Terrified German officers called them Night-Witches. ‘Night’ because of the way they idled their engines to glide silently over German cities in daring night-time bombing raids. And ‘witches’, because they were women.

Today, the BBC aired an unmissable documentary about the legendary Soviet 46th Night Bombers Guards Regiment, the first female combat fighter pilots in the world.

It is a poignant story of thousands of women, many of them teenage girls, overcoming traditional gender roles to demonstrate extraordinary heroism in defence of their motherland.

But in focusing on two ace pilots in particular, it is equally a warning against the politicisation of WWII, which has lately been appropriated to show off nuclear missiles on Red Square, stir national chauvinism and even rehabilitate Stalin. So much so, in fact, that President Medvedev was recently moved to deliver an unprecedented attack on the revival of Stalin’s legacy.

The author-narrator, Lucy Ash, speaks with some of these last remaining heros, including Galina Beltsova, a highly decorated fighter pilot feted by the Kremlin. Beltsova recalls the fear of being captured by the Germans; tears spring to her eyes when describing the break-up of the USSR.

But then there is her comrade Anna Yegorova. Hit by anti-aircraft fire, badly burnt and with a damaged parachute, she fell to the ground, suffering serious injuries. “The most dreadful thing’, she recalls, ‘was opening my eyes and seeing Germans in front of me’.

She then spent 5 months in a Nazi concentration camp. Yet shockingly, what was more harrowing still was her treatment afterwards by her own people.

As soon as she was liberated from the camps, barely alive, she was dragged off to be interrogated by SMERSH counterintelligence. “They swore at me, said I was the scum of the earth, that i switched sides and joined the Germans; they treated me like an animal and called me a fascist bitch’, she recalls. When, after more than 20 years, she was formally rehabilitated and named a Hero of the Soviet Union,  she remembers, “I felt burnt out, I felt no joy or satisfaction. It felt numb. After the SMERSH tortured me, something within me died. God save anyone from such treatment”.

“Even after all these years’, concludes Ash, ‘Anna still struggles to reconcile the conflicting emotions inside her. The same could be said in larger relief about her country, and its tortured recollection of the war years”.

The same, indeed, could be said for the whole history of the USSR - a series of contradictions and paradoxes, leaps and retrenchments, spectacular heroism, as well as savagery, betrayal, love and achievement, done, often by the same people, to each other - which can no less be separated into discrete fragments than the elements of a human life.

To wit, “the Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women to fly combat missions. Women pilots in other countries flew military aircraft in support roles and some were fired on by enemies. But only Soviet women pilots could fire back; only Soviet women dropped bombs and fought in air battles”. And yet the same Soviet Union then tried to shut down these female squadrons once the war was over.

The Soviet Union which both Anna and Galina defended in the face of almost certain death, but which repaid one with gratitude and the other with torture; the Soviet Union of both SMERSH interrogators and of Night-Witches.

Conservative Russians and those of an anti-Western disposition argue, correctly, that all too often the West cares to know and focus only on the Soviet Union’s crimes, and not on its achievements - human, technological and military, including its central role in WWII victory.

But accepting the essential truth of this grievance bestows no corresponding right of amnesia; to do so would be to repeat the very ignorance and bias that they rightly denounce. For only those who lack faith in Russia, who doubt that there are enough Nightwitches and Sakharovs and Akhmadulinas to counter-balance the Stalins and Berias, can be afraid to confront the Soviet past head-on.

“War in South Ossetia: Georgia started it”

Thus did today’s editorial in Britain’s Guardian say what almost the entire US media elite refused to do last summer. It referred to the comprehensive EU investigation that found the war to have been started by Georgia and not Russia, but could just as easily have been quoting this humble blog.

In a series of articles in August 2008, FPA Russia Blog exposed the blatant pro-Georgian bias of the US political class and  near hysterical anti-Russian propaganda spewed by mainstream news organs, when “the press’s credulity of official US government positions, easy embrace of jingoism and susceptibility to hawkishness reminded me queasily of its very similar performance in run up to the Iraq war”.

In an excellent commentary on the media’s complicity in the war, Glenn Greenwald denounced those “deceitful methods that permeate our political discourse, especially when it comes to demonizing America’s Enemy du jour“, methods which, as I pointed out last August, reinforced “to the uninformed viewer that it was Russia, not Georgia, which used the cover of the Olympic games to invade”.

Much of the media’s bias towards Georgia, whatever the true facts on the ground, was due to its love affair with the telegenic, fluent and media savvy president. Yet, as the Guardian shrewdly notes, “the ability to jump in front of a CNN camera does not confer on the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, the gifts of a democrat”. Not surprisingly, however, his crackdown on civil society groups and political opposition received little mention.

For example when CNN’s White House correspondent Ed Henry breathlessly delivered the following lines (with a straight face):

“…What’s really going on is that Russia is trying essentially to reconstitute the old soviet union.bring back the old spheres of influence. if you take over Georgia today, what’s next? Could they then move into the Ukraine (sic), could they take over the Czech Republic? These are awful options that are on the table, but there’s a fear that if they start here and are not stopped, what happens next?”

A year long EU probe was not necessary to unmask such claims as the nonsense that they are. But equally, perhaps not even such an investigation is enough to dispel the enduring anti-Russian sentiments nursed by the conservative-Atlanticist clique within Europe’s elite. This gang includes the usual suspects - a smelly alliance of right-wing pseudo-intellectuals (Bernard Henri-Levy) and past-their-prime freedom fighters determined to reinstate the Cold War that once gave them underdog hero status (Vaclav Havel). Just last week, that very group had issued a letter that compared Russia to Hitler’s Germany and urged the EU to defend Georgia at all costs.

In the wake of the report, that kind of comment becomes as ridiculous as the rubbish (so ably gathered by Greeenwald) that was spewed by John McCain:

[Putin] has exhibited most aggressive behavior, obviously, in Georgia. . . .We have to make the Russians understand that there are penalties for these this kind of behavior, this kind of naked aggression into Georgia, a tiny country and a tiny democracy.

and the Washington Post’s editorial board:

Part of the blame-the-victim argument is tactical — the notion that the elected president of Georgia foolishly allowed the Russians to goad him into a military operation to recover a small separatist region of Georgia. Mr. Saakashvili says, in an article we publish on the opposite page today, that the facts are otherwise, that he ordered his troops into action only after a Russian armored column was on the move. . . . Moreover, the evidence is persuasive and growing that Russia planned and instigated this war.

A year on, with a detente-minded Obama in the White House and the likes of Sarah Palin relegated to a museum of political curiosities, the EU investigation underscores just how much the GOP and the elite US media were on the wrong side of history.

The US, boxed in by a trigger happy Israel,  is frustrated about Russia’s refusal to support Iran sanctions. But let’s put Obama’s European missile defence gambit in perspective.

“If Russia is to give up Iran, the United States and the West have to offer something much bigger to Moscow than the scrapping of the missile defense system that never existed,” said Vladimir Sotnikov, an Iran expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences. And indeed, far from categorically abandoning the sale of S-300 anti-missile systems to Iran, Medvedev’s sole act of reciprocity has so far been to also remove some missiles that never existed, from Kaliningrad. Seems fair.

Russia does not want a nuclear armed Iran, so why is it not committing to sanctions? One explanation is that “Russia is enjoying the moment. Being a key player in the Iranian crisis confirms the Kremlin’s own view that Russia is once again a major world power. As soon as Moscow agrees to sanctions, Washington is unlikely to be so attentive”.

Another reason is that Russia knows that sanctions - though very good at creating civilian hardships - are far from effective at stopping countries from arming themselves (see Iraq).  So, being Iran’s closest big power trading partner gives Russia unprecedented leverage in the crisis to do something Western sanctions cannot: persuade Iran to back down.

“According to Rajab Safarov, director of the center for Contemporary Iranian Studies in Moscow, Russia has “sufficiently effective levers” to have an effect on Iran’s behavior. “Iran has an interest in good relations with Russia,” Safarov told reporters. “This means that Iran could listen to advice from Russia.”

Russia must also be careful not to unduly antagonise its large Islamic neighbour at a time when Dagestan and Chenchnya are experiencing resurgent separtist violence (two more senior Dagestani officials were gunned down on Sunday). While fighters have in the past been supplied by Saudi Wahhabis and groups tentatively associated with al-Qaeda, Medvedev-Putin cannot rule out the possibility of a spurned Iran (which is already being accused of supplying insurgents in Iran and Afghanistan with roadside bmobs) extending a destabilising hand to the militants.

At the same time, since the late 1990s, Russia has also cultivated close ties with Israel; in fact, diplomacy with this country may have contributed to Russia’s failure to make good, so far, on a contract to deliver the S-300 missiles to Iran. And Medvedev has hinted, albeit in a very lukewarm way, that sanctions against Iran may be ‘inevitable‘.

Whatever Russia will do in the end, its role in the Iran nuclear standoff is much more than mere grandstanding: in fact, Russia might be the only country with a key to its peaceful resolution.

In an inspired move hailed as “arguably the most concrete shift in foreign policy from that of the Bush administration, Obama might have just about made up for his disastrous appointment of Michael McFaul as his Russia advisor by scrapping plans for a European missile shield.

Even the Daily Telegraph, while deriding the US President for handing “the Kremlin a coup that will boost Mr Putin’s influence at home and abroad”, concedes that “Barack Obama’s diplomatic “reset” with Russia now has real teeth”.

Now that the ball is in Russia’s court, will the Kremlin “choose to frame the decision as an overdue correction of a Bush-era mistake rather than a real concession that requires reciprocity? That remains the 64,000 ruble question“.

Many signs point to the latter.  The Guardian reports that “Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, believes the wheels will start turning more rapidly. “We can expect the Start talks to be completed by the December deadline and the bilateral atmosphere will surely improve,” he said”.

So far, Medvedev has welcomed the decision but has not definitively settled on any of the 64000 rouble sides.

His statement that “Obama was “correcting” the US approach to missile defence” leaves open the chance that he does not consider the move to require any quid pro quo. This would be a grave mistake, of the sort the US made when it treated Gorbachev’s concessions on Eastern Europe as ‘corrections’ unworthy of reciprocation.

Let’s hope that, even if he does not consider the US move a concession to Russia (but rather a rational decision based on the ineffectiveness and cost of the ABM system as well as the infancy of the Iranian threat) he gives Obama te benefit of the boubt and chooses detente.

Russia’s annual disaster season is in full swing.

From the Kursk submarine disaster and the Beslan school massacre (along with the simultaneous suicide attacks on two airliners), it seems that if something will go wrong, it’s likely to do so between July and September.

Unfortunately, this year was no different: a major explosion killed as many as 76 people at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectic plant, sending litres of toxic waste into the Yenisei river. And last week, a wave of violence left scores dead in the Chechnya region.

What was different, however, was the administration’s response to the Caucasian killings.

The LA Times’s Megan Stack reports that Medvedev ‘acknowledged that growing violence in the impoverished southern republic of Ingushetia is rooted in unresolved domestic problems such as corruption and poverty’, rather than external forces, blaming ‘unemployment, clans who could not care less about people . . . as well as corruption, which has really become very widespread among law enforcement authorities’.

All very laudable and grown up, you might say.

So what does Medvedev suggest to curb the unchecked power of law enforcement and monetisation/politicisation of justice?

Curbing the power of juries, of course!

Speaking within mere hours of his earlier humanism, Medvedev said: ‘Jury trails fail for a variety of reasons. We need to think about teams of professional judges considering these kinds of charges’ for extremism and terrorism trials.

What will these changes mean for Medvedev’s pledge to clean up the abuses that spawn extremism?

‘Human rights activists and legal experts said the change compromised the entire premise of jury trials and offered protection to police officers who used brutal methods to extract confessions from suspected terrorists in the North Caucasus’, accordin to the Moscow Times.

Add a legislative disaster to the bloody list.

Most English-speaking readers didn’t know about Ingushetia until this morning, when its president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov miraculously and barely survived a massive suicide bomb that nearly levelled a whole city block (lending added weight, if any were needed, to Russian officials’ traffic aversion).

The headline grabbing stunt, on the anniversary of a bloody 2004 raid on Russian forces, capped off months of political violence in the semi-autonomous republic that borders Chechnya.

All the signs - the suicide nature of the bomb, the symbolic date - point to the work of Islamic extremists operating out of Chechnya.

But as with most things in Russia, the obvious answer may not be what it seems.

For a start, Moscow had recently appointed Yevkurov, a brave and principled man, to replace a hated former hardline KGB general who had failed to pacify the republic.  But rather than crack down on ‘militants’ (read: any young males you can get your hands on), Yevkurov chose a different path.

He increased goodwill by actually relaxing the draconian and racist round-ups, or ‘chistkas’, while training his sights on corruption instead. This was very smart policy because greedy officials can do more damage than actual militants; from blowing up airplanes to besieging Beslan. And as Yulia Latynina writes, it was common knowledge that Ingush officials up to the highest levels were on the take.

Indeed, the Saudi paper Arab News compared the violence against Yevkurov to Colombian and Mexican drug gangs: “He has made strides in fighting corruption and tackling the economic mess he found and it is difficult not to believe that he did not make enemies in doing so…As in those two countries, there are people in Ingushetia who are not afraid to strike at the heart of the state to keep things as they are”.

Russia’s Audit Chamber chief Sergei Stepashin openly speculated that it was Yevkurov’s anti-corruption drive had prompted the attempt on his life.

Anywhere in Russia, fighting corruption is a potentially fatal undertaking: crusading officials and journalists are routinely targeted more for their whistleblowing than their politics. All things considered, with “a brain concussion, a ruptured liver, a torn lung, several broken ribs and a damaged knee”, Yevkurov got off lightly compared to Judge Aza Gazgireyeva, assassinated earlier this month in front of her kids. However, he remains fighting for his life at a top Moscow hospital, and it is not yet clear that he will make it.

How ironic that even in the Caucasus, what gets you nearly killed is not being a Kremlin appointed ‘Quisling’ at the heart of an Islamist insurgency, but daring to clean up your own local government.

The Council on Foreign Relations today published an interview with Pavel Felgenhauer, the outspoken Putin opponent and astute defence analyst with Anna Politkovskaya’s old paper Novaya Gazeta, about all the main geopolitical questions facing Russia today.

The most interesting part of this was his assertion that Russia believes that the US missile shield in Eastern Europe “is a smokescreen”.

They believe that nuclear missiles will be deployed in Poland near Russia and these nuclear missiles will have also a first-strike capability and could hit Moscow before [Russia's response] could get airborne, so this is going to actually be seen not so much as missile defense as a deployment of first-strike capability.

He also notes that any quid pro quo regarding Russian pressure on Iran in exchange for the US aborting the missile shield is seen as a ploy, as Russia’s lack of the  necessary leverage to force the Iranians away from nuclearisation will give the US a free hand to proceed with the shield.

I think Felgenhauer’s argument is sound, if a little pessimistic. On the plus side, Russia’s recent military reforms, aimed at professionalising the army, should send a strong positive message to the US.

This is because, despite an overall increase in military expenditure which looks threatening on the surface, the reshuffle is actually a revolutionary rejection of Cold War era doctrine of mass mobilisation. By reducing the officer corps and trimming the fat, Medvedev removes the army’s technical potential for a European invasion and reconstitutes it into a more ‘clinical’ small-conflict force no longer for fighting NATO but rather terrorism and regional threats.

Obama would do well to recognise this when weighing the missile shield; if Russia has finally moved to take NATO out of its crosshairs, then the US should reciprocate.

In fact, even the usually sceptical Economist reports that already, “both sides are signalling a truce” and making some tentative steps in renewing arms control negotiations that were either frozen since the Cold War or undermined by Bush.  So much so, that “an early and radical chop in weapons numbers [might] be announced by the two presidents next month”.

 

In a refreshing turn of events, Vladimir Putin has reportedly saved the lives of several journalists during a trip to a Siberian conservation area for the endangered Amur tiger (in accordance with the Lomonosov-Lavoisier Law of Conservation of Media, an opposition website owner in secessionist Ingushetia was ordered killed shortly afterwards).

When a tiger escaped from a trap and ran in the direction of the press pack, Putin is said to have shot it with a tranquiliser gun. Then, in a clear signal to Nato and Georgia, the Prime Minister stripped down to his camouflage underwear and proceeded to tear out and eat its still beating heart.

Well, not exactly; but he might as well have done, judging by the British headlines:

“Putin shoots a tiger as Europe grapples with Russian aggression” screams the Guardian, and then asks: “Was it an openly hostile signal of power play to the west? Or just another incarnation of Putin's oft-demonstrated masculinity?”

“Vladimir Putin 'shoots’ tiger, dismisses EU leaders”, declares the Times, adding that “the Russian Prime Minister , shown in new macho-style pictures apparently tranquilising a tiger , said that any attempts at severing relations would be hampered by the self-interest of European nations”.

In fact, histrionics aside, this has been a big week for Russian diplomacy: President Medvedev spelt out the 5 principles of his new foreign policy vision. The following is the BBC's Paul Reynolds's fine summary; his article is also worth reading for its good commentary.

1. International law

“Russia recognises the primacy of the basic principles of international law, which define relations between civilised nations. It is in the framework of these principles, of this concept of international law, that we will develop our relations with other states.”

2. Multi-polar world

“The world should be multi-polar. Unipolarity is unacceptable, domination is impermissible. We cannot accept a world order in which all decisions are taken by one country, even such a serious and authoritative country as the United States of America. This kind of world is unstable and fraught with conflict.”

3. No isolation

“Russia does not want confrontation with any country; Russia has no intention of isolating itself. We will develop, as far as possible, friendly relations both with Europe and with the United State of America, as well as with other countries of the world.”

4. Protect citizens

“Our unquestionable priority is to protect the life and dignity of our citizens, wherever they are. We will also proceed from this in pursuing our foreign policy. We will also protect the interest of our business community abroad. And it should be clear to everyone that if someone makes aggressive forays, he will get a response.”

5. Spheres of influence

“Russia, just like other countries in the world, has regions where it has its privileged interests. In these regions, there are countries with which we have traditionally had friendly cordial relations, historically special relations. We will work very attentively in these regions and develop these friendly relations with these states, with our close neighbours.”

Asked if these “priority regions” were those that bordered on Russia he replied: “Certainly the regions bordering [on Russia], but not only them.”

And he stated: “As regards the future, it depends not just on us. It also depends on our friends, our partners in the international community. They have a choice.”

Of course, these postulates are nothing new. The principles of Multipolarity and the idea of Russia's Monroe Doctrine in the so-called Near Abroad (the former Soviet republics) were first advanced about a decade ago by Yevgueny Primakov. At the time, around the allied bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia made a lot of bluster regarding Nato encroachment, but couldn't deliver.  The difference is that now Russia appears for the first time able to put its tanks where its mouth is.

Russia's recognition of Ossetia and Abkhazia baffled me. On this blog, I have frequently tried to show alternative, Russian perspectives on matters that seem otherwise to be common sense, above debate, to Western audiences. But I just cannot see any benefits this move will bring. On the contrary, by uniting the traditionally friendly OSCE, pragmatic EU and hostile NATO in opposition, it threatens to increase Russia's international isolation, and heighten the very encirclement that Putin had so anxiously tried to roll back with his Caucasian gambit.

In an interview with Russia Today, Medvedev raised the stakes further still:

“We are not afraid of anything, including the possibility of a new cold war. But of course, we don't desire it”.

Not one other country has recognised the breakaway republics.

Indeed, while “it would be an exaggeration to say that Russia finds itself in international isolation, writes the Russian political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov, “Russia has clearly found itself in a vacuum. No one has supported Moscow's actions, although for various reasons”.

In his illuminating and clear-headed essay for Radio Liberty, Lukyanov goes on to state that:

“Russia has demonstrated that it is able and willing to use force outside its borders in order to defend its national interests. This leaves neighboring countries faced with the question of how to ensure their own security…And Russia has to answer an equally important question: What are the criteria for determining those genuinely essential national interests in the name of which it is justified to use military force?

Very important questions, which should have been answered BEFORE any shots were fired. Yet perhaps Lukyanov's most important observation is that Russia and the US appear to have “incompatible strategic horizons”.

Russia is a global power with regional ambitions. That is, it is ready to exchange its opportunities in distant regions like Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East in exchange for its interests in the regions that border it — Europe and Eurasia. That is, Moscow has a clear hierarchy of its priorities.

The United States is a superpower with global ambitions. A global leader does not have secondary interests. It isn't possible to sacrifice anything or make trades because if something starts to totter in one place, it could trigger a domino effect. Therefore, everyone else must be pushed back as much as possible. As a result, no constructive dialogue is possible.

Whether or not one endorses the rather bleak conclusion, it is undeniable that a new relationship must be negotiated between Russia and the US-led West.

All my friends have been asking me: why does Russia just not seem to care what other countries think of it? Surely there could have been more conciliatory, diplomatic things that Medvedev could have said etc? The truth is, I’m not sure how useful that would have been. George HW Bush famously said that the USA does not apologise to anyone. It is very doubtful that ‘politeness’ achieves anything in relations with other countries, whose ties are based on shared interests, not good vibrations. But it could cost you domestically. Just think of how Obama's foreign trip was interpreted by the right wing press as ‘pandering to France’ and ‘apologising for America’. Leaders have every incentive to sound tough, and the tougher, the better. Does anyone really believe that if Medvedev had been more balanced and understanding that Bush and NATO would have changed their Caucasus policy in his favour?

In fact, that is precisely what Gorbachev did in the late 1980s, and the near-universal perception in Russia is that the West royally took advantage of that to beat Russia while it was down. Gorbachev made a very big deal of sharing Western values, of transcending the old politics of division, of believing in universal human rights and individual free choice. And the West loved him back. But did all that Gorbymania stop America and West Germany from wresting concession after concession from the spluttering USSR? Nothing personal, just business!

So now it's no more Mr Nice Guy, goes the thinking, because Russia's learnt the hard way exactly where they finish.

Are things really coming to a head in the Caucuses?

Violence is escalating in Ingushetia (bordering Chechnya), Sochi, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Edward Lucas has written a lucid overview of the Russian conflict with Georgia and whether we are on a cusp of a major war.

A Russian position on the Ossetia question is here, arguing that the Kosovo precedent, along with the US push for Georgian and Ukrainian NATO membership, are muddying the waters.

Recently, Israel had acceded to Russian demands to stop supplying Georgia with arms.

Let's see how things develop and hope that a full escalation can be avoided.