(Interfax – March 5, 2014) Ukraine must pay its debt for gas supplied by Russia based on the contracts signed in 2009, Aleksey Miller, the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, has said, as reported by privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax on 5 April. Meanwhile, Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov has said Ukraine has no grounds to take Russia to international […]
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MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax) – Russian peacekeepers can be sent to a foreign country exclusively within the framework of international law, not at the request of local authorities, Chairman of the Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee Viktor Ozerov told Interfax while commenting on the Donetsk People’s Council’s possible appeal to Russia to send peacekeepers to this part of Ukraine. […]
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Johnson’s Russia List :: 2014-#75-#76 :: 4-5 April 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
MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) seems to be gradually softening its stance toward Crimea’s reunification with Russia, the head of the Russian delegation to the assembly told journalists Friday. “There’s been a certain shift in the attitudes of political groups. Some national delegations feel there’s no need to force Russia […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow, editor-in-chief – March 31, 2014) When he first assumed power in 2000, the press corps spent the first six months asking the same question: “Who is Vladimir Putin?” At first the media speculated he was merely a puppet of the oligarchs because he had clearly been handpicked by oligarch Roman […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 3, 2014) About half of Russians (46 per cent) think that the country is a democracy, while last year 38 per cent thought so, sociologists from the Levada Centre have told Interfax. According to the results of their survey, 32 per cent of Russians, the same number as in 2013, think that democracy is yet to […]
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(Interfax – April 4, 2014) NATO’s decision to suspend cooperation with Russia gives Moscow the right to suspend NATO transit to Afghanistan across Russian territory, Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ozerov said. “NATO is transporting armaments, military hardware and servicemen to Afghanistan across our territory. If our cooperation comes to a halt, we will have the right […]
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(RIA Novosti – April 3, 2014) The Pentagon statement on the suspension of discussions with Russia on missile defence issues is absolutely “perfunctory”, these consultations have long lost any meaning, the experts approached by RIA Novosti believe. Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on the Euro-ABM [European missile defence] project at the summit in Lisbon in 2010, but the talks […]
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MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s natural gas supplies to the European Union have no practical alternative, a senior energy analyst at the Colorado-based IHS company said Thusday. “The EU’s reliance on Russia to meet approximately 30 percent of its total gas demand means that there is no realistic alternative to European dependence on Russian energy supplies,” Andrew Neff […]
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MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) – It would be difficult for Europe to give up Russian energy resources, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview with TV channel Rossiya 24. He recalled that statements have been made about reducing the dependence on Russia in future. “And such work is being done in the European Union, in the United States. There […]
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MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s ailing economy would have collapsed without Russia’s financial help, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said that the Eastern European country’s economy had hit a wall last year and was heading for disaster when Russian bailout money averted a catastrophe. “Without the support that they […]
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MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) – Russia’s State Duma has unanimously passed a statement On Political Repressions in Ukraine, in which it expressed concerns about violations of pro-Russian citizens in the country. “While leaning on extremist forces and involving the law enforcement agencies, the self-proclaimed authorities use methods which violate peoples’ rights regarding their political opponents and resort to repressions and […]
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MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine’s interim authorities Friday of ignoring an independent probe into deadly sniper fire during protests in Kiev, while denying any alleged Russian link to the incident. “We did not have and could not have had any relation to these crimes,” Lavrov said, adding that Ukraine’s authorities who seized […]
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(Interfax – April 3, 2014) The first deputy prime minister of Crimea, Rustam Temirgaliyev, has rejected accusations voiced by the chief of the Ukrainian Security Service, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, that police officers whom the Ukrainian authorities accuse of shooting anti-government protesters in Kiev in February are hiding in Crimea, Russian privately-owned news agency Interfax reported on 3 April. The report quoted […]
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MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – Russia is currently not judging whether information that Berkut special task forces were involved in the shooting of people in Kyiv on February 20 is true or not, but says that such information contradict a lot of other evidence. “I can’t judge right now how grounded the statements [made in Kyiv on the investigation into […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Fyodor Lukyanov, special to RBTH – April 4, 2014) Fyodor Lukyanov is the chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. Western politicians now understand that, for the first time, Russia has decided to act as it sees fit, leaving no space for compromise. But what changes will we see in U.S.-Russian […]
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Subject: 1991 vs.2014: Ukraine: Triumph, Tragedy, or Farce? Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 From: Sergei Roy (sergeiroy@yandex.ru) Ukraine: Triumph, Tragedy, or Farce? By Sergei Roy Former Editor-in-Chief, Moscow News. [Sergei Roy (b. 1936) – journalist and writer based in Moscow. Writes in English and Russian. Translated into English scores of books, especially poetry, for Russian and foreign publishers. Chief editor […]
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Subject: UKRAINE: POPULAR UPRISING OR FASCIST COUP? Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 From: Stephen D. Shenfield <sshenfield@verizon.net> UKRAINE: POPULAR UPRISING OR FASCIST COUP? By Stephen Shenfield [Article also appeared at http://www.stephenshenfield.net/themes/international-relations/164-ukraine-popular-uprising-or-fascist-coup] Stephen D. Shenfield is an independent researcher and translator living in Providence, RI. He specializes in Russian and post-Soviet society and politics and is the author of “Russian Fascism: […]
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KYIV. April 4 (Interfax) – The results of a public opinion survey conducted by the GfK Ukraine company in March show that a relative majority of Ukrainian citizens support the change of power in the country. According to the poll results, 31% of respondents said they wholeheartedly supported the change of power in Kyiv in February, 18% would be likely […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Mark Silva – April 4, 2014) President Vladimir Putin, left, greets President Barack Obama during an official welcome of G20 heads of state and government, heads of invited states and international organizations at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5, 2013. Photographer: Guneev Sergey/Host Photo Agency via Getty Images As international tension was rising […]
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MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – A total of 46% of Russian citizens believe that democracy rules in the country, against 38% in 2013, sociologists of the Levada Center told Interfax. According to the survey, 32% of Russians, the same as in 2013, think democracy has not been established yet, while 13% of respondents (against 22% in 2013) said Russia has […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Lyubov Chizhova and Daisy Sindelar – April 3, 2014) In 1782, as Catherine the Great was pondering whether to annex Crimea, her lover and military adviser Grigory Potemkin urged her on, arguing: “Russia needs its paradise.” More than two centuries later, Russia has once again reclaimed its “paradise” with the forced annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. But it remains […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Mark Gimein – April 3, 2014) Mark Gimein is Companies and Markets editor at Bloomberg.com, and lead writer for the Market Now blog and newsletter. Russia finally succeeded in selling government bonds this week, at a fat yield of 8.93 percent. This comes after four failed auctions since the Crimea occupation started. Last week, the government […]
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(Interfax – April 3, 2014) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced the cancellation of the zero customs export duty on gas for Ukraine. The budget deficit of Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy will increase by UAH8.2 billion, or around $750 million at the current exchange rate, to UAH56.254 billion due to Russia resuming its duty on […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Halia Pavliva and Ksenia Galouchko – April 3, 2014) Back in April 2007, in the midst of the greatest commodities rally on record, OAO Gazprom’s (OGZD) deputy chief executive officer, Alexander Medvedev, was talking big. Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly aspired to be the world’s largest company, he said while offering up a prediction: its market value […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Xenia Grubstein, special to RBTH – April 2, 2014) For many Ukrainian-Americans and Russian-Americans, the crisis in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea are political but also deeply personal. Russians and Ukrainians in the diaspora and abroad are connected; their lives and those of their friends and families are intimately intertwined. RBTH asked […]
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MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – The actions by the United States to curb ties with Russia may force a number of responses by Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Thursday. “We aren’t curtailing anything, but it’s clear that the situation that our [US] partners are creating in bilateral relations, may force a number of decisions that Washington […]
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(Interfax – April 2, 2014) NATO’s decision to suspend cooperation with Russia will harm Afghanistan, Moscow’s envoy to NATO has said. Interfax news agency quoted Aleksandr Grushko saying: “Above all, NATO’s decision will harm Afghans.” He said that the decision was counterproductive. “As a member of the international community, we carry particular responsibility for the preservation of international peace and […]
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MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – The Pentagon’s recent talk of suspending anti-missile consultations with Russia is hot air, as the negotiations lost their significance long ago, experts have told RIA Novosti. The Russia-NATO missile shield talks have been treading water for years, ever since the two agreed at a 2010 Lisbon summit to cooperate on the European project. The […]
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MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Washington’s decision to freeze cooperation between the NASA space agency and its Russian counterpart on a slew of joint projects will hurt global space partnership but won’t be the end of the Russian space program, Director of the Space Policy Institute Ivan Moiseyev told RIA Novosti Thursday. NASA issued a statement saying it put […]
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MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – Signals are being received from Washington that the United States intends to put its dialogue with Russia on hold even in areas in which contacts between the two countries benefit the U.S. itself, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. “In recent days we have been flooded by signals from Washington that in light of […]
» Read more(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 3, 2014) Many Russians and some in the West believe that the Russian military could overrun Ukraine because of its superiority over Ukrainian forces, but such views ignore both the enormous challenges that any occupier of Ukraine would face and the reality that the Ukrainian military is in fact a far […]
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MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – Russia will keep a close eye on how the United States and Turkey follow the principles of the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, which set the rules for warships’ presence in the Black Sea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We have the Montreux Convention, which introduces absolutely clear-cut criteria that restrict […]
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MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Defense Ministry published on its website Thursday secret documents revealing that Ukrainian ultranationalist Stepan Bandera, who is considered as a national hero by his supporters, was involved in atrocities against civilian population in western Ukraine during World War II. The classified documents which were previously known to just a few specialists include reports […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – April 3, 2014) National polls appear to show widespread support among Russians for the government’s seizure and annexation of the Crimean peninsula last month. But not everyone in the country views the move as positive – and some see it as the last straw. The takeover of Crimea, paired with the Kremlin’s […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2014-#74 :: 3 April 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 […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – April 3, 2014) The number of Russians and Americans who view each others’ country negatively has soared during the Ukraine crisis, while more than four in 10 Russians believe the NATO countries have reason to fear Russia, recent poll results have shown. According to a survey released Wednesday by independent pollster Levada […]
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MOSCOW, April 2 (RIA Novosti) – NATO’s decision to suspend cooperation with Russia resembles Cold War-style sword swinging, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday. The 28-nation NATO bloc announced Tuesday it will suspend all practical contacts with Moscow, in a move to put further pressure on Russia following its reunification with Crimea. “The decision of the NATO Council of […]
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(RFE/RL – – rferl.org – Tetyana Yarmoshchuk and Claire Bigg – KYIV – April 01, 2014) Prominent Ukrainian doctor Olha Bohomolets says her country is “gravely sick.” And she’s determined to nurse it back to health. Bohomolets, who spent months treating injured antigovernment protesters in Kyiv, is running for president in Ukraine’s May 25 election with pledges to root out corruption […]
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MOSCOW, April 2 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged the Ukrainian government Wednesday to adopt a more balanced constitution to protect minority populations, blaming the ongoing political crisis in the country on an unstable legal foundation. “The lack of a balanced fundamental law in the country, which would adequately take into consideration the interests of all ethnic and linguistic […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 1, 2014) Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko believes that there is no national leader among the candidates registered for the presidential election in Ukraine. “I do not see a single national leader who could unite Ukraine and become a president elected nationwide among the candidates for the Ukrainian presidential post. For the time being I do […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexander Yakovenko, special to RBTH – April 2, 2014) The Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko explains Russia’s official position on the past events in Ukraine. Alexander Yakovenko is Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He was previously Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. The current situation in Ukraine is nothing short […]
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BRUSSELS, April 2 (RIA Novosti) – The EU is not ready for border enlargement, and is unlikely to offer membership for Ukraine, the Russian ambassador to the EU said Wednesday. “As far as I can see, the EU is determined not to admit Ukraine to the union. The association agreement doesn’t guarantee membership in the European Union. Turkey for example […]
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MOSCOW, April 2 (RIA Novosti) – The decisions taken at meetings of the NATO Council and the Ukraine-NATO Commission have impeded intra-Ukranian talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told US Secretary of State John Kerry in a telephone conversation. “The Russian side has stressed the urgent need for a joint effort to set up a broad intra-Ukranian dialogue promoting national […]
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BERLIN, April 2 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and Ukraine should be brought to a single negotiating table and Ukraine’s political stability should be in the interest of Russia, the EU and NATO member states, expert Cathryn Cluvier of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs said in response to comments by the German Foreign Minister on Wednesday. “I don’t […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – April 3, 2014) One of President Vladimir Putin’s relatives, Roman Putin, has spoken out against alleged corruption at Russian Railways, a state company headed by one of the president’s closest allies. The criticism by Roman Putin, who has been accused by some of capitalizing on the president’s reputation by founding the Putin […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 2, 2014) Alexander Veledinsky’s “Geograf Globus Propil” was the big winner at this year’s Nika awards for Russian film, picking up a bundle of the top awards. The Nika, an annual Russian film award named after the Roman goddess for victory Nike, awarded prizes to the best movies of 2013 in a ceremony at […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Ajay Kamalakaran, RBTH – April 1, 2014) Russian people have an amazing ability to see the humour in some of the glummest situations. It’s hard to argue that laughter is the best medicine. In the popular 2006 Russian film ‘Peter FM,’ the protagonist gets stopped by a policeman in an underpass in St […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Alex Jackson – March 31, 2014) Alex Jackson is a writer for Salzburg Global Seminar, an independent non-profit organisation based in Salzburg, Austria with a mission to challenge current and future leaders to solve issues of global concern. You can follow him on @salzburgglobal and @ajacko26 Civil society development in Russia has been hampered by restrictive laws and […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – D. Garrison Golubock – April 2, 2014) Dimiter Kenarov, a freelance reporter working in Crimea, was surprised to see a group of uniformed Cossacks hastily carrying cables and video equipment out of an Associated Press television studio. When he and another photographer attempted to document the incident, they found themselves attacked and robbed at gunpoint, […]
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