Zaporizhzhia Diary, South-Eastern Ukraine, November 2015

by Duncan Leitch (CREES) with Svetlana Kruglyak (Vmeste Zaporizhzhia)

Zaporizhzhia is regarded as one of Ukraine’s most important manufacturing centres with steel and machine-building sectors which account for 10% of the country’s productive and export capacity. Yet even in Soviet times the region was overshadowed by its more powerful neighbours, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk, and its local political elites have remained weak and largely subject to manipulation from Kyiv. This tendency reached new heights in the Yanukovich period, when the activities of the notorious Smotryashchiy figure enabled the former president’s ‘family’ to extract extortionate rents from most of the region’s large and small enterprises and earned Zaporizhzhia the unfortunate reputation of being Ukraine’s most corrupt region.

The Wedding of the Century: More Evidence of a Soft Exit for Chechnya?

By Karena Avedissian

In Chechnya, the wedding of a 17-year old girl and a middle-aged policeman has put centre-periphery relations and the growing divergence of regional arrangements in Chechnya and the rest of the Russian Federation in the spotlight.

On 30 April, Novaya Gazeta published an article by investigative journalist Elena Milashina about the intentions of a high-ranking policeman – the already married head of the Nozhai-Yurt District Interior Ministry - to wed the girl against her will. The report said that the prospective bride’s family had acquiesced under the threat of violence.

The Ties that Bind: War, History and Power in and around Today’s Russia

By Dr. Kevork Oskanian

It is difficult indeed to overstate the importance of victory day in Russia.  In its solemnity, it is as close to a religious festival as any secular event could be.  The Soviet Union was adept at filling the void left by its Marxist atheism with ritual and symbolism, and, more than on other days of the contemporary calendar, its imprint was still palpable on May 9^th, 2015. 

In Crimea, Time for Pressure

By Liana Fix - Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations and Visiting PhD Researcher at the University of Birmingham

March 18 marks the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Within the last year, the situation on the ground has considerably deteriorated, in particular for the Crimean Tatars. After about twenty years of relatively peaceful existence in their homeland, they are once again under pressure. Contrary to what Russia promised the Crimean Tatar community, we are now seeing a crackdown on Tatar political and media organizations (under the pretext of fighting “political extremism”) and mounting harassment of Crimean Tatars. Russia’s annexation of 2014 could well become the “third tragedy” of the Crimean Tatar community – after the Russian conquest of 1783 and Stalin’s mass deportations of 1944.

Nemtsov Murder: Chechen Theories Shouldn't Take Heat Off Putin

By Dr. David White

Despite the detention of five suspects, speculation about who is responsible for the brutal assassination of Russia’s former deputy prime minister and prominent opposition politician Boris Nemtsov continues unabated.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder, we were treated to a range of far-fetched theories as to the likely perpetrators and their motives. And despite incredulity from Nemtsov’s allies, the idea that the group of Chechens now facing charges committed the crime is just as likely as all the others flying around out there.

Boris Nemtsov Murder: Russia has Lost an Opposition Leader of Substance

By Dr. David White

There were several familiar faces missing at the head of the mass protest march in Moscow on Sunday 1 March, when more than 50,000 people took to the streets to demonstrate against Russian actions in Ukraine and to highlight discontent with the worsening economic crisis in the country. 

New Chatham House Paper by Dr. Richard Connolly - Troubled Times: Stagnation, Sanctions and the Prospects for Economic Reform in Russia

• Russia’s economic performance has been weakening for several years. The simultaneous fall in the price of oil and the Ukraine crisis have merely exacerbated pre-existing tendencies.
• The combination of stagnant GDP growth and lower oil prices threatens to reduce federal government revenues, but spending commitments are likely to prove hard to trim.
  

Why Peace in Ukraine Won’t Save the Russian Economy

By Dr. Richard Connolly

Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande’s push for peace in Moscow has helped fuel optimism about the prospects for Russia’s spluttering economy. On the morning of the meeting, the rouble had strengthened against the dollar and the euro, and both the dollar and rouble-based sections of the Russian stock exchange saw sharp gains.

Unfortunately for those in the Kremlin, however, Russia’s economic woes are so deep-rooted that peace in Ukraine is likely to offer only temporary respite at best.

Seminar: Trouble in the Neighbourhood? The future of the EU's Eastern Partnership

Location: University of Birmingham, Muirhead Tower Room 121
Date: Tuesday 17th February 2015 (18:00-19:30)
Contact: events@fpc.org.uk

Speakers:

Rt Hon John Spellar MP, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister (Labour)

James Carver MEP, European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee (UKIP)

Dr Kataryna Wolczuk, Reader in Politics and International Studies,  CREES, University of Birmingham

Dr Rilka Dragneva-Lewers, Senior Lecturer, CREES, University of Birmingham

Dr Kevork Oskanian, Research Fellow, CREES, University of Birmingham

Chair: Adam Hug, Policy Director, Foreign Policy Centre

Putin's Plan to Fight Recession in Russia also Increases Kremlin's Control of the Economy

By Richard Connolly

The Russian rouble started 2015 in much the same way it finished 2014: badly. After losing nearly 50% of its dollar value between July and the end of the year, the rouble lost a further 7% in January. The primary cause of this continued decline is the falling price of oil: Brent crude has dropped from US$53 dollars per barrel at year end to just under US$48 per barrel, a decline of nearly 10% for the year so far.

Playwright, Prisoner and President: the Life of Vaclav Havel

A review of Michael Zantovsky, Havel: a Life, London: Atlantic Books (2014)

By Tim Haughton

You only really appreciate someone when they have left. The death of Vaclav Havel in December 2011 provoked a week of mourning, warm and generous words from his political foes, and for many ‘perhaps a rediscovery’ of the man who had played so many different roles in his life: playwright, political prisoner and president (p. 14). Michael Zantovsky’s outstanding new biography published a quarter of a century after the Velvet Revolution swept away the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, provides a colourful, well-written and perceptive account of the life, work and impact of Vaclav Havel.

Putin Meets the Press – as State takes Tighter Grip of Economy

By Dr. Richard Connolly

Vladimir Putin has delivered his annual press conference and at the top of the agenda was the Russian economy, reflecting that the turmoil buffeting the Russian rouble has reached critical levels.

After a steady depreciation over recent months, the rouble reached an all-time low on December 16. The country is on the verge of a recession as a result of falling oil prices and the impact of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

The Long Shadows of War: The Aftermath and Legacies of Conflicts in Europe

By Dr. Tim Haughton

This year is full of poignant anniversaries; none more so than the outbreak of the First World War. Whilst the century of the outbreak of ‘the war to end all wars’ has focused attention on the causes of the conflict, as the contributions to the forthcoming edited volume, Aftermath: Legacies and Memories of War in Europe, 1918-1945-1989 highlight, the sight of poppies in the first half of November should also give us pause to reflect on the long shadows cast by that war.

Round-table: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict - The Uses and Misuses of History

This round-table will discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict - one of the most complex and protracted ethno-territorial conflicts in the post-Soviet space. It will focus on the role of historical narrative in the political discourse of all parties involved in the conflict. We will gather together scholars and policy-makers with in-depth empirical, scholarly and political experience of this turbulent region. The round-table is organised by The University of Birmingham Research Group on the Caucasus in collaboration with the Centre for Russian, Eurasian and European Studies and the Department of Political Science and International Studies of the College of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

Date: Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Time: 16:00 - 18:00h.

Location: University of Birmingham (Edgbaston Campus), Muirhead Tower, Room 121 

The (E)U-turn on Ukraine: Pragmatism or Surrender?

by Dr. Rilka Dragneva and Dr. Kataryna Wolczuk

Few bilateral agreements have had such a turbulent history and implications as the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine. The refusal to sign the agreement by then president Yanukovych triggered massive protests in Ukraine resulting in his overthrow in February 2014. This in turn provoked Russia’s response: annexing Crimea and fuelling separatism in Eastern Ukraine, including direct military incursion in August 2014.

Importantly, the Agreement envisages a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), which entails tariff changes but also provides for Ukraine’s integration into the EU single market. Russia has objected to both, alleging potential damage to its economy. Clearly, an important aspect of this ‘damage’ lies in the fact that the DCFTA precludes Ukraine’s membership into the Eurasian integration bloc, something which Russia has actively sought and presented as a viable (and indeed preferable) alternative to integration with the EU.

North Caucasians’ Sad, Paradoxical Fight in Eastern Ukraine

By Karena Avedissian

Widespread reports, not to mention video footage, confirm that North Caucasians are indeed fighting in Ukraine. Areas like Chechnya and Ingushetia, where Russia is arguably already at war, now link Moscow to the newer conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk. In other words, one of Russia's most violent areas is now feeding the bloodshed in Europe's newest war zone.

Chechen militants have reportedly joined pro-Russian separatist groups in Ukraine, most notably the Vostok battalion, whose name recycles the moniker of a battalion that fought Islamic extremists in Chechnya from 1999-2009. These are the “Kadyrovtsy,” well-trained irregular armed forces loyal to Chechnya's current leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Nationalism Sparks a Summer of Deadly Violence in the Caucasus

By Dr. Kevork Oskanian, University of Birmingham

The world has been brutally reminded of the unresolved conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in the South Caucasus which Armenia and Azerbaijan have locked horns over for more than 25 years. While the situation is clearly at a low ebb, the facts of what is happening are far from clear.

The two sides' accounts of the violence are, as ever, directly contradictory. In the absence of third-party monitoring, the only certainty seems to be that dozens of Azeri (or Azerbaijani) and Armenian soldiers have lost their lives in tit-for-tat exploratory and retaliatory raids, while civilians around the line of contact have been plagued by an upsurge in shelling and sniper fire.

The Sum and Its Parts: The European Union and its Member States

by Dr. Tim Haughton

August is perhaps the best month to reflect on European integration. True, there are the inevitable crises to deal with which tend to disrupt the holiday plans of foreign ministers and external relations personnel, but many of the Brussels-based bureaucrats have swapped their offices around Rond-point Schuman for warmer and sunnier climes, and many academics can finally get round to reading some of the books on the must-read pile.  

On Reporting the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

By Dr. Kamala Imranli-Lowe and Dr. Galina Yemelianova

(This is a fragment of a longer piece on the British media's coverage of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict)

In early August 2014 the British media reported an escalation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This has brought the conflict, which has been less covered since the cease-fire of May 1994, back to the media’s attention. This blog is intended to shed some light on the role of the British, and the wider Western, media in shaping particular attitudes among the public, as well as policy-makers involved in the negotiation process over this conflict. It is based on analysis of the main premises of over 4,000 reports and analytical commentaries on the conflict by BBC TV, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, The Financial Times, The Independent and The Economist in the period 1988-2014, including during the ‘hot’ stage of the conflict from 1988 to 1994. It focuses on the media’s interpretations of historical causes of the conflict and juxtaposes these interpretations with relevant historical facts.

Predictably Unpredictable: The 2014 parliamentary elections in Slovenia

By Dr. Alenka Krašovec, University of Ljubljana and Dr. Tim Haughton, University of Birmingham

Parliamentary elections and party politics in Slovenia are becoming predictable in their unpredictability. For the first two decades of the country’s independence party politics was largely stable. True, in the second decade the once mighty force of Slovene politics, Liberal Democracy, saw its support drop, the Social Democrats emerged as a powerful force, but only really for one election in 2008, and there were a stream of new parties. Nonetheless, in a region marked by high levels of electoral volatility, Slovenia appeared to be more stable than most. All that changed in December 2011 when early elections (provoked by the disintegration of a coalition) witnessed two parties formed just weeks before the polls garner 37% of the vote. Three-and-a-half years on, another early election provoked by a battle over the leadership in the biggest governmental party, Positive Slovenia, and the disintegration of the governing coalition, saw one new party formed just over a month before the polls scoop nearly 35% of the vote.