(Interfax – October 20, 2013) The proportion of Russia’s adult population that accesses the internet on a daily basis is continuing to grow steadily, with almost half now going online at least once a day, according to research from one of the country’s leading polling organizations. In remarks reported by the privately-owned Interfax agency on 17 October, the head of […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 19, 2013) While opening an international competition in Russia’s second largest city St. Petersburg on Friday, President Vladimir Putin, an avid judoist, called martial arts “a philosophy” that helps people to gain confidence in themselves. During his opening speech at the World Combat Games 2013, Putin, a judo black belt, said martial arts were, […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Robert Coalson – October 21, 2013) The United States is set to replace Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas combined by the end of this year. This is just one element of a rapidly shifting global energy environment that is revolutionizing Russia’s once-dominant position. RFE/RL takes a look at the challenges and […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 21, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will discuss prospects of bilateral military and technical cooperation and the situation in Afghanistan and Syria during talks in Kremlin on October 21. The coming meeting between the Russian president and Indian prime minister will be the third one in 2013. “Bilateral military and […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Andrei Kislyakov, special to RBTH – October 20, 2013) Over the past few years, Beijing’s investment in the aerospace sector has rapidly grown. Expert discuss whether China could overtake the leading countries in the industry. According to public data for 2011, China exported $3 billion worth of high-tech goods, including aerospace. The corresponding […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 19, 2013) More than two thirds of Russians believe that Arctic territories should not belong to any state, a poll carried out by the Kremlin-backed pollster Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) said on Friday. Only 17 percent of respondents said the Arctic territories should be divided between states, while 69 percent are convinced that the territories […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#188 :: 21 October 2013 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 […]
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Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#187 ::18 October 2013 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 POLITICS 1. Interfax: October poll puts Putin’s approval rating at 62%. 2. ITAR-TASS: […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Daniil Kislov – October 17, 2013) Daniil Kislov is a poet, journalist and essayist from Uzbekistan. He currently lives in Moscow. He is the main editor of the online news portal Fergana News. An ethnic Russian is killed at a Moscow street market, supposedly by a migrant from the Caucasus; the ensuing riot by nationalist extremists leaves one […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 18, 2013) Russian companies have been handed middling ratings in an appraisal of 100 companies from 16 emerging markets released by Transparency International. Including six Russian companies metal giants RusAl, Norilsk Nikel Evraz and Severstal, together with energy majors Gazprom and LUKoil on three separate scores, the survey, which was released on […]
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(Interfax – October 18, 2013) The Iranian nuclear problem cannot be resolved without a gradual lift of sanctions against Tehran, and the success of the latest negotiations does not add up to much, Russian Academy of Sciences Oriental Studies Institute Director Vitaly Naumkin said. “This is just the first step and, in my opinion, it is too much early to […]
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(Interfax – KYIV, October 17, 2013) Some 53% of Ukrainians support entry into the European Union, 35% do not and 12% cannot make up their mind, according to the Rating sociological group, which held its poll on September 26 – October 6, 2013. In the opinion of 47% of the respondents, Ukraine will gain more from a free trade zone […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – October 18, 2013) International pressure on Russia over the arrest of Greenpeace activists mounted Thursday as 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners urged President Vladimir Putin to drop the piracy charges against them. The 11 laureates made such an appeal in a letter sent to the Russian president, Greenpeace said. The letter, which […]
» Read more(Interfax – KYIV, October 17, 2013) Only 20% of Ukrainians support the country’s accession to NATO, according to the Rating sociological group, which held its poll on September 26 – October 6, 2013. A report published on the Rating website said that two-thirds of Ukrainians thought that Ukraine should not join NATO and 15% were hesitant. A relative majority of […]
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(Interfax – VERONA, Italy, October 18, 2013) Many European politicians do not realize that their countries would not benefit from producing shale gas, the head of contract structuring and pricing at LLC Gazprom Export, Sergei Komlev believes. “I think that there is no full understanding of this problem in Europe, particularly an understanding of the production costs of this issue. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anatoly Medetsky – October 18, 2013) Kaluga shines so brightly in the regional investment firmament that it has regularly drawn cheers from President Vladimir Putin and various economists. Some of the reasons why the region, 160 kilometers southwest of Moscow, is leading the way as a target for new business ventures include the decision by […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Sam Skove – October 18, 2013) When Nuri Katz, founder of investment firm Apex Capital, heads for the customs gate, he gets to decide which of his three passports to use – a privilege that his Russian clients would pay up to 5 million euros to enjoy. Katz is in the citizenship-by-investment business. Select […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 17, 2013) New Audit Chamber Chairman Tatiana Golikova says she plans to use her experience as a financier when planning changes to the work of the chamber. “I think there will be changes. If only because I have been professionally engaged in finance all my life and I have my own opinion on what to look […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 17, 2013) Drinking of alcohol by Russians has dropped by one-quarter over the past three years, according to a leading health official. The Health Ministry’s substance abuse specialist, Yevgeny Bryun, said alcohol consumption per capita currently stands at 13.5 liters of pure ethyl alcohol equivalent, down from 18 liters in 2010. The 2010 figure was […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 18, 2013) Russian are the most well educated people in the world, a report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development said. Russia topped the rankings followed by Canada and Japan. Israel and the United States rounded up the top five. The ranking factored in the percentage of adults in a country who […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 18, 2013) The approval rating of Russian President Vladimir Putin stands at 62% in October, sociologists of the All Russian Center for Public Opinion Studies (VTsIOM) told Interfax on Friday. Forty-seven percent of respondents to VTsIOM’s October survey said that Putin’s vast political experience appeals to them (38% in 2011). Thirty-three percent of those polled described […]
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(Interfax – BAKU, October 17, 2013) Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Moscow has lodged a protest with the Russian Foreign Ministry over what it called violations of the rights of Azeri native Orkhan Zeynalov, who is suspected of killing ethnic Russian man Yegor Shcherbakov in the Biryulyovo district in southern Moscow. “The brutal detention and brutal treatment of Orkhan Zeynalov, whom they […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg and Arifa Kazimova – October 16, 2013) Footage detailing the heavy-handed arrest of an Azerbaijani native suspected of killing a Russian man in Moscow has escalated mounting ethnic tensions between the two nations. Russian police detained Orkhan Zeynalov on October 15 on suspicion of fatally stabbing a 25-year-old ethnic Russian man, Yegor Shcherbakov, in […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 18, 2013) A Kremlin source has denied reports claiming that a number of regional governors may be relieved of their posts ahead of time. “These absurd claims are not even worth commenting on. This newspaper article uses some artificially formed agenda, not real facts,” the source told Interfax on Friday. The Izvestia newspaper said, citing its […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 17, 2013) The monthly Internet audience in Russia reached 66.1 million people aged 18 or older, or, 57% of the country’s population in fall 2013, Svetlana Borisova, the head of the FOM-RUNET project of the Public Opinion Foundation, told a conference RIW (Russian Internet Week) 2013. “The average daily audience of the Russian segment of the […]
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Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#186 :: 17 October 2013 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 POLITICS 1. Centre for European Reform: Charles Grant, Is Putin going soft? […]
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Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 Subject: Reform of the Kremlin Narrative From: Ray Finch <rayfin3@gmail.com> Reform of the Kremlin Narrative By Ray Finch, Foreign Military Studies Office Although anti-Americanism is not new in Russia, when half the Russian population indicates that they see America in a positive light, the Kremlin-backed media has to work harder to make the glass appear […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Marina Obrazkova, RBTH – October 16, 2013) The conflict that started in the capital has spread to other major cities. In the Russian regions, people have started taking to the streets in support of residents of the Moscow district of Biryulovo, who staged riots in response to the murder of a young man […]
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(RIA Novosti – KIEV, October 16, 2013) More than a half of Ukrainians are against the idea of making Russian the country’s second state language, according to a survey released by an independent Ukrainian pollster on Wednesday. Sociological Group “Rating” said 43 percent of respondents are in favor of the idea, while 51 percent are against. Five percent said […]
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(Interfax – October 17, 2013) The Geneva II international conference on Syria has been rescheduled once again due to the Syrian opposition’s reluctance to reach agreements, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper said on Thursday. The end of November or even December is now being discussed as a possible date for the conference instead of the middle of November previously announced by Russian […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 17, 2013) An international peace conference on Syria backed by Russia and the United States will take place on November 23-24, a senior Syrian governmental official said Thursday. The Geneva-2 conference will proceed despite leading Syrian opposition groups’ continuing reluctance to participate, Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said at a press conference in Moscow. The […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow – October 17, 2013) Russia’s growth over the first nine months of this year was 0%, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said on October 15. While the rest of the world is fixated on trying to spur growth, the Kremlin is largely ignoring the problem of its stagnating economy, […]
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(Interfax – October 16, 2013) Anti-Kremlin protesters prosecuted in the so-called “Bolotnaya case” could be freed under the amnesty proposed by the Human Rights Council (HRC) under the Russian president, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 16 October. The draft submitted to President Vladimir Putin specifically mentions people who “took part or were convicted for taking part in public […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 16, 2013) Some 43% of Russian citizens support the initiative to reinstate the “against all” opinion on ballots, the Russian Public Opinion Studies Center (VTsIOM) told Interfax on Wednesday. Twenty-one percent of the respondents disagreed with the idea, and 32% said they simply did not care. VTsIOM polled 1,600 people in 130 towns and cities in […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 17, 2013) The Russian Federation finds itself in a Zugswang, a German term for a situation in which any move leads to a loss, according to the editor of “Kulturolog.” And in its case, the situation is especially dire because the country increasingly finds itself forced to choose between disintegration and […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin – October 17, 2013) Following a recent eruption of ethnically motivated street violence, Moscow’s migrant-populated food markets and warehouses continue to serve as the front line in an ongoing fight against illegal immigrants declared by mayor Sergei Sobyanin. The now notorious vegetable warehouse in Biryulyovo that became the site of violent riots Sunday […]
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(Interfax – BRUSSELS, October 16, 2013) Relations between Russia and NATO have scaled back on certain tracks, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “Positive results are hard to win in practice in certain areas, and progress was even reversed on some tracks,” he said at the Royal Institute of International relations (the Egmont Institute) in Brussels. “I mean, for instance, […]
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(RIA Novosti – WASHINGTON, October 16, 2013) US scientists are “itching” to work with their Russian counterparts in putting nuclear weapons technology to use in new systems to defend Earth from threatening asteroids, an investigative journalism outlet reported Wednesday. “In recent years, advocates of the use of nuclear weapons to counter space threats have been gaining ground,” the non-profit […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 17, 2013) Russia wants to begin drafting a deal on visa-free travel with the EU early next year, a senior Russian diplomat said in an interview published Thursday. That deal, however, requires the EU to make a “political decision to begin negotiations on drafting the agreement,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov told RIA Novosti. The […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 16, 2013) The Russian economy is still stagnating, with zero GDP growth in Q3 this year on a seasonally adjusted basis, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said at a meeting of the State Duma’s budget committee. “The forecast was that we would reverse the tendency for economic growth to slow and this stagnation, which we […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – October 16, 2013) A court last week ordered activist Mikhail Kosenko to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment for attacking a riot police officer during the May 6, 2012 protest rally on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. The ruling sparked concerns among rights activists that Soviet-era punitive psychiatry, when dissidents were found to […]
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(Interfax – October 16, 2013) Russian party leaders have for the most part welcomed the commutation of opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksey Navalnyy’s sentence to a suspended one, on appeal, on 16 October. In reaction sampled by the Russian news agency Interfax, Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, of the nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), stood out, with his call for a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – October 17, 2013) The Azeri suspect in a deadly stabbing that triggered an anti-migrant riot in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district has confessed to the killing and requested an interpreter for his case, saying he “forgot Russian,” investigators said Wednesday. The news of the apparent language barrier further emphasizes the ethnic dimension of the […]
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(Interfax – KALUGA. October 15, 2013) Moscow does not consider Kyiv’s choice in favor of association with the European Union to be fatal or dramatic, although this would pose certain difficulties for the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union’s and Russia’s market, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. “Do we think that this is a dramatic or fatal choice? Of course we don’t […]
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(Interfax – BRUSSELS, October 15, 2013) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called the Russian-U.S. understandings on Syria’s chemical weapons a renaissance of diplomacy aimed not at building coalitions but at reaching common goals. Speaking at the Brussels-based Royal Institute for International Relations (Egmont Institute), Lavrov suggested that the world has switched to a polycentric from a bipolar system of […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova – October 16, 2013) With new rules simplifying registration of automobiles going into effect Tuesday, the country’s rapidly growing number of motorists will find the time and paperwork it takes to buy and sell a vehicle greatly reduced, while cost of ownership is on the increase. From Oct. 15, motorists no longer need […]
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Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#185 ::16 October 2013 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 POLITICS 1. AFP: Top Putin critic Navalny avoids prison on appeal. 2. ITAR-TASS: […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Ekaterina Shatalova and Nicholas Brautlecht – October 15, 2013) Vladimir Putin is inching closer to his goal of turning Russia into a major transit route for trade between eastern Asia and Europe by prying open North Korea, a nuclear-capable dictatorship isolated for half a century. Russia last month completed the first land link that North Korea’s […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 16, 2013) Russia is drafting changes to the law that will bar foreigners from owning or renting real estate in the country without official permission, a state-owned newspaper said Wednesday. The Economic Development Ministry told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that it is in consultation about the legislation with law enforcement and migration agencies including the Federal Security […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 16, 2013) Macroeconomic factors will work to push oil prices down next year, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said during a meeting the State Duma budget committee. Klepach said that that, in the forecast for Russia’s socioeconomic development in 2014-2016, there is built in the hypothesis “that the rather high oil prices we are seeing […]
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