July 21:
For the third time in half a decade, Russia and China are holding joint military exercises. The wargames, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports, involve some 3,000 soldiers drawn from Russia's Far Eastern Military District and the Peoples Liberation Army, and are intended to respond to the "Uighur-Chechen scenario" - the possibility of sustained instability in each country's most restive and troublesome region. Previous military maneuvers between Moscow and Beijing took place in 2005 and 2007, respectively.
July 24:
Russian authorities are bracing for the possibility of a "double dip" recession - and new economic instability at home. "The crisis, or the economy, is close to the bottom, which supports our argument... that the third quarter will be better than the second, though in year-on-year terms it will still be a minus,' Reuters reports Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach telling reporters in Moscow. But "[t]here are risks of a second wave of the slowdown, of the situation worsening at the start of next year due to companies' solvency and the situation in the banking sector." Klepach also warned that unemployment could rise again before the end of the current year, bringing with it growing social malaise.
July 29:
As part of its efforts to curb corruption and cronyism, the Medvedev government is tightening its scrutiny of police procedures and protocol. According to the Moscow Times, Russia's Interior Ministry " will now hold officials personally responsible" for leadership appointments and the performance of officials so selected, as well as instituting more stringent vetting of candidates for potential police positions. “We need a system that safeguards the reliable recruitment for our units of suitable young people to serve the fatherland,” Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has said. The new steps follow a series of public embarrassments for the country's police cadres, including the April rampage in Moscow of police major Denis Yevsyukov, which left three people dead.
August 4:
In a throwback to Cold War era brinksmanship, a pair of Russian nuclear-powered submarines have been detected off the East Coast of the United States. According to the New York Times, the Akula-class vessels were detected in recent days by U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, raising renewed concerns in Washington over Moscow's efforts to reassert its international standing as a strategic power. “I don’t think they’ve put two first-line nuclear subs off the U.S. coast in about 15 years,” says naval historian Norman Polmar. “It’s the military trying to demonstrate that they are still a player in Russian political and economic matters,” according to Polmar.
August 5:
In a move aimed at counterbalancing the Kyrgyz government's recent decision to allow U.S. and Coalition forces to remain at the Manas airbase, Russia has begun lobbying for a second deployment of its own in the former Soviet republic. Kyrgyzstan, meanwhile, is attempting to leverage Russia's interest to address a pressing concern - the security of its shared border with Uzbekistan. Eurasianet reports that Bishkek is lobbying for the new Russian military installation to be erected in its southern Batken province, close to neighboring Uzbekistan, as a way of mitigating the threats to Kyrgyz security emanating from the latter. "All the evil comes from the border," Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to Moscow, Raimkul Attakurov, has explained. "Our request is to locate the proposed military base closer to the border, where transit routes lie."
August 6:
The Kremlin is expanding the customer base for one of its most sought-after commodities - nuclear technology. RIA Novosti reports that Russian premier Vladimir Putin has signed a deal with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogon, securing access for Russian firms in the construction of Turkey's first nuclear power plant. Under the agreement, the plant, which is to be located near Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast, will be built by a consortium of Russian and Turkish firms, including Russia's Atomstroyexport and Inter RAO UES.