RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List table of contents & links :: JRL 2020-#108 :: Tuesday, 16 June 2020

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2020-#108 :: Tuesday, 16 June 2020
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1. Washington Post: Siberia’s persistent, freakishly mild weather is reverberating around the world. The planet just had its warmest May, continuing a streak from 2014.
2. Kremlin.ru: Meeting on implementing support measures for economy and social sphere – en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/63508
3. Government.ru: Meeting of the Presidium of the Government Coordination Council to control the incidence of novel coronavirus infection in the Russian Federation – government.ru/en/news/39873/
5. Meduza: ‘Giving up significant powers’. Putin says that amending the constitution will allow Russia’s parliament to appoint the prime minister. This isn’t true.
6. rt.com: Bryan MacDonald, ‘Russian president has more powers than tsar, pharaoh & Soviet general secretary combined’ – Communist Party leader – rt.com/russia/492000-russia-hyper-presidential-system-zyuganov/
7. rt.com: Putin says Communists oppose proposed Russian constitutional changes because they want to re-establish one-party dictatorship.
8. Meduza: Is voting in Russia’s July 1 plebiscite worth it? A quick summary of the debate between Alexey Navalny and Maxim Katz.
9. AP: Russia Starts Early Voting on Reform Extending Putin’s Rule.
10. Moscow Times: Ilya Shepelin, The Kremlin is Working Overtime to Promote the New Constitution – Just Not the ‘Putin Forever’ Part. What should have been a triumphant usurpation of power has turned instead into a timid attempt to write the onerous terms of a contract in letters so small that the borrower will sign without reading.
11. Moscow Times: St. Petersburg Leads Russia’s Coronavirus Mortality – Analysis.
12. New York Times: For Migrants in Russia, Virus Means No Money to Live and No Way to Leave. The coronavirus has highlighted migrants’ inferior status in Russia. With no jobs, and sometimes no health care, many want to go home – but find they can’t.
13. Intellinews: Russian retail coming back to life, but a full recovery will take longer.
14. www.rt.com: Russia to slash key interest rate to post-Soviet-era low.
15. Awful Avalanche: Russian Reaction To American Protests – Part II – awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2020/06/16/russian-reaction-to-american-protests-part-ii/
16. Post-Soviet Affairs: Beth Knobel, The Great Game and the evolving nature of political talk shows on Russian television. (excerpt)
[The Great Game video: https://www.1tv.ru/shows/big-game/o-proekte]
17. The Conversation: Marco Biasioli, Why Russia’s indie musicians don’t sing in English anymore
18. Al Jazeera: Natasha Frid, A life in the day of the Russian bathhouse. For thousands of years, the banya has been a symbol of human tenacity and endurance, a place to cleanse and transform.
19. E&T (Engineering and Technology: Vitali Vitaliev, At home in the (almost) unchanged world of 18th-century Russia
20. TASS: Russia-US ties hit rock bottom: Diplomat comments on ‘impact’ of Whelan spy case.
21. TASS: Vedomosti: American Paul Whelan sentenced for espionage, may be swapped for Russians jailed in US.
22. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Richard Sokolsky and Eugene Rumer, U.S.-Russian Relations in 2030. U.S.-Russia relations will remain frosty for years, but even Cold Wars eventually thaw. The United States should prepare now to act decisively when this one finally does, even if it takes a decade. (Excerpt)
23. Foreign Affairs: Victoria Nuland, Pinning Down Putin. How a Confident America Should Deal With Russia. – foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2020-06-09/pinning-down-putin
24. Infobrics: Poland is likely to receive Germany-based American soldiers to pressurise Russia – infobrics.org/post/31104/
25. The Guardian (UK): Belarus blues: can Europe’s ‘last dictator’ survive rising discontent? After decades in power, a bungled Covid-19 response has triggered a genuine electoral challenge.
26. AP: Ukraine President’s Wife Hospitalized With Virus.
27. TASS: Kremlin comments on Ukraine’s new NATO partnership status.
28. New York Times: A Conspiracy Made in America May Have Been Spread by Russia. The Americans who pushed a conspiracy theory the night of the Iowa caucuses have migrated to coronavirus conspiracies on Twitter, with help from a very Russia-friendly account.
29. Washington Post: Elite CIA unit that developed hacking tools failed to secure its own systems, allowing massive leak, an internal report found.
30. Consortium News: Ray McGovern, How an Internet ‘Persona’ Helped Birth Russiagate . Guccifer 2.0 turns four years old today and the great diversion he took part in becomes clearer by the day. – consortiumnews.com/2020/06/15/ray-mcgovern-how-an-internet-persona-helped-birth-russiagate/