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Only the continuation of nuclear arms control can create the political and military conditions for eventual limitations of innovative weapons systems and technologies, as well as for a carefully thought through and phased shift to a multilateral format of nuclear disarmament.
The replacement of Russia’s Human Rights Council head Mikhail Fedotov, who was completely loyal to the authorities, with United Russia party member Valery Fadeyev, determines the council’s status once and for all. It is first and foremost a presidential council, and only then a human rights council.
By cooperating with China in the military sphere, Russia loses virtually nothing in terms of security, while making life difficult for the United States, strengthening its relationship with a key partner, and gaining an economic advantage.
Considering the prospects for trade, Washington shouldn’t yet be concerned by the growth of Russian influence in the Gulf. It’s obvious, however, that Arab countries are being increasingly proactive in diversifying their connections. Moscow is simply making use of this to gain economic and political advantages.
America’s withdrawal creates an opportunity and a challenge for Moscow.
There’s one thing the Kremlin wants even more than sowing chaos in the United States: Keeping Trump in the White House.
The purchase of a stake in Arctic LNG 2 by a Japanese consortium is certainly a significant step in the development of economic ties between Russia and Japan, but if the Russian government doesn’t quickly begin work on improving the country’s investment climate, this deal will not be the start of a torrent of Japanese investment, but rather a small island of success in a vast sea of missed opportunities.
Street protests in Ukraine and the threat of destabilization are working to strengthen the authoritarian tendencies of President Zelensky’s rule. He sees that everywhere he has not managed to install his power vertical and his people, the seed of chaos and sabotage is germinating.
Russia need not concern itself about a new security architecture in Europe: eventually, one will grow out of its ongoing confrontation with the United States, together with the combined impact of Moscow’s rapprochement with Beijing and the evolving rivalry between the United States and China.
Two things have become clear following the dismissal of the head of Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory. First, Ukraine’s history politics must become more inclusive, and move away from the extremes of revolutionary fervor and the principles of party affiliation. Second, if the institute cannot be closed down, then it must be radically reformed. Above all, it must not be allowed to be monopolized by representatives of a single political persuasion.
Kolomoisky has been making use of his ambiguous position as the future president’s business partner since the very start of Zelensky’s election campaign, but this didn’t prevent Zelensky from sweeping to victory in the elections. Now, however, the trickster oligarch is becoming increasingly toxic for Zelensky’s team, not only within the country but also abroad.
Russian officialdom has lately developed an enormous appetite—bordering on patriotic hysteria—for historical politics.
With sharp twists and turns reminiscent of the jagged angles of Russian mountain ranges, China’s image in Russia has drastically changed since the founding of the People’s Republic of China seventy years ago.
Spending the surplus in the National Wealth Fund (NWF) via government decrees is the last chance for the state capitalists to get large sums of money for practically nothing, without looking beyond 2024. Meanwhile, it is the government that will have to bear the political risks of dispensing the NWF to the chosen few in full view of a society that is irate and becoming poorer for the fifth year in a row.
An open letter written by Russian Orthodox priests in defense of those imprisoned over recent protests in Moscow is that rare case when the use of the word “unprecedented” is no exaggeration. It’s the first time ever that the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church have taken collective action that was not sanctioned by the church authorities.
There’s no desperation or desire from the Belarusian side right now to obtain concessions from Moscow at any price. The damage to Belarus’s economy from Russia’s “tax maneuver” is serious, but not fatal. The cumulation of these losses will only anger Lukashenko and make him less prepared to compromise.
By September, the criminal cases brought against Moscow protesters had stopped being described as a “second Bolotnaya case,” and rightly so, because it was a false analogy. We have entered a new phase, in which we are seeing political protest cases that would previously have been classified as administrative violations be reassigned en masse as more serious crimes.
During the recent protests in Moscow, a clash has been taking place between the two middle classes: one born of the market economy, and one for which the only possible social elevator is the state itself.
The near-identical results of gubernatorial runners-up Mikhail Amosov and Nadezhda Tikhonova show once again that people were following the tactic of voting for anyone except acting governor Alexander Beglov, and that left with two other options, voters simply tossed a coin. For the first time in the city’s history, we have seen clearly expressed protest voting.
The outcome of Russia’s latest regional elections, especially in Moscow and Khabarovsk, throws into question plans to reduce the proportion of seats allocated by party list voting in favor of more single-mandate districts ahead of elections to the State Duma in 2021. It turns out that when faced with a strong protest mood like in Khabarovsk, or heavily mobilized protests amid a low turnout like in Moscow, these maneuvers don’t help.