(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, November 19, 2014) There are “no influential forces in the Kremlin now” calling for peace in Ukraine or with Russia’s other neighbors, independent Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet says. There are only various groups calling for war and differing only on when, where and how to carry out a full-scale war with Ukraine. […]
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(mccain.senate.gov – Washington, D.C., November 18, 2014) U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement urging the Obama Administration and the European Union to provide the support Ukrainian leaders have long sought in the face of renewed Russian aggression: “President Putin’s renewed aggression in Ukraine demands more than additional empty rhetoric and threats of […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, November 14, 2014) Renewed calls by some Ukrainians to shift the alphabet of their national language from one based on Cyrillic characters to a Latin-based script in order to escape from the influence of Moscow and be closer to the West has infuriated Russian nationalists, who say that there is no chance […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – November 20, 2014) New Year celebrations in Ukraine’s capital Kiev this year will be spearheaded by Saint Mykolay – the country’s Orthodox analogue of Santa Claus – instead of his secular Soviet-era counterpart Father Frost, according to an outline of the festivities published by the city administration. The holiday saint will be coming to the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – November 20, 2014) President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman on Tuesday voiced what Russia wants from the West over Ukraine: guarantees that the former Soviet republic will not join NATO, an outcome that political analysts agree was already unlikely in the year-long conflict that has already claimed 4,000 lives. “We would like to hear […]
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(RIA Novosti – Moscow, November 19, 2014) Ukraine’s non-aligned status is important for ensuring Euro-Atlantic security and is in the interests of the Ukrainians themselves, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said at a [joint] news conference with his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto. “There is no doubt that the non-aligned status (of Ukraine – RIA Novosti) is fundamentally important not just […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 20 (Interfax) – Approximately 2.6 million Ukrainian nationals are staying in Russia at the moment, which is one million more than a year ago, Federal Migration Service (FMS) chief Konstantin Romodanovsky said at the Thursday meeting of the Council of Legislators dedicated to migration policy issues. “About 2.6 million Ukrainian citizens are currently staying in Russia, which is […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#240 :: Wednesday 19 November 2014 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 me JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Ukraine 1. Interfax-Ukraine: Ukraine says Russian-trained “terrorists” targeted Dutch delegation in […]
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PBS News Hour interviews Russia scholar Kimberly Marten about Russia’s unfolding relations with the West. [click here for transcript] Said Marten: I think part of what’s going on is that Putin is trying to take attention off of the problems that the Russian economy is facing. The sanctions are working much better than … predicted … they’re having real impact on the Russian oil industry … one […]
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(Interfax – November 19, 2014) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had suggested to him that he should pay no attention to U.S. President Barack Obama’s remarks in which he called Russia a principal threat to the world. “The first time I took note of the listing of threats that President Obama took the […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leslie Patton, Ilya Khrennikov – November 19, 2014) McDonald’s Corp.’s (MCD) largest restaurant in Russia reopened after local officials shuttered the location for three months, an optimistic sign for a company trying to return to business as usual in the country. The outlet, situated in Moscow’s Pushkin Square, resumed business today, said Svetlana Polyakova, a spokeswoman […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – November 19, 2014) Russian banks are the most vulnerable among the world’s large emerging market economies due to Western sanctions and near zero levels of economic growth, a Standard & Poor’s report released Wednesday said. Sanctions directly affect more than 50 percent of Russia’s banking sector, which is dominated by state financial institutions, the report […]
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(Interfax – November 18, 2014) The head of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has said that the economy would retain stability if things go less than well, i.e. if oil prices averages 80 dollars per barrel and sanctions continue until the end of 2017. Speaking in the State Duma on 18 November, she added that Russia’s financial system was […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow – November 19, 2014) After controlling the ruble-dollar exchange rate for more than two decades to ease the pain of the transition to a free market, on October 9 the Russia’s central bank finally let the ruble go. The Russian currency is now a fully floating currency, but it is […]
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(Business New Europe – bne/IntelliNews – bne.eu – November 19, 2014) According to a poll conducted by the independent Levada centre, 39% of Russians think that corruption in the country got worse in last 15 years. That is 20% less than in July 2010, when 60% of respondents said the situation worsened. Traffic police are considered the most corrupt institution […]
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(Interfax – November 19, 2014) Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev believes that Russia and the West should find a compromise on the Ukrainian crisis or they will lose. “It [a compromise] has not been found yet, but it is quite possible. I think Russia and the entire Europe will lose if that doesn’t happen. The responsibility will then rest with […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Volodymyr Verbyany, Anton Doroshev – November 19, 2014) Russia’s foreign minister blamed the conflict in Ukraine on other countries’ efforts to increase their security since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A day after Russia and Ukraine clashed over how to move toward a new cease-fire agreement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S. and […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, November 18, 2014) Kiev should conduct negotiations on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis not with Moscow, but with the militia from southeast Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigoriy Karasin has said. “The Kiev government should conduct negotiations not with Moscow, but with representatives of southeast Ukraine,” he told Interfax. This was how the high-ranking diplomat commented […]
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KYIV. Nov 19 (Interfax) – The Ukrainian leadership believes the Geneva format of negotiations with Russia is the optimal one, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said. “This is a common position of the Ukrainian head of state and head of government: the Geneva format, with the U.S.’, the EU’s, Russia’s, and Ukraine’s involvement, is the best and the most effective […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexey Eremenko – November 19, 2014) As the Russian economy ambles toward recession, the government grapples with how to explain the downturn – no easy feat after 15 years of slowly mounting prosperity and President Vladimir Putin’s campaign promises of lavish social spending. So far, the authorities have been inclined to blame external factors, such […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Evgenia Pismennaya, Irina Reznik- November 19, 2014) Vladimir Putin sat motionless as the minister, seizing on the Russian leader’s first major meeting with his economic team in months, itemized the challenges. A recession is imminent, inflation is getting out of hand and the ruble and oil are in freefall, Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev told Putin, according […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, November 19, 2014) Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, says that Russian wants to receive “a 100 percent guarantee” that “no one will think about Ukraine entering NATO.” The only proper response to that outrageous example of imperial overreach is to offer NATO full membership in the alliance immediately. To do otherwise […]
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(Voice of America – Jamie Dettmer – November 19, 2014) Ukraine’s government is threatening to stop funding hospitals and medical services in areas in the east of the country controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. This is leaving the insurgents scrambling to make up for the shortfall amid signs that some locals want a return to normal. The health minister of the […]
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… 28. Business New Europe: Chris Weafer, 2015 looks likely to be Russian economy’s “Annus Horribilis”
29. Wall Street Journal: Russian Agency Looks to Meet With Twitter, Facebook on New Laws.
30. Moscow Times/Reuters: More Than 1 Million People in Russia Live as Slaves, Study Finds. …
[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#238 :: Monday 17 November 2014 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 me JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Ukraine 1. Reuters: Heavy shelling rocks rebel-held Donetsk in east Ukraine. 2. […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Angelina Davydova – November 17, 2014) Angelina Davydova is an independant environmental journalist based in St Petersburg. This autumn, in cities worldwide there were climate-themed marches to tie in with the Ban Ki-Moon UN summit, the most of important of which was a 400-thousand-strong demonstration in New York; and Russia too passed a series of measures. On 23 […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Matthew Bodner – November 18, 2014) Russia may be planning to build a new, independent national space station rather than prolong its participation in the $150 billion International Space Station (ISS) program beyond its current 2020 end date, the Kommersant newspaper reported Monday. The U.S. space agency NASA proposed last year to extend the life […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – November 17, 2014) It’s already got its own search engine called Sputnik, but now in an effort to better control the contents on RuNet, the Kremlin plans to launch its own version of Wikipedia. The Russian version of the user-generated encyclopaedia is designed to give “citizens more detailed and reliable” information about their country, […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Chris Weafer – November 18, 2014) Chris Weafer is Senior Partner at Macro-Advisory, which offers bespoke Russia-CIS consulting. In a memorable speech delivered in late 1992, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II described the year just ending as an “Annus Horribilis” as she referred to a year filled with misery and stress for the royal household. […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexei Lossan, RBTH – November 17, 2014) Since the beginning of 2014 the value of the ruble has fallen by about 50 percent against the dollar and the euro, a slide most analysts attribute to low oil prices. In the end, Russia’s Central Bank decided to bring forward plans to let the ruble […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, November 18, 2014) The G-20 meeting in Brisbane demonstrated that “the marginalization of Putin is a fait accompli,” that he has failed to split the West, and that its leaders have no intention of acting as Neville Chamberlain did in the late 1930s, according to Dmitry Oreshkin. The Moscow political scientist, who […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gevorg Mirzayan, special to RBTH – November 17, 2014) Beijing and Washington have developed a mechanism through which one side is to inform the other of any large-scale military actions. They have also agreed on a set of rules of behavior in the event their military units collide at sea or in the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Marc Bennetts – November 17, 2014) An excerpt from “Resurrections for Roubles: Adventures with Modern Russia’s Psychics, Sects, and Sorcerers.” When I first moved to Russia in 1997, despite only initially knowing about 10 words of the language, I would buy a couple of papers every morning and attempt to decipher them with the help […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – November 18, 2014) Capital outflow from Russia could grow to $130 billion this year, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Monday, news agency Bloomberg reported. The prediction brings the government’s expectations closer to that of the Russian Central Bank, which said on Nov. 10 that capital outflow could hit $128 billion in 2014. Investors have been […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Carl Schreck – November 18, 2014) The doggedly independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy is facing an existential crisis this week, with its editorial leadership and its operations due to be scrutinized in a snap shareholders meeting on November 21 called by state-owned Gazprom-Media, which holds a controlling stake in the station. The meeting comes amid […]
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(Interfax – November 17, 2014) President Vladimir Putin has backed Human Rights Commissioner Ella Pamfilova’s proposal to devise a procedure of removing nongovernmental organizations from the register of foreign agents after their foreign funding ends. Pamfilova told Putin that the Justice Ministry cannot remove NGOs, no longer financed from abroad, from the foreign agents register in the absence of a […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 18 (Interfax) – Russians have mixed feelings about the wish of some territories to separate from their mother states: 42% support this trend, 30% have a negative opinion and 28% are undecided, the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) said. Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents exhibit the highest degree of understanding towards the wish to break away (53% […]
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(Interfax – November 18, 2014) Over a third of Russians believe it is impossible to eradicate corruption in their home country, Levada Center told Interfax. Some 43 percent of 1,630 respondents polled in 134 populated localities said corruption was worst in the traffic police, 39 percent said this about the police in general and 35 percent pointed the finger at […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – November 17, 2014) Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko has ordered all state institutions to withdraw from the rebel-held Donbass and to stop paying salaries and pensions from the state budget to residents of the region. In a decree signed on November 15, Poroshenko ordered the National Bank of Ukraine to cut off all banking services […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – November 17, 2014) Foreign companies will soon have to seek government permission before buying a more than 25 percent stake in newspapers or magazines in Russia, extending state control in an industry still reeling from legal changes earlier this year, business daily Vedomosti reported late last week. The new amendments, which will […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Howard Amos – November 15, 2014) Reaching the climax of a personal attack on Russia’s Central Bank chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina in a debate in the State Duma early last week, Communist deputy Vyacheslav Tetyokin did not hold back. Nabiullina, he said, was “the most expensive woman in the history of our country.” Tetyokin was incensed […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – bne/IntelliNews – November 17, 2014) Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the leaders of the western world at the weekend at the G20 summit, the first face-to-face meeting of all the world’s leaders since the Russian annexation of Crimea in March. “At the closing of the evening program of the G20 summit [in Brisbane] […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sam Skove, special to RBTH – November 14, 2014) In recent months, newspapers, radio stations and websites have lost staff while new laws put restrictions on media ownership and advertising. Meanwhile, billions of rubles are being plowed into Kremlin-backed media outlets such as RT and new kid on the block Sputnik. On Nov. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – November 17, 2014) President Vladimir Putin made an early departure Sunday from the two-day G20 Summit in Australia, after fielding an abundance of criticism from Western leaders over Russia’s allegedly aggressive role in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, a move some observers say will inevitably be interpreted as a symbol of defeat. […]
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(Interfax – November 17, 2014) Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again said that Russia did not commit any violations of international law by incorporating Crimea and described the Western reaction as totally disproportionate to what had happened. “We believe that this sort of reaction was totally disproportionate to what had happened. Whenever I hear complaints about Russia violating international […]
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… 20. Reuters: Ukraine’s main task is to build army to stop Russia: PM Yatseniuk.
21. Bloomberg: Ukraine Default Risk Climbing One Year on From Maidan.
22. The Economist: Ukraine’s economy. Worse to come. The swooning economy is in desperate need of investment.
23. The Economist editorial: The collapse of Ukraine’s economy. Don’t chicken out of Kiev. Throttled by Russia, Ukraine’s economy needs more Western help-especially investment in infrastructure. …
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Marton Eder – November 13, 2014) Almost one year after the Maidan Square demonstrations began in central Kiev, Ukraine’s record-high borrowing costs are showing how difficult the path toward Europe has become. The yield on Ukraine’s dollar-denominated note due in July 2017 hit a record 17.95 percent yesterday, almost quadruple the average borrowing cost for emerging […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 14 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin says it would be useless to initiate a discussion of anti-Russian sanctions at the G20 summit in Australia and denies cooling in relations with German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. “If the subject [of sanctions] is raised, I will speak about it, of course, but I am not going to raise these […]
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(RIA Novosti – Donetsk, November 13, 2014) Representative of the DPR [Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic] at the tripartite negotiations Denys Pushylin [Denis Pushilin] has called for a new meeting of the Minsk Group with the participation of the OSCE, Ukraine and Russia as soon as possible. “We insist that the Minsk Group should meet immediately and invite representatives of […]
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… 17. Interfax-Ukraine: Advisor to SBU chief: There are all signs that Russia is preparing for active hostilities.
18. Wall Street Journal: Ukraine Digs In to Keep Donetsk Airport From Rebels. Villagers Hide in Cellars Amid Daily Barrages From Both Sides.
19. RFE/RL: Robert Coalson, News Analysis: What’s Behind The Resurgence Of Fighting In Eastern Ukraine? …