RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List table of contents :: JRL 2018-111 :: Tuesday, 19 June 2018

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2018-#111 :: Tuesday, 19 June 2018
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1. Washington Post editorial: Yet another Russia contact with the Trump campaign team. What are they hiding? Roger Stone and Michael Caputo said they never had contact with Russians. But they had.
2. Wilson Center: The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age.
3. Kennan Institute: Laura Dean, A Stage for Human Trafficking: The World Cup in Russia.
4. New York Times Editorial: A Siberian Prisoner Spoils Putin’s Extravaganza.
5. Interfax: Public outcry can’t influence court ruling in Oleh Sentsov’s case – Peskov.
6. Washington Post: Steve Goff, What’s it really like in Russia? During World Cup, more vibrant than I expected.
7. The Independent (UK): Oliver Carroll, World Cup 2018: England fans praise welcome by Russian hosts as they celebrate first win. ‘I was speaking to a Russian ultra… all he wanted to do was hug me,’ says one England supporter.
8. www.rt.com: Bryan MacDonald, English football fans discover real Russia is different to Oxbridge-dominated media portrayal.
9. Facebook: Ajay Goyal, Bureaucracy in Moscow.
10. www.rt.com: Over half of all Russians want Vladimir Putin to remain president after 2024, poll shows.
11. PONARS Eurasia: Putin’s Reelection: Capturing Russia’s Electoral Patterns. A discussion with Kirill Rogov on the transformation of electoral patterns during the March 2018 presidential elections and the techniques to compensate for the demobilization of the electorate.
12. Bear Market Brief: Russian middle class still hasn’t reached pre-2014 levels.
13. Bear Market Brief: Navalny announces July 1 protest against pension reform.
14. BBC Monitoring: Russian state TV backs pension age increase.
15. AP: A Big Stink Erupts Over Landfills Ringing Russia’s Capital.
16. Russiafeed.com: Alexander Mercouris, ECONOMY UPDATE: Russia’s economy grew more in 2017 than previously reported. Revised figures show industrial production growth significantly higher than first reported.
17. Intellinews.com: Ben Aris, Russian banks out of the woods, but no walk in the park.
18. Sputnik: Start of Nord Stream Construction in Russia Milestone for Project – Company.
19. www.rt.com: Russia dumped US treasuries to keep reserves safe – central bank.
20. Valdai Discussion Club: Ivan Timofeev, FIGHTING SANCTIONS: FROM LEGISLATION TO STRATEGY. President Vladimir Putin has signed federal law “On Measures (Countermeasures) Against Unfriendly Actions of the United States of America and Other Foreign Countries.” The State Duma is also discussing sanctions-related amendments to the Criminal Code.
21. Asia Times: Giovanni Pagi, How Chechen strongman became Putin’s bridge to Muslim world. Once its sworn enemy, Ramzan Kadyrov is now Russia’s unofficial voice on Islam.
22. Russian International Affairs Council: Igor Ivanov, Russia, China and the New World Order.
23. Valdai Discussion Club: Alexander Lomanov, NOT TO DISAPPEAR ONE BY ONE. Vladimir Putin’s visit to China and the simultaneous G7 summit in Canada created an unprecedentedly hard background for comparison. The US president’s public denunciation of his Western allies and his refusal to sign the G7 summit’s final statement have only emphasized the stability and promise of Russian-Chinese cooperation.
24. The Diplomat: Nicholas Trickett, Putin on the Ritz in China. A peek under the glitz of Russian-Chinese bonhomie.
25. Asia Times: M.K.Bhadrakumar, Trump holds the clock on North Korea while Putin plans his moves. Talk about a gas pipeline from Russia down through the Korean Peninsula has resurfaced amid a flurry of activity after the summit in Singapore and the Russian leader could be destined to play a key role in upcoming initiatives.
26. Interfax: U.S. decision to cancel drills with S. Korea shouldn’t be overestimated – Russian expert.
27. New RAND Publication: Rethinking the Regional Order for Post-Soviet Europe and Eurasia.
28. http://theduran.com: Alexander Mercouris, Putin-Trump summit finally on the way? Moscow hints that a summit in Vienna is under discussion as rumours of a July summit persist.
29. Facebook: Fred Weir, Russian news influences.
30. Los Angeles Times: Mark Swed, Searching for Russia’s soul, then and now, in ‘Boris Godunov’
31. www.opendemocracy.net: Gabriel Levy, Desperately seeking socialism: why the Soviet Union’s left-wing dissidents matter today. This new collection of essays seeks to rebalance our understanding of dissent in the late Soviet Union, drawing attention to democratic socialists from the 1950s into the 1980s.
32. Verso: Giuliano Vivaldi, The Soviet ’68. In the Soviet Union, 1968 marked the end of reformist optimism and the beginning of a more cynical era.

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