October 8:
Russia's newest gambling haven has officially opened. According to The Moscow Times, the Tigre de Cristal casino has just opened its doors in the Far East region of Primorye. The area - designated as a special gambling zone by the Kremlin back in 2009 - is expected to attract investors and gamblers from Asia. The casino, part of a larger complex of "15 hotels, 12 guest villas, a yacht club, a multifunctional trade and exhibition center, and several cinemas," is projected to yield over $16 million in taxes for the region annually.
October 9:
The Russian government is flouting the terms of the Obama administration's signature arms control initiative with the Kremlin, the Washington Free Beacon reports. Russia has deployed 111 nuclear warheads since the 2010 New START treaty went into effect - putting it at 98 warheads above the treaty limit, despite the looming 2018 reduction deadline. Meanwhile, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has fallen and remains below agreed-upon levels. Dr. Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon nuclear policymaker, has predicted that Russia will pull out of New START before it has to make any reductions to its strategic arsenal.
The ceasefire in eastern Ukraine is mostly holding - at least for the moment. That's the assessment of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In its latest report on the situation in Ukraine, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission "observed a relatively calm situation in the Donetsk region," with only sporadic signs of hostilities between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian irregulars. The situation in the Luhansk region, another stronghold of pro-Russian separatism, is currently one of "overall calm" as well, the OSCE mission noted.
The OSCE's ambit, however, is incomplete. The monitoring mission "is restrained in fulfilling its monitoring functions by restrictions imposed by the parties and security considerations, including mine threats, damaged infrastructure, and the unpredictability of the situation in Donbas." Additionally, it noted, "[a]rmed individuals continue to prevent... monitoring most areas close to the border with the Russian Federation in parts of Luhansk region not controlled by the [Ukrainian] Government."
October 10:
Russia's strategy in Syria is remarkably similar from the one it previously employed in Ukraine, a new analysis by USA Today notes. "Russia's recent involvement in Syria's civil war is similar in some ways to its intervention in eastern Ukraine, where it exploited ethnic conflict, provided weapons, employed volunteers and irregular forces and tried to deceive the West about its intentions," the paper outlines. This corresponds to the tactics outlined in what Russian officials have termed "new generation warfare" - a strategy which, according to military expert Phillip Karber, "combines low-end, hidden state involvement with high-end, direct, even braggadocio, superpower involvement."
October 11:
The costs of the Kremlin's military adventures abroad are already sky-high and getting still higher, a leading critic has assessed. Writing for Ekho Moskvy, economist Andrei Illarionov notes that recent assessments of the price tag of Russian President Vladimir Putin's military campaign in Ukraine - most notably the study "Putin.War" compiled by the late opposition activist Boris Nemtsov - undervalues the true cost to Russia of that military engagement. Illarionov notes that other factors, including indirect military spending, Russian subversion in other parts of the "post-Soviet space," and private sector expenditures associated with war preparations, dramatically raise the full cost of the conflict to the Russian state.
The "total cost of this war," he writes, "can be defined as the sum of the direct price for the state budget (the value of additional government military spending, compared with the average level of military spending in the "pre-war") and the price of the preparation and conduct of military operations to the private sector (as determined by the value of additional private capital outflow compared with the average size of private capital outflows in the "pre-war”)." And that sum, Illarionov concludes, rises to nearly $100 billion.
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