I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security:

• The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released analysis of nuclear security reporting by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which stated the department could improve its reporting practices regarding its highly-enriched uranium housing facilities. The report found that for the years 2014 and 2015, the DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s annual reports on the security of facilities housing nuclear material did not meet the federal definition of quality information, citing an issue with the report’s timeliness, accessibility or accuracy. (Homeland Preparedness News, 04.14.17)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• No significant developments.

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• “I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete,” U.S. President Donald Trump said of NATO at a news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg after they met in the Oval Office. “If other countries pay their fair share instead of relying on the United States to make up the difference, we will all be much more secure and our partnership will be made that much stronger,” Trump said. (AP, 04.13.17, Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• “I strongly believe the only way to deter Russia is to be strong,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, backing U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that NATO members raise their defense spending. But he added: “We have to find ways to live with them, to avoid a new cold war.” (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Poland on April 13 welcomed the first U.S. troops in a multi-national force which is being posted across the Baltic region to counter potential threats from Russia. More than 1,100 soldiers—900 U.S. troops as well as 150 British and 120 Romanians—are to be deployed in Orzysz, about 57 km (35 miles) south of Russia's Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad. Three other formations are due to become operational by June across the region. (Reuters, 04.13.17)
• Proximity to Russia is bolstering defense expenditure across Eastern Europe. Romania, Lithuania and Latvia are behind this year’s biggest advances. Other front-line countries such as Estonia and Poland also spend more proportionally than western members, meeting or surpassing NATO’s guideline of allocating 2% of economic output. Lithuania will keep increasing military spending in the next two years even after hitting the NATO guideline, its finance minister said, as Russia builds up capabilities on the borders of its Baltic neighbors. (Bloomberg, 04.10.17, Reuters, 04.12.17)
• U.S. Navy Adm. Michelle Howard, who heads NATO's Allied Joint Force Command in Naples and commands U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa, said Russia had clearly stepped up its naval actions in recent years, although the size of its navy was smaller now than during the Cold War era. "We're seeing activity that we didn't even see when it was the Soviet Union. It's precedential activity," Howard said. (Reuters, 04.09.17)
• U.S. President Donald Trump has signed off on Montenegro’s upcoming accession into NATO, helping pave the way for the military alliance’s expansion in the Balkans. U.S. Sen. John McCain has congratulated Montenegro and blasted Russia for its alleged attempts to interfere in the Balkans. The United States said on April 12 there are credible reports that Russia attempted to interfere in elections last October in Montenegro, which formally became a member of NATO this week. (AP, 04.11.17, AP, 04.12.17, Reuters, 04.12.17)
• Russia's foreign ministry said the United States’ approval of Montenegro's bid to join NATO was a "deeply mistaken" move that creates divisions in Europe. (RFE/RL, 04.14.17)
• Montenegrin prosecutors have formally charged 14 people, including two Russians and two pro-Russia opposition leaders, with plotting to overthrow the government last year. (RFE/RL, 04.13.17)
• U.S. President Donald Trump has this week ordered the first-ever battlefield use of America’s largest non-nuclear bomb — the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), also known as the “mother of all bombs.” Russia didn’t appreciate the U.S. press encroaching on its territory and was quick to point out that Russia has an even bigger bomb. This bomb, the Russian edition of Popular Mechanics wrote in 2013, is so big that it deserves the moniker: “father of all bombs” (FOAB). (The Moscow Times, 04.14.17)
• British officials say two Russian warships will be escorted by the Royal Navy as they transit the English Channel. (AP, 04.15.16)
• Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, called on the West to "restore trust" with Russia and warned that the two old adversaries are moving toward a renewed state of Cold War. "All the indications of a Cold War are there," he said in an interview with German newspaper Bild on April 14. (RFE/RL, 04.15.17)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• The Jubilee Pugwash Conference devoted to nuclear disarmament will be held on Aug. 29 in the Kazakh capital of Astana, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said. (Interfax, 04.11.17)

Counter-terrorism:

• The man Russian police believe was the suicide bomber who killed 14 people in a blast on the St. Petersburg metro last week developed an interest in Islam and soon after traveled to Turkey, two people who know him told Reuters. Alleged St. Petersburg suicide bomber Akbarzhon Dzhalilov was deported from Turkey in December 2016, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit reported. (Reuters, 04.09.17, CrimeRussia.com, 04.11.17)
• The death toll in an April bomb blast on a subway train in St. Petersburg has risen to 15. As many as 53 people injured in the April 3 terrorist attack still remain hospitalized, the city’s Deputy Governor Anna Mityanina said on April 11. (TASS, 04.11.17, RFE/RL, 04.12.17)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to punish Russian citizens who fight for terrorist groups abroad by stripping them of their passports. The fight against terrorism and Islamic State remains a priority for Russia, Putin said. There are about 20,000 foreign militants in Syria, of whom approximately 10,000 are citizens of former Soviet Union countries, and of these, less than a half come from Russia, he said. (The Moscow Times, 04.12.17, Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Russia’s Federal Security Service said that 16 terror attacks involving citizens of CIS states were prevented in 2016. (TASS, 04.11.17)
• Two extremist attacks in Europe during the past week have connections to former Soviet Central Asian republics. The man who allegedly drove a truck into a crowd in downtown Stockholm, killing four, is an Uzbek native said to have Islamist sympathies. Uzbekistan says its security services passed information on the accused man, Rakhmat Akilov, to the West before the deadly attack. On April 9, Norwegian authorities said a 17-year-old Russian with Islamist sympathies had been arrested on suspicion of placing a bomb at a subway station in Oslo. A Norwegian court has arrested the 17-year-old Russian citizen known as Isa B. (AP, 04.09.17, RBTH, 04.12.17, RFE/RL, 04.14.17)
• Russian investigators say two traffic policemen have been killed after their vehicle came under fire in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region. (RFE/RL, 04.08.17)
• Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev told FBI agents in 2011 that four mysterious men—young, and wearing suits—had come looking for him but never returned and he never knew why, according to an FBI interview report that was made public on April 10. (The Boston Globe, 04.10.17)
• The European Court of Human Rights has awarded 2.9 million euros ($3.2 million) to the victims of Russia's 2004 Beslan terrorist attack. Judges ruled that Russian authorities had contributed to the attack's "tragic outcome" by failing to carry out a coordinated rescue operation. They also found that police had "amazingly accurate information about the terrorist attack being prepared,” but did nothing to prevent it. (The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)

Conflict in Syria:

• In a Fox Business Network interview, U.S. President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t intervene militarily against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unless Assad resorts to using weapons of mass destruction again. “Are we going to get involved with Syria? No,” Trump said. But, he added, “I see them using gas … we have to do something.”  Trump called Assad “an animal” and a “truly an evil person,” and said that it is now up to Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his support of the Syrian regime. Trump also provided additional insight into his reasoning. “What I did should have been done by the Obama administration a long time before I did it, and you would have had a much better—I think Syria would be a lot better off right now than it has been,” Trump said. (The Washington Post, 04.12.17, The Washington Post, 04.12.17, AP, 04.13.17) 
• U.S. President Donald Trump said he thinks it’s “unlikely” Russia had no advance knowledge of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on civilians last week. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• During their talks on April 12, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed that Syria should be "unified and stable" after the Islamic State is defeated. At the meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tillerson, the sides had a rather "substantive" discussion on the Syrian crisis. Lavrov also said they also agreed to an international investigation into the use of chemical weapons in what was effectively an ultimatum. Tillerson said before his visit to Russia that Moscow must calculate the costs of remaining an ally of Assad, the Iranians and Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah. (The Washington Post, 04.12.17, TASS, 04.13.17, The Washington Post, 04.12.17, The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)
• Russia and the United States have a shared understanding that U.S. air strikes on Syria should not be repeated, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moualem in Moscow on April 13, Interfax news agency reported. He said this was "concluded" during U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s  April 12 visit to Moscow. (Reuters, 04.13.17)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said he is willing to restore the agreement by which U.S. and Russian forces communicate during operations in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on April 12, provided the Americans accept certain conditions regarding the fight against ISIS. "We have also talked about the state of affairs and the direction of our airspace forces, as well as the coalition headed by the U.S.," Lavrov said after meeting with Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The suspension of that agreement does not mean Russian air defense will shoot down incoming missiles in the event of another U.S. strike, but it will not prevent Syria from defending itself, Viktor Ozerov, the head of the defense and security committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told the Interfax news agency. (Washington Examiner, 04.12.17. The Washington Post, 04.11.17)
• U.S. State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said on April 13 that it was his understanding that the U.S.-Russian deconfliction agreement “does remain intact.” “There was some question that it was going to be pulled down. That was a Russia claim, at least … So I can’t speak to how it may change. My understanding is that it does remain in effect,” he said. (Russia Matters, 04.13.17)
• The Group of Seven industrialized nations on April 11 urged Russia to pressure the Syrian government to end the six-year civil war, but rejected a British call to impose new sanctions on Moscow over its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, who hosted the G-7 gathering, said “there is no consensus for further new sanctions.” “We must have a dialogue with Russia,” he said. “We must not push Russia into a corner.” German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Russia and Assad ally Iran must be involved in any peace process to end Syria’s six-year civil war. “Not everyone may like it, but without Moscow and without Tehran there will be no solution for Syria,” he said. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the time has come for Russia to end the "hypocrisy" of its support for Assad. (AP, 04.11.17, RFE/RL, 04.11.17)
• The Trump administration took the unusual step April 11 of unveiling intelligence discrediting Russia's attempts to shield its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, from blame in last week's deadly chemical attack. Officials said their case against the Syrian government included signals and aerial intelligence—combined with local reporting and samples taken from victims of the attack—that showed a Russian-made, Syrian-piloted SU-22 aircraft dropped at least one munition carrying the nerve agent sarin. (The Washington Post, 04.12.17)
• Tensions between the United States and Russia will not "spiral out of control" following last week's U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on April 11, describing it as a one-off response to Syria's use of banned chemical weapons. While some U.S. officials have said they believe Russia played a role, noting it had forces stationed at the same air base where Syrian planes allegedly launched the attack, Mattis said the United States is not involved. Earlier a senior U.S. official claimed that the United States had concluded that Russia knew ahead of time that Syria would launch a chemical weapons attack. (RFE/RL, 04.11.17, Reuters, 04.12.17, AP, 04.11.17)
• U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster said that Russia should be pressed to answer what it knew ahead of the chemical attack since it has positioned warplanes and air defense systems with associated troops in Syria since 2015. “I think what we should do is ask Russia, how it could be, if you have advisers at that airfield that you didn’t know that the Syrian air force was preparing and executing a mass murder attack with chemical weapons,” McMaster said on Fox News. McMaster then said on April 16 it was time for tough talks with Russia over its support for Syria's government and its "subversive" actions in Europe. (Reuters, 04.16.17, The Washington Post, 04.10.17)
• Russia's failure to strip the Syrian government of its chemical weapons stockpile contributed to the death of more than 70 Syrian civilians attacked with sarin gas, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has alleged. “I hope that Russia is thinking carefully about its continued alliance with [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, because every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer in to some level of responsibility.” (The Moscow Times, 04.10.17)
• “I think it is clear to all of us that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. “But the question of how that ends, and the transition itself could be very important, in our view, to the durability, the stability inside of a unified Syria.” (New York Times, 04.11.17)
• U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has warned that Russia could become an "island" if it doesn’t find a way to save face and side with the U.S. and its allies in opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17) 
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believed there were two main explanations for the incident in Idlib province: that Syrian government air strikes had hit rebel chemical weapons stocks, releasing poisonous gas, or that the incident was a set-up designed to discredit the Syrian government. Putin said on April 11 that Russia had information that the United States was planning to launch new missile strikes on Syria, and that there were plans to fake chemicals weapons attacks there. “We’ve seen all this before,” Putin said at a press conference in the Kremlin with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, describing the chemical attack as “a provocation.” Putin said the Syrian events remind of the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Russia opposed and which Putin said led to the collapse of the country and a surge in terrorism. (Bloomberg, 04.11.17, Reuters, 04.11.17, Reuters, 04.12.17)
• Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has fiercely rebuked U.S. President Donald Trump for authorizing airstrikes against a government airbase in Syria. “That’s it. The last of the campaign fog has disappeared. Instead of the theory he disseminated about working together to fight the main enemy—ISIS, the Islamic State—the Trump administration has proved that it will viciously fight the legitimate government of Syria—in blatant violation of the norms of international law, without the approval of the U.N., violating [the United States’] own procedures establishing the need to notify Congress about any military operation that isn’t tied to an attack on the U.S., and on the verge of a conflict with Russia.” (The Moscow Times, 04.07.17)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on April 14 that a chemical weapons attack in Syria that provoked U.S. missile strikes on the Middle Eastern country may have been staged. (Bloomberg, 04.14.17)
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov claimed that Russia has “absolute reliable information” that Syria’s jets struck chemical weapons controlled by terrorists. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Russia has vetoed a U.N. proposal urging the Syrian government to aid an investigation into a deadly gas attack in northern Syria. (The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)
• Russia, Syria and Iran strongly warned the United States April 14 against launching new strikes on Syria and called for an international probe into last week’s chemical attack there. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who hosted his Iranian and Syrian counterparts at a trilateral meeting in Moscow, denounced last week’s U.S. attack on Syria as a “flagrant violation” of international law and warned that any further such action would entail “grave consequences not only for regional but global security.” (AP, 04.14.17) 
• Russia plans to hold talks with the U.S. and the United Nations next week in Geneva aimed at breathing new life into the Syrian peace process, state media reported, in what would mark the first such contacts since the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump took office. (Bloomberg, 04.17.17)
• The joint command center that coordinates Russian and Iranian forces—as well as other militias fighting for the Assad regime—issued a statement on April 9 saying the United States had crossed its own "red line" by bombing the Syrian government air base. “What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines," read the statement. "From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well."  The top Russian and Iranian generals have condemned the U.S. missile strike against a Syrian military base and vowed to continue their fight against "terrorists," which they generally call opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, and his Iranian counterpart, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, spoke by phone on April 8, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. (RFE/RL, 04.09.17, The Washington Post, 04.11.17)
• The international body on chemical weapons control is testing samples from a suspected nerve gas attack that killed at least 87 people in Syria last week and could produce a report on the matter within three weeks, the British delegation to the commission said on April 13. (AP, 04.13.17)
• Ex-chief of the Russian Air Defense Forces Staff Igor Maltsev told Gazeta.ru that Russian air defense systems could detect cruise missiles only at the range of 24-26 kilometers if these missiles are flying at the altitude of 50-60 meters over moderately rugged terrain. Therefore, defending Shayrat, the air base targeted by U.S. cruise missiles last week, would have required deployment of four to five S-400 batteries in the area. (Russia Matters. 04.07.17)
• The Syrian government and rebels evacuated more than 7,000 people from four besieged towns on April 14 in the latest coordinated population transfer in Syria’s six-year-long civil war. However, the evacuation of more than 3,000 Syrians that was scheduled to take place on April 16 from four areas as part of a population transfer has been postponed, opposition activists said, a day after a deadly blast that killed more than 120 people, many of them government supporters. (AP, 04.17.16, AP, 04.14.17)
• The Russian Defense Ministry said on April 11 that two of its soldiers had been killed in a mortar attack in Syria and a third was fighting for his life, the RIA news agency reported. (Reuters, 04.11.17)
• British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to try to persuade Russia to break ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a phone conservation on April 10, May's office said. (RFE/RL, 04.11.17)
• Iraq's influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to "take a historic heroic decision" and step down, to spare his country further bloodshed. Sadr, who commands a large following among the urban poor of Baghdad and the southern cities, is the first Iraqi Shiite political leader to urge Assad to step down. (Reuters, 04.09.17)
• A memo by Britain's ambassador to Washington pointed to a tweet by Ivanka Trump declaring she was "heartbroken and outraged by the images coming out of Syria following the atrocious chemical attack.” Sources familiar with the diplomatic cable said that Ivanka's concern was a "significant influence in the Oval Office." Ministers were informed that it meant the administration's reaction had been "stronger than expected." (The Times, 04.09.17)
• Americans narrowly support missile strikes ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump last week in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack in Syria, even as most oppose additional military efforts to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Nearly 6 in 10 say they are concerned about the missile strike worsening relations with Russia, which has firmly supported the Assad regime and bolstered its military in battles with rebel groups. (The Washington Post, 04.10.17)
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said an alleged poison gas attack blamed on his government last week in Idlib province was "100% fabrication" used to justify a U.S. air strike, news agency AFP reported on April 13. (Reuters, 04.13.17)
• A delegation from Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federal Council, have met in Riyadh with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud for talks about the war in Syria. Federation Council Deputy Speaker Ilyas Umakhanov said the Russian delegation, led by Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, "differed in opinion" with Saudi Arabia's king about whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should remain in power. (RFE/RL, 04.17.17)
• When U.S. lawmakers return from their recess next week, they will quickly begin moving several bills designed variously to sanction the Assad, Iranian and Russian governments, several lawmakers and congressional aides said. (The Washington Post, 04.17.17)
• Following the U.S. strike on the Syrian airbase in Shayrat, a popular Facebook group called “Russians for Donald Trump” even changed its name to “Russians for Donald Trump RIP.” The community's organizer, Alexander Domrin, a professor at Moscow's National Research University Higher School of Economics, explained that hope in Trump is no longer justified. (The Moscow Times, 04.07.17)

Cyber security:

• During his visit to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he and his Russian counterpart “touched only briefly on the topic of cyber security.” He stressed that the U.S. sees a difference between the use of “cyber tools” to influence internal, domestic decision-making and using them to interfere in weapons development programs. (The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)
• A group known as the Shadow Brokers, which sprung to prominence with the release of files last year it claimed were stolen from the National Security Agency, on April 8 made public a fresh set of hacking tools it said had been developed by U.S. spies. Shadow Broker’s latest disclosures, western intelligence officials have said, appear to be made in direct reprisal for U.S. actions against the Kremlin’s interests. (Financial Times, 04.10.17)
• CIA Director Mike Pompeo on April 13 called WikiLeaks a "hostile intelligence service," using his first public speech as spy agency chief to denounce leakers who have plagued U.S. intelligence. He said Russia's GRU military intelligence service used WikiLeaks to distribute material hacked from Democratic National Committee computers during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (Reuters, 04.13.17)
• U.S. authorities announced April 10 that they are working to dismantle a global computer network that sent hundreds of millions of spam emails worldwide each year. Pyotr Levashov, the Russian man alleged to be at the head of the scheme, was arrested April 7 in Spain. (AP, 04.10.17)
• Karim Baratov, the Canadian accused of hacking Yahoo! Inc. email accounts for the Russian government, will remain in prison until a June hearing to determine whether he can be extradited to the U.S. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Germany is trying to beef up its cyber defense, after the interior minister called for rules that allow nations to attack foreign hackers targeting critical infrastructure. Government institutions, armed forces and companies are fielding hundreds of cyber-attacks a day, many from foreign servers in Russia, China and Iran, according to the armed forces, the Federal Office for Information Security and Germany's domestic intelligence agency, BfV. (Bloomberg, 04.10.17)
• Foreign governments such as Russia and China may have been responsible for a crash in the U.K.’s voter registration website in the weeks before the Brexit referendum, according to a report by Parliament’s Public Administration Committee. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Cybercrimes reportedly cost Russia 0.25% of its GDP in 2015. (Kommersant, 04.13.17)
• Russian officials and Google have reached an agreement to settle a two-year-old case against Google for requiring the pre-installation of some of its apps on mobile devices using the Android system. (AP, 04.17.17)
• Facebook has registered with Russia's Federal Tax Service and will begin paying VAT on the sale of virtual goods in Russia. (RBTH, 04.17.17)

Russia’s alleged interference in U.S. elections:

• During his visit to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is considering additional sanctions on Russia, in response to alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election: “The issue of the election interference is a serious issue, one that could attract additional sanctions.” (The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)
• Russia hasn’t seen “a single fact, or even a hint of fact” to back up the allegations of Russia’s meddling, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow on April 12. He said many people are eager “to undermine our relations in order to promote their domestic political, and maybe foreign-policy, ambitions,” Lavrov said. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of Carter Page, adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said. (The Washington Post, 04.11.17)
• When Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. These include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and one with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Kislyak’s behest. (New York Times, 04.06.17)

Energy exports from CIS:

• Russia will soon start consultations with its own oil producers about the possibility of extending an output cut deal with OPEC, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said. Saudi Arabia was reported to be lobbying OPEC and other producers to extend a production cut beyond the first half of 2017. (Reuters, 04.11.17, Reuters, 04.11.17)
• Denmark’s government wants to change the country’s laws in a way that could block a proposed Russian gas pipeline to Europe, a sign of the growing unease in the EU over the project. (Financial Times, 04.10.17)
• Gazprom has built over 650 kilometers (approximately 404 miles) of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline, Gazprom press service said on April 12 after the meeting of its CEO Alexei Miller with China’s Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli and the deputy general manager of China National Petroleum Corporation, Wang Dongjin. (TASS, 04.12.17)

Bilateral economic ties:

• Global rental site AirBnb has closed its Russian subsidiary. (The Moscow Times, 04.11.17)

Other bilateral issues:

• U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s still optimistic about improving relations with Russia a day after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vented deep disagreements during hours of talks in Moscow. “Things will work out fine between the U.S.A. and Russia,” Trump said in a Twitter posting on early on April 13. “At the right time everyone will come to their senses & there will be lasting peace!” (Bloomberg, 04.13.17)
• At a news conference on April 12 at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged that relations between the U.S. and Russia “may be at an all-time low,” but said he remained optimistic that the U.S. and its allies “could get along with Russia.” “Based on everything I’m hearing, things went pretty well, maybe better than anticipated,” he said of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Moscow visit. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said the level of trust with the U.S. has slipped after U.S. President Donald Trump’s election. “Trust at the working level, especially at the military level, hasn’t gotten better; rather, it’s deteriorated,” said Putin in an interview with the Mir TV channel that aired April 12. Putin then spoke about the reasons behind the deterioration of Russian-U.S. relations and the prospects of Syrian settlement at the meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow on April 12, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "President [Putin] gave a rather detailed account to his interlocutor [Tillerson] on his stance on the reasons that have led our bilateral relations to such a sad condition in which they are now," Peskov said. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17, TASS, 04.13.17)
• The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did not discuss the prospects for a meeting between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during their talks in Moscow. (RFE/RL, 04.13.17)
• During U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow, he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to appoint special envoys to address some of the “irritants” to relations—which Lavrov pointedly said had developed primarily during U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration. Tillerson said both nations would set up a "working group" to seek ways to ease tensions. The two ministers agreed there should be more  communication between U.S. and Russian diplomats and militaries. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17, The Washington Post, 04.12.17)
• “I will be frank, we have a lot of questions regarding very ambiguous and contradictory ideas on the international agenda in Washington,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after shaking hands with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow. “And I’d like to say, apart from words, we saw some very alarming actions regarding the unlawful attack in Syria.” Tillerson, looking directly at his counterpart while speaking, acknowledged what he called “sharp differences” between the two countries. He said he hoped they could candidly discuss ways to narrow them going forward. "There is a low level of trust between our countries,” Tillerson said in a news conference with Lavrov. "The world's two primary nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship." (ABC, 04.12.17, The Washington Post, 04.12.17)
• During their talks on April 12, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed that that the Korean Peninsula should be denuclearized. The Russian government has earlier said it was extremely worried the United States might decide to unilaterally attack North Korea. (The Washington Post, 04.12.17, Reuters, 04.11.17)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on April 17 that Moscow could not accept North Korea's "reckless nuclear actions" but said he hoped the United States would not take any unilateral action against Pyongyang. (Reuters, 04.17.17)
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described the rhetoric used by the United States as "primitive and loutish." (NBC, 04.12.17)
• The Pulitzer Prizes on April 10 honored The Washington Post for hard-hitting reporting on U.S. President Donald Trump's presidential campaign and The New York Times for revealing Russian President Vladimir Putin's covert power grab, praising their probing of powerful people despite a hostile climate for the news media. (Reuters, 04.10.17)
• Three astronauts from the International Space Station have successfully landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan—two from Russia and one from the United States. (AP, 04.10.17)
• Russia and the United States will continue joint research in 2017-2018 on a mission to Venus, Lyudmila Zasova, the head of the laboratory for spectroscopy of planetary atmospheres of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told TASS. (TASS, 04.15.17)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Russia is preparing to move the date of the 2018 election, which is expected to hand Russian President Vladimir Putin a new term, from March 11 to March 18—the day Russia celebrates its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.13.17)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to prevent "color revolutions" in Russia, also stressing that Moscow will do its utmost for that and support its partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization. (RBTH, 04.12.17)
• Some 52% of Russians questioned by the Levada Center said that they were “definitely not ready” to take a more active role in Russia's political life, while 28% described themselves as “reluctant” to take part. The figures have risen dramatically since 2015, when 38% and 33% of respondents reported that they “definitely would not” or “probably would not” take more interest in the country's government. (The Moscow Times, 04.12.17)
• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on April 12 called on his supporters to hold protest rallies across the country on June 12, which is the annual Russia Day public holiday. (Reuters, 04.12.17)
• Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's richest businessmen, has filed a lawsuit against leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, court documents released on April 13 showed, after alleging that Navalny had defamed him. (Reuters, 04.13.17)
• Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Russian oil tycoon jailed by the Kremlin, has called on supporters to back the presidential bid of anticorruption crusader Aleksei Navalny in next year’s election. (RFE/RL, 04.15.17)
• Russia saw a net capital outflow of $15.4 billion in the first quarter of 2017, the same amount as in the whole of 2016, the central bank data showed on April 11. (Reuters, 04.11.17)
• Only a year ago, Russia’s Finance Ministry was threatening jail time to anyone using digital currencies. In a major U-turn, it’s now edging closer to their acceptance as a legitimate financial instrument to open a new line of attack on money laundering. (Bloomberg, 04.10.17)
• Rosenergoatom has started cold and hot function testing at unit one of the Leningrad Phase II nuclear power plant under construction in western Russia. (World Nuclear News, 04.13.17)
• Life expectancy for Muscovites has climbed to 77 years thanks to improving healthcare, the city’s mayor announced on April 11. (The Moscow Times, 04.11.17)
• In an open letter published on April 13, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta is calling on the Russian government to respond to violent threats against its reporters from religious figures in Chechnya. (The Moscow Times,  04.14.17)

Defense and aerospace:

• A nuclear warhead-armed RS-28 would take about 30 minutes to reach the United States from a silo in central Russia; its warheads would be capable of destroying an area about the size of Texas. Armed with the “Object 4202” hypersonic warheads, each of which is capable of destroying an American missile silo, the time would be cut down to 12 minutes or less. The RS-28 ICBM is scheduled to become operational in 2018, according to former U.S. Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter. (Newsweek, 04.12.17)
• Russia’s new hypersonic anti-ship Zircon missile has reached eight times the speed of sound during a test, a source with Russia’s defense sector told TASS. (TASS, 04.15.17)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• A Russian regional governor who was dismissed by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week has been detained on charges of bribe-taking. Lawyers for the former Mari El region chief, Leonid Markelov, and a businessman accused of giving him a bribe, said on April 13 that Markelov was expected to be brought to Moscow and that searches were being conducted. (RFE/RL, 04.13.17)
• A second suspect has been arrested on charges of embezzling millions of dollars from Russian's MiG aircraft manufacturer. Sergei Mamaev, MiG's former deputy director general for economy and finance, was detained by police in April, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported on April 12. (The Moscow Times, 04.12.17)
• The regional prosecutor's office in Chechnya will investigate reports that local authorities are carrying out mass arrests of suspected gay men in the North Caucasian republic. (The Moscow Times, 04.17.17)
• The International Chamber of Commerce is holding an arbitration hearing over Russian magnate Sergei Pugachev’s claims for $12 billion from Russia, part of a long-running battle with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government. (AP, 04.17.17)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

• EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini will make her first official visit to Russia on April 24. Mogherini will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to "discuss the most pressing foreign policy issues, in particular the conflict in Syria," an EU statement said. (RFE/RL, 04.12.17)
• Vladimir Safronkov, Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, launched into a tirade in New York on April 13, nearly yelling at British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, who accused the Kremlin of supporting “the murderous, barbaric, criminal” Assad regime, and said Russia is “on the wrong side of history.” “You’re scared,” Safronkov told Rycroft. “Your dream has slipped away, because we’re going to work with the United States.” (The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)
• Estonia’s security service arrested a Russian in January on suspicion of spying, the Baltic country’s first case involving an alleged recruit of the GRU military intelligence service. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• A Polish government commission says a plane carrying Poland’s president may have disintegrated due to an explosion shortly before it crashed in western Russia in 2010, killing everyone on board. (RFE/RL, 04.10.17)
• United Nations human rights experts and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are demanding urgent action from Russian authorities to end the persecution of men perceived to be gay in the Russian region of Chechnya and to "thoroughly" investigate reports of abuse. (RFE/RL, 04.13.17)
• Italy's Foreign Ministry says it is seeking information about reports alleging that authorities in Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya have been abducting, torturing and killing gay men in an apparently coordinated campaign. (RFE/RL, 04.11.17)
• Russia says it has hosted regional consultations on Afghanistan intended to help national reconciliation. The Russian Foreign Ministry says the meeting involved senior diplomats from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and ex-Soviet Central Asian nations. Russia had also invited the U.S. to join the consultations, but it refused. Afghanistan asked Russia for assistance in supplies, services and training for the military and police, head of Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry Department for Policies and Strategic Planning, Mohammad Ashraf Haidari, said. (Reuters, 04.13.17, RBTH, 04.16.17)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived on April 14 in the Kazakh capital Bishkek to take part in summits of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The EAEU is set to discuss issues of integration, removal of trade barriers and main priorities for member states’ economic policies for the coming years, while the CSTO will discuss measures to strengthen cooperation on issues of regional security. (TASS, 04.14.17)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded state honors to executives at Glencore Plc, the Qatar Investment Authority and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA months after the $11 billion deal to buy a minority stake in state oil company Rosneft PJSC. (Bloomberg, 04.11.17)
• Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on April 17 tourists and businessmen from 18 nations can visit the Russian Far East without visas. (TASS, 04.17.17)

China:

• China, which has since 2011 joined Russia to veto six U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria, abstained from a vote April 12 on a U.S.-led proposal criticizing last week’s chemical weapons attack. The move left Russia—Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chief ally—as the only veto-wielding council member to oppose the resolution. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• China has rejected a Russian request to hold a trilateral meeting with India at the level of defense ministers in Moscow. (RBTH, 04.12.17)
• The first freight train to run from Britain to China departed on April 10. From Barking, it will pass through the Channel Tunnel into France and on to Belgium, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan before ending up in Yiwu, China. (Reuters, 04.10.17)
• According to a Chinese Ministry of Commerce announcement, China's cumulative investment in Russia since 1991 stands at $14.2 billion. However, this figure is deceptive since it doesn’t include transactions through offshore jurisdictions. Beijing has recently calculated a more realistic figure by polling Chinese companies that have invested in Russia. As a result, the Chinese have arrived at $40 billion of cumulative investment by the end of 2016, with about a quarter coming after the Crimea annexation, according to Carnegie Moscow Center’s Alexander Gabuev. (Interpreter/Carnegie Moscow Center, 04.07.17)
• “Neither Beijing [nor] Moscow are visionary superpowers which have more attractive values to promote globally. In many areas, China and Russia either have no alternative proposals to the current norms, or have conflicting views. But the similar nature of their authoritarian systems, and the position that both countries occupy in international fora (most notably the U.N.), make them natural partners in constructing an international order that values sovereignty over universal norms,” according to Carnegie Moscow Center’s Alexander Gabuev. (Interpreter/Carnegie Moscow Center, 04.07.17)

Ukraine:

• U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked his European counterparts on April 11 why American voters should care about the conflict in Ukraine, France's foreign minister said. The new U.S. administration under President Donald Trump has indicated it might be less engaged on the international stage than some of its predecessors, telling its allies that it would put U.S. interests first. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Tillerson had openly questioned why "American taxpayers" should be concerned about Ukraine, which has been racked by a separatist conflict for the last three years. (Reuters, 04.11.17)
• During his visit to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to sanctions imposed on Moscow for its 2014 annexation of Crimea. The condition for lifting sanctions remains the same as former U.S. President Barack Obama’s full implementation of the Minsk II ceasefire agreement in eastern Ukraine. (The Moscow Times, 04.13.17)
• Presidents of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine will hold talks in the near future in the Normandy group format, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 14. (Reuters, 04.14.17)
• The International Court of Justice (ICJ) says it will issue a ruling on April 19 on Kiev’s bid to block Russia from sending money, weapons and troops to eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 04.17.17)
• Ukraine’s central bank governor, hailed as the “No. 1 reformer” in the country’s struggle to rebuild its war-torn economy, has submitted her resignation. Valeria Gontareva told reporters in Kiev on April 10 she’d ended her mission, tendering a letter to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko saying she was ready to quit. (Bloomberg, 04.10.17)
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman has a 1% approval rating. (Bloomberg, 04.12.17)
• Russia’s top lender Sberbank has got rid of its leasing business in Ukraine, the bank said in a statement on April 7. (TASS, 04.08.17)
• Last August, a handwritten ledger surfaced in Ukraine with dollar amounts and dates next to the name of Paul Manafort, who was then U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman. Now, financial records newly obtained by The Associated Press confirm that at least $1.2 million in payments listed in the ledger next to Manafort’s name were actually received by his consulting firm in the United States. (AP, 04.12.17)
• U.S. President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman will register as a foreign agent for lobbying work he did on behalf of pro-Russian political interests in Ukraine, his spokesman has said. Paul Manafort's decision to register comes amid investigations by the FBI and Congress into the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia. (RFE/RL, 04.12.17)
• Ukraine has seen a slide in Russian speakers, from 33.9% in 1994 to 24.4% last year. (Financial Times, 04.13.17)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia has elected a new president. Russian news agencies on April 10 quoted local election chief Bella Pliyeva as saying that Anatoly Bibilov, speaker of the local legislature, won nearly 58% of the vote while the incumbent got 30%. (AP, 04.10.17)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit the Georgian breakaway region Abkhazia next week to open a new Russian embassy and meet with the local leadership. Lavrov’s working visit will start April 18 with the official opening of a new Russian embassy complex, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. (DFWatch, 04.14.17)
• The Georgian Defense Ministry has drafted and submitted to parliament a "concept" for the creation of a strong reservist force capable of supporting and augmenting the regular army in the event of a full-scale armed conflict. (RFE/RL, 04.17.17)
• Moscow has promised over $1 billion in loans for Belarus after last week's talks between the leaders of the two countries, Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko told the local ONT TV station late on April 9. Belarus then signed the Eurasian Economic Union’s Customs Code after months of legal wrangling. (The Moscow Times, 04.14.17, Reuters, 04.10.17)
• Prosecutors say that 17 people have been detained in Moldova and Ukraine in a suspected plot to assassinate Vladimir Plahotniuc, one of Moldova’s most powerful politicians. (RFE/RL, 04.08.17)
• France and Uzbekistan need to strengthen security cooperation in order to combat jihadist groups and prevent violent attacks, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told Reuters on April 15 during a visit to the Central Asian nation. (Reuters, 04.15.17)
• Uzbekistan's national airline has resumed flights from Tashkent to Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, some 25 years after such flights were halted. (RFE/RL, 04.11.17)

IV. Quoteworthy

• Obama on Syria in 2016: "I understand the impulse to want to do something, but ultimately what I've had to do is to think about what we can sustain, what is realistic. And my first priority has to be what's the right thing to do for America.” Trump on Syria in 2017: “So when I saw that, I said we have to do something.”
• Former U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates offers the crucial caveat: “There’s merit in getting Russia off balance politically, but being militarily unpredictable when Russian forces are directly involved is a very risky business.” (The Washington Post, 04.11.17)
• “Nobody can tell us on Russia what the American policy is, on Syria what the American policy is, on China what the American policy is,” one Washington-based ambassador said. “I’m not sure there is a policy. They will listen to me and tell me, ‘We will get back to you when there is a policy.’” (The Washington Post, 04.11.17)
• "As a whole, the administration's stance with regard to Syria remains a mystery. Inconsistency is what comes to mind first of all," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on April 12. (Reuters, 04.12.17)
• "Russia is on an island when it comes to its support of Syria," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. "In this particular case, it's no question that Russia is isolated. They have aligned themselves with North Korea, Syria and Iran. That’s not exactly a group of countries you’re looking to hang out with. With the exception of Russia, they are all failed states," Spicer said. (Reuters, 04.11.17)
• Iranian economist Saeed Laylaz on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's decision to run for president: "He wants to become a Boris Yeltsin." (Wall Street Journal, 04.12.17)