This Week’s Highlights

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

• According to a summary of the draft 2020 NDAA by the House and Senate Armed Services committees, the bill authorizes $300 million in weapons for Ukraine and an additional $743 million for the European Defense Initiative. The bill also includes the measure to punish companies involved in Russia’s Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream pipelines. The bill also reportedly prohibits any funds for buying or fielding intermediate-range ballistic or cruise missiles despite U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty and this week’s flight-test of an intermediate-range, ground-based ballistic missile, the second such test by the U.S. in four months. The bill also bans the transfer of the F-35 to Turkey while Ankara has S-400s. The 2020 NDAA’s $743.3 billion is reportedly the highest since World War II, adjusting for inflation, save for during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
• Trump and Pompeo hosted Lavrov in Washington on Dec. 10, agreeing with him on the need for denuclearization of North Korea, but disagreeing on whether to extend New START, as the U.S. side insisted on including China in a new arms control deal. The two sides also reportedly discussed Iran, Ukraine and Venezuela. Both Trump and Pompeo also raised the issue of elections interference, even though Lavrov said he did not discuss the issue with the U.S. president. Pompeo also said the U.S. and Russia continue to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. His comments came as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prepared a bill that would require the Trump administration to determine whether Russia should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism. While in Washington, Lavrov said U.S.-Russian bilateral trade has risen about one-third—from $20 billion during the Obama administration, to $27 billion this year. Trump told Lavrov he’d like to increase the volume of U.S.-Russian trade by “several times.”  

Russia’s domestic news:

• Russia’s natural population decline will reportedly set an 11-year record this year. In the first 10 months of this year, deaths outnumbered live births by 259,600, according to Rosstat data cited by RBC. It was the highest natural population decline since 2008, when deaths outnumbered births by 362,000, according to The Moscow Times.

Foreign affairs, trade and investment:

• The leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia met in Paris and reaffirmed commitment to implementing the Minsk II agreement, according to the joint communique of the Normandy Format summit. Putin and Zelenskiy also agreed to "commit to a full and comprehensive implementation" of a ceasefire by the end of 2019, according to the communique. The two also agreed to aim for "an all-for-all" prisoner exchange by the end of the year. However, Putin and Zelenskiy failed to resolve crucial issues such as a timeline for local elections in eastern Ukraine and the borders in the region. While Putin said relations with Ukraine were now in a ''thaw,” he also stressed Russia's longstanding position that Donbas should be given special status. Zelenskiy made clear that there could be no movement on the political and constitutional changes that Russia wants until security issues, including control of the border, had been settled. 

 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• The IAEA received the second and final shipment of low-enriched uranium (LEU) at a purpose-built facility in Kazakhstan housing the IAEA LEU Bank. Kazakhstan’s JSC Kazatomprom delivered 28 cylinders of LEU to the facility at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk. (IAEA, 12.10.19)
• France's Orano will supply a second depleted uranium hexafluoride defluorination plant to TVEL's JSC Electrochemical Plant in Zelenogorsk in Russia's Krasnoyarsk region under a 40 million euro contract awarded by Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom. (World Nuclear News, 12.11.19)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• “We agreed on the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea as our joint objective,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a Dec.10 press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in D.C. “We are promoting denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Lavrov said at the same conference. At their meeting, Pompeo and Lavrov discussed a wide range of other international and bilateral issues including arms control, the change in leadership in Venezuela and peace in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19, RFE/RL, 12.10.19, NK News, 12.10.19)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• At the Dec. 10 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. President Donald Trump asked Russia for support on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and to ensure the denuclearization of North Korea. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19)
• "The starting point of the [Dec. 27] exercise, which is being held with the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran's naval forces and the Russian and Chinese navy, is the third naval area in Konarak," Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, Iran's deputy army chief for coordination, said. (Newsweek, 12.11.19)

New Cold War/saber rattling:

• The U.S. military believes that an unarmed American drone reported lost near Libya's capital last month was in fact shot down by Russian air defenses and it is demanding the return of the aircraft's wreckage, U.S. Africa Command says. (Reuters, 10.07.19)
• U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, into law by the end of the year. According to a summary of the bill by the House and Senate Armed Services committees made public Dec. 9, the $743.3 billion is the highest since World War II, adjusting for inflation, save for during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. (Roll Call, 12.10.19)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• “We have had zero unprofessional incidents at sea and zero unprofessional incidents in the sky” with Russian jets in 90 days in Europe and the Mediterranean, U.S. Gen. Tod Wolters said. (The Moscow Times, 12.12.19)
• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has suggested that relations between Moscow and NATO are "not just halted but ... degrading every day," citing a falloff that began "about five years ago." (RFE/RL, 12.08.19)
• Turkey could finalize terms for delivery of a second consignment of S-400 advanced missile defenses from Russia by April when the first batch will be ready to operate, Ismail Demir, head of the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate, said. Turkey is also set to sign an agreement with Russia to jointly produce missiles and receive know-how to develop its own defense systems. (Reuters, 12.13.19, Bloomberg, 12.13.19)
• In the agreement on the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, House and Senate authorizers stopped short of unilaterally imposing sanctions on Turkey for the S-400 purchase. But they prohibited the transfer of the F-35 to Turkey while Ankara has the missile system or any other Russian military equipment that could compromise the aircraft. (Foreign Policy, 12.10.19)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• At the Dec. 10 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. President Donald Trump emphasized supporting "effective global arms control" that includes not only Russia, but also China. Lavrov also separately met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the same day. During the meeting, Lavrov reiterated that the Kremlin was ready to sign an extension of New START while Pompeo said he wanted to expand the agreement to include China. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19)
• Congress has slapped the U.S. Defense Department with a prohibition on spending any fiscal 2020 funds for buying or fielding intermediate-range ballistic or cruise missiles despite U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty. The prohibition was agreed by the House and Senate in the 2020 NDAA on Dec. 9. (Breaking Defense, 12.11.19)
• The U.S. flight-tested an intermediate-range, ground-based ballistic missile on Dec. 12, the second test in four months that would have been banned under the INF Treaty. The Defense Department said the launch came from Vandenberg Air Force Base with the rocket flying more than 500 kilometers before plunging into an open area. It was a prototype missile armed with a nonnuclear warhead. China has joined Russia in slamming the test. (Newsweek, 12.13.19, RFE/RL, 12.13.19, Reuters, 12.13.19)

Counter-terrorism:

• At the Dec.10 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. and Russia continued to cooperate in the fights against terrorism and drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed legislation that would require the State Department to determine whether Russia should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19, Reuters, 12.11.19)
• Fourteen international terrorist fighters have been detained in Russia in 2019 upon returning from abroad, and almost 400 related criminal cases have been opened, the Russian Interior Ministry said. (Interfax. 12.10.19)
• Around 1,500 Azerbaijani citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq to join terrorist organizations there; more than 900 of them are reported killed or missing, Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry said. (Interfax. 12.10.19)
• A court in the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan, has sentenced 14 men to prison terms of between 8 and 14 years for various terror-related activities. (RFE/RL, 12.11.19)
• The number of fighters belonging to ISIS in Afghanistan is growing and currently varies between 3,500 to 10,000, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Rashid Nurgaliyev said. (Interfax. 12.05.19)

Conflict in Syria:

• Russian forces have entered Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the Islamic State caliphate, in one of the starkest examples yet of how Moscow has filled the vacuum created by U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull U.S. forces from northern Syria. (Reuters, 12.09.19)
• The Trump administration’s rapidly shifting strategy in northern Syria has American commanders there scrambling to protect their forces from an expected surge in actions by military units from Turkey, Russia, Iran and the Syrian government, according to U.S. Defense Department officials. American commanders requested guidance outlining how American forces might deal with an attack from the assortment of armed groups, including Russian-backed Syrian government forces, but they have received muddled direction from the Pentagon, two Defense Department officials said. Both Kurdish and U.S. troops were forced to pull back from those areas as Turkish-backed forces moved in. (The Washington Post, 12.11.19, New York Times, 12.11.19)

Cyber security:

• U.S. authorities allege that at the same time as he was running Evil Corp, Maksim Yakubets was also working for Russia’s FSB. According to evidence discovered by RFE/RL's Russian Service, Yakubets' father-in-law is a former officer with an elite special-forces unit of the FSB. (RFE/RL, 12.11.19)

Elections interference:

• During his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Dec. 10, "President Trump warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections and urged Russia to resolve the conflict with Ukraine," White House spokesman Judd Deere said. Lavrov later appeared to contradict Trump when he reportedly told journalists that "we haven't even actually discussed elections." U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also discussed Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. elections during his earlier meeting with Lavrov. Lavrov stated that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections. (Reuters, 12.10.19, RFE/RL, 12.10.19)
• Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz 's report examining the FBI investigation of the Trump 2016 campaign rebutted conservatives' accusations that top FBI officials were driven by political bias to illegally spy on Trump advisers, but also found broad and "serious performance failures" requiring major changes. The inspector general found the Justice Department had filed misleading warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to carry out surveillance on Carter Page, an American businessman and former Trump campaign aide. Revelations that the FBI committed serious errors in wiretapping Page have spurred bipartisan calls for change to the government’s surveillance powers. (AP, 12.12.19, Financial Times, 12.11.19, The Washington Post, 12.10.19)
  • U.S. Attorney General William Barr disagreed with one of the inspector general's key conclusions, saying the FBI launched an investigation of a presidential campaign "on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. So, too, did Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr handpicked to conduct an investigation similar to that of Horowitz. (The Washington Post, 12.10.19)
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed a vote on a bill to impose sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine and interference in democratic elections. The Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act—described by Sen. Lindsey Graham as the "sanctions bill from hell"—targets Russian banks that support the Kremlin’s efforts to "undermine democratic institutions in other countries," Russian liquefied natural gas projects in other countries and the nation's cybersector, among other things. (RFE/RL, 12.12.19)

Energy exports:

• The U.S. House and Senate armed services reached agreement on the 2020 NDAA, which includes the measure to punish companies involved in Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream. In a separate move, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill that would set aside $1 billion to encourage the development of energy infrastructure projects in Central and Eastern Europe to reduce their dependence on Russian supplies. (RFE/RL, 12.12.19, Financial Times, 12.10.19)
• Ukraine has welcomed expected U.S. sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline as "good news.” But Germany on Dec. 12 warned Washington to mind its own business. “European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the U.S.,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter. (EURACTIV.com, 12.12.19, RFE/RL, 12.12.19)
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv and Moscow could reach an agreement on a new gas transit deal before the end of the year, and saw scope for compromise between their respective demands. Zelenskiy said that they had taken the option of a one-year deal off the table and that he asked for a 10-year deal. (The Moscow Times, 12.10.19)

Bilateral economic ties:

• U.S.-Russia bilateral trade has risen about one-third—from $20 billion during the Obama administration, to $27 billion this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump told Lavrov that he’d like to increase the volume of U.S.-Russian trade by “several times,” Kommersant reported. Russia and the U.S. have earlier identified persons responsible for the creation of a high-level group in the business sector. On the Russian side, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin will deal with the issue, and on the American side, the head of the American-Russian Business Council, Daniel Russell. The two will “probably be tasked” with organizing the first meeting of the group at the St. Petersburg economic forum in June 2020, according to Kommersant. (Russia Matters, 12.13.19, RFE/RL, 12.10.19)

Other bilateral issues:

• The U.S. Senate on Dec. 12 confirmed the nomination of John Sullivan, U.S. President Donald Trump's pick to be ambassador to Russia, at a time when ties between Washington and Moscow have been strained. (Reuters, 12.12.19)
• During his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Russia to release Paul Whelan, an American arrested in Moscow in December 2018 on charges of spying. Whelan denies the charges and said he is being abused by guards in prison. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19)
• Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas got $1 million from an account in Russia in September, a month before he was charged with conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. political campaigns, according to U.S. prosecutors who asked a judge to jail him for understating his income and assets. (Bloomberg, 12.12.19)
• A Russian court has ordered the deportation of five U.S. academics for allegedly giving a lecture at a university on a tourist visa, according to local media reports and court documents. Ryazan’s Sovetsky district court fined and ordered to deport five University of Buffalo professors and executives within five days. (The Moscow Times, 12.12.19)
• The U.S. has sanctioned Chechen police official Aslan Iraskhanov, a Pakistani police officer, and 18 other individuals accused of involvement in "gross violations" of human rights. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19)
• The Moscow City Court has upheld a lower court's decision to release U.S. citizen Gaylen Grandstaff from custody until the Prosecutor-General's Office clarifies its arguments in the drug-smuggling case against him. (RFE/RL, 12.09.19)

 

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Russia’s natural population decline will set an 11-year record this year. Russia’s overall population totaled 146.7 million in January-September 2019, the State Statistics Service Rosstat said. In the first 10 months of this year, deaths outnumbered live births by 259,600, RBC cited Rosstat data as saying. It was the highest natural population decline since 2008, when deaths outnumbered births by 362,000. In 2018, Russia’s total population dropped for the first time in a decade as migration numbers hit record lows. (The Moscow Times, 12.13.19) 
• Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Dec. 12 he sees Russia's 2019 budget surplus at 1.7 percent of GDP. The finance ministry previously indicated that the 2019 budget surplus may amount to 641.6 billion rubles ($10 billion), or 0.6 percent of GDP. (Reuters, 12.12.19)
• Russia’s central bank has cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 6.25 percent, the fifth rate cut this year. The cut on Dec. 13 took Russia’s interest rate to its lowest level since before the 2014 Russian financial crisis, when governor Elvira Nabiullina raised it to 17 percent. (Financial Times, 12.13.19)
• Thousands have rallied in the northwestern Russian town of Kotlas against the construction of a new landfill for waste from Moscow. (RFE/RL, 12.09.19)
• Russian authorities were right to jail protesters for throwing plastic cups at police during mass anti-government rallies in Moscow this summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a human rights meeting. (The Moscow Times, 12.11.19)
• Russian lawmakers tasked with weeding out foreign interference have endorsed penalties for Russian nationals who attend “undesirable” NGO courses abroad, the country’s parliament said Dec. 12. (The Moscow Times, 12.13.19)
• Yury Luzhkov, the pugnacious former mayor of Moscow who oversaw the transformation of the Russian capital over nearly two decades but whose national political ambitions went unrealized, has died. He was 83. (RFE/RL, 12.10.19)
• A court in the Russian city of Penza has sentenced Vladimir Alushkin, member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious group that Moscow has outlawed and labeled as “extremist,” to six years in prison. (RFE/RL, 12.13.19)

Defense and aerospace:

• The death toll in a fire on Russia's sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has risen to two, after a body was found on the vessel by search-and-rescue crews. Health authorities in the Murmansk region said that 14 people were hospitalized with injuries sustained during the fire, which broke out while the ship was undergoing repairs. (RFE/RL, 12.13.19)
• Russia plans to establish an air defense "dome" across its polar region by arming all of its Northern Fleet's Arctic divisions with S-400 missile batteries, a Russian naval commander said. (Reuters, 12.09.19)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• A court in St. Petersburg has sentenced Abror Azimov, main organizer of the St. Petersburg metro bombing that killed 15 people in 2017, to life in prison. (The Moscow Times, 12.10.19)

 

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

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

• Russia has announced the expulsion of two German diplomats in a tit-for-tat response to a similar move by Berlin. Germany last week expelled two Russian diplomats after the Federal Prosecutor's Office said on Dec. 4 that “there is sufficient factual evidence” that either Russian government agencies or Chechen regional agencies may have ordered the killing in Berlin of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian of Chechen origin, by Russian national Vadim K. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Khangoshvili "killed 98 people in one of his acts" and that he was also "one of the organizers of a Moscow metro blast." He gave no further details. Germany contradicted Putin on Dec. 11, saying it was not aware Russia had requested the extradition of Khangoshvili. (RFE/RL, 12.12.19, Reuters, 12.11.19, Reuters, 12.11.19, Gazeta.ru, 12.08.19)
• EU leaders on Dec. 12 decided to prolong economic sanctions against Russia over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine by another six months. The sanctions, which mainly target Russia’s financial, energy and defense industries, were first imposed in July 2014 as a response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for the separatists holding parts of easternmost Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 12.13.19)
• EU foreign ministers have agreed to go ahead with legislation to slap asset freezes and travel bans on human rights violators, a move seen as primarily targeting Russia. (RFE/RL, 12.09.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 13 called for "constructive dialogue" with Britain's Boris Johnson as he congratulated him on a decisive general election victory. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow always hopes an election brings to power voices in favor of "good relations" with Russia but was not sure that would be the case with Johnson's Conservative Party. (AFP, 12.13.19)
• The battle for control of Libya threatened to escalate further this week as Turkey said it might intervene to stop the Russian-backed forces now closing in on Tripoli. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that Turkey might send troops to counter the Russians if the U.N.-recognized government headquartered in Tripoli formally requested it. Russia's foreign ministry on Dec. 13 called for dialogue between hostile groups to resolve the crisis in Libya. (New York Times, 12.11.19, Reuters, 12.13.19)
• Global antidoping leaders agreed unanimously on Dec. 9 to banish Russia from international sports—including next summer’s Olympics in Tokyo—for four years, the latest and severest punishment yet connected to a years-long cheating scheme that has tarnished global sport. Russian officials have 21 days to lodge an appeal with the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. (New York Times, 12.09.19)

China:

• Russia and China plan to double by 2024 the bilateral trade turnover from the current $108 billion to $200 billion through projects in energy, industry, high technology and agriculture, according to the Russian Federal Customs Service. Around 74 percent of Russian exports to China are related to mineral fuels. Russia's imports of machinery and equipment from China amounts to 57 percent of total imports from Beijing. (Hurrieyt, 12.10.19)
• Russia anticipates 1.3 million Chinese will visit by the end of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 60 percent. Russia’s Tourism Agency now waives visas for Chinese tour groups that are led by an official guide. (Jingtravel, 12.12.19)

Ukraine:

• After more than eight hours of talks between the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia in Paris, the sides reaffirmed commitment to implementing the Minsk II agreement and agreed to meet again in four months. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also agreed to "commit to a full and comprehensive implementation" of a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine by the end of 2019, according to the joint communique of the Dec. 9 Normandy Format summit. They also agreed to aim for an "an all-for-all" prisoner exchange by the end of the year. Zelenskiy expects 72 Ukrainian prisoners to return home as soon as Dec. 24. However, Putin and Zelenskiy, who met for the first time face-to-face, failed to resolve crucial issues such as a timeline for local elections in eastern Ukraine and the borders in the region that Kyiv doesn't control. Putin said relations with Ukraine were now in a ''thaw.'' But he stressed Russia's longstanding position that the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine should be given special status. Zelenskiy made clear there could be no movement on the political and constitutional changes Russia wants until security issues, including border control, had been settled. He also ruled out conceding to Russia's previously insistent demand that Ukraine become a federation instead of a unitary state. (RFE/RL, 12.09.19, The Moscow Times, 12.10.19, New York Times, 12.10.19, Gazeta.ru, 12.10.19)
  • French President Emmanuel Macron, who mediated the talks along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, called them "fruitful." "There are disagreements, especially on timeline and next steps. We had a very long discussion on this," Macron said. "Now we need to carry on working very, very hard, there is no question about that, but there is momentum again, movement," Merkel told a joint news conference. (RFE/RL, 12.09.19, The Moscow Times, 12.10.19)
  • Ukrainian investigators are looking into whether former President Petro Poroshenko committed treason when the so-called Minsk agreement in 2015 was signed. (RFE/RL, 12.11.19)
• The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has voted to advance two articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump. The resolution paves the way for the full House of Representatives to vote on the charges next week. Trump is accused of trying to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 elections by pressuring the Ukrainian president to launch an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden and to probe a discredited theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had interfered in the 2016 presidential race. (Financial Times, 12.13.19)
• The 2020 NDAA would authorize another $300 million in weapons for Ukraine, according to a bipartisan summary of the bill by the House and Senate Armed Services committees made public Dec. 9. The bill would authorize an additional $743 million not requested for the European Defense Initiative. (Roll Call, 12.10.19)
• The White House budget office asserts in a new legal memo that it withheld military aid to Ukraine as a temporary move to study whether the spending complied with U.S. policy—and not as a political effort to block Congress's spending decisions. (The Washington Post, 12.12.19)
• When Rudy Giuliani returned to New York from Ukraine on Dec. 7, the president called him as his plane was still taxiing down the runway, Giuliani said. “‘What did you get?’” he said Trump asked. “More than you can imagine,” Giuliani replied. He is putting his findings into a 20-page report. (Wall Street Journal 12.13.19)
• The Council of Europe’s constitutional experts have criticized controversial language legislation adopted in Ukraine earlier this year and previous regulations regarding educational institutions signed into law by the country's previous president, Petro Poroshenko. (RFE/RL, 12.07.19)
• Ukrainian police have detained five people, including a pediatric surgeon and a rock musician, over the killing of investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet in a car bomb in July 2016, law enforcement officials said on Dec. 12. Police said all suspects had served as volunteers in Ukraine's war against Russian-backed rebels and that the motive for killing Sheremet was to destabilize the country but declined to say who might have ordered the murder. (Reuters, 12.12.19)
• The International Monetary Fund has agreed to lend $5.5 billion to Ukraine, a move viewed as a stamp of approval for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's anticorruption and economic policies. (New York Times, 12.09.19)
• Ukraine will ask the British Supreme Court not compel it to pay nearly $4 billion in debt to Russia from a Eurobond that Moscow had refused to have restructured when Kyiv's economy nosedived following the Euromaidan pro-democracy movement nearly six years ago. (RFE/RL, 12.09.19)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• The U.S. Senate on Dec. 12 unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a century ago as genocide. Sen. Bob Menendez pushed the resolution. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian responded to the move as a "victory of justice and truth." (bne IntelliNews, 12.12.19)
• Talks between the Russian and Belarussian presidents in Sochi Dec. 7 over plans for closer integration of the two countries ended in a stalemate. The pair managed only to strike an agreement to meet for further talks in two weeks in St. Petersburg. (The Moscow Times, 12.08.19)
• Twenty-eight inmates in Tajikistan have been handed lengthy prison terms for their roles in a deadly prison riot in May. The riot occurred in May in the Vahdat district, some 15 kilometers east of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, and claimed the lives of three prison guards and 29 inmates, including three opposition politicians. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. (RFE/RL, 12.13.19)
• Former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev has been charged with killing a security officer during a two-day standoff between security forces and supporters of the former leader in August. Interior Minister Kashkar Junushaliev said on Dec. 13 that Atambaev had been formally informed that he is suspected of lethally shooting Col. Usenbek Niyazbekov during the raid on Atambaev's compound in the village of Koi-Tash on Aug. 7. (RFE/RL, 12.13.19)

 

IV. Quoteworthy

• No significant developments.