August 27:
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service recently spent $1 million on software designed to monitor and spread information via social networks. The software ordered, according to RIA-Novosti, includes a system that will monitor the blogosphere and social networks “to single out the centers where the information is created and the ways by which it is spread among the virtual society,” as well as a system that will automatically spread information “with pre-prepared scenarios of influence on mass audience in social networks.” Some experts worry the latter system could be used for mass messaging or even infecting computers with “bot” programs. The head of the Russian Association Center for Safe Internet, however, claimed the software is used for propaganda like the Voice of America and RFE/RL radio stations. .
September 1:
Russian Duma opposition members are working to turn the tables on United Russia party members over the corruption charges against opposition member Gennady Gudkov. Days after investigators accused Gudkov of engaging in business and other paid activities—a practice technically banned but widely practiced by Duma officials—his allies began to use blogs to feature other Duma officials guilty of the same activities. Luxury cars and opulent real estate holdings appear on the tax reports of several of the ten lawmakers featured so far, which, as Gudkov notes, are odd luxuries for government officials earning five-figure salaries. The backlash is a rare occurrence among the Duma’s opposition members, reports the New York Times, as the body is typically dominated by its pro-Kremlin members. ”
September 3:
Russia, the world’s second-largest tobacco market after China, will submit a law banning smoking in public places to parliament by November. The announcement produced sharp protest from cigarette makers Philip Morris International Inc. and British American Tobacco Plc., reports Bloomberg Businessweek, who consider a Russia a “big success story.” Nearly 40 percent of the country’s population are habitual smokers, and the Health Ministry estimates that premature deaths caused by smoking cost the country 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. Smoking-related diseases are responsible for 23 percent of yearly deaths, which the Health Ministry believes could be reduced by up to 200,000 lives per year with the new bill. If passed, the law will outlaw all cigarette-related advertising, end retail sales at kiosks, and ban smoking in public places, to be effective January 1, 2015.
September 4:
Vladimir Putin’s approval rating has dropped twelve percent in the last four months—an unprecedented event in the former KGB agent’s history as Russia’s leader, Rueters reports. Many analysts suggest that the fall is a result of social forces out of the Kremlin’s control. Fractures between the country’s religious followers and more extreme political protestors widened with the Pussy Riot trial, which a former Kremlin spin expert suggested was intended to form closer ties between the Orthodox Church and Kremlin. Instead, said one analyst, “He has risked encouraging hard line and nationalist forces that have no particular sense of loyalty to him.”
A former parliamentary deputy noted that during Putin’s first term, his cause for creating a stronger state was a rallying point for most of society. “Putin would like to seize the social agenda now,” he added, “but how can he when society it divided into two opposing parts?” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, one of the country’s more anti-Kremlin newspapers, claimed that the falling poll numbers are an indication that society wants a new leader when Putin’s term ends in 2018.
September 5:
Russian officials denounced a new European Commission investigation into Gazprom’s European activities. According to the Wall Street Journal, the EC is investigating charges that the company breached antitrust rules by obstructing the gas flow across the EU and imposing unfair prices through its insistence in tying gas prices to oil prices. Russian officials accused Europe of “trying various means, not always proper, to create better conditions for themselves,” and one official added that “There is no alternative to Russian gas in Europe.” Analysts believe the EC could fine Gazprom up to $15 billion, ten percent of its annual global revenue, and force it to revise contracts that breach EU rules.
September 6:
China’s continued rise as a regional power has spurred Russia and Japan toward friendlier relations. According to the Wall Street Journal, officials from both sides are hoping increased cooperation between their countries will lead to a solution to the ongoing dispute over the southern Kuril islands. Since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency, both sides acknowledged a willingness to compromise, and Japanese leaders expressed an interest in renewing the discussion at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. “We are ready to continue negotiations,” the Russian Foreign Ministry announced, “and try to find solutions that will take on board the interests of both sides, that would be acceptable to the people of both countries.”