This Week’s Highlights

• Russia has said it will withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, the Financial Times reports. Moscow’s decision effectively cripples the 2002 treaty. Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that American allies did not appear willing to save the treaty by satisfying Russia’s demands in recent months that with the U.S. out of the treaty, they no longer pass along any intelligence gathered through it to Washington, according to the New York Times.
• The head of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff Valery Gerasimov held phone talks with the Chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the Russian Defense Ministry said. "The sides discussed the issues of security and maintenance of stability in various regions of the world that present a mutual interest," the Ministry said, TASS reports.
• The Trump administration on Jan. 14 labeled China, Iran, Russia, Cuba and North Korea as foreign adversaries as part of a new set of rules aimed at protecting the U.S. telecoms supply chain, Reuters reports. The rules will go into effect 60 days after publication, according to the Wall Street Journal. Shipments of communications hardware, software and other gear from those nations could be blocked under the new rules as posing a national-security risk.
• Over the past week, tens of millions of people have downloaded Telegram and Signal, making them the two hottest apps in the world, the New York Times reports. Their sudden jump in popularity was spurred by a series of events last week that stoked growing anxiety over some of the big tech companies and their communication apps, like WhatsApp, which Facebook owns.  
• Russia will restart construction of its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany this week, Financial Times reports. Gazprom will use the pipe-layer Fortuna ship and two support vessels, which are capable of laying about 1 kilometer of pipe a day. That could see it finish construction in about four months. “The Europeans must stop the construction of Nord Stream 2, and the Americans must suspend the sanctions,” adviser to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden Nicholas Burns told the German newspaper Handelsblatt.
• At the end of 2020, trade between Russia and China decreased by 2.9 percent in annual terms and amounted to $107.76 billion, according to the PRC's General Customs Administration statement released Jan. 14, according to TASS. Interfax reports that China was the main buyer of Russian agricultural products in 2020, with its purchases totaling $4.049 billion, up 27 percent, while the European Union was second with $3.325 billion, up 13 percent, and Turkey was third with $3.137 billion, up 26 percent.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has hosted a trilateral meeting in Moscow with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, RFE/RL reports. Following the talks on Jan. 11, Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian issued a joint statement on the Kremlin website announcing the creation of a trilateral working group to oversee the "unblocking of all economic and transport links" in the region. Aliyev called Putin's invitation for the trilateral meeting "very useful and productive," saying afterward that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict "remained in the past." However, Pashinian said the conflict was still not resolved, insisting that key issues surrounding the conflict were in suspension and needed to be resolved immediately.

 

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, or RVSN, has received about 70 Typhoon-M combat anti-sabotage vehicles, multiple news outlets reported. The Typhoon-M combat anti-sabotage vehicles designed to guard Russian Strategic Missile Forces’ formations are rearmed with thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles Yars and Topol-M. (Defense Blog, 01.12.21)
• Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, will this month begin work at the future site of a small-scale nuclear power plant in the far eastern Siberian territory of Yakutia, Alexei Likhachev, the company’s head, said. (Bellona, 01.11.21)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• North Korea showcased yet another new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) in just three months during a recent military parade, experts said Jan. 15. During the parade held on Jan. 14 at Kim Il-sung square in Pyongyang, the North rolled out SLBMs on transporter erector launchers. Establishing a nuclear force has been ''a strategic and predominant goal'' and ''the exploit of greatest significance in the history of the Korean nation,” North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un told a party congress. (Yonhap, 01.15.21, New York Times, 01.14.21)

Iran and its nuclear program:

• Iran has taken a significant step toward possible atomic-weapons production, starting work on an assembly line to manufacture a key material used at the core of nuclear warheads, the U.N. atomic agency said in a confidential report on Jan. 13, raising the stakes in Tehran's standoff with Washington ahead of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran has told the watchdog that it has started manufacturing equipment it will use to produce uranium metal at a site in Isfahan in the coming months. (Wall Street Journal, 01.13.21)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif will hold negotiations in Moscow on Jan. 26 to discuss a number of international issues, including the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, the situation around the JCPOA, the situation in Syria, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. (TASS, 01.15.21)

Great Power rivalry/New Cold War/saber rattling:

• The Trump administration on Jan. 14 labeled China, Iran, Russia, Cuba and North Korea as foreign adversaries as part of a new set of rules aimed at protecting the U.S. telecoms supply chain. The rules, which implement an executive order that U.S. President Donald Trump signed in May 2019, will go into effect 60 days after publication. Shipments of communications hardware, software and other gear from those nations could be blocked under the new rules as posing a national security risk. (Wall Street Journal, 01.14.21, Reuters, 01.14.21)

NATO-Russia relations:

• The head of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff Valery Gerasimov held phone talks with the Chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the Russian Defense Ministry of defense said Jan. 11. "The sides discussed the issues of security and maintenance of stability in various regions of the world that present a mutual interest," the Ministry said. The Ministry underscored that the conversation took place on the U.S.’s initiative. Gerasimov and Milley last talked in August 2020, after the incident with the U.S. servicemen who sought to block the Russian patrol in Syria. (TASS, 01.11.21)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Arms control:

• Russia has said it will withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty. Moscow’s decision effectively cripples the 2002 treaty. The U.S. withdrawal last November “destroyed the balance of interests [the signatories] reached when the Treaty was signed, inflicted severe damage to its functioning and undermined the role of the Open Skies Treaty as a confidence and security building measure,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement announcing that it would begin the formal process to withdraw from the pact. The ministry said in a statement that American allies did not appear willing to save the treaty by satisfying Russia’s demands in recent months that with the U.S. out of the treaty, they no longer pass along any intelligence gathered through it to Washington. (Financial Times, 01.15.21, New York Times,  01.15.21)
• Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Jan. 11 that Russia and the United States should extend New START and adjust their nuclear doctrines. Gorbachev said that Russia and the United States should shift to a no-first-use nuclear policy rather than the current one based on limitations. (Xinhua, 01.11.21)

Counter-terrorism:

• The Russian Foreign Ministry said Jan. 13 that there is no evidence of Iran's ties with terrorist group al-Qaeda, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made such an accusation. "It seems that Mr. Pompeo, before the last curtain call, wanted to do something more to hurt Iran. Nonetheless, this is absolutely unsubstantiated and unreasonable," said Zamir Kabulov, director of the ministry's second Asian department. (Xinhua, 01.14.21)
• It is "a lie" that Cuba supports terrorism, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Jan. 15, commenting on the U.S. recent decision to add the island nation to its list of "State Sponsor of Terrorism." (Xinhua, 01.15.21)
• Rostov-on-Don's Southern District Military Court has found Fatima Chotchayeva, a resident of the Russian internal republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, guilty of funding ISIS, the court's press service said. (Interfax, 01.14.21)

Conflict in Syria:

• The patrol ship Dmitry Rogachyov has started passing through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles in the direction of the Mediterranean, the Russian Black Sea Fleet said on Jan. 15. The Dmitry Rogachyov will join the group of the Russian navy in accordance with the Black Sea Fleet's plan, the press release said. In addition, A unit of Baltic Fleet ships (corvette Stoiky, the sea tanker Kola and the sea tug Yakov Grebelsky) has made a call at Syria's port Tartus, the press service for the Western Military District said. (Interfax, 01.15.21, Interfax, 01.11.21)
• A town in northern Syria became a battleground between Turkish-backed groups and U.S.-backed forces amid fears of a new large-scale Turkish offensive in the area. In recent weeks, fighting around the northern town of Ain Issa has intensified with Turkish-backed Syrian militias carrying out attacks against U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Ain Issa is largely controlled by the Kurdish-led SDF, a major U.S. partner in the fight against Islamic State. But Russia has a significant military presence in the region. Kurdish military officials say Russia has been pressing them to hand over the town to Syrian government troops. (VOA, 01.05.21)
• The Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units militia has ended its three-day siege of a military base in the regime-held town of Qamishli in Syria following Russian intervention. Russian commanders in the region held a meeting with representatives from both the YPG and the regime forces on Jan. 6. As a result, both sides agreed to release their respective captives and the YPG lifted the siege. (Middle East Monitor, 01.08.21)

Cyber security:

• Biden is elevating two White House posts that all but disappeared in the Trump administration: a homeland security adviser to manage matters as varied as extremism, pandemics and natural disasters, and the first deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. The White House homeland security adviser will be Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, according to transition officials. And for the complex task of bolstering cyberoffense and defense, Biden has carved out a role for Anne Neuberger, a rising official at the National Security Agency. She ran the Russia Small Group, which mounted a pre-emptive strike on the Kremlin’s cyberactors during the 2018 midterm elections. (New York Times, 01.12.21)
• On Jan. 11, investigators at Moscow-based cyber security company Kaspersky published new evidence linking the malicious code used to breach SolarWinds to spying tools developed by a Russian hacking group known as Turla. Turla is thought to be linked to a different Russian agency: its top domestic security service, the FSB. Experts at Kaspersky say the code overlaps they have identified represent “the first potential identified link to a previously known malware family.” While the researchers emphasize that they are not attributing the SolarWinds hack to the Turla group, they say the similarities between the hacking tools are curious. (Financial Times, 01.11.21)
• SolarWinds said a computer breach tied to Russia-linked hackers who accessed U.S. government systems and corporate networks after manipulating some of the software provider's code began at least a month earlier than first disclosed. Hackers were accessing its systems in early September 2019, the company said. (Wall Street Journal, 01.12.21) 
• The Labor Department's statistical arm—which prepares the jobs report and other market-sensitive information about the U.S. economy—was breached in the SolarWinds hack, but data wasn't lost or corrupted, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said. (Wall Street Journal, 01.14.21)
• Over the past week, tens of millions of people have downloaded Signal and Telegram, making them the two hottest apps in the world. Their sudden jump in popularity was spurred by a series of events last week that stoked growing anxiety over some of the big tech companies and their communication apps, like WhatsApp, which Facebook owns. Tech companies including Facebook and Twitter removed thousands of far-right accounts—including Trump’s—after the storming of the Capitol. Amazon, Apple and Google also cut off support for Parler, a social network popular with Trump’s fans. In response, conservatives sought out new apps where they could communicate. (New York Times, 01.13.21)
  • Russia’s most famous tech entrepreneur and the creator of the Telegram messaging service has rejected an offer by Western funds to buy a 5-10 percent stake in the company with a valuation of $30 billion. (bne IntelliNews, 01.11.21)

Elections interference:

• The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Jan. 11 against seven Ukrainians—including two who assisted Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani—for being part of what it called “a Russia-linked foreign influence network” that spread “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations” about Biden during the 2020 campaign. Giuliani relied on two of the Ukrainians who were penalized—Andrii Telizhenko and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk—as he sought to gather damaging information and force government investigations into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, related to Ukraine. The sanctions announced on Jan. 11 stemmed from the Ukrainians’ work with Andriy Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, who was the target of sanctions by the Treasury Department last year and was accused of being a Russian agent and spreading disinformation about Biden. Derkach had met with Giuliani in 2019. (New York Times, 01.11.21)
  • The head of the Ukrainian president's office says that Volodymyr Zelenskiy's administration will do "everything in its power to hold...responsible" Ukrainians who meddled in the November U.S. election after Washington imposed sanctions on nearly a dozen Ukrainian nationals and entities. (RFE/RL, 01.13.21)

• Trump's political appointees clashed with career intelligence analysts over the extent to which Russia and China interfered or sought to interfere in the 2020 election, with each side accusing the other of politicization, according to a report by an intelligence community ombudsman. (The Washington Post, 01.08.21)

Energy exports from CIS:

• Russia will restart construction of its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany this week in the face of U.S. sanctions that have paused construction for more than a year. Kremlin-controlled gas group Gazprom will commence pipe laying in a section of the Baltic Sea administered by Denmark on Jan. 15. Denmark’s energy agency said in a statement that it had received the necessary documents to approve for pipe laying to resume on Jan. 15. Gazprom will use the pipe-layer Fortuna ship and two support vessels, which are capable of laying about 1 kilometer of pipe a day. That could see it finish construction in about four months, dependent on weather conditions. (Financial Times, 01.09.21)

• The U.S. is willing to lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 if Europe suspends its construction, adviser to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden Nicholas  Burns told the German newspaper Handelsblatt. “The Europeans must stop the construction of Nord Stream 2, and the Americans must suspend the sanctions. This will give the new U.S. administration the opportunity to confidentially and calmly speak with the German government and other countries involved,” Burns said. (The Moscow Times, 01.15.21, Handelsblatt. 01.15.21)

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• Biden has chosen veteran diplomat William Burns as his nominee to serve as CIA director. Working closely with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s incoming national security adviser, he helped steer the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and has served as U.S. ambassador to Russia. Biden also chose David Cohen to return to the CIA as deputy director, a role he filled from 2015 to 2017. Previously, Cohen was the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence in the Treasury Department. While there, he oversaw sanctions against Iran, Russia, North Korea and terrorist organizations. (Financial Times, 01.11.21, New York Times, 01.15.21)
• Biden will nominate former journalist and Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), transition officials said. (Wall Street Journal, 01.13.21)
• Russia's telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has drawn up its first eight administrative protocols—all against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—for violating the country's controversial foreign agents law. (RFE/RL, 01.12.21)
• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has criticized Twitter’s decision to ban Trump. (Financial Times, 01.11.21)
• Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said Jan. 14 he is considering sending election advice to the U.S. following the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters who dispute his loss. (The Moscow Times, 01.15.21)

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

• Russia recorded 24,715 more COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, the country's COVID-19 response center said Jan. 15, roughly the same as over the previous day. (Xinhua, 01.15.21) Here’s a link to RFE/RL’s interactive map of the virus’ spread around the world, including in Russia and the rest of post-Soviet Eurasia. For a comparison of the number and rate of change in new cases in the U.S. and Russia, visit this Russia Matters resource.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered officials to begin mass vaccinations next week and to open up the inoculation program to all Russians. (RFE/RL, 01.13.21)
• Russia announced Jan. 11 that 1.5 million people around the world had received its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine as part of an initiative Kremlin critics have described as a geopolitical push. (The Moscow Times, 01.11.21)
• Russian vaccine scientists on Jan. 11 began a study to determine whether they can hasten the country’s campaign of coronavirus inoculations by providing only a single dose of its normally two-dose vaccine. (New York Times, 01.11.21)
• Moscow on Jan. 10 confirmed its first case of the new U.K. coronavirus strain. (RFE/RL, 01.11.21)
• Navalny has said he plans to return to his home country this weekend, having recovered from an assassination attempt that he and his supporters say was ordered by the Kremlin. “On Sunday, Jan. 17, I will return home,” Navalny said in a Jan. 13 Instagram post. “I survived. And now Putin, who gave the order for my murder, is screaming all around his bunker and telling his servants to do everything so that I do not return.” Russia’s prison service said Jan. 14 that Navalny faces immediate arrest once he returns from Germany. (Financial Times, 01.13.21, AP, 01.14.21)
• The volume of the Russian National Wealth Fund in December 2020 increased by 89 billion rubles ($1.21 billion) to reach 13.546 trillion rubles ($183.93 billion) as of Jan. 1 as gold overtook dollar asset for first time, the Russian Finance Ministry said Jan. 13. Russia’s total forex reserves totaled $593.6 billion by the end of last year. (bne IntelliNews, 01.15.21)

Defense and aerospace:

• The MiG-31 fighter jet of the Russian Naval Aviation will be armed with Kh-47M Kinzhal (dagger) hypersonic missiles, news agency Izvestiya reported. According to the report, the 98th mixed regiment as part of the Northern Fleet on the Kola Peninsula and the 317th Pacific Regiment in Kamchatka will receive these new versions of long-range MiG-31 fighters with K index that will be armed with Kinzhal hypersonic missile. (Defense Blog, 01.10.21)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• A Swedish court on Jan. 11 convicted a Russian citizen of the attempted murder of a blogger from Chechnya critical of strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, alleging high-level backing for the attack. The assault on Tumso Abdurakhmanov took place in his apartment in the Swedish city of Gavle in February 2020, when the accused struck him in the head with a hammer while he was sleeping. (AFP, 01.11.21)
• A court in Moscow has prolonged pretrial restrictions for the auditor of the Account Chamber, former governor of the Ivanovo region, Mikhail Men, charged with embezzling 700 million rubles ($9.6 million). The Basmanny district court on Jan. 14 ruled that restrictions imposed on Men must be extended until Feb. 28. (RFE/RL, 01.14.21)

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• Russia exported agricultural products worth $29.5 billion in 2020 and the first ten days of this year against $24.6 billion a year previously, the Agriculture Ministry's Agroexport Center said in a statement. China was the main buyer of Russian agricultural products, its purchases totaling $4.049 billion, up 27 percent. The EU was second with $3.325 billion, up 13 percent, and Turkey was third with $3.137 billion, up 26 percent. (Interfax, 01.15.21)
• Russian-Saudi trade grew by 6 percent, approaching $1.5 billion from January to October 2020, Lavrov said following talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Moscow. (Rusgov, 01.15.21)
• Russia has extended its suspension of flights to and from Britain due to the new U.K. coronavirus strain until Feb. 1. (RFE/RL, 01.12.21)

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

• At the end of 2020, trade between Russia and China decreased by 2.9 percent in annual terms and amounted to $107.76 billion, according to the PRC's General Customs Administration statement released on Jan. 14. (TASS, 01.14.21)

Ukraine:

• The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that a complaint brought by Ukraine against Russia alleging human rights violations in the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 is “partly admissible.” The Strasbourg-based court was ruling on Jan. 14, among other issues, whether Russia effectively controlled the Ukrainian territory before the State Duma on March 20, 2014, ratified a treaty that Putin signed as part of the annexation process. Kyiv insists Moscow controlled the peninsula since Feb. 27, 2014, and that Russian forces tortured and killed police as well as civilians, allegations that Moscow denies. (RFE/RL, 01.14.21)
• Political advisers to the Normandy Four leaders had an open and useful conversation but no agreement was reached, Dmitry Kozak, who led the Russian delegation, said on Jan. 12. The previous Normandy-format meeting was held on Sept. 11, 2020, also in Berlin. According to Kozak, next talks will be held in the same format, involving political advisers and foreign ministry officials from the four countries. "I don’t think so," he told journalists when asked whether Kyiv could use force in Donbas. "It would be a suicide to unleash combat operation." (TASS, 01.12.11)
• The Minsk Agreements on Donbas should be reviewed as an essential precondition for any progress toward ending the war there, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories Oleksiy Reznikov said. (Interfax, 01.11.21)
• The World Bank has revised its forecast for Ukraine's GDP growth in 2021 to 3 percent, while in October it estimated growth at just 1.5 percent. (Interfax, 01.11.21)
• In 2020, “the countries Ukraine imported most of the goods from are: China - $8.3 billion, Germany - $5.1 billion and Russia - $4.6 billion. The countries that exported most from Ukraine are China - $7.1 billion, Poland - $3.3 billion, Russia - $2.7 billion," Ukraine’s State Customs Service said. (TASS, 01.14.21)
• The Security Service of Ukraine has opened a criminal case on the possible import of drugs into Ukraine under the guise of a vaccine against coronavirus, the Suspilne online edition reports, citing its own sources in the SBU. (Interfax, 01.09.21)
• Turkey and Ukraine are working on “more than 30 joint projects” for the production of military equipment, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Turkey Andrii Sybiha said. (Ukraine Business News, 01.11.21)
• The leaders of Moldova and Ukraine have called for rebooting ties as the two neighbors pursue a pro-EU agenda and fend off territorial disputes with Russia-backed forces. (RFE/RL, 01.13.21)

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Putin has hosted a trilateral meeting in Moscow with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, nearly two months after a Russia-brokered cease-fire agreement ended six weeks of fierce fighting over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Following the talks on Jan. 11, Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian issued a joint statement on the Kremlin website announcing the creation of a trilateral working group to oversee the "unblocking of all economic and transport links" in the region. Aliyev called Putin's invitation for the trilateral meeting "very useful and productive," saying afterward that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict "remained in the past." However, Pashinian said the conflict was still not resolved, insisting that key issues surrounding the conflict were in suspension and needed to be resolved immediately. (RFE/RL, 01.11.21)
• Amnesty International is urging Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately investigate the use of "inaccurate and indiscriminate weapons" in heavily populated civilian areas during the recent fighting over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, saying such attacks violated international law. The group said that 146 civilians, including children and older people, died in the conflict, which claimed more than 6,000 lives. (RFE/RL, 01.14.21)
• For nearly a decade, Georgia had its own billionaire who built a political juggernaut that made him the de facto leader of the country. Now, the 64-year-old oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, says he's giving it all up to concentrate on giving away his fortune as a philanthropist. (The Washington Post, 01.15.21)
• Unit 1 of the nuclear power plant under construction in Belarus reached 100 percent of its capacity on Jan. 12, Russia's Rosatom said. The reactor, near Ostrovets in the Grodno region of Belarus, is of the AES-2006 design, which is the latest version of the VVER-1200 and the first of its kind built outside Russia. (World Nuclear News, 01.14.21)
• The independent BelaPAN news agency says police in Minsk have searched its offices while not allowing the company's lawyer to be present. (RFE/RL, 01.14.21)
• Populist politician Sadyr Japarov, sprung from prison during the political unrest that broke out in Kyrgyzstan last October, won a landslide victory on a low turnout in the snap presidential vote held on Jan. 10. (bne IntelliNews, 01.11.21)
• Kazakhstan's newly elected parliament has voted to keep Prime Minister Asqar Mamin in the post following the recent elections as the country looks for continuity to attract foreign investment into its oil, gas and mining sectors. According to the official results, Nur Otan secured a majority in Mazhilis with 76 of 107 seats. Two other parties, Aq Zhol (Bright Path) and the People's Party (formerly the Communist People’s Party), widely seen as pro-government parties, won 12 and 10 seats respectively. (RFE/RL, 01.15.21)

 

IV. Quoteworthy

• Erica Marat, associate professor at the College of International Security Affairs, a U.S. defense department-backed institution in Washington, described winner of the Kyrgyz presidential elections Sadyr Japarov as a “Kyrgyz Trump” whose election could mark “the beginning of another yo-yo moment of top-down authoritarianism.” (Financial Times, 01.11.21)