This Week’s Highlights:

• For his fourth term as president, Vladimir Putin is planning to appoint former finance minister Alexei Kudrin to a post in charge of economic strategy and outreach to Europe and the U.S. If Putin fulfills the goals he's set for his new term, Russia in 2024 will be far advanced in new technologies and artificial intelligence, have much improved roads and its people will be living significantly longer. For a quantitative look at how Russia has fared under Putin, check out the exclusive new report by Simon Saradzhyan and Nabi Abdullaev, “Measuring National Power: Is Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Decline?”
• Russia says it will stand by the Iran nuclear deal and develop closer ties with Iran if Trump withdraws from the agreement on May 12.
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov says that Russia is opposed to any trade war between the U.S. and China; however, Russia is not planning to miss out on the opportunities created for it by the trade disputes.
• Armenian opposition leader Nikol Pashinian secured the backing of 41 lawmakers in the 105-seat parliament for his nomination to be prime minister, leaving him as the only candidate in the upcoming May 8 parliamentary vote. Gen. Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATO's Military Committee, said he is surprized Russia has not intervened in Armenia. A Russia Matters article explains why Russia has not intervened.
• Gen. Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATO's Military Committee, has said that supplying lethal weapons to Kiev, such as the recently arrived Javelin antitank missiles from the U.S., will only be countered by the Russia-backed separatists.
• Asylum applications to the U.S. by Russian citizens in 2017 jumped nearly 40 percent compared to the previous year, reaching a 24-year high with 2,664 new applications and continuing a trend that began when Putin stepped back into the role of president in 2012.
• Almost 40 percent of America’s foreign-sourced uranium comes from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• No significant developments.

 North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• Russia will stand by the Iran nuclear deal and develop closer ties with Iran if U.S. President Donald Trump withdraws from the agreement on May 12, said Vladimir Yermakov, Director General of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at Russia’s Foreign Ministry. New U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “no decision” has been made on whether the U.S. will pull out of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but it is “unlikely” to remain unless major changes are made. (RFE/RL, 04.27.18, The Moscow Times, 05.04.18)
• Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman reminded Russia on May 3 of his government’s decision not to join Western sanctions against it, and asked that Moscow reciprocate with a more pro-Israel approach to Syria and Iran. The situation around the Iran nuclear deal was also the focus of a telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (TASS, 04.30.18, Reuters, 05.03.18)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• The West and Russia have a shared interest in Afghanistan's stability and "in countering the terrorists who threaten our country and threaten Russia and threaten Central Asia," top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Nicholson said on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting. (RFE/RL, 04.28.18)
• Gen. Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATO's Military Committee, said Russia was the greatest danger to "the security of Western countries and the model of society that we have." (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• A Russian fighter jet buzzed a U.S. Navy spy plane over the Baltic Sea, ramping up tensions. The Russian Su-27 jet performed a “safe” but “unprofessional” intercept of a U.S. Navy P-8 surveillance plane. (New York Post, 05.01.18)
• NATO fighter jets patrolling the Baltic airspace were scrambled last week to identify and escort Russian military aircraft, the Lithuanian defense ministry said on April 30. The alliance's jets intercepted two Russian Su-35 fighters and one Su-24 attack aircraft flying from mainland Russia in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. The Russian aircraft had their onboard transponders off, kept no radio contact with the regional air traffic control center and hadn't submitted a flight plan. The Russian jets eventually turned around and headed back toward mainland Russia. (ERR.ee, 04.30.18)
• Turkey has largely dismissed a warning from the new U.S. secretary of state against buying Russia's S-400 missile defense system, saying the deal is largely done and will not be reversed. (RFE/RL, 04.28.18)
• Germany will not meet its commitment to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense in the next four years and the ratio will in fact decline from 2020. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany had increased expenditure on the armed forces over the past few years and would spend 1.3 percent of GDP on defense next year. (Financial Times, 04.27.18)
• An international military exercise involving 13,000 troops from 16 countries kicked off in Estonia on May 2. The exercise, dubbed Siil (Hedgehog), is scheduled to last until May 14 and is the largest such drill to be held in the Baltic country since it regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. (RFE/RL, 05.02.18)
• Faced with a more active Russian fleet and increasing military competition across the world, the U.S. Navy has elected to reestablish U.S. 2nd Fleet to manage assets closer to the homeland, according to a memo signed by Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer earlier this week approving the reestablishment of the command in Norfolk, Va. (USNI, 05.04.18)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

• Russia's Federal Security Service said on May 4 it had detained five members of an Islamic State cell in a city northeast of Moscow in possession of home-made explosives and weapons. (Reuters, 05.04.18)
• A possible lone wolf terrorist was shot and killed after stabbing two police officers in the North Caucasus. The knife-wielding attacker died in hospital after being wounded while resisting arrest. The attacker may have been a local student who served two years in prison for attempting to join Islamic State. (The Moscow Times, 05.03.18)
• Sunni Islamist militants, particularly Russian jihadists returning from conflict zones, are the primary source of concern for Moscow, according to a report released May 1 by Jane's, the defense and security wing of IHS Markit. (CBNC, 05.01.18)
• The trial of a rejected Uzbek asylum seeker who has admitted to a truck attack that killed five people in Stockholm last year entered its final phase on May 2. (RFE/RL, 05.02.18)

Conflict in Syria:

• Russia has dispatched a frigate and a tanker to the Mediterranean as part of a continuing build up of naval forces in the region. The Neustrashimy-class (Project 1154) frigate Yaroslav Mudryy and Uda-class (Project 577D) tanker Lena have passed through the Straits on Gibraltar. (Jane’s 360, 05.01.18)
• Russia has deployed a second type of short-range air defense system to its main airbase in Syria. A Russian journalist posted a photograph showing a Tor-M2 at the Hmeimim air base on his blog on 25 April, but subsequently removed it. (Jane’s 360, 04.30.18)
• A Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jet crashed into the Mediterranean Sea after taking off from Hmeimim. One of the victims has been identified as Maj. Albert Davidyan. (The Moscow Times, 05.03.18)
• Chemical weapons inspectors have returned from a mission to the Syrian town of Douma, where they took samples and interviewed witnesses to determine whether banned munitions were used in an attack last month. (Reuters, 05.04.18)
• Syrian rebels said they have accepted a deal brokered by Russia to leave territory they hold near Homs, the country's third-largest city and one of the last rebel enclaves left in the war-torn country. (RFE/RL, 05.03.18)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S. is trying to divide Syria. During a meeting with his counterparts from Iran and Turkey, Lavrov said the recent U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria “seriously aggravated the situation.” The three ministers agreed to intensify efforts to provide humanitarian aid in Syria. (AP, 04.28.18)
• Israeli defense and political sources told Russia and the U.S. that if Iran attacks Israel from Syria, either itself or through its proxy Hezbollah, Jerusalem will not hold back and will respond forcefully, targeting Iranian soil. The comments come amid Iran's threats to react against attacks on their assets in Syria, allegedly by Israel. (Haaretz, 04.30.18)
• The U.S. government recently froze funding for the Syrian search and rescue group known as the White Helmets—a group celebrated internationally for their live-saving work but condemned by the Syrian government and its closest allies. The move is part of an effort initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this spring to reassess broader U.S. spending in the Syrian conflict, which effectively put a halt on $200 million in funding across the board. The Russian government has called the White Helmets "terrorists" and accused them last month of staging recent chemical attacks linked to the regime. (CNN, 05.04.18)

Cyber security:

• U.S. Sen. John McCain wrote in his new book that America should seriously consider a cyberattack to retaliate for Russia’s meddling in U.S. elections, to send a strong message. “I’m of the opinion that unless [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is made to regret his decision he will return to the scene of the crime again and again,” wrote McCain. (Defense News, 05.03.18)
• Hacker attacks are becoming more frequent and complex in Russia ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the situation is only expected to worsen.  (The Moscow Times, 05.03.18)
• Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov’s conviction for stealing the bank’s computer code for its high-frequency trading platform was upheld by New York’s highest court, after the bank accused him of swiping some of its most valuable electronic secrets. (Bloomberg, 05.03.18)

Elections interference:

• U.S. President Donald Trump assailed as "disgraceful leaks" the publication by the New York Times of four-dozen questions that special counsel Robert Mueller is said to want to ask the president concerning Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election and his own actions in response to the probe. More than 40 questions deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of FBI director James Comey and  national security adviser Michael Flynn, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. (New York Times, 04.30.18, Bloomberg, 05.01.18, Wall Street Journal, 05.01.18)
• Prosecutors working for Robert Mueller have made clear to Donald Trump’s legal team that the special counsel would consider a subpoena compelling the president to testify before a grand jury if he refuses to participate in a voluntary interview. (Bloomberg, 05.01.18)
• U.S. President Donald Trump signaled a more aggressive posture toward special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as Trump rid his legal team of its most determined advocate of cooperation with the Russia probe—Ty Cobb. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team last month, said May 3 that the president’s lawyers would restrict Mueller’s access to him. Giuliani said that Trump fired Comey because Comey would not state "that he wasn't a target" of the special counsel's Russia investigation. Giuliani also has a warning for special counsel Robert Mueller: Steer clear of Ivanka Trump. (AP, 04.03.18, The Washington Post, 05.03.18, Bloomberg, 05.03.18)
• U.S. President Donald Trump said on May 4 his lawyers had advised him against talking to special counsel Robert Mueller, even though he would like to speak with him as part of the Russia probe. (Reuters, 05.04.18)
• Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s overseeing the Russia investigation, dismissed those trying to intimidate him after a group of House Republicans drafted articles of impeachment against him. The draft cites Rosenstein’s failure to turn over internal Justice Department documents the Republicans have demanded about the origin of the Trump investigation, as well as the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. (Bloomberg, 05.01.18)
• Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, asked a judge to dismiss a count accusing him with failing to file a foreign bank and financial accounts report, or FBAR, for 2011. Manafort’s attorneys said prosecutors didn’t charge him within the required five-year period. Manafort also asked a judge to investigate FBI leaks of secret grand-jury information that came before his indictments. (Bloomberg, 04.30.18, Bloomberg, 05.01.18)
• U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III suggested that special counsel Robert Mueller's office had brought charges of tax fraud, bank fraud and failing to report foreign bank accounts against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to get him to flip against Trump. (Business Insider, 05.04.18)
• The Trump campaign has spent nearly $228,000 to cover some of the legal expenses for U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, raising questions about whether the Trump campaign may have violated campaign finance laws. (ABC News, 04.30.18)
• Russian mixed martial arts fighter Fedor Emelianenko—who has connections with President Donald Trump, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen and Russian President Vladimir Putin—was questioned this week by the FBI. (AP, 04.29.18)

Energy exports:

• Russia reaffirmed its pledge to an alliance with OPEC, despite two months of breaching its target under a global oil-output deal. Russia’s compliance with the deal was 95.2 percent in April, after a rate of 93.4 percent in March. (Bloomberg, 05.03.18)

Bilateral economic ties:

• While almost 40 percent of America’s foreign-sourced uranium comes from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, much of it comes from Canada and Australia—the world's largest producers after Kazakhstan. (Wall Street Journal, 05.04.18)

Other bilateral issues:

• Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Sheldon Whitehouse sent a letter to the CEOs of eight major banks—three from the United States and five from Europe—requesting details on the accounts and assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top allies, following the Treasury Department’s publication of a Russian “oligarch list” that coincided with new sanctions. (Foreign Policy, 04.26.18)
• Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev backs the idea of making it a criminal offense for Russians to observe sanctions imposed by the United States. ( Reuters, 04.28.18)
• The U.S. Treasury on May 1 gave investors an additional month to divest or transfer their holdings in sanctions targets United Company Rusal Plc, En+ Group Plc and GAZ Group, extending the deadline to June 6. The U.S. isn’t seeking to put Russian aluminum giant Rusal out of business by sanctioning the company, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, but its majority owner Oleg Deripaska must reduce his stake to less than 50 percent. Deripaska has agreed in principle to relinquish control of Rusal by selling down his stake in parent company EN+.  (The Moscow Times, 05.02.18, Bloomberg, 04.30.18, Financial Times, 04.27.18, Reuters, 05.01.18)
• New U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said May 4: "The choice is up to Vladimir Putin and the Russians. We would love nothing more for them to rejoin the democratic world and behave in ways that they're not doing today. We're very much prepared to have that dialogue. It's their choice if they want to be part of that or not." (The Washington Post, 04.29.18)
• The CIA declassified more information about Acting Director Gina Haspel’s career. She was deputy group chief of Russian operations in the Central Eurasia division from 1998 to 2000 and received language training in Turkish and Russian. (Bloomberg, 05.01.18)
• Russia’s Foreign Ministry has demanded the U.S. return the Russian flag that was flown from the seized consulate in Seattle. (The Moscow Times, 05.01.18)
• U.S.-based Russian doping whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov hit back at a libel lawsuit on April 30 by counter-suing three Russian athletes and suing tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, who has backed the athletes’ case. (Reuters, 04.30.18)
• The number of asylum applications by Russian citizens in the U.S. hit a 24-year high in 2017, jumping nearly 40 percent from the previous year and continuing an upward march that began after Russian President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012. U.S. authorities received 2,664 new asylum applications from Russian nationals in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. (RFE/RL, 05.02.18)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin is contemplating an effort to repair relations with the West as sanctions and growing international conflict obstruct attempts to reinvigorate Russia’s stagnant economy. Ahead of his inauguration next week for another six-year term as president, Putin was considering appointing former finance minister Alexei Kudrin to a heavyweight post in charge of economic strategy and outreach to Europe and the U.S. Dmitry Medvedev is expected to stay on as prime minister, but his powers over economic policy would be curtailed to give Kudrin more control (Financial Times, 05.02.18)
• If Russian President Vladimir Putin fulfills the goals he's set for his new six-year term as president, Russia in 2024 will be far advanced in new technologies and artificial intelligence, many of its notoriously poor roads will be improved and its people will be living significantly longer. (AP, 05.04.18)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared that the country is "practically finished" with preparations for the soccer World Cup, which is to be held from June 14 to July 15 in 11 Russian cities. (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• Police in several Russian cities have detained supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny on the eve of his rallies against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. Putin is scheduled to officially assume his fourth presidential term on May 7, with Navalny calling on supporters to take to the streets in at least 90 cities for “He’s Not Our Tsar” protests on May 5. (The Moscow Times, 05.04.18)
• Thousands of demonstrators are protesting in downtown Moscow against the Russian government's efforts to block the popular Telegram messaging app. As Telegram tried to use Google’s and Amazon’s cloud services to dodge a Russian ban, the two U.S.-based giants ended so-called domain fronting, the practice on which Telegram was relying. (Bloomberg, 05.03.18, RFE/RL, 04.30.18)
• Russia has not ruled out targeting the messaging service Viber for failing to grant security services access to users’ private communications, Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said. (The Moscow Times, 05.03.18)
• The Supreme Court in Russia's Chechnya region has rejected an appeal by the chief of the human rights group Memorial's office in Grozny, Oyub Titiyev, against the extension of his pretrial detention until June 9. (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• Minkail Malizayev, a vocal critic of strongman Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, has reportedly been hospitalized after being beaten and having his family threatened by a Chechen state television journalist. (The Moscow Times, 04.30.18)
• Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of the Chelsea football club, has reportedly donated half a billion dollars to Jewish causes in Russia and around the world over the past 20 years. (The Moscow Times, 05.01.18)
• Russia launched the world’s first floating nuclear power plant on April 28. The 70-megawatt vessel, christened the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed away from St. Petersburg by two boats. It is currently coasting through the Baltic Sea to the town of Murmansk for fuel and is then supposed to embark for the Arctic town of Pevek in 2019. (Gizmodo, 04.30.18)
• Concrete has been poured for what will become the foundations for the nuclear island buildings of unit one of the Kursk II nuclear power plant in western Russia. (World Nuclear News, 04.30.18)
• Russian oil giant Rosneft plans to start a $2 billion share buyback this year, while also cutting spending and debt. (Bloomberg, 05.01.18)
• The number of Russians diagnosed as obese has increased by almost 50 percent in five years, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. (The Moscow Times, 05.04.18)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russian military spending fell by a fifth last year, its first decline in nearly two decades, with tighter purse-strings likely to affect Moscow's military activity ahead, a report by defense think tank SIPRI showed. While global military spending rose one percent to $1,739 billion last year, Russia's fell 20 percent in real terms to $66.3 billion. While the budget is certainly facing cuts, the 20 percent drop outlined in the SIPRI report can be misleading if taken in isolation, according to an analysis by Stratfor. The difference in spending includes a one-time payment made by Russia's finance ministry in 2015 to clear some of the substantial debt it had accumulated with the country's defense industry. If this element is not included, the actual reduction has been calculated by analysts such as Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analyses to be closer to 7 percent than 20. (The Moscow Times, 05.02.18, Stratfor, 05.03.18)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• Five Russian men known as the "Primorye Partisans" have been sentenced to prison terms of between eight and 25 years in prison on murder charges in a high-profile retrial. The Primorye Regional Court in Vladivostok on May 3 found the men guilty of involvement in the murders of four local people in 2009. (RFE/RL, 05.03.18)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

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

• Britain's House of Commons has approved a measure to impose sanctions against people deemed guilty of human rights violations, in memory of the late Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called passage of the measure without a vote after agreement with the main opposition Labor Party in the House of Commons an "important moment." (RFE/RL, 05.02.18)
• A British MP has used parliamentary legal protections to accuse Christopher Chandler, a New Zealand billionaire, of having been suspected of links to Russian intelligence. Chandler founded the investment company Legatum Group which set up the think-tank Legatum Institute. The group traded in shares of Russian companies in the 1990s. (Financial Times, 05.01.18)
• Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with up to 100 milligrams of the nerve agent Novichok, a chemical weapons watchdog has said. Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the amount of Novichok used suggests it was created for use as a weapon rather than for research purposes. (Sky News, 05.03.18)
• The Czech-made nerve agent that President Milos Zeman described in a television interview as Novichok is of a different type than the toxin Britain says was used to poison a former spy, the Czech Foreign Ministry said in a statement on May 4. (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• The chief executive of BP was poisoned in a plot believed to have been orchestrated by the Russian security services, a former employee has told the Telegraph. Bob Dudley, the American boss of the British oil giant, was forced to flee Moscow after blood test results indicated he was being poisoned slowly. (Telegraph, 04.29.18)
• The EU is set to sanction five people who, according to the bloc, helped organize the Russian presidential election in Crimea in March. (RFE/RL, 04.30.18)
• Prosecutors in the Netherlands said on May 4 they have opened a criminal investigation into seven Dutch companies and their directors for allegedly breaching EU sanctions against Moscow, by helping Russia build a bridge to Crimea. (Reuters, 05.04.18)

China:

• Europe’s oil refineries are increasingly missing out on Russian crude as the world’s biggest energy producer directs more and more barrels by pipeline to China. Russia will ship an average of 19 percent less crude through its main ports on the Baltic and Black Seas in the first five months of 2018 compared with a year earlier. (Bloomberg, 04.30.18)
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said in reference to U.S.-Chinese trade disputes: "On the whole, we are opposing any sort of a trade war and are against swinging a ‘bat of sanctions,’ however, we will be not missing the opportunities, which are opening ahead of us.” (TASS, 05.04.18)

Ukraine:

• On Ukraine, Gen. Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATO's Military Committee, said supplies of "lethal weapons" to Kiev—such as the recent delivery of some 210 Javelin antitank missiles—will only be countered by the Russia-backed separatists who control territory in eastern Ukraine. "I believe adding more lethal weapons would create [an] imbalance that would then be matched from the other side by delivering more lethal weapons as well," Pavel said. Citing NATO sources, Pavel said there were now "3,000 to 5,000 Russian professionals" in eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• U.S. officials and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the U.S. has provided Ukraine with an undisclosed number of American-made, Javelin antitank missile systems. Ukraine’s defense minister said he would waste no time in starting to train his troops to use the sophisticated weapons, in defiance of Moscow’s warning that their sale to Kiev could escalate a four-year smoldering proxy war in the country’s far east. Training would start on May 2, Gen. Stepan Poltorak said. (Financial Times, 05.01.18, RFE/RL, 04.30.18)
• In Ukraine, four meandering cases that involve former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor. The decision to halt the investigations by an anticorruption prosecutor was handed down at a delicate moment for Ukraine, as the Trump administration was finalizing plans to sell the country sophisticated anti-tank missiles. (New York Times, 05.02.18)
• Ukraine has decided to expand sanctions on Russian companies and entities to mirror those of the U.S. (Reuters, 05.02.18)
• April 30 marked the end of the so-called anti-terrorist operation, which was run by Ukraine’s security services, and the start of a “joint services operation” under military command. Officials insist the reform will improve the efficiency and responsiveness of Ukraine’s forces, but critics say it gives Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his military chiefs sweeping powers a year before presidential and parliamentary elections. (Irish Times, 05.01.18)
• Journalist Vitaliy Kuksa, who had worked in the combat zone in Donbass, was killed in a car explosion in Kiev on April 27. (Interfax, 04.30.18)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Armenian opposition leader Nikol Pashinian has met with the ambassadors of Russia, the U.S., Georgia and the EU, and informed them that he is working to settle the country's political crisis. Pashinian secured the backing of 41 lawmakers in the 105-seat parliament for his nomination to be prime minister, which leaves him as the only candidate to date for the post in an upcoming vote of parliament on May 8. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said amid the fast-moving events that Russia hoped to maintain "good and constructive" relations with Armenia and hoped that Armenian parties will resolve their differences "as soon as possible." (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• Gen. Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATO's Military Committee, says he's surprised that Russia is not more openly involved in Armenia's recent tumultuous events that led to longtime leader Serzh Sargsyan being pushed from power. (RFE/RL, 05.04.18)
• Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili has lashed out at the country's government on domestic issues and urged it to stick to what he called a "policy of strategic tolerance" in relations with Russia, which remain strained a decade after the neighbors fought a five-day war. In his annual speech to parliament on May 2, Margvelashvili said that such a policy "is important for Georgia in current circumstances," suggesting that Moscow could be seeking a pretext for fresh conflict. (RFE/RL, 05.02.18)
• An Uzbek prosecutor has asked a court in Tashkent to sentence independent journalist Bobomurod Abdullaev to five years in prison for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Uzbek government. (RFE/RL, 05.03.18)

IV. Quoteworthy:

• “In our internal policy decisions, we have never depended this strongly on external factors—it’s radical,” said a former Russian cabinet official. “The government has been claiming that the Russian economy has adapted to sanctions, but the way the Americans are using sanctions now means you cannot adapt.” (Financial Times, 05.02.18)