Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1884

March 24:

Russia’s manipulation and absorption of Crimea in recent weeks has had an unintended consequence: a growing atomization on the part of Russia’s Islamic community. “Vladimir Putin’s transformation of Russia into a totalitarian, militarist and chauvinist state mean that the Kazan Tatars can see no future for themselves in that country as long as he is its president and is carrying out such policies,” writes Paul Goble in his Window on Eurasia blog, citing an official declaration by the Milli Mejlis, a council of the Tatar nation in the republic of Tatarstan. “Because of Putin’s actions in Crimea which reflect his double standards on self-determination and his oppression of the non-Russian and non-Orthodox population of the Russian Federation,” Goble writes, the Milli Mejlis concludes that Tatarstan must leave Russia “in order to preserve our nation, language and religion.”

March 26:

The Kremlin could soon have a new energy client, this time in the Middle East. The Egypt Independent reports that Moscow is now actively considering reviving its moribund energy relationship with Cairo. According to Egyptian Commerce Minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, the Russian government recently agreed to restart negotiations on a bilateral free trade arrangement between Egypt and the Eurasian Economic Union, which Moscow heads. The deal would facilitate the importation of liquefied natural gas from the Russian Federation and Eurasian states to Egypt.

Moscow is making its interest clear in other ways as well. “Russia is renovating the factories it had built in Egypt,” Abdel Nour has disclosed. The investments being made by Russia reportedly include an iron and steel factory in Helwan, the Nasr Automotive Company, and the aluminum factory in Naga Hammadi.

March 27:

The United States and Europe are pitching in financially to aid Ukraine, the Associated Press reports. Via the International Monetary Fund, Western nations have pledged as much as $18 billion in loans to Kyiv, according to Al-Arabiya. The IMF loans are intended as a "concrete signal of how the world is united with Ukraine," President Obama has said.

March 28:

Moscow may have welcomed Crimea’s decision to join the Russian Federation, but the move may end up costing the Russian government billions. So says former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who has projected – in comments carried by Interfax - that Moscow’s maneuvers in Ukraine could result in between $150 and $160 billion in capital flight, and that the Russian economy will stagnate as a result. But, Kudrin notes, Russians appear “prepared to pay [the price]” for this “independent foreign policy” on the part of their government – at least for now.

With Crimea now in its grasp, the Kremlin is rethinking its military arrangements with Kyiv. The Moscow Times reports that a recent meeting of the Russian National Security Council yielded the decision to terminate bilateral agreements with Ukraine over the status and operation of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. As a result, the paper reports, a number of military arrangements are now poised to be rolled back, and so are the attendant economic concessions Moscow had previously given to Kyiv – among them discounts on natural gas imports and cuts in export duties. A bill to formally void the agreements has been submitted to the Russian State Duma.

EDITORS’ NOTE: The move is part of escalating economic pressure being levied against Ukraine. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has already declared that Moscow plans to seek economic compensation to the tune of $11 billion for revenue lost while the arrangement above was in place.]