RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2016-3 :: Friday 8 January 2016

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2016-#4
Friday 8 January 2016

A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs
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RUSSIA

1. The Stanford Political Journal: Michael McFaul on Europe, Russia, China, and the Middle East.
2. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Unwrapping Christmas in Russian literature. The decorations are up, the nights are drawing in – in the northern hemisphere, at least – and gift-hunters are braving the crowds ahead of Christmas. In Russia, however, this celebration has a different meaning.
3. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Back to the USSR: Lamenting the loss of the everyday. While the range of consumer goods available to ordinary Soviet citizens was notoriously narrow, some of those goods were – and still are – so dear to people that they couldn’t have imagined life in the Soviet Union without them. RBTH interviewed a number of people who lived through the era to find out what they miss the most.
4. Interfax: Patriarch Kirill sees no tragedy in current economic crisis.
5. Interfax: Russian bombing of Syria “defensive” and just, top cleric says.
6. Russia Direct: Luke Johnson, How do changes in Russian legislation impact doing business in Russia? Introduction of new legislation – such as a new law on foreign media ownership that goes into effect in 2016 – can play an important role in changing how Western investors perceive the risk-reward trade-offs in Russia.
7. Forward: Olga Gershenson, How Russia Created a Jewish Tolerance Center Even Vladimir Putin Can Tolerate.
8. www.rt.com: Danielle Ryan, NATO logic: Russia is a grave threat, but expansion ‘nothing to do’ with Moscow.
9. Valdai Discussion Club: Dmitry Suslov, 2015 RESULTS: TRANSFORMATION OF GLOBALIZATION, REGIONALIZATION OF GOVERNANCE.
10. Russia Direct: The world on the edge: Russian and foreign experts reassess world order. Experts from the Valdai Discussion Club outline the most important challenges facing the world today and suggest how to deal with them in a new book, The World on the Edge: The Coil Unwinds.
11. The Guardian: Nuclear weapons risk greater than in cold war, says ex-Pentagon chief. William Perry lists a series of factors that he says mean the chance of a ‘calamity’ is higher today than in the 1970s and 80s.
12. Russia Direct: Debates: How should the next US president deal with the Kremlin? Russia Direct highlights the best comments about the impact of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign on Russia and the optimal policy the new American president should follow in U.S.-Russia relations.
13. RIA Novosti: Russian diplomat interviewed on relations with Latin America.
14. RFE/RL: Russia Seeks To Drive Wedge Into Central Asia.
15. Russia Insider: Lisa Marie White, Masha Gessen: The Woman Without a Clue. Masha Gessen proves yet once more that she’s almost as unstable as the radioactive isotope that she so greatly esteems.
16. Center for Global Interests: Maria Snegovaya, Russia’s Worsening Economy Means Less Aggression Abroad, More Repression At Home In 2016.
17. Counterpunch.com: William Blum, Russia, as Explained to Russians by Americans.
18. www.foreignpolicy.com: Thomas Remington, What to make of the Putin fan club?
19. www.foreignpolicy.com: Mark Galeotti, Yuri Andropov Would Drop Assad Like a Hot Kartoshka. And four other lessons Putin could learn from his hero, the Soviet Union’s most ruthless reformer.
20. Moscow Times: Sanctions, Khachapuri, Burgers – Moscow’s Year in Food.
21. The Daily Telegraph (UK): How Tolstoy rewrote the history of Russia. As War and Peace comes to television, Rosamund Bartlett reveals the games the book’s author plays with the truth.
22. Russia Beyond the Headlines: What’s behind the new investigation into the murder of the Romanovs.

UKRAINE

23. Russia Direct: Mihail Molchanov, Ukraine’s corruption at a crossroads. The scale and scope of official corruption in Ukraine only seems to have increased under the Poroshenko government, leaving some to wonder: Who’s actually benefiting – and why?
24. www.opendemocracy.net: Denys Gorbach, After the ban: a short history of Ukraine’s Communist Party. You can ban Ukraine’s communists, but you can’t beat them.
25. The Guardian: The Ukrainians starting a new life – in Russia. About 1.5 million have fled the conflict in Donetsk, with their choice of destination largely set by their allegiance in the war.
26. Russia Insider: Alexander Mercouris, Russia Versus Ukraine: The Court Case and the IMF. In the legal dispute over Ukraine’s $3 billion debt to Russia, it is Russia that has the advantage.
27. Euromaidanpress.com: Paul Goble, Moscow Patriarchate Church in Ukraine headed toward the dustbin of history, Chapnin says.
28. TASS: Ombudsman: Donetsk republic prepares for prisoner swap with Ukraine.
29. Huffingtonpost.com: Inside The Trauma Centers Treating Ukraine’s Veterans. Since the onset of the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, some 9,000 soldiers have died and at least 20,000 have been injured.
30. Kyiv Post: Ukrainian journalists still not guaranteed justice under new regime.
31. The New Yorker: Jack Hitt, The Russian Tom Clancy Is on the Front Lines for Real. (Fyodor Berezin)
32. Fort Russ: Klim Podkova: Don’t worry. Things here in Ukraine are going just super.

Map of Commonwealth of Independent States, European Portion

Map of Ukraine, Including Crimea, and Neighbors, Including Russia

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