January 30:
Amid declining economic prospects, the Kremlin is doubling down on its nuclear deterrent. Sputnik News reports General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, as telling reporters that the top priority of the military is now "the quality improvement of the Strategic Nuclear Forces." Concretely, Russia's plans include the establishment and equipping of four new missile regiments within the country's Strategic Rocket Forces. This move, Gerasimov has said, is necessary as a response to the West. "This attitude toward keeping the Strategic Nuclear Forces in the condition of high combat readiness in combination with the quality improvement of the combat potential of the regular troops will prevent the military superiority of the United States and NATO over Russia," the general has told reporters.
Is it "sacrilege" or censorship? The Associated Press reports that Russian prosecutors have launched an inquiry into Dozhd TV, Russia's top independent television channel, after it carried out a poll asking if the Soviet Union should have surrendered Leningrad to Nazi Germany in order to avoid the resultant one million casualties. The poll has ruffled the feathers of Kremlin officials, with presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that it crossed a moral "red line." Even if the survey was morally questionable, however, it is far from clear what laws - if any - Dozhd violated by conducting it, observers say. But that has not stopped Russian authorities from launching their inquiry.
Dozhd's media partners are taking their cues from the Kremlin. "All of a sudden, our partners - cable networks - first started warning us that they are going to disconnect us and then started actually disconnecting us," Dozhd's editor, Mikhail Zygar, has told AP.
February 1:
In a throwback to Cold War provocations, two long-range Russian bombers carrying nuclear nuclear-capable missiles were intercepted over the English Channel, London's Express newspaper reports. The two planes were detected by the Royal Air Force, which scrambled its own fighters to intercept the Russian jets. British officials are describing the incident as "yet another in a series of deliberately provocative" measures by the Russian government amid tensions over Ukraine. In effect, they say, NATO's status has shifted from "rival to adversary" in the Russian conception, with potentially grave consequences.
February 2:
As its international isolation deepens, Russia is working to expand its military contacts abroad, Newsweekreports. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, has announced that Russia will enter into "preliminary negotiations" for expanded defense collaboration with Brazil, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea. According to Gerasimov, the stepped-up interaction will entail "a series of joint naval and air force exercises, as well as joint drills of our ground troops and air assault troops" with Brasilia, Hanoi, Havana and even Pyongyang.
Russia's newest region is sliding backwards on human rights. "After Russia occupied Crimea last February, it quickly started the so-called 'passportization' process of granting Russian citizenship to Crimean residents,"writes Human Rights Watch researcher Yulia Gorbunova in The Moscow Times. That process, she notes, has effectively created a two-tier system - one under which "those who declared an intent to keep their Ukrainian passports were effectively made foreigners in their own home."
At the same time, Gorbunova highlights, the Russian government has targeted "Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic minority in the Crimean peninsula who openly opposed the Russian annexation." Specifically, "authorities have barred two Crimean Tatar leaders from entering Crimea. The authorities also accused Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar representative body, of 'extremism,' have harassed and persecuted its members and sealed its office in Simferopol."
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