December 5:
Russia is rethinking its demographic problem. According to Russia expert Paul Goble, Vladimir Putin is shifting his administration's focus in its ongoing struggle against Russian demographic decline from "boosting birthrates" to "cutting mortality figures." In his most recent State of the Nation address, Goble notes in hisWindow on Eurasia blog, Putin announced his intention to tackle the "super-high mortality rates" that currently exist in the Russian Federation - rates that are today fueled by rampant alcoholism, unsafe work environments, and violence.
However, doing so is bound to be difficult, Goble notes. That is because, although "Russian birthrates are not too dissimilar from those in European countries," the Kremlin has sought to boost them still further through federal offsets and other incentive programs as an easy way of combating the country's demographic woes. But ameliorating current mortality trends will be more challenge, and will require Putin "to find and spend more money on demographic programs than he has in the past, a step that will be difficult if not impossible given the stringencies the Russian budget now faces and the cutbacks in medical and social services he has already been forced to make."
December 6:
Russia's internet watchdog agency has threatened to ban the popular U.S. social media site BuzzFeed, theWashington Post reports. Russia is accusing BuzzFeed of posting an article concerning insurgent attacks in Chechnya that contains "appeals to mass riots, extremist activities or participation in mass (public) actions," and has demanded that BuzzFeed take down the article within a day. The Russian agency emailed BuzzFeed to clarify that its threat was connected to a video that BuzzFeed had linked to in the article, which was found to be from a Chechen separatist website forbidden in Russia. BuzzFeed has agreed to remove the article, and it appears Russia will refrain from banning BuzzFeed.
December 7:
Even as countries in Europe are trimming their ties to Moscow, Finland is heading in the opposite direction.The Moscow Times reports that Finland's parliament has approved plans to begin construction on a nuclear plant, a project financed and supplied by Russia's state-owned nuclear conglomerate, ROSATOM. Finnish officials are hoping that the project, which carries a price tag of upwards of $6 billion, could serve their steadily contracting economy.
December 8:
Russia's military could soon receive "equivalents" to two leading Western missile defense systems, reports Itar-TASS. The news agency cites Pavel Sozinov of defense conglomerate Almaz-Antei as saying that "Russia is working on an equivalent of the THAAD missile defense complex, which is capable of intercepting ballistic intermediate range missiles and, to a certain extent, warheads of inter-continental ballistic missiles." according to Sozinov, the Russian theater system "will undergo testing soon." Work is also underway on a Russian variant of the U.S. ground-based midcourse defense system, the expert said.
December 9:
Have U.S. authorities set their sights on Russia's media czar? Radio Free Europe reports that a Congressional letter sent to the Justice Department has requested an investigation into whether Russian media state tycoon Mikhail Lesin is guilty of wrongdoing in his recent acquisition of property in the U.S. The request, authored by Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) and now being considered by both the FBI and the Justice Department's criminal division, asks for an investigation into whether Lesin "violated U.S. anti-money-laundering laws when he purchased expensive California real estate." "I am hopeful that the full range of tools available to the agency are being used to look into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and anti-money-laundering statutes by Mr. Lesin," Senator Wicker has told the news service.
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