US senators meddle in Interpol and Washington targets Syrian oil shipment

Media: Russia slams US senators' attempt to meddle in Interpol election
No country has the right to veto the Interpol General Assembly’s democratic choice, an Interpol official told Izvestia, confirming that Chief of Russia’s National Central Bureau of Interpol and Interpol Vice-President for Europe Alexander Prokopchuk was one of two candidates for the Interpol presidency.

The election of a new Interpol president is scheduled to take place on November 21. Prokopchuk will compete against Interpol Interim President Kim Jong Yang of South Korea. However, the Interpol official pointed out that the president was not the formal head of the organization, led by the secretary general elected for a longer period, since the president’s term in office is only four years. Given that former Interpol President Meng Hongwei only served half of his term, the next president will hold office until 2020.

A group of four US senators earlier issued a statement, urging US President Donald Trump and the Interpol General Assembly to block the Russian candidate’s run. In their letter they said that Interpol electing Major General Alexander Prokopchuk as its new President is like "putting a fox in charge of the henhouse," the senators said.

"This is not just a statement which calls for refraining from voting for our nominee. It contains open insults against the Russian candidate. We should not brush this off. It is time we start filing lawsuits, particularly with US courts," said Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Deputy Chairman Andrei Klimov.

Retired Major General Vladimir Vorozhtsov, who supervised the Russian Interior Ministry’s cooperation with other countries’ law enforcement agencies, told RBC that Prokopchuk was a professional whose election would do much good for Interpol. According to Vorozhtsov, Prokopchuk is fluent in five languages and specializes in financial and tax crimes, as well as in crimes related to bankrolling terrorism.

Meanwhile, Prokopchuk’s election may bring no changes to Interpol’s activities, said Alexander Ivakhnik, the head of the Political Analysis Department at the Center for Political Technologies. "Even if Prokopchuk is elected, his position will be a technical one because there is the Interpol’s secretary general, after all. He will not become the key figure and his possible election will not expand [Russia’s] influence," the expert pointed out.

"Nationality-based discrimination is unacceptable when electing a head of an international organization. The focus should be on a candidate’s personal merits and achievements," Spokesman for the Russian Presidential Envoy for Affairs on Extradition, Deportation, Federal and International Searches Dmitry Grigoriadi told RBC.

Kommersant: Iran, Russia hit with new US sanctions for Syrian oil shipments

On Tuesday, the United States sanctioned two Russian companies - Global Vision Group and Promsyrioimport - on suspicion of supplying Iranian oil to Syria. Promsyrioimport Director General Andrei Dogayev was blacklisted. According to US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the move is aimed "against a complex scheme Iran and Russia have used to bolster the Assad regime and generate funds for Iranian malign activity." Washington warned that all parties involved in oil supplies to Syria may be sanctioned, Kommersant notes.

What happened to Promsyrioimport was predictable since the company had been created under the Russian Energy Ministry to tackle sanctions risks, namely to purchase Iranian oil even before the Iran nuclear deal.

As for Global Vision Group and Syrian national Mohammad Amer Alchwiki who controls it, the US Department of the Treasury claimed that they "are central to the delivery of oil from Iran to Syria, and the transfer of funds to the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force] IRGC-QF’s lethal proxies [Hamas and Hezbollah]."

"These new US sanctions are based on Washington’s tougher policy towards Syria, as new people have come to the Department of State, who are determined to deal with the Syrian issue in earnest," head of Al-Monitor’s Moscow bureau Maxim Suchkov told Kommersant. "A thing to remember is that sanctions pressure on Russia and Iran has been growing and in this regard, the Syria issue can emerge at any moment. If there is an excuse, there will always be sanctions. Russia will probably find a way to circumvent this package of sanctions. For instance, the already blacklisted companies could cooperate with Syria," the expert added.

"What is going on first and foremost points to mounting pressure against Iran, while Russia has only suffered an insignificant blow," Senior Lecturer at the European University in St. Petersburg Nikolai Kozhanov said, adding that "there is nothing new in the Treasury Department’s statement."

Damascus has never tried to cover up its imports of Iranian oil. In late October, the head of Syria’s State Fuel Company pointed out that the country’s Petroleum Ministry had a credit line with Iran, which helped ensure oil supplies. The company’s head also said that the ministry sometimes had to purchase fuel oil and gasoline through private companies. If it were not for those supplies, the Syrian people would have had trouble surviving several winters when the country’s oil fields were under the Islamic State’s control and pipelines had been destroyed.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: What caused Saudi Arabia to be treated like a pariah state?

The Saudis have been losing international support not only because of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder but also because of plans to diversify their sources of weapons, Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote, noting that following the Khashoggi murder scandal, Riyadh sought to increase arms exports from Russia.

When news about the tragedy started coming in, numerous Western politicians called for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. According to Reuters, the Saudi crown prince handed down instructions to the country’s defense ministry to focus on purchasing weapons and military equipment in the most important fields and train the military to use new kinds of weapons. Those particularly include the Russian-made S-400 air defense systems, as Moscow and Riyadh signed a contract on their delivery in May 2017. US officials say that Washington was outraged at that and its willingness to protect Prince Mohammad has been fading quickly under pressure from the CIA and Congress.

In addition, Berlin vowed that arms exports to Saudi Arabia would be curbed. "We have been turning up the heat on valid individual license holders, making sure that there currently are no exports from Germany to Saudi Arabia," a German economy ministry spokesman said. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said earlier in the week that Berlin had slapped Schengen entry bans on 18 Saudi nationals suspected of being involved in Khashoggi’s murder.

According to the Wall Street Journal, France may also prohibit arms exports to Saudi Arabia. However, it is yet unclear if other European countries, particularly Great Britain and Spain, will follow suit.

Meanwhile, experts point out that Russia does not have big contracts with Persian Gulf states. "I think the Saudis came under fire only because they had shown interest in purchasing the S-400 systems," Russian International Affairs Council Expert Yuri Barmin told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "As for the Persian Gulf region, we have major contracts with the UAE to cooperate on developing a fifth-generation fighter jet. Apart from that, Russia has only been supplying weapons to Bahrain on a more or less regular basis," the expert said. He also pointed out that technical and political difficulties had been hindering the implementation of the S-400 deal.

 

Izvestia: Washington’s Russophobia not dampening US tourism to Russia
More than 213,000 American tourists visited Russia in the first nine months of 2018, Izvestia wrote, citing data from the Federal Security Service (FSB). This number is nearly 30% higher than in 2014, precisely when relations between Moscow and Washington seriously began to deteriorate. Despite the ongoing diplomatic spat between both countries, the inflow of American tourists to Russia has been steadily growing.

According to the FSB Border Service, most Americans visited Russian in July to September, when over 123,000 US nationals came to the country.

Unlike the Cold War era, now there is no ideological confrontation between Russia and the United States, which would prevent tourist trips, Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov told Izvestia.

"Regarding the general public - common people and US businessmen - I don’t see any mounting hostility against Russia. For Americans interested in our country, Russia is not the forbidden destination it used to be in the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s," the senator noted.

Washington’s anti-Russian tone has not been dulling the tourist inflow from the US to Russia, added Professor of the Faculty of Law at the Higher School of Economics Alexander Domrin. According to him, "what is happening in Washington is the least of the American people’s worries." "They are far more concerned with what’s going on in their school district and state rather than some squabbles with Moscow," the expert said. "Americans take special interest in exotic tourism in Russia. Many wish to visit Siberia and see Lake Baikal or dream about a journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok to Moscow. Some are interested in its culture," Domrin explained.

In addition, according to the expert, Washington’s policy of sanctions and the anti-Russian political atmosphere only strengthen common people’s interest in Russia. By branding Russia as the main source of evil, the authorities make many think about going there and seeing with their own eyes if all that is true. Americans have difficulties travelling to other unfriendly states - North Korea and even Cuba - but there are no such issues as far as Russia is concerned. Particularly given that there is no danger for Americans here, Domrin concluded.

 

Kommersant: Air transport agency says 2018 FIFA World Cup works not enough
Russia’s aviation authorities are facing a great shortage of funds for the reconstruction of regional airfields. Kommersant’s sources say that a number of projects were postponed ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Experts believe that the shortage of funds will primarily affect small airfields.

According to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, the reconstruction of 66 regional airfields requires 171 bln rubles ($2.6 bln) for the next eight years, yet there is a shortfall of 107.4 bln rubles (1.6$ bln).

The agency has already asked the Finance Ministry to fill the funding gap. "We believe that the money will be allocated," a Rosaviatsia spokesman told Kommersant. A source in the Transport Ministry, in turn, said "we have requested additional funds from the Finance Ministry, and the request is currently under consideration."

According to an industry source, "66 airfields is a ridiculous amount." "Some of them are located beyond the Ural Mountains, and it is not an easy job to bring construction materials there and attract workers," the source told the newspaper.

Another industry source said that at cabinet meetings, Air Transport Agency officials had many times highlighted the need to increase the program’s funding. The agency considers the need to be justified, noting that during the run-up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the program was reviewed and the reconstruction of many airports has not begun yet, though the state earlier confirmed it was necessary.

Chief Expert at the Institute of Transport Economy and Transport Politics of the Higher School of Economics Fyodor Borisov believes that private investors cannot be expected to guarantee infrastructure renovation. "There is no money to reconstruct the regional network," he said. "These airfields are not capable of raising the necessary amounts of money for the reconstruction of tarmacs and runways. Besides, these facilities are state-owned, they don’t belong to terminal tenants," the expert noted. According to him, large airport holdings managed to complete infrastructure renovation works before the FIFA World Cup. Therefore, if the program ends up underfunded, it is small regional airfields with no ties to private investors that will have to go through an optimization.