DONETSK. Sept 9 (Interfax) – Residents of the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka claim that the explosion of a shell launched from Ukrainian army positions destroyed a stretch of railway on Tuesday. “The Ukrainian troops ruined a stretch of railway. There was a commuter train going from our station, from Avdiidka to Krasnoarmeisk. Now there is no service on the stretch. […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Liz Fuller – September 7, 2014) September 7 marks the first anniversary of the death from poisoning of Doku Umarov, the Chechen field commander who abandoned the cause of an independent Chechen Republic Ichkeria in 2007 and instead proclaimed a Caucasus Emirate (IK) encompassing the entire North Caucasus. While Umarov’s death has had only minimal impact on the […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 8 (Interfax) – The Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) has affirmed its preliminary estimate of 0.8% year-on-year GDP growth for the second quarter of 2014, the agency said. GDP was 17.697 trillion rubles in current prices in Q2. Rosstat published its preliminary estimate for Q2 in the middle of August. The Russian Economic Development Ministry estimated the economy […]
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(Interfax – September 8, 2014) The Russian economy is projected to grow 0.5 percent this year, and while this is not a very good figure, the situation in other countries does not differ much from Russia, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Russian newspaper Vedomosti. “We have focused on significantly higher growth rates. Now we are […]
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MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – Berlin will neither increase its military spending at the request of NATO on account of the crises in Ukraine and Iraq, nor decrease it, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said in an interview with ARD. “Currently, the Bundeswehr is well equipped and is fully prepared for participation in military actions”, Germany’s Spiegel […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Anna Boiko, special to RBTH – September 7, 2014) Baseball has struggled in Russia, but is showing signs of life among the nation’s youth. The all-American sport of baseball has few fans among the Russians, who have long favored soccer or hockey. Yet the game has its own history here, and its own […]
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Subject: South shore of the Kola peninsual Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2014 14:09:31 -0500 From: William Brumfield <william.brumfield@gmail.com> David, below is announcement for the latest in my RBTH series. A stunning part of northwest Russia. Regards, William —— My current article for Russia beyond the Headlines is devoted to the south shore of the Kola Peninsula. Located near the Arctic […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Matthew Bodner – September 8, 2014) As West’s Cold-War-era military alliance cranks its belligerence levels up to 11, NATO’s historic enemy, Russia, is rejigging its own military thinking in response. In response to the harder stance confirmed at NATO’s summit last week in Wales, Russian officials are revisiting the country’s war doctrine, mulling its nuclear […]
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MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – Kiev will stop being dependent on Russian gas in five years, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in an interview to Ukraine’s 1+1 television channel. The “victory” is achieved when Ukraine will not buy Russian gas at all, which could be accomplished in a five-year period, Yatsenyuk said in an interview released on Sunday. […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow – September 8, 2014) [Charts here http://www.bne.eu/content/story/gas-war-seen-next-phase-russia-ukraine-conflict] Even if a lasting ceasefire in eastern Ukraine can be secured, the cessation of military hostilities will only mark the beginning of a new fight. The battle between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies is about to restart and will probably come to […]
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MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – The United States supports Nazi-like Kiev regime as it is the only anti-Russian force that exists in Ukraine, director of the Moscow-based Institute of Globalization Studies said Monday. “The US supports them out of need, simply because they are the only existing anti-Russian,Russophobic force that exists in Ukraine. It’s understood that had Hitler attacked […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Tseytlin, special to RBTH – September 8, 2014) Sergei Tseytlin is a freelance translator who also works for RBTH. Sergei Tseitlin was born in Moscow and grew up in New York. He has been living in Italy for last 16 years – first in Milan, then in Venice, and now he lives […]
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MOSCOW, September 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is not planning to change its development course, despite being subject to external disturbances, according to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “The conditions for economic development, for the development of the country and people’s lives are certainly not simple. Speaking bluntly, as a member of the country’s leadership, I can say that I […]
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KYIV. Sept 8 (Interfax) – Donetsk Mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko says the military action has done “massive” damage to the city. “It’s in the billions [hryvni]. If we take the industrial sector, residential; buildings, social infrastructure, energy facilities, and railway, it will be a colossal amount of damage. It will take the city’s economy a lot of time to return to […]
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From PBS, Jeffrey Brown interviews Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, about unfolding events in Ukraine and the Western response. Click here for transcript: pbs.org/newshour/bb/will-cease-fire-ukraine-russian-separatists-last/
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#196 :: Saturday 6 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 1. Reuters: Putin is under Satan’s influence – leader of Kiev […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Robert Coalson – September 6, 2014) Czech President Milos Zeman sparked a testy exchange with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt this week at the NATO summit in Wales, declaring that Prague had not yet seen “clear proof” of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. “President Zeman should ask his own people,” Bildt retorted. “I don’t know if the Czech Republic […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – September 8, 2014) For the ceasefire deal struck in Belarus between the government in Kyiv and separatist rebels on September 5 to hold, Ukraine needed to get through at least 48 hours without a major clash between the opposing sides. By the morning of September 8 it seemed that the ceasefire had survived the […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Charles Recknagel – September 05, 2014) When Russian President Vladimir Putin looks at Ukraine, does he see Bosnia? The Balkan country, which has a tripartite presidency that reflects its ethnic balance, has remained at peace for almost two decades since the 1995 Dayton accords ended its three-year war. But it is widely regarded as a state in permanent […]
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MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) – The crisis in Ukraine has become an excuse for NATO’s long nurtured plans of eastward expansion and the build-up of its forces on the Russian border, Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday commenting on the NATO summit in Wales. “The summit adopted a line towards NATO’s eastward expansion and build-up of its presence near Russia’s […]
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(RIA Novosti – September 5, 2014) Minsk, 5 September: In addition to the OSCE, the leaders of Ukraine and Russia, who initiated the peace process, are the guarantors of the Minsk accords, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Luhansk republic, Igor Plotnitskiy [Ihor Plotnytskyy], has said. As part of the Friday [5 September] meeting in Minsk of the trilateral contact […]
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KYIV. Sept 6 (Interfax) – For the first time in the past few months Luhansk was quiet overnight, with no shooting, but the city is still without electricity, water and communications, the city council said on Saturday. “According to residents, as of September 6, the night was quiet for the first time in the past few months, and there was […]
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NEWPORT, September 5 (RIA Novosti) – NATO and Ukraine did not discuss the possibility of the Eastern European country’s membership in the military alliance, a NATO official said Friday. “In regard to membership, no, that question wasn’t raided and wasn’t discussed,” the official said on conditions of anonymity. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian government approved legislation to change the country’s “non-bloc” […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 5, 2014) While NATO on Thursday called on Russia to “end its illegal annexation of Crimea,” the organizers of a U.S. beauty pageant seem unfazed about the peninsula’s political status, and are planning to ship the country’s most beautiful married women to Sevastopol. Organizers of the Mrs. America beauty contest revealed Monday that they […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – September 5, 2014) As the NATO summit gets under way in Wales and world leaders put on a united front against the growing threat posed by radical terrorist organization the Islamic State, continued bickering between Russia and the West over events in Ukraine threatens to give the “apocalyptic” group carte blanche to […]
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KYIV. Sept 4 (Interfax) – The Solidarity party led by Petro Poroshenko, the Radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko, and the Batkivshchyna all-Ukrainian association have roughly equal electoral ratings in the run-up to early parliamentary elections scheduled in Ukraine for October 26, 2014, as is seen from a poll conducted by GfK Ukraine. In particular, 16% of respondents plan to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Howard Amos – September 5, 2014) The Russian business world is braced for the European Union’s unfurling of a fresh round of economic sanctions on Friday, with analysts predicting that Russia’s $2 trillion economy will be squeezed even tighter while its companies face isolation from international markets. A peace plan sketched out by President Vladimir […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) – The updated Russian military doctrine will not designate a potential enemy and conditions of a preventive nuclear strike against it; such information is available in classified directives, former Russian General Staff Chief Gen. of the Army Yuri Baluyevsky, who co-authored the 2010 military doctrine of Russia, told Interfax-AVN on Friday. “The state military doctrine is […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) – Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society and former prime minister of Russia, believes the purpose of the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies on Russia is to get Vladimir Putin out of power and isolate Russia on the international scene. In his letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, the text […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gevorg Mirzayan, special to RBTH – September 4, 2014) Moscow has a vital interest in maintaining a unified Ukraine in which the pro-Russian south-eastern regions will have a distinct voice. The main goal of Russia’s support for the militants in the Donbass region is to ultimately prevent Ukraine’s entry into NATO and to […]
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MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) – The OSCE intends to increase the number of its observers in Ukraine to 500, which may be enough for monitoring a ceasefire observance in eastern Ukraine, in the nearest future, Russian permanent envoy to the OSCE Andrei Kelin said. “We will begin recruiting in the nearest future. We may increase the mission [in Ukraine] to […]
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(opendemocracy.net – ALEKSANDR CHORNYKH – September 2, 2014) Aleksandr Chornykh writes for the Russian newspaper Kommersant. He specialises on education in Russia, and is one of the leading experts in his field. In Soviet times, the KGB kept a close watch on intellectuals – they might turn out to be dissidents. Today, the FSB still skulks on university corridors… In the Soviet […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 4, 2014) Russia’s Justice Ministry added a Moscow-based think tank that specializes in nuclear arms research to its controversial list of “foreign agents” on Wednesday. The designation means that the PIR Center, founded in 1994, has been found to receive funding from abroad and to conduct political activities, thus meeting two criteria that require […]
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(PONARS Eurasia – ponarseurasia.org – Vladimir Gelman – September 2014) Distinguished Professor, Political Sciences and Sociology; Aleksanteri Institute at the Finnish Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies In the 2000s, most experts considered the role of political opposition in Russia as peripheral at best. But with the protest wave of 2011-12, opposition actors and movements reentered the political arena. What factors […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 2, 2014) On the 10th anniversary of the Beslan terrorist attack in which more than 330 people died, a poll revealed Monday that fewer Russians think authorities mishandled the crisis than in 2004. The poll, conducted by the independent Levada Center from Aug. 22 to 25, showed a less critical attitude toward the authorities’ […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – September 1, 2014) The children who set off for their first day of school 10 years ago in the small Caucasus town of Beslan, North Ossetia, will graduate from high school this coming academic year – at least, those who survived will. On Sept. 1, 2004, a group of 32 armed terrorists […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – September 4, 2014) It’s not quite true that the Lyubimovka play festival is the first real event of each theater season in Moscow. This year, for example, some 10 top venues, including the Moscow Art Theater, the Mayakovsky and the Gogol Center, are already up and running. Historically Lyubimovka wasn’t even held […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 3, 2014) The Presidential Human Rights Council has prepared amendments to a controversial law that would stop nongovernmental organizations being fined for failing to register as “foreign agents,” Kommersant reported Tuesday. A law introduced by the government in 2012 requires NGOs that receive funding from abroad and are engaged in loosely defined political activity […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 4, 2014) Russian women place first in the world in terms of how much time they spend in front of a mirror, a study conducted by U.S. company Harris Interactive revealed. Fifty-seven percent of Russian women between the ages of 18 and 49 spend at least 45 minutes getting ready before leaving the house, […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexei Lossan, RBTH -September 1, 2014) The Russian Economic Development Ministry has considerably revised its forecast for economic development parameters for 2015-2017 for the worse. These include a drop in oil and gas production and lower oil prices. Experts predict that the forecast may be further revised, either up or down, as early […]
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MOSCOW, September 4 (RIA Novosti) – The leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in eastern Ukraine said in a joint statement Thursday they were ready to order ceasefire on Friday afternoon if a peace plan is signed during negotiations in Minsk. “We are ready to order ceasefire at 3:00 p.m. Moscow time [11:00 GMT] if an agreement […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – September 4, 2014) Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko called for a “permanent ceasefire” on September 3, following a call to Russian President Vladimir Putin, raising hopes that peace was around the corner in Ukraine. Those hopes were dented later the same day when the Ukrainian presidential website where the announcement had first appeared revised the […]
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MOSCOW, September 4 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow is ready to explain and clarify the provisions of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seven-point plan on Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday. “We, as a country that in cooperation with OSCE officials has been trying to launch a substantive and meaningful dialogue between Kiev and southeastern Ukraine, have put forward a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 4, 2014) More than 70 percent of Russians would ban imports of booze and cigarettes from Western countries in retaliation for sanctions, but few would give up foreign cars or pay an additional tax on vacations abroad, a recent poll indicated. Other popular measures included blacklisting foreign hotels (supported by 77 percent) and banning […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#195 :: Friday 5 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 1. The Times (UK): Neo-Nazis give Kiev a last line of defence […]
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(Interfax – September 3, 2014) Putin’s plan to settle the situation in Ukraine is only a proposal on priority measures, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitriy Peskov has said, Russian privately-owned Interfax news agency reported on 3 September. “This is not an exhaustive plan. It is a proposal on priority measures and everything else is an issue for further talks,” Peskov told […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 4, 2014) A new survey released by the independent Levada Center on Wednesday revealed a tendency among Russians to characterize Ukrainians by negative personality traits, and their Russians compatriots by favorable ones. Forty-seven percent of respondents to the poll, which was conducted between Aug. 22 and 25, said Russians were generally willing to offer […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 4, 2014) The majority of Russia’s urban population is breathing highly polluted air, including at least 14 million people in 38 cities where pollutant concentrations are 10 times above acceptable levels, according to a recent report by the national weather and environment service. Moscow was among cities that rated high on air pollution, mostly […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Luke Johnson – September 03, 2014) Kyiv appears to have taken a page from Stalin’s book in a bid to root out pro-Russian spies looking to weaken Ukraine’s defenses from within. Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey has announced the creation of a Special Service, similar to a counterintelligence organization that existed during Josef Stalin’s rule, to deal with subversive […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – September 4, 2014) Members of the Islamic State, a violent group of extremists presently terrorizing Iraq and Syria, have released a video threatening President Vladimir Putin and vowing to wage war in Russia’s restive North Caucasus. Message to Putin A video released by Al Arabiya and reportedly filmed in a seized airport in […]
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