(Interfax – July 13, 2017) The Russian Investigations Committee has ruled out the theory that opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was murdered on religious, rather than financial grounds, its spokeswoman has said. “During the investigation there was an analysis of the testimonies of suspects Zaur Dadayev and Anzor Gubashev on how they committed the murder of Boris Nemtsov on grounds of […]
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(PBS Newshour – July 12, 2017 – also appeared at pbs.org/newshour/bb/many-russian-republic-fighting-isis) “In the republic of Dagestan, a brutal separatist insurgency has long fought against the Russian state. Now, as many as 5,000 Dagestanis have left to fight for the Islamic State. Why have so many answered the call? As part of our week-long series Inside Putin’s Russia, special correspondent Nick […]
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MOSCOW. July 13 (Interfax) – The trial of the killers of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has left too many questions to say that their punishment is proportionate, Chairman of the Yabloko party’s Federal Political Committee Grigory Yavlinsky said. “There is no trust in either the trial over Boris Nemtsov’s murder or the judgment. Too many doubts and questions remain. […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 12, 2017) The current attacks on Aleksey Navalny that suggest he will become a dictator if he manages somehow to defeat Vladimir Putin reflect the utopianism of the Russian intelligentsia and its failure to understand that anyone who succeeds the current Kremlin leader is likely to be one as long as […]
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ST. PETERSBURG. July 13 (Interfax) – Government policy regarding the development of infrastructure, logistics and competition on food markets, as well as tariff regulation could help to reduce the volatility of prices and lower inflation expectations, Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said at the International Financial Congress. “We need to fight not only with the consequences of shocks for inflation, […]
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To inquire about a subscription to the full Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, e-mail David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net [check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2017-#134 Thursday, 13 July 2017 A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School […]
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MOSCOW. July 13 (Interfax) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s press secretary Natalia Timakova has dismissed as untrue a report by the newspaper Vedomosti, which claimed that United Russia chairman Medvedev has not joined the election campaign and has not been visiting regions which will have a gubernatorial election in September. The newspaper explained the “meager activity” of Medvedev by […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 11, 2017) Most Russians today associate Nikita Khrushchev with the thaw, de-Stalinization, and the opening of more comfortable five-story apartment blocks; but they did to forget that he was removed from power by his colleagues because he ran the country in a hands on way, intervening in some of the smallest […]
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(WASHINGTON – July 11, 2017 – Article ©2017 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Mike Eckel – also appeared at rferl.org/a/us-russia-fraying-ties-erode-arms-control/28611015.html) The U.S. Congress is moving decisively to start dismantling some of the bedrock agreements of U.S.-Russian arms control, reflecting the dangerous state of relations between Washington and Moscow and raising the specter of a new arms race. […]
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To inquire about a subscription to the full Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, e-mail David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net [check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2017-#133 Wednesday, 12 July 2017 A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School […]
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(Moscow Times/Kennan Institute – themoscowtimes.com – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Irina Olimpieva – July 11, 2017) Irina Olimpieva is a senior researcher at St. Petersburg Center for Independent Social Research On June 23, the Board of Trustees of the European University in St. Petersburg accepted the resignation of the rector, Oleg Kharkhordin. The EUSP is a private Russian university operating as a […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – July 11, 2017) Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru. In stories about her meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Natalia Veselnitskaya, the unlikely celebrity in the latest installment of the Trump-Russia story, is often described as […]
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(PBS Newshour – July 11, 2017 – also appeared at pbs.org/newshour/bb/inside-russias-propaganda-machine/) “For years, the Kremlin and the media it controls have waged a multifaceted information (and disinformation) campaign inside Russia and pointed at its perceived adversaries, including the U.S. As part of our week-long series Inside Putin’s Russia, special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin report on the information […]
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“An invisible wedge has been growing between Russia and its Central Asian neighbours since Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine …. The unease is most particularly tangible in Astana. Any statements made by Russian officials that appear to put in question the statehood Kazakhstan gained after it was granted independence from the USSR prompt collective gasps. At the same time, China […]
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“… Trump finally had the opportunity to meet … Putin for more than two hours … at the G-20 summit …. The meeting was newsworthy mainly because it happened …. for a bilateral relationship that had degraded to a more dangerous kind of postmodern Cold War since the Russian seizure of Crimea more than three years ago, and a vicious whirlwind […]
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“As Donald Trump spoke with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Hamburg … his State Department announced the appointment of a tough-minded former NATO ambassador to serve as Washington’s new point man on Ukraine. His mandate is to help implement the Minsk agreements. Kurt Volker is widely respected as an accomplished diplomat, but in Ukraine he confronts his greatest challenge yet. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova, Michele Berdy – July 10, 2017) When Anton Nossik, the “godfather” of the Russian Internet, died from a heart attack in the early hours of July 9, heartfelt condolences poured in across generations and political divides. The poet Lev Rubinshtein remembered him from childhood as a “wunderkind.” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described Nossik […]
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“… Officially, besides his native Russian, Putin speaks English and German – a language he used on a daily basis in his past career for the Soviet security services (KGB) while deployed in the city of Dresden in East Germany during the 1980s. …”
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MOSCOW. July 11 (Interfax) – Moscow plans to expel about 30 U.S. diplomats and freeze a number of U.S. properties in Russia, the newspaper Izvestia said on Tuesday citing a knowledgeable source with the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Washington’s decision not to return the embassy property seized in December 2016 may prompt Russia to take those measures. The problem was not […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – July 10, 2017) Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru. One of the many challenges of dealing with Donald Trump is that he sometimes misunderstands things. The fallout from Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin […]
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(PBS Newshour (public television) – July 10, 2017 – also appeared at pbs.org/newshour/bb/pride-patriotism-putin-helped-redefine-means-true-russian/) The new Russian identity is a combination of religion, old Russian traditions and rediscovered patriotism. It helps explain how today’s Russians think, how President Putin acts and why he remains popular. As part of our week-long series Inside Putin’s Russia, special correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach […]
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To inquire about a subscription to the full Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, e-mail David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net [check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2017-#132 Tuesday, 11 July 2017 A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School […]
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“… Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has campaigned against Western-imposed sanctions on Russia, met with Mr. Trump’s closest advisers: his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and the Trump campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort. The meeting was suggested, as The Post reported Monday, by a Russian pop star whose family has business ties both to the […]
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“It is perhaps ironic and at the same time just that the first meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin occurred in Germany at the G-20 summit in Hamburg. After all it is there that the Cold War began to unwind with the peaceful fall of the Berlin wall. It is also there in a […]
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“In his readout of the first meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson praised the desire of both presidents to forget about the past — and move on. Regarding Putin’s denial of interfering in our 2016 president elections, Tillerson stated, ‘I think what the two presidents, I think rightly, focused on is how do we […]
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“… On Sunday, before Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that there was a Clinton-related aspect to the meeting, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, was on Fox News suggesting that the Veselnitskaya episode was “a big nothingburger” for the Trump campaign. …”
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“… The main focus inside the United States was the meeting with President Putin, which lasted over two hours, much longer than anticipated. There was great anticipation about what this first meeting might produce …. Resumption of relations has been delayed by the domestic debate in the United States about Russia’s actions during the 2016 election campaign. It turned out to […]
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“The ceasefire in three Syrian provinces announced Friday after the Trump-Putin meeting in Hamburg is the first step in the right direction that the United States has taken in the Middle East in more than 20 years. The Syrian deal should be understood in the context of President Trump’s address in Warsaw the day before, a challenge to Russia to […]
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“The long awaited meeting between America’s and Russia’s presidents finally occurred at the G-20 summit. They got along great, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, connecting ‘very quickly,’ and talked for more than two hours. Even First Lady Melania Trump couldn’t drag her husband away after the first hour. …”
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To inquire about a subscription to the full Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, e-mail David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net [check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2017-#131 Monday, 10 July 2017 A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School […]
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“… The DNC’s reluctance to share its server probably stems from an awareness of lingering antagonisms within the FBI – the natural inference is that there’s presumably something on it that they don’t trust some FBI agents to keep to themselves once seen. Still, the failure to turn over the evidence is just the sort of lever on public opinion […]
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“… The relationship with the Chinese state began as a trade deal, but it has become progressively more political. It was not for nothing that when Xi Jinping took office in March 2013 his first trip abroad was to Moscow. To escape its blockade by the West, Russia has tried to shape the new emerging economies such as China into […]
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“During the past month, the crisis between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt has attracted global attention. When the Qatari foreign minister visited Moscow on June 11 and held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Moscow expressed a positive outlook …. It is interesting that Russia appears to remain neutral, while closely monitoring the situation. It is […]
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“… Will McMafia buck or conform to the stereotypes? On the lawn of Munden House, James Norton tells the Guide that he hopes his performance will remind us that Russians are different to what is considered the norm on cinema and TV. He says that one reason he wanted to play Alex, the Anglo-Russian who’s both revolted and seduced by […]
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“… Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein made history in Moscow yesterday. For one of the former USSR’s most famous refuseniks – Prisoners of Zion – to address Russia’s parliament 30 years after his release from the Siberian gulag is nothing less than another Russian Revolution vis-a-vis world Jewry. …”
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“On July 17, 1918, as the White Army advanced toward Red-held territory around Yekaterinburg in Siberia, 12 armed Bolsheviks ushered a group of 11 exiles into a basement of a merchant’s mansion once known as Ipatiev House, now the House of Special Purpose. The youngest in the party, a sickly 13-year-old named Aleksei, had to be carried by his father, […]
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“The first face-to-face meeting of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump finally took place on 7 July 2017 at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Not since the days of superpower summits during the Cold War has a meeting been more eagerly anticipated, or so assiduously impeded by its opponents. In the context where normal practices of diplomacy have so far degenerated, […]
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(Kremlin.ru – July 8, 2017) President of Russia Vladimir Putin answered journalists’ questions on the results of the two-day G20 Summit. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, Allow me to skip any statements and monologues. You have seen and heard everything, a great deal. Let us get straight to questions. Go ahead, please. G20 summits Question: Mr President, both […]
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“… One such survey that the Levada Center conducted in June asked which types of domestic and foreign policies the Russian people would like the future president to pursue. …”
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“… No doubt some senior Russian officials and businessmen are unsatisfied with Putin, but they’re not so unsatisfied that they will cooperate with the U.S., EU or NATO in unhorsing him, especially given our chronic inability to keep a secret. Despite all that ‘mafia state” chatter, Russia’s leadership will, if they need to, close ranks and clean house to protect […]
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U.S. Department of State July 7, 2017 Press Briefing on the President’s Meetings at the G20 BY SECRETARY OF STATE TILLERSON AND SECRETARY OF TREASURY MNUCHIN ON THE PRESIDENT’S MEETINGS AT THE G20 Hamburg Messe Hamburg, Germany SECRETARY TILLERSON: Thank you, Steve, and thanks for staying with us late these evening. President Trump and President Putin met this afternoon for […]
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“… It is not an honor to sit down with the leader of a regime that invades peaceable neighbors, covertly interferes in the elections of democratic nations, and orchestrates and tolerates the assassination of domestic political opponents and journalists. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to meet. As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after the leaders ended two-plus hours of conversation, it is crucial for […]
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“Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were scheduled to meet for only about thirty minutes, but they remained closeted together for over two hours … on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the first face-to-face meeting of the two presidents, even longer than the ninety minutes that George W. Bush and Putin had during their initial meeting. After the […]
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To inquire about a subscription to the full Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, e-mail David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net [check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2017-#130 Saturday, 8 July 2017 A project sponsored through the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School […]
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“The much anticipated first face-to-face meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has taken place on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. The two presidents met for over two hours, with only translators and their respective chief diplomats—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov—joining them. Despite its length, the meeting’s narrow agenda, which […]
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“When President Trump meets Vladimir Putin for the very first time, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany on Friday, it is going to be one of the most eagerly awaited and anxiously watched handshakes in history. Yet both sides have been carefully tamping down expectations for any kind of breakthrough at the meeting, each with […]
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“Question: Mr Lavrov, how did this long meeting go? Sergey Lavrov: If the presidents see that they have issues to discuss and to solve something rather than just exchange opinions, I don’t think that time is of paramount importance. Indeed, they had a very long conversation. My feeling was confirmed that President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and President of the […]
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(Twitter – July 8, 2017 – Michael McFaul @McFaul) Ok team Trump, you have to go on the record and deny this if it’s not true. Putin is making Trump look like a total pushover. Push back! Julie Pace @jpaceDCHAMBURG, Germany (AP) – Putin says he thinks Trump believes his denial of Russian meddling in US vote, but better […]
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“The self-proclaimed ‘deal maker’ finally got the beginnings of what could be an important diplomatic agreement in Friday’s Russian-American summit in Hamburg. For a rookie, President Trump appears to have avoided big mishaps that sometimes plague such great-power talks. The importance of the meeting between presidents Trump and Putin isn’t so much in the details, though the proposed cease-fire in […]
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“The Russian financial press took a rather sobering look at the first meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Friday, with the two major dailies witnessing the same meeting as most of the American press. Both Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers said the two had good chemistry and spent two hours and 20 minutes together, beyond their scheduled time. […]
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