Johnson’s Russia List :: 2014-#77 :: 7 April 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
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin – April 7, 2014) While Russia’s standoff with the West over Ukraine may have caused Italian energy group Eni to distance itself from the huge South Stream gas pipeline project linking Russia to Central Europe, partners from Germany, which is highly dependent on Russian gas, have stayed faithful. On Friday, German engineering conglomerate […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Peter Spinella – April 7, 2014) President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold his annual call-in show on April 17, Russian media reports said Monday. The question-and-answer session will be broadcast on national television and radio stations and is expected to cover “Crimea, the international situation, the domestic economy and the ruble,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday the country will not allow the activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to be used toward destructive ends as has recently happened in Ukraine. “Modern Russian legislation creates all of the conditions for the transparent and free activity of non-governmental social organizations, but we will never allow them to […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – EU financial losses if broad economic sanctions are imposed against Russia could reach a trillion euros, according to Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s an open question who would sustain greater losses from the sanctions,” Glazyev told the Russian RT TV channel in an interview over the weekend. “If the […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – American gas cannot become an alternative to the Russian fuel in Ukraine for the lack of “vacant export objects” in the foreseeable future, said Sergey Kupriyanov an official spokesperson for Gazprom in his interview with TV-channel Rossiya 24 Saturday. He stressed that the claims of Ukranian authorities about possibly importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – The violent suppression of anti-government demonstrations in eastern Ukraine would lead to a full-scale civil war, the president of the Center of System-based Analysis and Forecasting told RIA Novosti on Monday. “A violent crackdown is a possibility since [former Ukrainian Prime Minister] Yulia Tymoshenko has called to start shooting to quell the mob,” Rostislav […]
» Read more
KYIV. April 7 (Interfax) – The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday will debate the issue of increasing liability for separatism and banning parties that engage in separatist activities, Oleksandr Turchynov, acting president of Ukraine and speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, said. “One of the first issues to be debated by the parliament tomorrow is the law increasing criminal liability for separatism […]
» Read more
STRASBOURG. April 7 (Interfax) – There will be no stability in Ukraine until it begins heeding the opinion of the Russian-speaking population, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the head of the State Duma committee on international affairs, said. “The situation in eastern Ukraine shows that stability […]
» Read more
DONETSK, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – The situation in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Region requires individual examination and is not identical to the Crimean scenario, the deputy chairman of Russia’s upper house of parliament told RIA Novosti on Monday. “The situation [in Donetsk Region] requires separate consideration due to its historic and political background,” Federation Council member Ilyas Ukhmanov said in […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has no plans to increase its fortifications along the border with Ukraine, a source in the the country’s Border Guard Service told RIA Novosti on Monday. “All the necessary measures have already been taken, no follow-up steps for fortifying the borders with Ukraine are being considered,” the source said. The comment followed an […]
» Read more
(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 7, 2014) The only option Vladimir Putin has if he is to advance his policies in Ukraine is to use force because the majority of Ukrainians in every region of that country do not support him, do not believe what he says, and do not want what he wants, according to […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – The United States has completed payments under a historic agreement providing for the import of Russian highly-enriched uranium for electricity production, Russia’s state-owned uranium producer and trader Techsnabexport said Monday. “We received the final payment from the United States Enrichment Corporation in March,” the company said, adding that its obligations under a contract for […]
» Read more
(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Dan Pototsky, RBTH – April 7, 2014) This year marks 20 years since the internet first appeared in Russia. The first Soviet internet user, the well-known Soviet-American scientist Anatole A. Klyosov, speaks about the internet in the USSR, espionage and the surreal logic of history in an exclusive interview with RBTH. Anatole A. […]
» Read more
Subject: Russia’s confederal-disintegration, not federal, proposal for Ukraine Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 From: Ira Straus (IRASTRAUS@aol.com) Re Washington Post aticle “Kiev sees Russian federalization plans as attempt to destroy Ukraine.” I think it’s not just interesting but important. It says Ukrainians, by large polling majorities even in the East and South, reject Russia’s “federalization” proposal, and explains why it […]
» Read more
Subject: Sergei Roy’s piece Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2014 From: [experienced Western journalist] I spent one month in Kyiv, Crimea and eastern Ukraine and will be back there again soon. I have also been to Ukraine many times before, including Crimea. Sergei Roy’s piece is not insightful, it is inciteful. Below are a few private ruminations on that piece. It […]
» Read more
Subject: Ukraine and Sergei Roy Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 From: Stephen D. Shenfield <sshenfield@verizon.net> I would like to thank readers who have sent me appreciative and encouraging responses to my paper “Ukraine:Popular Uprising or Fascist Coup?” (which is now online on my site at http://www.stephenshenfield.net/themes/international-relations/164-ukraine-popular-uprising-or-fascist-coup). I would also like to respond to the long article by Sergei Roy (JRL […]
» Read more
(Moscow Times – cc – Ingrid Burke – April 7, 2014) International law is the weapon of choice in the Crimea conflict, with adversaries using sections of the United Nations Charter like artillery to bolster their own defenses and target their opponents’ weaknesses. But who will end up on the right side of history? The fact that the international community has […]
» Read more
(Interfax – March 5, 2014) Ukraine must pay its debt for gas supplied by Russia based on the contracts signed in 2009, Aleksey Miller, the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, has said, as reported by privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax on 5 April. Meanwhile, Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov has said Ukraine has no grounds to take Russia to international […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax) – Russian peacekeepers can be sent to a foreign country exclusively within the framework of international law, not at the request of local authorities, Chairman of the Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee Viktor Ozerov told Interfax while commenting on the Donetsk People’s Council’s possible appeal to Russia to send peacekeepers to this part of Ukraine. […]
» Read more
Johnson’s Russia List :: 2014-#75-#76 :: 4-5 April 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
MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) seems to be gradually softening its stance toward Crimea’s reunification with Russia, the head of the Russian delegation to the assembly told journalists Friday. “There’s been a certain shift in the attitudes of political groups. Some national delegations feel there’s no need to force Russia […]
» Read more
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow, editor-in-chief – March 31, 2014) When he first assumed power in 2000, the press corps spent the first six months asking the same question: “Who is Vladimir Putin?” At first the media speculated he was merely a puppet of the oligarchs because he had clearly been handpicked by oligarch Roman […]
» Read more
(Interfax – Moscow, April 3, 2014) About half of Russians (46 per cent) think that the country is a democracy, while last year 38 per cent thought so, sociologists from the Levada Centre have told Interfax. According to the results of their survey, 32 per cent of Russians, the same number as in 2013, think that democracy is yet to […]
» Read more
(Interfax – April 4, 2014) NATO’s decision to suspend cooperation with Russia gives Moscow the right to suspend NATO transit to Afghanistan across Russian territory, Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ozerov said. “NATO is transporting armaments, military hardware and servicemen to Afghanistan across our territory. If our cooperation comes to a halt, we will have the right […]
» Read more
(RIA Novosti – April 3, 2014) The Pentagon statement on the suspension of discussions with Russia on missile defence issues is absolutely “perfunctory”, these consultations have long lost any meaning, the experts approached by RIA Novosti believe. Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on the Euro-ABM [European missile defence] project at the summit in Lisbon in 2010, but the talks […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s natural gas supplies to the European Union have no practical alternative, a senior energy analyst at the Colorado-based IHS company said Thusday. “The EU’s reliance on Russia to meet approximately 30 percent of its total gas demand means that there is no realistic alternative to European dependence on Russian energy supplies,” Andrew Neff […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) – It would be difficult for Europe to give up Russian energy resources, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview with TV channel Rossiya 24. He recalled that statements have been made about reducing the dependence on Russia in future. “And such work is being done in the European Union, in the United States. There […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine’s ailing economy would have collapsed without Russia’s financial help, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said that the Eastern European country’s economy had hit a wall last year and was heading for disaster when Russian bailout money averted a catastrophe. “Without the support that they […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) – Russia’s State Duma has unanimously passed a statement On Political Repressions in Ukraine, in which it expressed concerns about violations of pro-Russian citizens in the country. “While leaning on extremist forces and involving the law enforcement agencies, the self-proclaimed authorities use methods which violate peoples’ rights regarding their political opponents and resort to repressions and […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine’s interim authorities Friday of ignoring an independent probe into deadly sniper fire during protests in Kiev, while denying any alleged Russian link to the incident. “We did not have and could not have had any relation to these crimes,” Lavrov said, adding that Ukraine’s authorities who seized […]
» Read more
(Interfax – April 3, 2014) The first deputy prime minister of Crimea, Rustam Temirgaliyev, has rejected accusations voiced by the chief of the Ukrainian Security Service, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, that police officers whom the Ukrainian authorities accuse of shooting anti-government protesters in Kiev in February are hiding in Crimea, Russian privately-owned news agency Interfax reported on 3 April. The report quoted […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – Russia is currently not judging whether information that Berkut special task forces were involved in the shooting of people in Kyiv on February 20 is true or not, but says that such information contradict a lot of other evidence. “I can’t judge right now how grounded the statements [made in Kyiv on the investigation into […]
» Read more
(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Fyodor Lukyanov, special to RBTH – April 4, 2014) Fyodor Lukyanov is the chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. Western politicians now understand that, for the first time, Russia has decided to act as it sees fit, leaving no space for compromise. But what changes will we see in U.S.-Russian […]
» Read more
Subject: 1991 vs.2014: Ukraine: Triumph, Tragedy, or Farce? Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 From: Sergei Roy (sergeiroy@yandex.ru) Ukraine: Triumph, Tragedy, or Farce? By Sergei Roy Former Editor-in-Chief, Moscow News. [Sergei Roy (b. 1936) – journalist and writer based in Moscow. Writes in English and Russian. Translated into English scores of books, especially poetry, for Russian and foreign publishers. Chief editor […]
» Read more
Subject: UKRAINE: POPULAR UPRISING OR FASCIST COUP? Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 From: Stephen D. Shenfield <sshenfield@verizon.net> UKRAINE: POPULAR UPRISING OR FASCIST COUP? By Stephen Shenfield [Article also appeared at http://www.stephenshenfield.net/themes/international-relations/164-ukraine-popular-uprising-or-fascist-coup] Stephen D. Shenfield is an independent researcher and translator living in Providence, RI. He specializes in Russian and post-Soviet society and politics and is the author of “Russian Fascism: […]
» Read more
KYIV. April 4 (Interfax) – The results of a public opinion survey conducted by the GfK Ukraine company in March show that a relative majority of Ukrainian citizens support the change of power in the country. According to the poll results, 31% of respondents said they wholeheartedly supported the change of power in Kyiv in February, 18% would be likely […]
» Read more
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Mark Silva – April 4, 2014) President Vladimir Putin, left, greets President Barack Obama during an official welcome of G20 heads of state and government, heads of invited states and international organizations at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5, 2013. Photographer: Guneev Sergey/Host Photo Agency via Getty Images As international tension was rising […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – A total of 46% of Russian citizens believe that democracy rules in the country, against 38% in 2013, sociologists of the Levada Center told Interfax. According to the survey, 32% of Russians, the same as in 2013, think democracy has not been established yet, while 13% of respondents (against 22% in 2013) said Russia has […]
» Read more
(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Lyubov Chizhova and Daisy Sindelar – April 3, 2014) In 1782, as Catherine the Great was pondering whether to annex Crimea, her lover and military adviser Grigory Potemkin urged her on, arguing: “Russia needs its paradise.” More than two centuries later, Russia has once again reclaimed its “paradise” with the forced annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. But it remains […]
» Read more
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Mark Gimein – April 3, 2014) Mark Gimein is Companies and Markets editor at Bloomberg.com, and lead writer for the Market Now blog and newsletter. Russia finally succeeded in selling government bonds this week, at a fat yield of 8.93 percent. This comes after four failed auctions since the Crimea occupation started. Last week, the government […]
» Read more
(Interfax – April 3, 2014) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has announced the cancellation of the zero customs export duty on gas for Ukraine. The budget deficit of Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy will increase by UAH8.2 billion, or around $750 million at the current exchange rate, to UAH56.254 billion due to Russia resuming its duty on […]
» Read more
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Halia Pavliva and Ksenia Galouchko – April 3, 2014) Back in April 2007, in the midst of the greatest commodities rally on record, OAO Gazprom’s (OGZD) deputy chief executive officer, Alexander Medvedev, was talking big. Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly aspired to be the world’s largest company, he said while offering up a prediction: its market value […]
» Read more
(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Xenia Grubstein, special to RBTH – April 2, 2014) For many Ukrainian-Americans and Russian-Americans, the crisis in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea are political but also deeply personal. Russians and Ukrainians in the diaspora and abroad are connected; their lives and those of their friends and families are intimately intertwined. RBTH asked […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – The actions by the United States to curb ties with Russia may force a number of responses by Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Thursday. “We aren’t curtailing anything, but it’s clear that the situation that our [US] partners are creating in bilateral relations, may force a number of decisions that Washington […]
» Read more
(Interfax – April 2, 2014) NATO’s decision to suspend cooperation with Russia will harm Afghanistan, Moscow’s envoy to NATO has said. Interfax news agency quoted Aleksandr Grushko saying: “Above all, NATO’s decision will harm Afghans.” He said that the decision was counterproductive. “As a member of the international community, we carry particular responsibility for the preservation of international peace and […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – The Pentagon’s recent talk of suspending anti-missile consultations with Russia is hot air, as the negotiations lost their significance long ago, experts have told RIA Novosti. The Russia-NATO missile shield talks have been treading water for years, ever since the two agreed at a 2010 Lisbon summit to cooperate on the European project. The […]
» Read more
MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Washington’s decision to freeze cooperation between the NASA space agency and its Russian counterpart on a slew of joint projects will hurt global space partnership but won’t be the end of the Russian space program, Director of the Space Policy Institute Ivan Moiseyev told RIA Novosti Thursday. NASA issued a statement saying it put […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – Signals are being received from Washington that the United States intends to put its dialogue with Russia on hold even in areas in which contacts between the two countries benefit the U.S. itself, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. “In recent days we have been flooded by signals from Washington that in light of […]
» Read more
MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) – Russia will keep a close eye on how the United States and Turkey follow the principles of the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, which set the rules for warships’ presence in the Black Sea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We have the Montreux Convention, which introduces absolutely clear-cut criteria that restrict […]
» Read more