their preparatory activities.

The nature of the plot

The men, led by Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov of the GRU (the Main Intelligence Directorate) intended to launch the coup with the immediate aim of taking control of Ekaterinburg – a city of 1.4 million – and the surrounding region of Sverdlovsk. Having established a military base there, the intention was then to take on Moscow and seize the apparatus of the state. This remarkable (or more accurately, delusional) plot was scheduled for 2 August 2011, and was to be spearheaded by an armed insurrection initiated by the Ekaterinburg “national-patriotic cell” of an organisation named “The People’s Militia of Minin and Pozharskii” (PMMP). Its leader – Kvachkov – and a number of other PMMP members are currently being tried in Ekaterinburg’s Sverdlovsk District Court. Also standing accused are Leonid Khabarov, a retired reserve colonel and Afghan veteran; pensioner and ex-policeman Aleksandr Ladeishchikov, and Viktor Kralin, an inventor and Doctor of Sciences. Aleksandr Ermakov is considered to be the group’s ideologist and organiser. Medics consider that Ermakov is suffering from schizophrenia, and since the summer he has been compulsorily put on medication by order of the Sverdlovsk District Court.

The intended coup was to use a number of “military cells”, and both Sergei Katnikov and Vladislav Ladeishchenko “have given evidence against the other plotters, thereby receiving reduced sentences”.

The plotters codenamed their operation “Daybreak”, and whilst possessing only a limited budget and little in the way of material and manpower, they were certainly not short of imagination as demonstrated by the fantastical dimensions of their plan which was broken down into a number of clearly defined stages. However, the plot was uncovered in July 2011 shortly only weeks from its scheduled launch, but given the paltry resources and manpower discovered, would they really have gone ahead with their hare-brained scheme? Independent experts consider that it would take a force of tens of thousands of troops to seize and control a city the size of Ekaterinburg, something that was clearly way beyond the scope of the plot. Nonetheless, the stages are worth outlining to provide an insight into the bizarre and unbalanced minds of the plotters.

Stage 1 was to consist of a series of “diversionary actions”; sabotage aimed at crippling key aspects of the city’s energy and transport infrastructure: cutting Ekaterinburg’s electricity supply by knocking out a mainline of pylons; blowing up railway tunnels and the severing of its gas and oil pipelines. These actions were intended to create general panic and to disrupt the governance of the city.

Stage 2 would witness the unleashing of a campaign of terror, with the plotters targeting and killing key figures on a detailed hit list who included: leaders of the local sub-departments of the Ministry of Defence, the directorates of the FSB and the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the emergency services. Also singled out for “liquidation” were named leaders of ethnic minority populations in the city representing the Jewish, Azeri and Armenian diasporas. Given that they were unable to identify a clear leadership amongst the Chechen and Dagestani populations, it was deemed that all members of these two minorities should be shot at will. A synagogue, national-cultural centres and a number of cafes were also singled out for destruction.

Stage 3 envisioned the seizure of weapons and ammunition and assumed that elements within the MVD’s Spetsnaz would come over to the side of the plotters. Next, stage 4 was intended to consist of the full-scale mobilisation of the city’s military as well as sympathetic adult males within the civilian population, with those not wishing to become involved being removed to one of Ekaterinburg’s satellite towns. The final stage of the plan involved the plotters consolidating their hold on the whole of the Sverdlovsk Region, with sympathisers from the rest of Russia being encouraged to come and join them in their armed uprising. Having thus established their armed redoubt through setting off a chain reaction of insurrections, they hoped to seize the Russian state.

The plan hinged upon the deployment of several groups of saboteurs each about ten strong, with ancillary forces numbering around 30-50 men, as well as circa 200 “others”. Where were these men to be found? Who were they? Did they exist outside of the confines of the conspirators’ imaginations? For a group of half a dozen men – elderly men at that – such a plan is clearly ludicrous. The recent revolutions – “the colour revolutions” – that have taken place in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, required considerable amounts of money and mass popular participation to bring about political change; were the plotters really so deluded as to think that they could achieve their far-reaching objectives with next to no resources or public support, and to bring about change through political violence?

With respect to support for the PMMP elsewhere, there is not a great deal of evidence. Kvachkov travelled to different Russian cities in the summer of 2010 attempting to drum up support, but he achieved little. However, a man named Petr Galkin who was said to have been a member of the PMMP’s Togliatti Cell was arrested that year. He was carrying a crossbow. Following Kvachkov’s arrest in the summer of 2011, a benefit concert was arranged on his behalf by a number of sympathisers at Moscow’s October Cultural Centre in the northwest of the city, but it was burned down on 29 October 2011 the day before it was due to take place. Russian “antifascists” were suspected.

The current of Russian nationalism represented by Kvachkov and his confederates is a virulently anti-western and militaristic one, and embodies the type of ugly attitudes that are routinely and incorrectly attributed to moderate democratic nationalists by their opponents around the world – including in the UK. The negative ultranationalism articulated by the likes of Kvachkov and his ilk in Russia, or indeed in any country, deserves to be roundly condemned. Insofar as any rudiments of ideology can be discerned in the plotters’ position, it is entirely negative in tone and content, and would bring no benefit to the Russian people. The PMMP in its bloody intent seems to represent the latest incarnation of the negative spirit that has animated the worst excesses of Russian history throughout the ages, whether under tsars or Communists. In their own way, the plotters may well have seen themselves as contemporary oprichniki – “the men apart” – who did Ivan the Terrible’s bloody work in the name of his concept of “good governance”, which happened to be autocratic and merciless. Below is Sergei Eisenstein's and Sergei Prokofiev's lurid vision of one of Ivan's drunken late-night revels with his handpicked killers - the oprichniki: "Zhgi! Zhgi! Zhgi! Zhgi!" ("Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!") they chant; an apt summary of their destructive mentality.

Ivan's Feast with the Oprichniki

Charlie Hebdo and the Hysteria of Islamists

Once again, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has fallen foul of the Islamists by publishing cartoons of Mohammed, leading to the usual threats and security alerts that attend any slight to the fragile sensibilities of ‘the devout’. This is not the first time that it has been targeted, for back in November last year its decision to publish a special issue entitled Charia Hebdo which contained many cartoons of its ‘guest editor’ Mohammed, led to its offices being firebombed. Both incidents highlight a phenomenon first generated by the Danish Jyllands-Posten furore and its publication of a number of Mohammed cartoons in 2005.

Charlie Hebdo published a fresh set of cartoons this week as a response to the violently febrile reaction to the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film that has been witnessed across much of the Muslim world and amongst some Muslims resident in European states. These reactions serve to illustrate the ugly domineering impulse that lies at the heart of Islamic doctrine, and it is of course crucial that we tackle this challenge in an appropriately robust fashion: we must not cave in to Islamist threats, and their demands to restrict freedom of speech and expression in our nations; blasphemy is no offence.

In Germany, the Pro-Deutschland movement has expressed its desire to publicly screen the ‘Innocence of Muslims’, causing some disquiet amongst the German authorities and sections of the media that have wheeled out the usual demonising ‘racist’ and ‘far-right’ labels to apply to the group. In Russia, Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov called for Google to block Russian web access to the film’s Youtube site, threatening to curtail its freedom to operate in the country from November if it failed to do so. Rostelekom, one of Russia’s biggest internet providers, blocked access to Youtube in a number of Russian regions last night, and Yaroslav Nilov, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Social and Religious Organisations, has called upon the Ministry of Culture to ban screenings of the film in Russia on the basis that this would constitute “incitement to religious hatred.” He noted that Russia had a Muslim population of 20 million. The reaction of these influential Russian politicians seems to have been born out of a combination of a desire to appeal to the growing number of Muslim voters in the country, and of fear.

It is time that mainstream broadcasters and politicians in Britain and other European nations stopped pretending that these violent outbursts, threats and intolerance are not connected to Islamic doctrine, which is incompatible with a modern, civilised political and social worldview. In our countries, Muslims should not only be seen to respect our right to freedom of speech and expression and to acknowledge the supremacy of secular law, but they should also give active support to these principles. If not, then they should give serious consideration as to where they ought to live: is it to be here, or somewhere more conducive to their mental and cultural universe, such as their ancestral familial homeland(s)? The recent violent reactions to the ‘Innocence of Muslims’, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and Tom Holland’s ‘Islam: The Untold Story’, have followed swiftly upon the anniversary of 9/11, which makes it apparent that all of these attacks upon freedom of expression are part of a wider Islamist political agenda.

Given this reality, how can anyone still give credence to what is printed in the pages of The Guardian upon such matters? That paper, and the BBC, to name but two influential players in the mass media, ought to offer us an explanation as to why they have systematically distorted reporting about Islamic issues so as to provide Islamic doctrine with a veneer of respectability, helping to embed it within our country and to facilitate its spread. We never wanted it, and we certainly do not need it. Now is as good a time as any to make this fact crystal clear.

Charlie Hebdo's latest cover

 

Obama: preparing to attack Syria?

There are ominous signs that the US is preparing for military intervention against Syria. As in Iraq, it is of course the pretext of WMD - this time the potential movement of Syrian chemical and biological weopons - that is being deployed to rationalise US aggression. The New York Times quotes Obama as saying:

We cannot have a situation in which chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

In other words, the US President is implying that such weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist militants including Al-Qaeda. This comes a day after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadii Gatilov claimed that:

Yet more facts have appeared, including those in the mass media, about the massive scale of the supply of weaponry manufactured in the West to the Syrian opposition through third countries.

Today, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo as well as a Syrian government delegation, and issued a statement reiterating their opposition to foreign intervention in Syria, emphasising "the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law and the principles contained in the UN Charter, and not to allow their violation". No country or group of nations, in their opinion, should pursue a policy of imposing "democracy by bombs". The message from Moscow and Beijing to Obama is clear: stay out of Syria. The question is, will the world's sole military hyperpower take heed of these words, or instead pursue the reckless policy of destabilising and destroying another Arab state with no clear vision of what is likely to come next? Some within America's Christian fundamentalist eschatological fringe may rave with enthusiasm at such a potential portent of the coming of the 'end times', but rational beings everywhere will instead shudder at the likely mass bloodletting which will ensue.

It is widely known that Islamist militants, including some holding UK passports, have entered Syria in order to destabilise the Assad regime, and that regional powers such as Saudi Arabia appear to have been funding the uprising. Whatever should happen, Syria's internal problems are not our problems, and the UK should not interfere in Syrian affairs. However, just as in Libya, there has been a clamour for intervention within our foreign policy establishment that has been paralleled by the BBC's emotive tenor favouring direct intervention. We should not succomb to such propaganda. Atrocities are being committed in Syria, and they are being committed by both sides. However, the so-called "activists" of the "Opposition" are not, on the whole, humane Western-style democrats. Islamism looks set to come to Syria aided, no matter how unwittingly, by the US and the UK. Life under Assad may have been bad for some people, but for others, particularly Christians and Alawites, many may find that they have no lives at all once his regime is gone. If Syria fragments, what happens to her neighbouring states? What impact, in particular, will this have on Turkey? Ethnic and confessional groups straddle borders, and hundreds of thousands of refugees threaten to add an additional destabilising influence to the mix.

Pussy Riot: Views from Russia

The trial that has led to the sentencing of three members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot to two years imprisonment has generated a great deal of media interest around the globe. Their conviction for “hooliganism” and “religious hatred” in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour has been greeted with widespread indignation, with well-known celebrities such as Madonna, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono expressing their support for the group members, but how has the trial and subsequent sentence been perceived in Russia? What is the narrative being spun by the mainstream Russian media?

Pussy Riot claim that their stunt – their “punk prayer” to the Virgin Mary for Putin to leave office – was politically motivated, but quite what their manifesto is, other than for Putin to go, is not known. Prior to their impromptu cathedral performance, the group was unheard of outside of Russia and not that well known in their home country. Irrespective of any political motivation, evidently this episode has created one thing: massive publicity. How many Russian punk bands had you heard of before this trial? In fact, how many Russian bands had you heard of?

One of Russia’s most popular papers – Izvestia – draws attention to the fact that two of the women sentenced today have young children which offers them the hope of having their sentences reduced significantly as has happened on a number of occasions in the past for women in a similar situation. However, there remain ten days during which an appeal can be made, and only then, if unsuccessful, will the sentence be carried out. Even if they are unlucky, the paper says that the may be able to apply for early release in spring 2013. Moreover, if all else fails it is likely that an appeal will be made to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the sentences violate Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees “freedom of expression”.

The editor of the more critical Novaya Gazeta made the Pussy Riot case the main story, stating: “The sentence demonstrated that our state and Church have finally merged in ecstasy. To criticise the Church means an attack upon the state, and the reverse. This bears no relation whatsoever to the true intimate and secret religious sensibility.”

The government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta unsurprisingly took a critical stance towards the foreign media, singling out The Guardian and The Globe and Mail in particular, not being impressed by The Guardian’s comparison of Pussy Riot with Jesus Christ. Moreover, noting that Amnesty International had also joined the foreign press in condemnation of Russia’s handling of the trial the reporter asked “Where does such unity suddenly spring from?” She, Galina Vasina, provided this by why of an answer: they all wanted to hinder the emergence of “a strong Russia”.

Russian journalist Alexander Nekrassov spoke to Jon Snow in this evening’s edition of Channel 4 News, claiming that Pussy Riot had offended the deep religious sensibilities of many Russian people and therefore had deserved punishment of some sort. It is true that ‘singing’ their punk prayer in the cathedral was discordant, disruptive and inappropriate, but for it to have been adjudged to have been a criminal matter, potentially carrying a sentence of up to seven years, strikes me as bizarre as well as innately unjust. Surely, something along the lines of a banning order prohibiting the members of the group involved from entering certain ecclesiastical buildings for a particular length of time would have been more appropriate? Already, the three women have spent five months in custody, which is a long time for a ‘misjudged’ publicity stunt. Even Putin claimed that he did not wish the women in question to receive a harsh sentence, which begs the question: does Putin consider two years incarceration to be a harsh sentence?

As for the group indulging in “religious hatred”, that charge is an obvious absurdity. In what way can their action be said to have incited hatred of Orthodox Christians or Christianity?

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was originally built to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon after his burning of Moscow in 1812. In the early 1930s, the Communists dynamited the building, raising it to the ground with the original intention of building a Palace of the Soviets topped by a giant statue of Lenin, but constant waterlogging caused a change of plan, and for decades it was instead the site of the world’s largest open air swimming pool. In 1990 permission was granted to rebuild the Cathedral, so today a replica of the original stands on the site. It is therefore a building imbued with considerable national symbolism, hence, presumably, its choice as the location for Pussy Riot's noisy intervention.

The cause of Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samusevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been championed across the western world, but like any event in Russia that can be turned to an anti-national end, globalists, particularly those of a US Neocon bent, will be keen to use this case not only as a means of propagandising against the Putin clique, but against the Russian state's general independent stance in international affairs. Irrespective of the composition of its leadership at any one time, the Russian Federation serves as a steadfast geopolitical opponent of a globalised unipolar world, which is why Neocons such as Mitt Romney possess such hostility towards the country. So, if you should hear Romney declaring his support for Pussy Riot and human rights in Russia, you need to be aware that for him arguments about such freedoms are ancillary to assisting the promotion of globalism and the hobbling of one of its strongest opponents.

Today, Pussy Riot have released what they term a “Single for the Sentence” entitled “Putin lights the bonfires of Revolution” which can be heard below. It, thankfully, is not as discordantly grating as their ecclesiastically themed effort. There is though as you might expect, a considerable amount of screeching.

Cossacks ride on Paris!

Cossack Commemoration

Two hundred years ago such an announcement would have been dreaded following the savaging of Napoleon’s Grande Armée by Russian arms and General Winter, but today, this news betokens not forthcoming acts of bloody vengeance, but something of a cultural exchange in commemoration of the bicentennial of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Itar-Tass reports that a detachment of 23 riders, all descendants of Don Cossacks who had harried Napoleon’s troops during their hellish retreat, yesterday set out from Moscow dressed in replica uniforms from the 1812 campaign and mounted on steeds of the appropriate Don Cossack breed, renowned for their endurance and ability to travel long distances. These days the breed is rare, but it is hoped that this commemorative event will help to secure its future.

According to Itar-Tass, the cavalry tour is a purely “socio-cultural undertaking which possesses neither a political nor an economic goal.” The role of the state is said to have been confined to lending some organisational assistance, whereas the tour itself has been funded through private donations.

Along the Cossacks’ route, which will take the riders through western Russia, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Germany and France, there will be a series of conferences, roundtables, seminars and concerts, with the detachment even being accompanied by a “mobile museum”. The climax will come at Fontainebleau, where a celebration concert and charitable auction will be held, with the latter disposing of the horses themselves. For the horses’ sake, it is to be hoped that the French gastronomic predilection for a certain type of meat will not on this occasion be a determining factor in the auction.

It is doubtful that on this occasion the visiting Cossacks will have any linguistic impact, although it is said of their ancestors that they did lend a word to the French language with which you may be familiar: “bistro” from the Russian “bystro” – quickly. Legend has it that occupying Russian troops banged their Parisian tables with impatience yelling “Bystro, bystro!” in their anxiety to be fed, and from thence it is said to have entered the French language. Although the etymology is disputed, the story possesses a certain charm.

The defeat of Napoleon plays a central role in Russia's national narrative, his invasion being just one of many from the West which over the centuries included the Teutonic Knights, the Poles, the Swedes, the French, the Germans and the Austrians. This historical experience, and the devastation wreaked by many of these invasions, has etched itself deeply into the Russian national psyche, hence what to us seems like an alarmist response by the Russians to American plans to site anti-ballistic missile defences in Poland. As for the riders, the video below shows their departure from Moscow yesterday. They have a long ride ahead of them.

Cossack Revival

Before you fall into the error of thinking that these contemporary Cossacks are little more than a Russian equivalent of the Sealed Knot, think again. Since the late Soviet period, repressed Cossack identities have re-emerged in different parts of Russia and in neighbouring states such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan where their hosts possessed traditional territories. In the main, with the notable exception of Ukraine that possesses its own Cossack tradition which forms an integral part of its national identity and myth (it would argue with some credibility that its Cossacks were the originals), Cossacks see themselves as a distinct branch of the Russian people, or a “sub-ethnos” in the parlance of Russian ethnographers.

Since the late 1980s Cossack revivalism has led to the creation of a variety of Cossack organisations, some have which have sought a contemporary role for themselves analogous to that of their late-tsarist predecessors as servitors of the state and guardians of its borderlands. Earlier this month Izvestia announced that Aleksandr Tkachev, Governor of the Kuban, wishes to use Cossacks to help tackle illegal immigration to the region emanating from the northern (predominantly Muslim) Caucasus that he believes could lead to regional destabilisation and interethnic conflict. He remarked that currently the region was about 80% ethnic Russian with ethnic minorities making up the remainder, but drew attention to the parallel of Kosovo which although once majority Serb (he made the gaffe of referring to Serbs as Croats) now possessed an overwhelming Albanian majority. He is determined to nip the demographic crisis in the bad to ensure that the Russians do not share the same fate, and he sees the Cossacks as playing a very active and central role in this. It would seem therefore, that the Cossacks should no longer be regarded as just another historical curiosity.

Cossacks leave Moscow for Paris

Russian Horsemen Ride to Paris on Anniversary of... by tvnportal

Hizb ut-Tahrir in Tatarstan

Although the trial of Pussy Riot has currently made the international news (see forthcoming article after sentencing), much that goes on inside Russia, particularly if it is outside of Moscow or St Petersburg, passes largely unnoticed by the outside world. Last month, an Islamist double attack on prominent Tatar Muslims critical of Salafism led to the death of Tatarstan's Deputy Mufti Valiulla Yakupov and the serious wounding of the Chief Mufti Ildus Fayzov, prompting a Spetsnaz operation that rounded up many Islamist militants. Now however, it would seem that Tatarstan's Islamist problem may be embedding itself within the republic's official structures, for allegations have emerged that Tatarstan's police have been "pandering to Islamists".

Izvestia reports that deputies of the Russian State Duma have requested an explanation from Tatarstan's General Prosecutor's Office for the failure of police to intervene in recent meetings, where representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir (a proscribed organisation in the Russian Federation) gathered alongside Tatar separatists and flew flags emblazoned with the organisation's slogans. The meetings at which these symbols are said to have been displayed were held in protest at the Spetsnaz crackdown on Islamists following the double attack. Aleksandr Starovoitov, a deputy belonging to Russia's Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) - a rather different beast to our own Liberal Democrats - told Izvestia:

That representives of separatist organisations and even of banned extremist organisations came out bears witness to the fact that the Tatarstan authorities may fully share their views, if not support them.

That a figure such as Starovoitov might be inclined to make such a statement is not surprising, but is there an underpinning factual basis for his assertion? It would seem that comments by other Duma members would suggest that there is, for the Head of the Committee on Nationality Affairs Gadzhimet Safaraliev told the paper:

The appearance of flags of such an organisation as "Hizb ut-Tahrir" is completely inadmissible. This is an extremist organisation banned by the courts. And that the Kazan police in no way reacted to the appearance of such symbols on the streets of the city represents a failure to discharge their duties. 

Today they march with flags, tomorrow with machine guns. Such activists must be called to account. The General Prosecutor's Office must deal with this.

Tatarstan's Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to comment on a meeting of the Tatar nationalist group Azatlyk (the Union of Tatar Youth) at which Hizb ut-Tahrir flags were said to have appeared, although it did acknowledge "that there were flags with Arabic inscriptions". As commented previously, it is unfortunate that many young Tatars of a nationalist inclination are falling into the trap of identifying with Islamism as the primary facet of their being, for after all, Hizb ut-Tahrir's call for the establishment of a universal caliphate has nothing to do with autonomy or political self-determination for the Tatar nation.

Although Russia does possess a genuine problem with civil liberties owing to the routine abuse of power by influential members of the political elite, as exemplified in the current Pussy Riot trial, it appears that those who have no genuine respect for such liberties, just like their Islamist counterparts in Britain, are happy to invoke the name of Western civil rights and freedom of expression in order to subvert those values. Nail' Nabiullin, the Leader of Azatlyk thus told Izvestia:

Our organisation is unregistered and up to this point we do not wish to be registered, since as soon as we had registered, they would ban us immediately. Now the authorities exert strong intimidation against activists, so that they don't conduct any activities or pickets. This is done through institutions of higher education, which they threaten to purge.

I am not acquinted with the flags of "Hizb ut-Tahrir". Although, of course, at the last meeting there were people with flags with Arabic inscriptions. They translated them to me as "There is no God but Allah".

Quite how far Azatlyk is focused specifically upon the Islamic inheritance of the Tatars is hard to say, since my knowledge of Tatar and the other Turkic languages is minimal to put it mildly. However, a report appearing on Russia's Ria Novosti today revealed that Nabiullin had led a protest on Sunday "against the mass detention of Muslims afer the double attempt on the lives of Muslim leaders in Kazan". Given the focus of this protest and the fact that it was jointly organised by Azatlyk and Kazan's Al'-Ikhlis mosque, it would seem to have a heavily Islamic, possibly Islamist, bent. Altogether, it is said that circa 100 individuals participated in the protest that passed off peacefully.

The growth of Islamism across the Russian Federation - particularly in those constituent republics and regions hosting a traditionally Muslim population - is a cause for concern, for the differential birth-rates between Muslims and non-Muslims is pronounced; the long-term decline of the ethnic Russian population continues, whilst the Muslim population booms. Many analysts, both within the country and without, must be posing the question of whither Russia should a Muslim majority hold sway in a few decades time? Such an eventuality would be positive neither for the Russians, nor for the rest of the world.

Kazan's Kremlin

Chechen champions PC regulation of Russian mass media

Russia is often regarded as a country in which concerns relating to political correctness are generally held not to hinder reporting, although naturally, practical apprehensions relating to widespread corruption and the immense power of the country's oligarchs, and those within and allied to Putin's circle, exert a certain chilling effect upon the freedom of the mass media. Nobody, after all, is keen to experience a fatal 'accident' or some other form of unanticipated personal misadventure. Now however, it looks as if these informal restrictions upon reporting are to be supplemented by a new law muzzling writers and broadcasters in their handling of information relating to people's ethnic and racial origins, as well as to their religious affiliations.

As in the UK, where such legislation has been born largely of a slavish apeing of an inappropriate US example combined with reference to the putative welfare and interests of an increasingly influential Muslim minority, Russia seems set to follow a path where the systematic distortion of reporting is held to be both a necessary and desirable tool of ensuring interethnic amity and concord.

According to an article run by Izvestia on 26th July, a former Chechen minister and current Deputy of the Russian Duma Shamsail Saraliev,  is pushing for the introduction of a bill this autumn that will seek to tackle what he believes to be the negative reporting and portrayal of ethnic and national minorities. He states:

In the mass media on a daily basis you will encounter : two Chechens killed a Russian, an Armenian attacked a Russian. Why place the accent upon nationality/ethnicity? This only makes people angry and provokes national/ethnic conflict. There are no bad nationalities/ethnicities.

Saraliev reveals that this proposed approach has been revealed to the resident population of the North Caucacus Federal District using social media and local broadcasters:

We are asking people whether or not it is necessary to place a prohibition on the indication of nationality/ethnicity in articles and reporting.

It is claimed that 82% of the inhabitants of the Caucasus republics support this proposal.

Aleksandr Sokolov Head of Club Multinational Russia thinks that such an approach should be broadened to include regional origin. However, he does think it valid to include reference to ethnicity or religion if conflict has arisen upon either grounds in the case concerned. Then again, in a example familiar to British readers, he had voiced his approval of positive stereotyping of ethnic and tacial minorities, citing the case of American blacks.

A third influential individual - Gadzhimet Safaraliev, Head of the Duma Committee on Nationality Affairs - is working on similar proposals and thinks that a presidential decree will be ready by late in the year. He also thinks that its remit should include cinematography. Safaraliev is a Dagestani.

During the Soviet period, Russia was of course the fountainhead of political correctness, with what could and could not be said or portrayed being tightly controlled. This began to change thanks to Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, and in post-Soviet Russia a significant liberalisation of freedom of speech and expression took place. Now, unfortunately, it would seem that this relatively brief era is coming to an end, with Russia seemingly intent upon adopting some of the misplaced press restrictions adopted in the West.

Dmitrii Rogozin: Russia’s planetary ambitions

Izvestiia has announced that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitrii Rogozin is planning ‘a series of scientific conferences’ with key personnel in Russia’s space sector, and has suggested that Russia ought to examine the possibility of establishing a manned scientific base on another planetary body rather than seek to extend the life of the International Space Station (ISS). In response to questions fielded by journalists regarding the future of manned spaceflight he stated: 

“Let’s say, if we are speaking about the ISS, is there a point in continuing this programme as an international expedition which orbits around the Earth? Then again perhaps, in fact there would be sense in attempting to address such [scientific] questions by locating a station of this type directly on other planets. It needs to be considered.”

The first of the projected conferences will take place in April, with a view to determining ambitious goals in space exploration.  

Whereas Russia remains the only participating nation capable of launching humans to the ISS since the retirement of the US shuttle fleet, its recent endeavours in space exploration have been inglorious. The late ambitious Phobos-Grunt Mission which was intended to travel to the Martian moon of Phobos, collect a sample from its surface and return it to Earth, managed to get no further than Earth orbit following a hardware failure after its initial launch. The doomed orbiter and lander therefore suffered the indignity of a fiery re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, where it burned up over the Pacific. 

NASA and ESA planetary missions have been far more successful than their Russian counterparts, and although the Russian Space Agency – Roskosmos – currently enjoys a good reputation in launching human and inanimate cargos into low-Earth orbit, the glory days of the Soviet space programme are long gone. Rogozin however, evidently views space exploration as a matter of national prestige, and is thus looking at increasing the space sector’s profile. Such an approach of course is not new, and politicians of all stripes and hues in a number of countries over the years have appealed to the spirit of exploration and innovation to justify ambitious space programmes that have often promised more than the Earth (Mars to be precise in the cases of Bushes senior and junior, and then an asteroid and Mars by Obama), yet have delivered precious little since the heated rivalry of the Space Race in the 1960s.  

The global economic crisis has had a particularly negative impact upon NASA and ESA, with each agency scaling back its programme of exploration, both manned and robotic, owing to budgetary retrenchment. Plans to send humans to Mars  - overseen by rocket ace Wernher von Braun – were already in existence in the early 1970s, with the intention being to undertake such missions later in the decade or in the early 1980s. However, as the Apollo Programme fizzled out amidst public indifference to the last manned lunar missions, NASA’s vision shrank, with the manned space programme thereafter being confined to low-Earth orbit. NASA’s subsequent glories have been in the robotic exploration of the Solar System, through missions such as the two Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini-Huygens (in conjunction with ESA) and various rover and orbiter missions to Mars. By comparison, the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s record in planetary exploration has been dismal, with the majority of their orbiters and probes failing, although their Venera landers did manage to yield a first glimpse of the hellish Venusian surface.    

Whilst both NASA and ESA have been scaling back their ambitions, new spacefaring nations – China and India – have been scaling up theirs. It is China in particular which now appears to wish to leapfrog the established space powers, having already established its own manned launch capability and having concrete plans to create its own orbiting space station in the near future. China has also declared its intent to send taikonauts to the Moon by 2025, and to then establish a lunar base. Under George Bush, NASA had pledged to return to the Moon by 2019 and to build a lunar outpost by 2024, but the Constellation Programme was scrapped as too costly under the Obama administration. Obama instead expressed the oft-repeated desire to send a manned mission to Mars, but at some unspecified point in the 2030s or even 2040s. In the interim, the objective of a manned deep space mission to an asteroid was declared, but once again, without any firm dates or realistic budgetary commitments. It therefore seems likely that it will be China’s ambitions in space which will serve to kick-start any potential serious non-robotic exploration of the Solar System.  

Rogozin, as a Russian of a nationalist bent, clearly finds the prospect of manned space exploration an alluring one. Quite how much valuable data has been mined from the imperfect analogue of a mission to Mars provided by the Mars 500 Project which concluded in Star City just outside of Moscow last year remains to be seen, but perhaps it has spurred Rogozin and others within Russia’s space sector to reconceptualise what may be possible in the near future, with a view to once again putting Russia at the forefront of cutting edge science. So, despite the unpleasant, smelly and not to mention dangerous reality of life away from Mother Earth, we could yet live to see human feet once again making bold impressions in the lunar dust, and possibly alighting for the first time on the surface of another planet: Mars. 

Phobos-Grunt: Russia's latest failed space mission

Moscow's Culture War: Multiculturalism versus National Culture

It is often thought that Russia has escaped the multiculturalist extremism that has bedevilled Western Europe in recent decades, although of course it itself is a multiethnic state in which a number of other peoples such as the Tatars, Bashkirs and Ossetians possess their own ethnically demarcated national homelands. The ethnic Russians themselves – russkie – are dispersed across the northern Eurasian landmass, but have as their core ethnic homeland an ill-defined region west of the Urals. In recent years however, the ethnic Russian heartland – Moscow in particular – has been experiencing a mass influx of non-ethnic Russians both from within the Russian Federation and the post-Soviet states of Central Asia and the Caucasus. This has fuelled a process of Islamisation and the associated paralysis caused by mass street prayers in Moscow.

Against this backdrop, a recent initiative reported upon by Izvestiia becomes to a certain extent comprehensible. What is it precisely? Well, Moscow’s City Education Department has decided to introduce its own form of multiculturalist education to promote “the friendship of peoples” through establishing “international clubs (interclubs) where children will be inculcated with tolerance for other peoples.” As yet, the report states that this approach has only been voluntarily adopted by a number of individual educational establishments, and it chooses to examine the “experiment” conducted at School 225 in Moscow’s Central District.

“We have an interclub led by a foreign language teacher” – said the school’s Director Nadezhda Neverova – “In this, children who wish to stay after lessons study and discuss interesting dates, listen to music and express their opinions, prepare theatrical productions and radio broadcasts. This is not bad, and an interesting form of preventative measure against extremism.”

“On 16 February the Education Department will hold a seminar on interclubs for teachers of the capital’s other schools.”

“ The language of culture is the most democratic language in the world”, declared the Deputy Chairman of the Public Chamber on Improving the Quality of Education Liubov’ Dukhanina. “Xenophobia arises precisely because of a shortage of information about another people. Children, coming through such clubs, will be more inclined to tolerance and less towards aggression.”

However, this initiative is not universally supported by Muscovites, and certain parents have made their objections known. Galina Shnaider, Chairman of the “Moscow Parents” movement stated that rather than study other ethnic groups: “It would be better to add to and foster children’s love specifically for Russian culture – national dances and pancakes.” Moreover, “it is not necessary to “inculcate” a position of tolerance to other peoples in our children.”

Quite clearly, the culture wars are coming to Moscow, with defenders of national culture pitting themselves against more powerful forces seeking to impose "tolerant" attitudes upon the city’s children. If this amounts to promoting interest in foreign languages such as English, French and German and an appreciation of their associated cultures, then this can be seen as no bad thing; but if, as I suspect, it focuses particularly upon promoting acceptance of the mass influx of non-European migrants to Moscow, particularly those carrying the increasingly assertive culture of Islam, it is no good thing at all. In a week when Ray Honeyford passed away, Muscovites should learn from the ruinous experience of multiculturalism in Britain and other European countries, and choose instead to preserve and strengthen Russia’s own national identity and traditions. If Russia follows the Western multiculturalist path, how many European nations will still exist in 2100? Although a country with significant - particularly political – flaws, it is still a nation that is strong enough to stand up to the forces of globalism on the international stage when its elite determines such a stance to be in its interest.Will it in future serve as a potential bulwork against the de-Europeanisation of European states, or will it join us in our act of collective cultural self-immolation? Perhaps the fate of the interclubs initiative will give us an indication as to which way the cultural wind will blow in Russia.

Pupils in a Moscow "International Club"

Nevskii Express Muslim Brotherhood Bombers Sentenced

On 27^th November 2009 a bomb attack took place on the Nevskii Express (pictured below) travelling from Moscow to St Petersburg, with a crank claiming that this had been carried out by a Russian cell of Combat 18 based in St Petersburg. This never rang true, and the main theory at the time of the explosion was that it was the act of Islamist terrorists, probably Chechens. Earlier this week, the culprits were finally sentenced for this act of terror, but rather than being Chechens, they were all Ingush males from the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia said to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood.  

 

Interfax reports that four of the men were sentenced to life imprisonment on the following counts: “the organisation of and participation in an illegal armed formation”; “banditry”; conducting a “terrorist act”; “murder”; “attempted murder”; the “illegal trafficking of weapons” and the “illegal preparation of weapons”. A further six were given 15-year custodial sentences. The attack that these men prepared and perpetrated claimed the lives of 27 passengers and wounded a further 132.

Although Ingushetia and Chechnya split from each other in the 1990s, both still technically remain in the Russian Federation and are hotbeds of Islamism. Russia has suffered from a series of serious Islamist terrorist attacks that have not received the attention that they often deserve in the Western media (e.g. Moscow Metro, March 2010; Kizlyar, March2010; Nazran, April 2010; Vladikavkaz, September 2010), and tensions with the Muslim peoples of the northern Caucasus remain high, as evidenced by a spate of clashes in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and its surrounding district. If it were not for the strategic importance of Chechnya occasioned by the fact that oil pipelines happen to cross its territory, it could well be to Russia’s benefit to let the ‘republic’ and the other Islamic peoples of the region – such as the Ingush – become independent.

Ingush-Russian Clash in Rostov-on-Don

The national question is a theme that is hotly debated in Russian politics, with proponents of ethnic and civic models battling it out. As in Western Europe however, it is the civic version that is dominant, and Russia possesses its very own variant of multiculturalism. What makes the national question such a live issue is the relative demographic decline of ethnic Russians which is paralleled by a surge in immigration from nearby Muslim states and higher birth rates amongst Muslim indigenous ethnic groups within Russia. Violent Islamism continues to bedevil the country and over the past decade the DPNI (Movement Against Illegal Immigration) has sprung up to address concerns about the mass influx of non-Russians. Presidential contender Vladimir Putin evidently thinks that votes are to be won by touching upon this theme, for he has just published his thoughts on the national question in Russia (see the forthcoming article ‘Russia and the National Question: Putin the Patriot?’).

The soft underbelly of the Russian state is the North Caucasian Federal District, of which the Muslim republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia form component parts. It is from this region that the bulk of Russia’s domestic Islamist threat originates. Abutting onto this is the Southern Federal District, of which Rostov-on-Don is the administrative centre. Last week Rostov bore witness to a mass brawl between local Russian students and ethnic Ingush (the latter being a Sunni Muslim ethnic group) that resulted in two individuals being taken to the local hospital to be treated for concussion. The fight was brought to an end when one of the as yet unidentified participants drew out an ‘Osa’ pistol and fired several shots into the air. According to Nezavisimaya gazeta, “the incident took place a week ago next to a dormitory building of the Don Technical University” and local officials have subsequently taken “measures to forestall the appearance of extremism and interethnic conflicts.”

According to Kavkazskii uzel, additional information suggests that “on one side were local residents aged 25 and 19, on the other, seven students from the technical university, having come from Ingushetia to study. Almost all of the students were of the same age: namely 19.” The fight is said to have been sparked by a slanging match that arose between the two.

The local authorities are concerned by this incident because it is not an isolated case. Kavkazskii uzel notes that there have been recent mass brawls in the city and elsewhere in the Rostov District, notably on 2 January when a 38-year-old died of a chest wound and three others were hospitalised; four were hospitalised with serious injuries following a violent ethnic clash in Rostov-on-Don’s Lenin Square in August last year; last July two dozen people were injured (nine hospitalised) in the hamlet of Mel’nikov in the inappropriately named Veselovskii (literally ‘cheerful’ or ‘merry’) region, and another fight between students broke out in the port city of Taganrog on 9 February 2011.

The wounding and subsequent death of Russian student Maksim Sychev by an Ingush student named Khazbulat Markhiev at the Rostov State Construction University at the end of November 2010 caused uproar in Rostov. On 12 December that year a protest was held that attracted some 2,500 participants bringing together “students, football fans, national-patriotic and other informal opposition bodies”. Markhiev was later charged with bringing about Sychev’s death through inflicting “traumatic brain injury” for which he received a three-year sentence.

Taking into consideration the aforementioned context, it can be no surprise that the atmosphere in Rostov must therefore be rather tense. The question that naturally poses itself is this: are these incidents unrelated, or are they symptomatic of something more worrying in the state of Russo-Ingush ethnic relations? 

Russians and Ingush Clash in Rostov-on-Don 

(picture courtesy of Russkii obozrevatel')

 

David Cameron’s Russian Lessons

How the Russians, not normally renowned for their mirth, managed to keep straight faces when David Cameron attempted to speak their language at the start of his visit to their country, it is hard to fathom. He executed (a most appropriate term in this context) the delivery in such a fashion as to render it nigh on incomprehensible to a native-English speaker with a pretty good grasp of Russian. I have a feeling that the famous ‘That’s Life’ speaking dog, renowned for saying “sausages”, could not have been any less comprehensible. It was as if some foreign dignitary visiting England were to place himself proudly before the assembled representatives of the mass media and say “ooee lugf oor cuntrow. Digevva ooee ah stwonga.” Actually, I can’t remember what Cameron said in Russian (it was rather hard to take in, or indeed to decipher), or the English translation that usefully followed, but it did involve the word “digevva” (sorry, that should be “together”).

Thus, Cameron’s visit to Russia started how it would proceed: embarrassingly. He and his team had arrived in Moscow carrying the conviction that these Russian Johnnies were jolly indecent chaps, and needed a good talking to about such things as human rights and dealing with corruption (strangely, I don’t recall British governmental delegations to Saudi Arabia behaving in such a manner or raising these issues). David and Willie Hague looked dreadfully cross, and chastised their hosts about their disgraceful behaviour.

Dave appeared to strike up a reasonable rapport with amiable Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, but as for Putin, the once-and-future Tsar (sorry! Meant to say “President”), he exuded all the warmth of a tank of liquid nitrogen. The body language and facial expressions in the video below display the reality of the power relationship between the Russian and British governments: a contemptuous Putin, bored and seemingly a little irritated at the need to exchange diplomatic pleasantries with the Cameron administration; Cameron and Hague discomfited, looking submissive and slightly afraid. Russia may be an ailing great power, but it is still a state with massive reserves of natural resources and an enormous military machine. It will have a role to play in the geopolitical future, whereas the UK . . . what of it? Are not its leaders intent on continuing our drawn-out process of national suicide?

David Cameron ‘revealed’ that he had been approached by theKGB whilst on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1985, perhaps with a view to him becoming a spy. However, it would appear that the latter decided that the future Bullingdon boy’s lack of linguistic aptitude, as well as his ignorance of social conditions in England, rendered him useless to their aims. So, I suspect that so far as the Russian elite goes Dave, it’s not so much “do svidaniya” as “proshchaite!”

The Russian Political Elite capitulates to Islamisation

For the second year running, thousands of Muslims brought chaos to the streets of Moscow on 30 August through staging mass prayers to mark Eid ul-Fitr, or Uraza Bayram as the Russians call it. Although the Mayor of Moscow – Sergei Sobyanin – arranged one of the pavilions in Sokolniki Park to be equipped with sufficient prayer mats for 9,000 worshippers, this was left largely empty, whilst practising Muslims preferred to show their strength by blocking the streets, with most of them – some 50,000 – congregating near the city’s ‘Cathedral Mosque’, causing great disruption to commuters. A further 15,000 gathered at and around the mosque on Bolshaya Tatarskaya Street. The end of prayers brought problems too, with crushes being experienced at the Prospekt Mira and Rizhskaia Metro stations. The English-language version of Pravda reports:

The prayers ended at 10:00 a.m., and thousands of people headed back to the metro. A human stampede was formed near the entrance to the station. Police officers were trying to ask the believers to walk towards two other stations nearby. Another stampede appeared at 10:30 near Rizhskaya metro station. The people were storming the entrance to the station. Muscovites were hugging the walls, children were crying. Hundreds of people were late for work.

This spectacle never used to occur in Moscow, so one must pose the question: why now? What is it that has prompted tens of thousands of practising Muslims to purposefully bring sections of the capital to a standstill in a display of mass strength? How does the Russian political elite view this, and what are the opinions of non-Muslim Muscovites and Russians more generally?

Moscow possesses four mosques, yet the Muslim population of the city is growing at a rapid rate fuelled largely by Muslim immigration from the former Soviet Muslim states of the ‘near abroad’. However, its size is also augmented by internal migration from the traditionally Muslim-inhabited regions of the Russian Federation itself, such as Tatarstan (see this article for information on generational radicalisation amongst the Tatars) and Bashkortostan. Provisional figures from the 2010 census suggest that Moscow has a population of circa 11.5 million, but there are also many illegal residents who will not have been included in this figure. A considerable proportion of the city’s Muslim population falls into the category of ‘illegal guest workers’

Estimates for the number of Muslim residents vary considerably, with most settling on a figure somewhere in the region of 1.2 to 2 million. These seem credible, but one suggestion that this figure could be as high as 5 million seems untenable to me. Naturally, even if only 10% of Moscow’s Muslim population were to be classed as ‘practising’, four mosques would not be able to accommodate 120,000 to 200,000 people. Thus, as in Paris and Nice, many Muslims have decided that they will pray in the streets and disrupt everyday life in the city if need be with their mass displays of ‘piety’. As is the case with many modern European metropolises, other notable examples being London and Paris, a declining indigenous birth-rate and mass immigration from the former colonies – particularly Muslim ones - is having a negative impact on the character of Moscow. Although the process is not as far advanced as in London, Muscovites could soon start feeling themselves to be strangers in their own city, as many remaining Londoners do in theirs. If current demographic trends continue, Russia itself will be a Muslim majority state by 2050: one in possession of thousands of nuclear warheads.

Returning to the question of the attitude of the Russian political elite to Islam, we find a number of comments from leading politicians on the recent end of Ramadan in the left-wing newspaper Komsomol’skaia pravda. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev was quoted as saying:

“Reviving traditional Islamic values assists in the conservation of Russia’s cultural diversity.” Moreover, in his Ramadan message the paper stated that he “remarked upon the contribution of Muslim society to the strengthening of peace in Russia, declaring that the ummah inculcates amongst its youth a sense of tolerance and respect for members of other peoples.”

Current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was reported as having “valued the contribution of Muslim society to the life of the country” and “remarked that the position of the Muslim Ummah with respect to extremism, in particular, to attempts to transform the traditional values of the religion, sowing enmity and intolerance, needed attention.” He concluded by stating that Islam “receives the support of the whole of society, aiding in the preservation of civil peace and agreement in the country.”

Most gushing of all in his Ramadan greetings (evidently with an eye on the Muslim vote) was Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobianin in a special telegram addressed to Muslims: “The joyous holiday of Eid ul-Fitr possesses a great significance in the life of Muslims. This is a time of moral improvement, when the faithful especially deeply acknowledge and respect the high spiritual ideals – the values of goodness, philanthropy and caring for one’s neighbours.”

Quite clearly, these key figures at the apex of the Russian state are propagandising a view of Islam very much in line with the old Soviet doctrine of druzhba narodov – the friendship of peoples – but in this instance substituting Islam for nationality. This however, is not necessarily a position shared by ethnic Russians – russkie.

Following last year’s Eid ul-Fitr disruptions to life in Moscow, Der Spiegel ran a piece on Russian nationalists mobilising a campaign to prevent the construction of a mosque in the Tekstilshchiki district of the city which has been dubbed Moscow's 'ground zero mosque'. It revealed that the proposed mosque would only be one of up to 40 that the Moscow Council of Muftis wish to see available to Muslims in the capital. Local residents, discomfited by the prospect of a mosque being built on a rare green space used for recreational purposes in Tekstilshchiki, have thus objected to its construction on the grounds that it will deny them of use of such a convenient facility. In an effort to prevent it from going ahead, protestors have been planting saplings in the hope that this area of ground can be preserved as a park instead. This campaign has infuriated Muslims, with Der Spiegel noting that Imam Ildar Aljautdinov has warned ‘that some Muslims may become radicalised if they don’t have mosques to worship in.“We must build more mosques,” he says. “Otherwise something bad will replace the religion.”’

As you can see from Aljautdinov's remarks, doctrinaire Muslims are applying the same bullyboy tactics in Moscow as in England and elsewhere in Europe: submit to our demands or we shall not be responsible for the violence unleashed by our co-religionists.

Returning to the recent chaos to hit Moscow, the video and photographs below show the scale of the Muslim assertion of ownership of the city’s streets. Who in Russia will stand up to this? Кто в России защитит русского народа от исламизации?

Russian Woman struggles to get to Work

Sokolniki Warehouse devoid of Worshippers

Suspected Minsk Metro Bomber detained in violent Confrontation with Police

Viktor Dvorakovskii, an ethnic Russian Wahhabist convert and prime suspect for the 11 April bombing of the Oktiabr'skaia Minsk Metro station, has been arrested in the settlement of Inozemtsevo in the southern Russian district of Stavropol. The 23-year-old Dvorakovskii, who was born in Dagestan in the city of Makhachkala, became a convert to ‘radical Islam’ at the age of 20, and has been evading the Russian special services since they began searching for him in March after he accidentally blew up his own flat with an improvised explosive device. His wife and three-year-old child were in the flat at the time and were wounded.

Viktor Dvorakovskii: the Minsk Metro Bomber?

(Picture: Itar-TASS)

According to Izvestiia, last night’s detention of Dvorakovskii occurred quite by chance when a local police patrol spotted a man behaving in a suspicious manner who then attempted to hide himself in some bushes next to a kindergarten. Upon being asked for his identity documents, he threatened to blow up the police and promptly threw a bomb at them which landed to the side of the group concussing one of the officers. The patrol opened fire and a second device exploded blowing off Dvorakovskii’s right hand. A local resident told reporters how she heard Dvorakovskii yell “Allahu Akbar” before the sounds of two detonations rent the night air. At the time of writing, the latest reports stated that he lay comatose in hospital, bearing wounds sustained from the second bomb blast and a number of small-arms rounds. What was left of his right hand was amputated by surgeons.

At the time of his arrest it was thought that Dvorakovskii was planning an imminent suicide attack, albeit a relatively small-scale one. Recently, it had been thought that he was already dead, following a suicide bombing in Makhachkala on 10 May this year. This took place in similar circumstances to last night’s encounter, with a police patrol happening upon a man “acting suspiciously” who then detonated an explosive device killing one of the officers. Dvorakovskii, who is reported as having received paramilitary training alongside other jihadists in the northern Caucasus, is also said to have had links with a number of other perpetrators of Islamic terrorist acts in Russia, including another ethnic Russian Wahhabist – Vitalii Razdobud’ko – who was responsible for the Domodedovo Airport bombing as well as a double suicide bombing alongside his wife in Gubden, Dagestan on 14 February this year. This bombing killed three policemen and wounded 26 others. Razdobud’ko, his wife Maria Khoresheva and a number of others, had also been involved in a foiled plot to bomb multiple targets in Moscow this past New Year’s Eve.

The cases of Dvorakovskii, Razdobud’ko and his wife illustrate that what lies at the root of Muslim terrorism is Islamic doctrine, not the straw men of ‘racism’ and ‘relative deprivation’ which the British mainstream media routinely wheel out by way of ‘explanation’. It is depressing that ethnic Russians find themselves under attack from this common threat, but if Dvorakovskii was indeed responsible for the Minsk bombing, it is good news indeed that he has been apprehended and now lies in a coma. The members of the Russian police patrol who tackled him must be congratulated for their bravery. May they have every success in hunting down and eliminating all others who follow this vicious jihadist ideology.

“You have made a great personal contribution to Russian statehood.”

Thus ran the written greeting from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to Ramzan Kadyrov as he was officially inaugurated into his second five-year term as Chechen President last week reports Izvestiia. These were warm words indeed from Medvedev, but they paled in comparison to Putin’s gushing message which was relayed via Aleksandr Gennad’evich: “I think, considering such services to the Fatherland, that these five years should last for fifty years!” This brought forth a storm of applause from the hall.

In this phrase, one discerns Putin’s attitude towards democracy: it’s useful for providing a rubberstamp for authoritarianism, but otherwise rather troublesome. Kadyrov may be an Islamist, but he’s one of Moscow’s Islamists, so the Russian political elite is willing to let him run his writ in Chechnya providing that he keeps his Islamising tendencies within the boundaries of the autonomous republic. There was an implicit nod towards the importance of Islam in Chechnya by one of the official representatives sent by Moscow – Aleksandr Khloponin – who stated: “We in the Caucasus have a saying: there is nothing more precious than faith.” Given the state of this part of the world, this was a sad but accurate observation, although I am sure that Khloponin did not intend it to be interpreted in such a fashion.

Kadyrov’s address was short, but included the words “We will pay, as we have done formerly, special attention to the development of civil society.” What manner of civil society does Kadyrov have in mind? The behaviour of his law-enforcement agents in targeting women for not wearing headscarves (even if they’re not Muslim) does not fill me with hope that this “special attention” will make the lives of people in Chechnya better than hitherto. It is likely to propel them backwards socially, towards social norms informed and governed by Shariah. Interestingly, Izvestiia reporter Nataliia Alekseeva notes that Kadyrov did not employ the word ‘Russia’ once in his inauguration speech, which should strike one as odd for an individual lauded for having “made a great personal contribution to Russian statehood.”

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov (photo - AP)