Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1620

January 27:

The Russian Orthodox Church has elected Metropolitan Kirill as its new Patriarch. The Associated Press reports that Kirill, who has served as the Church’s caretaker leader since the passing of longtime Patriarch Alexy II in December, handily defeated his two nearest challengers, receiving 508 of the 700 votes cast by eligible clerics.

As part of its efforts to shore up its faltering economy, the Kremlin is planning to provide the country’s struggling banks with a 900 billion ruble ($27.4 billion) capital infusion. According to Pakistan’s Daily Times, Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, is likely to receive the lion’s share of that sum – some 500 billion rubles – with other commercial banks getting smaller allocations as part of an effort to increase liquidity and reinvigorate investor confidence. The decision brings the tally of money spent by the Russian government so far on economic stabilization to well over $200 billion.

January 29:

In its bid to reinforce the Obama administration’s apparent reservations about its predecessor’s plans to deploy U.S. missile defenses in Europe, the Kremlin has publicly ratcheted down its military response to the system. According to a Russian military official cited by Pakistan’s Daily Times, Russia has abandoned plans to deploy advanced Iskander missiles in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, as previously threatened by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. “Russia does not need to place Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if a US missile defence shield is not going to put fear into eastern Europe,” the official is cited as saying.

The RIA Novosti news agency reports that Russia has signed on to the European Union’s newest initiative to combat terrorism financing. A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that the Kremlin has signed the Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism, which entered into force in May of last year. "The signing by Russia of the convention is one more proof of Russia's commitment to an uncompromising struggle with these crimes," the ministry said on its website. Experts, however, say that Russia’s endorsement of the convention could have significant impact at home, and not necessarily in a benign way – allowing, among other things, for authorities to try suspects for money laundering without evidence of the original crime.

Kyrgyzstan appears to be the latest target of cyberwarfare from Russia. According to The Industry Standard, a technology newsletter, the government of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan has been taken offline by Russian hackers. Since January 18th, the Standard reports, the former Soviet republic’s two largest Internet providers have been under what experts have described as "massive, sustained distributed denial-of-service attack," with the effect of leaving virtually the entire country without in access to the Internet. According to the trade paper, the attacks have been traced back to the group of nationalistic Russian hackers which launched a cyber offensive against the Republic of Georgia last summer during that country’s brief war with Russia.

January 31:

Russia has taken its crackdown on illegal migration to the skies. The Gulf Times reports that Russia’s Federal Migration Service has begun using unmanned aerial vehicles to track down illegal migrants near the Russian capital of Moscow. The FMS first started using drones in December “as an experiment,” Oleg Moldievsky, head of the Service’s Moscow region branch, has revealed. Since then, however, the benefits of more closely identifying and tracking “foreign citizens” have made the practice popular among Russian authorities, and the FMS plans “to use these methods very effectively and often.”