November 30:
Rumors continue to circulate regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s health, despite repeated denials from the Kremlin. After several state visits in October and November were postponed for undisclosed reasons, Japanese media sources this week announced that a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was postponed due to Putin’s continuing “health problems”, Reuters reports. Putin’s chief of staff stubbornly denied that the president is suffering any health problems, while the Kremlin made its displeasure with the announcement clear. “It is just unethical to name the dates that were discussed,” said Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov. “There were several: at first it was October, November, December, January... then we even shifted to February.”.
December 1:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of advancing democracy through “iron and blood” days ahead of a state visit to Turkey, where Syria is expected to be the major topic of discussion, reports Reuters. “Russia is not opposing Western influence or putting a stick in the spokes of Western-initiated projects out of spite,” he added, maintaining Russia’s position that Assad cannot be forced from power by international pressure. Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov suggested that the situation has been exacerbated by increased activity by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, giving the conflict “a clearly expressed inter-religious element.”
December 3:
U.S. President Barack Obama called on the Kremlin to renew the twenty-year-old Nunn-Lugar disarmament program, despite Moscow’s announced intention to cancel the program. “Russia has said that our current agreement hasn’t kept pace with the changing relationship between our countries,” Obama said. “To which we say, let’s update it.” The New York Times suggests Moscow may link the renewal of the program to concessions by the U.S. over the NATO missile shield in Eastern Europe, which it has long opposed. Since it began in 1992, the Nunn-Lugar program assisted in the deactivation of 7,600 nuclear warheads, as well as hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles, missile silos, and nuclear air-to-surface missiles.
December 5:
Russia is on track to record its first natural population growth for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia recorded 790 more births than deaths through the end of October, a miniscule but noteworthy advance from the early 1990s, which saw Russia’s population declining by over one million people a year. The announcement seems to contradict the widespread “doomsday” predictions regarding Russia’s population crisis, including the United Nations Population Division’s, which predicts that Russia’s population will fall up to 30% by 2050. Experts caution, however, that Russia’s population levels are still far from safe. “Demographic trends are like oil tankers – you cannot turn them around immediately,” said one expert. “What seems to me to be important is the working-age population – and actually that is something we do know 18 years ahead of time and is rather depressing news for Russia.”
December 6:
The latest militant attacks in Russia’s restive Caucasus region saw the fatal shooting of a prominent television journalist, as well as the attempted assassination of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic’s deputy transport minister. Russian officials warned that the murder of the journalist, Kazbek Gekkiyev, was likely a threat to journalists “who cover operations against the bandits acting on the republic’s territory.” Militants posted a video threatening the employees of the state-run television station earlier this year, although Gikkiyev wasn’t named. Before the attacks, the Guardian reports that Kabardno-Balkaria was considered the more peaceful republic in a region characterized by militant violence.
December 7:
Russia’s opposition activists celebrated as the U.S. Senate voted to approve legislation to “name and shame” Russia’s human rights violators. “I congratulate those who managed this,” said prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “At least there is some place in the world where they punish thieves and the murders of our fellow citizens.” The Kremlin was markedly less pleased with the vote, reports the New York Times, and vowed retaliation. While the Foreign Ministry accused the United States of hypocrisy, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia will begin to refuse entry to Americans “guilty of gross violations of human rights.” The Magnitsky Act, which President Obama is expected to sign into law, will bar travel to the United States by those designated as violators of human rights, prevent them from owning property or doing business in the U.S., and freeze any financial assets currently held here.