This is an excellent documentary about modern day Russia under Vladimir Putin.

It’s phony election time again in Russia. That means it’s time to start throwing people in jail and intimidating those who would demand an actual election rather than a sham.

Russia launched an investigation on Thursday into the country’s chief independent election watchdog, in what the group described as the culmination of a state-sponsored campaign to silence the monitor just three days before parliamentary polls.

Moscow city prosecutors said in a statement the investigation followed a complaint filed by lawmakers objecting to watchdog Golos’s foreign financing and calling for it to end vote monitoring.

The complaint echoed Vladimir Putin’s speech on Sunday at his United Russia party congress, where he accused foreigners of funding his political opponents in what reminded some of the anti-Western rhetoric that marked his 2000-08 presidency.

This is what you have to understand about Russia. The way Vladimir Putin retains power is by convincing Russians that they are somehow under siege from “foreign powers” and therefore they need a leader with a firm hand like him. The funniest part is how Putin complains about “political opponents.” Who? Any real political opponents he threw in prison years ago. I don’t know how anyone in Russia can watch the so-called upcoming “elections” and keep a straight face. Vladimir Putin has decreed that he will be the next president of Russia. Just like he decreed that Dmitry Medvedev would replace him as president last time. And how he decreed that he would be the Prime Minister after installing Medvedev. And how he decreed just the other day that Medvedev will replace him as Prime Minister. Why bother with the sham elections?

What’s interesting about Russia is that most Russians don’t really seem to mind living without basic freedoms like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or a free press. They like Putin. They don’t mind living in a country where the police moonlight as contract killers for organized crime. They don’t mind having a government run by a bunch of gangsters. Imagine living in a country where journalists are routinely murdered for criticizing the government. That is the reality in modern day Russia. But the people don’t seem to care.  All I can say is, good luck with that.

There’s a new drug on the rise in Russia. It’s called “Krokodil” and it’s essentially a poor man’s heroin. It got its name because it turns the injection site on the skin black and scaly like a crocodile. The drug begins rotting away your flesh from the inside. The average life span of a Krokodil user is 1 year. Watch and prepare to be horrified.

This article titled “Putin’s populist speech hints at Kremlin return” was written by Miriam Elder in Moscow, for The Guardian on Friday 23rd September 2011 17.15 UTC

Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the government should be more responsive to people’s concerns, at a party congress that could indicate whether he plans to return to the Kremlin next year.

Addressing members of the ruling United Russia party, the prime minister avoided the tough talk for which he has become known, focusing instead on issues close to the country’s increasingly dissatisfied populace. He vowed wages would be raised to an average 24,000 roubles (£480) a month by the year’s end. He promised better education and a renewed focus on pensioners, and acknowledged the problems of corruption and excessive bureaucracy.

Putin also mentioned the work of the country’s struggling human rights community – but implied the government should take over. “There is a category of people who criticise me,” Putin said, saying they “belong to the so-called human rights defender category”.

“They are not many but they, as a rule, bring attention to those problems that seem to neither affect nor relate to people’s everyday life,” he said. “But without solving these problems, society will not develop, it won’t feel complete.” It was the government’s job, he said, to address those problems.

The two-day United Russia congress may provide hints as to who will become Russia’s next president, a post widely expected to be taken back by Putin, who is also the leader – though not a member – of the party. An announcement could come on Saturday, when both Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the current president, are due to address a rally of 10,000 people in the Luzhniki football stadium.

The recent increase in Putin’s publicity stunts – from riding a Harley Davidson to “discovering” ancient Greek urns while diving – is among the factors being taken as a sign he plans to return to the presidency.

The congress’s main task is to present a list of candidates for December’s parliamentary vote. The person chosen to head the list could be a sign of who the presidential candidate will be.

The overwhelming focus of Putin’s address, and his responses to questions from deputies, focused on economic issues, which rank at the top of voter concerns. The “most fundamental rights of citizens”, he said, were “salary, vacation, healthcare and education”.

Putin also took his traditional shots at the west, saying Russia’s justice system was “probably better” than that of the United States and disparaging the protests that have erupted in financially stricken parts of Europe.

In Russia, he said, “everything we do is done for the sake of the people – or, at least, that’s how it should be”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Russia refuses more Syria sanctions” was written by Ian Black, for The Guardian on Monday 12th September 2011 19.44 UTC

Russia has rebuffed western attempts to increase the pressure on the Syrian regime, led by Bashar al-Assad, as new United Nations figures show at least 2,600 people have been killed since anti-government protests erupted in March.

President Dmitry Medvedev said after talks with David Cameron that additional pressure was “absolutely not needed” because existing UN and European Union sanctions were squeezing the regime.

Britain, the US and France have been pushing for tougher action by the UN but have met opposition from Russia and China, veto-wielding permanent members of the security council, and others.

The latest UN casualty figures – 400 more than previously given – were announced on Monday by the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, who called the situation “dire” and again complained that Syria had refused access for a UN humanitarian assessment team.

Syria has banned almost all journalists from entering the country but new images have emerged of killings, injuries and funerals of victims.

One clip, [WARNING: Contains explicit images] posted by the Local Co-ordination Committees, appeared to show the final moments of a 14-year-old boy, Izzat al-Babidi, reportedly shot in the head during a demonstration in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Monday morning.

Other pictures showed hundreds of people attending the funeral of another boy, Subhi Salam, who was fatally wounded by a sniper during protests last Friday.

Pillay’s figure of 2,600 dead was immediately contradicted by a senior aide to Assad, Bouthaina Shaaban. “There are 700 casualties among the army and the police, and 700 among the rebels,” she said in Moscow. “We have a list [of the victims' names], and we can provide it.”

Shaaban’s visit was part of an attempt by Syria to stave off any danger that its Russian ally would abandon it. Medvedev appeared to show that he would stand firm, calling for a “well-balanced position between both parties to the conflict, the Syrian government and the rebels”. This was a far cry from the now firm western position that Assad has lost all legitimacy. Russia’s support brought a call from Syrian opposition activists for a “day of anger”.

Al-Arabiya TV quoted opposition sources as claiming that Syrian military aircraft had been flying low over the central city of Homs, where many have died in recent weeks. Syrian activists describe fighting in the nearby Rastan area between army defectors and loyalists, and an incipient “low-intensity civil war”, with Islamists smuggling in weapons from abroad.

The Saudi-owned channel also reported three clergymen from the Assad family’s Alawite sect in Homs as distancing themselves from the “atrocities” carried out by the regime. This week, opposition figures plan to unveil the final makeup of the Syrian National Council, a broad coalition of different anti-Assad groups.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Russian satellite missing within hours of takeoff” was written by Tom Parfitt in Moscow, for The Guardian on Thursday 18th August 2011 18.35 UTC

A Russian communications satellite, the biggest to be built in Europe, went missing hours after takeoff on Thursday.

The £146m satellite was sent into orbit by a Proton rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and disappeared just as flight controllers began to celebrate the launch.

If the Express-A4M satellite is irretrievable it will be a bruising failure for Russia; three navigational satellites for the Glonass global positioning system crashed into the Pacific, off Hawaii, shortly after blasting off in December.

Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, said the satellite’s Briz-M unit, the engine block responsible for positioning it correctly in high orbit, had fired correctly over four stages but contact was lost before the final firing.

The agency said it had established the location of the engine block but the whereabouts of the satellite remained unknown. “The radio systems are not detecting the satellite in its fixed orbit. There are no signals from the satellite,” a source told Interfax news agency.

The satellite weighed 5.8 tonnes and was fitted with 63 transponders and 10 antennae. It was designed to provide digital television, telephone and internet services across the former Soviet Union.

Space industry sources suggested Russia would turn to Norad, the US-Canadian aerospace defence command, and the Toulouse space centre in France for help in locating the satellite.

The incident is especially embarrassing for Roscosmos after Vladimir Popovkin, head of the agency, said on Wednesday that the organisation would be moving resources away from manned spaceflight.

Popovkin said the satellite launch represented “a change of priorities”. “For us the main thing is becoming the satisfaction of Russia’s demands for satellite information, including communications services and broadcasting.”

The agency said on Thursday it was setting up a commission to investigate the failed launch.

The satellite was jointly built by the Khrunichev centre in Moscow – named after a Soviet-era aviation minister, Mikhail Khrunichev – and Astrium, a Paris-based aerospace company. It was commissioned by the Russian ministry of communications.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Mikhail Gorbachev: I should have abandoned the Communist party earlier” was written by Jonathan Steele in Moscow, for The Guardian on Tuesday 16th August 2011 22.02 UTC

Politicians rarely admit mistakes, but Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev always was in a different class. So it is not surprising that, as he looked back on his six tumultuous years in power at the head of the Soviet Union, he was willing to count the errors he had made.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian he named at least five. They led not just to his own downfall 20 years ago; they also brought the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of an unregulated economic free-for-all that turned a few Russians into billionaires while plunging millions of people into poverty.

Gorbachev cuts a relaxed, even cheerful figure these days, but there are still the occasional twinges of bitterness, particularly when discussing his arch-rival Boris Yeltsin, or when he described the plotters who put him under house arrest in the Crimea during their abortive coup 20 years ago .

“They wanted to provoke me into a fight and even a shootout and that could have resulted in my death,” he said.

Asked to name the things he most regretted, he replied without hesitation: “The fact that I went on too long in trying to reform the Communist party.” He should have resigned in April 1991, he said, and formed a democratic party of reform since the Communists were putting the brakes on all the necessary changes.

This judgement will be of particular interest to historians since it is Gorbachev’s first public admission that he should have left the Communist party several months before the coup of August 1991. In the memoirs he published in 1995 he did not go so far.

By the spring of 1991 Gorbachev was caught between two powerful trends which were narrowing his room for manoeuvre. On one side conservatives and reactionaries in the party were trying to reverse his policies; on the other were progressives who wanted to establish a full multi-party system and take the country towards market reforms.

Things came to a head at a session of the Communist party’s central committee in April 1991. At a Communist party central committee meeting, several speakers called for the declaration of a state of emergency and the re-imposition of censorship. According to his memoirs, Gorbachev reacted sharply: “I’ve had enough of demagoguery. I am resigning.”

In his Guardian interview, he explained what happened in detail: “The Politburo [the top decision-making body within the central committee] went into a meeting and sat for three hours without me. I was told they criticised me and the discussion ran loose. Three hours later they invited me back and asked me to withdraw my resignation. During that time my supporters in the central committee had opened a list and more than a hundred people put their names behind the idea of creating a new party.”

When the central committee resumed its session, tempers had cooled, Gorbachev withdrew his resignation and no one wanted the issue put to a vote. (Even if he had resigned from the party, he would have remained Soviet president). In his memoirs, Gorbachev wrote: “Today I often wonder whether I should have insisted on resigning the post of general secretary. Such a decision might well have been preferable for me personally. But I felt I had no right to ‘abandon the party’.” The party had ruled Russia since 1917 and it was hard for anyone in Russia, particularly an official who had spent his entire career as a party functionary, to imagine it going out of power.

Today Gorbachev’s doubts have gone. “I now think I should have used that occasion to form a new party and should have insisted on resigning from the Communist party. It had become a brake on reforms even though it had launched them. But they all thought the reforms only needed to be cosmetic. They thought that painting the facade was enough, when actually there was still the same old mess inside the building.”

His second regret, he said, is that he did not start to reform the Soviet Union and give more power to its 15 republics at an earlier stage. By the time he began to think of creating a looser federation in early 1991 the three Baltic states had already declared independence. Blood had flowed in Lithuania and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. Under its ambitious leader, Boris Yeltsin, Russia, the largest republic, was flexing its muscles and demanding more control over the Soviet budget. Some analysts say the whole Soviet system was unreformable and any change was bound to lead to an unstoppable process of increasingly dramatic transformation. It was inevitable, according to this analysis, that Gorbachev lost control.

In part because of his generous character, sunny personality, and happy home-life (until his wife Raisa Maximovna died of leukemia in 1999), Gorbachev remains an optimist. Loss has not embittered him or made him cynical. He argues that all the main Soviet problems were on the verge of resolution until the August 1991 coup wrenched the competing forces into a new dynamic.

The Communist party was due to draft a new programme in November 1991. Parliament had adopted an “anti-crisis plan” to accelerate economic reform. The 12 Soviet republics that remained after the Baltics left had accepted the text of a new treaty that would give them more political and economic autonomy while leaving defence and foreign affairs to the Soviet government. The treaty was to be signed on 20 August.

“Here I made a mistake. I went on holiday. I probably could have done without 10 days of vacation … I was all ready to fly to Moscow to sign the treaty,” he said. But on 18 August a group of people arrived uninvited. I picked up the phone to ask what kind of people they were and who had sent them, but there was no line. The phone had been cut off.”

Gorbachev was with his wife, daughter Irina and her family in a government villa at Foros on the shore of the Black Sea. The buildings were under guard for three days until the coup collapsed because of Yeltsin’s resistance, splits in the army, and internal disagreements among the group of around a dozen plotters who were all ministers or senior Communist party officials.

Gorbachev vigorously rejected theories that he had given a green light to the plot. “People claim falsely that Gorbachev still had communications and that he had organised everything. They say Gorbachev thought he would come out the winner, whatever happened. That’s nonsense, total nonsense”, he said. “These people wanted to unseat the leader and preserve the old system. That’s what they wanted. They demanded that I write a statement asking to be released from the duties of the presidency because of ill-health.”

Raisa Maximovna kept a diary during their house arrest. In it she reported that Gorbachev warned the guards he would take “extreme measures” if his links to the outside world were not restored.

This was all bluff, Gorbachev told me. “That was part of my manoeuvring … I just wanted to put pressure on them but I wanted to avoid provoking them … My extreme measure was diplomatic and political. I was able to outplay them. If there hadn’t been movement in Moscow, my position would have been left hanging in the air. But here in Moscow people were protesting. They were led by Yeltsin and this is why we have to give him due credit and hand it to Yeltsin. He did the right thing”.

As one of the Guardian’s correspondents in Moscow during the coup, I reminded Gorbachev that Yeltsin’s call for a general strike went unheeded and many Russians were in despair, feeling the coup would succeed. The older generation remembered how hardline colleagues had easily removed Khrushchev and brought the era of de-Stalinisation to an end in 1964. I asked Gorbachev what would have happened if the plotters had arrested Yeltsin as well as Gorbachev at the beginning. Could they have won?

The former Soviet leader said hypothetical questions were of little value. The balance of forces was such that the coup was doomed whatever the plotters did. The coup plotters were in confusion because of his resistance and refusal to resign the presidency. He also pointed out that special forces mutinied when ordered to storm the White House where Yeltsin was surrounded by thousands of supporters.

Gorbachev listed several achievements he was most proud of, starting with one word: “Perestroika.”

Meaning restructuring, perestroika was the programme of reforming the Soviet Union’s political and economic system that Gorbachev set in motion soon after he came to power in March 1985. But it also involved the restructuring of international relations based on nuclear disarmament, the rejection of forcible intervention abroad and a recognition that even superpowers lived in an interdependent world. No country was an island or should act unilaterally.

The new Soviet policy of non-intervention allowed the eastern European states to produce internal regime change by peaceful means. “What we were able to achieve within the country and in the international arena was of enormous importance. It predetermined the course of events in ending the cold war, moving toward a new world order and, in spite of everything, producing gradual movement away from a totalitarian state to a democracy.”

Gorbachev has never reconciled himself to Yeltsin’s nine years in power which he sees as a time of chaos. Nor to Yeltsin’s pact with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to declare the Soviet Union dead in December 1991. He should have got Yeltsin out of the way several years before he became a direct rival. “I was probably too liberal and democratic as regards Yeltsin. I should have sent him as ambassador to Great Britain or maybe a former British colony,” he said.

He praises Putin for initially restoring stability until about 2006. Even though he used some authoritarian methods, that was acceptable in Gorbachev’s view. “But then came the moment when I saw him changing the election system, abolishing elections for governors of Russia’s regions and getting rid of the single-member constituencies. I counted 20 changes that I couldn’t support,” he added.

As the hour-long interview neared its end, I asked the former Soviet president about change in China, the world’s largest Communist state. Gorbachev takes the long view of history but is sure reform there is inevitable. Any suggestion that he should have followed China by starting with economic rather than political reform is wrong, he says.

“In the Soviet Union nothing would have happened if we had done that. The people were cut out, totally isolated from decision-making. Our country was at a different stage of development from China and for us to solve problems we had to involve people.”

“Do you think the Chinese will be able to avoid the same hard choices at some point in time? There will be a moment when they will have to decide on political change and they are already nearing that point.”

In March this year, Gorbachev celebrated his 80th birthday in London at a gala evening in the Royal Albert Hall, hosted by Kevin Spacey and Sharon Stone. An eccentric array of singers performed for him, including Shirley Bassey, Paul Anka, Melanie C as well as the German rock band the Scorpions, who were the second western group to play in the Soviet Union.

But the highlight was a performance on a large screen of Gorbachev singing a Russian love song. The audience was stunned by the clarity as well as the passion of his voice. I told him I didn’t know he could sing so beautifully, and had this hidden talent.

He laughed. ” If necessary I’ll become a pop singer,” he said. “Raisa liked it when I sang.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Russia defies growing consensus with declaration of ‘total war on drugs’” was written by Tom Parfitt in Moscow, for The Guardian on Wednesday 8th June 2011 18.18 UTC

Drug dealers are to be “treated like serial killers” and could be sent to forced labour camps under harsh laws being drawn up by Russia’s Kremlin-controlled parliament.

Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the state duma, the lower house, said a “total war on drugs” was needed to stem a soaring abuse rate driven by the flow of Afghan heroin through central Asia to Europe.

Russia has as many as 6 million addicts (one in 25 people). Every year 100,000 people die from using drugs, Gryzlov said in a newspaper. The scale of the problem “threatens Russia’s gene pool”, he said. “We are standing on the edge of a precipice. Either we squash drug addiction or it will destroy us.”

This year, President Dmitry Medvedev said drug abuse was cutting up to three percentage points off economic growth.

Injecting drug-use is also accelerating Russia’s HIV crisis because – unlike most other European countries – methadone treatment is banned and needle exchange programmes are scarce, meaning the virus spreads quickly from addict to addict via dirty syringes. An estimated one in 100 Russians are HIV positive.

Under legislation promoted by the ruling United Russia party and now being reviewed in parliament, drug addicts will be forced into treatment or jailed, and dealers will be handed heftier custodial sentences. “The barons of narco-business must be put on a par with serial killers with the appropriate punishment in the form of a life sentence,” said Gryzlov, who is chairman of the party.

Activists criticised the idea of putting addicts behind bars, pointing to a growing worldwide consensus that treating drug users as criminals has failed as a strategy.

The Global Commission on Drugs Policy said in a report last week that there needed to be a shift away from criminalising drugs and incarcerating those who use them. Gryzlov, however, claimed that “criminal responsibility for the use of narcotics is a powerful preventative measure”.

Special punishments should also be considered for dealers, he added: “Sending drug traders to a katorga [forced labour camp], for example. Felling timber, laying rails and constructing mines – that’s very different from sitting in a personal cell with a television and a fridge while you keep up your ‘business’ on the outside.”

While it remains unclear how many of the measures will become law, other leading members of United Russia – which is headed by Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and which dominates the duma – said they supported the initiative.

The plans follow an admission by Medvedev in April that Russia’s fight against drug addiction had failed. He called for radical measures such as mandatory drug tests in schools.

Possession of small quantities of psychotropic substances in Russia carries an administrative fine of up to 15,000 roubles (£330), but Gryzlov indicated it would now result in a jail term. The state should offer narkomany (addicts) a stark choice, he said: “Prison or forced treatment.”

That could be a bleak prospect. Some of Russia’s detox clinics still use “coding”, a controversial therapy in which patients are scared into thinking terrible consequences (such as their testicles falling off) will result if they mix drugs with medicines which are actually placebos.

Several activists condemned Gryzlov’s suggestion to “isolate” drug users from society.

“Sending more people to prison will not reduce drug addiction or improve public health,” said Anya Sarang, president of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, an advocacy group for people with HIV which works with injecting drug users (IDUs). “Russian prisons are terrible places full of HIV, tuberculosis and other diseases. Drugs are often even more accessible there than anywhere else.”

She added: “What we need instead of this harsh drug control rhetoric is greater emphasis on rehabilitation, substitution treatment, case management for drug users and protection from HIV.”

HIV prevalence among IDUs in western countries is 1 or 2%, but lack of outreach work and the absence of opiate substitution (methadone) and other “harm reduction” measures mean the figure is 16% in Russia – rising to 60% in hotspots such as St Petersburg.

Denis Broun, the Moscow-based director of UNAids for Europe and central Asia, told the Guardian that Gryzlov’s proposals could make matters even worse.

“It has been widely shown that criminalising people using drugs simply drives them underground and makes them much harder to reach with preventative measures,” he said. “This is not an effective strategy for fighting HIV. Purely repressive measures do not work.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Russian soldiers in Chechnya

Yet another whistleblower is coming forward to complain about conditions inside Russia’s military. Many stories have emerged over the years detailing the horrible conditions Russian soldiers must live under. Russia’s military is a shadow of what it once was. Alcoholism and corruption are widespread as are breakdowns in discipline. Dozens of soldiers die every year at the hands of other soldiers in horrific hazing incidents. Newly enlisted soldiers often have to pay protection money to keep from being killed by their fellow soldiers.

The latest allegations to surface are that Russian soldiers were fed dog food to save money.

Russian Interior Ministry troops were fed dog food earlier this year to save money, a former officer in the ministry said on Thursday.

A rare whistleblower in Russia’s expansive security forces, ex-Major Igor Matveyev said officers tried to cover up the scandal and other alleged wrongdoing at the Interior Ministry troops base where he served in the far east city of Vladivostok.

“It’s embarrassing to say but soldiers here were fed dog food. It was fed to them as stew,” Matveyev said in an interview with Reuters, adding that dog food labels were covered up with labels reading ‘premium quality beef’.

As usual, nothing is likely to come of this. Corruption is a way of life in Russia. Whoever is charged with investigating this incident will probably be paid to say it didn’t happen and life will go on. Russia likes to create the illusion that its a powerful nation, but it’s not. Corruption is destroying the country from within. Bribes must be paid to do anything in Russia. They lack an independent judiciary. Their military is in tatters. The only real power they have is in oil and natural gas which they use as a political weapon to get what they want.

This is a documentary about the modern day Russian prison system. What you discover is that the Soviet Gulag is still very much with us. Prisoners are packed into cells 30-50 people deep. They’re covered with lice, infected with TB, and most suffer from malnutrition. The film also explores the rich history of Russian prison tattoos. Every tattoo means something and usually reflects a persons status within the criminal hierarchy.