(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 6, 2014) Year-on-year inflation hit 8 percent in September, driven up by the plummeting value of the ruble and Russia’s bans on many food imports from the United States and European Union, according to data from state statistics service, Rosstat. Rising food prices were the main driver, climbing 11.4 percent year-on-year in September, up […]
» Read more
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Julia Reed in Moscow – October 6, 2014) Et tu, Ukraine? To many Russians, and certainly to most Russian politicians, the issue of Ukraine seems as touchy as the subject of teenagers leaving the nest feels to some parents: what’s wrong with their home? Aren’t they happy with their parents? Why now, at this […]
» Read more
(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexei Lossan, RBTH – October 3, 2014) Speaking at the Russia Calling Investment Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the main direction in the development of Russia’s economy. Analysts believe that Russia’s main challenge will be keeping inflation under control – inflation that was partly brought about by the ban on food imports […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, October 6 (RIA Novosti) – The three-party gas protocol of Russia, Ukraine and the European Union is ready and Moscow is currently waiting for Kiev to answer, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Monday. “A draft protocol to be signed by the three sides – Russia, the European Union and Ukraine – has been prepared. Currently, our joint proposal […]
» Read more
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Nikolai Holmov, OdessaTalk – October 6, 2014) Tuesday 7th October is Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin’s 62nd birthday. It is now, also to be the date where in all probability, the currently sitting Verkhovna Rada will formally put an end to the legally held non-aligned status of the nation. (At the same session that […]
» Read more
[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#208:: Monday 6 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. Zerkalo Nedeli (Kyiv) : About 50 per cent of Ukrainians […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 3, 2014) When a young Vladimir Putin decided to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a spy, he headed to the local branch of the KGB in Soviet Leningrad. Wary of unsolicited applicants, the KGB officers turned Putin away, but not without some valuable advice: Go get an education, preferably in […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is set to develop exchange programs for schoolchildren with countries in Europe and Asia, Deputy Minister of Education Veniamin Kaganov said on Friday. “We have sufficient [student] exchange with many countries. Agreements on cooperation in the educational field are signed with over 70 countries across the world. Quite a few international exchange programs […]
» Read more
(Interfax – October 2, 2014) The Russian authorities have no plans to limit the number of trans-border internet exchange points (IXP) or to regulate the management of the country’s local domains, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 2 October. “Such an idea is not on the agenda,” Russian Telecommunications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov told journalists answering a question as to […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – October 3, 2014) German Gref, head of Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank, on Friday castigated systemic inefficiencies in the Russian government that, he said, waste trillions of rubles and threaten to drag Russian society back into Soviet times. “We have inconceivable social costs in the area of public administration,” Gref said in a […]
» Read more
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris – Moscow, October 2, 2014) Leading Russian investment bank VTB Capital held a slimmed-down version of their annual investment conference on October 1-2. The event, “Russia Calling! 6th Annual VTB Capital Investment Forum” at the World Trade Center Moscow didn’t look cut down from the point of view of the number of […]
» Read more
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,” […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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. […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
[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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
… 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, […]
» Read more
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. […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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, […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
[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 […]
» Read more
[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’ […]
» Read more
(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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more
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 […]
» Read more