Deutsche Welle: Russia removes Vladimir Putin mosaic from military church

An image of the mosaic, which showed Putin alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, was first made public in Russian media last week. While the Kremlin has not publicly commented on the mosaic, the decision to remove it apparently came from Putin himself.

Bishop Stefan of the church in question denied reports that the mosaic had been dismantled, but told Russian media that it had indeed been removed from display "in accordance with the wish of the head of state [Putin]." [...]

Meanwhile, Vladimir Legoyda of the Synodal Department for Relations between the church and the media told Russian media that a second mosaic depicting former leader Josef Stalin should also be removed.

"With his name associated with many troubles in the lives of people who can not be crossed out of history," he told Russian radio program Faith, while acknowledging that the featuring of secular figures in churches is not abnormal.

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Associated Press: Russian minister: West out of step, can’t accept its decline

He pointedly scorned much of the “West,” a term Russian officials typically use to refer to the United States and its traditional allies in Europe. He accused them of manipulating their citizens, disseminating false information, and preventing journalists from doing their work — all charges that the West has long lobbed at the Russian government and its predecessor, the Soviet Union.

“It is hard for the West to accept seeing its centuries-long dominance in world affairs diminishing,” Lavrov said. “Leading Western countries are trying to impede the development of the polycentric world, to recover their privileged positions, to impose standards of conduct based on the narrow Western interpretation of liberalism on others.” [...]

Lavrov accused the West of maintaining a double standard: promoting liberal values where they’re convenient but discarding them when they’re not. “When it is advantageous, the right of the peoples to self-determination has significance. And when it is not, it is declared ‘illegal’,” he said.

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Quartz: What Russia wants from the Trump-Kim summit

The US is consulting Russia ahead of the summit, “asking our advice, our views on this or that scenario,” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian state news organizations yesterday (Feb. 25). Lavrov is reportedly recommending that the US offer “security guarantees” to the North Korean leader to encourage him to denuclearize and has even flown to Vietnam this week as well.

The notion that the US president is taking advice from Vladimir Putin’s government on North Korea is alarming, analysts said. Yet it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Trump has previously demonstrated his willingness to believe Putin over his own US intelligence agencies.[...]

Putin’s overall goals in the region: ease sanctions against North Korea, burnish his government’s image, and make America look weak. Any situation in which Trump offers economic aid or to ease sanctions to the Kim regime, without securing any concrete steps toward denuclearization, would accomplish these steps, analysts said.[...]

Last year, Trump surprised US military officials and his own advisors when he suggested the US stop participating in “war games” with South Korea, an idea he reportedly got from Putin.

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Politico: Georgian leader revives French connection

Zourabichvili met President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday at the Elysée Palace, on her first bilateral foreign trip as head of state. The visit was also something of a return home. Although she was elected president of the land of her ancestors in December, Zourabichvili was born in France and spent three decades working in its foreign service.

While Macron repeatedly stressed the friendship between their two countries, he also stuck to standard French talking points, designed to avoid rocking the boat with Russia. He reiterated France’s continued support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty — but did not say explicitly that Moscow occupies 20 percent of the country.[...]

For France, any decision on Georgia is part of a bigger calculation about relations with Russia. And French ministers are not going to risk a confrontation with Moscow over a country of 3.7 million people, even if its president used to be one of their employees.[...]

Paris is willing to move to a harder line with Moscow generally, argued Nicolas Tenzer, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris, but not on its own. “There is a will to be more firm with Russia but not for a confrontation, because France is still looking for allies," he said. “Trump’s America isn’t it and the Europeans are split.”

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Spiegel: The Forgotten War in Eastern Ukraine

But Sunday's election does in fact deserve attention, because this time they were less a provocation than the product of political negligence. It goes back to Aug. 31, the day of the assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of state and prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic. When he and a handful of supporters entered a cafe that evening just around the corner from the government's headquarters, an explosive device went off above the entrance. [...]

After the explosion, Moscow -- which always seems to view offense and the best form of defense -- immediately accused Kiev of murder. The elimination of Zakharchenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, meant that Ukraine was transforming the hostilities in the Donass region into a "bloody war." The head of Russian parliament, the Duma, said he viewed the ongoing peace negotiations as having ended in failure and that the assassination "resets the meaning of the Minsk agreements to zero." The same day, security forces in Donetsk reported they had arrested "Ukrainian saboteurs" responsible for the murder and that they would soon reveal the men behind the slaying. But that never happened. And soon, there was no longer any talk of the alleged saboteurs either. There is now broad consensus that Zakharchenko was either killed by Russian forces or by people from within his own camp. [...]

A special commission is now examining "illegal" expropriations said to have been initiated by the minister. Among other things, he is said to have confiscated the property of a large Donetsk merchant market with armed fighters last year, embezzling 850 million rubles in the process. Even the markets and companies "nationalized" by Zakharchenko are now being returned to their rightful owners -- possibly even the Ukrainian supermarket chain that suddenly belonged to his wife. Specialists with Moscow's domestic intelligence service, the FSB, are investigating further cases of corruption, and armed separatist units have been placed under Russian control.[...]

It's difficult to answer the question with a clear "no." The leadership in Ukraine still has no idea how to resolve the conflict. It is trying to gradually win back land in the east and now has moved almost as many banned heavy weapons to the front as the separatists. Politically, the country is paralyzed until next year's presidential election. And none of the candidates have a plan for the future. If one considers that large cities such as Odessa or Kharkiv continue to be predominantly pro-Russian, an ominous conclusion becomes unavoidable: Yet another major political shift in Ukraine cannot be ruled out. That is what Putin is counting on. And that is why he won't be budging anytime soon in Donbass.

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openDemocracy: Mimetic power: how Russia pretends to be a normal member of the international community

While explaining the concept to Russian diplomats, Putin viewed Russia’s soft power as either diplomacy, or most likely, propaganda that can be made available, or even enhanced or intensified, at will. Soft power, however, according to Joseph Nye’s discussion of the concept, is the pre-existing ability to influence other countries through attraction, with resources of soft power being a nation’s political values, culture and foreign policy. Being a pre-existing ability, soft power differs from an immediate action that, for example, can be a diplomatic action, propaganda effort or humanitarian gesture.[...]

What happened when Moscow realised that it was dramatically failing to use “soft power” to influence Western nations through attraction? Not only after 2014 but even before, they must have realised that the Kremlin’s political values did not match prevailing Western values and that its peculiar international behaviour – no matter how assured they were of its legitimacy and credibility – was one of the reasons for the deterioration of the relations with the West. Russian official diplomacy and public diplomacy can still draw upon what they believe to be Russian high culture as an important resource of soft power, but it has limited value considering the failures that overshadow Russia’s cultural achievements.[...]

Russia’s mimetic power is the ability to influence Western nations by creating the impression that Russia is a normal member of the international community and emulating what pro-Kremlin actors perceive as Western soft power techniques. By presenting Russia as a credible and responsible international partner, Moscow is trying to convince the West – especially following the Ukraine-related escalation of the conflict between the West and Russia – to lift the sanctions, go back to “business as usual”, and ultimately stop any attempts to democratise Russia (Moscow sees the latter as Western attempts to bring about a regime change in Russia). The emulation of perceived Western soft power techniques serves two objectives: first, to contribute to the creation of the image of Russia adapted to the Western normalcy, and, second, to undermine Western resolve to stand up to Moscow’s subversive activities.[...]

For example, Russian officials would regularly slam Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for allegedly infringing on the rights of Russian-speaking minorities, while Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would publish a series of “white books” discussing “violations of human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine” at the same time as other Russian agencies send military forces to invade Ukraine. Yet when human rights “go too far”, implying that Moscow fails to wriggle out of particular criticisms, Russian officials have a readymade excuse: Western human rights contradict “the fundamentals of our culture based on Orthodox Christianity”.

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Politico: How Putin’s Folly Could Lead to a Middle East War

It was all very predictable, the moment that Putin began to partner with Iran and its lethal proxy, Hezbollah. They shared intelligence, patrolled together and fought together against the Sunni jihadists and other rebels who were warring against the Assad regime.

Iran’s motivations for this unlikely marriage were crystal clear: The regime viewed Syria as a crucial territory to maintain a land bridge from their borders to the Mediterranean. For Iran, Syria was key to regional domination. It was also key to maintaining military supply routes to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Russia, by contrast, had more global ambitions. For one, Putin was putting a finger in the eye of the Obama administration. The message was that Russia could dominate territory once seen as under American influence. Putin also sought to convey to the rest of the Arab world that Russia was a strong and reliable ally for the region, and that Russia was willing to provide advanced weaponry at the right price—and without American-style red tape and oversight. [...]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the Israelis on Monday, calling the strike “a dangerous development.” Lavrov is right about that. The Israelis have shown that they can operate repeatedly inside of Syria, with or without Russian deconfliction. And with Trump signaling outrage over Sunday’s chemical weapons attacks in Damascus, the United States is not likely to restrain the Israelis from protecting their interests.

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The New Yorker: Rex Tillerson at the Breaking Point

It was through a Boy Scouts connection that he was chosen to be Secretary of State. From 2010 to 2012, Tillerson was the national president of the Boy Scouts of America, where he sat on the board with Robert M. Gates, the former Defense Secretary for George W. Bush and for Barack Obama. After quarterly meetings, Gates told me, he and Tillerson got together. “We would share a whiskey and talk about the world,” he said. (Exxon also engaged a consulting firm owned by Gates and another prominent Republican, Condoleezza Rice.) [...]

For years, as Exxon and others in the industry conducted a concerted lobbying effort against the legislation, Congress delayed acting on it. Then, in 2010, following the financial crisis, language calling for a new disclosure regulation, Rule 1504, was included in the Dodd-Frank legislation, which imposed reforms on banks and other financial institutions. Tillerson, as the C.E.O. of Exxon, went to Capitol Hill to argue against the rule, and met with one of the senators who supported it. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Tillerson said that if Exxon had to disclose payments to foreign governments it would make many of those governments unhappy—especially that of Russia, where Exxon was involved in multibillion-dollar projects. The senator refused to drop the rule, and Tillerson became visibly agitated. (Tillerson denies this.) “He got red-faced angry,” the source recalled. “He lifted out of his chair in anger. My impression was that he was not used to people with different views.” [...]

Determined to find new reserves, Tillerson demonstrated on several occasions that he was willing to engage in deals that were contrary to the foreign policy of the United States. The most intense conflicts arose when Exxon tried to do business in countries where the U.S. had imposed economic sanctions. According to senators and aides, and to documents filed with Congress, Exxon lobbied the U.S. government extensively to relax sanctions on Iran, which were designed to curtail its nuclear-weapons program. Exxon was also a member of USA Engage, a group that lobbied against the sanctions. [...]

In addition to imposing sanctions on the Russian government, the U.S. targeted Sechin and other senior officials close to Putin. Yet the relationship with Exxon continued. Company officials made a number of oil deals with Sechin, and, after Tillerson’s confirmation, applied for a waiver to the sanctions that prevented work in the Kara Sea. The Treasury Department subsequently fined Exxon two million dollars for the deals it made with Sechin, and denied its request for a waiver. “I was very pleased about that,” a former U.S. official who worked on Russia sanctions told me. “The integrity of the people at Treasury held up. It didn’t matter that Tillerson was Secretary of State.” [...]

But what Tillerson has proposed is far more ambitious than eliminating a few dozen jobs. He has suggested deep cuts for humanitarian aid and economic development—the whole range of initiatives designed to alleviate suffering and to advance America’s interests. His budget called for drastically reducing or completely dissolving programs to help refugees, deliver aid to countries hit by disaster, support fledgling democratic movements, protect women’s groups, and fight the spread of H.I.V. and aids. The proposed cuts to such foreign-aid programs total some $6.6 billion.

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America Magazine: How the Vatican is encouraging dialogue between Russia and the West

President Vladimir Putin has visited the Vatican five times and has already had two private conversations with Pope Francis, in 2013 and 2015. He is expected to meet him again next January, when he comes for the opening of a Russian art exhibition in the Vatican. Moreover, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has met his Vatican counterparts on several occasions and engaged in what sources say were “substantial, constructive discussions.” [...]

This developing friendship has been matched by an ever-improving relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church, with its 150 million members, and the Holy See. Pope Francis has played a huge role in this with his approach to the Orthodox Church and his willingness to meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. Relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Holy See have been encouraged by President Putin, who has embraced the Orthodox faith not only at a personal level but also as part of his effort to consolidate his power at home. Last year, Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis met in Havana in February; a month later, the pope appointed one of the Holy See’s top diplomats, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, as nuncio to Russia. [...]

The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, visited Russia from Aug. 20 to 24, upon an invitation from Russian state and church authorities. (This was the first visit by a secretary of state since 1999, and the most significant since Cardinal Agostino Casaroli’s 1990 visit following the collapse of the Soviet Union.) Cardinal Parolin had what he defined as “important and constructive encounters” with President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Hilarion, president of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations and the number-two official in that patriarchate.

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