Putin cracks down against calls for greater autonomy in Siberia

[Mister Nightowl]

Source: GlobalPost

Dan Peleschuk October 28, 2014 00:21

NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia — When Alexander Bakayev mentions Moscow or any other city west of the Ural Mountains, he speaks of “Russia” as if it were another country.

This place, some 1,800 miles east of the capital, is simply “Siberia.”

“Siberians are different,” says the social activist and filmmaker. “They stand out.”

People here have felt freer from Moscow’s control for centuries.

Just don’t tell the Kremlin, which is trying to ensure any notions of regional freedom stay well within a small circle of artists and activists lobbying for greater recognition — political, cultural and otherwise — for this vast Russian expanse.

Despite Moscow’s support for the separatist rebels who have seized swaths of eastern Ukraine and demanded independence, officials have made it clear they’ll tolerate no such movement at home by stifling even the faintest calls for more rights in Russia’s regions.

Read more: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/141024/siberia-novosibirsk-activists-federalization-putin

---

Czar Vlad doin' his thing. Again.

[joshcryer]

1. Putin can fuck off.

He won't be able to contain his own peoples' discontent.

[RKP5637]

2. +++ 1,000 +++ Putin and his style are obsolete in the 21st century! He's trying to

roll Russia back to some times that should be forgotten.

[joshcryer]

6. Putin will be seen by future Russians as a dictatorial figure.

He will be seen like Bush for Russia. Bank on it. He's literally Russia's Bush.

[leftynyc]

3. Trying to distract

what this drop in oil prices is doing to his economy - it was headed down before the drop and now it's in a faster spiral down. Just a few hours ago the russian currency hit an all time low against the euro.

http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-ruble-hits-an-all-time-low-against-the-euro-2014-10?utm_source=washingtonpost.com/pb/themost&utm_medium=referral

[pampango]

4. Guardian in May: Russia toughens laws against separatists seeking self-determination inside Russia.

Russia toughens laws against separatists seeking self-determination inside Russia.

According to president Vladimir Putin, those in Crimea who voted to secede from Ukraine were simply exercising their right to self-determination, and the Kremlin continues to condemn Kiev's military operation against separatists in eastern Ukraine. But that hasn't stopped Russia's parliament from toughening punishments for separatist ideas in its own country.

New legislation introduced by Andrei Klishas, head of the Federation Council's committee on constitutional legislation, seeks to increase the maximum punishment from three to four years imprisonment for "public calls for actions violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation." The bill also adds lesser punishments including arrest for up to six months and compulsory work for up to three years.

A government crackdown on independent media has been accompanied by stricter regulations on the internet in recent months. Putin signed a controversial law earlier this month forcing popular bloggers to register with the government's internet watchdog.

Meanwhile, the government was discussing on Friday the creation of an "internet ombudsman" position, according to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The newspaper reported that one of the candidates for the position was conservative MP Sergei Zheleznyak, who has authored a variety of moralistic legislation, as well as initiatives to increase the authorities' access to internet users' information.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/24/russia-toughens-punishment-separatist-ideas

Apparently what is good for the folks in eastern Ukraine is not good for the folks in Siberia. Odd how that works out. Territorial integrity is an important concept when it is your territory, not so much when it is another country's territory.

[joshcryer]

7. Nevermind Putin was never elected.

Simple statistics prove he was never legitimately elected.



Putin is literally Bush in every way imaginable.

[Darb]

14. Interesting graphic, help me to understand it better.

How does it translate exactly.

[renegade000]

17. i think it's a plot of election results from different localities

Showing that in Uganda and Russia there are outlier clusters of localities with near 100% turnout with near 100% of the vote going toward the winner, which is pretty damning evidence of some sort of chicanery. Of course, I'd really like to have a link for where this data comes from, because this is pretty remarkable if true.

[joshcryer]

20. Statistical Detection of Election Irregularities

http://www.santafe.edu/news/item/pnas-thurner-fingerprints-election-thieves/

Here's a preprint (don't have access to the published paper but I don't think it differs by much): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.3087v2.pdf

They put the data online: http://www.complex-systems.meduniwien.ac.at/elections/election.html

I think it's a good approach.

[ColesCountyDem]

5. "Do as I say, and not as I do", eh, Comrade Major Putin?

You're nothing more than a KGB thug in a Saville Row suit.

[pampango]

8. While at the same time: "Russia backs rebel polls in east Ukraine"

Russia has announced plans to recognise elections scheduled for next weekend by rebels in east Ukraine, defying the government in Kiev and indicating that the crisis, which began nearly a year ago, is far from abating. In an interview with the Izvestia newspaper on Tuesday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced Moscow's plans saying: "We expect the elections will go ahead as agreed, and we will of course recognise the results."

Two pro-Russian separatist regions, the self-proclaimed people's republics of Dontesk and Luhansk, are holding polls on Sunday to elect leaders and parliaments, exactly a week after Kiev completed general elections which the two regions refused to participate in.

"We are counting on it being a free vote and that it will go ahead unhindered," Lavrov said.

Lavrov said the elections would be "important from the point of view of legitimising the authority" of the regions' rebel leadership. He also said Moscow was likely to recognise parliamentary elections held by Ukraine on Sunday, although it would wait for the verdict of the OSCE observers.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/10/russia-backs-rebel-polls-east-ukraine-20141028998626393.html

So the Russian government will "wait for the verdict of the OSCE observers" before recognizing the legitimacy of the results. However, it will "of course recognise the results" of the separatist election.

Who the election monitors are in the separatist election. Apparently not the OSCE. Perhaps the same assortment of politicians from the far-right in Europe as served as 'observers' in the Crimean referendum.

"No major international organisations are monitoring the vote, but a group of observers from 23 countries – a mixture of anti-western ideologues and European far-right politicians – have arrived of their own accord and gave a press conference in Simferopol on Saturday evening.

Belá Kovács, an MEP from the far-right Hungarian party Jobbik, said everything he had seen on Saturday conformed to international standards and he expected the vote to be free and fair.

Kovács said there were no British observers at the referendum. The BNP's Nick Griffin "really wanted to come, but we persuaded him not to", he said."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/ukraine-crisis-crimea-referendum

I wonder if the Russian government would be equally respectful of an election held by separatists in Siberia as they are those in Ukraine.

[Comrade Grumpy]

9. All you have to do around here is type "Putin," and the spittle starts flying.

[snooper2]

11. Oh comrade, I'm sorry you are feeling sad, when I feel sad or even homesick

I put on some driving videos! (rocking music too! )

[LanternWaste]

13. Yours being the first... creating a rather creative self-fulfilling prophecy for our bemusement.

Yours being the first... creating a rather creative self-fulfilling prophecy for our bemusement.

[snooper2]

10. Pootie needs to still control the North Korean Logging Camps in Siberia

[jakeXT]

12. A Siberian Republic, a Brzezinski dream from 1997

In these circumstances, Russia's first priority should be to modernize itself rather than to engage in a futile effort to regain its status as a global power. Given the country's size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia's vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia -- composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic -- would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entities would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/53392/zbigniew-brzezinski/a-geostrategy-for-Eurasia

[The Magistrate]

15. Sounds Rather Like Putin's Proposal For Ukraine, Sir

Recall that the Soviet Union was in its legal structure a federal union of several republics, with various autonomous regions as well. The eastern possessions of Russia are hardly of long-standing; most were acquired by 'treaties' extorted from a decrepit Imperial China in the mid and late nineteenth century. It is, in fact, a long term Chinese goal to regain the Trans-Amur and Trans-Ussuri, and given the decline in Russian power and population, they are likely to manage it, one way or another. For reference, here is the map of it, as things stood in the eighteenth century:

[jakeXT]

18. And of course the US is mediating...

In Asia, the U.S. role should be that of regional balancer and conciliator, replicating the role played by the U.K. in intra-European politics during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The U.S. can and should help Asian states avoid a struggle for regional domination by mediating conflicts and offsetting power imbalances among potential rivals.

In doing so, it should respect China's special historic and geopolitical role in maintaining stability on the Far Eastern mainland. Engaging with China in a dialogue regarding regional stability would not only help reduce the possibility of U.S.-Chinese conflicts but also diminish the probability of miscalculation between China and Japan, or China and India—and even at some point between China and Russia over the resources and independent status of the Central Asian states. Thus America's balancing efforts in Asia would ultimately be in China's interest as well.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203413304577088881349304486

[The Magistrate]

19. When You Have A Point, Sir, By All Means State It

"It was his vocation to announce the obvious in terms of the scandalous."

[Tommy_Carcetti]

16. Maybe Ukraine can send in some little green men with tanks.

And then hold a plebiscite with a 97% approval vote two weeks later.