Tag Archives: Putin

U.S. officials say Russian inaction enabled Syria chemical attack

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017.

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trump administration officials on Sunday blamed Russian inaction for enabling a deadly poison gas attack against Syrian civilians last week as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson prepared to explain to Moscow a U.S. retaliatory missile strike.

Tillerson said Syria was able to execute the attack, which killed scores of people, because Moscow had failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure and destroy chemical weapons in Syria.

White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Syria’s “sponsors,” Russia and Iran, were enabling President Bashar al-Assad’s “campaign of mass murder against his own civilians.”

But Tillerson, who is expected to visit Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian officials, said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ program there was “no change” to the U.S. military posture toward Syria.

“I think the real failure here has been Russia’s failure to live up to its commitments under the chemical weapons agreements that were entered into in 2013,” Tillerson said.

“The failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure on Russia’s part to achieve its commitment to the international community,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base after he blamed Assad for the chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” McMaster said the United States would take further action in Syria if necessary.

“We’re prepared to do more. In fact, we were prepared to do more two days ago,” McMaster said. “The president will make whatever decision he thinks is in the best interests of the American people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani said in a phone call that aggressive U.S. actions against Syria were not permissible and violated international law, the Kremlin said.

McMaster said Russian leaders were supporting “a murderous regime” and their actions would dictate the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

“Do they want it to be a relationship of competition and potential conflict,” McMaster said. “Or do they want it to be a relationship in which we can find areas of cooperation that are in our mutual interest?”

Tillerson stopped short of accusing Russia of direct involvement in planning or carrying out the attack, saying he had not seen “any hard evidence” to suggest Moscow was an accomplice to Assad.

But he said the United States expected Russia to take a tougher stance by rethinking its alliance with Assad because “every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and David Morgan; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Russia warns of serious consequences from U.S. strike in Syria

President Trump meeting with his National Security team and being briefed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford via secure video after a missile strike on Syria while inside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated that this image has been digitally edited for security purposes.

By Steve Holland, Andrew Osborn and Tom Perry

PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russia warned on Friday that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base could have “extremely serious” consequences, as President Donald Trump’s first major foray into a foreign conflict opened up a rift between Moscow and Washington.

The U.S. military launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross warships in the Mediterranean Sea that hit the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations of the Shayrat air base, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons.

It was Trump’s biggest foreign policy decision since taking office in January and the kind of direct intervention in Syria’s six-year-old civil war that his predecessor Barack Obama avoided.

The American strikes were in reaction to what Washington says was a poison gas attack by the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad this week that killed at least 70 people in rebel-held territory.

The U.S. action catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground aiding its close ally Assad.

“We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the U.S. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious,” Russia’s deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev charged that the U.S. strikes were one step away from clashing with Russia’s military.

Moscow said it had suspended communication with U.S. forces designed to stop planes colliding over Syria, where U.S. jets frequently bomb Islamic States militants. But senior U.S. military officials told Pentagon reporters that Russia has not suspended the military communications channel.

U.S. officials informed Russian forces ahead of the missile strikes, and avoided hitting Russian personnel.

Satellite imagery suggests the Shayrat air base is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin’s effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups.

Trump has frequently called for improved relations with Russia which were strained under Obama over Syria, Ukraine and other issues, but the U.S. president said action had to be taken against Assad.

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically,” Trump said as he announced the attack on Thursday night from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,” he said, adding: “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

ASSAD ‘ON NOTICE’

A wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, for the strikes.

Assad has been “put on notice” by the U.S. action, Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told the Security Council, terming it a “proportionate response to unspeakable acts.”

U.S. officials said the military intervention was a “one-off” intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks, and not an expansion of the U.S. role in the Syrian war.

The action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, as well as to countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, that he is willing to use force.

Assad’s office said Damascus would respond by striking its enemies harder.

The Syrian government and Moscow denied Syrian forces were behind the gas attack but Western countries dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike.

The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people and called it “blatant aggression” which made the United States a partner of “terrorist groups” including Islamic State. There was no independent confirmation of civilian casualties.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties on Friday backed Trump’s action but demanded he spell out a broader strategy for dealing with the conflict and consult with Congress on any further action.

A Russian frigate carrying cruise missiles sailed through the Bosphorus Strait into the Mediterranean Sea, although there was no indication it was in response to the U.S. action.

Russia expects U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to explain Washington’s stance in light of the missile strikes

when he visits Moscow in the coming week, Interfax news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying.

Washington has long backed rebels fighting Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and driven half of Syrians from their homes since 2011.

The United States has conducted air strikes against Islamic State militants who control territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are on the ground assisting anti-Islamic State militias.

Russia joined the war on Assad’s behalf in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in his favor. Although they support opposing sides in the war between Assad and rebels, Washington and Moscow say they share a single main enemy, Islamic State.

Tuesday’s attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria was accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to have given up under a Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago.

Video depicted limp bodies and children choking while rescuers tried to wash off the poison gas. Russian state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims.

The U.S. strikes cheered Assad’s enemies, after months when Western powers appeared to grow increasingly resigned to his staying in power. But opposition figures said an isolated assault was far from the decisive intervention they seek.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Lesley Wroughton, Patricia Zengerle, Roberta Rampton, David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Megan Davies in New York and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff and Alistair Bell; Editing by Giles Elgood and James Dalgleish)

Russian authorities hunt metro bomber accomplices; several detained

People mourn next to a memorial site for the victims of a blast in St. Petersburg metro, at Tekhnologicheskiy institut metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

By Polina Nikolskaya

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) – Russian authorities detained several people in St Petersburg on Thursday after finding an explosive device in one residential building and said they were investigating suspected accomplices of the man behind this week’s deadly metro bombing.

Bomb disposal experts made the explosive device found at the apartment building safe after evacuating people living in flats on two stairwells.

“We were told: the house is mined, get out quickly,” one woman, who only gave her name as Tatiana and lives in the building, told Reuters.

Another resident, who gave his name only as Anatoly, said he had seen police detain four young men occupying an eighth floor apartment next to his own.

St Petersburg is still reeling after a bomb ripped through the city’s metro on Monday, killing 14 people and injuring 50.

The attack, which authorities say was carried out by a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen, has put renewed focus on the large number of emigres from mostly Muslim central Asian states, who have moved to Russia to work.

Russia’s state investigative committee, a body with sweeping powers that is looking into the bomber’s background, said in a statement it was looking into the backgrounds of people it suspected of being accomplices.

It said it had identified several people of central Asian origin who had been in touch with Akbarzhon Jalilov, the main suspect. A search of the suspects’ homes had turned up objects that were important for the investigation, it said.

Russian news agency Interfax reported that investigators had detained several people suspected of being Jalilov’s accomplices.

It was unclear if those detained at the site of Thursday’s bomb scare were the suspected accomplices identified by the investigative committee.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Alexander Winning in Moscow; Writing by Sujata Rao; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Trump says chemical attack in Syria crossed many lines

A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

By Jeff Mason and Tom Perry

WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of going “beyond a red line” with a poison gas attack on civilians and said his attitude toward Syria and Assad had changed, but gave no indication of how he would respond.

Trump said the attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, “crosses many, many lines”, an allusion to his predecessor Barack Obama’s threat to topple Assad with air strikes if he used such weapons. His accusations against Assad put him directly at odds with Moscow, the Syrian’s president principal backer.

“I will tell you, what happened yesterday is unacceptable to me,” Trump told reporters at a news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Wednesday.

“And I will tell you, it’s already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” though when asked at an earlier meeting whether he was formulating a new policy on Syria, Trump said: “You’ll see.”

Vice President Mike Pence, when asked whether it was time to renew the call for Assad to be ousted and safe zones be established, told Fox News: “But let me be clear, all options are on the table,” without elaborating.

U.S. officials rejected Russia’s assertion that Syrian rebels were to blame for the attack.

Trump’s comments, which came just a few days after Washington said it was no longer focused on making Assad leave power, suggested a clash between the Kremlin and Trump’s White House after initial signals of warmer ties. Trump did not mention Russia in his comments on Wednesday but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said it was time for Russia to think carefully about its support for Assad.

Pence said the time had come for Moscow to “keep the word that they made to see to the elimination of chemical weapons so that they no longer threaten the people in that country.”

Western countries, including the United States, blamed Assad’s armed forces for the worst chemical attack in Syria for more than four years.

U.S. intelligence officials, based on a preliminary assessment, said the deaths were most likely caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday. A senior State Department official said Washington had not yet ascertained it was sarin.

Moscow offered an alternative explanation that would shield Assad: that the poison gas belonged to rebels and had leaked from an insurgent weapons depot hit by Syrian bombs.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russian explanation was not credible. “We don’t believe it,” the official said.

COUNTER-RESOLUTION

The United States, Britain and France have proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would condemn the attack; the Russian Foreign Ministry called it “unacceptable” and said it was based on “fake information”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would press its case blaming the rebels and Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Russia would veto the draft if Western nations went to a vote without further consultations, Interfax news agency reported.

Moscow has proposed its own draft, TASS news agency quoted a spokesman of Russia’s U.N. mission, Fyodor Strzhizhovsky, as saying on Wednesday.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, issued what appeared to be a threat of unilateral action if Security Council members could not agree.

“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she told the council, without elaborating.

Trump described the attack as “horrible” and “unspeakable.” He faulted Obama for failing to carry through on his “red line” threat and when asked if he had responsibility to respond to the attack, said: “I now have responsibility”.

The new incident means Trump is faced with same dilemma that faced his predecessor: whether to openly challenge Moscow and risk deep involvement in a Middle East war by seeking to punish Assad for using banned weapons, or compromise and accept the Syrian leader remaining in power at the risk of looking weak.

While some rebels hailed Trump’s statement as an apparent shift in the U.S. position, others said it was too early to say whether the comments would result in a real change in policy.

Fares al-Bayoush, a Free Syrian Army commander, told Reuters: “Today’s statement contains a serious difference from the previous statements, and we expect positivity … from the American role.

Others who declined to be identified said they would wait and see.

Video uploaded to social media showed civilians sprawled on the ground, some in convulsions, others lifeless. Rescue workers hose down the limp bodies of small children, trying to wash away chemicals. People wail and pound on the chests of victims.

The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said one of its hospitals in Syria had treated patients “with symptoms – dilated pupils, muscle spasms, involuntary defecation – consistent with exposure to neuro-toxic agents such as sarin”. The World Health Organization also said the symptoms were consistent with exposure to a nerve agent.

“We’re talking about war crimes,” French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters in New York.

Labib Nahhas, chief of foreign relations at Ahrar al-Sham, one of the biggest rebel groups in western Syria, called the Russian statement factually wrong and one which contradicted witness accounts.

“This statement provides Assad with the required coverage and protection to continue his despicable slaughter of the Syrian people,” Nahhas told Reuters.

The incident is the first time U.S. intelligence officials have accused Assad of using sarin since 2013, when hundreds of people died in an attack on a Damascus suburb. At that time, Washington said Assad had crossed a “red line” set by then-President Obama.

Obama threatened an air campaign to topple Assad but called it off at the last minute when the Syrian leader agreed to give up his chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by Moscow, a decision which Trump has long said proved Obama’s weakness.

SAME DILEMMA

The Western-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution condemns the attack and presses Syria to cooperate with international investigators. Russia has blocked seven resolutions to protect Assad’s government, most recently in February.

Trump’s response to a diplomatic confrontation with Moscow will be closely watched at home because of accusations by his political opponents that he is too supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election last year through computer hacking to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The FBI and two congressional committees are investigating whether figures from the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.

Trump’s relationship with Russia has deteriorated since the presidential election campaign, when Trump praised Putin as a strong leader and vowed to improve relations between the two countries, including a more coordinated effort to defeat Islamic State in Syria.

But as Russia has grown more assertive, including interfering in European politics and deploying missiles in its western Kaliningrad region and a new ground-launched cruise missile near Volgograd in southern Russia – an apparent violation of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – relations have cooled, U.S. officials have said.

The chemical attack in Idlib province, one of the last major strongholds of rebels, who have fought since 2011 to topple Assad, complicates diplomatic efforts to end a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of Syrians from their homes.

Over the past several months, Western countries, including the United States, had been quietly dropping their demands that Assad leave power in any deal to end the war, accepting that the rebels no longer had the capability to topple him by force.

The use of banned chemical weapons would make it harder for the international community to sign off on any peace deal that does not remove him. Britain and France on Wednesday renewed their call for Assad to leave power.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Polina Devitt in Moscow; Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Lesley Wroughton and Steve Holland in Washington; writing by Peter Graff, Philippa Fletcher and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall, Louise Ireland and Lisa Shumaker)

Blasts in St. Petersburg, Russia metro stations kill 10

An injured person stands outside Sennaya Ploshchad metro station, following explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – At least 10 people were killed in explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg on Monday, Russian authorities said.

Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying one of the blasts was caused by a bomb filled with shrapnel.

President Vladimir Putin, who was in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, said the cause of the blasts was not yet clear and efforts were underway to find out. He said he was considering all possibilities including terrorism.

A Reuters witness saw eight ambulances near the Sennaya

Ploshchad metro station.

Video showed injured people lying bleeding on a platform, some being treated by emergency services. Others ran away from the platform amid clouds of smoke.

 

An injured person is helped by emergency services outside Sennaya Ploshchad metro station, following explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg.

An injured person is helped by emergency services outside Sennaya Ploshchad metro station, following explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

A huge whole was blasted in the side of one carriage with mangled metal wreckage strewn around the platform. Passengers were seen hammering at the windows of one closed carriage.

Authorities closed all St. Petersburg metro stations. The Moscow metro said it was taking unspecified additional security measures in case of an attack there.

Russia has been the target of attacks by Chechen militants in past years. Chechen rebel leaders have frequently threatened further attacks.

At least 38 people were killed in 2010 when two female suicide bombers detonated bombs on packed Moscow metro trains.

Over 330 people, half of them children, were killed in 2004 when police stormed a school in southern Russia after a hostage taking by islamist militants. In 2002, 120 hostages were killed when police stormed a Moscow theater to end another hostage taking.

Putin, as prime minister, launched a 1999 campaign to crush a separatist government in the Muslim southern region of Chechnya, and as president continued a hard line in suppressing rebellion.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Russia blocks access to Internet pages promoting new Moscow protest

FILE PHOTO: Riot police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has blocked access to several Internet pages promoting what the authorities say is a planned illegal anti-government protest in or near Moscow’s Red Square on Sunday.

The planned demonstration would take place a year before a presidential election and a week after the biggest anti-government protests in years ended in hundreds of arrests, including that of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Sunday’s organizers describe themselves online as “young people and ordinary students from Moscow” and say they have nothing to do with Navalny, who is serving out a 15-day jail sentence for his role organizing the March 26 protests.

As of Friday afternoon, around 2,000 people had signed up online to attend the student protest, which in the authorities’ eyes is illegal because its organizers did not seek permission beforehand or agree the venue and timing with them.

A copy of what appeared to be an authentic letter from the prosecutor general’s office to the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, was leaked online on Friday asking for access to five Internet pages to be blocked, saying they amounted to calls for “mass disorder” and “extremist activity”.

Three of those five pages were blocked on Friday afternoon.

The prosecutor general’s office was not immediately available for comment, but its press service confirmed to the TASS news agency it had asked for access to several pages to be blocked because they were advocating illegal protests in Moscow and “in large cities” on April 2.

Roskomdadzor was not immediately available to comment.

President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to run for what would be a fourth term next year, spoke out against the protests on Thursday, saying that anyone who broke the law should be punished.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Jack Stubbs)

Face of anti-Kremlin protests is the son of a Putin ally

A riot police officer climbs on a lamp pole to detain opposition supporters during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Maria Tsvetkova and Maria Vasilyeva

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian high school student Roman Shingarkin had some explaining to do when he got home after becoming one of the faces of anti-Kremlin protests at the weekend. His father is a former member of parliament who supports President Vladimir Putin.

At the height of a protest in Moscow on Sunday against what organizers said was official corruption, 17-year-old Shingarkin and another young man climbed onto the top of a lamp-post in the city’s Pushkin Square.

Hundreds of protesters in the square cheered and whistled as a police officer, dressed in riot gear, shinned up the lamp-post and remonstrated with the two to come down. They refused, and the police officer retreated, to jubilation from the protesters down below.

As images of the protests, the biggest in Russia for several years, ricocheted around social media, Shingarkin’s sit-in on top of the lamp-post was adopted by Kremlin opponents as a David-and-Goliath style symbol of defiance.

Shingarkin was eventually detained when, after the protest in Pushkin Square had dispersed, police persuaded him to climb down. He was taken to a police station but as a minor, he could not be charged. From the police station, he had to ring his father to ask to be picked up.

His father, Maxim Shingarkin, was from 2011 until 2016 a lawmaker in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament. He was a member of the LDPR party, a nationalist group that on nearly all major issues backs Putin.

Putin last year gave the party’s leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a medal for services to Russia. With Putin standing next to him, Zhirinovsky proclaimed: “God protect the tsar.”

Shingarkin had not told his father he would be going to the protest, but the former lawmaker quickly guessed what had happened.

“When I rang my dad from the police station, he immediately understood why I was there,” Shingarkin, wearing the same blue and black coat he had on during the protest, said in an interview with Reuters TV.

“I went there (to the rally) out of interest to see how strong the opposition is, how many people would take to the streets, and at the same time to get a response from authorities to a clear fact of corruption.”

He decided to climb up the lamp-post because he “could see nothing from the ground”.

Contacted by telephone on Wednesday, Shingarkin senior said he was sympathetic with his son’s motives for attending the protest.

“He has a social position, against corruption, I support it completely,” Maxim Shingarkin said.

But he emphasized that his son’s actions did not mean that he or the family were opponents of Putin.

The Russian leader, Shingarkin senior said, is popular among voters and there is no one to replace him, but he is let down by the officials around him.

Roman Shingarkin said for now he would not attend any more protests unless they were approved by the authorities.

He said he might venture to a non-approved demonstration once he turns 18, because if he gets into trouble then, the police will charge him and not involve his parents.

(Writing by Maria Tsvetkova and Christian Lowe; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Generation born under Putin finds its voice in Russian protests

FILE PHOTO: Riot police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

By Denis Pinchuk and Svetlana Reiter

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Protests across Russia on Sunday marked the coming of age of a new adversary for the Kremlin: a generation of young people driven not by the need for stability that preoccupies their parents but by a yearning for change.

Thousands of people took to the streets across Russia, with hundreds arrested. Many were teenagers who cannot remember a time before Vladimir Putin took power 17 years ago.

“I’ve lived all my life under Putin,” said Matvei, a 17-year-old from Moscow, who said he came close to being detained at the protest on Sunday, but managed to run from the police.

“We need to move forward, not constantly refer to the past.”

A year before Putin is expected to seek a fourth term, the protests were the biggest since the last presidential election in 2012.

The driving force behind the protests was Alexei Navalny, a 40-year-old anti-corruption campaigner who uses the Internet to spread his message, bypassing the state-controlled television stations where nearly all older Russians get their news.

“None of my peers watches television and they don’t trust it,” said Maxim, an 18-year-old from St Petersburg who took part in a protest there.

He said messages about the demonstration were shared among his friends via a group chat on a messaging app: “Half the group went to the demonstration.”

Navalny, who was arrested at one of Sunday’s protests, tailors his message for YouTube and VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.

One of his recent videos, a 50 minute expose accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of secretly owning an archipelago of luxury homes, has been watched more than 14 million times on YouTube. Medvedev’s spokeswoman called the allegations “propagandistic attacks” unworthy of detailed comment and said they amounted to pre-election posturing by Navalny.

While older Russians may have turned a blind eye to official corruption during years when living standards improved, younger Russians speak of it in terms of moral outrage.

“Why do I believe that what is happening right now is wrong? Because when I was little, my mum read fairy tales to me, and they said you should not steal, you should not lie, you should not kill,” said Katya, a 17-year-old who was at the protest in Moscow. “What I see happening now, you should not do,” she said.

Like other students who spoke to Reuters at the demonstrations, Katya, Maxim and Matvei asked that their surnames not be published to avoid repercussions.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Young people actively seeking change represent a new challenge for the Kremlin. It has built and maintained support for Putin for years by focusing mainly on ensuring stability, which Russians sought after the chaos of the immediate post-Soviet years.

Putin came to power after the 1990s, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and millions found themselves destitute. But young people who do not remember those times have different priorities than those even a few years older, said Yekaterina Schulmann, a political analyst.

“Our political regime is fixated on what it calls stability, that is a lack of change,” she said. “The political machine believes the best offer it can make to society is ‘Let’s keep everything the way it is for as long as possible’.”

“Young people need a model of the future, clear prospects, rules of the game which they recognize as fair, and … a social leg-up. Not only do they not see any of that, no one is even talking about it,” said Schulmann.

According to user data compiled from a social media page for people who said they planned to attend Sunday’s protest in St Petersburg, more than one in six were aged under 21.

It is still too early to say whether the new phenomenon will emerge as a serious challenge to Putin’s rule. It could be a burst of youthful idealism that fizzles out.

In any case, opinion polls show that Putin will win comfortably if, as most people expect, he runs for president next year.

His most serious rival for the presidency, Navalny, trails far behind in polls and could be barred from running because of an old criminal conviction which he says is political.

Still, the involvement of so many young people has forced the Russian authorities to pay attention.

A Kremlin spokesman said youngsters had been offered money by protest organizers to show up. The Kremlin offered no evidence to support this allegation, and none of the young people who spoke to Reuters said they had been offered payment.

Several students said school and university authorities had warned them before the protests they could be punished for taking part.

Pavel, a 20-year-old studying to be a veterinarian who attended a protest in Moscow, said it was worth it to risk some of Russia’s stability in the hope of change.

“Yes, maybe it will be negative; yes, maybe there won’t be the stability that we have now. But for a person in the 21st century it’s shameful to live in the kind of stability we have now.”

(Additional reporting by Natalia Shurmina in Yekaterinburg, Russia; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Peter Graff)

Life under Russia not all it was cracked up to be: Crimean ex-leader

Sevastopol Mayor Alexei Chaliy applauds during a meeting of deputies of the State Duma, Russia's lower parliament house, with members of the Crimean parliamentary delegation in Moscow

By Darya Korsunskaya and Anton Zverev

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (Reuters) – The pro-Moscow Crimean politician who signed a document handing control over the Ukrainian peninsula to Russia in March 2014 said the three years since had been a time of disappointment for many people in the region.

Alexei Chaliy, who at the time of Russia’s annexation was the self-proclaimed governor of Crimea’s biggest city Sevastopol, said he has no regrets about the region becoming part of Russia – a status that Ukraine and most other countries do not recognize.

But he took issue with the way the region had been run since, saying local leaders who took over from him were ineffective, plans to develop the economy had gone nowhere, and prices for consumer goods had shot up.

“If we’re talking about changes linked to quality of life in the region, then here – we have to acknowledge – in a significant way things don’t correspond to what was expected,” Chaliy said.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in the days after an uprising installed pro-Western leaders in the Ukrainian capital, prompted Europe and the United States to impose sanctions on Russia and dragged east-West relations to their lowest level since the Cold War.

Chaliy, a 55-year-old businessman, played a major role in events on the ground leading up to the annexation.

While Russian soldiers appeared on the streets, and many officials loyal to Kiev fled, Chaliy took de facto control of the local administration in the city of Sevastopol. Crimea voted to join Russia in a referendum that is regarded as illegitimate by Ukraine and Western states.

Soon after the vote, Chaliy, dressed in his trademark tight black sweater, attended a March 18 Kremlin ceremony with Russian President Vladimir Putin to co-sign a document on Crimea’s status within Russia.

Afterwards, he served briefly as the Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol before stepping aside for new leaders. He is now a member of the Sevastopol legislative assembly.

In an interview in his office in the city – three years after the annexation – Chaliy said that Sergei Menyailo, who took over from him as Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol, had failed to follow up on a strategy for economic development.

“Why didn’t it work out? Because the executive arm which came in … turned out to be incompetent and unwilling,” Chaliy said. “Therefore if we’re talking about expectations, then a lot of expectations were not fulfilled.”

He also said that funds injected from Moscow were misspent by the local administration.

Menyailo was moved from the post last year and is now the presidential plenipotentiary for Siberia. He did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Chaliy said he supported the new governor.

Most Crimean residents interviewed by Reuters reporters over several visits in the past few months said they had no wish to go back to rule from Kiev.

HARSH REALITY

Chaliy said many people in Crimea had hankered for the certainties of life in the Soviet Union, the last time the peninsula was ruled from Moscow.

“There are lots of people who are disappointed because … it wasn’t Russia they were joining but, for many of them, it was the Soviet Union. Back to 1988 or 1989, when factories were operating and there were loads of specialists and jobs.”

“They don’t understand that this won’t happen, and cannot happen.”

Soon after Russian’s annexation, pensions and public sector wages rose dramatically because they were brought into line with Russian levels, higher than in Ukraine.

This though was offset by a rise in prices in stores, partly the result of difficulties of getting goods to the peninsula – which is not connected by land to Russia.

“For us, 2015 and 2016 were very difficult from the point of view of inflation. Now the process has stabilized. As a whole, prices are at a high level. In Sevastopol they’re higher than anywhere else,” said Chaliy.

“Of course, if you compare this with people’s expectations, then in this sense a lot of people are disappointed.”

The private sector, heavily dependent on tourism, has suffered. Ukrainian tourists stopped visiting, and major companies, including some Russian ones, suspended investments because of the risk of being hit by sanctions.

“Businessmen are accustomed to going skiing in Europe and nobody wants to leave themselves open” to being included on a list of people barred from entering the European Union, Chaliy said.

He saw no prospect of the sanctions being lifted any time soon, and offered advice to his fellow Crimeans: “Breathe slowly, relax, and live under a state of sanctions.”

(Editing by Christian Lowe and Pravin Char)

Kremlin rejects U.S., EU calls to free detained opposition protesters

A law enforcement officer climbs on a lamp pole to detain opposition supporters during a rally in Moscow. REUTERS/Sergei

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin on Monday rejected calls by the United States and the European Union to release opposition protesters detained during what it said were illegal demonstrations the previous day and accused organizers of paying teenagers to attend.

The protests, estimated to be the biggest since a wave of anti-Kremlin demonstrations in 2011/2012, come a year before a presidential election that Vladimir Putin is expected to contest, running for what would be a fourth term.

Police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Vladivostok.

Police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Vladivostok. REUTERS/Yuri Maltsev

Police detained hundreds of protesters across Russia on Sunday, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny, after thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against corruption and demand the resignation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev’s spokeswoman has called corruption allegations against him “propagandistic attacks,” saying they amount to pre-election posturing by Navalny, who hopes to run against Putin next year.

Opinion polls suggest the liberal opposition, which Navalny represents, has little chance of fielding a candidate capable of unseating Putin, who enjoys high ratings. But Navalny and his supporters hope to channel public discontent over official corruption to attract more support.

The United States and the European Union both issued statements calling on Russia to free detained protesters, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday such calls were wide of the mark.

“We can’t agree with these calls,” Peskov told reporters on a conference call, saying the police had been professional and properly enforced Russian law.

He said the Kremlin had no problem with people expressing their opinions at protest meetings, but said the timing and location of such events had to be agreed with the authorities in advance, something which he said had not been done in large part on Sunday.

The authorities are concerned opposition activists will try to encourage people to break the law again in future, he said.

Law enforcement officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow.

Law enforcement officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

“We can’t respect people who deliberately misled minors — in essence children — calling on them to take part in illegal actions in unsanctioned places and offering them certain rewards to do so, thus putting their lives at risk,” said Peskov.

“What we saw yesterday in certain places, and especially in Moscow, was a provocation.”

He said police had gathered factual evidence that some teenagers, who had been detained, had been paid cash by protest organizers to attend.

The Kremlin would listen to what people who took part in other sanctioned anti-government protests in some Russian cities had said on Sunday, Peskov promised.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn/Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Kevin O’Flynn)