Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1606

November 19:

Russia is lobbying the United Nations for a review of global arms export regulations in the wake of its August war with Georgia, RIA Novosti reports. According to the news agency, Russia is pushing for tighter restrictions on arms supplies to foreign nations, charging that the U.S. and Ukraine aided Tbilisi during the latter's conflict with Moscow. "Illegal weapons, including small arms, fall into the hands of terrorists and irresponsible users," Russia's UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, has told a session of the UN Security Council. "The Caucasus crisis in August this year showed that the current mechanisms of weapons transfers, including the Wassenaar Arrangement, are inadequate."

Fears for the safety of jurors has led the judge presiding over the trial of three men accused of murdering journalist Anna Politkovskaya to close the proceedings to the public. "A court officer told me that the jury refuses to be in a courtroom in the presence of media representatives," RIA Novosti reports the judge as saying of the trial, now getting underway. "Therefore, further hearings will be held in a closed court."


November 20:

More than 100 people have been killed so far this year in racist attacks in Russia, the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights has said. According to the human rights watchdog, between January 1st and November 15th of this year, a total of 114 people – 37 of them of Central Asian origin – were killed in racially-motivated assaults throughout the country, the Moscow Times reports. An additional 357 people were injured in such attacks. The upsurge in attacks, Russian political scientists say, is attributable in part to "a certain rise in nationalist mood," as well as "economic difficulties and a loss of ideology."

Russia and India are poised to sign an agreement for four more nuclear reactors as part of deepening strategic cooperation between Moscow and New Delhi. The new deal is expected to be signed in early December, during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's planned visit to the South Asian state. The planned facilities will be located in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu state, where Russia is already in the process of building two nuclear reactors, reports the Times of India.

As part of ongoing efforts to ease the impact of the global financial meltdown on Russian citizens, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced a $14.6 billion tax cut for businesses. At a speech before a party congress of the United Russia faction, Putin pledged to cut profit taxes by four percent beginning this coming January, as well as a slew of other measures, ranging from greater unemployment benefits to additional tax breaks for small businesses. "We will do our best to prevent the problems of past years, the collapse of past years, from repeating itself in our country again," the Moscow Times reports Putin as saying. "All this money will remain at work in the economy."


November 22:

Just two years after an interruption of gas supplies to Ukraine precipitated a major energy crisis in Europe, Russia's Gazprom natural gas monopoly has again set its sights on the former Soviet satellite. The Kremlin-linked company has warned that it could cut off energy supplies to Ukraine unless Kyiv moves quickly to repay its outstanding $2.4 billion debt to the Russian energy giant in full. "We would like to avoid such a scenario, we would like to agree on everything before New Year's, but as you understand, we cannot deliver gas without a contract," the Agence France Presse reports Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov as saying. At issue is a deal signed in October by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian premier Yulia Tymoshenko to settle the debt dispute between the two countries - something which "has not happened so far," Kupriyanov says.