ZEB WALTON
ayo! - BEZ
what a g
Another Big Win For Putin!!!
- Thread starter 88m3
- Start date
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what a g
ill
Superstar
Eastern Ukraine will never fall into western hands.
All he said was his group was doing surveillance and that they never communicate with the rebels.
Amphibious
Land, water, wherever.
Tryin to bite my post, fakkit
you had a hot vid, i made it an informative post
Billionaire Russian businessman found dead outside Surrey home could have been poisoned
Alexander Perepilichnyy, who collapsed and died outside his home in 2012, was due to give evidence in a case which implicated Russian tax officials
CAHAL MILMO
Monday 18 May 2015
188
PRINT
A A A
Evidence has emerged for the first time that a millionaire Russian businessman found dead outside his Surrey home may have been poisoned by assassins - despite the insistence of police that his death was not suspicious.
Alexander Perepilichnyy collapsed and died outside his home on a select estate in Weybridge in November 2012 shortly before he was due to give evidence as a whistleblower in an investigation into an alleged $230m (£146m) fraud which implicated Russian tax officials in a conspiracy with organised criminals. He had been told he was on a mafia hit list.
The news of Mr Perepilichnyy's death was first reported by The Independent, sparking interest in the case from around the world.
The sudden death of a hitherto healthy man in the depths of the Stockbroker Belt led to intense speculation that the 44-year-old was the target of contract killers from the Russian mafia. But Surrey Police insisted within 12 months of the death that extensive toxicology testing and other investigations showed the death was not suspicious and there had been "no third-party involvement".
But at a pre-inquest hearing it emerged that fresh testing by a leading poisons expert has revealed the presence of a chemical in a sample of the stomach contents of Mr Perepilichnyy which is strongly associated with a lethal plant toxin known to be used by Russian contract killers.
Lawyers for police acknowledged in a hearing at Surrey Coroner's Court in Woking that the presence of the chemical "ion" was a "cause for very serious concern".
Further tests are now being urgently carried out to establish whether the chemical "calling card" in the stomach contents can be used to show that Mr Perepilichnyy must have swallowed a deadly plant poison shortly before his death.
The court heard that the substance was extremely rare in nature and could only be derived naturally from five sources - all of them forms of the poisonous plant Gelsemium, otherwise known as "heartbreak grass" and a known tool of assassins from Russia and China, where the most toxic version of the shrub - Gelsemium elegans - grows on remote hillsides.
UK News in Pictures
1 of 50
PEREPILICHNYY WARNED HIS NAME WAS ON GANG HIT LIST
PEREPILICHNYY 'FEARED FOR HIS LIFE' AND WAS IMPLICATED IN FRAUD
THE EXCLUSIVE GATED COMMUNITY WHERE PEREPILICHNYY DIED
Mr Travers has previously ruled that he will not hear evidence concerning Mr Perepilichnyy's background at any inquest but he said the situation would be "plainly different" were evidence of poisoning to emerge and the scope of any hearing may have to change.
Lawyers for the insurance companies with which the businessman took out his policies said it was now vital that the issue of the potential poisoning be resolved.
Bob Moxon Browne QC said: "My understanding is that [Prof Simmonds] has recovered from the stomach contacts a suspect ion. The suspicion is that this compound is found only in nature in five forms, all of which are associated with the highly toxic Gelsemium plant. Nobody is suggesting that the ion recovered from Mr Perepilichnyy's stomach killed him. But it is the calling card of what may have killed him."
Alexander Perepilichnyy, who collapsed and died outside his home in 2012, was due to give evidence in a case which implicated Russian tax officials
CAHAL MILMO
Monday 18 May 2015
188
A A A
Evidence has emerged for the first time that a millionaire Russian businessman found dead outside his Surrey home may have been poisoned by assassins - despite the insistence of police that his death was not suspicious.
Alexander Perepilichnyy collapsed and died outside his home on a select estate in Weybridge in November 2012 shortly before he was due to give evidence as a whistleblower in an investigation into an alleged $230m (£146m) fraud which implicated Russian tax officials in a conspiracy with organised criminals. He had been told he was on a mafia hit list.
The news of Mr Perepilichnyy's death was first reported by The Independent, sparking interest in the case from around the world.
The sudden death of a hitherto healthy man in the depths of the Stockbroker Belt led to intense speculation that the 44-year-old was the target of contract killers from the Russian mafia. But Surrey Police insisted within 12 months of the death that extensive toxicology testing and other investigations showed the death was not suspicious and there had been "no third-party involvement".
But at a pre-inquest hearing it emerged that fresh testing by a leading poisons expert has revealed the presence of a chemical in a sample of the stomach contents of Mr Perepilichnyy which is strongly associated with a lethal plant toxin known to be used by Russian contract killers.
Lawyers for police acknowledged in a hearing at Surrey Coroner's Court in Woking that the presence of the chemical "ion" was a "cause for very serious concern".
Further tests are now being urgently carried out to establish whether the chemical "calling card" in the stomach contents can be used to show that Mr Perepilichnyy must have swallowed a deadly plant poison shortly before his death.
The court heard that the substance was extremely rare in nature and could only be derived naturally from five sources - all of them forms of the poisonous plant Gelsemium, otherwise known as "heartbreak grass" and a known tool of assassins from Russia and China, where the most toxic version of the shrub - Gelsemium elegans - grows on remote hillsides.
UK News in Pictures
1 of 50
PEREPILICHNYY WARNED HIS NAME WAS ON GANG HIT LIST
PEREPILICHNYY 'FEARED FOR HIS LIFE' AND WAS IMPLICATED IN FRAUD
THE EXCLUSIVE GATED COMMUNITY WHERE PEREPILICHNYY DIED
Mr Travers has previously ruled that he will not hear evidence concerning Mr Perepilichnyy's background at any inquest but he said the situation would be "plainly different" were evidence of poisoning to emerge and the scope of any hearing may have to change.
Lawyers for the insurance companies with which the businessman took out his policies said it was now vital that the issue of the potential poisoning be resolved.
Bob Moxon Browne QC said: "My understanding is that [Prof Simmonds] has recovered from the stomach contacts a suspect ion. The suspicion is that this compound is found only in nature in five forms, all of which are associated with the highly toxic Gelsemium plant. Nobody is suggesting that the ion recovered from Mr Perepilichnyy's stomach killed him. But it is the calling card of what may have killed him."
Mexico watches its $300 million satellite explode during botched launch by Russians http://fusion.net/story/136679/mexi...ite-explode-during-botched-launch-by-russians
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
humble forever
All Star
This country is a organize crime utopia. On a other note, Putin has to be shytting bricks if America gets close with Iran.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
He's loosing all of his cards in the Middle East which is a disaster for Russia. I really doubt Assad can hold out long even with Hizbullah and Iran supplying weapons and troops. Assad can't loose army after army and expect the population to replenish it. Iraq seems doomed in dealing with IS as well but Iran can't step away from that or the problem will be at their border.
Amphibious
Land, water, wherever.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Fighting HIV where no-one admits it's a problem
International AIDS Candlelight Memorial Day in Moscow, 2011
Hooked - Part 3
The phrase "Aids epidemic" awakens distant memories in most of Europe, Australia or the Americas, where infection rates have generally been in decline for years. But as former UK Health Secretary Lord Fowler explains, the phrase is not used in Russia either - despite failed policies that have allowed infection rates to soar.
For years Russia has remained remarkably silent on the challenge it faces from HIV and Aids. Now that silence has been broken by an epidemiologist who has been working in the field for more than two decades - and he calls the situation "a national catastrophe".
Vadim Pokrovsky, the softly spoken head of the Federal Aids Centre in Moscow, has watched as the figures have climbed remorselessly upwards.
There are about one million people living with HIV today in Russia and year on year the rate of infection is rising, unlike sub-Saharan Africa where the rate of increase is slowing. This is according to Russia's official figures, which almost everyone agrees are a substantial underestimate of the true position.
Last year some 90,000 Russian people contracted HIV, compared with fewer than 3,000 people in Germany, which has one of the lowest rates of HIV infection in Europe. Germany's population may be half the size of Russia's but the difference here is a factor of 30.
"We need to spend 10 times more on prevention," Pokrovsky told me recently. "We need many more resources and we need some political decisions - and changes in the law in connection with methadone and the private lives of individuals."
The trouble is that his diagnosis goes smack against the current ideology of the state and the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church.
Catch up later on iPlayer Radio
Browse the Health Check archive
In an interview this month with Agence France-Presse he was even blunter, saying the Kremlin's policy of promoting traditional family values had failed to halt the spread of the virus. "The last five years of the conservative approach have led to the doubling of the number of HIV-infected people," he said.
When Pokrovsky argued for the introduction of sex education in schools - a step resolutely opposed bypresidential children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov - the head of Moscow City Council's health committee, Lyudmila Stebenkova, called him a "typical agent working against the national interests of Russia".
Pokrovsky's approach, she told the Russian newspaper Kommersant, would only increase children's interest in sex and lead to a surge of HIV and other diseases.
"Instead of distributing condoms we should be promoting sexual fidelity and healthy families - that is much more effective," she said.
Yet the figures suggest otherwise. Pokrovsky has warned women that their chances of marrying an HIV-positive man are high.
"There are 80-100 cases of HIV infection among women a day. This is no joke - a day. They are mostly young women, aged from 25 to 35 years and they are the main new risk group," he told me.
Waiting room at a regional Aids centre in Russia
Almost 60% of those with HIV in Russia are injecting drug users and a further group are the sexual partners of the drug users. The HIV virus has spread like wildfire via contaminated needles and syringes.
That is why many countries around the world provide clean needles and methadone, which is taken orally, in place of drugs which are injected. When I was health secretary in the UK, that policy was started in 1987 and since then the numbers of people newly infected by contaminated needles have reduced almost to zero. The same results have been seen in a range of European countries and in Australia, which was an early pioneer of such policies to reduce the harm at-risk groups do to themselves and each other.
Yet in Russia methadone is banned. The World Health Organization may see the synthetic opiate as essential in combating heroin dependence, but in Russia anyone caught using it or distributing it can face up to 20 years in prison.
Health officials rely instead on narkologia, a traditional form of treatment that dates back to Peter the Great's attempts to fight alcoholism in the early 18th Century. In essence, this approach consists of isolating the drug user during a month of detoxification, followed up with rehabilitation - including lectures, self-help groups, physiotherapy, diet advice and so on.
Evgeny Brun, Russia's chief narcologist
The country's chief narcologist, Dr Evgeny Brun, is dismissive of replacement drugs. "Our professional joke is that methadone is similar to treating the vodka alcoholic with cognac," he told me with a chuckle.
It is true that methadone is also an addictive drug but if it comes from a healthcare source, in controlled doses and without needles, it often allows the drug-user to function reasonably and hold down a job. The glaring defect in the traditional Russian method of treatment is that all too often it does not work.
Global Aids epidemic in 2013
People living with HIV 35m - 31.8m adults and 3.2m children under 15
New HIV infections 2.1m - 1.9m adults and 240,000 children under 15
Aids related deaths 1.5m - 1.3m adults and 190,000 children under 15
When I toured the wards of the Moscow Research and Practical Centre of Narcology, there was no doubting the dedication of head doctor Elena Sokolchik.
The hospital on the outskirts of Moscow is considered one of the best facilities in the country, although only 10-15% of patients here go on to the voluntary course of rehab after their initial treatment.
Dr Sokolchik has been on a number of professional visits abroad but was troubled by what she saw. "When an addict comes - along with her children - to a centre where she can get methadone I feel that this is wrong and hypocritical. I don't want a kid to see addictive drugs distributed as if they were medicines," she says.
Elena Sokolchik, head doctor at the Moscow Research and Practical Centre of Narcology
Dr Sokolchik told me that she was proud of her record.
"I can tell you for certain that of our patients who go through the rehabilitation programme, 48% stay drug free for a year, 35% manage two years and 8% stay clean for eight years," she says.
But these statistics indicate that roughly half of those who go through rehab do not stay drug-free for a year, and say nothing about the 80% to 90% who do not stay for rehab. Survey after survey shows many patients are soon back on injecting drugs - and once again spreading the virus.
"Nobody believes me when I say that the Russian government is not doing any prevention work to stop the HIV epidemic," says Anya Sarang, head of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation - a small charity in Moscow which tries to promote better health for drug users.
"There is absolutely no effort to stop the epidemic among people who inject drugs and unsurprisingly Russia remains one of the few countries in the world where the HIV epidemic is still on the rise."
It is also true that no support is given to the handful of voluntary organisations trying to fill the gap. Sarang says that her small foundation is the only one doing harm-reduction work on the streets of Moscow. But it is an organisation which lives on a shoestring. It would dearly like a van to act as a mobile testing centre but that is beyond its resources - and volunteers have to lug their supplies around in rucksacks on the Moscow metro.
Infants at an orphanage for HIV-positive children in Moscow
There are some bright spots in the Russian landscape, though. A few miles outside St Petersburg there is a clinic for infectious diseases which was originally built as hospital for the poor by Tsar Alexander II in the 19th Century, and which now houses a special unit for children with HIV, some of whom have been orphaned or abandoned. The devoted work of the staff there has not only provided children with proper care but altered attitudes among people living nearby.
Back in the 1980s the fear was that HIV was infectious merely through touch or proximity. At one point, a petition was sent to President Boris Yeltsin calling for the clinic to be closed - and so it was, but only for 24 hours. Fortunately, wiser counsel intervened. Today the position is much improved and many children are eventually adopted.
But although discrimination against children with HIV has diminished, other prejudices remain very much alive. Adults with HIV can face ostracism. Sex workers caught carrying condoms are too often threatened with a charge of soliciting and forced to pay bribes to police. President Putin's legislation against the promotion of homosexuality encourages bigots, and makes it hard to get safe-sex advice leaflets printed.
Everyone agrees that the most important aim of global policy must be to persuade more people to step forward for HIV tests. But why should you come forward if you risk discrimination? At present only half of those around the world with HIV know their condition, so many will continue to spread the virus - and the battle against Aids is set back further.
Perhaps it is for these reasons that when asked about the outlook for an Aids-free Russia, Vadim Pokrovsky confesses he is not very hopeful. "Victory on HIV infection," he says quietly, "will require another 25 years."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32792830?ocid=socialflow_facebook
- 20 May 2015
- From the sectionMagazine
International AIDS Candlelight Memorial Day in Moscow, 2011
Hooked - Part 3
The phrase "Aids epidemic" awakens distant memories in most of Europe, Australia or the Americas, where infection rates have generally been in decline for years. But as former UK Health Secretary Lord Fowler explains, the phrase is not used in Russia either - despite failed policies that have allowed infection rates to soar.
For years Russia has remained remarkably silent on the challenge it faces from HIV and Aids. Now that silence has been broken by an epidemiologist who has been working in the field for more than two decades - and he calls the situation "a national catastrophe".
Vadim Pokrovsky, the softly spoken head of the Federal Aids Centre in Moscow, has watched as the figures have climbed remorselessly upwards.
There are about one million people living with HIV today in Russia and year on year the rate of infection is rising, unlike sub-Saharan Africa where the rate of increase is slowing. This is according to Russia's official figures, which almost everyone agrees are a substantial underestimate of the true position.
Last year some 90,000 Russian people contracted HIV, compared with fewer than 3,000 people in Germany, which has one of the lowest rates of HIV infection in Europe. Germany's population may be half the size of Russia's but the difference here is a factor of 30.
"We need to spend 10 times more on prevention," Pokrovsky told me recently. "We need many more resources and we need some political decisions - and changes in the law in connection with methadone and the private lives of individuals."
The trouble is that his diagnosis goes smack against the current ideology of the state and the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church.
Catch up later on iPlayer Radio
Browse the Health Check archive
In an interview this month with Agence France-Presse he was even blunter, saying the Kremlin's policy of promoting traditional family values had failed to halt the spread of the virus. "The last five years of the conservative approach have led to the doubling of the number of HIV-infected people," he said.
When Pokrovsky argued for the introduction of sex education in schools - a step resolutely opposed bypresidential children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov - the head of Moscow City Council's health committee, Lyudmila Stebenkova, called him a "typical agent working against the national interests of Russia".
Pokrovsky's approach, she told the Russian newspaper Kommersant, would only increase children's interest in sex and lead to a surge of HIV and other diseases.
"Instead of distributing condoms we should be promoting sexual fidelity and healthy families - that is much more effective," she said.
Yet the figures suggest otherwise. Pokrovsky has warned women that their chances of marrying an HIV-positive man are high.
"There are 80-100 cases of HIV infection among women a day. This is no joke - a day. They are mostly young women, aged from 25 to 35 years and they are the main new risk group," he told me.
Waiting room at a regional Aids centre in Russia
Almost 60% of those with HIV in Russia are injecting drug users and a further group are the sexual partners of the drug users. The HIV virus has spread like wildfire via contaminated needles and syringes.
That is why many countries around the world provide clean needles and methadone, which is taken orally, in place of drugs which are injected. When I was health secretary in the UK, that policy was started in 1987 and since then the numbers of people newly infected by contaminated needles have reduced almost to zero. The same results have been seen in a range of European countries and in Australia, which was an early pioneer of such policies to reduce the harm at-risk groups do to themselves and each other.
Yet in Russia methadone is banned. The World Health Organization may see the synthetic opiate as essential in combating heroin dependence, but in Russia anyone caught using it or distributing it can face up to 20 years in prison.
Health officials rely instead on narkologia, a traditional form of treatment that dates back to Peter the Great's attempts to fight alcoholism in the early 18th Century. In essence, this approach consists of isolating the drug user during a month of detoxification, followed up with rehabilitation - including lectures, self-help groups, physiotherapy, diet advice and so on.
Evgeny Brun, Russia's chief narcologist
The country's chief narcologist, Dr Evgeny Brun, is dismissive of replacement drugs. "Our professional joke is that methadone is similar to treating the vodka alcoholic with cognac," he told me with a chuckle.
It is true that methadone is also an addictive drug but if it comes from a healthcare source, in controlled doses and without needles, it often allows the drug-user to function reasonably and hold down a job. The glaring defect in the traditional Russian method of treatment is that all too often it does not work.
Global Aids epidemic in 2013
People living with HIV 35m - 31.8m adults and 3.2m children under 15
New HIV infections 2.1m - 1.9m adults and 240,000 children under 15
Aids related deaths 1.5m - 1.3m adults and 190,000 children under 15
When I toured the wards of the Moscow Research and Practical Centre of Narcology, there was no doubting the dedication of head doctor Elena Sokolchik.
The hospital on the outskirts of Moscow is considered one of the best facilities in the country, although only 10-15% of patients here go on to the voluntary course of rehab after their initial treatment.
Dr Sokolchik has been on a number of professional visits abroad but was troubled by what she saw. "When an addict comes - along with her children - to a centre where she can get methadone I feel that this is wrong and hypocritical. I don't want a kid to see addictive drugs distributed as if they were medicines," she says.
Elena Sokolchik, head doctor at the Moscow Research and Practical Centre of Narcology
Dr Sokolchik told me that she was proud of her record.
"I can tell you for certain that of our patients who go through the rehabilitation programme, 48% stay drug free for a year, 35% manage two years and 8% stay clean for eight years," she says.
But these statistics indicate that roughly half of those who go through rehab do not stay drug-free for a year, and say nothing about the 80% to 90% who do not stay for rehab. Survey after survey shows many patients are soon back on injecting drugs - and once again spreading the virus.
"Nobody believes me when I say that the Russian government is not doing any prevention work to stop the HIV epidemic," says Anya Sarang, head of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation - a small charity in Moscow which tries to promote better health for drug users.
"There is absolutely no effort to stop the epidemic among people who inject drugs and unsurprisingly Russia remains one of the few countries in the world where the HIV epidemic is still on the rise."
It is also true that no support is given to the handful of voluntary organisations trying to fill the gap. Sarang says that her small foundation is the only one doing harm-reduction work on the streets of Moscow. But it is an organisation which lives on a shoestring. It would dearly like a van to act as a mobile testing centre but that is beyond its resources - and volunteers have to lug their supplies around in rucksacks on the Moscow metro.
Infants at an orphanage for HIV-positive children in Moscow
There are some bright spots in the Russian landscape, though. A few miles outside St Petersburg there is a clinic for infectious diseases which was originally built as hospital for the poor by Tsar Alexander II in the 19th Century, and which now houses a special unit for children with HIV, some of whom have been orphaned or abandoned. The devoted work of the staff there has not only provided children with proper care but altered attitudes among people living nearby.
Back in the 1980s the fear was that HIV was infectious merely through touch or proximity. At one point, a petition was sent to President Boris Yeltsin calling for the clinic to be closed - and so it was, but only for 24 hours. Fortunately, wiser counsel intervened. Today the position is much improved and many children are eventually adopted.
But although discrimination against children with HIV has diminished, other prejudices remain very much alive. Adults with HIV can face ostracism. Sex workers caught carrying condoms are too often threatened with a charge of soliciting and forced to pay bribes to police. President Putin's legislation against the promotion of homosexuality encourages bigots, and makes it hard to get safe-sex advice leaflets printed.
Everyone agrees that the most important aim of global policy must be to persuade more people to step forward for HIV tests. But why should you come forward if you risk discrimination? At present only half of those around the world with HIV know their condition, so many will continue to spread the virus - and the battle against Aids is set back further.
Perhaps it is for these reasons that when asked about the outlook for an Aids-free Russia, Vadim Pokrovsky confesses he is not very hopeful. "Victory on HIV infection," he says quietly, "will require another 25 years."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32792830?ocid=socialflow_facebook
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Russia Is Using Mobile Crematoriums to Hide Ukraine's Dead
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-26/putin-burns-his-dead-to-hide-ukraine-aggression
How Vladimir Putin created America’s new hot wine
http://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...utin-created-americas-new-hot-wine/?tid=sm_fb
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-26/putin-burns-his-dead-to-hide-ukraine-aggression
How Vladimir Putin created America’s new hot wine
http://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...utin-created-americas-new-hot-wine/?tid=sm_fb
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Putin denies Russian troops are in Ukraine, decrees certain deaths secret
Karoun Demirjian May 28 at 12:51 PM
MOSCOW — If there was one weak spot in Russian support for the Kremlin’s aims in Ukraine this year, it was the population’s strong aversion to sending in Russian troops — something Russia denies doing, despite mounting international evidence to the contrary.
Now, Russia can ignore that evidence — as well as any questions citizens might raise — since President Vladimir Putin signed a decree classifying certain peacetime deaths of soldiers as state secrets.
Putin signed an order Thursday making the deaths of Russian troops lost during “special operations” a secret, amending a previous decree that limited such secrecy to deaths of soldiers in wartime. Some watchers can see only one plausible reason for the change: Russia is gearing up for another military push into Ukraine.
[Ukraine says it wants a missile shield to protect against Russian aggression]
“We’re in a prewar situation. Right now there’s going to be another campaign in Ukraine,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst based in Moscow, who added that Russia was being secret about losses because “we’re fighting a secret war.”
But war brings about the sort of casualties that can serve as proof of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, Felgenhauer pointed out.
“If foreigners know about the losses of soldiers in Donbass, that’s not very good,” he said, using a term that refers to eastern Ukraine. “But more important is that the Russian public doesn’t know. So it’s going to be a secret, as it was in Soviet times.”
Russia has long denied its troops are operating in Ukraine, dismissing as fabrications reports of training camps, troop buildups and even the testimony of captured Russian soldiers claiming to be on active duty.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that the decree is a simple upgrade of state privacy laws that “has nothing to do with Ukraine” and that Putin had no plans to green light a special operation there.
Yet dead and missing soldiers speak to the Russian population louder than NATO satellite images tracking Russian troop movements. And last summer, as news of troops returning from Ukraine in caskets reached the Russian people, the government narrowly avoided an internal crisis.
Eventually, mothers of Russian soldiers clamoring for information on their sons captured in Ukraine were muzzled, while politicians who publicized the secret funerals and burials of Russian soldiers thought to have died in Ukraine were reportedly beaten.
Russia has a history of secrecy surrounding the deaths of troops. The country spares no ceremony celebrating its military victories and prowess, but there are still many families who don’t know what happened to their war dead, in World War II or any of the military campaigns that Soviet troops fought in the decades after. Russians don’t even know how many people who died in those conflicts were civilians vs. soldiers, because the state kept such figures secret.
But one thing is sure: Much as they may support Putin’s Ukraine policies, Russians don’t want to repeat the experience of suffering mass losses over a conflict in another country. Last year, one state-run poll found that two-thirds of Russians opposed sending troops into Ukraine, while barely more than a quarter of the population supported the idea.
Nonetheless, reports continue to emerge about how Russia has been building up its troop presence near the Ukrainian border. A Bloomberg report this week cited U.S. lawmakers claiming that Russia was operating mobilecrematoriums in eastern Ukraine to hide its dead — and thus hide its involvement in the conflict.
And then there’s the image that the decree’s terminology — “special operations” — drums up. “Special operations” is “a new term to identify a new reality" without a legal definition, presidential Human Rights Council member Sergey Krivenko told Russian news outlet RBK on Thursday.
But Russians have heard the term before during Putin’s presidency — in connection with such campaigns as the second Chechen war, the 2008 conflict in South Ossetia and, most recently, last year’s annexation of Crimea.
Read more:
Wary of Russia, Europe now tiptoes when it comes to expansion
Putin takes swipe at U.S. in Victory Day speech
Russian soldier’s mother nearly faints, then demands to know why he was in Ukraine
Karoun Demirjian is a reporting fellow in The Post's Moscow bureau. She previously served as the Washington Correspondent for the Las Vegas Sun, and reported for the Associated Press in Jerusalem and the Chicago Tribune in Chicago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...3-11e5-93f4-f24d4af7f97d_story.html?tid=sm_fb
Karoun Demirjian May 28 at 12:51 PM
MOSCOW — If there was one weak spot in Russian support for the Kremlin’s aims in Ukraine this year, it was the population’s strong aversion to sending in Russian troops — something Russia denies doing, despite mounting international evidence to the contrary.
Now, Russia can ignore that evidence — as well as any questions citizens might raise — since President Vladimir Putin signed a decree classifying certain peacetime deaths of soldiers as state secrets.
Putin signed an order Thursday making the deaths of Russian troops lost during “special operations” a secret, amending a previous decree that limited such secrecy to deaths of soldiers in wartime. Some watchers can see only one plausible reason for the change: Russia is gearing up for another military push into Ukraine.
[Ukraine says it wants a missile shield to protect against Russian aggression]
“We’re in a prewar situation. Right now there’s going to be another campaign in Ukraine,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst based in Moscow, who added that Russia was being secret about losses because “we’re fighting a secret war.”
But war brings about the sort of casualties that can serve as proof of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, Felgenhauer pointed out.
“If foreigners know about the losses of soldiers in Donbass, that’s not very good,” he said, using a term that refers to eastern Ukraine. “But more important is that the Russian public doesn’t know. So it’s going to be a secret, as it was in Soviet times.”
Russia has long denied its troops are operating in Ukraine, dismissing as fabrications reports of training camps, troop buildups and even the testimony of captured Russian soldiers claiming to be on active duty.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that the decree is a simple upgrade of state privacy laws that “has nothing to do with Ukraine” and that Putin had no plans to green light a special operation there.
Yet dead and missing soldiers speak to the Russian population louder than NATO satellite images tracking Russian troop movements. And last summer, as news of troops returning from Ukraine in caskets reached the Russian people, the government narrowly avoided an internal crisis.
Eventually, mothers of Russian soldiers clamoring for information on their sons captured in Ukraine were muzzled, while politicians who publicized the secret funerals and burials of Russian soldiers thought to have died in Ukraine were reportedly beaten.
Russia has a history of secrecy surrounding the deaths of troops. The country spares no ceremony celebrating its military victories and prowess, but there are still many families who don’t know what happened to their war dead, in World War II or any of the military campaigns that Soviet troops fought in the decades after. Russians don’t even know how many people who died in those conflicts were civilians vs. soldiers, because the state kept such figures secret.
But one thing is sure: Much as they may support Putin’s Ukraine policies, Russians don’t want to repeat the experience of suffering mass losses over a conflict in another country. Last year, one state-run poll found that two-thirds of Russians opposed sending troops into Ukraine, while barely more than a quarter of the population supported the idea.
Nonetheless, reports continue to emerge about how Russia has been building up its troop presence near the Ukrainian border. A Bloomberg report this week cited U.S. lawmakers claiming that Russia was operating mobilecrematoriums in eastern Ukraine to hide its dead — and thus hide its involvement in the conflict.
And then there’s the image that the decree’s terminology — “special operations” — drums up. “Special operations” is “a new term to identify a new reality" without a legal definition, presidential Human Rights Council member Sergey Krivenko told Russian news outlet RBK on Thursday.
But Russians have heard the term before during Putin’s presidency — in connection with such campaigns as the second Chechen war, the 2008 conflict in South Ossetia and, most recently, last year’s annexation of Crimea.
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Karoun Demirjian is a reporting fellow in The Post's Moscow bureau. She previously served as the Washington Correspondent for the Las Vegas Sun, and reported for the Associated Press in Jerusalem and the Chicago Tribune in Chicago.
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