RUSSIA & UKRAINE – Johnson’s Russia List table of contents & links :: JRL 2020-#37 :: Tuesday, 3 March 2020

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Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2020-#37 :: Tuesday, 3 March 2020
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1. Irrussianality: Paul Robinson, CONSTITUTIONAL UPDATE.
2. BMB Russia: Constitutional Reform.
3. Bloomberg: Putin Adds New Changes to Constitution, Wooing Traditionalists.
4. TASS: Kremlin: Constitutional amendments submitted by Putin passed legal expert study.
5. TASS: Putin hails non-systemic opposition, notes its contribution to bettering society.
6. www.rt.com: ‘Register and keep working’: Russia’s ‘foreign agents’ law protects from outside meddling, doesn’t infringe on anyone, Putin says – rt.com/news/482166-putin-foreign-agents-meddling/
7. www.rt.com: Bryan MacDonald, ‘May God bless them’: Putin says Russian protest leaders free to hold marches as long as they obey laws – rt.com/russia/482189-putin-protest-free-obey-law/
8. Kremlin.ru: On civil society and foreign agents (interview to TASS) – en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/62924
9. Reuters: Russian constitution must define marriage as heterosexual, Putin says.
10. The Unz Review: Anatoly Karlin, “Russia for Russians” to be Written Into the Constitution – unz.com/akarlin/russia-for-russians-to-be-written-into-the-constitution/
11. Awful Avalanche: Opinion Poll: How many Russians Observe Lent? – awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/opinion-poll-how-many-russians-observe-lent/
12. Institute of Modern Russia: Vladimir Gelman: “An intention to preserve the political status quo and Putin’s authority is seen in the constitutional reform”
13. TASS: Russian Constitutional Court rules to review activist Konstantin Kotov’s verdict.
14. Bloomberg: Vladimir Putin Bets His Political Legacy on a Tax Whiz.
15. Bloomberg: Putin’s New Premier Reaches Out to West With Bid for OECD Ties.
16. Russia Beyond: The Potemkin villages myth EXPOSED – rbth.com/history/331767-potemkin-villages-myth-exposed
17. www.raamoprusland.nl: The delicate balance of Great Patriotic War history politics. What to do with a problem like history? All countries manage their memories for their present convenience, but the escalating furore around the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe poses some serious challenges – but also opportunities, argues our columnist Mark Galeotti.
18. New York Times letter: Extend a Nuclear Arms Treaty. Andrei Kozyrev, former foreign minister of Russia, writes about the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
19. TASS: Izvestia: Terrorists driven out of Syria’s Saraqib ahead of Putin-Erdogan meeting.
20. Financial Times: Russia’s Syria gamble under pressure as Turkey attacks in Idlib. Erdogan threatens further escalation of hostilities before Moscow meeting.
21. Moscow Times: Bruno Macaes, Russia and Turkey Search for the Endgame in Syria, With or Without Assad. As they meet this week, Putin and Erdogan may have to give up on their most ambitious plans and settle for something they can actually obtain.
22. Dances With Bear: John Helmer, LESSONS ON HOW TURKS FIGHT AND HOW RUSSIANS FIGHT THEM UNTIL THEY RUN AWAY, ONLY TO TRY AGAIN. (excerpt) – helmer.net/lessons-on-how-turks-fight-and-how-russians-fight-them-until-they-run-away-only-to-try-again/print/
23. Russia Beyond: Could Turkey use its new Russian weapons against their creator? – rbth.com/science-and-tech/331774-turkey-s-400
24. Russian International Affairs Council: Sergey Markedonov and Alexander Dubowy, Neutrality for the Black Sea Region Countries: Abstraction, Unattainable Goal or Effective Model? – russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/neutrality-for-the-black-sea-region-countries-abstraction-unattainable-goal-or-effective-model/
25. Brookings: Angela Stent, Russia and China: Axis of revisionists? (Excerpt) – brookings.edu/research/russia-and-china-axis-of-revisionists/
26. Russian International Affairs Council: Vassily Kashin, What Opportunities are Opening up for Russia against the Backdrop of the Tech War between the U.S. and China? – russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/interview/what-opportunities-are-opening-up-for-russia-against-the-backdrop-of-the-tech-war-between-the-u-s-an/
27. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Andrew Weiss, With Friends Like These: The Kremlin’s Far-Right and Populist Connections in Italy and Austria. (excerpt)
28. Filmsuck: PODCAST: Interview with Andrei Nekrasov, director of “The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes”
29. www.rt.com: Bryan MacDonald, Atlantic Council lets former organizer of Crimean ‘anti-NATO weekend’ whitewash Ukrainian Neo-Nazis – rt.com/op-ed/481939-atlantic-council-nazi-ukrainian-azov/
30. TASS: Ukrainian top diplomat’s statements on Donbass run counter to Minsk accords – Lavrov.
31. Atlantic Council: Stephen Blank, U.S. should revive Lend-Lease to contain Russia.
32. Moscow Times: Sean Guillory, Why Should Bernie Sanders Apologize for Communism? American memory politics of the communist past is first and foremost a whip for ideological disciplining.
33. Washington Post: Yana Skorobogatov, Yakov Feygin and Artemy M. Kalinovsky, Critics of Bernie Sanders’s trip to the Soviet Union are distorting it. Sanders was expressing broadly bipartisan enthusiasm for Soviet reform, not a love of authoritarianism.
34. Antiwar.com: Scott Horton, The New Cold War With Russia Is All America’s Fault.