Russia 090423 Basic Political Developments

Russian Army is short of men, President Medvedev says

http://www.mosnews.com/themes/2009/04/23/soldiers/

Today, 11:04 PM

While the Russian government is trying hard to modernize the Armed Forces despite the country’s financial problems, there are not enough men to staff the army, President Medvedev says.

"It is known that there are problems with the presence of young men prepared for military service," Interfax news agency quoted Medvedev as saying at a government meeting at Ryazan in central Russia Thursday.

"In the past 20 years their number has decreased by a third, and the health and the level of physical development of more than 40 percent of people of draft age do not meet the army service requirements," he said.

Medvedev suggested that Russia's oil-and gas-fuelled boom - which came to an abrupt halt last autumn with the global economic crisis - did little to improve the country's army, notorious for corruption and abuse of soldiers, AFP reports.

He also noted the widespread practice of bribing doctors to forge medical documents to avoid being conscripted.

"There is one more topic to which one cannot turn a blind eye," he said. "Doctors' notes get bought. We know this."

Medvedev said the Armed Forces would benefit from the presence of more women soldiers, and more should be done to ensure the women soldiers’ comfort in the army.

“If the women are interested in this, I think that the army will only benefit from that,” he said, adding that nothing prevented women from rising to the highest military posts.

The government is hoping to turn its ailing army into a modern force by slashing a bloated officer corps and modernizing its Soviet-style command structure, but the reforms have sparked resistance from the top brass, AFP adds.

Under the plan, three out of four servicemen would still be conscripts, Medvedev said.

Russian president laments unfit conscripts

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russian_president_laments_unfit_conscripts_999.html
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) April 22, 2009


Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that over 40 percent of those eligible for military service were not fit enough, amid a government drive to modernise the armed forces.

"It is known that there are problems with the presence of young men prepared for military service," Interfax news agency quoted Medvedev as saying at a government meeting at Ryazan in central Russia.

"In the past 20 years their number has decreased by a third, and the health and the level of physical development of more than 40 percent of people of draft age do not meet the army service requirements," he said.

Medvedev suggested that Russia's oil-and gas-fuelled boom -- which came to an abrupt halt last autumn with the global economic crisis -- did little to improve the country's army, notorious for corruption and abuse of soldiers.

He also noted the widespread practice of bribing doctors to forge medical documents to avoid being conscripted.

"There is one more topic to which one cannot turn a blind eye," he said. "Doctors' notes get bought. We know this."

The government is hoping to turn its ailing army into a modern force by slashing a bloated officer corps and modernising its Soviet-style command structure, but the reforms have sparked resistance from the top brass.

Under the plan, three out of four servicemen would still be conscripts, Medvedev said.

Medvedev reaches out to Russia's unruly bloggers

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gXwp1JmGBdDV6HRrNp9GEEYYdKyg

13 hours ago

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev praised the openness of the Internet on Wednesday as he made his debut on LiveJournal, a popular blogging community seen as an outpost of free speech in Russia.

"Lately the Internet has grown into a fully fledged self-regulating system, and one that strongly influences all aspects of our life. At the forefront are social networks and blogs," Medvedev said.

"Trying to regulate the Internet, to do this primitively, is very difficult. On the Internet one must act by its rules," he added, speaking in a video posted on his new LiveJournal blog.

The Russian version of LiveJournal is a freewheeling blogging community with a broad range of users including government critics rarely featured on Russia's state-dominated mainstream media.

Medvedev, a 43-year-old who claims to be an avid Internet user, first began blogging on the Kremlin's own website last year. But the move to LiveJournal could attract more visitors and provoke more online discussion.

Hundreds of comments poured into the blog in the hours after it started, including some mildly critical of the president.

"You are the president of a mighty nation, but the blog is rather boring," said one user, posting under the pseudonym zloy_volzhebnik (Evil Magician).

Medvedev has recently called for greater government openness and granted an interview to an opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, known for its fierce criticism of his predecessor, president-turned-premier Vladimir Putin.

Analysts meanwhile continue to question the extent to which Medvedev is prepared to push democratic reforms, especially given the continued influence of his mentor Putin.

Russians Bet on a Market for Dampening Dissent

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/world/europe/23cannon.html?_r=1&ref=world
By ANDREW E. KRAMER

Published: April 22, 2009

VARGASHI, Russia — Alongside bargain retailers, cheap restaurants, debt collectors and bankruptcy lawyers, a midsize factory in Siberia is promoting a product that it hopes is just the thing for hard times. Employees here call it the “anti-democracy truck,” a modified fire truck fitted with a water cannon and designed to quell riots.

“We look at this as a product with a market,” Vladimir N. Kazakov, the factory director, said in an interview in his office. “We don’t mind who buys them. We would be happy to sell them to Israel, America or France.”

The business, though, sheds some light on Russia in the financial crisis.

The country that was on the cusp of prosperity after so many years of post-Soviet turmoil is struggling through another uncertain period of economic change and social upheaval.

The water cannon business has become, in a sense, a barometer of social unrest in Russia, written up in Russian news magazines and joked about dryly on the Echo of Moscow radio station in the capital.

Mr. Kazakov said he expected two or three purchases of the roughly half-million dollar vehicles this year. The Russian Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, has asked the plant to be ready to re-outfit the assembly line to produce many quickly, if needed. But no solid orders have come in yet, he said.

“If the order comes, we will fulfill it on time, and well,” he said.

The truck is sold under the brand names Avalanche-Hurricane and, for a smaller model, the Storm. Shrouded in steel armor, it comes standard with brick- and cobblestone-resistant window grilles, sprinklers attached to a tank of chemical irritant like pepper spray, speakers that can emit ear-splitting noise and, of course, a powerful, joystick-operated water cannon. The cannon can topple protesters from dozens of yards away.

Economically related social unrest has already arisen throughout the lands of the former Soviet Union. Used-car dealers have taken to the streets in Vladivostok to protest tariffs. In Ukraine, where tens of thousands of steel workers are newly unemployed, protesters gathered on the central square in Kiev. Most recently, in Moldova, an angry crowd stormed the Parliament building and hurled furniture out the windows. Among the protesters were unemployed young people with little prospect of finding jobs in Moldova.

In that riot, incidentally, the pitfalls of using an off-the-rack fire truck for crowd control were on full display. News photographs showed protesters, pumping their fists in excitement, climbing on the dented hood of a standard-issue red-and-white fire truck, its windshield smashed and its crew long gone.

In Russia, the economy is doing an about-face from 6 percent growth in 2008 to an expected 2.2 percent contraction this year, according to government figures that are probably too optimistic, many economists say. With unemployment rolls swelling, protests are likely, said Yevgeny S. Gontmakher, a member of the board of the government-affiliated Institute of Contemporary Development, a research organization in Moscow. “The social consequences will grow all this year, we can say that with certainty.”

In one measure of discontent, 39 percent of Russians in a national poll answered yes when asked if they had noticed a “rise in the mood to protest” among their acquaintances.

The factory here in Vargashi, in the western part of Siberia, is the only plant in Russia with a government certificate to make water cannons, Mr. Kazakov said. It is also, paradoxically, situated in the type of struggling one-factory town where Mr. Gontmakher and others have said industrial unrest is most likely.

A glum ensemble of gray apartment blocks and muddy streets, bisected by the trans-Siberian railway, the town is wholly dependent on the plant. Of 12,000 residents, 600 work there. Workers grumble that salaries are already falling.

The plant’s fortunes followed the trajectory of the Russian economy as a whole; it flourished in the late Soviet period, producing 3,000 fire trucks a year and selling them to 27 countries, including Mongolia, Tanzania and Vietnam. In those days it had branched out into tank trucks for milk, and even produced a model called the spirtovoz, or spirit carrier, designed to transport vodka in bulk. A faded Communist-era mural that says “Glory to the Working Class!” still adorns a building here. In the current crisis, the plant is struggling. Production of fire trucks fell to 35 trucks in February from 70 in December.

Anton Y. Sinagnoyev, a laid-off construction worker, said he supported the factory’s new product, even if it was used against other laid-off workers like himself. He said he was happy that the plant had prospects. “If we didn’t make them, somebody else would,” he said.

Factory managers said they hoped that police departments in Russia and elsewhere would trade up to customized crowd-control vehicles for the financial crisis. The trucks are far more effective in safely dispersing large, hostile groups than standard fire trucks, mounted police officers or lines of police officers with shields are, Mr. Kazakov said.

But for now, though, the new business strategy remains just that. Even if the company manages to sell the two or three water cannon trucks it hopes to sell this year, that will not begin to make up for the lost revenues from fire trucks, Mr. Kazakov conceded. “The situation in the country is not at that point,” he said.

Russian police readied for unrest

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8012878.stm
By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Moscow

Russia's paramilitary police units are being reorganised to guard against "extremism" amid fears of growing social unrest, an official says.

A senior interior ministry official told the BBC the definition includes protests provoked by the credit crunch.

The official said a new federal department was being set up to expand the remit of existing squads tackling serious crime nationwide.

They will still answer to the interior ministry, like gendarmeries elsewhere.

Confirmation came as the International Monetary Fund forecast that the Russian economy would shrink by 6% this year.

The projected decline follows 10 straight years of rapid growth.

The BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow says the creation of the special police units is another sign of the government's growing nervousness about the impact of the crisis on Russia. The interior ministry official spoke of a deteriorating socio-economic environment, and said the crisis could get even worse.

According to the IMF, the countries of the former Soviet Union will be the hardest hit of all the regions in the world. It predicts that the Russian economy will shrink by far more than the government has been prepared to admit.

Already, millions of Russians have been thrown out of work, while prices, including for food, have continued to rise rapidly. In some areas people have taken to the streets to vent their anger.

So far the demonstrations have been small, but there have been specific calls for the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his government to resign.