RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List table of contents :: JRL 2018-45 :: Friday, 9 March 2018

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2018-#45
Friday, 9 March 2018
A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs
The contents do not necessarily represent the views of IERES or The George Washington University.

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1. The Stanford Daily: Stanford suspends all undergraduate programs in Russia.
2. Carnegie Moscow Center: Alexander Baunov, A Hi-Tech Russian Doll: Putin’s Fourth-Term Reboot. Putin’s goal is now neither to recreate the USSR, nor to become part of the West. Rather, the ambition is to build an economic and technological “West” inside Russia, while continuing an aggressive posture towards the West on the outside.
3. Interfax: Russian Central Elections Commission receives 73 complaints from presidential candidates, mostly from Grudinin – chairperson.
4. Carnegie Moscow Center: Andrei Kolesnikov, Frozen Landscape: The Russian Political System Ahead of the 2018 Presidential Election. (excerpt)
5. www.opendemocracy.net: Andrew Wilson, Russia’s elections: the rise and fall of “dramaturgiya.” The Kremlin is used to scripting election campaigns to the minute. But the 2018 election shows how they’re losing control.
6. Ozy.com: WHY RUSSIANS ARE SO HOPEFUL FOR THE FUTURE.
7. The Guardian: Jonathan Steele, The Long Hangover by Shaun Walker review – Putin’s new Russia. Russian nationalism and nostalgia in a former Moscow correspondent’s account of Putin’s rule.
8. Paul Goble: West Now Focusing on Young People to Change Russia a Decade from Now, Federation Council Report Says.
9. Between Two Worlds: The “Art” of an American Surviving in Small Town Russia: Hal Freeman, POLITICS AND RELIGION IN RUSSIA. (excerpt)
10. www.rt.com: Russian farmers feeding half the world thanks to biggest grain harvest ever.
11. Russia Beyond: Diana Bruk, Why do most Russian women hate feminism?
12. Moscow Times: Michele Berdy, Harassment Russian Style.
13. https://off-guardian.org: FILM REVIEW: Loveless [нелюбовь] (2017). Catherine Brown looks at the 2017 Russian film and questions the claims made in western media that it represents an indictment of Russian society. On the contrary, she suggests, the film is a celebration of the sense of collective responsibility & compassion versus narrow self-absorption & materialism. [https://off-guardian.org/2018/03/08/catherine-brown-review-of-loveless/ ]
14. TASS: All Para athletes from Russia arrive to PyeongChang.
15. Christian Science Monitor: Fred Weir, For Russians, Pyeongchang was a success. But doping’s shadow still hard to escape. The Olympic ban made Russian athletes’ victories in Pyeongchang that much more dramatic for the Russian public. But the underlying issues over doping remain unresolved with fewer than 100 days until Russia hosts the 2018 World Cup.
16. Creators.com: Pat Buchanan, Time to Get Over the Russophobia.
17. The National Interest: Daniel DePetris, Despite the Bluster, Russia Is Not 10 Feet Tall.
18. Axios.com: Eugene Rumer, Time for the U.S. to reckon with Russia’s new global reach.
19. www.rt.com: ‘Urgently engage with Russia’: US senators call for dialogue after new nuclear arsenal unveiled.
20. www.foreignpolicy.com: Putin and Xi Are Dreaming of a Polar Silk Road. The Northern Sea Route might not be the next Suez Canal, but it’s at the heart of Moscow and Beijing’s play for the high north.
21. New York Times: Russia’s Greatest Problem in Syria: Its Ally, President Assad.
22. Der Spiegel: The Truth About the Russian Deaths in Syria. Hundreds of Russian soldiers are alleged to have died in U.S. airstrikes at the beginning of February. Reporting by DER SPIEGEL shows that events were likely very different.
23. NYU Jordan Center: Venelin Ganev, Orgasmic Communism? (excerpt) [Full text http://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/orgasmic-communism/#.WqKH65M-cWo]
24. Russia Beyond: Sex in the Soviet Union: Myths and mores.
25. Kyiv Post: Donbas war mediator accused of attempting to assassinate Ukrainian leaders, arms smuggling. (Volodymyr Ruban)
26. Matador Network: The biggest culture shocks Americans face in Russia.
27. Washington Post editorial: Is Putin’s poison squad back in Britain?
28. Sputnik: Analyst Sheds Some Light on Mysterious Russian Ex-Spy Poisoning Story.
29. Defensenews.com: Is Russia influencing America’s nuclear debate? Mac Thornberry thinks they will. (excerpt)
30. Huffington Post: Richard North Patterson, Is America’s President A Russian Asset? (excerpt)
31. Politico.com: John Sipher, How Putin Will Manipulate Us in 2018. Americans always fight the last war. We should expect a new Russian meddling strategy in November.
32. The Nation: James Carden, Should Western Elites Blame Russia for the Populist Surge? By now even the most tireless promoters of the idea that Russian “bots” pose some sort of existential threat to Western democracy are no longer so sure.
33. The American Conservative: Daniel Lazare, The National Endowment for (Meddling in) Democracy . The unwritten rule governing the NED’s activities is that the U.S. has an unqualified right to do unto others what others may not do unto the U.S. (excerpt)
34. Tablet: Lee Smith, Who Believes in Russiagate? Knowledgeable reporters on the left and right are frightened by the spread of an elite conspiracy theory among American media.

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