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New cadre raises campfire song to Russia and Putin Published: July 19 2007 03:00 | Last updated: July 19 2007 03:00 In a sunlit glade fringed with pine forest and a deep-blue lake, thousands of hands clap in unison with the beat. It could be a rock festival, were it not for the song's refrain - "Go on, Russia." - and the clunky slogans splashed across the speaker stacks: "Let's modernise the country! Let's defend our sovereignty!" This is morning aerobics at Lake Seliger, 200 miles north-west of Moscow. For two weeks, 10,000 student-age activists from Nashi, a youth group...

Through the good offices of La Russophobe's translator we are able to open a window into neo-Soviet Russia that would otherwise be closed to the non-Russian speaking world. In our "Articles" blog, you will find extensive translated extracts from the unabridged Nashi manifesto direct from Nashi's website. You can see the unabridged version in Russian, the juicy bits from which are translated below, here, and the shortened, brochure-like screed in Russian is here (a comic book version of the manifesto has been published and distributed by Nashi as a propaganda leaflet; it was translated into English here, but then the...

It's official. To be patriotic in Russia is to be a fan of Putin, specifically a Putin Youth. During the celebration on June 12th of Independence Day (Russia from the Soviet Union in 1990), "the only groups allowed onto Red Square were the youth group Nashi" - which means "ours" - "the Young Guard and Young Russia," according to Sergei, a Nashi supporter. Tickets were carefully dispensed only to the faithful near the Krasny Ploshad Metro from a truck, I finally discovered after questioning a dozen reluctant people holding the tickets. The 120,000-odd Putin Youth members are perhaps the most...

MOSCOW, July 2 — Yulia Kuliyeva, only 19 and already a commissar, sat at a desk and quizzed each young person who sat opposite her, testing for ideological fitness to participate in summer camp. “Tell me, what achievements of Putin’s policy can you name?” she asked, referring to Russia’s president since 2000, Vladimir V. Putin. “Well, it’s the stabilization in the economy,” the girl answered. “Pensions were raised.” “And what’s in Chechnya?” Ms. Kuliyeva asked, probing her knowledge of a separatist conflict that has killed tens of thousands and, although largely won by Russia’s federal forces and Chechen loyalists, continues....

It was but all a dream to ever believe Russia would be benign and peaceful under Putin. Deplorably, numerous people in strategic posts misjudged Russia. Today the Kremlin is on the offensive. It has positioned military and ex-security service personal in charge of Russian industry and all key governmental posts. It is liquidating its adversaries even across international borders, has gagged the media, suppressed civil liberties, harassed foreign diplomats, intimidated businessmen and NGOs, it's threatened to target Europe with ABM missiles, it carried out intense cyber attacks against its neighbor, Estonia and it's using pipeline power to shake down its...

Estonian authorities annulled a visa for a Russian woman who protested against the recent dismantling of a Soviet-era memorial in the Estonian capital, and are considering deportation of another two protesters. Alexandra Bondarenko, apprehended earlier Monday, has already had her visa annulled, and is to be deported shortly. The other two detainees, identified only by their first names - Alexandra and Nadezhda - could also face expulsion. All the three detainees are 21 years old, and entered Estonia on tourist visas. The young women affiliated with the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi were detained in central Tallinn at the former site...

Russian youth protest Poland’s Estonia support 08.05.2007 About 40 youth organization activists have staged a picket at the Polish embassy in Moscow to protest against Poland’s support for Estonia which chose to move a monument to Soviet soldiers from the center of its capital Tallin. The picketers criticized Warsaw’s plans to adopt a law to dismantle communist-era monuments in Poland, which they see as tantamount to destroying monuments honoring Soviet troops.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO accused pro-Kremlin youths of unacceptable intimidation against Estonia's embassy in Moscow, saying on Thursday it must stop and that Russia-Estonia tensions should be defused diplomatically. Days of protests at the embassy over Estonia's relocation of a Soviet war memorial escalated on Wednesday when demonstrators stormed a news conference shortly before the ambassador arrived and were dispersed by bodyguards spraying gas. Diplomats said the protests amounted to a blockade of the embassy of Estonia, which is a NATO and European Union member. "NATO is deeply concerned by threats to the physical safety of Estonian diplomatic staff, including...

moscow • Russia halted deliveries of oil products to Estonia yesterday in a move that coincided with protests in Moscow over the Baltic state’s relocation of a Soviet war memorial. The cut-off was likely to revive Western fears the Kremlin is using its energy might as a political weapon against ex-Soviet neighbours. Russia’s state rail monopoly said it planned to carry out maintenance on the rail link to Estonia, disrupting supplies. Coal exporters said Russian railways had also halted exports of steam coal via Estonia for this month, totalling up to 900,000 tonnes, citing a shortage of railway wagons. They...

Estonian border guards have not allowed activists of the Nashi youth movement, who left for Estonia in two different tourist groups, to enter the country. "Seven activists of the Nashi movement, including girls, who have tourist visas to Estonia, were not allowed to enter the country," press secretary of the movement Anastasiya Suslova told Interfax on Tuesday. The refusal paper handed out to young men states that "they constitute a threat to Estonian state security and that they are banned from entering the country for five years," she said. Activists wanted to make certain that the remains of Soviet...

It's very difficult to explain how anyone could ever have thought that Russia would simply "give up" its hostility towards the West and its values and institutions just because it "lost" the Cold War, and could therefore "never go back" to Soviet values. Where did this insane idea come from? Is it just frenzied Western arrogance? If the West had lost the Cold War, would we have simply repudiated democracy and adopted a communist dictatorship? The latest confirmation that Russians never abandoned their hatred of the West came in Vladimir Putin's eighth (possibly last) state-of-the-nation message. In it, as Reuters...

About 15,000 supporters of Russia's pro-Kremlin youth movement have vowed to defend their country from a host of enemies as they celebrated seven years of Vladimir Putin's presidency. Members of the Nashi movement said on March 25 that traitors are trying to pave the way for foreign powers to steal Russia's giant reserves of natural resources. Supporters waved Russia's flag and chanted "Russia" before speeches. They also went to recruit members in Moscow and give out special mobile-phone cards to be used to send out messages to followers.

Ambassador suffers months of harassment and BBC service in Moscow mysteriously goes off the air after the Litvinenko murderThe Russian authorities yesterday stood accused of orchestrating a campaign of intimidation against British interests in Moscow, where the ambassador has been harassed and the BBC Russian Service mysteriously taken off air. With ties between the Kremlin and London already strained by the police inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, The Times has learnt that relations with Russia risk being further damaged by other serious diplomatic disputes. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said yesterday that it had complained to the...

Ever since his sudden emergence as Russia's president when Boris Yeltsin abdicated at the end of 1999, Vladimir Putin has baffled analysis. What does this ex-spy (if there is such a thing: he himself once said that "there are no former chekists"), who pays lip service to free markets, really stand for? What other leaders does he resemble? The Putinology game has continued for six years now. Hardly anyone still hopes that Putin can become the democrat he sometimes claims to be; even "managed democracy" is no longer touted much. Early talk of the "Chinese model" -- liberalized economic policy,...

It's 7:30 on a Saturday morning in July. On the scenic shores of Lake Seliger, about 360 kilometers northwest of Moscow in the Tver region, some 3,000 young Russians are emerging sleepily from their tents underneath tall birch trees, summoned to morning assembly and exercises by the booming strains of the Russian national anthem. Camp Seliger offers its teenage denizens hiking, swimming, sports, and cookouts. But this camp has a twist. It is run by a new political youth movement called Nashi ("Our Own" in Russian). Its purpose, along with outdoor summer fun, is to build up patriotic fervor in...

THE sun rises over several hundred tents next to blue lakes. At the stroke of 7am, large speakers blare Soviet-era patriotic songs and bright-eyed youths emerge for another day of physical and ideological instruction. This is the first summer-camp of Nashi (Ours), a youth organisation set up by the Kremlin this year to support President Putin. It has assembled 3,000 teenagers from across Russia for two weeks of fun, training and political indoctrination. The organisers have spared no expense. They pay for all travel expenses, the rent of the idyllic location 200 miles north of Moscow, the tents, sailing and...

Jewish leaders in Russia said Tuesday that anti-Semitism and xenophobia were persistent in Russian society and they criticized law enforcement officials for not doing more to punish nationalist crimes. Borukh Gorin, spokesman for the Federation of Russia's Jewish Organizations, said an investigation by prosecutors into whether an ancient Jewish religious text was inciting religious hatred "was a sign of a serious illness of our society." Last week, prosecutors dropped the inquiry into whether the Russian translation of a 19th century summary of Jewish religious laws called Kitsur Shulhan Arukh provoked religious hatred. The inquiry had been prompted by a complaint...

MOSCOW - Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who quit to focus on political activities, on Monday accused Russian officials of interfering in his four-day trip to the troubled Caucasus region. Kasparov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, told a news conference that officials conspired to prevent him from meeting with local residents and organized hooligans to throw eggs and tomatoes at him and his entourage. In one city, authorities denied permission for his chartered plane to land, he said. He lamented the continuing violence and endemic corruption that has plagued the region where war-torn Chechnya is located,...

Pro-Kremlin Youth Group Organizes Victory Day Gun Salutes in Baltic Capitals The pro-Putin youth movement Nashi (Ours) organized “VE-Day fireworks” in the capitals of three former Soviet republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that are demanding Russia acknowledge the Soviet occupation of their independent states in 1940, local media report. On May 9 at 22:00 local time 100-mm artillery guns fired a salute in downtown Vilnius and Tallinn, and half an hour later 60 volleys were fired in Riga from two 195-mm guns. A spokesman for Nashi told the RBC news agency that thousands of WWII veterans, living in countries that...

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is one of President Vladimir Putin's closest confidants and is regularly mentioned as a possible successor to Putin in 2008, made some uncharacteristic political statements in a 1 March interview with "Moskovskii komsomolets." "Only democrats, with their split personalities, could believe that we might get help from abroad," Ivanov said. "Nobody will help us except ourselves. Therefore we should be powerful and capable of guaranteeing our national security in any situation."' He also criticized Russian liberals for viewing Russia only as "a money-making enterprise." Recent Russian media reports indicate that the Kremlin has ordered...