7 Things to Know

1. In the past month of fighting, Russian armed forces made net gains of 25 square miles in Ukraine, according to an estimate by the Belfer Russia-Ukraine War Task Force. Their research shows that Russian forces gained 43 square miles of Ukrainian territory, while Ukraine gained 18 square miles in the month preceding the Aug. 8, 2023 issue of the task force’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. 
2. An initial group of Ukrainian pilots is not expected to complete training on U.S.-made F-16s before next summer, WP reported, citing senior Ukrainian government and military officials. Just six pilots will go through the first round of training, according to two Ukrainian officials. Meanwhile, 20 Ukrainian pilots are preparing for jet-specific English-language training, U.S. officials told WP.
3. U.S. President Joe Biden's request to Congress for $20 billion in additional funding for Ukraine has “teed up the first major test of the anti-interventionist sentiment coursing through the GOP,” according to Axios. "A Republican-led House will not rubber-stamp any blank-check funding requests; rather, the administration's emergency funding requests must be reviewed and scrutinized on their merits consistent with the practice and principles of our majority," a spokesperson for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said. Nevertheless, Axios predicts that a House vote on Ukraine aid would likely pass with the support of Democrats and Republican hawks.
4. The Jeddah summit aimed at finding a peaceful end to Russia’s war against Ukraine concluded with no joint statement, though a European diplomat claimed there was general support from the delegates of more than 40 nations for the “respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine needs to be at the heart of any peace settlement,” FT reported. The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, offered a similar take on the outcome of the weekend event. He said: “there were different points of view, but all the attendees declared allegiance to UN principles, international law and respect to sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Meanwhile, the head of Brazil’s delegation, Celso Amorim, said that "any real negotiation must include all parties," including Russia, according to RFE/RL. As for the Chinese delegation, it stuck to calls for a cease-fire as a precursor to actual peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, the latter of which did not participate in the summit, Bloomberg reported. Following the talks, China's top diplomat Wang Yi assured his Russian counterpart that Beijing hasn't wavered in its stance on the Ukraine war, WSJ reported.
5. Russia sold about $1.7 billion worth of nuclear products to firms in the United States and Europe, AP reported. The purchases occurred as the West leveled stiff sanctions against Moscow over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russia supplied the U.S. nuclear industry with about 12% of its uranium last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Europe reported getting about 17% of its uranium in 2022 from Russia. 
6. Russia’s economy may return to its pre-war level next year as it adapts to the impacts of international sanctions; but the Kremlin’s drive to expand military recruitment may yet derail progress toward this goal, according to a Bloomberg report. Russia’s economy, which has expanded for four successive quarters following a decline of more than 4% a year ago, may reach its pre-war size by the middle of next year, according to  Natalia Lavrova, chief economist at BCS Financial Group. Lavrova forecasts 2% growth in 2023, according to Bloomberg, while the country’s central bank expects growth of up to 2.5% this year, according to NYT.
7. All heads of Ukraine's regional military recruitment centers will be dismissed amid ongoing concerns about corruption, RFE/RL reported, citing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason,” he said. Earlier this week, Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said it had opened 112 cases against recruitment officers, according to NYT. Some 77% of polled Ukrainians believe that Zelensky is directly responsible for corruption in the government and military administrations, according to a new poll conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Kyiv Post reported, citing Interfax.

 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• Ukraine's Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) has been reconnected to its main external power line, state-owned power generating company Enerhoatom said Aug. 11, averting what officials said was a possible blackout. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)
  • Ukraine's nuclear authority, Enerhoatom, said Aug. 10 that ZNPP is on the verge of a blackout because power was cut off from the main high-voltage line to the facility. (RFE/RL, 08.10.23)
• Russia’s state-owned atomic energy company, Rosatom, said it plans a cold shutdown of the fourth reactor at ZNPP because of a leaking pipe, but may use the sixth unit in so-called hot shutdown to meet the plant’s own needs. IAEA has been urging Russia to bring all six reactors at the occupied plant into a state of cold shutdown for safety reasons. (Bloomberg, 08.10.23)
• An elite Chechen military unit has been deployed as a police force in the occupied Ukrainian nuclear city of Enerhodar, which hosts ZNPP. (MT/AFP, 08.09.23)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• Iran and the United States appear to be observing an informal agreement under which Iran has limited its nuclear program and restrained proxy militias. The announcement of a prisoner exchange deal between the United States and Iran could increase the prospects for further diplomatic cooperation, including the Biden administration's longstanding goal of containing Iran's nuclear program, according to officials and analysts. (NYT, 08.10.23)
• After a meeting of deputy foreign ministers in Tehran, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow and Tehran were unanimous in the belief that the failure to implement the deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear program stemmed from the policy of "maximum pressure" pursued by the United States. (Reuters, 08.08.23)

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

• On Aug. 5 a Ukrainian naval drone truck a Russian oil tanker in the Kerch Strait near Crimea. Russian tanker SIG's engine room was damaged by the attack  but the crew was safe and work was under way to tow the vessel, which could not move by itself, following the attack. (FT, 08.05.23, RFE/RL, 08.05.23)
• On Aug. 7 at least three people were killed in Russian assaults that targeted Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions, officials said. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
• On Aug. 8 Russian forces launched missile strikes on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, according to Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, killing seven people and injuring 88 others. (WP, 08.08.23, FT, 08.08.23)
• On Aug. 9 Ukrainian shelling killed one and injured four people in Russia's border region of Belgorod, the governor said, targeting a region that has been hit by repeated Ukrainian strikes. (MT/AFP, 08.09.23)
• On Aug. 10 two people were killed after Ukraine shelled a small village in the Russian border region of Bryansk, the region's governor said. (MT/AFP, 08.10.23)
• On Aug. 11 Russian air defense systems shot down a drone flying over Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, as Vnukovo international airport temporarily halted flights. (MT/AFP, 08.11.23)
• On Aug. 11 Ukrainian defenses shot down a ballistic missile over Kyiv. The Ukrainian Air Force said that three other ballistic missiles, known as Kinzhals, were aimed at targets in the western part of the country. One Russian missile crashed in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, killing an 8-year-old child, the Prosecutor General's Office said. (NYT, 08.11.23, Kyiv Independent, 08.11.23)
• Twenty-two Ukrainian prisoners of war were brought home from captivity, Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said Aug. 7 on Telegram. (WP, 08.08.23)
• Ukraine has ordered the mandatory evacuation of roughly 11,000 people from towns and villages near the northeastern front line, as fighting intensifies around the city of Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, where Russia has poured forces into offensive efforts. (NYT, 08.10.23)
• The U.S. Justice Department is cooperating with the International Criminal Court and supporting Ukrainian prosecutors carrying out war crime investigations, Attorney General Merrick Garland said. (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• A survey conducted by the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration between May and June 2023 estimated about a million Ukrainians who were abroad had returned to their place of origin to pay a visit or stay. Another 353,000 returned from abroad but remained displaced within Ukraine. (WSJ, 08.09.23)
• Ukraine has issued a coastal warning about the threat of military action in the waters of six Russian ports in the Black Sea. The warning pertains to the waters of the internal and external areas of the ports of Anapa, Novorossiysk, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, Sochi and Taman. (The New Voice of Ukraine, 08.05.23)
• Ukraine laid out temporary Black Sea routes for ships that are willing to navigate waters threatened by Russia, as it seeks to reclaim control over its maritime trade. Katerina Kononenko, an operations manager at Avalon shipping in Romania, said that shipowners with very old fleets, and who are willing to work without insurance, may be willing to use such corridors. (Bloomberg, 08.10.23)
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he aims to revive the Black Sea grain deal with an “expanded scope,” calling on Western countries to help turn the initiative into the basis for peace between Russia and Ukraine. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed the deal in a call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (Bloomberg, 08.09.23, Reuters, 08.05.23)

Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

• In the past month of fighting Russian armed forces made a net gain of 25 square miles, according to the estimate by the Belfer Russia-Ukraine War Task Force. Their research shows that the period saw Russian forces gain 43 square miles of Ukrainian territory, while Ukraine’s gain was 18 square miles in the month preceding the Aug. 8, 2023, issue of the task force’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. (RM, 08.08.23)
• During the night of Aug. 5-6 Ukraine's air defense reported a "massive missile attack" saying at least 70 missiles and suicide drones targeted sites around the country. Kyiv said its air defenses had neutralized 12 of 14 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles before they could reach their targets. In addition, Russia fired at least three Kinzhal air-launched missiles from Tu-95 strategic bombers flying in the Caspian region. All 27 Shahed drones were destroyed, Ukraine's Air Force reported. (RFE/RL, 08.06.23) 
• On Aug. 5 Russia claimed it had captured the settlement of Novoselivske in northeastern Ukraine, where Kyiv said it was confronted with a growing number of attacks. Footage from the Russian army showed Novoselivske completely destroyed, with white smoke billowing over crumbling buildings. (MT/AFP, 08.06.23)
• On Aug. 6 Russia said that its forces struck military airbases in the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions in western Ukraine and that "all targets were hit." "Overnight Russia's armed forces carried out strikes ... on Ukrainian armed forces airbases around the settlements of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region and Dubno in the Rivne region," the Russian Defense Ministry said. (MT/AFP, 08.06.23)
• On Aug. 6 Ukrainian forces struck two bridges connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to the rest of Ukraine. (NYT, 08.07.23)
• On Aug. 7 Russia claimed its troops had advanced three kilometers (two miles) along the Kupiansk front in northeast Ukraine over the last three days. (MT/AFP, 08.07.23)
• On Aug. 7 Russia said it had shot down a Ukrainian drone in the central Kaluga region, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, adding that the incident "affected neither people nor infrastructure." (MT/AFP, 08.07.23)
• On Aug. 9 two Ukrainian drones headed toward Moscow were shot down, Russian authorities said, the latest in a surge of drone attacks targeting the capital. One was shot down in the Domodedovo area on the southern outskirts of the city, while the second was shot down in the Minsk highway area, west of the capital. (MT/AFP, 08.09.23)
• On Aug. 10 Russia's Defense Ministry said it had downed 11 Ukrainian drones near Crimea overnight, as well as two drones flying toward Moscow. (MT/AFP, 08.10.23)
• Geolocated footage published on Aug. 10 suggests that Ukrainian forces crossed the Mokri Yaly River and advanced eastward into the southwestern outskirts of Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area. (ISW, 08.10.23)
• On Aug. 11 Russia claimed its forces had "improved" their offensive positions around two settlements near the town of Kupiansk in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed its forces had "improved the tactical situation" on the front line near Vilshana and Pershotravneve. (MT/AFP, 08.11.23)
• Elite Ukrainian troops carried out a daring raid this week across the Dnipro river on enemy positions in Russian-occupied territory near the southern city of Kherson. Ukraine has carried out sporadic raids, often under cover of darkness, across the key river that functions as one of the war’s southern front lines. But the latest foray appears to form part of a counteroffensive strategy to pin down Russian forces and create multiple bridgeheads for a future broader attack, analysts say. (FT, 08.11.23)
• Some of Ukraine's most elite special forces are now operating slightly back from the front line—with virtual-reality glasses that give a drone's-eye view. These forces are part of the Security Service of Ukraine's "A," or Alpha, division. The Alpha division alone this year has damaged or destroyed more than 322 tanks and armored vehicles, 48 artillery systems and 65 special equipment objects, including electronic warfare, said the deputy director. (WP, 08.06.23)
• Military analysts say the Ukrainian surface drones could change the complexion of the war by forcing Russia to commit more resources to protecting its ports, warships and cargo ships that it uses to transport weapons, fuel and other supplies for its military. The attacks are also expected to further raise shipping and insurance costs for vessels headed to Russia's vital Black Sea ports. (WSJ, 08.11.23)
• Ukraine’s counteroffensive may be moving at a slower pace than Western leaders would like, but a new analysis by a British think-tank suggests that’s because those same Western leaders moved too slowly to send Ukraine the tanks, armored vehicles and ammunition it needed. The analysis, published Aug. 8 by the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, regarded as one of the world’s leading defense and security think tanks, concluded that Western officials hesitated too long over whether to send key weapons. (NYT, 08.08.23)
• Newly delivered, American-made cluster munitions have given fresh impetus to Ukraine's campaign to retake territory captured by Russia, after weeks of little progress. Ukrainian soldiers say they have used the cluster bombs—which release dozens of smaller bomblets and can cause devastation over a broader area than ordinary artillery shells—to hit concentrations of Russian infantry, groups of vehicles and other targets, clearing the way for ground advances. (WSJ, 08.08.23)
• Mediazona, together with the BBC and a team of volunteers, have confirmed through open sources the names of 30,003 Russian soldiers killed during the invasion of Ukraine. Over the past two weeks, about 1,300 people have been added to the list, including four officers with the rank of lieutenant colonel and above. In total, 284 high-ranking officers are now known to have died. (Mediazona, 08.11.23)
• RFE/RL has found documentary evidence that Russia is attacking Ukraine with cruise missiles that Kyiv handed over to Moscow in the 1990s. A report by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, reveals that the serial numbers of numerous missiles that hit targets in Ukraine match those of missiles listed in the 1999 agreement on the weapons handover. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)
• Biden's request to the Congress for $20 billion in additional funding for Ukraine has teed up the first major test of the anti-interventionist sentiment coursing through the GOP. A House vote on Ukraine aid would likely pass with the support of Democrats and Republican hawks. Whether it gets to the floor will depend on McCarthy's appetite for yet another right-wing uprising ."A Republican-led House will not rubber-stamp any blank-check funding requests; rather, the administration's emergency funding requests must be reviewed and scrutinized on their merits consistent with the practice and principles of our majority," a spokesperson for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)  said in a statement. (Axios, 08.10.23)
  • A senior administration official told reporters that existing funding for Ukraine will last through September, and that the supplemental package will "get us through" the first quarter of 2024 if the war is still ongoing. (Axios, 08.10.23)
  • Republican Chris Christie, waging a long-shot bid for his party's presidential nomination, visited Ukraine and met Zelensky. The former New Jersey governor billed the trip as a fact-finding mission to assess the effectiveness of U.S. military aid to Ukraine. (WP, 08.05.23)
  • A recent CNN poll found 55% of Americans do not believe Congress should authorize more funding for Ukraine, including 71% of Republicans. (Axios, 08.10.23)
• U.S. weapons stockpiles will not drop below “acceptable levels of risk” despite the constant flow of arms to Ukraine, said Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushing back on the idea that America may be putting itself in danger by sending such a massive amount of military aid to Kyiv for its war with Russia. (Washington Times, 08.09.23)
• In an interview with The Washington Times, Milley:
  • Stressed that it is far too early to draw any major conclusions about Ukraine’s 2-month-old counteroffensive and acknowledged that “there’s a lot of fog” about the state of the Ukrainian advance, which by most accounts appears to be moving slower than Western military observers and planners have hoped. “I think it would be premature to say victory or defeat one way or another just yet. It’s not over yet.” (Washington Times, 08.09.23)
  • Said of Ukrainians: “They are fighting on their own turf, but they’re executing offensive combined arms maneuver warfare, which is very, very difficult to do.” “And they’re going through some highly dense minefields that are obviously very dangerous.” (Washington Times, 08.09.23)
  • Said: “We need to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to successfully defend itself. The issue of Ukraine is much bigger than Ukraine. ... [F]or Europe, for the United States, for other countries in the world, it’s much bigger than that.” “It’s about a set of rules that were put in place by the United States.” (Washington Times, 08.09.23)
• The first batch of Abrams tanks are expected to arrive in Ukraine by early fall. (Axios, 08.10.23)
• A first group of six Ukrainian pilots is not expected to complete training on the U.S.-made F-16 before next summer, senior Ukrainian government and military officials said. Just six pilots, about half a squadron, will go through the first round of training, according to two Ukrainian officials. Another 20 Ukrainian pilots are ready for English training, U.S. officials said. (WP, 08.11.23)
• A member of German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz's ruling party—Andreas Schwarz, a member of parliament representing the Social Democrats (SDP)—has for the first time called for Berlin to supply Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles. (RFE/RL, 08.06.23)
• Rheinmetall AG has bought around 30 Leopard 1 A5 battle tanks from a Belgian company on behalf of the German government as part of a package of military hardware for Ukraine unveiled at last month’s NATO summit. (Bloomberg, 08.09.23)
• By the end of the year, Ukraine will be producing NATO-standard 155mm ammunition as well as the Soviet 152mm and 122mm calibers already produced. (WSJ, 08.07.23)
• Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said Estonia had already provided Ukraine with military aid worth more than 400 million euros ($441 million), or more than 1% of the Baltic country's GDP. (dpa, 08.10.23)
• Slovak President Zuzana Caputova has granted permission for nine Slovak citizens to serve in the Ukrainian armed forces fighting off an invasion from Russia. (RFE/RL, 08.06.23)

Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:

• U.S. software giant Microsoft will not renew licenses for Russian companies from Sept. 30, the U.S. company said in a letter on Aug. 11. Microsoft stopped sales in Russia in March 2022 after the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February, but continued to issue licenses for the products that had already been sold. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)
• Google has started blocking its popular workplace apps for Russian companies under U.S. sanctions, the Kommersant business daily reported Aug. 11. Around 30% of Russian companies’ corporate information is stored on Google Workspace services, which include Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive and other cloud-based tools, according to one of the sources’ estimates. (MT/AFP, 08.11.23)
• Bacardi's Russian business, Bacardi Rus LLC, imported $169 million of products during the 12 months to June 30, according to Russian government customs data collected by Export Genius, a trade-data specialist. Products imported include Grey Goose vodka, Bombay Sapphire gin, Oakheart rum, Dewar's Scotch whisky, Patrón tequila and Martini-branded vermouth, prosecco and other products. (WP, 08.08.23)
  • Ukrainian authorities have added Bacardi Limited, the world's largest private spirits company, to the "international sponsors of war" list on Aug. 10, because the Bermuda-based company continues to do business in Russia. (RFE/RL, 08.10.23)
• A Russian court has frozen about $36 million worth of Goldman Sachs’ assets in the country after state-owned bank Otkritie, which is under Western sanctions, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. bank. Otkritie accused Goldman of refusing to fulfill 615 million rubles ($6.4 million) of debt obligations under derivatives agreements between the two banks. (FT, 08.08.23)
• The U.S. Treasury Department on Aug. 11 imposed sanctions on Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, two Russian billionaires behind Alfa Group. The Treasury Department on Aug. 11 also levied sanctions on Fridman and Aven’s closest business partners, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev. “Wealthy Russian elites should disabuse themselves of the notion that they can operate business as usual while the Kremlin wages war against the Ukrainian people,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said. In the Aug. 11 announcement, the U.S. also included sanctions on the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (WP, 08.11.23, Bloomberg, 08.11.23)
  • Latvian authorities need to take into account new U.S. sanctions against Russian tycoon Petr Aven as they decide whether to revoke his citizenship, Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said. (Bloomberg, 08.11.23)
  • Over a year ago the West launched a new foreign-policy weapon to pressure the Kremlin to halt its war in Ukraine: It sanctioned more than a hundred leading Russian businessmen and their families, hoping that they would prod Russian President Vladimir Putin to give up his expansionist plans. So far the strategy hasn't worked. Meanwhile, a handful of deep-pocketed oligarchs are pushing back, intensifying their legal challenges in U.K. and European Union courts (WSJ, 08.06.23)
  • Dozens of Russians connected to Putin or the Russian military are still welcome in European Union countries despite wartime sanctions meant to isolate Russia. That privilege is drawing criticism from politicians and antiwar activists. Yelena Isinbayeva, an Olympic gold medal-winning Russian pole vaulter with close ties to Putin, is living quietly in a luxurious residence worth millions in Spain's Canary Islands. A daughter and son-in-law of Boris Obnosov, the head of the Russian-owned company Tactical Missiles Corp., continue to live in Prague, where the family owns numerous properties and luxury vehicles. (WP, 08.08.23)
• Russian companies are turning to Hong Kong for dispute arbitration services as sanctions over the Ukraine war restrict their access to western courts. Lawyers in the city say Russian companies are increasingly adopting Hong Kong’s governing law in their commercial contracts for similar reasons. (FT, 08.09.23)
• Authorities in Italy have halted an investment program for Russian and Belarusian citizens that offered residency permits in exchange for large investments. (Current Time, 08.08.23)
• A $700 million superyacht tied to Putin is being refitted while impounded in Italy. (FT, 08.05.23)
• U.S. lawyers on Aug. 8 voted to adopt a revised rule that imposes a more explicit obligation to vet potential clients, as part of an effort to quell concerns about the use of lawyers to facilitate money laundering and other financial crimes. (WSJ, 08.09.23)
• The U.K. government has unveiled 25 new sanctions targeting Russia’s access to foreign military supplies, under a package the Foreign Office claims is its “largest” such raft of measures to date. Britain on Aug. 8 designated three Russian companies importing electronics crucial to Moscow’s battlefield kit, as well as 22 individuals and businesses outside Russia that are supporting its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (FT, 08.08.23)
• Putin has signed a decree suspending double-taxation treaties with more than 30 countries that Russia has deemed "unfriendly." The decree, published on Aug. 8, affects double-taxation agreements with the United States, several EU states, Britain, South Korea, Australia, Japan and others. (RFE/RL, 08.09.23)

Ukraine-related negotiations:

• A peace plan pitched by Ukraine and its allies to more than 40 countries in Saudi Arabia Aug. 5-6 brought little in the way of concrete steps to stop the war or reverse Russia’s territorial gains. There was no joint statement after the Jeddah meeting. (Bloomberg, 08.06.23, SCMP, 08.07.23)
  • A European source told AFP that agreements had been reached on several matters, including the principle that respect for Ukraine's "territorial integrity and sovereignty" should be "at the heart of any peace settlement." (FT, 08.07.23, BNE, 08.06.23, RFE/RL, 08.06.23)
  • The most tangible outcome from the Jeddah meetings was a plan to form working groups under various points of Zelensky’s 10-point “peace formula” — on areas including food supply and nuclear security — according to people familiar with the matter. Zelensky told the gathering via a video link that "the international rules-based order, violated by Russian aggression, must be restored." (Bloomberg, 08.06.23, RFE/RL, 08.06.23)
  • Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Aug. 7 that “there were different points of view, but all the attendees declared allegiance to U.N. principles, international law and respect to sovereignty and territorial integrity.” “We will hold another meeting within a month, month-and-a-half and we will move toward [holding] a summit,” he said. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
  • Leaders of Russia’s BRICS allies met with Zelensky in Jeddah on Aug. 6 and agreed that Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be at the heart of any peace deal with Russia to end the war. (BNE, 08.06.23)
  • Representatives for China stuck to calls for a cease-fire as a precursor to peace talks — an approach that French delegates said was unacceptable because it would effectively freeze Russia’s gains in place. (Bloomberg, 08.06.23)
    • The U.S. on Aug. 7 praised China's participation in the Jeddah meeting. (WSJ, 08.08.23)
    • China was an active participant in the meetings, the head of Ukraine's presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said. (WSJ, 08.08.23)
    • One European diplomat said China “appeared constructive” during the talks. Another European official said China “participated actively and was positive about the idea of a third meeting at this level.” They added that China had indicated it would attend the next such meeting. Beijing had made no comment on the meeting by Aug. 6 evening. (FT, 08.07.23) See China-Russia: Allied or aligned? section for more on this issue.
  • The head of Brazil’s delegation, Celso Amorim, said that "any real negotiation must include all parties," including Russia. "Although Ukraine is the biggest victim, if we really want peace, we have to involve Moscow in this process in some form," he said.  (RFE/RL, 08.06.23)
  • ''This is not only a conflict between Russia and Ukraine,'' Amorim, international affairs adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, said in a speech that he delivered virtually during the talks. ''This is also a chapter in the longstanding rivalry between Russia and the West,'' he said, according to a copy of the speech obtained by The New York Times. (NYT, 08.05.23)
  • Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on Aug. 7 that Russia would discuss the results of the talks with other BRICS nations. She described Zelensky’s proposal as “a senseless ultimatum to Russia,” aimed at “prolonging hostilities.” (NYT, 08.07.23)
  • Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s national security council, said Aug. 6 that Moscow had to be included in talks for any proposal to work. “This was not there,” he said in a post on Telegram in which he said occupied Ukrainian territories belonged to Russia. (FT, 08.07.23)
• “There are currently no grounds for an agreement,” Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said. “We will continue the operation for the foreseeable future.”… Asked if Russia sought more Ukrainian territory beyond the four provinces annexed: “No,” he said. “We just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours.” (NYT, 08.06.23)

Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

• Russia will boost its military forces near its borders with NATO states, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. He singled out the “militarization of Poland” and said the entry of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership would be “seriously destabilizing” for Russia’s security. Taking into account the armed forces of eastern European countries, about 360,000 service people are stationed in the immediate vicinity of the borders of Russia and its ally Belarus, he claimed. (Bloomberg, 08.09.23)
• Russia said Aug. 5 it scrambled an Su-30 fighter jet to "prevent a violation of the Russian state border" by a U.S. Reaper MQ-9 military drone over the Black Sea. "As the Russian fighter approached, the foreign reconnaissance drone performed a U-turn away from the border," the Russian Defense Ministry said. The ministry said the drone belonged to the U.S. Air Force. (MT/AFP, 08.05.23)

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

• China's top diplomat assured Russia that Beijing hasn't wavered in its stance on the Ukraine war, right after a Chinese envoy joined a multilateral forum in Saudi Arabia—which excluded Moscow—to discuss ways to end the conflict. In a Aug. 7 call, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, affirmed the strong partnership between their governments. The two ministers also discussed the Ukraine war, but neither readouts directly mentioned the weekend diplomatic gathering in Saudi Arabia. Even so, Wang's comments included an apparent reference to the Jeddah meeting that sought to reassure Moscow about China's position on the war. China, at any international multilateral forum, will "uphold an independent and impartial stance" while promoting peace talks and seeking a political solution to the "Ukraine crisis," the Chinese diplomat said. Russia's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement characterizing the call as confirmation that "Moscow and Beijing have identical or largely concurring approaches toward international affairs," without elaborating on what was discussed regarding Ukraine. Lavrov and Wang "reaffirmed their commitment to maintain close foreign policy coordination," the statement said. (WSJ, 08.08.23)
• Eleven Russian and Chinese naval force patrolled near the coast of Alaska last week in what U.S. experts said appeared to be the largest such flotilla to approach American shores. The USS John S. McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon responded to the flotilla, tracking its movement. The four destroyers were in addition to the American maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft. (WSJ, 08.06.23)
  • "According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, naval vessels of the two countries have recently conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters in the western and northern Pacific Ocean. This action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation," the Chinese Embassy spokesman, Liu Pengyu, said. (WSJ, 08.06.23)
• China’s exports to Ukraine totaled nearly $233 million in June, down from a high of $1.2 billion from January last year.  By contrast, China’s exports to Russia reached a new historical monthly high of 69 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) in June. Its crude imports from Russia rose 8.2% month-on-month to a record 10.50 million tons in June, according to customs data. (Bloomberg, 08.07.23)
• Russian exports to China dropped in July, the first time since steadily rising in the months following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Reuters reported Aug. 8, citing Chinese customs data. China’s July 2023 imports from Russia declined by 8% compared to July 2022, totaling $9.2 billion. China’s overall monthly imports shrank 12.4%. It was the first monthly decline of Chinese imports from Russia since February 2022, the news agency said. In June 2023, China’s imports from Russia grew 15.7%. (MT/AFP, 08.08.23)
• China's embassy in Moscow has criticized the treatment of five Chinese citizens who were refused entry into Russia, calling the treatment inconsistent with the overall friendly relations between the two countries. The five, attempting to drive into Russia from Kazakhstan late last month, were refused entry after four hours of examination and had their visas canceled, the embassy said. “Russia’s brutal and excessive law-enforcement activities in this incident have seriously violated the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese citizens,” the embassy said. (Bloomberg, 08.05.23, RFE/RL, 08.05.23)
  • The situation that arose on July 29 in connection with the refusal to five Chinese citizens to enter Russia across the Russian-Kazakh border at a checkpoint in the Astrakhan Region is devoid of any political context and will not affect bilateral relations, while stirring up a fuss would play into the hands of ill-wishers, Alexey Zaitsev, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s deputy spokesperson told a news briefing. (TASS, 08.09.23)
• China, Iran and Russia are engaged in foreign interference in New Zealand, the nation’s domestic intelligence agency said Aug. 11 after making its threat assessment report public for the first time. (AP, 08.11.23)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

• "As the only country to have experienced the horror of nuclear devastation in war, Japan will press on tirelessly with its efforts to bring about" nuclear disarmament, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Aug. 6 at a memorial ceremony in Hiroshima. "The widening division within the international community over approaches to nuclear disarmament, the nuclear threat made by Russia, and other concerns now make that road all the more difficult." (WP, 08.07.23)
• Russian arms control expert Alexei Arbatov wrote in an article: “deterrence doctrines undergo frightening transformations (metamorphoses), turning into their opposite, i.e. plans and practical options of unleashing a nuclear war. Recently, this has been manifested in the Russian strategic discourse on ways to quickly and successfully complete the military special operation in Ukraine. Such initiatives are prone with the danger of Russian national suicide.” (Polis, 2023)
• “For how long should Russia tolerate open warfare from the West using Ukrainian meat?” Sergei Karaganov, a well-connected Russian foreign policy expert, asked in an interview. “There is a high risk of nuclear war, and it is increasing,” he said. “The war is a prolonged Cuban missile crisis, but this time with Western leaders who reject normal values of motherhood, parenthood, gender, love of country, faith, God.” (NYT, 08.06.23)

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI:

• A Ukraine-linked hacker group said on Telegram on Aug. 7 that it had hacked the website of Moscow's municipal property registration bureau (MosgorBTI) overnight, saying "the information about state officials, politicians, military and special services officers who support the Ukraine war had been handed to Ukraine's defense forces." (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
• According to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at WithSecure in Helsinki and one of the most celebrated hunters of Russian cyber gangs, Clop “is a Russian-speaking crime group operating out of Russia and Ukraine.” Hypponen notes that since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the number of ransomware attacks against companies and institutions in Europe and the U.S. that emanate from Ukraine has dropped, while those launched from inside Russia have increased. (FT, 08.05.23)
• As Meduza found, the data of customers who use the Yandex Go service, including those abroad, are now stored only in Russian data centers in the Moscow, Ryazan and Vladimir regions. (Meduza, 08.08.23)

Energy exports from CIS:

• Russia’s crude breached the price cap set by the G-7, while revenue from oil exports soared to an eight-month high, according to the International Energy Agency. The price of the country’s seaborne crude shipments last month jumped to $64.41 a barrel on a weighted average, “smashing” the $60 price limit set last year by the G-7, the IEA said in its latest monthly report. The price strength of Russia’s Urals crude reflects supply tensions for sour grades amid supply cuts within the OPEC+ oil alliance, the IEA said. (Bloomberg, 08.11.23)
• Russia maintained its oil and oil product exports at 7.3 million barrels per day in July, while export profits grew by $2.5 billion to $15.3 billion, which is the highest level since last November, according to the IEA. (TASS, 08.11.23)
  • Global demand for oil reached an all-time high of 103 million barrels a day in June driven by better than expected economic growth in OECD countries, strong summer air travel and surging oil consumption in China, particularly for petrochemical production, the IEA said in its monthly oil report on Aug. 11. (FT, 08.11.23)
• In June 2023, Russia held on to its spot as the top oil supplier to China and India for the fifth month in a row, according to OPEC’s August report. Russia accounted for almost 20% of total oil imports by China, according to OPEC. Russia has consistently been the top oil supplier to India over the last 12 months, supporting 45% of all Indian oil imports, OPEC said. (TASS, 08.10.23)
• The average cost of Russian crude landing on Indian shores in June was the lowest since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago. The price for each barrel including freight costs was $68.17, down from $70.17 in May and $100.48 a year earlier, according to the latest figures from India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry. While that’s higher than a $60 cap imposed by Western nations on Moscow, the threshold doesn’t include shipping. (Bloomberg, 08.07.23)
• Russia exports around 500,000-550,000 barrels a day of crude and 450,000 barrels of refined products, mostly fuel and diesel, from Novorossiysk. The port also loads about 250,000 barrels a day of crude from Kazakhstan. Nearby the port, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, or CPC, alone loads tankers with about 1.3 million barrels of crude per day and is the main route for exporting oil from Kazakhstan to Europe. (Bloomberg, 08.07.23)
• Poland has resumed pumping oil through the key Druzhba pipeline linking Russia to Europe that was damaged over the weekend. (MT/AFP, 08.08.23)
• Europe’s energy industry, intent on avoiding gas shortages during the coming winter, has resorted to shipping large volumes of the fuel into Ukrainian storage, despite the Russian invasion. Naftogaz, the country’s energy company, said the number of non-Ukrainian companies injecting gas into the country reached 19 this year, up from four in 2021. (FT, 08.09.23)
• LNG made up 34% of the EU’s gas imports last year and that total is expected to rise again in 2023 to 40% — giving it the same importance Russian gas once had. (FT, 08.10.23)

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• The United States and its European allies are importing vast amounts of nuclear fuel and compounds from Russia. Russia sold about $1.7 billion in nuclear products to firms in the United States and Europe, according to trade data and experts. The purchases occurred as the West has leveled stiff sanctions on Moscow over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, blocking imports of such Russian staples as oil, gas, vodka and caviar. Russia supplied the U.S. nuclear industry with about 12% of its uranium last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Europe reported getting about 17% of its uranium in 2022 from Russia. (AP, 08.10.23)

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• Russian soprano Anna Netrebko on Aug. 4 sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York and general manager Peter Gelb, alleging defamation, breach of contract and other violations related to the opera’s decision to drop her following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The suit asks for at least $360,000 in damages. (AP, 08.05.23)
• A former senior FBI official is in talks to resolve criminal charges in two separate indictments, including entering a possible guilty plea as early as next week in a case involving accusations that he worked for a Russian oligarch, according to a public filing and statements by his lawyer in court. Charles F. McGonigal, who retired in 2018 as the counterintelligence chief in the FBI's New York field office, has been accused by federal prosecutors in New York of violating U.S. sanctions, money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Oleg Deripaska. (NYT, 08.08.23)

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

• Russia’s economy may return to its pre-war level as soon as next year as it adapts to the impact of international sanctions, though the Kremlin’s drive to expand military recruitment may yet undo this goal. The economy expanded by an estimated 4.6% in the second quarter and by 1.5% in the first half of the year, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Aug. 11 at a meeting with officials. The GDP data means Russia’s economy has expanded for four successive quarters, following a decline of more than 4% a year ago. The economy may reach its pre-war size by the middle of next year, said Natalia Lavrova, chief economist at BCS Financial Group, who forecasts 2% growth in 2023. (Bloomberg, 08.11.23)
• The Russian central bank expects the Russian economy to grow up to 2.5% this year, a faster than normal pace that would allow it to recover practically all economic activity that has wiped out since the start of the war. Unemployment is near a record low and real wages have been growing steadily this year, as state factories and private companies compete for scarce labor. (NYT, 08.09.23)
  • “As an economist, I don’t know how this bubble can be deflated,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, and a former adviser at the Russian central bank. “One day it could all crash like a house of cards.” (NYT, 08.09.23)
• If measured in GDP, PPP, current dollars, Russia had the fifth largest economy in the world in 2022, overtaking Germany, according to the World Bank’s database. If measured, however, in inflation-adjusted constant 2017 international dollars, PPP, then Russia still remained sixth, behind Germany. The International Monetary Fund’s data for 2022 also shows Russia as sixth among the countries with the greatest share of the world’s GDP, measured in PPP. (RM, 08.08.23)  
• Russia’s Finance Ministry again began to publish estimates of the budget deficit to GDP after a break. According to the agency, from January to July 2023, the deficit amounted to 1.8% of GDP, that is, 2.817 trillion rubles. In the first seven months of 2023, the budget received 14,525 billion rubles, which is 7.9% less than in the same period in 2022. Of these, oil and gas revenues—only 4,193 billion rubles—are 41.4% less than in the same period of 2022.  (Istories, 08.08.23)
• The weakening ruble neared an exchange rate of 100 per U.S. dollar earlier this week, down by roughly 25% since the start of the year. The decline prompted the Bank of Russia on Aug. 10 to halt purchases of foreign currency for the remainder of the year “to reduce volatility.” (NYT, 08.10.23)
• Putin approved a windfall profit tax on large Russian companies as the government seeks additional sources of income for the budget against the backdrop of massive spending on its war in Ukraine. Companies will be subject to a 10% tax paid on the difference in profit in 2021-2022 compared with 2018-2019. The law that comes into force in January will apply to businesses that made an average annual profit of more than 1 billion rubles ($10.5 million) in that period. (Bloomberg, 08.05.23)
• “Our presidential election is not really democracy, it is costly bureaucracy,” said Dmitry  Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. “Mr. Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90% of the vote,” Peskov said. (NYT, 08.06.23)
  • Putin can choose not to hold presidential elections next year because he will “obviously” win re-election, Peskov said Aug. 6. (MT/AFP, 08.07.23)
• Putin signed a decree on Aug. 4 that introduces penalties for people who work with unregistered international or nongovernmental organizations. (RFE/RL, 08.04.23)
• Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny admonished the Russian elite on Aug. 11 for its venality, expressing hatred for those who squandered a historic opportunity to reform after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. In an impassioned 2,000-word essay in response to being handed a 19-year additional prison sentence that would mean the 47-year-old stays in jail until he is 74, Navalny said hatred sometimes overcame him. "I can’t stop myself from fiercely, wildly hating those who sold, pissed away and squandered the historical chance that our country had in the early nineties," Navalny said in his most substantive statement since his sentencing last week. After the Soviet collapse, Navalny said, the Russian elite had sold a European future down the river for the pointless trappings of corrupt despotism. (Reuters, 08.11.23)
• Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service added sociologist and political scientist Boris Kagarlitsky to the register of extremists and terrorists on Aug. 7. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
• Self-exiled Chechen opposition activist Abubakar Yangulbayev said on Telegram on Aug. 7 that four of his relatives were forcefully sent by Chechen authorities to serve in the Russian armed forces in the war in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• The Basmanny district court in Moscow on Aug. 7 sentenced writer Dmitry Glukhovsky to eight years in prison on a charge of discrediting the Russian military in his online posts condemning Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
• A court in St. Petersburg on Aug. 10 ordered one of the country's most prominent TV journalists, Alexander Nevzorov, who fled Russia in March 2022, to pay 20,000 rubles ($205) for "extremist" thoughts. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)

• Police in the western Russian city of Kaluga have detained Albert Ratkin, a bishop of the New Word Baptist church, as a witness in a probe against the chairman of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, Yury Sipko. The Investigative Committee said in a statement on Aug. 8 that Sipko was suspected of spreading alleged fake news online about Russian armed forces involved in Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 08.09.23)
• A court in Yekaterinburg on Aug. 9 fined a local branch of the Memorial human rights group 300,000 rubles ($3,110) for allegedly discrediting Russia's armed forces involved in Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. (Current Time, 08.09.23)
• The Prosecutor General's Office of Russia has declared the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) to be an "undesirable" organization, Meduza reported. (RM, 08.10.23) 
• Alexey Petrov, an adviser to the office of Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, was linked to a neo-Nazi group known as WotanJugend. According to the investigation carried out by Reuters, 27-year-old Petrov was found to have posted content on his VKontakte social media page that appeared to be associated with the neo-Nazi group WotanJugend from 2011 to 2014, when he was aged between 16 and 19. (Kyiv Post, 08.10.23)
• A student organization at the Moscow State University is raising money for ammunition and equipment for fighting in Ukraine, according to T-invariant. This outlet has discovered that the founders of the association are the son and daughter of Yuri Trutnev, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. (RM, 08.10.23)
• Arkady Volozh, the co-founder of Russian tech giant Yandex has spoken out against the “barbaric” war in Ukraine. (FT, 08.10.23)
  • Volozh attracted widespread ridicule last week after he appeared to try to distance himself from Russia's war by publishing a new biography on his website which described him as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur." (WP, 08.11.23)
• Russia has issued a new history textbook for students in their final year of high school. The 17 paragraphs in the chapter on the war in Ukraine include Russian propaganda claiming the United States is the main beneficiary of the war and describing occupied territories of Ukraine as "new regions" of Russia. The textbook will be included in the curriculum from Sept. 1. (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• Rossia Segodnya, the massive state-run media conglomerate, has formally submitted a request to register the name and logo of Ekho Moskvy radio station. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)
• A few more of Levada’s respondents began to donate their clothes and other things to those in need, with 49% doing so in July 2023, up from 44% in June 2022. (Levada Center, 08.08.23)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russia’s largest known military equipment storage facility has been stripped of nearly half of the Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles that were stored on its grounds before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, The Vagzhanovo military equipment depot — located outside the republic of Buryatia’s capital of Ulan-Ude in eastern Siberia — is just one of nearly two dozen such sites identified by The Moscow Times’ Russian service using open-source data. (MT/AFP, 08.08.23)
• Russia launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years on Aug. 11 in a bid to be the first country to make a soft landing on the lunar south pole, a region believed to hold coveted pockets of water ice. A Soyuz 2.1 rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft blasted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, 5,550 kilometers east of Moscow, at 2:11 a.m. Moscow time. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)
• Russia has begun making copies of attack drones it acquired from Iran last year and is using them in combat against Ukrainian forces despite sanctions imposed to cripple the country's weapons production, according to a report issued Aug. 10 by a weapons research group. Called the Geran-2, the drones are a Russian-made version of the Shahed-136, which explodes on impact, researchers say.  (NYT, 08.11.23)
•  See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Emergencies, security, law-enforcement and justice:

• On Aug. 9 a factory in a city near Moscow making optical systems for the Russian military was rocked by an explosion which sent a column of smoke into the sky and injured 56 people. Authorities said the blast was caused by a violation of technical protocols by a fireworks company that rented storage space from the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Plant and used it to house equipment for its fireworks displays. Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said on Aug. 10 that 12 people are still missing. (FT, 08.09.23, RFE/RL, 08.10.23)
• In 2022, 83 explosions occurred in Russia, according to Verstka. The publication studied the data of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and concluded that this is a record number of explosions over the past 10 years. During the year, 55 people died in such incidents, another 10,647 people were injured. (Meduza, 08.09.23)
• Russia is on track to open more criminal cases for treason in 2023 than over the past 20 years combined, Russia’s independent news website Kholod reported Aug. 7. Authorities launched 82 treason investigations between January and July—a fourfold increase from the 20 cases investigated in all of 2022—Kholod said, citing publicly available media reports. (MT/AFP, 08.07.23)
• Christo Grozev, lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat, said he suspected the June 23 coup attempt by Prigozhin was coming the night before because, he says, there was an explosion of telephone traffic between Russia’s senior military. Grozev says he has several upcoming stories on Russian “illegals”—long-term sleepers based in the West. “We have found sleepers in Europe and the Americas,” he says. (FT, 08.11.23)
• Russia’s interior minister said thousands of police personnel have quit their posts. “Over the past month, 5,000 employees have left the internal affairs structures” and there’s a shortage of investigators, Vladimir Kolokoltsev said. (Bloomberg, 08.10.23)
• In 2022, the federal budget received 19.1 billion rubles ($192.4 million) from forced labor performed by convicts for state and private companies, compared to 8.8 billion rubles ($89.4 million) in 2016, according to MT’s Russian service. (MT, 08.11.23)
• Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) said on Aug. 10 that more than 26,000 people sentenced to so-called "penal labor" instead of being sent to prisons had been used in various industry fields such as construction, engineering, agriculture, housing and communal services since Jan. 1. (RFE/RL, 08.10.23)
• An appeals court in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod on Aug. 7 upheld the life sentence imposed on Ilnaz Galyaviyev, who had been convicted of an armed attack on a school in Kazan in which nine people, including seven children, were killed. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• Already the world’s largest wheat exporter, Russia produced a record grain harvest in 2022-23, generating 23% more volume than it had on average in the previous five years. It is expected to produce slightly less in the coming year, but still a bumper crop. This is likely to give Moscow just shy of 60 million tons to export this crop year and next — far more than usual, according to figures from S&P Global Commodity Insights. “Moscow is seeing an opportunity where if you take the Ukrainian share off the market, there’s a lot more share for Russia to take,” said Anthony Rizzo, agriculture and fertilizer analyst at consultancy CRU. (FT, 08.10.23)
• Russian grain ports are overflowing after two big harvests. Russia shipped 4.4 million tons of wheat in July, a record for the month and almost 60% above average, according to consultant SovEcon. Some terminals on the Azov Sea stopped accepting grain due to lack of storage capacity, SovEcon said. (Bloomberg, 08.09.23)
• In nickel, the top three producers (Indonesia, the Philippines and Russia) account for two-thirds of the market. (FT, 08.08.23)
• Putin submitted to the State Duma a draft law that eliminates the need to notify the Secretary General of the Council of Europe about the introduction or termination of martial law or states of emergency in the Russian Federation. (Meduza, 08.09.23)
• Serbian President Alexander Vucic said he planned to visit China in October and possibly meet with Putin there. President of Republika Srpska (one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entities) Milorad Dodik said on Aug. 10 he also expected to visit China and meet with Putin there this fall. (TASS, 08.10.23)
• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned against Russia's Wagner mercenaries taking advantage of instability in Niger. (AFP, 08.08.23)
• On Aug. 11, the West African bloc Ecowas approved a "standby force" in response to the military takeover in Niger, and Ivory Coast's president said it could be deployed "as soon as possible." In a statement issued on Aug. 11, Russia's foreign ministry warned other West African nations not to send troops into Niger. Military officials from Ecowas countries are reportedly set to meet on Aug. 12 to draft plans for a military intervention. (BBC, 08.11.23)
• A South African government inquiry into whether weapons were loaded onto a Russian Lady R ship in December 2022, as claimed by a U.S. diplomat, has established that a European company had in fact been loading food onto the vessel. (BNE, 08.09.23)
• The Central African Republic voted to abolish term limits in a July 29 constitutional referendum, which may result in Wagner-backed President Faustin-Archange Touadera seeking reelection in 2025. (Bloomberg, 08.08.23)
• A government official has been arrested in Germany, accused of passing secret information to Russia. He worked for an office dealing with military equipment and information technology. It is alleged he went on his own initiative to the Russian embassy in Berlin, and also to its consulate in the city of Bonn, where he offered his services. (BBC, 08.09.23)
• Karin Kneissl former Austrian foreign minister who danced with Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding has been residing in a Russian village this summer. (MT/AFP, 08.08.23)

Ukraine:

• Ukraine’s intelligence service said it has detained a woman who was allegedly gathering information on Zelensky’s travel details to help Russian forces carry out an assassination attempt. In a separate case on Aug. 8, the intelligence service (SBU) said it had arrested a group of women in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region for allegedly working for both Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Wagner paramilitary group. (FT, 08.08.23)
• All the heads of Ukraine's regional military recruitment centers will be dismissed, Zelensky announced on Aug. 11, amid concerns about corruption. Zelensky said a review of Ukraine's recruiting centers revealed signs of professional abuse ranging from illegal enrichment to transporting draft-eligible men across the border despite a wartime ban. "This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason," he said in a statement. Draft officers who were dismissed without being accused of violations may join the army to retain their rank, Zelensky said. (Bloomberg, 08.11.23, RFE/RL, 08.11.23
  • Earlier this week, Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said it had opened 112 cases against recruitment officers. The bureau detained the head of the Kyiv District Territorial Center for Recruitment and Social Support, whom it did not name, accusing the official of taking part in a large-scale scheme to produce fictitious documents claiming that draft-age men were unfit to serve and allowing them to leave the country — for a bribe of $10,000 apiece. (NYT, 08.11.23)
  • Some 77% of polled Ukrainians believe that Zelensky is directly responsible for corruption in the government and military administrations, according to a new poll conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF) and reported by Interfax. While not believing he is directly involved in corruption schemes, those polled said delays in addressing those who are means the president’s office shoulders the blame for a lack of action. (Kyiv Post, 08.06.23)
• A court in Ukraine has sentenced Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Ionafan (Anatoliy Yeletskykh) to five years in prison on charges of justifying Russian aggression. (UNIAN, 08.08.23)
• Ukraine’s membership would weigh most heavily on the EU’s finances. As an internal Council of the EU note seen by the FT highlights, the two biggest areas of the EU budget are the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and cohesion, or regional spending, which together account for around 62 % of the EU’s seven-year budget or around €370 billion each. Admitting Ukraine, with farmland that exceeds the size of Italy and an agricultural sector that employs 14 % of its population, would be a game-changer. It follows that Ukraine would become the biggest recipient of CAP funding, the majority of which comprises direct payments to farmers or income support. (FT, 08.06.23)
• Hungarians are the largest of dozens of ethnic minorities that make up the historically diverse region of Zakarpattia, wedged in a corner of the Carpathian Mountains between Romania, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Once close to 150,000, the Hungarian community now numbers about 70,000-80,000. (FT, 08.09.23)
• Ukraine’s government bonds have surged in price by more than 50% over the past two months as investors grow more optimistic about how much of their money they will get back in an eventual restructuring of the war-torn country’s debt. (FT, 08.11.23)
• Ukraine’s exports of IT services rose from $5 billion in 2020 to $7.3 billion last year. (FT, 08.10.23)

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• The United States used the anniversary of Belarus’s disputed 2020 presidential election to impose new sanctions against the country on Aug. 9, punishing state-owned enterprises and key government officials for involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war and the “fiercely undemocratic and repressive policies” of its longtime authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. (NYT, 08.10.23)
• Belarus on Aug. 7 began military exercises near its border with Poland and Lithuania. The Belarus defense ministry said the military drills were designed to draw on experiences from Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, including the use of drones. Minsk has been loyal to Moscow throughout the full-scale invasion. The exercises started in an area close to both Poland and Lithuania, prompting the deployment of an additional 1,000 Polish soldiers on top of the existing 2,000 troops stationed at the border. Lithuania said it was also planning to send more border guards to the Belarusian frontier. (FT, 08.08.23, AP, 08.07.23)
• Poland plans to have 10,000 soldiers near its border with Belarus to counter the increased threat from Minsk, its defense minister said on Aug. 10. Mariusz Blaszczak told Polish national radio that 10,000 soldiers would eventually be stationed on the border or nearby. He did not give a timeframe. (FT, 08.10.23)
• Poland's government on Aug. 7 accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the European Union via the Polish border in order to destabilize the region. " (MT/AFP, 08.07.23)
• The ethnic Armenian leader of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Arayik Harutiunian, has issued an urgent appeal to the international community, asking for immediate action to lift a de facto blockade imposed by Azerbaijan and prevent what he called "the genocide of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh." Yerevan and international aid groups have warned that a dire humanitarian situation has been unfolding in the breakaway Azerbaijani region with convoys of food and medicine blocked. (RFE/RL, 08.09.23)
• A delegation led by representatives of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, Sarah Arkin and Damian Murphy, has visited the site in Armenia's southern Syunik Province where an Armenian convoy of 19 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been stranded for nearly two weeks by Azerbaijan's closure of a checkpoint. (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• A group of United Nations experts have voiced alarm over the ongoing blockade of the Lachin Corridor by Azerbaijan, which has led to a dire humanitarian crisis in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. An Aug. 7 statement published on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says, “The blockade of the Lachin Corridor is a humanitarian emergency that has created severe shortages of essential food staples including sunflower oil, fish, chicken, dairy products, cereal, sugar and baby formula.” (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• Armenian police detained more than a dozen protesters outside a government building in Yerevan on Aug. 8 after they demanded authorities take steps to unblock the Lachin Corridor (RFE/RL, 08.09.23)
• Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has warned Azerbaijan against what he called "nullifying a historic opportunity for peace" between the two South Caucasus neighbors, calling for the lifting of a de facto blockade of Azerbaijan's mostly Armenian-populated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. (RFE/RL, 08.11.23)
• Azerbaijani economist Fazil Qasimov has been detained in Turkey and handed to Baku on unspecified charges, Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry said on Aug. 8. Media reports said earlier that the Turkey-based Qasimov is a suspect in a case against Qubad Ibadoglu, the chairman of the unregistered opposition Azerbaijan Democracy and Welfare Party. Ibadoglu was arrested last month on a charge of counterfeiting after police claimed they found counterfeit money in his abandoned apartment in Baku. Ibadoglu rejected the charge, while Human Rights Watch demanded his immediate release, calling the charges against him "spurious." (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• Zelensky on Aug. 7 commented on the 15th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, saying that the “wound” caused by Russia’s occupation of the country remains. (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (Democrat-New Jersey) has called on Kyrgyzstan to uphold international sanctions against Russia for its unprovoked war against Ukraine and urged the Central Asian country to stop its violations of human rights. (RFE/RL, 08.09.23)
• Kyrgyz authorities say they have shut down 39 mosques and 21 religious educational organizations in the Osh region. The press service of Kyrgyzstan's State Committee of National Security said the move followed an investigation that revealed noncompliance with the law on religious freedom and religious organizations, construction standards, hygiene, and fire safety. (RFE/RL, 08.08.23)
• Britain's Serious Fraud Office has confiscated three luxury properties worth more than $25.5 million in the United Kingdom that belonged to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of late President Islam Karimov who is currently serving a 13-year sentence in Uzbekistan for money laundering. (RFE/RL, 08.09.23)
• Georgia has declared Aug. 7 a day of mourning for the victims of last week's deadly landslide in the resort town of Shovi. The latest confirmed death toll is 18, while rescue teams continue to search for 17 people missing since the landslide occurred on Aug. 3. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
• An Uzbek court has sentenced three police officers in a case linked to mass anti-government protests in the country’s Karakalpak Autonomous Republic last year. (RFE/RL, 08.07.23)
• People in Turkmenistan now have no functioning instant-messaging app after the last existing one, IMO, became inaccessible in the country (RFE/RL, 08.05.23)
• Nurlan Masimov, a cousin of Karim Masimov — the jailed former head of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (KNB) — has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of bribery and embezzlement amid President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s crackdown on predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev’s allies. (RFE/RL, 08.10.23)

 

IV. Quotable and notable

• “It is very simple. Right now, Russian imperialism can be stopped cheaply, because American soldiers are not dying,” Poland's President Duda told WP. But if we don’t put a halt to Russian aggression now, “there will be a very high price to be paid.” (WP, 08.10.23)

 

V. Useful tables

 

Year 2022

Country	GDP, trillion, current international $ (source: World Bank)	Country	GDP, trillion, constant 2017 international $ (source: World Bank)	Country	GDP, based on PPP, share of world total, %, in 2022 (source: IMF)
China	30.33	China	25.68	China	18.48%
U.S.	25.46	U.S.	21.56	U.S.	15.574%
India	11.87	India	10.06	India	7.251%
Japan	5.70	Japan	5.21	Japan	3.754%
Russia	5.33	Germany	4.50	Germany	3.27%
Germany	5.31	Russia	4.03	Russia	2.918%
Indonesia	4.04	Indonesia	3.42	Indonesia	2.469%
Brazil	3.84	Brazil	3.25	Brazil	2.347%
France	3.77	U.K.	3.14	U.K.	2.272%
U.K.	3.66	France	3.13	France	2.265%

The cutoff for reports summarized in this product was 2:00 pm Eastern time on Aug. 11, 2023.

Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute an RM editorial policy.

Photo shared by the Ukrainian presidential press service via a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.