A TRNC Precedent?

An interesting (certainly by the standards of an int'l law journal's website - cf. the concept of "law school hot" - and perhaps even really interesting) discussion of last year's war in Georgia and its possible repercussions:

I have read in the blogosphere and received emails myself claiming that the events in Georgia require a rethinking and rewriting of the laws governing the use of force and the acquisition of territory. I am rather sceptical but would welcome articles arguing the opposite. To me, it is a case of ‘plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose‘.

But let us first address the depressing politics - this time demoralizing world politics perfectly personified by some celestial Central Casting.

First, the breathtakingly cerebrally challenged Saakashvili, whose every move, including throwing the match into the dry tinder, has militated against his desired entry of Georgia into NATO. The conspiracy minded may well claim that he was a Russian agent. His one redeeming feature were his blustering sophomoric news conferences which supplied relief to a very serious situation - comic relief, that is, provided by the squirming dignitaries forced to stand, ex officio, by his side and suffer each of his ‘I told you so…!’

Then we were treated to a rather new scary spectacle - US officials palpably and transparently aware of their real and perceived weakness, also of their lack of credibility, speaking loudly whilst carrying a broken reed. It is a photo-finish as to which America gives us more of a shiver - blustering, over-confident, but strong, or blustering, under-confident, and weak.

And then there was the redoubtable Sarkozy and Merkel (but hardly Solana…!) making all the right noises of ‘engagement diplomacy’, but unable to paper over the deep internal divisions within the Union, and therefore manifesting again Europe’s long inability to translate its economic might into political and military capital - so what’s new? Only Putin comes out entirely in control - hopefully, in the long run, a Pyrrhic victory.

The Russians will not withdraw from the two rump entities any time soon and no one will push them either. Have the Superpowers not been somewhat more equal than everyone else for some time now? That does not make the invasion any more legal than that of, say, Turkey into Cyprus and the status of the rump ’statelets’ is indeed likely to remain more like that of Northern Cyprus than that of Bangladesh. This may not be the time for talking of ’shifting paradigms’ (a less elegant phrase might be ‘koshering the pig’) but perhaps it is rather even more important to hold fast to the old ones oft consecrated in their breech. But I am sure there are other views out there and EJIL or EJIL:Talk! would welcome hearing them.

When I first read this earlier in the year, it made think of an article I saw back in December which made me think of the idea of a "TRNC precedent" (the phrase that popped into my mind, as a natural counterpoint to the idea of a "Kosovo precedent" which has been widely touted by secessionists the world over, but especially in the post-Soviet space) which is alluded to by the author above.

And now there's been an interesting follow-up to that article I saw in December: it seems that Greeks forced out of Northern Cyprus can lay claim to their land in the European Court of Justice. I wonder if this will have an impact on real estate prices in Abkhazia (especially since the registration of property claims by people displaced in the conflict there has been going on for years)?

Greek Cypriots 'can reclaim land'

The EU's top court has backed the right of a Greek Cypriot to reclaim land in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus that has since been sold to a UK couple.

BBC News, 28 April 2009

Meletis Apostolides was one of thousands of Greek Cypriots who fled his home when Turkish forces invaded in 1974, following a Greek-inspired coup.

The land was later sold to Linda and David Orams, who built a villa on it.

The European Court of Justice says a ruling in a Cypriot court that the villa must be demolished is applicable.

Even if the ECJ ruling cannot be enacted because the land is under Turkish Cypriot control, it means Mr Apostolides will be able to pursue a claim for compensation in a UK court.

It could also open the way for hundreds more Greek Cypriots to demand restitution for properties they were forced to flee.

Many Britons and other foreigners have invested in property in northern Cyprus, despite the legal ownership still being in some doubt.

Mr Apostolides said he was "very much" pleased with the EU court's ruling, and that it was "what we expected".

He added: "This is a difficult issue that has to be decided by the courts."

Property boom

The European Court of Justice ruling on Tuesday said that the decision of a Cypriot court in Nicosia was applicable in the north, even though Cyprus does not exercise control there.

It also said that one EU country - in this case the UK - must recognise judgments made in the courts of another.

The Republic of Cyprus joined the EU in 2004.

EU law was suspended in northern Cyprus for the purposes of Cyprus's accession, but lawyers argued successfully that the Orams' civil case still falls within the scope of the EU regulation.

Northern Cyprus is self-governing and still occupied by the Turkish army, but is not recognised internationally.

Nevertheless, it has become a thriving tourist destination in recent years, and house-building has boomed.

Some of those houses have been sold by Turkish Cypriots to foreigners, even though the land they were built on was once owned by Greek Cypriots and its legal status remained uncertain.

Property disputes dating back to 1974 have been one of the main obstacles to efforts to reunify Cyprus.

Correspondents say dispossessed Greek Cypriots are now likely to launch more legal battles, which in turn may harden opposition to reunification among Turkish Cypriots.

Russia's approach to NGOs: the "tarnished image problem" and "preventing color revolutions"

I happened upon this (admittedly somewhat outdated) paper (pdf) titled "Contextual and Legislative Analysis of the Russian Law on NGOs," by an American named Josh Machleder who was working as an Alfa Fellow at the INDEM Foundation back when this law was big news. I haven't read it closely, but the section headings make it look quite interesting.

Update April 29 - looks like this topic is still current, here's a recent piece on it from OpenDemocracy that I just saw today.

"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law"

Nikolai Zlobin is a Russian analyst who has been based in DC for some time - I'm not sure if it's that exposure that makes him generally sound more sensible than the average pundit, or something else. He also has a blog, the insights of which I wish I had been reading last fall when I was pontificating and speculating in this space about the fate of the Russian throne presidency. The article below is from the newspaper Vremia Novostei, and there's a slightly longer version on his blog.

Anyway, although I don't agree with everything in this article, I enjoyed the blend of an "outside-the-box" approach to international law with a pragmatic assessment of why things went down as they did in this case, so I decided to translate it for the edification of anyone who is fascinated or frustrated with the idea of a "Kosovo precedent" - and where it might lead - but doesn't read Russian.

Kosovo will not return to Serbia, just as Abkhazia will not return to Georgia

Nikolai Zlobin, Vremia Novostei, Feb, 29, 2008

In international law there are two principles – the right of nationalities to self-determination and territorial integrity of states – that at first glance appear to contradict each other. But if an ethnic group wants to break away and create its own state, it has the right to do so. The right of an ethnic group is superior to the right of a state. But if another state seeks to annex a part of the territory of a neighboring country, then the principle of territorial integrity applies, and the international community must ensure that it is observed.

In other words, if Russia wants to annex Abkhazia, that would be a violation of international law. But if Abkhazia wants to secede from Georgia and create an independent state, then its people have the full right to do so. There have been similar cases since 1945. This is the case in Kosovo as well, which is not becoming part of another state but is trying to create its own state. Moreover, a prohibition against becoming part of another state was a condition of Kosovo’s independence. Therefore, there is no basis for comparing the situation in Kosovo with the “Munich Agreement” which gave Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany in 1938.

International law inevitably changes. The foundations of the current system were formed in the first years following World War II. This was the international law of the Cold War period, and it does not adequately reflect contemporary realities and requires serious changes. Russia should become one of the leaders in the creation of a new system of international law, which would take into account the processes of globalization and technological developments. The way to do this is to avoid clinging to the norms and procedures of the past, whatever their benefits were in their day, and to shape the future based on the realities of the present.

The UN system, created in 1946, is in need of modification. It has long since ceased to be a politically effective international organization, has turned into a humanitarian organization and has not been in a position to solve a single significant international problem for years. In addition to Kosovo, one can point to the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many other things taking place which conflict with the letter of international law. We need new organizations which are capable of placing the world’s development within a manageable framework, so that events will not be left to their natural course as is the case today. Russia can and should play a large role in the creation of this new system, in cooperation with the EU, the USA, China, the Arab world, and other interested parties.

The principal complaint against supporters of Kosovo’s independence is that they have violated UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 10, 1999. But it’s not all that simple. That resolution concerned the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which ceased to exist a few years later. Serbia is not mentioned once in the resolution. The document does not require a UN Security Council resolution to approve further changes to Kosovo’s status, and supporters of the region’s independence took advantage of this.

I consider what happened in Serbia to have been a huge and primarily human tragedy. It happened, though, not on February 17, when Kosovo declared independence; it has been going on for quite some time already. In recent months, Russia’s representatives at meetings in Washington and Brussels made terrible threats, but then on the sidelines said, “Don’t worry, Moscow won’t do anything in response.” Serbian politicians constantly took a ambiguous position, sent unclear signals, and tried to sit not just on two, but on three or four chairs at once. As a result, it was they who lost Kosovo. The task became to make sure that this tragedy didn’t become a larger tragedy, that it didn’t lead to another war in the Balkans. Between a very bad option and a very, very bad one, the former was chosen.

Kosovo won’t return to Serbia, just as Abkhazia won’t return to Georgia – no matter what they are promised, no matter how high a level of autonomy is offered, no matter what position the UN Security Council takes. At some point in the negotiations, it became clear that Kosovo and Serbia would never come to an agreement. The EU and the US decided to be realistic and take responsibility for the situation. They decided that maintaining the status quo in Kosovo would be more dangerous than disrupting it.

Serbia wants to become an EU member and to join NATO as soon as possible. Kosovo and the other Balkan states want the same things. Adherence to European norms is a powerful motivation and sets the standard of behavior for the region’s politicians. Each country wants to enjoy a quality of life such that no one would want to secede from it. Serbia was unable to achieve this. It’s essential to create a country which attracts everyone to join it and not one which makes entire regions want to break away. President Putin had good reason to speak about the importance of making Russia an attractive country. This is a more effective method of combating separatism than appeals to other states whose own problems will always be more important to them.

Kosovo independence is one of very few foreign policy issues on which the Bush Administration has followed President Clinton's line. The genuine feeling in Washington is that stability in the Balkans depends in large part on whether Serbia can become a truly democratic country which fully shares Western values. But this can't possibly happen as long as Serbia has the colossal problem of Kosovo weighing it down.

In Washington, they say that the independence of Kosovo will help Serbia to become a successful state.

Serbia's reputation in American political circles has been ruined over the course of the past decade. Many American politicians see Serbia as the main threat to European security. This is why American policy on this issue was openly anti-Serbian from the beginning and continues to be so. Unfortunately, neither Russia nor Serbia itself will be able to quickly change this situation. This situation, though, makes Washington's stance even more intransigent and increases its impatience and willingness to take drastic measures without listening to its opponents. And not only on the issue of Kosovo.

I would take issue with a couple of the points here – first, the idea of self-determination under international law is not generally considered to be the unfettered right implied by Zlobin's description. The self-determination he suggests is so broad that it sounds almost like Lenin's idea of self-determination inevitably involving a separate state. In fact, I believe the current state of international law (for whatever it's worth) is that the general right of self-determination refers first of all to the right of nations to enjoy their national language, traditions, etc., within the confines of the state they happen to find themselves in through representation in that state's government; and secession, also known as "external self-determination," is considered a remedy of last resort.

Moreover, in the case of Abkhazia, there is a fairly compelling argument to be made that the conflict was not the sort of national self-determination which the international community should seek to promote or reward by recognizing. The Abkhaz, who constituted 17% of the population of the region in 1989, managed to drive out well over 200,000 ethnic Georgians – nearly a majority of the region’s population – during the fighting in 1992-93, and even then did not become a plurality in the region.

But perhaps I’m simply falling victim to the “old thinking” that Zlobin would like to move beyond. In all seriousness, I too have found the existing international law framework to be insufficient to deal with or even at times to describe some of the aspects of the unresolved conflicts in the post-Soviet space. In any event, international law is at least to some extent based on state practice, so perhaps another Oliver Wendell Holmes quote (in addition to the one used in the title) might be applied to the situation surrounding Kosovo: “It is the merit [sic] of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principle afterwards.”

It's interesting that as Zlobin proposes an innovative, cooperative role for Russia in formulating new international law norms, at least one other commentator is observing that Russia's use of international law is stuck in the past.

Also interesting are some - though by no means all - of the articles that made up the avalanche of commentary which followed Kosovo's declaration of independence. Here is a random selection of ones I enjoyed reading:

Christopher Borgen, the lead author of the definitive legal analysis of Transdniester's attempt at secession from Moldova, runs through the legal analysis of Kosovo independence and concludes that it is "a quintessential 'tough case,' demonstrating the ways in which political interests of states affect how the international law is given effect." Borgen rightly points out the importance of the facts of a potentially precedential case (and how narrowly they are interpreted) in drawing broader legal lessons, but he concludes that

Despite the declarations and best intentions, just saying something is "unique" may not be enough. States and commentators may need to ask why one claim of independence is purportedly unique and then consider its downstream political and legal effects. In the end, we need to keep in mind that sometimes the most effective law in politically-charged situations may be the law of unintended consequences.

Moldovan analyst Dumitru Minzarari believes there is now a "Kosovo precedent," and that it represents "a triumph of the law of the fist over international law." He also points readers of his blog to Charles Kupchan's article on the Foreign Affairs website and discusses that article at length.

Slate's Christopher Hitchens, with his usual acerbic tone, lays the blame for the ultimate outcome at the feet of Serbia:

Of course, one ought to acknowledge that this is a calamity for the Serbs and indeed an injustice in the sense of an insult to their pride and history. But the injustice was self-inflicted. I remember seeing, in Kosovo, the "settlements" for Serbs that the Milosevic regime was building in a vain effort to alter the demography. And who were the bedraggled "settlers"? The luckless Serbian civilians who had been living in the Krajina area of Croatia until their fearless leader's war of conquest for "Greater Serbia" had brought general disaster and seen them finally evicted from farms and homesteads they had garrisoned for centuries. Promised new land on colonized Albanian territory, they had been uprooted and evicted once again. Where are they now, I wonder? Perhaps stupidly stoning the McDonald's in Belgrade, and vowing fervently never to forget the lost glories of 1389, and maybe occasionally wondering where they made their original mistake.

Oh, and in lieu of tracking down a pretty picture for this post, I'll simply point out that you can track which countries have recognized Kosovo's independence here.

The War in Abkhazia - Cyxymu Remembers

[Image source]

Blogger cyxymu spent last week marking the 14th anniversary of the storm of Sukhumi, which dealt a final defeat to the Georgian forces in their war with Abkhazia. As He has a lengthy post with his own interesting theory about why the conflict unfolded as it did - he thinks that the main motivating force behind the fighting was Russia's desire to get Georgia to join the CIS.

He has also posted recollections from a number of his readers about their experiences during their last days in Sukhumi. I was going to translate a couple of them, but some of the best ones are quite long...

The recollections culminated on the 27th with cyxymu's own thoughts about the significance of that date (which I did translate - the same post has a couple of difficult-to-watch videos):

Today marks 14 years since the day when I stepped on the earth of my homeland for the last time. On September 27, 1993, I left my hometown and have not been back since. That was the last day when Sukhumi existed. On that day, as the Abkhaz say, "they shot the 'i' off Sukhumi," and along with it they killed the city's soul. And if on other questions I can find points of agreement with my Abkhaz friends, that day remains for us a chasm which we can never cross. For us [Georgians], that day is a day of mourning, a day when hundreds and thousands of civilians died by the hands of the Abkhaz units who entered the city; tens of thousands of Georgians, saving themselves and their children, fled into the mountains; a day when children lost their parents and parents lost their children. But for the Abkhaz side it is a day of victory, the day when they took Sukhumi. And we'll never be able to arrive at a common denominator regarding that day.

I don't lose hope, and I believe that we will return to Sukhumi, that Abkhaz and Georgians will be able to live together, but in order for that to happen it's essential to punish the war criminals whose arms are covered up to their elbows in the blood of civilians.

Somewhat less emotionally, cyxymu posted last week about the Abkhazian special forces
troops captured after a skirmish with the Georgians, and how they were led by an
officer who had served in the Russian peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia before joining the Abkhazian
armed forces. The post is titled "вот такие у нас миротWARцы" - an impossible-to-translate pun meaning "these are the kind of peacekeepers we have," but substituting "WAR" for a phonetically similar syllable in the Russian word for "peacekeepers." He's also written recently about the firefight several days ago in South Ossetia.

[Update 10/1] I had the thought that I should temper the translated text above by noting that most neutral observers of the conflict believe that atrocities rising to the level of war crimes were committed on both sides (see, e.g., this Human Rights Watch report). For what it's worth, my opinion is that too much time has past and attitudes have become too entrenched for a tribunal or other attempt at post-conflict justice to be effective. On the other hand, I can't think of anything better, so maybe a low-impact "truth and reconciliation" process that doesn't necessarily hand down harsh sentences would be one way to go about starting to rebuild the bridges burnt back in 1993.

A very sad article from IWPR about relatives on both sides of the conflict still looking for the bodies of those officially declared missing.]

Alisher Usmanov - Богатые тоже плачут

The world's 142nd-richest person is wounded by a blog.

[Image source]

Thanks to a web host's fear of the UK's plaintiff-friendly libel laws, Uzbek/Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov was able to temporarily suppress some interesting material posted about him at Craig Murray's website. Notably, Usmanov has not taken Murray to court, presumably because his lawyers don't think he would win, even with the UK libel laws which put the burden of proof on the defendant. Based on material available elsewhere on the internet (for example, see Anticompromat's extensive bio and other information on Usmanov), it looks like at least some of what Murray claims may be true. More on Usmanov, including his interests in Transnistria (a topic not discussed by Murray), below the cut.

Murray, of course, was the UK's Ambassador to Uzbekistan who was sacked, according to him for being an opponent of the West's policy of tolerating Uzbek President Islam Karimov's human rights abuses. Murray has now reposted the article that drew the letter from Usmanov's lawyers, which is titled "Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist," at a newly created Blogger blog - alisherusmanov.blogspot.com. The bit about Arsenal relates to Usmanov's ownership of a stake in the British football (soccer) club.

Usmanov may be learning a difficult lesson about using heavy-handed tactics to go after speech you don't like - often (at least in an open society), such tactics just get more people talking about the material you find offensive. Perhaps if Murray's blog was hosted in Russia, Usmanov would have had success getting his friends in the Kremlin (Usmanov, you'll recall, was the tycoon who recently pre-empted the auction of Rostropovich's art collection and declared his plans to donate the collection to the Russian state - he's identified by one study as belonging to the "liberal-technocratic" camp of Russian elites, as opposed to the siloviki - page 33 of this pdf) to deploy the new "anti-extremism" law against him. Another advantage he would have on his home-field media space is that he's the owner of the Kommersant publishing house.

But instead of anything resembling such a result, the case - well, actually, there's no legal case - the story has become a cause celebre for bloggers the world over, it appears. Nathan has an interesting post about the brouhaha at Registan, with interesting comments. The Moscow Times also had an article about the story yesterday, noting that part of the reason it's become such a big story is that the website of at least one other politician aside from Murray, hosted on the same server, was also shut down for "technical reasons." We'll see if Usmanov gets to be Arsenal Chairman, regardless of the size of his ownership stake. For the moment, it looks like he fought the blogs, and the blogs won.



Interestingly enough, I had been reading just a few days ago about Mr. Usmanov's ownership of a controlling stake in the crown jewel of Transdniester's industrial sector - Moldova Steel Works, better known as MMZ, which is the abbreviation its Russian name, Молдавский металлургический завод, at Rîbniţa (also spelled Râbniţa or Rybnitsa, or Рыбница in Russian):

The metallurgic production unit in Rabnita is by far one of the most important objectives in Transnistria. 4,000 people are employed in this factory and the whole Northern part of the separatist republic depends on this factory. At maximum capacity, the factory can produce up to one million tons of steel and one million tons of laminated products a year.

Several groups benefited of this production unit. First it was the Russian group Itera, which at the end of '98 bought 75% of the shares. Once the group fell into the disgrace of president Putin, Itera had to sell in 2004. The shares were bought by the companies from Liechtenstein , which at this moment control 90% of MMZ. The two companies are called Rumney Trust Reg and EIM Energy Investment & Management Corporation. Both companies used to belong to the Itera Group. The buyers hurried up to certify with documents the new property, while the only ones who admitted being part of the Itera group, were Youssouf Hares and Alisher Usmanov, a Syrian businessman also active in the Ukraine, and of Uzbek origin. [...] Hares declared to us that the factory cost 100 million dollars and that the exclusive manager of MMZ is Alisher Usmanov. [source]

Organizational chart compiled by the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism,
showing the ownership structure of the MMZ steel plant in Rybnitsa .
[image source]

According to a report published last year by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York on various legal aspects of the situation in Transdniester (which the report refers to as "the TMR"), economic influence is one of the levers Russia uses to maintain its outsized role as a third party to the secessionist conflict between Moldova and the PMR authorities:

Besides direct economic assistance by Russia, the fortunes of Russian economic elites have become intertwined with a successful secession of the TMR. The TMR’s economy is highly reliant on Russia. “Just over 50% of [the TMR’s] officially registered exports are direct towards two key markets—Russia and Russian companies registered in North Cyprus.” To pick just one example, the ECHR found credible evidence that “from 1993 onwards Transdniestrian arms firms began to specialize in the production of high-tech weapons, using funds and orders from various Russian companies.”

More generally, though, the risk of the TMR’s privatizations—which were largely bought by Russian and Ukrainian companies—being unwound or otherwise jeopardized leads to a substantial interest on the part of some of Russia’s business elite. This is redoubled with the substantial interest that Gazprom now has in the proper transfer of shares in Moldova-Gas from the TMR to Gazprom as a valid means of paying off debt.

Or consider as another example the story of the Moldovan Metallurgical Plant (MMZ) in Ribnita. The Ribnita plant was built in 1984 using German technology and is widely considered to still be the most advanced steel works in the former Soviet Union. The Ribnita plant also generates between 40 percent and 66 percent of the TMR’s tax revenues. The TMR sold the Ribnita plant, despite the protests of the government of Moldova, to the Russian company Itera.

Then, in April 2004, Itera sold 75 percent of the plant to the Hares Group, an Austrian company, which purchased another 15 percent from other co-owners. Some have argued that the Hares Group is a “political buffer” which purchases assets in former Soviet republics and then re-sells them to the actual intended owners. In the summer of 2004, Hares allegedly sold 30 percent of the MMZ shares to Alisher Usmanov, one of the “metal tycoons” of Russia, who then announced a plan to consolidate MMZ with five other enterprises from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan making the new enterprise the fourth largest ore mining and processing company in the world. Such high economic stakes may well play a part in driving Russia’s political agenda, regardless of the requirements of international law.

[source: pp. 292-293 in this pdf (footnotes omitted)]

"Conditional recognition of privatizations" in Transdniester has been proposed as part of one potential settlement plan, but this doesn't seem to have made a critical difference in resolving the conflict just yet.



A few years ago, Usmanov seemed confident that there would be no unwinding of MMZ's privatization, or at least that he'd be able to "take steps" to avoid losing control of the enterprise:

Moscow 19 October 2004 14:56 Alisher Usmanov’s holdings in Moldovan Steel Works (MMZ) should not be jeopardised by the recent decision of the Moldovan parliament that cancelled all privatisation deals in the breakaway region of Transdniestr, the Russian businessman said last week. “I believe that the privatisation of MMZ was done under the legislation effective at that moment and that my subsequent participation in the acquisition of a share package in a company that owns MMZ stock was in good faith and should not be cancelled,” said Usmanov, who controls Urals Steel in Russia and holds a substantial minority stake in Corus Group. Usmanov said that he is planning no immediate action. “However, if [the recent developments] infringe the interests of the mill’s owners in any way, we will take steps aimed at the preservation of the mill’s uninterrupted operation, jobs and corporate ownership structure,” he added.

More recently, earlier this year there was speculation that Gazprom would give its right to receive Transdniester's extensive natural gas debts to Usmanov's holding company, Metalloinvest, which would then take payment of the debts from Transdniester in the form of the portion of MMZ shares that remained in control of the de facto state. However, all of the parties supposedly involved denied that a deal had taken place. Quite a tangled web, and I'm not sure of the situation as it stands today.

[Image source for all images of MMZ]

[Update - according to this multipart investigative report on the sale of Moldovan assets to Gazprom, what happened this March was the following:

“Gazprom” assigned Transnistria’s gas debts, in the amount of USD 1.3 billion, to the “Metalloinvest” Holding, which is also co-owner of Râbniţa Metallurgical Plant and Cement Factory. When informing the local media about the transaction, Anatolii Belitcenco, President of the Board of Administration of Râbniţa Metallurgical Plant specified that he did know the debt assignment conditions but that, thanks to them, Transnistria obtained a deferral for a few decades. Igor Smirnov, the leader of the self-proclaimed Transnistrian republic, responded to Belitcenco’s statement with as surprising as cynical a declaration: “Transnistria does not have legal gas debts because it did not sign any contracts with ‘Gazprom’. And so, Transnistria will not pay anything to “Metalloinvest”. Moldova must come to an agreement with Usmanov (Holding’s leader, who holds 30 percent of the shares of Râbniţa Metallurgical Plant), it is the one that has debts.”]

[Update Oct 10: IHT has an article about the brouhaha surrounding Murray's blogging about Usmanov, which is titled "Bloggers beware when you criticize the rich and powerful" and describes the initial shutting down of Murray's site as "the Internet equivalent of a smackdown." Via Registan.]

Still catching up with the summer's news

One of the events of the summer which has been seamlessly woven into the "new Cold War" narrative was Russia's suspension of its obligations under the CFE treaty. Although a law student should perhaps have something more to say about this, I don't, really, except to mention the obvious - that it's an example of the common phenomenon of "international law" - even treaty law - taking a back seat to political considerations.

The Accidental Russophile covered this story in a much more thorough and timely fashion, but I wanted to chime in with a couple of links and share a few articles which do explore the legal aspects of this brouhaha: a thoroughly footnoted article from the newsletter of the American Society of International Law; and several posts on the excellent international law blog Opinio Juris.