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

Nuclear security and safety:

• The U.S. and Russia are waging rival campaigns at the U.N. Security Council over the type of ballistic missile fired by North Korea earlier this month as the U.S. pushes to impose stronger sanctions on Pyongyang over the test. While the U.S. says the missile was an ICBM, Russia believes it was medium-range. (Reuters, 07.20.17, Bloomberg, 07.20.17)
• President Vladimir Putin has signed a strategic document that highlights nuclear and terrorist threats to Russia among other things. In particular, the “Fundamentals of the Russian Federation’s Naval Activities Through Year 2030” lists “proliferation of weapons of mass destructions, and missile technologies.” The July 20 document says Moscow is also concerned about “widening of the scale of international terrorism, piracy, poaching, illegal transpiration of weapons, narcotics psychotropic substance, chemical substance, and radioactive materials.” The general purpose of this document is to strengthen Russian naval forces in seas adjacent to Russia and in other parts of the world ocean where it has been recently active. (TASS, 07.20.17)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• New U.S. sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile program are unfounded, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official said on July 20, adding that the U.S. is fulfilling its own part of the Iran nuclear deal "very badly." (Reuters, 07.20.17)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• In a show of “new military bravado,” in the words of one nuclear-security analyst, Russia’s two largest nuclear-powered naval vessels, the Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) battle-cruiser and a Typhoon-class submarine called the Dmitry Donskoy, left northern Russia on July 17 on their way to the Baltic Sea and then St. Petersburg for Russia’s annual Navy Day celebration at the end of the month. This is the sub’s first journey into the Baltic; the cruiser hasn’t been there since test sailing in 1996. While Norwegian military officials said they had “no reason to be concerned about the nuclear reactors on board,” a nuclear physicist working with the environmental watchdog group Bellona said he is “deeply concerned about the safety on board this nuclear Armageddon machine,” citing the advanced age of the vessels’ reactors and the fear that the crew may push them too hard on such a “prestige voyage.” (Russia Matters, 07.17.17, The Barents Observer, 07.18.17)
• In Eastern Europe this month 45,000 troops from the U.S. and 23 other countries are staging war rehearsals for a Russian invasion. Eighteen exercises are underway this summer in the Black Sea region. U.S. military leaders do not expect an imminent invasion, but they understand why countries along the Russian border are jittery. These exercises should help them prepare to fight back if Russia threatens them, said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, in a July 18 webcast from Bulgaria. (Real Clear Defense, 07.19.17)
  • “What do we do in a crisis?” said Deputy Commander of U.S. Army Europe Maj. Gen. Timothy McGuire. The U.S. military for a long time has not trained for the type of war that it would have to fight against a sophisticated enemy like Russia. “We have to bring back that toughness,” McGuire said. “We are trying to get back to being agile,” he said. “The days of going to a FOB [forward operating base] with three meals a day provided by [military contractor] KBR are over.” One of the challenges is logistics, he said. The U.S. Army has three combat brigades based in Germany, so moving troops and supplies to Eastern Europe would require careful planning. “We have to get diplomatic clearances from nations,” said McGuire. “We’ve had friction at the borders; the coordination is not as solid as it should be.” Even routine checkpoints can hold up supply convoys. (Real Clear Defense, 07.19.17)
• NATO should permanently deploy anti-aircraft weapons in the Baltics to deter Russia, Lithuania's president said on July 20 as the United States put Patriot missiles on display after including them in an exercise in the region for the first time. (Reuters, 07.20.17)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

• Furat Media, the Russian-language branch of Islamic State's propaganda apparatus, has released three high-quality videos since the start of July. Furat's Twitter and Telegram accounts feature daily updates and multimedia posts, suggesting the group's Russian branch may not be affected as strongly by the decline in propaganda capabilities that IS has reportedly been experiencing. The man who runs IS's Russian-language media is a 34-year-old ethnic Karachai from Russia, Islam Atabiev, aka Abu Jihad, was designated as a terrorist by the U.S. State Department in October 2015. (VOA, 07.20.17)

Conflict in Syria:

• The U.S. won't insist on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's immediate ouster as it seeks a political settlement of the country's six-year civil war, President Donald Trump's counterterrorism adviser said on July 20, marking a significant change from Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, who insisted Assad must go as part of any political settlement in Syria. Bossert spoke following news reports that Trump had decided to halt the CIA's covert program to arm and train Syrian rebels battling the Assad government. Both changes in the U.S. position are sure to please Russia. Bossert said the Trump policy of working with Russia in Syria, starting off by forging a cease-fire agreement in the southwestern part of the country, is paying off. (RFE/RL, 07.21.17)
• President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials. The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later. Officials said Trump made the decision to scrap the CIA program nearly a month ago, after a meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster ahead of the July 7 meeting in Germany with Putin. The decision will not affect a separate Pentagon-led effort to work with U.S.-backed Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State. (The Washington Post, 07.19.17)
• Russia and Iran both threaten U.S. interests as they pursue long-term roles in Syria, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said. (Bloomberg, 07.21.17)
• A Syrian Kurdish militia says it will hand over the bodies of nine enemy fighters to Turkey following clashes with Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the handover was arranged by Russia. The Russian military maintains a handful of posts in Kurdish territory in northern Syria. (AP, 07.18.17)
• U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will not roll back sanctions on Russia unless Moscow agrees to negotiated peace deals between warring parties in Ukraine and Syria. "I would never take the sanctions off until something is worked out to our satisfaction and everybody's satisfaction in Syria and Ukraine," Trump told reporters on July 12 aboard Air Force One. "I've made great deals. That's what I do. Why would I take sanctions off without getting anything?" he asked, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not raise the issue of sanctions in their recent meeting in Germany. (RFE/RL, 07.14.17)
• Mortar shells hit the Syrian capital of Damascus, with one of the projectiles hitting the Russian Embassy and one falling nearby, causing some material damage, the state-run SANA news agency said on July 16. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the shelling. Rebels fighting the government of Moscow-backed President Bashar al-Assad have previously struck the Russian Embassy. (RFE/RL, 07.17.17)
• U.N.-led Syria talks have a chance of making progress because demands for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad have receded, Russia's ambassador in Geneva, Alexei Borodavkin, told reporters on July 15, a day after the conclusion of a seventh round of talks. The U.N.’s envoy to Syria said there were no major breakthroughs but that “incremental progress” was made. An eighth round of talks is planned for early September and the envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said he has asked Assad’s envoys “to be ready to address the political process’’ in the next session. (Reuters, 07.15.17, VOA, 07.15.17)
• Russia's mostly Muslim republic of Chechnya is becoming a major player in rebuilding war-ravaged Syria. And ordinary Chechens are likely to foot the bill, with many of them being forced to make contributions or face the possibility of exile or death, human rights activists say. A murky charitable foundation run by the family of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is restoring Aleppo's landmark mosque. The gesture is aimed at helping the Kremlin cement its footprint in Syria and to solidify Kadyrov's standing in the Muslim world. (AP, 07.18.17)
• U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on July 14 that the United States cannot prove that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. Earlier in the week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had "confirmed information" that Baghdadi was killed. And Russia's army said last month that it was seeking to verify that it had killed the IS chief in a May air strike in Syria. But U.S. and Iraqi officials have been skeptical. "If we knew, we would tell you. Right now, I can't confirm or deny it," Mattis said. "Our approach is we assume that he's alive until it is proven otherwise, and right now I can't prove it otherwise." (RFE/RL, 07.15.17)
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on July 16 that Israel opposes the cease-fire agreement in southern Syria that the United States and Russia reached because it perpetuates the Iranian presence in the country. A senior Israeli official who asked not to be named due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter said Israel is aware of Iranian intensions to substantially expand its presence in Syria, in part by dispatching extensive military forces, including the establishment of an airbase for Iranian aircraft and a naval base for Iran's navy. Both the U.S. and Russia said the following day that they understand Israel’s concerns about a future Iranian presence in Syria, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying that Russia and the United States would do all they could to address Israeli concerns about the creation of de-escalation zones in Syria, the RIA news agency reported. (Haaretz, 07.16.17, Jerusalem Post, 07.18.17)
• On July 12 and July 13, deputy assistant to U.S. President Donald Trump Sebastian Gorka suggested that two confiscated Russian diplomatic compounds in the U.S. could be restored "if we can see acts of good faith" from Russia on the conflict in Syria. Frants Klintsevich, head of the Russian Federation Council's Defense and Security Committee, told TASS that it was illogical to link the compound issue to Syria. "If we adopted such an approach, then there would be no U.S. diplomatic property left in Russia," Klintsevich said. (RFE/RL, 07.14.17, 07.14.17)

Cyber security:

• Moscow and Washington are in talks to create a joint cyber security working group, RIA news agency reported on July 20, citing Russia's special envoy on cyber security Andrey Krutskikh. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is shutting down an office that coordinates cyber issues with other countries, according to two people familiar with the plan, in a move that critics said will diminish the U.S. voice in confronting hackers. (Reuters, 07.20.17, Bloomberg, 07.19.17)
• After months of delay, the Trump administration is finalizing plans to revamp the nation's military command for defensive and offensive cyber operations in hopes of intensifying America's ability to wage cyberwar against the Islamic State group and other foes, according to U.S. officials. (AP, 07.17.17)

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

• The Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump, Jr., after his father won the Republican nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election counted Russia's FSB security service among her clients for years, Russian court documents seen by Reuters show. The documents show that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, successfully represented the FSB's interests in a legal wrangle over ownership of an upscale property in northwest Moscow between 2005 and 2013. (Reuters, 07.21.17)
  • The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump, Jr., last year had drawn attention from U.S. government officials even before that now-famous encounter for her work fighting U.S. sanctions that had angered the Kremlin. At one point, officials tried to seize emails from the attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and deny her entry into the U.S., according to government and legal documents. The scrutiny focused on Veselnitskaya's ties to Prevezon Holdings Ltd. and its owner, who is the son of a former Russian government official and a fierce advocate for rolling back some of the U.S. sanctions. (AP, 07.18.17)
  • Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that she was meeting with Russian authorities regularly, and shared information with the Russian prosecutor general's office, including with Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, a top official appointed by the Kremlin. The information was about William Browder, a U.S. fund manager turned Kremlin critic, who lobbied for passage of a 2012 U.S. law known as the Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned Russians accused of defrauding Browder's firm in Russia out of $230 million and causing the death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in Russian custody. Namely, she said she wanted to inform the Trump campaign of allegations that an American firm Browder worked with, Ziff Brothers Investments, had dodged taxes in Russia and later donated to Democrats. (Wall Street Journal, 07.15.17)
  • The U.S. Secret Service on July 16 denied a suggestion from President Trump's personal lawyer that it had vetted a meeting between the president's son and Russian nationals during the 2016 campaign. (Reuters, 07.16.17)
• President Trump has defended his son's meeting with Veselnitskaya, arranged on the basis of a promise of sensitive government information from the Russian government that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton, by saying that it was simply politics as usual: “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!” the president tweeted on July 17. He reiterated the sentiment in an interview on July 19. (New York Times, 07.18.17, 07.19.17)
  • Reporters conducting the interview asked Trump repeatedly for his opinion about the offer of Russian government help for his campaign in the email sent to his son. Trump replied: “Well, I thought originally it might have had to do something with the payment by Russia of the D.N.C. Somewhere I heard that. Like, it was an illegal act done by the D.N.C., or the Democrats. That’s what I had heard. Now, I don’t know where I heard it, but I had heard that it had to do something with illegal acts with respect to the D.N.C. Now, you know, when you look at the kind of stuff that came out, that was, that was some pretty horrific things came out of that. But that’s what I had heard. But I don’t know what it means. All I know is this: When somebody calls up and they say, ‘We have infor—’ Look what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff.” (New York Times, 07.19.17)
  • The president has insisted that he learned of the meeting only a few days before it was first reported by The New York Times on July 8. “It must have been a very important—must have been a very unimportant meeting, because I never even heard about it,” Trump said in his July 19 interview with the paper. In response to the July 8 article, the president’s aides helped write his son's initial statement explaining why he had met with Veselnitskaya as they flew back with the president from the Group of 20 summit on Air Force One. After debating how transparent to be, the president signed off on a statement from his son that was so incomplete that it required days of follow-up statements. The Times asked Trump about the timing of a speech in which he promised revelations about Clinton’s corrupt dealings with Russia, given soon after his son received the email offering such information; Trump said it was merely one of many such speeches. (New York Times, 07.18.17, 07.19.17)
• An American-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants. Ike Kaveladze works for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013, and attended as their representative, according to a lawyer, Scott Balber. Balber said on July 18 that he had gotten a phone call from a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend asking if Kaveladze would agree to be interviewed. Born in Soviet Georgia, Kaveladze came to the United States in 1991. In 2000, his actions as the head of a Delaware company called International Business Creations were the subject of a government investigation into how Russians and other foreigners were able to launder large amounts of money through U.S. banks. Balber said Kaveladze was not charged with any crime as a result of the inquiry, which he said was largely focused on the internal procedures of U.S. banks. (The Washington Post, 07.18. 17)
• Robert Mueller, the U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election, is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses, as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe. Trump told the New York Times on July 19 that a probe into his finances or those of his family unrelated to Russia would be out of bounds. (Bloomberg, 07.20.17, New York Times, 07.19.17)
  • Deutsche Bank executives expect the lender will soon receive subpoenas or other requests for information from U.S. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller regarding the investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia, the Guardian reported. Separately, the New York Times reported that banking regulators are reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to President Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, citing three unidentified people briefed on the review. (Bloomberg, 07.20.17)
• Members of the Trump campaign's inner circle, including his eldest son and son-in-law, are being called before Senate committees next week to talk about the 2016 election. Donald Trump Jr. is scheduled to appear July 26 before the Senate Judiciary Committee along with former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to a witness list released by the panel. Also, a lawyer for Trump's powerful son-in-law and adviser said Jared Kushner will speak to the Senate intelligence committee July 24. (New York Times, 07.20.17)
• Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Trump's presidential campaign in March 2016. (New York Times, 07.19.17)
  • New York prosecutors have demanded records relating to up to $16 million in loans that a bank run by a former campaign adviser for President Trump made to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to a person familiar with the matter. (Wall Street Journal, 07.18.17)
• As the Russia investigations heat up, a growing cast of lawyers is signing up to defend President Trump and his associates. But the interests of those lawyers—and their clients—don't always align, adding a new layer of drama and suspicion in a White House already rife with internal rivalries. The result is a crowded group of high-priced attorneys bent on defending their own clients, even if it means elbowing those clients' colleagues. Meanwhile, Trump's re-election campaign more than doubled its spending on legal fees over the past few months as its lawyers assisted the campaign in its handling of investigations into interactions between the president's associates and Russia. (AP, 07.17.17, New York Times, 07.15.17)
• Trump on July 19 excoriated Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his decision to recuse himself from the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but Sessions has said he has no intention of quitting. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump told the New York Times in an interview published July 19. “It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president.” (Bloomberg, 07.20.17)
• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) of the Senate Judiciary Committee heads what could wind up being the most consequential of the congressional investigations related to the Trump-Russia scandal: a probe of Trump’s firing of former FBI director James Comey and collusion between the Trump camp and Russia. The inquiry presumably will examine whether the president obstructed justice by axing the official leading the FBI’s investigation of interactions between the Trump camp and Russia and its related probe of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. So far it looks like the 83-year-old Iowan is more interested in developing a counter-narrative to the Trump-Russia storyline by conducting a series of alternative investigations into tangential subjects. These inquiries seem designed to minimize the culpability of Trump and his aides and to deflect attention from the core issues of the controversy, while undermining the credibility of agencies or people who have uncovered information on Trump. (Mother Jones, 07.18.17)
• If there's one competitive congressional race where investigations into Moscow's support for Donald Trump might matter, it's in Republican Dana Rohrabacher's California district—the increasingly competitive Orange County seat held by a man who can't stop defending the Kremlin. A 2016 Moscow trip by Rohrabacher has been revisited in recent days because of its connection to persons involved with the Trump Tower meeting. (McClatchy, 07.19.17, The Atlantic, 07.18.17)

Energy exports from CIS:

• U.S. company Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services provider, has agreed to buy a 51% stake in Russia’s Eurasia Drilling Company, in a renewed attempt to take control of the country’s biggest oil and gas exploration company. The bid will be subject to approval by Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a bid by Schlumberger in 2015 valued a 45.65% stake in Eurasia Drilling at around $1.7 billion. The agreement comes after a consortium of Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern funds said they would acquire an undisclosed stake in Eurasia Drilling. (Financial Times, 07.21.17)
• A European Union court on July 21 lifted an interim ban that prevented Gazprom from exporting higher amounts of natural gas through the Baltic Sea, just as the Russian energy giant seeks to double capacity on the route—a move that is dividing the EU and threatens a major source of Ukraine's revenue. (Wall Street Journal, 07.21.17)

Bilateral economic ties:

• For nearly two decades, Boeing and Airbus have had the global market for big commercial jetliners largely to themselves. That is all changing, with three new competitors—from China, Russia and Canada—rolling out their own entries into what is called the single-aisle market. Orders for these new jets are few for now, and the Russian and Chinese makers won't deliver planes for years. It is also uncertain how popular they will become. Still, if even one of these new competing jets is a hit, it could threaten one of the most lucrative sectors for Boeing and Airbus. (Wall Street Journal, 07.16.17)

Other bilateral issues:

• Presidents Trump and Putin had a second, previously undisclosed conversation at the G20 summit earlier this month in Germany, a White House official confirmed on July 18. The official did not say how long the second meeting, at a dinner for G20 leaders, lasted or what was discussed. Ian Bremmer, a risk analyst who was first to report the meeting, said Trump got up from his seat halfway through dinner and spent about an hour talking "privately and animatedly" with Putin, "joined only by Putin's own translator." There was no formal readout of the chat. Pool reporters with the president saw Putin’s motorcade leave at 11:50 p.m., followed shortly by Trump, who departed the concert hall at 11:54 p.m. One senior European official said it was not unusual for leaders to circulate or “withdraw to a corner” at such private gatherings. (Reuters, 07.18.17, The Washington Post, 07.18.17)
  • Initially, President Trump derided the news reports of a secret meeting as “sick,” adding: ''Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!” But in a July 19 interview he gave an account similar to Bremmer’s, saying only the conversation was very brief, perhaps 15 minutes: “We talked about Russian adoption. Yeah. I always found that interesting. Because, you know, he [Putin] ended that years ago. And I actually talked about Russian adoption with him, which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don [Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s son] had in that meeting.”—a reference to the controversial June 2016 meeting. (New York Times, 07.18.17, 07.19.17)
  • President Trump gave a similar account, but said the conversation was very brief, perhaps 15 minutes. “We talked about Russian adoption,” Trump told the New York Times on July 19. “Yeah. I always found that interesting. Because, you know, he [Putin] ended that years ago. And I actually talked about Russian adoption with him, which is interesting because it was a part of the conversation that Don [Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s son] had in that meeting.”—a reference to the controversial June 2016 meeting. (New York Times, 07.19.17)
  • In video footage preceding the meeting, Trump appears to gesture at Putin, first getting his attention, then pointing to himself, then at Putin, then pumping his fist in the air; Putin nods in seeming acknowledgement. (The Washington Post, 07.19.17)
• Senior U.S. and Russian diplomats met July 17 at the State Department to discuss “irritants” between the two countries, as the Kremlin stepped up its demand that the White House return two diplomatic compounds seized last year as punishment for Moscow's interference in the 2016 election. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov characterized the move as “robbery in broad daylight.” After more than three hours of talks Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters that the so-called dacha conflict had been “almost, almost” resolved. On July 18 Russia's Foreign Ministry reiterated that it reserved the right to retaliate against the United States for its seizure of diplomatic property. (The Washington Post, 07.17.17, New York Times, 07.18.17)
• Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman has been nominated as the U.S. ambassador to Russia, the White House announced July 20, ending months of delay in formalizing the appointment amid deteriorating relations between the two countries. The Kremlin approved Huntsman’s appointment late July 17, about the same time that the United States approved Anatoly Antonov to serve as Russia’s ambassador in Washington, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly about pending appointments. Huntsman, a Republican, was ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011. He ran for president in 2012. The company owned by Huntsman’s family has business interests in Russia, and he has traveled to that country in that capacity. (White House, 07.20.17, The Washington Post, 07.18.17)
• The Treasury Department says it is slapping Exxon Mobil Corp. with a $2 million fine for violating Russia sanctions while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was the oil company's CEO. (AP, 07.20.17)
• Financier Anthony Scaramucci, a presidential advisor, has been appointed as White House communications director. Scaramucci’s Russia ties have come under scrutiny since January, after he, as an incoming aide to the president-elect, discussed possible joint investments with the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund that the U.S. sanctioned in 2015. Last month CNN retracted a story about a supposed investigation by the Senate intelligence committee into the meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a $10 billion state-run investment vehicle. News of the meeting, held at the Davos economic forum, had prompted two U.S. senators to call for an investigation into possible violations of Russia sanctions by Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, an investment firm that manages some $12 billion. While at Davos, Scaramucci told Russian state news agency TASS that sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis have not succeeded. “I think the sanctions had in some ways an opposite effect because of Russian culture,” he said. “I think the Russians would eat snow if they had to. And so for me the sanctions probably galvanized the nation with the nation’s president.” He also told Reuters at the time that NATO should focus on finding common cause with Russia. (The Washington Post, 07.21.17, AP, 06.26.17, Business Insider, 01.19.17, Bloomberg, 01.17.17, Reuters, 01.17.17)
• Most Americans don’t share the president’s apparent soft spot for Vladimir Putin: 65% view the Russian president negatively—and 53% say it’s realistic to think Russian hacking will disrupt future U.S. elections. Only 6% listed the relationship with Russia as the most important issue facing the country. (Bloomberg, 07.17.17)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Russian state bodies sent Google over 13,200 requests to remove content between the last day of 2015 and the first day of 2017, more than the rest of the world combined, according to the U.S. search engine’s new transparency report. The majority, nearly 12,000, involved content on YouTube. Over the last year, 85% of Russia’s removal requests fell under national security concerns; content criticizing the government came in at a distant second—5% of requests. (Newsweek, 07.21.17)
• Konstantin Vyshkovsky has shown he can dodge sanctions imposed against Russia by pulling off three Eurobond sales in just over a year. But the Finance Ministry’s debt chief may yet meet his match as the country looks to swap $4 billion of old foreign bonds for new ones. (Bloomberg, 07.17.17)
• A Moscow district court on July 18 ordered opposition leader Alexei Navalny and two co-defendants to pay 2.16 million rubles ($35,500) in damages to a timber company over charges of fraud, the state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported. (The Moscow Times, 07.19.17)
• Sistema and its owner had for years assiduously steered clear of politics in Russia, hoping to avoid the kind of legal issues that often dog high-profile businesses here. But as it has grown into the country’s largest privately owned conglomerate, it has found itself mired in a multi-billion-dollar legal battle with the state oil company Rosneft, stirring investment worries. (New York Times, 07.17.17)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russia’s Rosoboronexport state arms seller will provide foreign delegations taking part in the MAKS airshow, which runs from July 18 to July 23, with data on the performance of Russian combat aircraft in the counterterrorist operation in Syria, the company’s press office said. (TASS, 07.18.17)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

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

• Siemens quits Russian joint venture, halts deliveries to state companies after Crimean "turbine debacle." The Kremlin declined to comment on the situation in general and on reports in the German press that President Putin had given a guarantee to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the turbines would not end up in Crimea. (Welt, 07.21.17, RIA Novosti, 07.21.17, New York Times, 07.21.17, Reuters, 07.21.17)
• Russia's Foreign Ministry has dismissed an international tribunal's ruling against it for seizing a Greenpeace ship as encouraging criminal behavior. The Hague-based court on July18 ordered Russia to pay damages and costs of nearly 5.4 million euros ($6.2 million) to the Netherlands for unlawfully seizing a Greenpeace ship protesting at an oil platform in Arctic waters. The Arctic Sunrise, sailing under a Dutch flag, was seized by Russia in 2013 during a protest against an offshore oil platform. (AP, 07.20.17)

China:

• For nearly two decades, Boeing and Airbus have had the global market for big commercial jetliners largely to themselves. That is all changing, with three new competitors—from China, Russia and Canada—rolling out their own entries into what is called the single-aisle market. Orders for these new jets are few for now, and the Russian and Chinese makers won't deliver planes for years. It is also uncertain how popular they will become. Still, if even one of these new competing jets is a hit, it could threaten one of the most lucrative sectors for Boeing and Airbus. (Wall Street Journal, 07.16.17)
• China is filling the void left by U.S. restrictions on the sale of armed drones. State companies are selling aircraft resembling General Atomics's Predator and Reaper drones at a fraction of the cost to U.S. allies and partners, and to other buyers. Beijing used to sell mainly low-tech arms to poorer countries; now it is marketing sophisticated items including stealth fighters, and targeting markets once dominated by Russia and the U.S. China is now the world's third-biggest arms seller by value, behind the U.S. at No. 1 and Russia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI. (Wall Street Journal, 07.15.17)
• Analysis by Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center and Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University: Sensationalist arguments about Beijing’s plans to extend its regional power into the vast empty lands of Russia’s Far East and Siberia are based on faulty assumptions and draw on sparse factual data. (South China Morning Post, 07.14.17)

Ukraine:

• Russian-backed separatists declared a new state in Ukraine on Tuesday, ratcheting up a confrontation with the Kiev government, though Moscow distanced itself from the move as the Trump administration steps up efforts to resolve the three-year-old crisis. A statement released by the separatist Donetsk News Agency declared the formation of a new state called Malorossiya, or Little Russia—a name once used to refer to Ukrainian lands within the czarist empire. The new state, the declaration said, would include all the regions of Ukraine except (Wall Street Journal, 07.19.17)
• A new round of talks aimed at fostering implementation of a cease-fire and peace deal for the conflict in eastern Ukraine was held in Minsk, Belarus, on July 19 involving representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE, which are participants in the Trilateral Contact Group. OSCE Ambassador Martin Sajdik said that there had been some progress in implementing aspects of the 2015 Minsk accords, in particular on prisoner exchanges between the Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces. (RFE/RL, 07.19.17)
• Ministers from all 28 EU states adopted on July 17 a decision to grant Ukraine temporary trade preference for some agricultural and industrial products, following a similar decision by the European Parliament earlier this month. Representatives of the European Parliament and the European Council are to sign the agreement during a plenary session in Strasbourg in September. The measures will apply for three years from the end of September. (RFE/RL, 07.17.17)
• A national monument commemorating the victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash in Ukraine was unveiled in Vijfhuizen, the Netherlands, on July 17. The plane was shot down in July 2014, months after the start of a war between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini reiterated the bloc's "full support" for continuing investigations into the downing of the plane, saying "it is crucial that the investigators can complete their work, independently and thoroughly." Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on July 16 also urged Russia to comply with U.N. Security Council resolution 2166. Fifteen relatives of the victims staged a silent protest outside the Russian Embassy in The Hague on July 16, calling on Moscow to take responsibility for the deadly downing. The protesters sat outside the embassy for an hour, bringing with them a bench with a plaque reading: “Waiting for responsibility and full clarity,” and below, in Russian, “Humanity over politics.” They also delivered an open letter to the embassy, which calls for Russia to co-operate with the investigation into the perpetrators of the fatal downing of Flight MH17. (RFE/RL, 07.17.17, RFE/RL, 07.16.17, The Moscow Times, 07.17.17)
• The naval piece of this summer’s U.S.-European combat rehearsal in the Black Sea region is called Sea Breeze, co-hosted by the United States and Ukraine. Air, land, sea and amphibious forces from 17 nations will simulate maritime interdiction operations, air defense, anti-submarine warfare, damage control tactics, search and rescue and amphibious warfare. (Real Clear Defense, 07.19.17)
• U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker will visit eastern Ukraine and Kiev July 21-24 for discussions on the ongoing crisis, the State Department said in a press release on July 21. (Sputnik, 07.21.17)
• The Russian defense industry has substituted 90% of its Ukrainian products, a process that will be complete before the end of 2018, Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov told reporters on July 18. (TASS, 07.18.17)
• A former Ukrainian lawmaker says Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region have confirmed that they are holding blogger Stanislav Aseyev. The separatists have reportedly accused Aseyev of espionage and threatened him with up to 14 years in prison. Aseyev, who writes under the name Stanislav Vasin and contributes to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, went missing in Donetsk on June 2. (RFE/RL, 07.17.17)
• The crisis in Ukraine will continue until Ukrainians’ patience runs out, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on July 14 at a meeting with workers in the Belgorod region in central European Russia. (TASS, 07.14.17)
• "We'd like to see Ukraine as a stable and democratic state where the language, religious and ethnic minorities could live freely and use their rights stipulated by international conventions, including the convention of the Council of Europe," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on July 13 as he addressed a conference on the floor of the Korber Foundation. "Also, it would be nice if that country did not cultivate artificial Russhophobic moods." (TASS, 07.14.17)
• Georgia and Ukraine have agreed to cooperate in their efforts to join the EU in a declaration of strategic partnership in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, on July 18. Ukraine's leader also says Ukraine and Georgia will coordinate their efforts to reclaim areas captured by pro-Russian separatists.(RFE/RL, 07.18.17, AP, 07.19.17)
• Siemens is considering exiting two joint ventures with Russian companies after the German industrial conglomerate recently found itself at the center of a scandal over supplying turbines to Crimea. (Center on Global Interests, 07.17.17)
• Paul J. Manafort, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, recently filed financial reports with the Justice Department showing that he earned nearly $17 million for two years of work for a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin—more than the party itself reported spending in the same period for its entire operation. The discrepancy is a reflection of Ukraine’s murky domestic politics under former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. (New York Times, 07.15.17)
• Ukraine's Naftogaz plans to sign natural gas purchase agreements with Trafigura Trading (Europe) Sarl and Vattenfall Energy Trading GmbH as it expands supply from Europe in a continued effort to diversify away from Russian energy imports. (Reuters, 07.18.17)
• Benjamin Stimson, a British national, was sentenced on July 14 to five years and four months in prison after the Manchester Crown Court ruled he illegally entered eastern Ukraine in 2015 to fight alongside Russia-backed separatists against the central government. Stimson pleaded guilty to a charge of assisting others in committing terrorism, officials said. (RFE/RL, 07.14.17)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.

IV. Quoteworthy

• No significant developments.