November 8:
Moscow is bracing for a more adversarial policy from Great Britain. RT reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to name Russia as a top-tier threat to the UK when his government unveils its new National Security Strategy later this year. The document, currently being drafted by Whitehall, reportedly identifies "rising aggression by Russia" as a key strategic challenge confronting the British government in the years ahead.
November 9:
The October 31st downing of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has been tied conclusively to the Islamic State terrorist group, in the process spiking fears in Moscow that the country has made itself a target of Islamist terror as a result of its intervention in Syria. "We understand of course that, with the start of this operation [in Syria], all these terrorist organizations in Syria and those that morally and financially support them will try to activate groups in the underground who remain in Russia," Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defense committee in Russia's Federation Council, has told Bloomberg. The Kremlin, for its part, insists that it has the situation well in hand, and has accelerated its counterterrorism efforts throughout the country, including through the creation of a program designed to "conduct ideological warfare against Islamist terrorism," particularly in Russia's restive North Caucasus region.
The BBC reports that Russia's most famous human rights group has become a target of the Kremlin. Memorial, a noted rights watchdog established to document human rights abuses by the Soviet Union, has been officially been placed on a list of "foreign agents" by the Russian government. The label, given pursuant to a notorious 2012 law requiring groups which receive funding or sponsorship from abroad to formally register with the Kremlin, puts Memorial on a list of some 101 groups stigmatized as "foreign agents" by the Kremlin. The organization's crime? That "the St Petersburg Memorial branch received funds from various foreign organisations including the European Commission and the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has been labelled 'undesirable' under Russian law," the news agency reports.
November 10:
The Kremlin is holding military consultations with North Korea. Sputnik reports that a high-level military delegation headed by the country's Deputy Chief of Staff, General Nikolai Bogdanovsky, has arrived in Pyongyang. Bogdanovsky's visit comes on the heels of Moscow's approval of a recently-negotiated bilateral agreement "on the prevention of dangerous military activities" that might adversely affect the security of the other party.
Russia's prison population is radicalizing. Russia expert Paul Goble, citing the findings of Roman Silantyev of the Human Rights Center of the World Russian Popular Assembly, notes that "[a]t least ten percent of the ethnic Russians who have converted to Islam over the last decade have done so while in prison." The trendline is worrying, Goble writes in his Window on Eurasia blog, because Silantyev's findings also indicate that these converts “have become adherents not of traditional Islam but rather of the most radical Muslim groups and thus potential fighters for the Islamic State."
Russia's economy might be suffering under the weight of ongoing Western sanctions and low world oil prices, but its military budget is still rising - albeit slowly. According to The Diplomat, a budget report just released by the Duma's Defense Committee outlines that 3.145 trillion rubles (or $49 billion) will be allocated by the Kremlin for national defense next year. That represents an increase of $400 million, or 0.8 percent, over 2015 levels.
November 12:
Russia's common border with China was demarcated over a decade ago, but Beijing increasingly appears eager to rewrite that boundary. The Washington Times, citing a recent item in the Chinese press, reports that officials in the border city of Hunchun have installed five new boundary markers - and in the process revised the country's border with Russia to return nearly two square miles to Chinese control. That development would be notable in and of itself, but the incident sparked a significant public outcry - against Russia. "Tens of thousands of Chinese 'netizens' quickly responded online, charging the government with failing to ask Moscow to return not just that tiny fraction but all of the 'lost territories' Russia is said to have taken from China since the mid-19th century," the paper reports.
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