RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List table of contents :: JRL 2016-179 :: Wednesday, 28 September 2016

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2016-#179
Wednesday, 28 September 2016
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1. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Andrei Kortunov, In reading Putin, don’t mistake nostalgia for ambition. Vladimir Putin has mentioned several times that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical mistake. Although these words were often interpreted as his desire to constitute that country, there is little reason to believe this.
2. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Russia takes 119th place in global health ranking. Lower-than-expected score attributed to high rate of alcoholism and suicide.
3. Reuters: Andrew Osborne, Putin Faces Dilemma After Vote Win: How to Prolong a System Based on Himself.
4. http://theduran.com: Adam Garrie, Russia’s Recovery: The Story of ‘the Putin Miracle.’ Russia’s contemporary problems are mainly traceable to the Western engineered economic and social collapse of the 1990s. Its recovery under Vladimir Putin is far more impressive than its continuing problems.
5. Carnegie Moscow Center: Alexander Baunov, Looking to 2018: The Kremlin Plans Its Next Election. The Russian authorities delivered a resounding victory for the ruling party in the 2016 parliamentary election after reaching the conclusion that they showed weakness in 2011 and the Russian opposition exploited that. This will shape their strategy for the next presidential election in 2018.
6. Atlantic Council: Anders Aslund, Can Vladimir Putin Make the Twenty-First Century a Russian Century?
7. Russia Direct: Ekaterina Grobman, Russia’s domestic policy architect is now managing the Duma. Vyacheslav Volodin, now that he has won Kremlin support to become the next speaker of the State Duma, has emerged as a potential Putin successor in 2018.
8. Sputnik: Russian Economy to Experience Difficult Conditions for Next 3 Years.
9. Reuters: Putin says next budget must deliver state’s social pledges in full.
10. TASS: Putin demands to bring inflation to 4% in medium term.
11. Kremlin.ru: Meeting on budget planning.
12. AP: Putin Praises Farmers for Russia’s Strong Grain Harvest.
13. Kremlin.ru: Meeting with Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev.
14. Bloomberg: Russia Smashes Post-Soviet Oil Supply Record as OPEC Weighs Curb.
15. Intellinews.com: Russia’s industrial production is heavily dependent on state spending.
16. TASS: Russia climbs two notches in World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness ranking.
17. EU Observer: EU sanctions hurting Russian firms, US says.
18. www.rt.com: Pro-life activists launch new petition promoting total abortion ban in Russia.
19. Russia Beyond the Headlines: It’s 1 step forward, 1 step back for Russia in global education rankings. Despite the introduction of the Bologna model of higher education, Russian universities are still finding it difficult to meet the criteria of Western rankings. Experts talk to RBTH about the problem of including Russian institutes in such global lists.
20. Valdai Discussion Club: Ivan Timofeev, EU-RUSSIA: SELECTIVE ENGAGEMENT AND STRATEGIC SECURITY DIALOGUE. Neither Brussels nor Moscow seem to have a clear understanding of what issues need to be included into the list of partnership destinations.
21. BBC Monitoring: Russian press agrees that Clinton won first TV debate.
22. Russia Beyond the Headlines: Russian media split on who won first U.S. presidential debate. Russians closely followed the first U.S. presidential debate on Sept. 26 and its aftermath, with some media organizations questioning the objectivity of the CNN poll naming Clinton the winner.
23. Valdai Discussion Club: US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: A BATTLE OF TWO HAWKS. Despite Donald Trump demonstrating of greater realism in foreign policy than Hillary Clinton, it is obvious that Russia will have very serious issues if either of the two candidates is elected president of the United States, according to Valdai Club programme director Dmitry Suslov.
24. The Blog Mire: Rob Slane, Is Your Nation The Exceptional One?
25. Rethinking Russia: Thomas Graham, Can Russia and the United States Cooperate in Syria?
26. Russia International Affairs Council: On Thin Syrian Ice. (interview with Ambassador Aleksandr Aksenenok)
27. Irrussianality: Paul Robinson, NEITHER WAR NOR PEACE. (re Ukraine)
28. TASS: MH17 crash investigators call not to rush with accusations against Russia.
29. New York Times: Russia Implicated in Shooting Down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Over Ukraine.
30. TASS: Kremlin calls for impartial, full investigation of MH17 crash in Ukraine.
31. Counterpunch.org: Jan Oberg, Ukraine as the Border of NATO Expansion.
32. Interfax-Ukraine: Ukrainian politicians displeased with Israeli president’s speech at Verkhovna Rada.
33. Russia Direct: Adriel Kasonta, The perils of arming Kiev. A new political push within the U.S. Congress to arm Ukraine may impact European security in ways that were never intended. In a worst-case scenario, it might even lead to the proliferation of weapons to terrorists.
34. Paul Goble: Eastern Europe Arming Itself because ‘No One Wants to Be the Next Ukraine’