January 12:
Nearly $38 billion left Russia in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, while yearly totals for capital flight have more than doubled. The Wall Street Journal reports that a total of $84.2 billion left Russia last year, compared to $33.6 billion in 2010. As a result, the ruble finished the year down five percent, even as the average price of a barrel of Russian oil reached new highs. Experts blame Europe’s ongoing economic crisis and Russia’s political turmoil for driving off foreign investors. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has attempted to brace the Russian population for future economic turbulence. “2012 will not be easy,” he warned recently. “Rather, it will be the opposite, even more difficult than 2011. The data from the world’s leading economies, those alarming signals that come from them, should make us take things seriously in supporting the interests of our citizens.”
January 14:
A Russian ship suspected of carrying munitions to Syria managed to evade EU officials in Cyprus, and is believed to be anchored off the Turkish coast. The Associated Press reports that a Cypriot official claims to have found bullets aboard the Russian ship - which would violate the EU embargo against Syria. Officials let the ship leave, however, after its owners promised to sail for Turkey instead of Syria. Soon after, however, the ship turned off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) and vanished off radar screens. This is “’standard operating procedure’ for ships involved in drugs trafficking and clandestine arms shipments,” according to one arms trafficking expert.
January 16:
Presidential candidate Vladimir Putin has drawn further criticism with his latest editorial, Reuters reports. In it, the current prime minister promises that as president he will bring stability, rather than stagnation - a criticism that has been leveled against him by opponents. There is a “long and painful period of global turbulence” ahead, said Putin, arguing that he was the best leader to guide Russia through it. Putin also used his article to reach out to Russia's middle class, which has been the driving force behind the country’s recent anti-government protests. “The middle class are the people who can choose policies,” he wrote. “Their level of education lets them consciously pick candidates, not just vote ‘with their hearts,’” referring to a popular Yeltsin slogan from the mid-1990s. He did not, however, offer any specifics about his planned initiatives should he return to the Russian presidency this March.
January 17:
Neither Japan nor Russia appears willing to abandon the decades-old dispute over the Kuril Islands. In the most recent development, UPI reports that Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba riled tempers in Moscow by performing an “inspection” of the disputed territory ahead of a Russian delegation to Japan slated for later in January. Russia's Foreign Ministry responded by saying that it “hoped Tokyo wasn’t using the event to draw attention to its claims over the chain of islets.” Soviet troops occupied the Kuril Islands during World War II, and Moscow has claimed possession since that time. The dispute has prevented the two countries from ever signing a formal treaty to end the war.
January 18:
Continuing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa have helped to further sharpen the divisions between Moscow and Washington, the New York Times reports. Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, recently warned that "outside encouragement of antigovernment uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa could lead to 'a very big war that will ause suffering not only to countries in the region, but also to states far beyond its boundaries.'" When asked about the current sanctions being levied against Iran, Lavrov claimed that they were aimed at smothering the Iranian economy and its people, "probably in the hopes of provoking discontent."
Lavrov's comments are but the latest sign of an increasingly conspiratorial Russian mindset. Not long before, the Russian press accused the newly-appointed American Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, of working to "provoke" revolution, while Prime Minister Putin accused radio station Ekho Moskvy of serving American interests. After hearing a broadcast that claimed the U.S.-planned missile defense shield in Eastern Europe was not a threat to Russian security, the prime minister took offense. "This is not information - what they're broadcasting," he said. "It's serving the foreign policy interests of one country with respect to another, to Russia."