September 4:
Despite ongoing tensions over events in Ukraine, Russia has announced the conclusion of two new gas deals with Europe, Reuters reports. The first - an asset swap between Russia's Gazprom and Germany's BASF - will give Russia greater access to gas trading and storage in Europe. The second will double to capacity of the Nord Stream pipeline to deliver gas to Europe through the Baltic Sea, thereby bypassing Ukraine. The German government has emphasized that these deals are independent corporate decisions "that the German government has no influence over and does not try to influence."
After Syria, Russia's jihadi contingent is heading east. A new expose by The Daily Beast reports that Ukrainian forces fighting Russia now have an unlikely new ally: a battalion of jihadis from the North Caucasus. The "Sheikh Mansour Battalion," made up of Russian militants who fought most recently with the Islamic State in Syria, has "enlisted in the fight against the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine." "Over the past year," the newsmagazine notes, "dozens of Chechen fighters have come across Ukraine's border, some legally, some illegally, and connected in Donbas with the Right Sector, a far-right-wing militia."
But these militants are finding a chilly welcome from the Ukrainian government, despite the presence of a common foe. "So far, neither the Right Sector battalion nor the Chechen battalion have been registered with official forces," The Daily Beast reports, and observers say that the government of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko finds it "unimaginable to allow former or current ISIS fighters to join any government-controlled or -sponsored military unit." For now, then, the Chechen fighters are simply fellow travelers - fighting toward a common goal with Ukrainian forces, but not toward a common vision.
September 5:
Russia's beleaguered Far East could soon receive investment from a new source. Sputnik News reports that the South Korean government has expressed its willingness to "combine efforts" with the Kremlin in the development of Russia's eastern territories. At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, South Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Yoon Sang-jick said that - with the presence of proper stimuli, like the free port regime recently signed into law by President Putin - South Korean companies will become more and more involved in the region.
The British Broadcasting Corporation has proposed the establishment of a new satellite news channel for Russian speakers as a way of countering the effects of Russian propaganda. According to The Independent, the primary target of the new BBC measure - which will be part of the organization's already-existing World Service - is the Kremlin's RT channel, which has breached UK broadcasting codes on numerous occasions. According to Tony Hall, the BBC's Director-General, the measure is necessary because British outreach has been blocked, jammed and otherwise restricted in Russia - even as Russian propaganda and misinformation has saturated Western airwaves.
September 6:
In a throwback to the Cold War, Russia is rebuilding its vast intelligence network throughout Europe, the Czech government has charged. "It is assessed that Russia is creating a structure in Europe drawing on the concept of the Comintern founded by the Soviet Union," the Czech Republic's Security Information Service has said in an annual report, excerpts from which were published by Radio Free Europe. The network, the report notes, is similar in size and structure to the COMINTERN created by Moscow prior to the Second World War. Among its particular interests, according to Prague, is the Czech energy sector, which is now in the process of enlargement. "Russia does not consider a fight over the Czech nuclear energy sector a lost battle," the study states.
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