(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – December 26, 2013) With Sochi quickly becoming a focus of world attention as the finish line for preparations approaches for the Winter Games, the venue that will host the opening ceremony of Russia’s largest international event in decades has still not been officially opened for use. Fisht Olympic Stadium, which will host […]
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(RIA Novosti – December 23, 2013) Editor in Chief of Moskovskiy Komsomolets daily Pavel Gusev, TV presenter Kseniya Sobchak and Editor in Chief of Ekho Moskvy radio Aleksey Venediktov have been named as Russia’s most frequently quoted journalists, RIA Novosti news agency reported on 23 December quoting media monitoring service Medialogiya. They were followed by TV journalists Nikolay Svanidze and […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Georgy Bovt, special to RBTH – December 16, 2013) There are many reasons for the release of Khodorkovsky after 10 years in a Russian prison, some of them known and many that are unknown. The story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s release from prison is so full of mysteries and almost mystical coincidences that one […]
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(RIA Novosti – Moscow, December 25, 2013) Now is the least opportune moment in the past 15 years for Russia to discuss further reductions of strategic offensive weapons, Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security and disarmament department, has said in a RIA Novosti interview. “Now is the most inauspicious moment in the past 10-15 years to talk […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – December 26, 2013) U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul plans to ring in the New Year in Moscow for the first time in his life, combining Russian and U.S. traditions, he said in an interview published Wednesday. McFaul, who’s been in Russia since early 2012, also said that the reports of his resignation were greatly […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 25 (Interfax) – More than $1 trillion has been siphoned off from the Russian economy to offshore territories in the past 20 years, Russian Federation Council Chair Valentina Matviyenko said on Wednesday. “According to estimates by numerous experts, over $1 trillion worth of Russian capitals has been funneled to offshore jurisdictions in 20 years,” Matviyenko said in an […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 25 (Interfax) – Russia’s subsurface resource base allows the country to maintain oil production of 500 million tonnes a year for the next ten, given the current conditions, Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi said during a meeting devoted to the ‘effectiveness of studying and developing raw hydrocarbons on Russia’s continental shelf.’ However, the minister said, if efforts are […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 25 (Interfax) – Consumer demand is the main driving force of a Russian economy that is slowing for internal reasons, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel. “The main problems are our domestic ones. Low investment activity now complements export limitations. The only part of this engine that is in […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – December 24, 2013) Requesting money for a project that violates the laws of physics is something you would expect from an institution run by government officials, say critics of the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, a government-owned company, is developing a gravitsapa […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 24 (Interfax) – Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russia’s parliament, has advised against comparing former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was pardoned by the Russian president on December 20 and flew to Berlin immediately after his release from prison, with Soviet writer and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom Matviyenko described as a prominent […]
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MOSCOW, December 26 (RIA Novosti) Almost half of Russians support their president’s decision to pardon jailed former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an independent pollster said on Thursday. Levada Center said 14 percent of respondents said they “definitely approve of” the move, while 33 percent said they “mostly approve of” it. Only five percent said they had a “definitely negative” opinion […]
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Moscow, December 24, Interfax – Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion in Russia (68%) and 7% of the country’s population is Muslim. No more than 1% of residents define themselves as Catholics, Protestants, Judaists and others, Levada Center said. There were 50% of Orthodox Christians and 4% of Muslims in the country a decade ago, Levada Center told Interfax, referring […]
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(RIA Novosti – December 23, 2013) Russia’s former Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Kudrin has expressed concern that Ukraine may spend the funds provided by Russia only to cover its day-do-day expenses, in which case Kyiv will need more economic assistance in two years’ time. Kudrin was speaking at his end-of-year news conference at Russian state news agency […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 23 (Interfax) – Russian Communist Party Central Committee First Deputy Chairman, State Duma First Vice-Speaker Ivan Melnikiov has presented the results of the outgoing year the way they are seen by the communists. “The period of pretentious capitalism which is addicted to the resource model started to expire in 2013. Practically everyone said that the country had hit […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, December 24, 2013) As the peoples of Eurasia enter into the holiday season, it is worth remembering that Father Frost, a figure that many Russians see as uniting their country however divided it may be, in fact varies widely not only among the region’s many nations but also and perhaps more surprisingly […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexey Mikheev, special to RBTH – December 26, 2013) It is customary in Russia to propose a toast before each new round of drinks. At official events, the toasts are serious and earnest. At a party with close friends in attendance, they are usually ironic and jocular. People in other countries usually think […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Nikolay Surkov, Marina Obrazkova, RBTH – December 24, 2013) The outgoing year had a disturbing start a large-scale disaster. In February, a large meteorite fell in Chelyabinsk, a major industrial center of the Urals. The explosive power of this meteorite was approximately 500 kilotons (30 times stronger than the Hiroshima atomic bomb). […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – KIEV December 25, 2013) As street protests in Kiev over President Viktor Yanukovych’s U-turn on a planned deal with the European Union appear to be waning after several weeks of fervor, one sentiment voiced by pro-EU demonstrators is still ringing in analysts’ ears: “The Soviet Union did not fall in 1991; […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – December 26, 2013) As the last Greenpeace activist detained in the Arctic 30 protest received notification Thursday that he was cleared of all charges under a recently passed amnesty, several other international activists who’d already been granted amnesty received permission to leave Russia. The news marks the end of a saga that […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, December 21, 2013) Russia would like to see Ukraine participating in Eurasian integrational processes and the agreements between Russia and Ukraine of 17 December confirm a shared desire for constructive work, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “Eurasian integrational structures are open to other partners in the CIS as well. Of course, we would like to […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#232 :: 26 December 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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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Katerina Ryzhakova, special to RBTH – December 23, 2013) In the battle between east and west, Ukrainians need to closely examine what they really want. The Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski explained it this way: “The television industry doesn’t like to see the complexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 23 (Interfax) – Chairman of the State Duma International Affairs’ Committee Alexei Pushkov believes that Russia has many allies in West European countries in advocating traditional values. “Russia is not suggesting that Western societies live according to our patterns but advocates the right of all countries and societies to live the way they find necessary instead of becoming […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Brian Whitmore – December 19, 2013) Vladimir Putin is calling on the conservatives of the world to unite — behind him. The Kremlin leader’s full-throated defense of Russia’s “traditional values” and his derision of the West’s “genderless and infertile” liberalism in his annual state-of-the-nation address last week was just the latest example of Putin attempting to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – D. Garrison Golubock – December 23, 2013) In his famous 1994 essay “The USSR as a Communal Apartment,” Yury Slezkine chronicles the rise of nationalism in the Soviet Union, likening the state to a communal apartment in which each “recognized” ethnicity has their own private room in which to flourish. For the West, the 1990s […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – December 20, 2013) The Kremlin’s drastic overhaul of state-owned media, which would see RIA Novosti, Russia’s biggest news agency, dissolved and absorbed into a new holding, has left industry insiders and experts wondering what, exactly, would arise in its place and how deeply the national media landscape will be affected. “The time […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 23 (Interfax) – The amnesty declared for the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution fully applies to former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, a source familiar with the situation has told Interfax. “He qualifies according to all criteria named in the amnesty, namely the crime he is charged with implies punishment of up to two years, and he belongs […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – December 23, 2013) Russians would like to see nongovernmental organizations provide more help for socially vulnerable groups but aren’t interested in an increase in human rights advocacy, the Public Chamber said in a report. Russia has roughly 100,000 registered “socially oriented NGOs,” but only 5 percent of them are “really active,” a draft report published […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, December 23, 2013) One can only be pleased for those who have been released from unjustified captivity in the Russian Federation such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but one should only be disturbed by what such periodic mass amnesties on public holidays and state anniversaries in Russia say about the nature of that country’s […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – December 23, 2013) The announcement of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s release after 10 years of imprisonment has garnered mixed reactions from the Russian population, which remains torn between acknowledging the former oligarch’s hardships and despising him for the riches he acquired in the 1990s. President Vladimir Putin made the surprise announcement that he would […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – December 21, 2013) I don’t know quite how to say this without diminishing the importance of the incomprehensible inner trial that a Russian man undergoes in a Russian prison for amassing his own power and using it to defy the Russian state. First of all, I am sincerely happy that former oil […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Daryna Krasnolutska and Kateryna Choursina – December 23, 2013) Ukraine’s opposition invited anti-government protesters to join a new political movement as it seeks to keep pressure on President Viktor Yanukovych for choosing $15 billion of Russian aid over a European accord. The Maidan movement, which takes its name from the Ukrainian word for a central public […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, December 23, 2013) Unless the Russian government takes effective measures over the next decade to raise birthrates and cut super-high death rates, two Moscow experts say, the country will see a catastrophic decline not only in its overall population but even more among those of working age. Darya Khalturina and Yevgenya Yuryeva […]
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(Interfax – December 22, 2013) Russian opposition politicians and human rights figures have expressed different views on the political future of former head of the Yukos oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, who was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin and released from prison on 20 December. Eduard Limonov, radical opposition figure and leader of the unregistered Other Russia party, thinks that Khodorkovskiy […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anatoly Medetsky – December 23, 2013) The opposition’s lackluster performance in recent regional elections has likely contributed to President Vladimir Putin’s stunning decision to pardon a former thorn in his side: Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In the most spectacular showdown, Alexei Navalny, a critic of Putin, mustered 27 percent of the vote in the race for the […]
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Moscow/Krasnoyarsk, December 23, Interfax – The Moscow Patriarchate is hoping that the members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot who have been released from prison today after being amnestied will improve. “Every person has a right to make public statements, honest debates, and competition of ideas. However, when political manipulations and dangerous provocations happen, it’s unacceptable,” Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova, Ezekiel Pfeifer and Yekaterina Kravtsova – December 23, 2013) Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was released Friday after a presidential decree ended his 10 years of imprisonment, said from Germany on Sunday that he would not return home for fear of being unable to leave again. Khodorkovsky, whose release was reportedly facilitated […]
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MOSCOW, December 20 (RIA Novosti) More than two-thirds of Russians do not trust other people, the Russian Public Chamber said in its annual civil society report Friday. “The level of trust between people in Russia remains low at present. More than two-thirds of Russians believe that you should be cautious in relations with others and only every fifth respondent […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#231 :: 23 December 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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MOSCOW. Dec 20 (Interfax) – The statements of people accusing Russia of imperial ambitions or aspiration to restore the Soviet Union are groundless, Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said. “No one wants to restore anything and it is impossible already, so such statements are absolutely baseless,” Matviyenko said at an integration club meeting in the Russian Geographical Society. It […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – December 20, 2013) Nine of out ten employees of the world’s most successful companies say that their supervisors are encouraging staff to focus on work effectiveness, while less than half of Russian companies’ top managers do so, a survey released Friday showed. The “best companies for leadership” annual survey by the Hay Group management consulting […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Dmitriy Romendik, RBTH – December 19, 2013) The quality of secondary education is an issue widely debated by the Russian public, as parents are increasingly concerned by falling teaching standards. The most objective measurement of schoolchildren’s academic performance is the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). It tests 15-year-old schoolchildren every three years. […]
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(Interfax – December 20, 2013) A draft report of the Russian Public Chamber, “On the Status of Russia’s Civil Society”, affirms a growth of aggressive xenophobia in the country. “Aggressive xenophobia is a serious challenge to contemporary Russia. Xenophobia reached its peak in 2013, according to a survey of the Levada Center, which said that 70-80 percent of the Russian […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – December 19, 2013) An international public commission declared Wednesday that there were no “riots” at the May 2012 opposition protest on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow, which was dispersed after violence broke out with police, resulting in more than 400 detentions. The commission’s findings were announced as hope lingers that at least some […]
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Moscow, December 20, Interfax – Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin on Friday, will become a spiritual leader for Russia’s civil society, the country’s veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva told Interfax on Friday. “I am convinced that Mikhail Borisovich [Khodorkovsky] is well-equipped to play the role of a spiritual leader who will provide […]
» Read more(Kremlin.ru – December 19, 2013) [DJ: Putin video http://eng.kremlin.ru/video/1680 with English interpretation] QUESTION: Jill Dougherty, CNN. Mr Putin, I worked in Russia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and when I came back, I noticed that a lot of attention is being given to religion and moral values. I don’t remember it being like that. I would like to […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 19 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin is opposed to the attempts to agitate or split society over attitude to monuments to certain historical figures. “We should respect every period in our history, and it is better not to agitate or blow our minds with certain premature actions that may split our society,” Putin said. He said he […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 19 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has disagreed with the opinion that Russia is controlled in “manual regime” by the chief of state. “You are mistaken that the chief of state is dealing with the bulk of governance issues. Questions, which catch the public eye one way or another, come up and there is an impression that […]
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MOSCOW, December 20 (RIA Novosti) Mayors of Russian cities should be elected, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, following recent media speculation that direct mayoral elections could be abolished. “Mayors certainly should be only elected… The municipal level is the closest level of power to people,” Putin told journalists at his annual televised press conference. “Municipal heads should be people […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 20 (Interfax) – Russia needs to enact new measures to spur economic growth since the measures that have already been approved are insufficient, Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach said at a briefing in Moscow on Thursday. “Those measures that have been approved are insufficient to accelerate growth. Therefore, I think that enactment of new measures is both […]
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