(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – October 16, 2014) Consumer confidence in Russia’s financial system is falling, with half of Russians saying they don’t trust banks and are using such services less, in a troubling signal for a system under pressure from Western sanctions and more sensitive than ever to outflows of depositors, a recent study showed. In […]
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(Voice of America – Andre de Nesnera – October 15, 2014) After several rounds of international sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in March and support of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, experts are divided over whether they are working. “It depends on what your understanding of the purpose of sanctions is,” said Matthew Rojansky with […]
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(Interfax – October 16, 2014) Ukraine’s new lustration law may lead to political persecution in the country, but Europe has approved of this document, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights commissioner, Konstantin Dolgov, has said. “I totally agree with remarks concerning the lustration problem. Indeed, the West prefers not to comment on this law. Effectively, it is the legitimization of […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 16, 2014) Most of Russia’s indicators of economic health have plummeted this year. Inflation last month was at its highest level in three years, capital outflow this year is expected to exceed $100 billion, the ruble has lost almost 20 percent of its value since January, and economic growth is anaemic, […]
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MOSCOW, October 16 (RIA Novosti) – Russia should make every effort to guarantee freedom of expression, support media pluralism, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher told RIA Novosti, regarding the new law, which has reduced the possible share of foreign stockholders in Russian media. “An essential feature of freedom of expression in a democratic society is media pluralism, and Russia, […]
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VIENNA, October 16 (RIA Novosti) – Amid numerous US sanctions against Russia, Moscow has every right to begin introducing sanctions against the United States, but chooses not to follow this path, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister told RIA Novosti. “This is a reflexive, instincts-based reaction of Washington on what does not fit into the American idea of how, with whom, to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – October 16, 2014) Despite an economic slump and rising inflation, the majority of Russians believe that Western sanctions and Russia’s retaliatory ban on food imports will actually help the economy, a poll published Thursday showed. Only 25 percent of respondents expect sanctions to damage the Russian economy, and only 26 percent expect […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 16, 2014) The ruble dropped to another historic low on October 15, passing the RUB41 per dollar mark in morning trading, but analysts said Russia’s central bank is not panicking because ruble weakness is bolstering manufacturing growth and budget revenues. “The CBR is not panicking either in terms of the scale of its […]
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(Interfax – October 15, 2014) Kremlin chief of staff Sergey Ivanov has said that the house arrest of billionaire businessman Vladimir Yevtushenkov is damaging Russia’s investment climate. In an interview with popular pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which was quoted by Interfax news agency, Ivanov said that “I agree, this [the arrest of Yevtushenkov] is having a bad influence of the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 16, 2014) The number of Russian officials has decreased slightly from 2009, but their collective earnings have grown 31 percent to 682 billion rubles ($16 billion), a new study showed Wednesday. Russia had 1.45 million officials in 2013, compared with 1.5 million five years ago, the study conducted by the RBC news website said. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 16, 2014) Former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev has called on Russia and the West to put an end to their war of words and retaliatory sanctions over Ukraine and discuss a practical solution to the crisis. “How can you conduct a dialogue if you ‘punish’ the people in power who influence politics?” Gorbachev said […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – October 15, 2014) It’s futile for the U.S. and its allies to “blackmail” Russia over the Ukraine crisis, President Vladimir Putin said in a newspaper interview. Russia’s partners should remember the risks involved in disputes between nuclear powers, Putin said. He accused Barack Obama of adopting a “hostile” approach in naming Russia as a threat to […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, October 15, 2014) Russians support the president of the Russian Federation and more and more often see their trust in Vladimir Putin as a reflection of his successful handling of the problems facing Russia, sociologists have told Interfax. A poll conducted by the [Russian independent polling organization] Levada Centre among 1,630 people in 143 population centres in […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Yana Polyanska, Claire Bigg – October 15, 2014) The standoff between Kyiv and Moscow has reached food stores in the Ukrainian capital, where Russian-imported goods are soon to be marked with special labels. The Kyiv city legislature has approved legislation ordering stores to enforce the new measure, which its initiator, lawmaker Ruslan Andriyko, says aims at warning […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#215 :: Wednesday 15 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 1. Business New Europe: Ukraine’s lustration law bans up to a million […]
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(Interfax – October 15, 2014) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev believes a reset for Russia-U.S. relations will be impossible while sanctions are still in place, at least until the sides “go back to square one.” “No, of course not. It’s absolutely impossible,” Medvedev said in an interview with the channel CNBS answering a question whether a reset could happen while […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, October 14, 2014) The USA was involved in the collapse of the Soviet Union and tried to destroy Russia; Washington’s current attitude to Moscow resembles a cold war, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev has said. “President Barack Obama’s new administration started sending signals about the need to resume a mutually beneficial dialogue with Russia on a […]
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WASHINGTON, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine is not only facing a gas crisis this coming winter, but also a possible overall energy crisis due to disruptions in coal mining and transportation facilities, said Tatiana Mitrova, head of the Oil and Gas Department at the Russian Academy of Sciences Energy Research Institute (ERI RAS). “[It is] not just a potential […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 11, Issue 181 – Pavel K. Baev – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – October 14, 2014) Considering Russia’s shocking transformation in the course of just half a year, it is easy to forget that last February the country was united in the joy of hosting the Sochi Winter Olympic games. The issues that dominated the political […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – October 13, 2014 – Daisy Sindelar) Russia’s Justice Ministry has asked the country’s Supreme Court to liquidate Memorial, the country’s oldest and best-known human rights organization, which groups together more than 50 bodies nationwide. Founded in 1989 under the auspices of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, Memorial has led efforts to uncover communist-era repressions and fight discrimination […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Neil Melvin – October 9, 2014) Neil Melvin is director of the Armed Conflict and Conflict Management Programme at SIPRI In recent months, the ‘frozen’ Karabakh conflict has been more fire than ice. With outside powers stoking the flames, what are the chances of finally securing peace? During the summer months, as international headlines were dominated by the […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Galiya Ibragimova, RBTH – October 14, 2014) Russia has announced its intention to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 70-75 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. However, specialists interviewed by RBTH are divided on whether the plans are realistic, with some arguing that the pledge is incompatible with Russia’s energy strategy through 2035. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexey Eremenko – October 14, 2014) Russia is the only country among the world’s biggest economies whose biological resources not only exceed its environmental footprint but are continuing to grow, a new study said. WWF Russia on Monday presented a report on Russia’s biocapacity, or the capability of its ecosystems to produce resources useful for […]
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MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is not going to introduce new measures in response to Western economic sanctions, Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov told reporters on Tuesday. “We are not interested in responding [to Western sanctions] with some unreasonable measures. It’s our [Western] colleagues who should be thinking about when they will lift [the sanctions], […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 14 (Interfax) – The Central Bank of Russia’s ruble exchange rate policy is “optimal,” Sberbank of Russia (MOEX: SBER) President and CEO German Gref said. “The policy that the Central Bank is pursuing is, in my view, optimal from the standpoint of managing the exchange rate. The economy is self-tuning, because the processes underway are very complex. Over […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 14, 2014) On paper, Russian companies have huge foreign debts, and no way of refinancing them because sanctions effectively close Western capital markets to Russian borrowers. But with much of Russian corporate foreign debt in fact hidden equity investments from offshore zones, the figures seem much worse than they are. International headlines are […]
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(Interfax – October 14, 2014) Russia will use long-term measures to protect itself from Western sanctions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said. “We will certainly adopt all the measures needed to protect ourselves from unlawful restrictions. You are aware of the resources that are being allocated for these purposes. Beyond any doubt, it will be a long-term program,” he […]
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(Interfax – October 14, 2014) A comparison of genomes of ancient Europeans and people living in contemporary countries has shown that a Siberian tribe is an ancestor of modern Europeans, said Olga Posukh, senior research fellow of the human molecular genetics laboratory of the Cytology and Genetics Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian branch. “A certain genetic component of […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 14 (Interfax) – The European Union plans to review its sanctions against Russia at the end of October, the Head of the EU Delegation to Russia, Ambassador Vygaudas Usackas, said when answering a question from Interfax on the sidelines of the European Business Association forum in Moscow on Tuesday. The results of such a review will depend on […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 14, 2014) Russia’s statistics agency on Tuesday launched a sweeping census of the population in the Crimea region, which the country annexed from Ukraine in March. Residents will be asked to field 33 questions on their age, ethnicity, spouse and children, native language and housing and income, the regional branch of the State Statistics […]
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MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – The window of possibility for finding a solution to the civil conflict in Ukraine is now open, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday. “Today, the window of possibility to overcome the Ukrainian crisis is open. Practical measures are being agreed upon and implemented on the basis of ceasefire agreements reached on the initiative […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 14, 2014) Russia and China signed a raft of 40 agreements encompassing trade, energy, finance and technology, following a meeting between Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang, on October 14 in Moscow. The agreements demonstrate how Russia is looking for other options, after sanctions imposed on Russia in […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin- October 14, 2014) President Vladimir Putin has approved the creation of a state-owned oil exploration drilling corporation that will replace Western oil service companies forced to reduce operations in Russia by sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine, a news report said Monday. In a time of “sharply escalating international tensions,” a national oil service […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – October 13, 2014) Yury Lyubimov once told me about meeting the great director Vsevolod Meyerhold. This happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1987. I paid Lyubimov a visit to talk about his old friend, the playwright Nikolai Erdman, but the conversation, naturally and fortunately, took plenty of detours. The story in Lyubimov’s words […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Tim Ash, Standard Bank – October 13, 2014) I spent the last past week in DC trying to gauge better the Western response function to the crisis in Ukraine and with Russia. Herein are a few big picture take-outs from my discussions with a range of academics, journalists and policy types. First, the contrast […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexander Bratersky, special to RBTH- October 13, 2014) The current breakdown in bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia has brought a return to rhetoric and attitudes previously associated with the Cold War. When a group of Russian high schoolers were shown an artificial launching site during an excursion to a Cold War-era […]
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MOSCOW, October 13 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow opposes confrontation with the West as a joint international effort is required to counter threats to global stability, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. “Despite the hostile behavior of the Western partners, we still oppose sliding into the primitive scenario of a direct confrontation between Russia and the West. Russia is ready […]
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(Bloomberg – boomberg.com – Henry Meyer, Evgenia Pismennaya – October 13, 2014) Defying his former enemies in the U.S. and Europe may force Vladimir Putin to aid the ascent of his biggest rival in the east. Isolated over Ukraine, Russia is relying on China for the investment it needs to avert a recession, three people involved in policy planning said, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – October 13, 2014) Russia’s Justice Ministry has filed a claim with the Supreme Court seeking the liquidation of the Russian Memorial Society, an independent human rights group. Critics say the move exemplifies the Kremlin’s ongoing stifling of non-governmental organizations. The Russian Memorial Society, which was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by […]
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(Interfax – October 12, 2014) Over half of Russians (61 percent) admit that fluctuations in the exchange rate of the ruble have a certain impact on their lives while 13 percent don’t notice any impact, a Public Opinion fund poll indicates. In the opinion of 62 percent of respondents a stronger ruble is better for the Russian economy and only […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gleb Fedorov, RBTH – October 13, 2014) Russia has an effective antibacterial system that helps avoid uncontrollable outbreaks of viruses similar to Ebola, says one of the country’s leading epidemiologists. Research by a Boston university also indicates that the chances of the Ebola virus spreading to Russia are currently minimal. According to a study published […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#214 :: Tuesday 15 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. The National Interest: Paul Saunders, How Russia Sees the Ukraine […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 13, 2014) Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops stationed near the Ukrainian border to pull back to base, in an apparent move to reduce tension as cracks appeared in the uneasy ceasefire between government forces and rebels in East Ukraine’s Donbass region. At the same time, a leader of the Donbass […]
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MOSCOW, October 13 (RIA Novosti) – Six months have passed since the start of a massive mop-up operation in southeastern Ukraine. The operation has claimed the lives of 3,000 to 5,000 people, including civilians, soldiers and militia members, as well as the passengers of the Malaysian Boeing that crashed in the sky above Donetsk on July 17. HOW IT ALL […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Vladimir Kuznetsov – October 13, 2014) The ruble extended its longest losing streak in more than a year as $6 billion of Russian currency interventions failed to stem the depreciation amid tumbling oil prices. The ruble weakened 0.6 percent versus the dollar-euro basket to 45.3423 by 5:15 p.m. in Moscow, taking its seven-day decline to 2.3 […]
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(Interfax – October 13, 2014) The Internet usage index in Russia is 66 percent, the same as a year ago, and 46 percent of users go online daily, the Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) said. Most active users are persons aged 18 to 24, people with higher education (66 percent in each of these two categories), prosperous people (58 […]
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As they are toppled one after another in cities across the country, statues of Lenin are becoming an endangered species in Ukraine. But Lenin the political symbol is still alive and kicking. (opendemocracy.net – LEONID RAGOZIN – October 13, 2014) Inside a granite pyramid on Red Square, in front of the Kremlin wall, lies the mummy of a short bald […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 13, 2014) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has fired key commanders of Kyiv’s failed so-called “anti-terrorist operation” against Russian-backed rebels in the Donbass region of East Ukraine, including defence minister Valery Heletei. “It’s time to replace the Defence Ministry’s chief,” Poroshenko was quoted as saying on October 12. Heletei had become the target of […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Vitaliy Syzov, Halyna Tereshchuk, Claire Bigg – October 09, 2014) Irina Yaremko, a real estate agent in Lviv, says owners letting their flats through her agency now request that potential tenants from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions be immediately rejected. KYIV — When heavy fighting erupted in her hometown of Horlivka, in eastern Ukraine, Yulia and her husband […]
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Subject: Ukraine: An Apprehensive Bird’s View Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 From: Sergei Roy <SergeiRoy@yandex.ru> Ukraine: An Apprehensive Bird’s View By Sergei Roy [Former Editor-in-Chief, Moscow News] The world’s political, military, and media antennae are now mostly catching signals from the Middle East, specifically from the area around ISIS. Briefly, my take on the current situation is this: ISIS is […]
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