November 13:
The Kremlin is playing dumb over Ukraine. Sputnik (formerly RIA Novosti) reports that Russia's Foreign Ministry has formally denied allegations by NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that Russian forces have begun moving onto Ukrainian territory. "I can state it openly and officially that there was no troop movement through the border and certainly no Russian military presence on the territory of Ukraine," a Foreign Ministry has declared.
As tensions over Ukraine continue to simmer, Russia is further downgrading its cooperation with the U.S. on nuclear issues. The New York Times reports that, on the heels of its non-participation at a preparatory meeting for the 2016 nuclear security summit, Moscow has informed Washington "that it is planning to reduce its participation next year in a joint effort to secure nuclear materials on Russian territory," bringing down the curtain on a long-standing arena of bilateral collaboration. The news was formally conveyed to the Obama administration by ROSATOM chief Sergei Kirilenko, who told the White House that there is no bilateral cooperation on securing fissile material currently being "envisioned" by the Kremlin for 2015, and possibly significantly longer.
November 15:
Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggressive policy toward Ukraine may be politically popular among the Russian masses, but it is decidedly less so among the military forces actually being dispatched to fight there.Writing in his Window on Eurasia blog, Russia expert Paul Goble - citing Russian human rights sources - reports that "[s]ome 250 Russian draftees at a military base in Rostov oblast have rejected the appeals of their commanders to sign up as contract soldiers" - a designation that would have permitted them to be sent to the Ukrainian front. The news, Goble reports, is significant, insofar as "it shows that there is not as much enthusiasm in the Russian army for actions in Ukraine as Russian propagandists have suggested."
November 16:
The Kremlin is working to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions on Russia's ailing banking sector. According to The Moscow Times, the Russian government has drafted a set of new legal tweaks that will enable it to invest as much as a fifth of the country's National Welfare Fund in bank debt. The move marks a further repurposing of the $82 billion Fund, which was originally designed to backstop Russia's pension system. Increasingly, however, the NWF has "become an important source of emergency financing for companies impacted by Western sanctions imposed over Russia's actions in Ukraine," the paper reports.
November 17:
Despite a variety of remedial measures now being attempted by the Kremlin, growth estimates for Russia's economy are virtually nil for the foreseeable future. Radio Free Europe reports that fresh modeling by Russia's Central Bank suggests that near-complete economic stagnation lies ahead for Russia. "The base scenario set out in an annual monetary policy strategy document issued on November 10 forecast economic growth of 0.3 percent this year, zero in 2015, and 0.1 percent in 2016," the news service reports. The prediction is based upon the assumption that Western sanctions will last until the end of 2017, though there is potential for better growth if the sanctions are lifted earlier.
Moscow is increasingly charting its own path in space. The Moscow Times reports that the Russian government is planning the construction of a "new, independent national space station" as a replacement for the existing International Space Station (ISS). The plan envisions the ISS being decommissioned following its current 2020 project end date, and its replacement with a Russian-origin substitute. It is also a repudiation of NASA's proposal for the ISS project to be extended, and for U.S.-Russian collaboration in civilian space to continue. As such, the paper notes, it represents "a possible regression to Cold War-style competitive space exploration" on the part of the Kremlin.
Want these sent to your inbox?
Subscribe