Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Putin issues warning, protesters to take a breather.  Faced with renewed street-based opposition to his rule, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin issued a warning on 12 June.  Speaking at a Kremlin reception, he said: “For a country as huge as Russia, with its multiethnic population and its complex federative arrangements, the undoubted value of evolutionary, gradual development is obvious.  We cannot accept anything that weakens our country and divides society.  We cannot tolerate any decisions and steps that could lead to social and economic shock.”

His comments coincided with the first big anti-government rally since he returned to the Kremlin.  However, on 13 June, Solidarity activist Sergey Davidis suggested that there would probably be no more big mass events in Moscow until the autumn.  In the meantime, the disparate opposition is beginning to implement its plans to set up a coordinating council to prepare future protests.  According to Davidis: "No-one either elected or authorized” the current organizing committee, and the committee has often been criticized for not having any mandate.  Now, he says, there is “an initiative to form single coordinating bodies of the protest movement on the basis of democratic procedures".

Davidis added that this week "a small group consisting of universally recognized leaders, [Aleksey] Navalnyy, [Sergey] Udaltsov, and several more people, will work out certain rules of game. There are different versions: elections only in the internet, or in the internet and also off-line.  There are several schemes, there are questions including technical ones, but they can be solved.  This scheme will be drawn up within quite a short period of time, maybe a month.  Voting will take another month.”

*** Increased North Korean military activity.  According to South Korean government sources, North Korea is displaying “an unusual amount of military activity”.  On 12 June, one government official said: “North Korea has deployed a bunch of Sukhoi and MiG jet fighters to some frontline military airfields, such as those in Taetan and Nuchon-ri, South Hwanghae.  They are dramatically bulking up the military drills of those aircraft.”  It is said that Pyongyang’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, has ordered an increase in the duration of air force military exercises.  Pyongyang is also ratcheting up its anti-Seoul propaganda through China-based social networking services.

*** Germany opposes military intervention in Syria.  On 11 June, Germany’s Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere complained about the “continued waffling by people who bear none of the responsibility [which] creates expectations in regions like Syria, thereby causing terrible disappointment”.  He added that he found it “hardly bearable that some coffee house intellectuals call for the deployment of soldiers in the world without being accountable for it”.