Category: Politics, Government, Protests, Elections
Politics, Government, Protests, Elections
What crisis? Moscow marks 868th birthday with glam metal and plenty of make-up
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – MOSCOW BLOG: Anna Kravchenko in Moscow – September 4, 2015) [Photos here bne.eu/content/story/moscow-blog-what-crisis-moscow-marks-868th-birthday-glam-metal-and-plenty-make] There is an old Moscow joke about continuous road repair in the city: When leaving his post in 2010, former mayor Yury Luzhkov said he buried treasure under one of the pavements, hence all the digging. This summer the joke is […]
» Read morePoll shows three parties likely to be elected to next Russian parliament
(Interfax – September 3, 2015) With one year to go, half of Russian citizens have said they intend to vote in the next parliamentary election in Russia scheduled for 13 September 2016, according to an opinion poll conducted by Levada Centre. Thirty-one per cent have said they are “very likely” to vote and 19 per cent said they will “definitely” […]
» Read moreLack of Manifestos Points to Political Complacency in Russian Regions – Experts
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – September 4, 2015) Only five acting governors taking part in elections in 21 Russian regions next week have published electoral manifestos, the Petersburg Politics think tank said in a report published Thursday. The lack of manifestos attests to a deficit of clear vision among potential heads of Russian regions – as well […]
» Read morePutin Calls on Young Russians to Work for the Glory of Their Country
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – September 3, 2015) Gifted young Russians should “most importantly” work for the glory of their country, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday at a new center for gifted students in the southern city of Sochi. The center, which has been named “Sirius,” after the brightest star in the night sky, offers special programs […]
» Read moreRussia’s New Personal Data Law Will Be Hard to Implement, Experts Say
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daria Litvinova – September 3, 2015) In a streak of measures designed to impose stricter control over the Internet in Russia, the law that requires all Internet services store the personal data of Russian users on Russian territory – in effect from Tuesday – will be the most difficult to implement due to its vagueness […]
» Read moreRE: 2015-#171-Johnson’s Russia List/Demography
Subject: RE: 2015-#171-Johnson’s Russia List/Demography Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2015 From: Josh Wilson <jwilson@sras.org> In response to 29. Moscow Times: Why Is Russia’s Growth in Life Expectancy Slowing? From 2015-#171-Johnson’s Russia List. Response originally posted here: https://www.facebook.com/SRASFB The main thing to point out is that these aren’t really “objective numbers.” The period of comparison between Russia’s performance on life expectancy […]
» Read moreInterfax: Eighty-Eight NGOs registered as ‘foreign agents’ in two years, seven of them did it voluntarily – Justice Ministry
(Interfax – September 1, 2015) Less than 10 percent of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) recognized as ‘foreign agents’ submitted by themselves an application regarding their status during the two years that the respective law has been in force, according to Dmitry Yermak, the acting director of the NGO department at the Russian Ministry of Justice. “Altogether, 88 organizations have been included […]
» Read moreThe Radical Menace to Ukraine
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – August 31, 2015) A police officer was killed during a protest in Kiev on Monday. It was the first such fatality since Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity” last year. Radical nationalists, some with weapons, gathered to protest a constitutional amendment proposed by President Petro Poroshenko that would make it possible to reintegrate separatist areas […]
» Read moreLike Stalin, Putin hasn’t Changed the Rules of the Game; He’s Destroyed Them, Portnikov Says
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 28, 2015) The Anschluss of Crimea and the murder of Boris Nemtsov were not continuations of the rules of the game that had existed before, with the first following the 2008 Russian actions in Georgia and the second that of murders like Galina Starovoitova and Anna Politkovskaya, Vitaly Portnikov says. Instead, […]
» Read moreRunning for Office in Siberia: Part IV: History, Perspective and the Components of a Modern Campaign
Subject: Running for Office in Siberia: Part IV: History, Perspective and the Components of a Modern Campaign Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 From: Sarah Lindemann-Komarova <echosiberia@gmail.com> Running for Office in Siberia A series on the District #35 Election for Novosibirsk City Council By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova [Founder, Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center 1995 – 2014. Helped to establish this as the […]
» Read moreKhodorkovsky Calls for Civil Disobedience against Unjust Laws and Putin’s Unjust System
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 27, 2015) Mikhail Khodorkovsky says that Russian citizens are fully entitled not to observe unjust laws imposed not to promote justice but to protect the power of Vladimir Putin, a potentially dramatic development in the relationship between the Russian opposition, the Russian people, and the Kremlin. In a blog post on […]
» Read moreRBTH: “Kiev under pressure from EU over Minsk accords, insist Russian experts”
Recent talks between the Ukrainian, French and German leaders on the implementation of the Minsk peace agreements in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region saw Paris and Berlin express their continued support for Kiev, but Russian analysts say Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is under pressure to make compromises. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gevorg Mirzayan, special to RBTH – August […]
» Read moreA Winter Of Discontent For Russia
(Oilprice.com – Colin Chilcoat – August 25, 2015) Winters are the stuff of legend in Russia and – despite a fair bit of warming – winter 2015/16 is shaping up to be one of the harshest, and most formative, in recent memory. After a brief period of respite – and muted acceptance of the “new normal” – to start the […]
» Read moreRussian ombudsman slams ex-Defence Ministry official’s parole as “elite” justice
(Interfax – August 25, 2015) Russian human rights ombudsman Ella Pamfilova has strongly condemned a court decision to release on parole Yevgeniya Vasilyeva, a key figure in the Oboronservis case, suggesting the move amounted to “elite” justice, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 25 August. Earlier on 25 August, a court in Vladimir Region granted Vasilyeva parole after she […]
» Read moreRussians More Optimistic about Ethnic Problems at Home But Have Little Reason to Be, Experts Say
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 26, 2015) The shares of Russians who say that ethnic conflicts in their country are “likely” or “more likely than not” have declined from 17 and 45 percent respectively in October 2013 to five and 20 percent now, according to the findings of a new Levada Center poll. But Mikhail Remizov […]
» Read moreDom Knigi: Quotes from a bookshop, what people read, what people believe, and the Guardian
Subject: Dom Knigi: Quotes from a bookshop, what people read, what people believe, and the Guardian Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 20:24:33 +0100 From: Antony Penaud <antonypenaud@yahoo.fr> Quotes from a bookshop, what people read, what people believe, and the Guardian Antony Penaud received his DPhil (University of Oxford) in 2000. He is French and lives in London. A friendly pdf […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK Reuters: Russia’s biggest air show hurt by economic crisis, sanctions
Russian poll on nationalism and xenophobia produces worrying results
(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Henry Kirby in London – August 25, 2015) More Russians than ever (41%) believe that illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries should be granted legal status in Russia and given the chance to assimilate, although 43% still want them to be expelled from the country. According to a survey published by independent polling company Levada […]
» Read moreInterfax: Putin’s job approval rating exceeds 80% – poll
MOSCOW. Aug 26 (Interfax) – The job approval rating of Russian President Vladimir Putin stands at 83% in August, Levada Center sociologists told Interfax on Wednesday following this month’s survey. Seventeen percent of respondents of the center’s latest poll were dissatisfied with Putin’s work as Russian president. In June the approval rate was 89%, in April-May – 86% and in […]
» Read morePutin’s ‘New People’ are the Black Hundreds of Today, Golts Says
(Paul Goble – Windows on Eurasia – Staunton, August 22, 2015) Vladimir Putin’s “new people,” the lumpen who are prepared to take the law into their own hands in the name of advancing the goals of the Kremlin leader that they think are being undermined by the bureaucracy and oligarchs, are the exact equivalent of the Black Hundreds that carried […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK Moscow Times/ Mark Galeotti: Museums Show Russia’s Big Security Problem
NEWSLINK Moscow Times/Vladimir Ryzhkov: Putin Has Russians’ Loyalty, But for How Long?
Ukrainians Mark Independence Day United by Patriotism and Hope, Sociologist Says
(Paul Goble – Windows on Eurasia – Staunton, August 24, 2015) Today is Ukraine’s Independence Day, and compared to the years before Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea and the Russian invasion of the Donbas, Ukrainians are now far more united by patriotism and by their hopes for the future, according to Irina Bekeshkina, a sociologist at the Kyiv Institute of […]
» Read more‘Mass Murder:’ Russian Patients Brace For Ban On Medical Imports
(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – August 23, 2015) When Yulia Koptseva heard about a Russian government plan to ban a range of foreign-made medical goods, she had a single, urgent thought: “I want my daughter to live.” That was also the poignant comment she left on an online petition that has gathered almost 10,000 signatures against the proposal, […]
» Read moreHow Next Round of Russia’s Disintegration May Begin
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 24, 2015) In his poem, “The Fall of Rome,” W.H. Auden wrote that it could be signaled not by some dramatic event but rather by “a bored official” scribbling a note and leaving his office to go home, a reminder that enormous tectonic shifts often begin with small things that most […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK The Conversation: Bad news for Putin as support for war flags beyond Russia’s ‘troll farms’
NEWSLINK Los Angeles Times: “White supremacist gathering underscores Russia’s nationalist trend”
NEWSLINK Reuters: “A $620,000 watch tells what time it is in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”
NEWSLINK The New Yorker/Masha Gessen: The Dearly Departed Return to Russia.
NEWSLINK Reuters: ‘Putin the Polite,’ chilling hero of Russian souvenirs.
Unlike Stalin’s Show-Trial Victims, Russia’s Political Defendants Don’t Back Down
(RFE/RL – Robert Coalson – August 20, 2015) There are, of course, many differences between the infamous show trials of Josef Stalin’s Great Terror and the politically convenient prosecutions of the political adversaries of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Stalin liked to try his victims in huge mass productions on blatantly political charges and then march them off for summary execution […]
» Read moreRussia’s ‘Foreign Agents’ Risk Losing Right to Run Media
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daria Litvinova – August 21, 2015) As the crackdown on Russian NGOs continues, the Communications Ministry has suggested forbidding those labeled as “foreign agents” from launching and registering media outlets. The proposal, part of a bill that the ministry published on a government website for draft laws, stipulates that non-governmental organizations registered as “foreign agents” […]
» Read moreRunning for Office in Siberia
Subject: Running for Office in Siberia Part III Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2015 From: Sarah Lindemann-Komarova <echosiberia@gmail.com> Running for Office in Siberia A series on the District #35 Election for Novosibirsk City Council: Part III: Becoming an Official Independent Candidate By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova [Founder, Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center 1995 – 2014. Helped to establish this as the hub for […]
» Read moreNudists in Despair as Moscow Authorities Move to Close Naturist Beach
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Daria Litvinova – August 21, 2015) Moscow nudists may soon lose their best-known and most popular beach in the Serebryany Bor natural park, as city authorities plan to expel the naturists from their traditional hangout in western Moscow and turn it into a regular beach. “These people [nudists] are depraved. We can’t encourage vice. They’re […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK The Hill: “Pentagon chief: Russia is a ‘very significant threat'”
NEWSLINK New York Times: “Putin vs. Parmesan”
State Statistics Show Flat Unemployment, Survey Paints Different Story
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 20, 2015) Despite unemployment levels remaining relatively consistent in the first six months of 2015, more Russians are seeing close friends and family members losing their jobs than in January, according to survey data released by a Russian polling center on Tuesday. According to Russian state statistics agency Rosstat, in January the levels of […]
» Read moreKaliningrad election commission confirms Yakunin’s rank as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary
KALININGRAD. Aug 20 (Interfax) – It has been confirmed that Russian Railways (MOEX: RZHD) chief Vladimir Yakunin has the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Kaliningrad regional election commission chief Inessa Vinyavskaya wrote on her Facebook page. “In reply to the commission’s query as part of the verification of the information on V. I. Yakunin, the Russian Presidential Administration […]
» Read moreHalf of Russians Believe Putin is Poorly Informed of Situation in the Country, Poll Shows
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 20, 2015) Over half of Russians think President Vladimir Putin does not receive a complete picture of what is going on in Russia or is being deliberately misled by his entourage, according to a poll released Wednesday by an independent Russian polling center. Fifty-six percent of respondents in the poll conducted by the Levada […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK Washington Post: Russia’s summer of intrigue: Political trials take center stage.
Putin Aide Who Called Shock Rate Cut Sees Pause as Oil Nears $40
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Olga Tanas, Evgenia Pismennaya – August 18, 2015) Andrey Belousov went largely unheeded the last time he forecast a shift in monetary policy. Now President Vladimir Putin’s top economic aide is lending weight to a growing consensus that Russia’s easing cycle is wearing out. The central bank may pause its interest-rate cuts after five decreases this […]
» Read moreRussian Press Digest (19 August 2015)
(opendemocracy.net – EDITORS OF OPENDEMOCRACY RUSSIA) This Wednesday, the Russian press focuses on the departure of Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. According to business daily Kommersant, Yakunin called his decision to leave ‘a personal one’ during a conversation with Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Kaliningrad’s election commission is processing Yakunin’s candidacy to become the […]
» Read morePutin Said Ready to Revamp Inner Circle as Ally Yakunin Goes
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Irina Reznik, Ilya Arkhipov, Olga Tanas – August 18, 2015) Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ready to start replacing long-serving allies in his inner circle after the sudden departure of OAO Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin as head of the country’s largest employer. Putin intends to bring in trusted younger people to shake up his team ahead […]
» Read morePutin May Be Tiring of His Cronies
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – August 18, 2015) Vladimir Yakunin seemed eternal: Nothing he could do appeared to undermine his standing in the system President Vladimir Putin has built to run Russia. Yet now he is leaving the top job at the national railroad monopoly, after 10 years of mismanaging it. Putin may be realizing that tough economic […]
» Read moreRIA Novosti: Putin says no need to worry about Russian economy
(RIA Novosti – August 18, 2015) Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on Russians not to worry about the country’s economy, because the government is monitoring the situation around the clock, RIA Novosti reported on 18 August. “Everyone is on the job; the government is managing the economy, on a daily and hourly basis. We don’t let anything out of […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK The Times (UK)/Mark Franchetti: “The last days of an oligarch” (Boris Berezovsky)
Russian Press Digest (17 August 2015)
(opendemocracy.net – EDITORS OF OPENDEMOCRACY RUSSIA) This Monday, the Russian press reports on the import ban on foreign medicines, Rosneft’s taxes, and an attack by Orthodox activists on a Moscow sculpture exhibition. Kommersant opens with an article on new plans to ban imports of a range of medical products. Several large NGOs, including Vera and Podari zhizn, involved in medical […]
» Read moreRussia’s surprisingly stingy sovereign wealth fund
As disputes over budget spending intensify, the stability of NWF suggests fiscal conservatives in government can still fight their corner. (Business New Europe – bne.eu – Alex Nice, analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit – August 18, 2015) [Charts here http://www.bne.eu/content/story/insiders-russias-surprisingly-stingy-sovereign-wealth-fund] Since the EU and US imposed sanctions on Russia’s banking, defence and energy sectors in mid-2014, there has been speculation […]
» Read moreHead of Russia’s Mighty Rail Monopoly Looks Set to Step Down
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – August 18, 2015) Vladimir Yakunin, one of Russia’s most powerful executives and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, was nominated as a senator for the upper chamber of the Russian parliament Monday, a position that would oblige him to step down as head of the state rail monopoly Russian Railways (RZD). […]
» Read more