Author Archives: Plamen Miltenoff

Orban Hungary immigrants

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What Orbán’s Third Win Could Mean for Europe

With his strong election victory on Sunday, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán exceeded all expectations. What will the party’s third win mean for Europe?

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In an extremely divisive campaign, Orbán essentially focused on one single issule, warning against Hungary’s “downfall” at the hands of “immigrants.”
cheering supporters, who could be heard shouting a chant usually associated with right-wing extremists or radical football fans: “Ria, ria, Hungaria.”
Everyone in Hungary knows that he’s corrupt and that he governs poorly, and yet many people still vote for him because they consider it important that he protects them from immigrants and minorities like the Roma.

REFUGEES AND FORCED IMMIGRATION ’18

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REFUGEES AND FORCED IMMIGRATION ’18 / III. International Interdisciplinary Conference on Refugee and Forced Immigration
OCTOBER 12-13, 2018, Istanbul, TurkeyAll papers will be published in the proceedings e-book (with an ISBN number), which will be given as a DVD at the conference. Participants can also apply to INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES; DAKAM’s Journal to be reviewed.

Enquiries: conference@dakam.org
Web address: https://www.dakamconferences.org/refugeesandforcedimmigration

Don cossacks

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Cossacks’ faith as identity

It’s about Russia, not God

by Anaïs Llobet  April 2018  https://mondediplo.com/2018/04/13cossacks-box

The Russian Orthodox Church, which sees the Kiev patriarchate as a rival, cannot afford to alienate the 75% of the Ukrainian population who remain faithful to it: this is one of the few cases in which Moscow has not been able to count on the support of the Church.

Most Cossacks approve of the synergy between Church and state, which normally runs smoothly. But a few see it as a sign that the lessons of the past have been forgotten, something close to a betrayal. One young man showed me photographs of his great-great-grandparents, who were killed or died in exile after the Soviet authorities deported them in the 1920s.

Alexey Lebedev, a Cossack and priest of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, was just as angry: ‘When someone tells you that anyone who believes in Orthodoxy has a duty to defend the state, he is repeating the religious line dictated by Vladimir Putin. Patriarch Kirill’s Church isn’t really a religious organisation, it’s just a department of the Kremlin in charge of Orthodox affairs.’

Russia criminal background

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Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/23/how-organised-crime-took-over-russia-vory-super-mafia

A number of commentators have dubbed Russia a “mafia state”. It is certainly a catchy epithet, but what does it actually mean?

The Kremlin does not control organised crime in Russia, nor is it controlled by it. Rather, organised crime prospers under Putin, because it can go with the grain of his system.

There is a very high level of corruption in Russia, which provides a conducive environment for organised crime. It is not just professional criminals who are exploiting the opportunities provided by Russia’s cannibalistic capitalism – state agents, too, are exploiting their own criminal opportunities in an increasingly organised way. In 2016, the police raided the apartment of Col Dmitry Zakharchenko, the acting head of a department within the police force’s anti-corruption division. There they found $123m (£87m) in cash

The connection between the elite and the gangsters usually revolves around mutually profitable relationships – but these relationships can also fall apart in spectacular ways.

The modern Russian state is a much stronger force than it was in the 1990s, and jealous of its political authority. The gangs that prosper in modern Russia tend to do so by working with rather than against the state. In other words: do well by the Kremlin, and the Kremlin will turn a blind eye. If not, you will be reminded that the state is the biggest gang in town.

Just as the Russian language has become colonised by many borrowings from criminal slang, so too have regular Russian business practices become suffused with underworld habits and methods. Corporate espionage, bribery, and the use of political influence to swing contracts and stymie rivals remain commonplace, and continue to connect the worlds of crime and business. Likewise, the new generation of crime bosses are more likely than ever also to be active within the realms of legitimate and “grey” business.

The increasing sophistication of criminal operations, especially their shift towards white-collar crime, has created a need for financial specialists, to manage their own funds and also their economic crimes.

A vor I once spoke to bitterly complained that “we have been infected by the rest of you and we are dying”, but the infection has passed both ways. Many of the organising and operating principles of modern Russia follow the lead of the underworld. Maybe it is not that the vory have disappeared so much as that everyone is now a vor, and that the vorovskoi mir – the world of the thieves – ultimately won.

Kosovo

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Welcome To The Country With The Biggest Crush On America

February 24, 20183:51 PM ET   

The EU told Serbia it can join by 2025 — but only if it carries out reforms and works out its differences with Kosovo. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he supports Serbia’s candidacy only if it recognizes Kosovo and deals with “nonfunctional” northern Kosovo.

Kosovo’s current leaders — Thaci and Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj — are throwbacks to the 1990s, both former Kosovo Liberation Army officers who fought the Serbian Army. Serbia wants to extradite Haradinaj to be tried for war crimes. Thaci has been accused of involvement in an organ-trafficking ring. (He denies the allegations.) Their supporters recently angered the United States and the EU by trying to scrap a special court to try former KLA fighters for wartime and postwar crimes.

Unemployment hovers between 30-35 percent, rising to nearly 60 percent among young people. More than half of Kosovo’s population is under age 25.

Some are lured by crime and even terrorism. At least 315 Kosovars joined the Islamic State in recent years.

 

Eastern Europe and holocaust

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Rewriting History in Eastern Europe

Poland’s New Holocaust Law and the Politics of the Past

By Volha Charnysh and Evgeny Finkel
Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a controversial law criminalizing statements that attribute responsibility for the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities to “the Polish nation.”
The law is just the latest part of a broader effort at historical revisionism.
Nor is Poland the only postcommunist country that has tried to reframe the history of its role in World War II and defend the part it played in the Holocaust. Hungary, Ukraine, and the Baltic states have all made similar moves.
ascendant right-wing populist parties across Europe mean that the union no longer speaks with one voice. Sanctioning a member state is now more difficult.Right-wing populist politicians, traditionally Euroskeptics, are now even more willing to invite international disapproval and gain domestic popularity by stoking nationalism and whitewashing the past.
In states that experience direct threats from Russia and are ruled by right-wing populist parties, the trend toward policing history and silencing inconvenient facts about their roles in World War II is likely to continue. That will heighten tensions with the United States and Israel, divide allies even within eastern Europe, and stifle open debate. Ironically, it is Putin’s autocracy that might benefit the most from these developments.