October 12:
Russia's declining economic fortunes are prompting new political divisions within the country, the Washington Post reports. According to the paper, Russian President Vladimir Putin's campaign in Ukraine - and the resulting Western sanctions and economic stagnation - have sparked fears for the future among the country's elites. These worries have been exacerbated by the recent arrest of well-known oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov, previously a close associate of the Kremlin, on charges of money laundering that many in Moscow see as a signal that the Russian government is beginning to turn on its own.
At the heart of the problem, observers say, is the stock the Russian government places upon its Ukraine policy. "Investors have learned that, for Mr. Putin, economic growth is not a priority," notes Sergei Guriev, an economist at the Paris university Sciences Po. "If he has to choose between growth and Crimea, he will choose Crimea."
October 13:
Russia and China are deepening their strategic partnership still further. According to the Agence France Presse, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang, have met in Moscow and signed "dozens" of new deals on energy, finance and strategic coordination. Prominent among these was the creation of a "currency swap line" worth $24.5 billion as a mechanism to promote trade and investment between the two countries.
October 14:
Is Vladimir Putin dusting off an old Soviet icon? "In September President Vladimir Putin restored the title 'Dzerzhinsky Division' to an elite Moscow police unit," notes Alan Johnson in the journal World Affairs. The move is significant, insofar as the name of Soviet official Felix Derzhinsky became synonymous with organized state terror and repression during the early days of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, Derzhinsky's statue in central Moscow was removed - but recent years have seen creeping signs of the Soviet official's "rehabilitation," Johnson notes, culminating with Putin's edict.
October 15:
Economic dislocation resulting from Western sanctions over Ukraine are taking a bite out of Russia’s military budget. The Financial Times reports that the Kremlin has been forced to slash its planned military expenditures by some 5.3 percent in 2016. This marks the first time since the late 1990s that Russia has slowed its defense-related spending. The move, Russian analysts say, is predicable. "Despite Mr Putin's patriotic rhetoric and his successes in Crimea and Ukraine, the weak economy will make cutting defence spending plans inevitable," according to Ruslan Pukhov of the Moscow Defense Brief.
Russia's tense political ties with Japan are being roiled anew by increasingly aggressive Russia incursions.According to Reuters, Japan's Self-Defense Force has been forced to scramble aircraft to intercept Russian fighters more than five hundred times between March and September of this year - a 73 percent increase over 2013 statistics. The figures, released by the Japanese government, point to "increased air activity" on the part of the Russian armed forces in north Asia, Japanese defense officials say.
The Kremlin has put one of Russia's most prominent human rights groups in its crosshairs. London's Guardiannewspaper reports that Russia's Justice Ministry has formally asked the country's supreme court to order the closure of the Memorial human rights foundation, which was founded in the late 1980s by Nobel laureate and anti-communist icon Andrei Sakharov. The request follows an earlier, unsuccessful attempt by Russian authorities to force Memorial to register as a "foreign agent" under Russia’s notorious law on the subject.
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