September 12:
President Dmitry Medvedev has likened the Georgian military assault on South Ossetia that led to last month’s war to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Agence France-Presse reports. “Almost immediately after these events it occurred to me that for Russia, August 8, 2008 was almost like September 11, 2001 in the United States,” Medvedev said in a meeting with Western foreign policy experts in Moscow. According to participants in that meeting, Medvedev said he “would not have hesitated for a second” to intervene militarily in Georgia even if Georgia had been granted official NATO applicant status.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has admitted that foreign capital inflows could fall by up to 45 percent this year but denied turmoil in Russia’s financial markets was caused by the conflict in Georgia, the Financial Times reports. Speaking to Western journalists in the resort of Sochi, Putin blamed Russia’s outflow of capital on “speculative” moves by Western institutions withdrawing funds because of the “mortgage crisis” in the U.S. and Europe, but he denied that there is a liquidity crisis or that the turmoil has “anything to do” with the Georgian conflict. He also said Washington has huge deficits while Russia has “a double surplus” on its budget and trade accounts, adding that the U.S. “should attract allies and partners” and “not behave like some kind of Roman Empire.”
Kremlin Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev has held a council meeting on a desolate Arctic island in order to stress the need for Russia to claim a slice of the Arctic’s resources, Reuters reports. “The Arctic must become Russia’s main strategic resource base,” Russian news agencies quoted Patrushev as telling the officials attending the meeting, who included Russia’s defense and interior ministers and the speakers of both houses of parliament. As Reuters notes, Russia says a whole swathe of the Arctic seabed should belong to it because the area is really an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.
September 13:
Hundreds of Russian soldiers have left bases they set up on the outskirts of the Black Sea port of Poti and at three other locations in western Georgia ahead of a September 15th deadline. Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia told the Associated Press that Russia has fulfilled the commitment made in an agreement worked out by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week but noted that even with the departure of those 250 soldiers and 20 armored vehicles, some 1,200 Russian soldiers remain at 19 positions inside Georgia. Lomaia stressed that Georgia, like the European Union and the United States, demands a full Russian withdrawal to prewar positions, in accordance with a cease-fire that Sarkozy brokered in August.
September 16:
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that Russian defense spending will increase by 27 percent in 2009, Regnum reports. Putin told members of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia - including its leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky - that 2.4 trillion rubles (more than $94 billion) will be allocated for national defense and security next year. He also said that spending for education, health care and pensions will also grow - by 26 percent, 35 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
Russia’s two largest stock exchanges, the MICEX and RTS, have been forced to suspend trading after experiencing huge one-day declines, Rosbalt reports. According to the news agency, the price of shares in the Gazprom natural gas monopoly dropped 14.8 percent while the Rosneft state oil company’s share price fell 20.6 percent and the state-controlled VTB Bank’s share price plunged 32.5 percent. Overall, the Russian stock market’s capitalization dropped nearly 20 percent today alone.