Politics, Government, Protests, Elections
The case against journalist Catherine Belton and the publishers of … “Putin’s People: How The KGB Took Back Russia And Then Took On The West” was brought by several wealthy Russians … Russian state-owned energy giant Rosneft … is also suing […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, July 23, 2021) Russians of a certain age and status are delighted to see American defeats much as their Soviet predecessors were to see them a generation or more ago; but even these attitudes have less to do with nostalgia than with a desire for revenge against the United States and the […]
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(Article text ©2021 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Yelena Rykovtseva, Robert Coalson – July 28, 2021 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/russian-foreign-agents-law/31382204.html) MOSCOW — Earlier this month, the Federal Security Service (FSB) published a draft instruction listing military and technical topics that Russian citizens could be deemed “foreign agents” for discussing, making them subject to […]
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The St. Petersburg election commission has banned the former head of jailed Kremlin’s critic Alexei Navalny’s headquarters, Irina Fatyanova, from running in elections to the city’s legislative assembly […]
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In the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, great power competition has returned to the Middle East […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, July 15, 2021) Russians live in poverty and have the concerns that produces, they don’t trust officials and they don’t fear the West whatever the powers that be say, but despite both of these factors, they want to see Vladimir Putin remain as president, according to a major new study by the […]
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The designations are seen by Kremlin critics and analysts as an attempt to throttle independent journalism and retaliate against those who expose high-level corruption ahead of high-stakes parliamentary elections
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, July 14, 2021) Anatoly Shaburov, the Yekaterinburg political analyst who edits the Politsovet portal, says that the September Duma elections like all Russian elections have sparked debate and suggests that how the upcoming ones differ from the past are best summarized in ten theses (politsovet.ru/70931-desyat-tezisov-o-vyborah-2021.html): 1. The biggest change from the past […]
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… [F]our nuclear-powered icebreakers …. are meant to ensure Moscow’s dominance over the melting Arctic […]
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Russian officials’ plans to restrict live streams from polling stations in upcoming parliamentary elections have been met with accusations of pre-emptive attempts to conceal voter fraud, including ballot stuffing […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, July 7, 2021) Russia has significantly reduced the number of abortions over the last several decades both in absolute terms and relative to the number of live births, experts at the HSE’s Institute of Demography say. But Russian officials have changed the way such events are classified without consulting specialists thus making […]
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Russia must prepare for major revenue losses brought by a global push toward renewable energy and subsequent fall in demand for fossil fuels … Siluanov warned […]
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To inquire about a subscription to the full Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, e-mail David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net Support the JRL: russialist.org/funding.php Donate Online: click here for direct link at GWU [check back for updates, including more links; some links also posted to facebook and twitter] Johnson’s Russia List :: JRL 2021-#138 :: Thursday, 8 July 2021 A project sponsored […]
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Yabloko stalwarts see little chance of victory in September’s high-stakes elections to the country’s national parliament […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 1, 2021) In the course of his Direct Line television show, Vladimir Putin said he was against moving the capital of the Russian Federation from Moscow but does favor having Russian companies which operate there have their headquarters in Siberian cities and pay taxes there rather than as now in Moscow. […]
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The [Russian] Navy’s Black Sea Fleet said the Kalibr cruise missile-equipped frigate Admiral Essen and the Moskva missile cruiser are en route […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, June 25, 2021) Russia’s autocratic government is modern not just because it has reversed the democratization wave of three decades ago but because it is willing to make use of modern techniques in some spheres of life under its control for its direct benefit, according to Gulnaz Sharaftudinova. The Kremlin uses various […]
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Russia is meanwhile increasing its fossil fuel production and remains the only one of the world’s top seven carbon-emitters […]
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MOSCOW. July 1 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill compelling major foreign IT companies working with Russian audiences to open fully-fledged offices in Russia. The document was published on the official web portal for legal information on Thursday. The law compels foreign IT companies with a daily Russian audience exceeding 500,000 to open fully-fledged […]
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… This year’s Direct Line event, the first since the start of the pandemic and Putin’s 18th overall, focused heavily on domestic issues, particularly Covid-19 […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, June 24, 2021) Many commentators have focused on the decline since January 2021 in the percentage of Russians who say they are ready to protest, but the share who are ready to do so still remains much higher than was the case in the last three years, Lev Gudkov of the Levada […]
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“Following United Russia’s congress … the ruling party confirmed its election list for the September 2021 State Duma election. The first five names were presented by … Putin himself … United Russia’s chairman, former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, was noticeably absent from the list. Sources say that both Medvedev being left out and Putin making the announcement was […]
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Golos estimates that at least 9 million Russians, or 8% of the population, have been stripped of so-called “passive suffrage” even before Russian lawmakers tightened election laws […]
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… Putin’s live, nationally televised call-in show … will fall about 10 weeks before the flagging popularity of the ruling political party is put to the test in national elections […]
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Pavel Chikov leads the Agora group of more than 200 lawyers in a system with the odds stacked against them […]
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“Tensions between party leaders and members intensify as parliamentary elections loom.” “… Navalny’s … anti-corruption investigators and regional political activists built the biggest political challenge to Putin’s 21 years in power. … result[ing] in [Navalny] being arrested and jailed … after surviving a nerve agent poisoning. But Navalny’s opposition movement, which led 100,000 people to protest against his arrest … […]
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(Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 18, Issue 90 – Pavel K. Baev – June 7, 2021) The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) was launched in 1997 as a Russian equivalent to the Davos World Economic Forum, and for many years it provided a venue for Western business looking for opportunities to invest in Russia. But […]
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According to the Levada Center … 28% of Russian respondents said they expect new political protests while 30% anticipated economic protests to erupt […]
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According to independent Medialogia monitoring site, Meduza was among the top 10 most-cited Russian-language Internet sources in 2020 and was the No. 1 “most-linked-to” in social-media posts […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, June 2, 2021) Twenty-five years ago, Russia had its last presidential election in which the outcome was not ordained. But after Boris Yeltsin’s orchestrated victory, Konstantin von Eggert says, the country entered yet another non-democratic era in which the rise of someone like Vladimir Putin was inevitable. In that sense, the independent […]
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… The forum was staged despite Russia recording around 9,000 new coronavirus infections a day […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, May 29, 2021) The roughly ten percent of Russians who are middle class not only by virtue of incomes but by level of savings, education, and rank in the economy play a very different role than do the much larger middle classes in more developed Western countries, Yevgeny Gontmakher says. Middle classes, […]
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… The measure appears to be a thinly veiled attempt at neutralizing Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which the authorities are seeking to have declared an “extremist” group ahead of parliamentary elections […]
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(Interfax – May 28, 2021) Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden will meet in Geneva on June 16. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told Interfax special correspondent Vyacheslav Terekhov in an interview that the main task the two presidents will have to address is restoring strategic stability. Question: Numerous attempts by the previous U.S. administration to hold […]
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Russia has banned non-state-approved educational activities and cooperation with foreign academics […]
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MOSCOW. May 31 (Interfax) – Russia may use force if need be in response to unfriendly activities by other countries, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said. “The new edition of the National Security Strategy emphasizes that Russia seeks greater predictability, trust and security in the international arena. At the same time, it says that it is lawful to take […]
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Most parties … participating in the upcoming Duma and regional legislative assembly elections are now including environmentalists in their list of candidates […]
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… Nevertheless, firms continued to report significant challenges to operating in Russia […]
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… The cacophony of leaks and claims has also helped muddy the waters around the events of May 23, making it increasingly difficult to untangle fact from fiction […]
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… Putin said Wednesday that mandating coronavirus vaccinations would be “impractical and impossible” amid an ongoing debate […]
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Most entrepreneurs say Russia is not safe for business and that court rulings are not independent […]
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The crackdown is being seen as a sign that the Kremlin is playing closer attention to local power structures ahead of fall elections […]
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… The measure appears aimed at neutralizing the foundation of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, which Russian authorities are seeking to have declared “extremist” ahead of parliamentary elections […]
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… Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media submitted a draft bill … requiring only commercial, and not state media, to be subjected to financial audits […]
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… The company filed a lawsuit April 23 against Roskomnadzor in the Moscow Arbitration Court […]
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… The prospect of an invasion, unimaginable for most Europeans, has for the past seven years hung like a specter over this industrial port city located just 100 kilometers from Russian territory […]
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The head of the Levada Center … says that 43 to 44 percent of Russians think another invasion would boost Putin’s ratings, but 40 percent say that it would have precisely the opposite effect and spark mass dissatisfaction and protests […]
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“Imprisoned dissident’s supporters are looking for new ways to maintain his visibility and, they say, keep him alive.” “… Russian authorities are moving to have [Navalny’s] political movement, including his anticorruption foundation, declared an extremist organization, putting it on a par with terrorist groups such as al Qaeda or violent religious cults. The move would choke off funding and provide […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – May 20, 2021) Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has recovered after he ended a 24-day hunger strike last month demanding adequate medical treatment, a top aide and the head of Russia’s prison service said Thursday. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s best known domestic critic, is serving two-and-a-half years in a penal colony outside Moscow on old […]
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