(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – August 26, 2013) Paying or coercing participants to come to rallies is an ongoing issue in the capital’s political sphere It’s a warm summer morning, and I’m standing with a disjointed cluster of about fifteen people outside Tretyakovskaya metro station. A young blonde woman dressed in grey sweatpants and a hoodie with dangling rabbit […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Yulia Ponomareva, RBTH – August 26, 2013) Kremlin ally faces convicted opposition leader Navalny after a date change rules out Prokhorov. A political contest for control of Europe’s largest city has become a fight between Kremlin-backed Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and opposition activist Alexei Navalny. The Sept. 8 election for mayor of Moscow will […]
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(Interfax – August 23, 2013) Half of crimes in Moscow are committed by migrants; in general, the situation with ethnic crime in the Russian capital remains tense; the head of the Moscow city’s central directorate of the Interior Ministry, Anatoliy Yakunin, told Russian privately-owned news agency Interfax on 23 August. “I’d like to say that 50 per cent of all […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 25, 2013) Most people in Moscow and the West see Russia’s current political problems as a working out of the events of 1991, a view that very much defines what they are doing and what they expect to happen next, according to Vladimir Pastukhov, perhaps the most penetrating analyst writing on […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova – August 26, 2013) Public protests in heightened security zones in Sochi will be prohibited during the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games next year, according to a presidential order published Friday. Some activists have denounced the order as unconstitutional, though Human Rights Watch representatives said that protests might still be possible since the […]
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(Interfax – August 26, 2013) Former CIA employee Edward Snowden changed his plans of flying from Moscow to a Latin American country after he learned that Cuba had decided to deny landing to an Aeroflot plane carrying him, Kommersant reported on Monday. “Moscow definitely expected that Edward Snowden who arrived at [Moscow’s] Sheremetyevo airport on June 23 would fly to […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 23, 2013) Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, said there is no Islamization in Chechnya, the people of the republic simply have deep respect for Islamic traditions and unity with Russia is a choice of the Chechen people. “We don’t have any Islamization. To our great regret, we have young women who go around naked, without […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexander Kolesnichenko, special to RBTH – August 23, 2013) The collapse of the Soviet Union, the transition to a market economy, the ban on the Communist Party, the complete transformation of the public and the economic structure of the country all of these followed the coup attempt on Aug. 19-21, 1991. The […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#153 :: 21 August 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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(RIA Novosti – ROSTOV-ON-DON, August 23, 2013) The Moscow-led Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan may have to use protective measures should Ukraine sign an association agreement with the European Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. “If our neighbors [Ukraine] resort to a substantial liberalization of their customs regime with the EU, goods that are not bad in […]
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(RIA Novosti – August 22, 2013 – Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of the Russia in Global Affairs journal, authoritative source of expertise on Russian foreign policy and global developments) Russian-Ukrainian relations are again at the center of attention. Nothing has happened between Moscow and Kiev in the three years since the signing of the Kharkiv agreement, under which Ukraine extended Russia’s […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#156 :: 26 August 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 Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova and Ezekiel Pfeifer – August 23, 2013) The mayoral campaign of opposition leader Alexei Navalny faced a new wave of pressure by authorities Thursday as the Moscow Elections Commission warned he could be struck from the ballot and police raided a printer of his campaign materials. With just over two weeks left before […]
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(Interfax – TBILISI, August 22, 2013) The Georgian government has extended its contract with the influential lobby and legal firm Patton Boggs, which is headquartered in Washington, DC, until the end of 2013, the Georgian media have reported. Under the contract, Patton Boggs will receive monthly payments of $110,000 for its services, which is $20,000 more than it received before. […]
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(Bloomberg – Lucian Kim – August 18, 2013) Twenty-five miles on the main road west from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Russian soldiers argue with a mercenary as refugees trudge along in the summer heat. The scene, reminiscent of the Balkans in the 1990s, is the result of a 10-day conflict over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. The […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, August 23, 2013) Lawyers of the two jailed members of the Russian feminist punk protest group Pussy Riot are filing a petition to have their clients’ remaining jail time replaced with community service, a Russian daily reported Friday. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were sentenced to two years in jail last August for their February […]
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(Interfax – August 23, 2013) The majority of Russians think that the refusal of U.S. President Barack Obama to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin will not have any impact on the countries’ bilateral relations and they support Moscow’s decision to grant asylum to former employee of U.S. special services Edward Snowden, sociologists said. Half of Russian citizens (50 percent) […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 23, 2013) Around 2.5 million liters of wine have been delivered by Georgia’s enterprises to the Russian market since Russia lifted its ban on Georgian wine imports, Gennady Onishchenko, head of the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor and Russia’s chief epidemiologist, told Interfax on Friday. “A total of 690 shipments of alcohol products weighing more than 2.4 […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#155 :: 23 August 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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(Interfax – August 22, 2013) Russia’s membership in the World Trade Organization, the first anniversary of which was on Wednesday, has not had a negative impact on the country’s economy and there are no plans to reconsider the conditions of Russia’s accession to the trade body, the director of trade negotiations at the Economic Development Ministry, Maxim Medvedkov said in […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow – August 22, 2013) Russia never does things by halves. Before the global crisis of 2008, the talk was of an economy overheating. But the latest data showing second-quarter GDP grew just 1.2% from a year ago suggests the country is sliding toward recession and the government seems, at first […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin – August 22, 2013) All illegal street markets will be closed in the Moscow region by the end of this year, acting Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said Wednesday as the campaign against illegal immigrants amid two key elections was gaining momentum. During debates on regional television on Tuesday, Vorobyov boasted a 15 […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 22, 2013) Like Americans, most Russians view nationalism in a negative way, according to a Russian Jewish émigré living in New York, but they will not be able to integrate their society and escape from the Soviet past unless they take nationalism away from those who call themselves Russian nationalists and […]
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(Interfax – August 21, 2013) A proposal that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) should react to anonymous tip-offs could lead to an increase in such messages and would in practice duplicate work done by the police, Tatyana Lokshina, head of Human Rights Watch’s Moscow bureau, told Interfax news agency on 21 August.(1) On the same day, government-owned Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 22, 2013) Mass searches of NGOs across the country have helped to detect 22 “foreign agents,” a top official from the Prosecutor General’s Office said Thursday. The law, which requires non-governmental organizations that receive funding from abroad and engage in “political activity” to register as “foreign agents,” came into effect in November. In March, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Guennadi Moukine – August 22, 2013) Small business representatives called for equality before the law and less interference from the government, sharing their concerns with Moscow mayoral candidate teams at a round-table discussion organized by the For an Honest Market movement Wednesday. The meeting was attended by mayoral candidate Sergei Mitrokhin of the liberal Yabloko […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – August 22, 2013) Standing on a soapbox, mayoral hopeful Alexei Navalny asks the people who’ve gathered to listen to his campaign speech near Timiryazevskaya railway station: “What do you know about me?” After a brief silence, someone in the crowd hesitatingly replies: “Corruption.” “What do you mean corruption? You mean I stole […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 21, 2013) The Foundation for the Development of Civil Society (FoRGO) predicts that United Russia candidates may win all gubernatorial elections on September 8 but the opposition can offer strong rivalry in mayoral elections in Voronezh and Yekaterinburg. “We assume that that candidates nominated by United Russia or supported by United Russia will win in all […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 21, 2013) The Russian government’s failure to maintain the infrastructure that existed at the end of Soviet times is one of the primary reasons why this year’s flooding in the Russian Far East has inflicted so much damage and suffering on the population there, according to Moscow experts. Many Moscow commentators […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 21, 2013) Most Russians tend to expect that Russia will develop according to the Western, not Asian pattern, sociologists from Levada Center have told Interfax. According to a poll conducted in July in 130 towns and cities in 45 territories of Russia, over a quarter (27%) of the interviewed assume that in 50 years science, technology […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 22, 2013) Traders that have been looking for the shortest route from Asia to Europe since the days of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot may have finally found it, though the way may be colder than expected and the cargo will probably consist of less silk and spices. Yong Sheng, a 19,000 ton Chinese […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Andrei Kislyakov, special to RBTH – August 22, 2013) Russian researchers have been developing systems to gather data on the most dangerous threats to the Earth and to destroy them, if need be. Yet a specific strategy for neutralizing space threats has yet to be developed. The latest news from space is […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, August 22, 2013) US President Barack Obama’s official visit to Russia has been postponed, not cancelled, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday. “The visit has been postponed, not cancelled,” Alexander Lukashevich said. “The invitation that Mr. Obama has is still in force, and we hope that he will use it at some point in […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Irina Filatova – August 22, 2013) Russia could annul a free trade regime with Ukraine and scrap joint projects in a number of industries if Kiev signs an association agreement with the European Union, Kremlin advisor Sergei Glazyev was quoted as saying Wednesday. By signing the agreement which is slated for November Ukraine […]
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(Voice of America – James Brooke, VOA Moscow bureau chief, covering Russia and the former USSR – August 15, 2013) When I first visited Georgia, on a reporting trip, in September 1991, I arrived in Tbilisi armed with four years of college Russian and gung ho to use it! To my dismay, the independence-minded residents of the Georgian Soviet […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: 2013-#154 :: 22 August 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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(RIA Novosti – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief, The Moscow News – August 19, 2013) The news of violence coming out of Egypt is horrifying, and it must be said, unfortunately, that we haven’t seen the end of the horror. So why are Russians continuing to flock to the country for vacation this month? The short answer is economics. Vacation packages […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, August 21, 2013) Five of Russia’s extradition requests sent to the United States in the past few years have been left unanswered, a deputy Russian prosecutor general has said in an interview. “Since 2008, the United States has refused 16 times to extradite people to us citing the absence of a relevant treaty,” Deputy Russian Prosecutor […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Nathan Gray – August 21, 2013) Growth in targeted investment is the key message of the 2013 American Express/CFO Global Business and Spending Monitor, scheduled for release in Russia this week. While businesses worldwide are still exercising caution, the report’s findings cite growing optimism among companies toward investment, with specialization in markets and value delivery […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 20, 2013) The Kremlin has held back a proposed program to give financial support to the most talented Russian students undertaking postgraduate degrees in top foreign universities, because there is no guarantee that the economy will benefit from the outlay, a news report said Tuesday. The program was aimed at raising the standard of […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, August 20, 2013) The opinion poll data published by Moscow mayoral candidate (from the opposition RPR-Parnas party) Aleksey Navalnyy, which indicate that a second round is possible in the mayoral election on 8 September, do not reflect the real balance of forces and are dictated by the wish to influence voters, VTsIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Centre) […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – August 21, 2013) Sitting in a tiny room that serves as a temporary office for elections watchdog Golos, Grigory Melkonyants, a senior member of the now defunct organization, is full of enthusiasm. Despite the roller-coaster ride the organization has been through in recent months caused by sanctions placed on it by the […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Darya Novak, special to RBTH – August 20, 2013) Moscow, Saint Petersburg and The Golden Ring are the only option presented to you by your travel agency you must be thinking there has to be more to Russia than this? Well, you would be right! Russia Beyond The Headlines is launching the ultimate […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, August 21, 2013) Modern Russian residents have largely changed compared to Soviet people, independent pollster Levada Center has said, citing a recent poll. Asked whether the residents of today’s Russia are different from people who lived in the Soviet Union, 74 percent of respondents said they are completely or in many respects different. Fourteen percent said […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – August 21, 2013) With Moscow about to vote for a new mayor this September, opposition blogger and candidate for the job Alexei Navalny is doing what he does best: exposing the sweet little earners that come from being well connected. In this case it is Anna Sobyanina, the daughter of Moscow’s incumbent mayor, Sergei […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 20, 2013) A serious change has occurred in the Russian mentality and political system since the breakdown of the Soviet Union, Levada Center sociologists told Interfax. Seventy-four percent of 1,600 respondents polled in 130 towns and cities in 45 regions in July said fellow citizens had changed a lot or entirely in the past two decades […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 20, 2013) Pussy Riot punk band member Yekaterina Samutsevich, convicted to two years of a suspended sentence, has filed a lawsuit against her former lawyers Violetta Volkova, Nikolai Polozov and Mark Feigin. Samutsevich said she demanded to award her non-pecuniary damages for insulting statements regarding her. “The lawsuit has been filed against three lawyers: against Feigin, […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – August 20, 2013) Russia’s economy, long one of the drivers of growth in the developing world, might already be in recession. Worse, the country’s leaders are offering no indication that they’re prepared to combat it. Identifying recessions can be difficult in Russia. The typical definition is two quarters of declining gross domestic product, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anatoly Medetsky – August 21, 2013) As officials scowl at the cargo that goes out through foreign harbors, the government is making headway on a plan to build a $7 billion port on the Black Sea. The Port of Taman will open in 2019 to handle dry cargoes, such as grain and coal, Transportation Minister […]
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(Moscow, August 19, 2013) Egypt is facing the threat of a civil war breaking out and only the Egyptian Army could prevent this from happening, experts think. The disintegration of the country is also likely, experts interviewed by RIA Novosti suggested. (Passage omitted: events of past week) Commenting on the current situation, a doctor of philosophy and a specialist on […]
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