May 31:
According to The Moscow Times, Russia has seen a revival of the old Soviet tradition of informing on neighbors, coworkers, and even family members. Just as it was common practice in Soviet times to denounce fellow citizens, Russia today has seen a marked uptick in citizens reporting others to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. To some, such as human right activist Alexander Cherkasov, these sorts of denunciations are encouraged by the state. While there are some who might report others for genuine reasons, snitching rarely occurs where there is no gain for the denouncer. In fact, through rhetoric, the state signals to groups of "concerned citizens" what sorts of groups ought to targeted, from homosexuals to loosely defined "extremists" to "foreign agent" NGOs. As Irina Khaly, a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, puts it, "Everything is sliding back to 1937: denunciations, secret informants and squealers."
June 1:
Despite an ostensible ceasefire between Russian and Ukrainian forces, "serious human rights violations and abuses... persist in eastern Ukraine," a new report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has found. The report, which covers the human rights situation in Ukraine from February 16th to May 15th of this year, details instances of "shelling, executions, arbitrary and illegal detentions, torture, ill-treatment, human trafficking and the lack of justice and accountability, as well as deprivation of economic and social rights." Despite the conclusion of the so-called Minsk II ceasefire back in February, "shelling has not stopped, nor have armed hostilities between Ukrainian armed forces and armed groups" backed by Russia, the study finds.
InRussia's republic of Tatarstan, a strange political synergy is taking place. News website lenta.ru reports that the regional chapter of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) has begun recruiting local Muslims as a way of bolstering its ranks and gaining new relevance. The region's Muslims, meanwhile, see the opposition party as a new vehicle for political relevance after years of being shut out of national politics. "[T]he Communist Party must become the face of the people, to help the revival of mosques and churches, as well as protection of the rights and interests of people of faith," says Hazrat Gumarov Batyrsha, a prominent regional imam who has joined the KPRF.
June 2:
ROSATOM and the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), Russia and China's state nuclear corporations, are considering collaborating in the development of nuclear energy abroad, reports Sputnik. Russia and China already cooperate on domestic projects such as the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant, for which ROSATOM is developing new power units. But the two countries now want to expand their efforts to initiate new nuclear projects in third countries. Says Zhu Jincai, Deputy Director of CNNC, "At the moment, we are discussing further comprehensive cooperation not only in Russia or China, but also in other countries, and not only in the nuclear energy sphere, but also in using uranium resources and commonly exploiting nuclear technologies."
Is Russia rethinking its relationship with Syriandictator Bashar al-Assad? According to Al-Sharq al-Awsat, there are now indications of a "dramatic U-turn" in the Kremlin's approach to Syria's ruling regime - which it has long supported, despite more than four years of bloody civil conflict there. Moscow, the paper contends, is increasingly beginning to contemplate a "future without Assad" and, at a recent international conference on terrorism issues, articulated what amounts to a sea-change in official policy when the Russian representative argued that "what concerns Russia is to safeguard its strategic interests and secure the future of minorities," as well as to keep the country intact - priorities that might be better achieved without Assad in power.
June 3:
Russia's economy is now in the throes of a "full-blown" economic crisis, according to former Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin. "We are currently faced with a full-blown crisis under any existing criteria," the RIA Novosti news agency reports Kudrin as saying. "The Economic Development Ministry estimates Russia’s GDP will sink by 2.8 percent this year, which already means a recession. But my thought is that the drop will be sharper, by about 4 percent." The culprit, according to the former economy czar, isn't a loss of revenue resulting from the current, low world price of oil, but from "the need to support defence expenditure" in support of national military modernization and the war in Ukraine. "This year," he noted, "despite shortages of financing in some other areas, government spending on defence will grow by R600bn [more than $110 million]."
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