IN THIS ISSUE

* Isa Yamadaev appeals to President Dmitry Medvedev for protection
* Moscow searches for someone to stabilize the North Caucasus
* Yatseniuk proposes neo-isolationist third way in Ukrainian foreign policy
** New in the Jamestown blog on Russia and Eurasia (http://www.jamestown.org/blog):
- Eurasian Energy Briefs

Isa Yamadaev Says Hit Squads Have Order to Kill Him Before New Year’s

The Jamestown Foundation

Isa Yamadaev –the younger brother of former Vostok battalion commander, who was shot dead in Dubai in March, and of State Duma deputy Ruslan Yamadaev, who was shot dead in Moscow in September 2008– has asked the Russian head of state for protection after publishing an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev claiming that hitmen have arrived in Moscow, where he now lives, and plan to kill him before the end of the year.

In the open letter, which was published in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, Yamadaev wrote that he was forced to appeal to Medvedev, the guarantor of the Russian constitution and the rights of Russian citizens, via the newspaper because he could no longer remain silent: “My brothers are dying one after another,” he wrote. “And this hunt is not being carried out by savages in the Amazon jungles, but in the capital of our homeland by outwardly respectable officials wearing $200,000 Bovet watches who love to appear on television and discuss their great deeds. However, behind their outward luster is hidden treachery, cynical lies, greediness and a panicked fear that the time is coming for them to answer for all of this,” he complained.

In July, an anonymous member of the Yamadaev clan told the Kavkazsky Uzel website that an unsuccessful attempt on Isa Yamadaev’s life had been made in Moscow. In his open letter to Medvedev yesterday, Isa Yamadaev repeated that allegation, writing: “In July of this year, a hired killer tried to murder me, but thanks to the police, for whom their oath, officer’s honor and legality are not empty words, I survived … Today, those who committed that crime are behind bars awaiting trial.”

Moskovsky Komsomlets quoted an anonymous source in Russia’s special services as confirming that members of Chechen “death squads” had arrived in Moscow with the task of assassinating Isa Yamadaev. The source said that several hit teams had arrived for that purpose in the Russian capital last week (www.mk.ru, November 19).

Kavkazsky Uzel today (November 20) quoted Isa Yamadaev as writing in his blog that he had learned from “reliable sources” that several groups had come from Chechnya with orders to eliminate him before New Year’s. “I decided to appeal to the president of Russia, Dmitry Anatolevich Medvedev, through the pages of Moskovsky Komsomolets in an open letter in order, as far as possible, to somehow have an influence on the arbitrary rule created by the gang of people who got their hands on power in Chechnya. I am not the only one on their list for liquidation, and the list of those who have fallen victims of these killers is very extensive,” he explained (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, November 20).

On November 16, the court hearing in the Sulim Yamadaev murder case in Dubai was postponed until December 17. An Iranian and a Tajik are on trial in the emirate. The Iranian, who has been identified in media reports as a former horse groom for the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, is accused of criminal complicity by monitoring the movements of Yamadaev from Dubai International Airport to his Dubai apartment, pointing out Yamadaev’s apartment to other suspects, who are at large, and supplying the murderers with the pistol used to kill him. The Tajik is accused of conspiracy. The two men have pleaded not guilty. During a court appearance on August 31, the two suspects reportedly alleged the involvement of Adam Delimkhanov, the State Duma deputy, former Chechen deputy prime minister and Ramzan Kadyrov’s chosen successor, in the plot to murder Sulim Yamadaev. Two Russian brothers believed involved in the shooting fled Dubai (www.khaleejtimes.com, November 17; www.thenational.ae, Associated Press, October 26).

In addition to Sulim and Ruslan Yamadaev, other critics and rivals of Ramzan Kadyrov have been killed in recent years. Earlier this year, Umar Israilov, a former member of Kadyrov’s bodyguard detail who claimed Kadyrov had tortured him in a secret jail and who gave testimony to the European Court of Human Rights about the Chechen leader’s alleged human right abuses, was shot to death in Vienna. In July, Natalya Estimerova, an activist in the Grozny office of the Memorial human rights group, was seized outside her apartment building in the Chechen capital and found shot to death several hours later in neighboring Ingushetia. The Chechen leader has denied any involvement in any of these murders.

Medvedev’s Questionable Plan to Form a Government Post in Charge of the North Caucasus

Mairbek Vatchagaev

In his annual State of the Nation address to the Federal Assembly on November 12, President Dmitry Medvedev spent a whole section of his speech talking about the situation in the North Caucasus. The president admitted that the region is still a threat to peace in Russia overall. A range of measures that will hardly change the situation was suggested on the matter. The measures are exclusively of a propagandistic nature and reminiscent of the country’s communist past. He reduced the problem to the stock excuse of all analysts –corruption. According to the head of state, there is no other place in Russia where the scale of corruption and violence is comparable to what is happening in the North Caucasus. It was the first time that high level authorities acknowledged they could not change the local officialdom, which is formed on the principles of clan structures. “Frankly speaking, the level of corruption, violence, and clannishness in the North Caucasian republics is unprecedented,” said Medvedev (www.rian.ru, November 12). Confessions of such a kind clearly contradict the statements made by Vladimir Putin, who would love to see only the positive in the region (www.kp.ru, February 14, 2008).

Experiments in how to control this politically complex region have been conducted in Russia since 1991. The region was first under the leadership of a minister of ethnic affairs, then special envoys, and later presidential appointees (Sergei Shakhrai, Ivan Rybkin, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, Valery Tishkov, Ramzan Abdulatipov, and Boris Berezovsky), who had to give much prominence to Chechnya. During Vladimir Putin’s administration, the main workload was placed on the head of the Southern Federal District. Dmitry Medvedev’s attempt to introduce a new position that would be in charge exclusively of the North Caucasus –something he mentioned in his State of the Nation address– clearly demonstrates that Moscow is still looking for a solution to the North Caucasus problem. The new position is doomed because, as planned by Russia’s president, it will be an appointee of the prime minister. This means that Medvedev has made it clear at the outset that the appointee will be neither a competitor nor an opponent of the administration of Vladimir Putin. In that case, the appointee will be a mere intermediary between the head of the Southern Federal District (Dmitry Ustinov, Russia’s former prosecutor-general and minister of justice) and Moscow’s officials. Why was it necessary to introduce a new position that would be accountable to the prime minister rather than to the president of Russia? There is no logic in this whatsoever; it is a mere rollback to what was being practiced in the region in the 1990’s.

If the position is intended for Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, as is believed by some journalists, then it can be considered the beginning of the end of his political career. Even if the new position is raised to the level of federal vice-premier, which might be perceived as a promotion for Ramzan Kadyrov, in reality it would just be a planned removal of Kadyrov from Chechnya. Furthermore, Kadyrov occupying that position would ensure that he would be in conflict with all the heads of constituent regions of North Caucasus because of differences in management styles. He would be viewed through the prism of ethnicity (nationality), but not as the Kremlin’s protégé. It means that he would be seen as a Chechen who is trying to meddle in their business. Meanwhile, Kadyrov’s press-secretary, Alvi Kerimov, thinks that “Ramzan Kadyrov himself could have taken on the responsibilities of the position” (www.echo.msk.ru, November 12).

Kadyrov’s candidacy sits well with the president of the Russian Islamic Cultural Center, Abdul Vahed Niyazov, who believes that Kadyrov could be the first practicing Muslim to become a Russian vice-premier (www.islam.ru, November 15). It is worth noting that Russia could take full advantage of this fact, pushing for Kadyrov’s candidacy and, in so doing, presenting itself in a favorable light before the Muslim world, with whom it is trying to have some leverage against U.S. interests. One needs to remember that Ramzan Kadyrov was more popular in the Russian press in October 2009 than many Russian politicians, including such important figures as Dmitry Kozak, Anatoly Chubais, Sergei Kirienko, and others (www.ng.ru, October 30).

However, plenty of other names have been mentioned in the Russian press as possible nominees for the position of overseeing the North Caucasus region, including Dagestani millionaire Suleiman Kerimov and disgraced Ingush businessman Mikhail Gutseriev. Gutseriev is currently on the run from the Russian justice system in Great Britain. It is entirely possible that Dmitry Kozak, who has already been in charge of the Southern Federal District, will be in demand again. The candidacy of Arkady Yedelev (Russia’s Deputy Interior Minister, who was recently put in charge of the security forces of Ingushetia) also looks attractive. Some name the senator Alexander Troshin as a likely option. According to the political analyst Yulia Latynina, the position will definitely have to be filled by a North Caucasus native (Ekho Moskvy, November 12). This will hardly matter, though, if the appointee does not have the privilege to be on a hotline with both the president and prime minister of Russia, bypassing all the administration’s bureaucrats.

Ten years since the beginning of the second Chechen war in the fall of 1999, Russian authorities continue to find ways to achieve real control over the region. It is impossible for Moscow to conceal the fact that the situation in the region is worsening daily because of the spread of armed opposition by jamaats throughout the region, particularly in Ingushetia and Dagestan. The ideology of Salafism is gaining ever more popularity among the local Muslim population of North Caucasus, because it is perceived as the only counterbalance to the Kremlin’s policies in the North Caucasus represented by the local bureaucrats.

Ukrainian Presidential Candidate Arseniy Yatseniuk’s Foreign Policy

Taras Kuzio

In 2008-2009 Arseniy Yatseniuk grew rapidly in popularity and was seen as the rising star of a “new generation of Ukrainian politicians,” with some even touting him as “Ukraine’s Obama” who would inevitably prove “pro-Western.” Evidence of Yatseniuk’s pro-Western stance was seen when he promoted Ukraine’s trans-Atlantic integration as foreign minister in 2007-2008, his election in the first five candidates of the pro-Western Our Ukraine-People’s Self Defense bloc in the 2007 elections and his signature (together with President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko) on a January 2008 letter to NATO requesting a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine.

These assumptions about Yatseniuk were not based on his statements or election program, which was only released in October (www.frontzmin.org). Yatseniuk’s foreign policy shift away from Brussels and Moscow is described by Ukrainian experts as “isolationist” or a nationalist third-way.

In June 2009, Yatseniuk’s main financial sponsor –oligarch Viktor Pinchuk– pressured him to exchange Ukrainian for Russian political technologists: Timofei Sergeitsev, Dmitry Kulikov and Iskander Valitov (www.proua.com, July 3; Ukrayinska Pravda, July 21-22). These political technologists had a poor reputation –they had not only worked in Viktor Yanukovych’s 2004 dirty election campaign, but also belonged to the State Duma Expert Council controlled by the Ukrainophobe Konstantin Zatulin who is banned from entering Ukraine.

Russian political technologists moved Yatseniuk away from his pro-Western orientation to a Ukrainian “third way,” isolationist-nationalist platform. In an interview in Korrespondent (July 31), Yatseniuk praised the former Russian President Vladimir Putin for bringing order to Russia. When asked if he wanted to be a “Ukrainian Putin” he replied that he planned to be neither a “Putin” nor an “Obama,” indicating the isolationist-nationalism position he was adopting. Yatseniuk has also used the global economic crisis to become a critic of liberalism (wwwfrontzmin.org).

Since last summer Yatseniuk has abandoned the pro-NATO position that he held in 2007-2008. In a lengthy interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraini (July 31-August 6), Yatseniuk stated his now often repeated phrase that Ukraine is not being invited into NATO or the E.U. and, therefore, membership in both organizations is currently not an issue for the country. Yatseniuk’s election program, speeches and statements call for a new “Eastern European union” of countries not given a membership option by the E.U. which he defines as “Greater Europe” (Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraini, September 28).

One of the first public discussions of Yatseniuk’s isolationist-nationalism took place at the annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) summit on September 25-26. YES, a pro-E.U. lobbying NGO funded by Pinchuk gave the floor to the three main presidential candidates –Tymoshenko, Yatseniuk and Yanukovych– in a live broadcast on ICTV, one of four television channels owned by Pinchuk. Yatseniuk’s speech at the YES summit confused Ukrainian and foreign guests with voters watching ICTV unclear as to what he really stood for, and if he supported or opposed Ukraine’s membership of the E.U. (NATO was not even raised). “Nobody to the very end understood what Yatseniuk meant when he spoke of Greater Europe,” Glavred editor and Yatseniuk sympathizer Alyona Getmanchuk observed on September 28. Yatseniuk could not answer repeated questions as to what ideological niche he represented (www.glavred.info, September 28).

Ukrainian media analysis following the YES summit was uniformly critical, stating that he was a different man the year before, when he was described as the “most progressive pro-European” Ukrainian politician (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 28). Yatseniuk’s speech shocked guests for the “aggressiveness” of its “message” (www.glavred.info, September 28). Yatseniuk’s Greater Europe is an alternative to Western and Russian integrationist projects and would unite Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in a new union with its center in Kyiv. Greater Europe would focus on four joint projects in energy, transport and communications, industry and access to world markets and the military-industrial complex (Yatseniuk’s “New Course” election program, www.frontzmin.org).

In Yatseniuk’s “Ukrainian Interests” (Interfax-Ukraine, September 28) he explained the roots of his Greater Europe idea as lying in the most “powerful geopolitical project in the history of mankind –Kyiv Rus” (Ukrayinsky Tyzhden, October 16). Yatseniuk stressed the role of Kyiv as the ideological center of eastern Pan Slavism, Eastern European Orthodox civilization and the ideological kernel of the Russian empire. Kyiv should, Yatseniuk believes, be revived as the center of a new geopolitical project and “Eastern European empire with its center in Kyiv” (Komentarii, October 16). “Ukraine can and should become the initiator of a new Eastern European union that I see from Uzhorod to Vladivostok. And Kyiv will be its center,” he asserted (Komentarii, October 16).

As Ukrainian experts noted, Yatseniuk has “borrowed” the ideas of Ukrainian right and left-wing populist-nationalists who propagated the theme of “away from Moscow and the West” in the 1990’s. In 1993 Dmytro Korchynsky, the then leader of the extreme right-wing Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA), said: “Our people have become used to living in a big state. We will make Ukraine into a large state so that the people will have no need to change their habits” (Komentarii, October 16). UNA’s fusion of pan-Slavism and Ukrainian nationalism came one year after its paramilitary People’s Self Defense Forces (UNSO) fought in the Trans-Dniestr conflict on the side of separatists. Korchynsky is now head of Bratstvo, a member of the Eurasian Youth Movement.

Left-wing Ukrainian left-wing populist-nationalism was popularized by two Prime Ministers in 1995-1997: Yevhen Marchuk and Pavlo Lazarenko. This translated into political support in the in the 1998 elections in the Social Democratic united and Hromada parties respectively. Yatseniuk’s Greater Europe is also similar to the 2003 CIS Single Economic Space that unites the same four countries with Kyiv replacing Minsk as its center.

In 2008 Yatseniuk was seen as the new face of Ukrainian politics supporting a pro-Western foreign policy; but, this was before Ukrainians and Westerners had seen his program. Since last summer, his election program has positioned Yatseniuk as the candidate supporting an isolationist-nationalist third way, without deference to either Moscow or Brussels and Washington.

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