Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1876

February 17:

The Voice of America reports that Russian officials have announced a plan to buy an additional $2 billion of Ukrainian Eurobonds, less than two months after buying $3 billion in December of last year. Both purchases are part of the $15 billion loan Russia has promised the government of embattled Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, which is seen as an attempt to prop up Yanukovich’s beleaguered presidency in the face of widening popular protests.

February 20

Russia is threatening that it could use outright military force to protect Crimea, a pro-Russian enclave in Ukraine. “If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war,” the Financial Times cites an unnamed Kremlin official as saying. “They will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia [in 2008].” The sentiment appears to be reciprocated in Crimea, where the speaker of the regional parliament has announced that the area could secede from Ukraine in the event of a national split. More broadly, Russia appears to be drawing an intellectual and political red line in Ukraine. “We will not allow Europe and the U.S. to take Ukraine from us. The states of the former Soviet Union, we are one family,” another foreign policy official has told the London daily. “They think Russia is still as weak as in the early 1990s but we are not.”

Russia now faces a real threat of economic recession. RIA Novosti reports that January saw the country’s GDP shrink and the ruble reach a record low against the Euro. According to the state news agency, a new report by Russia’s statistics service Rosstat has revealed rates of investment into the country are the lowest they have been since 2010, and growth in wages the slowest since 2009. Retail growth, at 2.4 percent, is similarly at a four-year low.

February 21:

Russia’s discriminatory domestic policies highlight the need for a reform of the process by which the International Olympic Committee, or OIC, chooses host cities, a coalition of leading human rights watchdog groups has said. The coalition, spearheaded by Human Rights Watch, highlighted Russia’s “anti- lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) laws, as well as other serious human rights abuses,” to argue that the OIC should rework its Charter’s nondiscrimination principle – a key element used in the consideration of host cities – to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories.

February 22:

RIA Novosti reports that the United States has expressed its concern over the conviction just handed down by a Moscow court against eight Russian opposition activists who participated in the now-infamous 2012 Bolotnaya Square protests. That rally resulted in significant clashes between police and protesters, leading to widespread arrests of opposition figures on charges of rioting and disorderly conduct. The U.S. State Department has said that the “politically motivated” trial “points to serious concerns about due process and rule of law in Russia.”

Anti-government protesters in Ukraine have succeeded in securing the ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in a move that marks a significant strategic defeat for Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports. Russian officials have reacted negatively to news of the Ukrainian Rada’s vote to remove Yanukovych from office – a step Kremlin politicians have equated with a “coup d’etat.” Policymakers in Moscow have also been quick to blame Western influence for Yanukovych’s ouster. “The West is giving Yanukovych a final push. It's not just a matter of Ukraine on its own,” Alexei Pushkov, chair of the Russian Duma’s International Affairs Committee, wrote on his Twitter feed. “The ultimate goal, if you remove all the chaff, is to bring NATO closer to the borders of Russia."

February 23:

The Winter Olympics in Sochi have come to a close, marking a tactical victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The New York Times notes that “Russia had so much to prove at the Winter Games,” and managed to successfully pull off the international spectacle despite widespread concerns over security and terrorism, as well as woes over infrastructure construction and logistics that plagued the games. The success of the Sochi Olympics also represent an affirmation of the “grand ambitions” of President Putin himself, who has sought to use the Games to catapult Russia back onto the world stage as a great power, notes the Times.