February 20:
The persistent protests by Russia's long-haul truckers are intensifying. Dozens of truck drivers hailing from 40 different Russian regions have commenced a new 10 day strike outside of Moscow, the RosBalt news agency reports. The drivers are irate over the PLATON tariff system recently established by the Kremlin, which will significantly hike tolls for truckers beginning on March 1st.
February 21:
Russia's recent diplomatic overtures to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers are causing friction with the Kremlin's strategic allies in Tehran. Iran's PressTV reports that Russian Energy Minster Alexander Novak recently traveled to Doha, Qatar for discussions with Saudi Energy Minister Ali al-Naimi regarding the possibility of the creation of a "ceiling" on oil production as a means to stabilize global energy prices. Russia, whose federal budget is heavily dependent on the export of oil and natural gas, has seen its economy ravaged by low energy prices, coupled with ongoing Western sanctions.
But Moscow's overtures have jarred Iranian officials, who have bristled at the idea of a production cap for political reasons now that their country is becoming reintegrated into the world economy. "Asking Iran to freeze its oil production level is illogical," Mehdi Asali, Iran's representative to OPEC, has said. "When Iran was under sanctions, some countries raised their output and they caused the drop in oil prices. How can they expect Iran to cooperate now and pay the price?"
Moscow is ratcheting back its cooperation with Washington in Afghanistan, the New York Times reports. Despite ongoing tensions with the West over its conduct in Ukraine, Russia has generally preserved its cooperation over the security situation in Afghanistan with the U.S. But now, things appear to be changing. Russia's envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, has confirmed to Russian media sources that Moscow has adopted a new, more skeptical attitude toward collaboration with America on the War on Terror's first front. "We won’t join... useless events, and we've already told the Americans," Kabulov has said. "Honestly speaking, we're already tired of joining anything Washington starts."
Instead, Russia is increasingly keeping its own counsel in the war-ravaged nation. "Russia has reinforced its largest foreign military base in Tajikistan, along the border with Afghanistan, and the Russian military has held regular exercises with Tajik soldiers," the Times reports. Additionally, "[t]he Kremlin has committed $1.2 billion to train and equip the Tajik Army, forming a new bulwark in Central Asia north of Afghanistan" as part of its new, unilateral approach.
As a result of its intervention into the Syrian civil war, the Russian government is guilty of war crimes, a leading human rights watchdog group has charged. Amnesty International has told Britain's Sky News that Moscow's aerial campaign in Syria has "deliberately" targeted both civilians and humanitarian workers on the ground there. According to Tirana Hassan, the director of Amnesty's crisis response program, Russian bombing raids have intentionally hit schools, hospitals and civilian dwellings - making the Kremlin guilty of violations of the laws of war which explicitly place the civilian population of an affected nation outside the scope of the conflict.
Nikita Kamayev, the former Russian anti-doping czar who ostensibly died from a suspicious heart attack earlier in February, may have been poised to expose systematic doping and drug violations in the Russian sports world. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that, weeks prior to his death on February 14th, Kamayev had contacted the Sunday Times newspaper in an email in which he relayed plans to author an expose on the Russian sports world. "I want to write a book about the true story of sport pharmacology and doping in Russia since 1987 while being a young scientist working in a secret lab in the U.S.S.R. Institute of Sports Medicine," the email is said to have read.
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