October 1:
The fight against the Russian government's curbs on religion has just gotten an unlikely champion: L. Ron Hubbard's new-age doctrine of Scientology. London's Guardian newspaper reports that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the closure by local authorities of two Scientology branches (in Surgut and Nizhnekamensk, respectively) was illegal. The Scientology branches originally had been refused listing as "religious organizations" because they had not existed in Russia for at least 15 years, as mandated by the country's Religions Act. As part of the ruling, each Scientology outpost was awarded Euro 5,000 in damages, and an equal amount to defray legal costs.
October 2:
Russia's ties with NATO member states continue to thaw. The Times of London reports that the Russian and French governments are nearing agreement on the former's procurement of a Mistral naval assault ship. The deal, if concluded, would mark Russia's first arms purchase from a NATO member nation since the end of the Cold War.
[Editor's Note: The French government may be sanguine about the impending Mistral deal, but other NATO countries are likely to be worried, and for good reason. According to the Times, the Mistral "can deploy four landing barges, 16 helicopters and up to 70 vehicles, including 13 tanks..." and "can also carry 450 soldiers and is equipped with a 69-bed hospital." Its sale to Russia, therefore, is likely to reinforce Russia's increasingly bellicose naval posture in the Black Sea, where the Kremlin recently pledged to protect the international trade of Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia by force if necessary.]
RIA Novosti reports that Russia's state-run nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has just signed some $3 billion in contracts with Japan and France to provide each with low-enriched uranium (LEU). News of the deals, announced by Atomenergoprom, the country's civil nuclear power administration, comes on the heels of Russia's first shipment of LEU to the U.S. in mid-September. Other sales of LEU abroad, meanwhile, are in the offing. "By the end of 2009 other deals, worth up to $2 billion in total, could be signed," Atomenergoprom's official press service has announced.
October 5:
The Associated Press reports that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the seven-nation security bloc headed by Moscow and intended to serve as a counterweight to NATO in Russia's "Near Abroad," has commenced massive military exercises in the south of Kazakhstan. The drills, which entail thousands of troops from Russia and four other CSTO members (Kazakhstan, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan), are aimed at coordinating regional responses to terrorism and insurgent activities.
Russia's demographic fortunes continue to get grimmer, a new report from the United Nations has assessed. According to the latest edition of the UN's multi-year study on Russian demographics, entitled Russia Facing Demographic Challenges, Russia's domestic population - in retreat since 1992 - continues to ebb, and will shrink by some 11 million more people by the year 2025. Nor have recent remedial efforts by the Kremlin provided a lasting solution. Recent initiatives by the Russian government to provide monetary rewards to women for having more babies "have caused a surge in the birth rate," the Associated Press cites the study as saying. But such fixes "will not make much difference in the long term," and by the middle of this century it is projected that Russia will have a smaller population than that of Vietnam.
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