Moscow, January, 15, Interfax – Russia’s ex prime-minister, Mercury Club president and Academy of Science Presidium member Evgeny Primakov said it is wrong to look at the Islamic forces in the Middle East as a single camp. “About two years have passed since the Arab Spring wave of revolutionary protests toppled the authoritarian rulers in the Middle East and North […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – January 15, 2013) Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his newly appointed Ukrainian counterpart, Leonid Kozhara, had a series of meetings on Sunday and Monday to underline the importance of fostering strategic ties between the two countries, with Ukraine’s potential accession to the Russia-dominated Customs Union a central topic. Relations have been strained […]
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WASHINGTON, January 14 (By Carl Schreck for RIA Novosti) – US President Barack Obama’s nomination of veteran Washington lawmakers John Kerry and Chuck Hagel for his next national security team portend a pragmatic approach to US-Russia relations in his second term but few prospects for breakthroughs, analysts said. Obama has tapped Kerry for secretary of state and Hagel for defense […]
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NOVY URENGOI, January 15 (RIA Novosti) – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday called for more intensive exploration of Russia’s oil- and gas-rich continental shelf, stressing that all shelf development projects should be long-term. “The [current] pace of geological surveys on the continental shelf is insufficient,” he said. Medvedev listed a number of reasons for the slow progress, including the […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Nathan Gray – January 15, 2013) The fourth annual Gaidar Forum kicks off at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and State Administration on Wednesday, bringing together Russian and international economic leaders to discuss key policy issues around the theme of “Russia and the World: The Challenges of Integration.” The forum grew out of […]
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(www.opendemocracy.net – Andrei Zaostrovtsev – January 11, 2013) Andrei Zaostrovtsev is lecturer at the M-Centre at the European University, St. Petersburg and professor of the Higher School of Economics One way Vladimir Putin has retained his popularity among Russians has been by increasing retirement pensions and other social benefits, and as a result the state pension fund is deep in […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Bratersky – January 15, 2013) When President Vladimir Putin gave Russian citizenship to French actor Gerard Depardieu, the story became the biggest Internet hit and a subject of political controversy over the long New Year’s vacation. It was the first time in modern Russian history that someone who was not a former spy but […]
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(Interfax – 14 January) Moscow – According to the poll carried out by the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM), the Russian Investigations Committee (RIC) is the most effective law-enforcement body in the fight against corruption. The poll was conducted in 38 regions in 146 population centres among 1,600 respondents on 22-24 December. Its results were published on the eve […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – January 15, 2013) President Vladimir Putin has introduced a bill into the State Duma calling for tougher penalties for Russians and foreigners who violate registration rules, in a bid to “civilize” internal migration. The bill, introduced into the lower house of Parliament last Wednesday, echoed an earlier proposal by Russian lawmakers to […]
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(Interfax – January 15, 2013) The impossibility to continue funding pseudo-human rights organizations was the true reason behind last weekend’s protests against the so-called Dima Yakovlev law in Russia, the country’s ombudsman for children’s rights Pavel Astakhov said. “The protests are not not against the fact that they [orphans] are allegedly doomed to some sort of existence or even death […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 15 (Interfax) – The Russian Investigative Committee has pledged to continue the inquiry into the 1995 killing of popular journalist and TV anchor Vladislav Listyev. “It is still early to draw the line in this case. It will not be closed. The inquiry has been put on hold and the services responsible for it have been instructed to […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – January 14, 2013) Anna Arutunyan is the politics editor of The Moscow News “Children are [expletive] sacred,” one protester was overheard telling another at Sunday’s March against Scoundrels. That was one of the reasons that the march, widely expected to continue a trend of dwindling turnout for the spate of mass anti-government […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – January 15, 2013) A State Duma committee on Monday discussed an online petition opposing the “Anti-Magnitsky Law” passed late last year, but it appeared to delay until at least April any action that could result from the petition. The petition, published on the website of opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta last month, was […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 15, 2013) Five ministers in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s Cabinet have failed to live up to the expectations of certain Kremlin administration officials, according to a survey conducted by Izvestia. The lowest rating went to five Cabinet members: Far East Development Minister Viktor Ishayev, Education Minister Dmitry Livanov, Regional Development Minister Igor Slyunyayev, Transportation […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Roland Oliphant – January 15, 2013) The Health Ministry’s chief narcologist, Yevgeny Bryun, warned Monday that it would take a month for many Russians to recover from the excesses of New Year’s celebrations. “Long holidays are in any event bad. Long-term abuse of alcohol is always bad; it has chronic toxic impacts, the effects of […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 15 (Interfax) – The “tandem” government era in Russia is over, argued former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, president of the Mercury Club and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Today Russia has some new characteristics that distinguish it from the previous period. One of them is the end of the tandem era. This does not at […]
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Johnson’s Russia List 2013-#8 14 January 2013 davidjohnson@starpower.net JRL homepage: www.russialist.org JRL on Facebook: www.facebook.com/russialist JRL on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: http://russialist.org/funding.php In this issue POLITICS 1. Moscow Times: Top 10 News Stories Over New Year’s Holidays. 2. ITAR-TASS: Russians “don’t notice” 90th anniversary of Soviet Union’s foundation. 3. Moscow Times/BBC Monitoring: What the Papers Say, Jan.14, 2013. 4. Russia […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 11, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-privatization.html) Staunton, January 11 The Russian people “who 20 years ago dreamed about freedom today are choosing slavery” because they were deceived by the elites about privatization and thus no longer “believe anyone,” according to an analysis by Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian scholar who now works at […]
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TBILISI. Jan 12 (Interfax) – Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has accused Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of an attempt to change Georgia’s foreign policy. At the ceremony for introducing the new governors, which was held in the presidential palace on Saturday, Saakashvili said Ivanishvili in his recent interview had said that he had to “repel” the attacks of the Western world […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Kristen Blyth – January 14, 2013) When asked how she became qualified to work as a real estate agent, Emma became defensive. “I don’t want to tell you,” she told The Moscow News. “I’m a realtor now, and that’s all you need to know.” Emma was the broker that Elliott Estebo, an expat English teacher, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova – January 14, 2013) No New Year’s celebration in Russia is complete without its most important guest: the television set. Although this year’s holiday shows and music concerts left much to be desired in terms of quality, Russians still got plenty of entertainment courtesy of the nation’s most flamboyant singers, dancers and politicians. […]
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(www.opendemocracy.net – Pavel Usanov – January 11, 2013) Pavel Usanov is head of the Hayek Institute for Economy and Law in St. Petersburg and Reader at the Higher School of Economics. Since the collapse of the USSR investors have flocked to Russia, tempted by the high rates of return and the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere in Moscow, where everything seems […]
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(Interfax – January 11, 2013) Moscow – Journalism is an important and necessary profession that enjoys public confidence but it is not very profitable, said Russians polled by the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) ahead of the Russian Press Day marked on January 13. “Russians have less confidence in journalists than in scientists or teachers,” says a VTsIOM press […]
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GORKI, January 14 (RIA Novosti) – In terms of supply and demand Russia is an “adoptee’s market” with over 128,000 children waiting for adoption and only 18,000 families ready to take them, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said Monday. Of that number 105,000 are in so-called “children’s homes,” or orphanages, while the others, who are 14 and above, are in […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 12, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-russia-now-faces.html) In the absence of any deep division within the power elites — and there is none evident now — Vladimir Putin’s current turn to repression is completely logical from his point of view and guarantees that the Russian Federation now faces “years of reaction,” however much […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 14, 2013) Former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who at an inquiry Friday into allegedly illicit property sales gave investigators “a few sheets of paper with explanations” then refused further questions, faces being considered a suspect, the Investigative Committee said. “If the former defense minister believes he is free of any guilt with regard to […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 14 (Interfax) – Detectives investigating the murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya are very close to the identification of persons who ordered the high-profile crime. The possible involvement of Boris Berezovsky and Akhmed Zakayev has not been proven so far, Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax in an exclusive interview. “I can say that the […]
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(Interfax – January 14, 2013) Mass opposition protests have become more serious and they have a future, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Interfax on Sunday. The opposition organized a march demanding the dissolution of the State Duma and the reversal of the so-called anti-Magnitsky law, which bans U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children, in central […]
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MOSCOW, January 14 (Marc Bennetts, RIA Novosti) Opponents of a Kremlin-approved ban on US nationals adopting Russian children expressed anger on Monday at a state TV program that suggested they were betraying their homeland. “State television is brainwashing people,” said Maria Orlovskaya, who helped promote and organize Sunday’s peaceful protest march in central Moscow against the ban. “The authorities […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anatoly Medetsky – January 14, 2013) The events that unfolded throughout the long holiday break from a plane crash to attempts to find clarity for child adoptions by U.S. parents to a new formidable submarine entering service have possessed a magnitude that would better befit a busy news week. While some of them […]
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Johnson’s Russia List 2013-#7 10 January 2013 davidjohnson@starpower.net JRL homepage: www.russialist.org JRL on Facebook: www.facebook.com/russialist JRL on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: http://russialist.org/funding.php Your source for news and analysis since 1996 “We don’t see things as they are, but as we are” In this issue POLITICS 1. Financial Times: Sergey Aleksashenko, Hello 2013: will Putin finally get serious on reform? 2. […]
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(Vestnik Kavkaza – January 10, 2013 – http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/politics/35648.html) Interview by Maria Sidelnikova. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza The head of the Socio-Political Studies Center, Vladimir Yevseyev, told Vestnik Kavkaza about prospects of development of the situation in Central Asia. – If anything scary happens in Central Asia, should Russia expect a new wave of migrants? – I don’t think we should […]
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WASHINGTON, January 10 (RIA Novosti) – The US will continue its cooperation with Russia despite differences on a number of issues, such as the Russian adoption ban, US Department of State Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said on Wednesday. “Our overall approach remains to try to cooperate with Russia as much as we can on as many issues as we can that […]
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(RIA Novosti – Fyodor Lukyanov – January 10, 2013) Fyodor Lukyanov is Editor-in-Chief of the Russia in Global Affairs journal, an authoritative source of expertise on Russian foreign policy and global developments, online at http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/ The year 2013 began much like 2012 with news of fighting in Syria and predictions that the tide is about to turn in the […]
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MOSCOW, January 10 (RIA Novosti) A Russian news website has provoked a furor after publishing what it claimed was an appeal from a Russian teenage orphan whose adoption by a US family was prevented by a new law banning adoptions by Americans. The 1obl.ru news portal in the Chelyabinsk region published a story claiming a boy in a local […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) – The multi-part drama known as the corporate dispute at Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel (RTS: GMKN) came to a conclusion at the end of 2012 with an unexpected twist. The distribution of forces that had emerged at Norilsk Nickel since the end of 2008 seemed fairly stable and safe. Vladimir Potanin’s Interros and Norilsk Nickel’s […]
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(www.opendemocracy.net – Andrei Zaostrovtsev – January 9, 2013) Andrei Zaostrovtsev is lecturer at the M-Centre at the European University, St. Petersburg and professor of the Higher School of Economics Owning a business in Russia today is a hazardous affair: each year thousands of companies close after their owners are accused of ‘economic crimes’ and face either prison or protection payments […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 9, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-putin-playing-regions.html) Like Nicholas II and Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin is putting the regions and their more traditionalist values in play against the emergent civil society in Moscow as part of his effort to keep himself and his allies in office and in control of Russia’s enormous natural wealth, […]
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BEIJING, January 10 (RIA Novosti) China-Russia trade grew 11.2 percent in 2012 from the previous year to $88.16 billion, the Chinese General Customs Administration reported on Thursday. Trade with the European Union, China’s largest trading partner, declined by 3.7 percent last year to $546.04 billion while trade with the United States, China’s second-largest trading partner, grew by 8.5 percent to […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) – The Russian stock market gave investors hopes for good profits early on in 2012 but ended up at the rear of global financial flows demonstrating rather modest results. The overall global situation was also certainly far from ideal, but, despite all the European debt troubles, the uncertainty surrounding the U.S. presidential elections and the fiscal […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) – Officials and businessmen need to win people’s confidence back, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the synodal department on liaison between the church and society, said. “Many people now feel alienation from decisions made in the economic sphere. Decisions are made by a limited circle of people. Our president has called the privatization unfair. This […]
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MOSCOW, January 10 (RIA Novosti) Russia’s economy is among the least free in the world, according to an index published on Thursday. Russia took 139th position out of 177 countries on the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation think tank and the Wall Street Journal. The showing represented a slight improvement from 2012 for Russia, […]
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MOSCOW. Jan 9 (Interfax) – The fact that Foreign Policy magazine has declared Russian President Vladimir Putin last year’s most influential figure in global politics, business and public affairs means “the so-called ‘Putin factor’ will play a significant role in the foreign policy of the United States for the next five years,” a Russian political scientist said. “Foreign Policy is […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Evgeniya Chaykovskaya – January 10, 2013) An initiative for the State Duma’s dissolution accumulated more than 100,000 signatures, forcing the lower house of parliament to discuss it. However, the deputies must consider the opinion of 60 million people who supported them during elections, said State Duma Deputy Speaker and Deputy Head of the United Russia […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 8, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-protests-political.html) The rise of a new generation of independent journalists in Russia who use technology to report directly to their audience and who are not shy about declaring their interest in promoting civil society is an entirely natural response to the increasing government restrictions on the official media […]
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Johnson’s Russia List 2013-#6 9 January 2013 davidjohnson@starpower.net JRL homepage: www.russialist.org JRL on Facebook: www.facebook.com/russialist JRL on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: http://russialist.org/funding.php Your source for news and analysis since 1996n0 “We don’t see things as they are, but as we are” In this issue POLITICS 1. ITAR-TASS: Russian Orthodox Christians to celebrate arrival of Jesus Christ for 12 days. 2. […]
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(Al-Monitor – www.al-monitor.com – Fyodor Lukyanov – January 8, 2013 – http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/01/syria-assad-speech-russia.html) Fyodor Lukyanov is Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs, an authoritative Russian journal devoted to foreign policy and international relations, online at http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/. Addressing the nation for the first time in over six months, Syrian President Bashar Assad thanked Russia for its efforts to help find a political […]
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(Interfax – January 9, 2013) The U.S. can help Russian children through cultural, educational, and medical assistance programs, Russian presidential children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said. “With the termination of the adoptions agreement, we have to expand cooperation in the sphere of education, cultural exchange, education programs, and programs that make it possible to take in children for treatment,” Astakhov […]
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[How to Work with Russia on Syria – The National Interest – Paul J. Saunders – January 7, 2013 – http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/how-work-russia-syria-7935] Paul J. Saunders writes in The National Interest on U.S. policy towards Syria, and whether there is a window of opportunity for a negotiated resolution of the conflict, with a particular eye on the potential for Russia to cooperate […]
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(Dmitry Travin – www.opendemocracy.net – January 7, 2013) Dmitry Travin is Research Director at the European University in St. Petersburg’s Centre of Modernization Studies. The first eight years of the last decade were incredibly successful for Russia’s economy, but the crisis of 2008 hit hard and growth remains decidedly sluggish. Dmitry Travin wonders whether the country’s economy will ever be […]
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