(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – October 24, 2014) A congress of Russian intellectuals has appealed to the head of state-run Channel One television to acknowledge “falsifications” in its reporting on Ukraine, holding the network accountable for the deaths of young Russians who were moved to go and fight there. The congress told Channel One chief Konstantin Ernst […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Matthew Bodner – October 24, 2014) While top Russian officials and pro-Kremlin politicians continue to paint NATO as an existential threat to Russia and even an instigator of the Ukraine crisis, Moscow has been working to strengthen the legitimacy of its own security organization: the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). But while this bundling of […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Volodymyr Verbyany – October 23, 2014) Andriy Teteruk had just returned from fighting as a volunteer battalion leader in eastern Ukraine when he received an invitation from Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to run for parliament on his People’s Front ballot. “I also got proposals from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party,” Teteruk, 41, […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Graham Stack in Kyiv – October 24, 2014) Ukraine is to go to the polls on October 26 in early elections likely to give forces supporting President Petro Poroshenko a strong majority in the parliament, paving the way for sweeping constitutional reform. “This should be a constitutional majority,” said Poroshenko, out campaigning in the […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#220 :: Wednesday 22 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: Nicolai Petro, Why the Putin Peace Plan […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Stepan Kravchenko – October 21, 2014) Tamara Nekrasova never really hated Ukrainians, not even when a shell fired from Ukrainian territory struck her house just a short walk from the Russia-Ukraine border, sending her to the hospital and killing a neighbor. It wasn’t until later, after months of relentless anti-Ukraine reports on Russian television, that anger […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 11, Issue 185 – Vladimir Socor – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – October 20, 2014) Western powers lost control and, to some extent, lost comprehension of the situation in Ukraine during the Euromaidan mass protest movement and its aftermath. They then trailed behind the events throughout Russia’s war against Ukraine to date. The European Commission’s lame-duck status […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 21, 2014) Russia and Ukraine are meeting on October 21 to hammer out a new agreement over Ukraine’s debts to Russia and future pricing for Russian gas, as winter approaches and Ukraine desperately needs Russian supplies to be restarted. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian opposite number Petro Poroshenko reached a provisional […]
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(RIA Novosti – Alexander Mercouris – LONDON, October 21, 2014) Alexander Mercouris is a London-based lawyer The ASEM summit in Milan cruelly exposed the illusions EU leaders hold about the Ukrainian conflict, and not for the first time Ever since the February coup in Ukraine, the EU’s leaders have held to two assumptions: First, that the crisis in Ukraine is […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#219 :: Tuesday 21 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. Paul Goble: Window on Eurasia: Another Indication a New Russian Attack […]
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Subject: To Post: ASN 2015 World Convention (Proposal Deadline Reminder: 29 October 2014) Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 From: Dominique Arel <darel@uottawa.ca> Dear David: could you post this Deadline Reminder on JRL? Thanks, Dominique Call for Papers 20th Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) International Affairs Building, Columbia University, NY Sponsored by the Harriman […]
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(Voice of America – voanews.com – Mark Snowiss – October 20, 2014) With eastern Ukraine crippled by conflict between government forces and pro-Russia separatists, many democratic activists in Kyiv paint the struggle as having given birth to a new unified state. They identify the call to resist what is widely perceived to be Russia’s aggression as having brought together a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin – October 21, 2014) As the Russian and Ukrainian Energy Ministers sit down with European Commission chaperones to resolve their intractable natural gas dispute on Tuesday, the ball will be in the EU’s court, which is expected to finance both Ukraine’s and its own energy security. With the approach of winter sharpening the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – October 21, 2014) The prospect of assuaging the rift in U.S.-Russia relations appeared dimmer Monday after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted that the dire state of bilateral ties would persist for a long time. Lavrov’s bleak forecast follows last week’s multilateral talks about the situation in Ukraine on the sidelines of […]
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KYIV. Oct 21 (Interfax) – The fighting subsided in Donetsk overnight but heavy gunfire was again reported from the Kirovsky and Kyivsky districts on Tuesday morning, says a report posted on the City Council website. The Kyivsky district was shelled from 5 p.m. through 10:30 p.m. local time on Monday. A residential building was damaged and a fire started in […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 21, 2014) Many in both Ukraine and the Russian Federation have suggested in recent days that a new and large-scale Russian military attack in Ukraine may be imminent, but perhaps the clearest evidence for that has been provided by an unexpected source: Ella Panfilova, the Russian human rights ombudsman. In an […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – October 20, 2014) Russia’s human rights ombudswoman has accused the European Union of “ignoring human suffering” in eastern Ukraine, in an interview published in the state-run bulletin “Rossiiskaya gazeta.” Ella Pamfilova said that although Europe is “an icon in the style of human rights, democracy, and freedom of speech,” it “openly prefers to disregard the situation […]
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MOSCOW, October 20 (RIA Novosti) – Monday will be the final day for those, going to monitor the upcoming parliamentary election in Ukraineto register with the country’s Central Election Commission. More than 1,800 observers have been registered so far, with 1,589 representing non-government organizations and 238 dispatched by foreign governments. A snap election to the Ukrainian unicameral parliament, known as […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 20, 2014) Over 100 masked men wearing nationalist insignia laid siege to Zaporizhstal, one of Ukraine’s largest steel plants, and owned by Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov, newswires report. “The northern and southern entrances to the Zaporizhstal metallurgy plant are blocked by about 10 passenger vans carrying unidentified people of athletic appearance wearing […]
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(RIA Novosti – Moscow, October 19, 2014) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that he would not dramatize Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s public statements ahead of the elections to the Supreme Council [parliament], although some of them are “hitting below the belt”. “As regards public statements (by Poroshenko), the election campaign is under way in Ukraine, passions are running […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, October 19, 2014) First deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic Andriy Purhin [Russian: Andrey Purgin] rejects German intelligence allegations of militia members’ involvement in the crash of the Malaysian Boeing, suggesting that Ukrainian troops may have shot down the airliner in error, mistaking it for a reconnaissance aircraft. “These allegations against us make no […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 20, 2014) Russia and Ukraine have moved a step closer to an agreement on gas supplies and pricing, but have called for the international community to help Ukraine pay its gas bill. “[We] reached an agreement,” Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko said on Ukrainian TV on October 17, immediately following Russia-Ukraine talks with European […]
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(Pravda.ru – October 17, 2014) Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in an interview with the BBC that he was expecting a large-scale civil war in Russia in the future. “What is happening in Ukraine, is undoubtedly bad for Russia, as it strengthens the authoritarian regime in Russia and ruins the hopes of the progressive part of the society for the technological development […]
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Paul Backer, an American attorney based in Moscow, recently has offered the following original contributions to the JRL on the subject of sanctions and the response by business and legal counsel. Backer, pbacker@skalalaw.com, is with Skalaw Law, online at skalalaw.com. Part I: Russia sanctions: implementing client sanctions policies – Sept. 26, 2014 Part II: Russian companies’ failures to adopt effective sanctions policies […]
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… 37. Moscow Times: Vladislav Inozemtsev, The Ruble’s Senseless and Harmful Devaluation.
38. RFE/RL: Brian Whitmore, Putin’s Class Of 2014.
39. www.opendemocracy.net: Yelizaveta Surnacheva, For the Russian elite, loyalty is all. Life has changed for Russia’s elite – and not just their holiday destinations
40. Bloomberg: China Embraces a Russia Cut off From Western Capital. …
Subject: Sanctions Update Part 3, Practical Steps. Date: 15 Oct 2014 From: Paul Backer <pauljbacker@gmail.com> Part 3. Practical aspects of sanctions impact optimization for Russian companies. Violating sanctions or hoping for a world without sanctions is not a sanctions policy. Effective sanctions policies optimize transacting and protect assets. They work at the nexus of regulatory, corporate, international, finance, litigation, procurement […]
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Subject: New book: Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 From: Ruslan Pukhov <director@cast.ru> Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine Edited by Colby Howard and Ruslan Pukhov, Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Published by East View Press, 2014 ISBN 978-1-879944-22-0 paperback, 252 pages $89.95 Description: Brothers Armed discusses […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – October 17, 2014) Prominent Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said in an interview this week that he would not return the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine if he had the power to do so, and that the issue of illegal immigration was more important for Russia than anything happening in neighboring war-torn Ukraine. […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 17 (Interfax) – The administration of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic is calm about the statement made by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who said the elections in the DPR are to be conducted in accordance with Ukrainian legislation. “Our position remains unchanged. We will not allow any Ukrainian elections on our territory. As for Barroso, we […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – October 17, 2014) Ukrainian PM Arseny Yatsenyuk has said that 39 top government officials have lost their jobs on the basis of a lustration law that entered into force on October 14, purging officials who served under former president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February. “In accordance with the basic norm of the […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 11, Issue 183 – Pavel Felgenhauer – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – October 16, 2014) In a series of recently published interviews, President Vladimir Putin (kremlin.ru, October 15), Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (Interfax, October 15) and national security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, October 15) have outlined Moscow’s strategic vision of the world after the […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 16 (Interfax) – More than 3.5 million Ukrainian nationals moved to Russia this year, Lilia Arestova, deputy head of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) naturalization department, said at a meeting of the committee for public support to residents of south-eastern Ukraine. “The FMS is keeping a daily record of arrivals. A total of 3,631,124 Ukrainian nationals moved to […]
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BELGRADE, October 16 (RIA Novosti) – President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reassured European partners that Russia would do everything possible to prevent any interruption of Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe. “We would’t want any crisis to occur during the winter period,” Putin told reporters following talks with Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade. “Russia has always been a reliable […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Nikolai Litovkin, RBTH – October 16, 2014) During a three-hour meeting in Paris on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed cooperation against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as well as the political crisis in Ukraine. After the talks, Lavrov said that the meeting had been […]
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KIEV, October 16 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine will not guarantee uninterrupted transit of Russian gas to Europe via its territory unless it signs a gas transit contract with EU partners, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Thursday. “Ukraine declares that we are a state that guarantees uninterrupted transit of natural gas, but in order to guarantee it, we need to sign […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Timothy Ash of Standard Bank – October 15, 2014) Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, this week estimated that the crisis in Ukraine would likely cost the German economy €40bn this year, and a further €50bn in 2015 – presumably through lost exports, and a broader disruption to the German economy and weaker resulting real […]
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(US Department of State – John Kerry, Secretary of State – October 14, 2014) Paris, France SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good evening, everybody. Thanks for your patience. This has been a very productive couple of days, and I’m glad to have an opportunity to be able to catch up on the discussions that we’ve had, both with Foreign Minister Fabius as […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Tim Ash, Standard Bank – October 15, 2014) Interesting poll reported by Interfax. Predictably President Poroshenko’s For Petro Poroshenko Bloc is still riding high in the polls with 33.5% – and emerging as the new party of power. Next up up is Liashko’s Radical Party with 12.8%, and seemingly on the rise. This is […]
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[Graphics and tweets here en.ria.ru/society/20141012/193990648/ Ukrainian-Teens-Tweet-Nazi-Propaganda-Boast-of-Burning-Russians.html] MOSCOW, October 12 (RIA Novosti), Ekaterina Blinova – Since the Euromaidan turmoil and events triggered by the Ukrainian coup of February 2014, Ukrainian youth has been used as the main propaganda force of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Ukrainian right-wing nationalists attract young people by romanticized the image of OUN-UPA and Stepan Bandera, the famous […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 15 (Interfax) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev believes that a unitary state in Ukraine has no future but says a decision must come from the Ukrainians themselves. “Ukraine is an independent country and Ukrainians should decide for themselves where to live,” he said in an interview with the channel CNBC, answering a question about the Kremlin’s expectations […]
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MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti) – The return of Russian troops, who took part in summer exercises in southern Russia, to their permanent bases is part of Russia’s domestic policy and not a signal to anyone, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday. “All sorts of decisions that Russia takes, including decisions on our armed forces, are the responsibility of […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 16 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that mutually beneficial relations may still be restored with Ukraine and that it is possible to end the armed conflict in Ukraine’s southeastern regions. “Despite the current complicated period in Russian-Ukrainian relations, we are interested in having consistent, equal and mutually beneficial cooperation with our Ukrainian partners. In practice, this […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Tony Czuczka, Kateryna Choursina- October 16, 2014) German Chancellor Angela Merkel blamed the Kremlin for continuing to stoke the Ukraine conflict as Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that he won’t be blackmailed over the crisis. “Russia must make the decisive contribution to de-escalation,” Merkel told parliament in Berlin today. “The situation in Ukraine remains extremely difficult […]
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[check back for updates, including more links; links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List JRL 2014-#216 :: Thursday 16 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. Wall Street Journal: Putin Trip to Europe Sparks Flurry […]
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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 – 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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(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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(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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