Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1835

June 1:

Russian officials announced plans to return nuclear submarine patrols to the southern seas for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. “The revival of nuclear submarine patrols will allow us to fulfill the tasks of strategic deterrence,” said an unnamed source in the military General Staff. “Not only across the North Pole, but also the South Pole.” The Borei-class submarines are equipped to carry sixteen Bulava long-range nuclear missiles, Reuters reports, and are set to be phased into patrols over the next several years. Russia recently purchased eight Borei-class submarines as a part of its military modernization.

Not long after on the same day, military officials revealed that a heavy aircraft carrier – the only if its kind in the Russian fleet – will join the Mediterranean fleet. Russian navy commander Admiral Viktor Chirkov tried to downplay the significance of the announcement, noting that “after all, ships from the Northern, Black Sea, and Baltic Fleets will perform missions as part of this group. So why not?” According to Business Insider, however, experts view the move as clear indication of the Kremlin’s interest in the region. The carrier, named the “Admiral Kuznetsov” after the former Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy, holds several sea-based fighter planes and helicopters, missiles, anti-submarine systems, and a crew of nearly 2,000.

June 3:

In an editorial for Bloomberg, Ben Judah argues that the European Union risks a major policy error should it sign a new visa-facilitation agreement with Russia at an approaching summit. The visa-facilitation agreement is essentially a step toward visa-free travel in Europe for Russians, which will first make visas cheaper and easier for many Russians to acquire. In particular, such a deal would benefit the roughly 15,000 Russian bureaucrats holding biometric “service passports.” Judah notes that these bureaucrats, which Russians call “the organs,” represent the “beating heart” of Putin’s political system. He argues that the EU would be rewarding them and Putin for their “increasingly repressive policies.” While the EU’s friendliness toward Russia made “some sense” during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, Judah argues, it is “hopelessly mismatched to Putin’s repression.”

He argues that the EU should freeze its current visa negotiations. Doing so, he contends, “would signal to Putin that he can’t get what he wants from Europe at the same time as he tramples on dissent.” More importantly, he argues, such a move would “show the Russian establishment, as a whole, that repression has costs for them.” Judah concludes that an agreement for visa-free travel for Russian bureaucrats would illustrate that “European politicians, for all their frequent blustering about the need to protect universal human rights, are as cynical as the ones in the Kremlin. This is, of course, what Putin has long claimed to be the case.”

The five men accused of gunning down well-known journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 currently face a second trial for the charges. All five were tried and acquitted last year, Al-Jazeera reports, but the Supreme Court halted the retrial, sending the case back for further investigation. Politkovskaya was known for her work in exposing corruption and rights abuses in Chechnya. She was also a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, who activists accused of ordering the hit. He derisively noted after her death that “in my opinion murdering such a person certainly does much greater damage from the authorities’ point of view, authorities that she strongly criticized, than her publications ever did.” Although a former police officer earlier admitted to tracking Politkovskaya and providing the murder weapon, there is still no hint of who ordered the hit in the first place. Anna Stavitskaya, a lawyer representing Politkovskaya’s family, guaranteed that even in the new trial “there is no chance the name will be voiced.”

June 4:

While defending the Kremlin’s sale of S-300 missiles to Syria, Russian President Putin insisted that the delivery has not yet taken place. “We don’t want to upset the balance in the region,” he maintained. “The contract was signed a few years ago but it hasn’t been fulfilled yet.” The statement comes a week after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad announced that his government had received the “first batch” of missiles. The announcement was part of a supposedly leaked interview with Lebanon’s Al Manar TV, the LA Times reports, but when asked later about the missile shipments, Assad refused to give a direct answer. “It is not our policy to talk publicly about military issues in terms of what we possess or what we receive,” he noted. Israel recently asked Russia to cancel the missile shipments, but Putin maintains that the sales “don’t violate any international provisions.”

June 6:

Opposition activist and former chess champion Garry Kasparov became the latest Russian to leave the country for political reasons. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Kasparov will stay out of Russia “for the time being” over concerns that he could be “deprived of his freedom” if he remains. Kasparov posted a video to his website on June 5th, saying he “might be part of this ongoing investigation of the activities of the political protestors.” He added that he did not want to “share the fates” of the witnesses in the investigations against former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who were also later charged with crimes. Kasparov has become a prominent critic of President Putin in recent years.