June 1:
Amid Western tensions over Ukraine, Jerusalem is downgrading its relationship with Moscow still further.Defense News reports that the strained ties between Russia and the United States over Ukraine are causing Israel to “shy away from high-profile sales and strategic cooperation with Moscow.” Israel is said to have recently forfeited $1 billion in “defense trade and dual-use development projects” with Russia in an effort to balance relations with Russia and with its longtime strategic partner, the U.S. Zvi Kaplan, the former director of the Israel Space Agency, sums up the difficulty: “as much as we wanted to expand cooperation and trade ties...we couldn’t risk upsetting our American friends.”
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have found a new ally in his domestic struggle against onetime political ally Fethullah Gulen and his followers. Al Monitor reports that the recent thaw in ties between Ankara and Moscow - which have been severely strained of late as a result of the Syria crisis - are rooted in a shared distrust of the Islamic social and political movement. The Russian government has already taken a dim view of Gulen’s ideas and activities, and all Gulenist schools have been been closed in Russia. The attitude is a welcome one for Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, which has fallen out of late with Gulen over a number of political issues.
June 2:
Russia has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the spreading violence in Eastern Ukraine. At a press conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed Russian plans to submit a “depoliticized” draft resolution to the UN Security Council that seeks to “halt violence and begin practical negotiations for the purpose of establishing a stable and reliable ceasefire.” Notably, the Voice of Russia reports, the measure calls upon the UN to “immediately create humanitarian corridors that will help civilians leave hostility zones.”
[EDITORS’ NOTE: The proposal, which is of a piece with other attempts by the Russian government to shape the political environment in Ukraine, is all the more striking when placed in context. Moscow may now be urging action in Ukraine, where casualties of unrest have so far been limited, but the Kremlin previously vetoed a similar plan to establish humanitarian corridors in war-torn Syria, a strategic ally, where the death toll from a three-year-old civil war now exceeds 160,000.]
Russia and Ukraine are moving towards an agreement concerning Ukraine’s $3.7 billion energy debt to Russia. The Washington Post reports that the two sides have agreed on a reasonable, as yet undisclosed, price, and a one-year supply safety guarantee. The deal comes on the heels of Ukraine’s full payment of its March and April natural gas bills to Russia.
Russia may be at odds with the West over Ukraine, but at least one aspect of the Kremlin’s foreign outreach is thriving. The Moscow Times reports that the country’s nuclear trade is booming, and that Russia’s state-owned ROSATOM conglomerate is planning new projects in Hungary, Kazakhstan, India, and Iran. ROSATOM, the paper reports, plans to expand its “global order book” to as much as $100 billion this year, an increase of some 25 percent over 2013 figures. By 2030, the agency hopes to triple its sales of nuclear technology.
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