Letter From the Editors

Leonid Slutsky is on a falcon hunt. “Zhirinovsky’s falcons” – senior colleagues of the late LDPR founder – have been losing party status since his death three years ago. It’s clear that new leader Slutsky can brook no rivals. The latest target is Duma deputy Yaroslav Nilov, who was expelled last week by an “absolute majority” of his erstwhile comrades.

Analyst Konstantin Kalachov believes Slutsky will have difficulty explaining the move to the public: “Was it for saying that Zhirinovsky remains the leader of the party, while Slutsky is merely the chairman? But that’s how it is.” Slutsky, anticipating such criticism, explained, “Someone who breaks with party discipline . . . who acts in ways that damage the LDPR’s reputation, cannot remain in our ranks. These are the principles the great Zhirinovsky bequeathed to the party.”

In Armenia, many of the old bosses are still around, and allegedly the rebellion on their behalf is quite vehement. According to NG, authorities loyal to Prime Minister Pashinyan claim to have uncovered “plans to bring about 4,000 militants out onto the streets of Yerevan in August and overthrow the government in September.” At the center of the plot is Archbishop Bagrat’s Sacred Struggle movement, which authorities say recruited “oligarchs, deputies, journalists and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church” and attempted to engage allies of the two living prereform presidents.

However, not everybody was convinced by the authorities’ claims, NG reports: “Many residents in the country thought it was ludicrous, since the approval ratings of the political forces listed in the document were, if not at the level of margin of error, then at least close to it.” Expert Vladimir Novikov believes the crackdown represents an existential conflict between the AAC as the age-old anchor of Armenian national identity and Pashinyan, who is “pursuing a policy of rejecting Armenia’s historical traditions.”

By contrast, Belarussian President Lukashenko, having survived his existential struggle, can now assert his authority through tepid acts of magnanimity. As part of a détente with the US, Novaya’s Irina Khalip writes, “some of the most prominent political prisoners held in Belarussian jails finally walked free, including a man many believed would never again live to see the light of day – if he was even still alive at all – Sergei Tikhanovsky.”

Dmitry Taratorin notes in NG that this release, in turn, may feed dissent in the ranks of Belarus’s flagging émigré opposition. Tikhanovsky seemed eager to quash such rumors, clearly stating: “The leader of the opposition is Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, my wife, and I am not going to stake any claims here.” At the same time, he didn’t exactly fall into line, saying “I will begin to act as I see fit” in new opposition media ventures.

Tikhanovskaya was visiting the NATO summit, where allied leaders sent mixed signals of their own. Novaya quotes The Telegraph as saying, “flattery of Donald Trump reached ‘new, bizarre heights’ in The Hague.” Secretary General Mark Rutte showed special eagerness to hand Trump the “big win” of allies boosting defense spending to 5% of GDP: “For too long, one ally, the US, carried too much of the burden.” But then the deadline was quietly pushed back to 2035. Likewise, in deference to Trump, the summit’s final communiqué omitted mention of Ukraine’s future NATO membership. Rutte, however, publicly repeated the promise to “support Ukraine on its irreversible path to NATO membership.”

Trump appears, for the time being, to have had more success browbeating Iran and Israel into an unofficial ceasefire. To establish leverage, however, he chose to bomb Iran, which revealed cracks on his own team. His most vociferous advocate in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, criticized the move (“Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war”), and he publicly chided his national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, for going off script (“I don’t care what she said”). It seems that, when it comes to quelling dissent, force of personality will only take you so far.