NOVO OGARYOVO (outside Moscow), October 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has enough reserves to implement all the tasks under the state budget regardless of global political and economic trends, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday. “We certainly have reserves to resolve the issues that could arise as a result of developments of the situation in the world and in Russia,” […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – YASNAYA POLYANA, Tula Region – October 3, 2014) When they were in their 50s, Elaine and Alfred Podovinikoff packed up their lives in their native Canada and emigrated to a muddy, provincial Russian settlement with a single paved road and freely roaming chickens. The Podovinikoffs resettled just south of Tula – an […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 3, 2014) Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko reaffirmed to foreign investors that his goal is for Ukraine to ultimately join the European Union, and for this sweeping reforms are necessary. “This involves a significant number of reforms and solving problems. It’s hardly possible to conduct 62 reforms simultaneously, but we have no choice,” Poroshenko […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Alexandr Litoy – October 2, 2014) Alexandr Litoy is a Moscow-based journalist, specialising in socio-political issues and extremism among the youth. He began his career at Novaya Gazeta, has worked with RBC Holdings and is currently a freelance journalist. The Donbas separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army with the help of volunteers from all over the world […]
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WASHINGTON, October 3 (RIA Novosti) – US ready to lift some of the sanctions against Russia if the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk is observed, US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland stated. “When the Minsk agreement is fully implemented, we can and will begin to roll back some sanctions. It is in Russia’s hands when that day comes,” Nuland […]
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DONETSK. Oct 3 (Interfax) – There has been a series of explosions in the Donetsk center, an Interfax correspondent said on Thursday. Presumably, it was shells fired by Ukrainian servicemen that exploded. In turn, representatives of Second Republican Channel of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic told Interfax about the Ukrainian army’s bombardment of the channel’s head office. “Several shells have […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Agnes Lovasz, Daryna Krasnolutska – October 2, 2014) The bloody conflict in Ukraine’s east is severing the arteries that connect the nation’s economy. The effects are being felt hundreds of miles from the unrest in industries as different as electricity and food processing. Power plants at the other end of the country are being starved of […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 3, 2014) The EU is considering expanding sanctions against Russia if rebels in Eastern Ukraine move to capture Donetsk airport or the port city of Mariupol. Bloomberg cited a source close to the German government on October 2 discussing the option of expanding sanctions against Russia if Donetsk airport or Mariupol were taken. […]
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DONETSK/KYIV. Oct 3 (Interfax) – Armed clashes for control over the Donetsk airport continue, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) told Interfax on Friday morning. “Fighting continues. Several buildings on the premises of the Donetsk airport are currently under our control. But it is too early to say that we are already controlling […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#207:: Friday 3 October 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 JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Ukraine 1. Moscow Times: Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia Has No Way Back From […]
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MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti) – The United States and US President Barack Obama personally forced the European Union members to introduce sanctions against Russian over its stance on the Ukrainian crisis, US Vice President Joe Biden announced. Washington rallied “the world’s most developed countries to impose real cost on Russia” and introduce restrictive measures against Moscow, Biden said at […]
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(RIA Novosti – Alexander Mercouris, London-based lawyer – LONDON, October 2, 2014) The EU repeatedly boasts of its commitment to the rule of law. In reality, the legal basis of the sanctions it has imposed on Russia is extremely dubious. However, past experience shows that even when the EU’s own courts declare sanctions illegal, the EU, despite its fulsome proclamations, […]
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… 10. Reuters: Merkel tells Putin Moscow has duty to temper separatists in Ukraine.
11. www.foreignpolicy.com: Alec Luhn, Cluster Bombs in Potato Fields and Tripwires on the Cow Path. Cleaning up after five months of war in eastern Ukraine.
12. Interfax: Ukraine rebels’ reports of “mass grave” of 400 a “misunderstanding”, leader says. …
(RFE/RL – Luke Johnson – October 02, 2014) After chairing a meeting of the Russian Security Council on October 1, President Vladimir Putin insisted the Kremlin was not planning to limit access to the Internet or put it under total state control. The authorities would, however, take additional measures to increase cybersecurity and continue to shut down sites promoting extremism, xenophobia, […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 2 (Interfax) – Russia has no intention of ending its relations with its traditional partners, including Europe, and expansion of cooperation with China is a global trend, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “Russia is also thinking about expansion of cooperation with China, and it didn’t begin thinking about it yesterday or due to some sanctions or political restrictions. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 2, 2014) David Petrosyan had hoped his 15-year-old sister would spend a year studying at a U.S. high school, something he had done years earlier that had a lasting impact on his ambitious academic pursuits. “For me, doing a FLEX program proved that I can achieve something with my brain alone. It was […]
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(RIA Novosti – Moscow, October 1, 2014) It is absurd to raise the issue of a possible closure of the Russian borders, the Russian president’s press secretary Dmitriy Peskov has said, commenting on a survey by the Levada Centre about the possibility of a return of the Iron Curtain. “The absurdity of this survey does not require any answer,” Peskov […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 2, 2014) Ukrainian manufacturing is taking a heavy hit across the country and not just in the war-torn Donbass, as the economic collapse and loss of Russian markets take their toll. Vehicle producers are worst hit, with a number of companies closing their doors and laying off workers. Lviv bus plant announced on […]
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(RIA Novosti – October 1, 2014) Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksey Meshkov has said that the OSCE mission’s reports on the situation in Ukraine have become more objective, the Russian RIA Novosti news agency reported on 1 October. “The mission’s work has become much more balanced, which, on the one hand, has made their reports more objective, but on the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – September 29, 2014) As Moscow’s weather gradually cools down, the temperature of political discourse is definitely heating up. A public spat over the place in history of novelist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn led last week to some fighting words that culminated with a popular actor, Yevgeny Mironov, slinging rhetorical mud at a […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, October 1, 2014) Russian Investigations Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin has rejected allegations that the committee has exceeded its authority and interfered in Ukraine’s internal affairs by launching a criminal case into the genocide of Russian-speaking citizens in Donbass [area in and around Donetsk Region]. “Specially for those questioning the legality of the Investigations Committee’s investigation: I want […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, October 1, 2014) Sources in the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic [DPR] have specified that the burial site on the outskirts of Makeyevka [a settlement in east Ukraine] only contained the remains of 9 people, while the 400 unidentified bodies the republic’s authorities spoke about earlier came to morgues from different parts of the region. “We were misunderstood […]
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(Interfax – October 2, 2014) Seventy-eight percent of Russian citizens recently interviewed by the Levada Center said they knew about the ceasefire which exists between Kiev and the self-proclaimed Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republics (LPR), and 19 percent said they had only learnt about it from the center’s sociologists, a Levada Center spokesman told Interfax. Sixty-eight percent of the […]
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(Business New Europe – October 2, 2014) Kharkiv authorities have said they will re-erect the central square statue of Vladimir Lenin that was toppled by pro-Ukraine activists. Kharkiv deputy head Ihor Terekhov said that “understanding the illegality of the monument’s toppling, the city authorities have ordered scaffolding to be put in place around the pedestal and in the immediate future […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Tom Balmforth – MOSCOW, October 2, 2014) You can call it the “people’s lustration,” the “Trash-Bucket Challenge,” or mob rule. But by whatever name, Ukrainian activists are increasingly taking the matter of punishing officials from the old regime into their own hands. Impatient with unsigned lustration legislation, activists from groups like the ultranationalist Right Sector have been tossing officials in trash […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Jake Rudnitsky – October 2, 2014) Russian oil output rose to near a post-Soviet record last month, a sign the biggest source of revenue for President Vladimir Putin’s government has yet to be eroded by U.S. and European sanctions. The nation increased output 0.7 percent to 10.61 million barrels a day, according to preliminary data from […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexey Eremenko – October 1, 2014) It seems unfeasible that Russia, which holds a fifth of the planet’s forests, could run out of wood. And yet it is happening, at least with commercially usable forests, environmental analysts say. The Russian logging industry will face lack of harvestable timber in 10 to 20 years, a short […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Ilya Arkhipov, Ryan Chilcote – September 30, 2014) President Vladimir Putin won’t be swayed by sanctions over Ukraine because he doesn’t allow such pressures to affect his decisions, said Igor Sechin, head of OAO Rosneft (ROSN), Russia’s biggest oil company. “He will never let himself be pressured into making a decision,” Sechin, who’s worked with the […]
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MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – There is an increasing risk of radicalization among Muslim youth in Russia, Russian News Paper Kommersant reported on Wednesday. A large group of Muslim youth attacked a police bus on September 26, as the police arrested a man, who drove into an officer, after being told to move his car, parked in a no-parking […]
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(Interfax – October 1, 2014) Russia has withdrawn from the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) education program with the U.S. as the latter has violated its obligations on returning Russian schoolchildren home after they studied there, says Russian presidential commissioner on children’s rights Pavel Astakhov. “One of the reasons is the gross violation by the host party (the U.S.) of its […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 1, 2014) More than half of all Russians are against the idea of the government broadening a ban on travel to Western countries, a recent survey has shown, but one third considers more groups should be prevented from leaving the country. Out of the 1,600 people questioned by independent pollster Levada Center, only 55 […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, September 30, 2014) A relative majority of Russians (39 per cent) believe that democracy in the Russian Federation was [and is] at its height under the rule of Vladimir Putin: 12 per cent said that it was so during the first two terms of Putin’s presidency (2000-2008), and 27 per cent – during this term (since 2012), […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 1 (Interfax) – The Russian government is developing measures to prevent attempts to disrupt the operations of the Russian segment of the Internet, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “It is necessary to continue to promptly prevent attempts to disrupt the stable operations of the Russian segment of the Internet. Interagency exercises to prevent such attempts were conducted in […]
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MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti), Nastassia Astrasheuskaya – Less is more was the ruling principle for Bolshoi’s musical director Tugan Sokhiev at the premiere of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s rare opera The Made of Orleans. He chose to have no decorations or exquisite costumes in the concert opera, staged at the theatre for the second time in its 239-year history. The telling […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 1, 2014) A dangerous but entirely predictable trend is occurring in both Russia and the West: Many who see what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine as a crime are saying he is mad or insane, an approach that simultaneously makes him less responsible for what he has done and leaves […]
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MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – The United States is deploying some 700 troops as well as battle tanks in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland in the next couple of weeks, NBC News reported Wednesday. “The purpose is to be a very visible demonstration of commitment to our allies,” said Captain John Farmer, public affairs officer for the Ironhorse, formal […]
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MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that more than 400 bodies have been discovered in mass graves near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, in what he described as “horrific” evidence that pointed to a war crime. “This is obviously a war crime. Already more than 400 bodies have been discovered in […]
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Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 From: Paul Backer <contact@skalalaw.com> Subject: Russia sanctions, implementing client sanctions policies Part 1. Russia sanctions, implementing client sanctions policies. Skala Law client update. Sanctions’ impact will worsen through 2015. Failing to understand sanctions’ purpose and enforcement materially and avoidably damages listed and unlisted entities. Lack of a sanctions policy renders entities noncompetitive in tenders and […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.ru – September 30, 2014) Russia’s official communications regulator Roskomnadzor says it will enforce a recently passed law that could force foreign-owned internet companies to store the data of Russian users on Russia data centres, as part of a Kremlin drive towards what it calls ‘information sovereignty’. Major US-based internet companies such as Facebook, Google, and […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Maxim Kantor – September 29, 2014) Maxim Kantor is a painter, novelist and playwright. His latest novel V tu storonu (In that direction), which explores the parallel between the financial crisis and a malignant tumour, will be published in Russia shortly. When communism ended, Russia’s people wanted democracy. Instead, they got the market and neoliberalism. Now, it appears, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – September 30, 2014) Democracy is important to most Russians, but they can’t seem to agree on what exactly it is, according to a survey published Monday. In the survey, conducted by the state-run pollster Public Opinion Foundation and published by the Kommersant newspaper Monday, 63 percent of respondents said it was important […]
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(RIA Novosti – September 27, 2014) Both sides in Ukraine conflict signed a much-awaited treaty aimed at ending hostilities, which claimed thousands of lives and put the war-torn eastern regions on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. Twelve-point memorandum, banning military action in Ukraine came as result of grueling negotiations held in Minsk and brokered by Russia and the Organization for […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#205 :: Wednesday 1 October 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 JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Ukraine 1. Euromaidan PR: Expert: by applying in 2020, Ukraine will become an […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#204 :: Tuesday 30 September 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 JRL on Twitter: twitter.com/JohnsonRussiaLi Support JRL: russialist.org/funding.php 4 Ukraine 1. Reuters: EU keeps Russia sanctions in place, sees ‘encouraging’ […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Oleg Kashin – September 24, 2014) Oleg Kashin is a prominent Russian journalist. His work has appeared in Kommersant, Lenta, Colta and numerous other publications. One of the main elements of collective consciousness in post-Soviet Russia is a belief that this consciousness can be manipulated in the most unlikely ways. The Hollywood film Wag the Dog, a satirical […]
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KYIV. Sept 30 (Interfax) – The lustration law passed by Verkhovna Rada complies neither with the Ukrainian Constitution, nor international law, its enactment will entail negative consequences, said Vitaliy Yarema, the country’s Prosecutor General. “As regards lustration, I have (expressed) my point of view, and not only mine but also that of the legal experts working at the Prosecutor General’s […]
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BRUSSELS. Sept 30 (Interfax) – Russia is awaiting the European Commission’s proposal to lift its concerns about the enforcement of the EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA), Russian Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov told reporters. “The decision of the European Council was anticipated and quite consistent with the agreement reached in the Russia-Ukraine-EU trilateral format […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – COMMENT: Ben Aris in Moscow – September 30, 2014) Russia is actively preparing for a war that nobody wants and that will probably never happen. But its increasingly obvious commitment to real preparations for a potential military conflict with the West have been convincing enough to create trump cards in the diplomatic and sanctions […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, September 28, 2014) The oldest Russian noncommercial organization [the usual Russian phrase for what is referred to elsewhere as NGOs], the Moscow Helsinki Group, had to scrap the majority of its human rights projects due to a shortage of funds, Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alekseyeva told Interfax on Monday [28 September]. “We have limited our activities. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – September 30, 2014) An opposition lawmaker who inquired about the reported deaths of Russian paratroopers in Ukraine has been told by the Defense Ministry that the accounts are “rumors” and that releasing information about military casualties would violate privacy laws. State Duma lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov – one of the few critics of President Vladimir Putin’s […]
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