July 28:
Russia's national currency continues to plummet in value. Radio Free Europe reports that the Russian ruble has continued to weaken against the U.S. dollar in recent weeks, with its value falling below 60 rubles to the dollar in late July for the first time since this spring.
July 29:
Russia's deepening economic woes do not seem to have put a crimp on official military spending. According toThe Moscow Times, the Russian government has disclosed that it bought some $33.2 billion in defense equipment last year, despite expanding Western sanctions against the Russian Federation. buoying the country's defense industry in the process. Russia, the paper notes, "bucked the global downward trend in defense revenues," fueled by growing official expenditures on armaments and defense equipment. This trend, moreover, is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, because Russia's current military modernization plan stretches through the end of the decade.
July 30:
The 2006 poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko - an act strongly believed to have been perpetrated by agents of the Russian government - was tantamount to a mass casualty attack, an official inquiry into the incident has concluded. Reuters reports that the British government probe of the killing, which took place in London and involved the use of the radioactive isotope polonium, was equivalent to "a nuclear attack on the streets" of the British capital, and put "an unknown number of Londoners" at potential risk.
"We will never know how dangerous the exposure of polonium to the public at large will be and what long term effects will be visited upon Londoners," a lawyer for the London police has told the inquiry. "Anyone who arranges for polonium-210 to be brought into a citycentre does so without any regard for human life." Two Russians, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi (the latter now a member of the Russian Duma) are wanted by British authorities for their roles in the incident.
Russian authorities have formally opened court proceedings against Nadia Savchenko, the Agence France Presse reports. Savchenko, a Ukrainian helicopter pilot, was captured by separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, and subsequently handed over to the Russian government and imprisoned within Russia - a state of affairs her lawyers have described as tantamount to "kidnapping." Savchenko is accused of being complicit in the deaths of two journalists from Russia's state television and radio agency as a result of shelling in Eastern Ukraine. Her trial is now being carried out by the city court in the Donetsk People's Republic, a self-declared pro-Russian enclave in Eastern Ukraine - a choice of venue that Savchenko's lawyers say is aimed at "shielding the proceedings from the public eye."
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Over the past year, Savchenko has emerged as a high-profile political prisoner - and a bellwether of sorts for relations between Moscow and Kyiv. The Ukrainian government has gone to great lengths in its attempts to secure her freedom, including appointing her as an official representative to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), thereby granting her diplomatic immunity. Russia, however, has refused to honor this status and release Savchenko, setting the stage for the current trail.]
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