(Interfax – October 13, 2014) The Internet usage index in Russia is 66 percent, the same as a year ago, and 46 percent of users go online daily, the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) said. Most active users are persons aged 18 to 24, people with higher education (66 percent in each of these two categories), prosperous people (58 […]
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As they are toppled one after another in cities across the country, statues of Lenin are becoming an endangered species in Ukraine. But Lenin the political symbol is still alive and kicking. (opendemocracy.net – LEONID RAGOZIN – October 13, 2014) Inside a granite pyramid on Red Square, in front of the Kremlin wall, lies the mummy of a short bald […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 13, 2014) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has fired key commanders of Kyiv’s failed so-called “anti-terrorist operation” against Russian-backed rebels in the Donbass region of East Ukraine, including defence minister Valery Heletei. “It’s time to replace the Defence Ministry’s chief,” Poroshenko was quoted as saying on October 12. Heletei had become the target of […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Vitaliy Syzov, Halyna Tereshchuk, Claire Bigg – October 09, 2014) Irina Yaremko, a real estate agent in Lviv, says owners letting their flats through her agency now request that potential tenants from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions be immediately rejected. KYIV — When heavy fighting erupted in her hometown of Horlivka, in eastern Ukraine, Yulia and her husband […]
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Subject: Ukraine: An Apprehensive Bird’s View Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 From: Sergei Roy <SergeiRoy@yandex.ru> Ukraine: An Apprehensive Bird’s View By Sergei Roy [Former Editor-in-Chief, Moscow News] The world’s political, military, and media antennae are now mostly catching signals from the Middle East, specifically from the area around ISIS. Briefly, my take on the current situation is this: ISIS is […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Kateryna Choursina – October 13, 2014) Russian troops are pulling back from the border with Ukraine, the government in Kiev said, calling it a positive move. President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to withdraw from Ukraine’s borders on Oct. 11. About 17,600 soldiers, who were on drills since the summer in the Rostov region, are to […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#213:: Monday 13 October 2014 E-Mail: davidjohnson@starpower.net A project of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs: www.ieres.org JRL homepage: russialist.org JRL on Facebook: facebook.com/russialist JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Ukraine 1. Kyiv Post: From blankets to buckwheat, candidates use bribes to win […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#212:: Friday 10 October 2014 E-Mail: davidjohnson@starpower.net A project of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs: www.ieres.org JRL homepage: russialist.org JRL on Facebook: facebook.com/russialist JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php 1. Reuters: Special Report: Flaws found in Ukraine’s probe of Maidan massacre. […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Stephen Bierman, Elena Mazneva – October 10, 2014) U.S. and European Union moves to pressure Russia by threatening its oil output overlook one detail: a mass of conventional resources across Siberia, according to Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi. Russia will distribute more oil and gas deposits found in traditional areas during the Soviet era, dulling the […]
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MINSK. Oct 10 (Interfax) – The delay in the enforcement of the economic bloc of Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU makes it possible to adjust the provisions of the document whose implementation could considerably harm the economy of the Customs Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “Kyiv and Brussels heeded our arguments and decided to postpone the enforcement of […]
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WASHINGTON, October 10 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine should not become a member of NATO and was never intended to become a NATO member, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe told RIA Novosti. “We don’t need Ukraine as a member of NATO, we shouldn’t put it in NATO. It’s a different country. It was never our plan when we […]
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WASHINGTON, October 10 (RIA Novosti) – A proxy war between the United States and Russia could erupt in Ukraine should Washington decide to provide lethal assistance to help Kiev in its crackdown on independence supporters in the east, a scholar from National Defense University (NDU) told RIA Novosti. “Policy-wise it could lead to slow march into a proxy conflict with […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 10, 2014) Kiev’s municipal council has ordered stores in the capital to label Russian-imported goods with additional markings to warn consumers they could be supporting the “aggressor” by buying the products, media reports said. According to the ruling approved by the city’s legislature, Russian made-goods will also have to be displayed on separate shelves […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 10, 2014) The state of Russia’s road system, which now ranks 136th out of 144 countries evaluated, is so bad that even Vladimir Putin, who recently has been given to upbeat statements about the country, has had to change his tone. But his comments in Novosibirsk yesterday suggest that he won’t […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 10 (Interfax) – The administration of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said the accusations made against the DPR by Ukraine, which is accusing the DPR of ceasefire violations, are ungrounded. “These accusations are ungrounded. In the course of all these days since the Minsk memorandum was signed, the Ukrainian military opened fire on the city’s residential quarters from […]
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MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) – Self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine has signed an agreement with Kiev authorities on the establishment of a ‘buffer zone’ separating the sides of the conflict, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said Friday. “We have signed an agreement on a buffer zone. The document stipulates that Kiev-led forces will pull out from several […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – BALTIC BLOG: Mike Collier in Riga – October 9, 2014) If you are constantly battling to try and disprove Russian claims that your state is essentially neo-Nazi, it doesn’t help if an evening of musical entertainment then pops up giving Nazi death squads the razzle-dazzle of a Broadway musical. That’s exactly what has happened […]
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MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) – Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told RIA Novosti on Friday that he has left hospital and is back at work. “Now I am out of hospital,” Gorbachev said. Answering a question about how he is feeling, the former Soviet leader stated that “well” would be an overstatement. “If I could reach the party assessment […]
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US Department of State October 9, 2014 Remarks at the Aspen Institute Victoria Nuland Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Berlin, Germany Assistant Secretary Nuland: It’s wonderful to be here with all of you at the Aspen Conference. Thank you to Aspen. Thank you to Microsoft for your support, this fantastic space. Thank you Rudy, and congrats to […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 9 (Interfax) – Only 13% of Russians are aware of the existence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and 54% learned about it during a poll held by the Public Opinion Foundation. Another 26% of 1,500 respondents polled in 43 regions on September 28 had heard something about the ISIL, and 7% failed to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 9, 2014) A legislative commission has approved a bill reducing fines for non-governmental organizations that fail to register with the Justice Ministry as so-called “foreign agents,” the government said in a statement Wednesday. The bill, conceived after the Ministry received complaints from the country’s human rights commissioner, proposes halving the minimum penalty for officials […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – October 9, 2014) Russia has released from custody opposition activist Sergei Mokhnatkin, who gained prominence among fellow activists for what he said was an attempt to protect a woman from police brutality at a protest rally, and who has been charged with violence against police. Mokhnatkin’s attempt to protect the woman had […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 9, 2014) A poll published Wednesday revealed that a majority of Russians believe their country is perceived as “interesting” abroad, while few believe foreigners think Russia is “authoritarian.” The poll’s results, which showed that most Russians believe the country is viewed favorably abroad, may be a surprise to some in light of the West’s […]
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(Blooomberg – bloomberg.com – Ye Xie and Elena Popina – October 9, 2014) As Russia starts burning through foreign reserves in a bid to defend the ruble, flashbacks to the country’s 1998 devaluation and default are inevitable. While the government is in a much stronger position today to fend off the crisis than it was then — foreign reserves are […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 9 (Interfax) – Capital outflows from Russia in 2014 could turn out to be less than the official forecast of $100 billion, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev believes. “We haven’t changed the forecast for this year. It is still $100 billion. Our accumulated outflow, I believe, is currently $78 billion for eight months and it looks like it […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 9, 2014) The ruble dropped on October 8 by a further 24 kopecks to the dollar and 29 kopecks to the euro. In order to support the exchange rate, the central bank was estimated by market participants to have sold more than $1.1bn, at least four times raising the upper threshold of the […]
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MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that he went on a 5-mile hike in the mountains of Siberia on his 62nd birthday. “The day before yesterday was a day of walking for me. I walked in the mountains for almost 9 kilometers [about 5 miles]. Everything still hurts,” Putin said, opening a session of […]
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(RIA Novosti – Moscow, October 8, 2014) Russia has been ready for a long time to denounce the agreement on the stay of troops of NATO member states on the territory of the Russian Federation but one should not hurry with this, the chairman of the Russian State Duma defence committee, Vladimir Komoyedov, has said. After NATO took upon itself […]
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(Stratfor.com – October 9, 2014) Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his 62nd birthday Tuesday in a peculiar fashion: by himself in the Siberian forests. For the past few days, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, has brushed off journalists’ questions about why the president decided not to celebrate his birthday in Moscow or do other work as he has in previous years. This […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Michael Winfrey – October 9, 2014) When the Islamic State commander known as “Omar the Chechen” called to tell his father they’d routed the Iraqi army and taken the city of Mosul, he added a stark message: Russia would be next. “He said ‘don’t worry dad, I’ll come home and show the Russians,’” Temur Batirashvili said […]
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The Council on Foreign Relations hosted an event featuring former Russia oil oligarch, and former Russian prison inmate, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Open Russia and Building Civil Society: A Conversation With Mikhail Khodorkovsky,” is archived at cfr.org/russian-federation/mikhail-khodorkovsky-open-russia-building-civil-society/p33555. Among other things, Khodorkovsky argued that Putin has become so entrenched as a strongman, that any successor might be regarded as merely temporary. This […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#211:: Thursday 9 October 2014 E-Mail: davidjohnson@starpower.net A project of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs: www.ieres.org JRL homepage: russialist.org JRL on Facebook: facebook.com/russialist JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Ukraine 1. AP: Ukraine adopts law to purge government officials. 2. The […]
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MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) – A serious outbreak of Ebola virus is unlikely in Russia, although sporadic infections among Russians who traveled abroad are possible, the head of Russia’s public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said Thursday. “No hysterical reports have ever been made for the Russian Federation, and will never be made, because the situation is under control and all […]
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Subject: UKRAINIAN TRAGEDY AND A NEW COLD WAR Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 From: George Enteen <gxe1@psu.edu> UKRAINIAN TRAGEDY AND A NEW COLD WAR George Enteen Professor Emeritus of Russian History Penn State University The appalling events in Ukraine have but a single explanation in the minds of Americans – Russian aggression. This is personified and dramatized in the unattractive […]
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WASHINGTON, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – The United States is designing a work program that may eventually lead to providing lethal assistanceto the Ukrainian government, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA), Derek Chollet said on Wednesday. “[Ukrainian] President [Petro] Poroshenko has been asking us for lethal assistance”, Chollet said in his speech at the International Institute […]
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(Voice of America – Doug Bernard – October 8, 2014) [Study here http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501761. “Russia, Ukraine, and the West: Social Media Sentiment in the Euromaidan Protests”] A new study conducted at Harvard University suggests that Russian-speaking Ukrainians may be significantly more supportive of Kyiv’s standoff against Moscow and the pro-Russian separatists than has previously been reported. The study, authored by researcher […]
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(Interfax – October 8, 2014) The world should see the difference between Ukraine’s de facto annexation of Crimea in the 1990s and the self-identification of the people of Crimea in 2014, Russian State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin believes. He was speaking at a session of the Federation Council legislators council presidium session on 8 October, as reported by Russian privately-owned […]
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(Interfax – October 9, 2014) The Ukrainian economy is in a catastrophic state and the country could need hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize it, Russian presidential aide Sergei Glazyev said at a Eurasian Economic Integration conference in Moscow. “Ukraine has entered into a phase of economic catastrophe. Calculations by the Eurasian Development Bank show that Ukraine would have […]
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MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) – It would be extremely difficult to revive constructive dialogue between Russia and NATO as bilateral relations have deteriorated to a great extent this year, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday. “The atmosphere [of bilateral cooperation] that has been respected by the alliance for a long time has dissipated in a blink of an eye. […]
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(Voice of America – Andre de Nesnera – October 8, 2014) Recent statements at the United Nations by President Barack Obama and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated things are not well between Washington and Moscow. President Obama said the international community must urgently address what he called “Russian aggression in Europe” — a reference to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea […]
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TBILISI. Oct 8 (Interfax) – Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili thinks the relations between Tbilisi and Moscow will improve and does not fear aggression from Russia. “Vladimir Putin seems to me an interesting person who is capable of really solving issues of utmost complexity for Georgia,” Margvelashvili said in an interview with Forbes Georgia. “I have not met him in person […]
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(Interfax – October 7, 2014) Food quality and assortments have not changed amid Russia’s retaliatory “food embargo” but prices have gone up, Muscovites told the Public Opinion Foundation. Two-thirds (66 percent) of 1,000 Muscovites polled over the phone on September 28 approved of the ban on food imports from a number of Western countries, 21 percent criticized that step and […]
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(Interfax – October 7, 2014) The risk of the Russian economy moving from stagnation to a full-scale recession “has become slightly higher” in the short run, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 7 October, quoting the latest study carried out by a group of Russian researchers. The research headlined “Comments on the state and business” for the period from […]
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(Moscow Times editorial – themoscowtimes.com – October 8, 2014) Official documents published Monday show the Kremlin has scrapped the president’s annual budget address. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS that the set piece speech would, from now on, be folded into the state-of-the-union address, usually given in December. While Putin floated the idea of combining the two speeches […]
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MOSCOW, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – Interethnic tensions have reduced significantly this year in Russia as a result of the country’s reunification with Crimea and President Vladimir Putin’s high approval ratings, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, Magomedsalam Magomedov said Wednesday. “The main factors for the significant reduction in interethnic tension was rallying people around such […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Lyubinskaya, special to RBTH – October 8, 2014) Results of a recent poll indicate a discontinuity between views on the meaning of democracy and what constitutes democratic leadership. A recent poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) provided new insight into how Russians feel about democracy – and what they think […]
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KIEV, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine will present Russia and the international community with proposals regarding the restoration of control over Ukraine’s eastern border, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said Wednesday. “The Ukrainian side is now articulating a very concrete proposal for international monitoring for restoration of the sovereignty of the international […]
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MOSCOW, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – Less than half of the population of the United Kingdom, France and Germany think that the European Union should participate in the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis while supporting humanitarian aid deliveries and a peacekeeping mission, with some also suggesting the provision of financial aid for the Kiev government, an ICM poll commissioned by […]
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(US Embassy Ukraine – October 7, 2014) Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Thank you Rector Huberski, thank you students. I am so sorry to be late, I am so sorry to keep you waiting. I am so delighted to be here with the future of Ukraine. You know, every […]
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MOSCOW, October 8 (RIA Novosti) – Speaking about the possible removal of sanctions against Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that the matter was for Western states to decide. “Sanctions is the business of our western colleagues, the business of the countries that decided to use this illegal instrument for some reason, possibly just to take their frustration […]
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