This Week's Highlights

• U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing Germany to pull the brakes on a major gas deal with Russia as the price for avoiding a trans-Atlantic trade war, according to officials interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, a senior U.S. diplomat has said the planned Russian pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, could face U.S. sanctions. Putin said he would stand up for the project and described the U.S. position as a way for Trump “to promote … the sale of U.S. shale gas” to Europe.
• Polls suggest Germans trust Russia more than the U.S. under Trump. While 14 percent of respondents view the U.S. as a reliable partner, 36 percent said the same of Russia.
• The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined the U.S. intelligence community was correct in assessing Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump, contradicting findings House Republicans reached last month.
• In 2015, well before publicist Rob Goldstone helped organize the June 2016 meeting for senior Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer, he approached the weeks-old Trump campaign with an invitation to visit Moscow, and possibly even to meet with Vladimir Putin.
• The White House has eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council, doing away with a post central to developing policy to defend against increasingly sophisticated digital attacks and the use of offensive cyber weapons.
• A problem-ridden South Carolina facility originally intended to turn old nuclear weapons into reactor fuel to light American cities will be used to revitalize America’s aging nuclear weapons, and to create the capacity to make more.
• Sergei Skripal, a Russian former double agent who was poisoned with a nerve toxin in England in March, has been released from the hospital. German media are reporting that the country’s foreign intelligence service secured a sample of the Soviet-developed toxin, known as Novichok, in the 1990s and passed on its knowledge to partners including Britain and the U.S.
• Russian lawmakers on May 17 voted to postpone the second reading of a bill that would make it a crime to comply with Western sanctions on Russia.
• Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has proposed amending the Russian constitution to allow three consecutive presidential terms rather than two, potentially allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to run in the 2024 election.
• Harvard professor Richard Pipes, an author of seminal works on Russian history, died May 17.

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• The Pentagon and Energy Department announced plans to begin building critical components for next-generation nuclear weapons at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The facility, a problem-ridden complex originally intended to turn old nuclear weapons into reactor fuel to light American cities, will be used to revitalize America’s aging nuclear weapons, and to create the capacity to make more. (New York Times, 05.14.18)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• The White House has said it is "still hopeful" that a planned June 12 summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump will go ahead, despite Pyongyang's threat to cancel the historic event after suspending high-level talks with South Korea scheduled for May 16 over joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. (RFE/RL, 05.16.18)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met on May 14 in Moscow—the Iranian diplomat's second stop, after Beijing, on a tour of key capitals as Tehran deals with the fallout from the U.S. decision to pull out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where Amano was taking part in an exposition organized by Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom. No major public statements came out of the meetings. (RFE/RL, 05.14.18)
• The United States intensified its financial pressure on Iran on May 15, slapping anti-terror sanctions on the head of its central bank, Valiollah Seif, dealing a further blow to European hopes of salvaging the Iranian nuclear deal. A day later, the U.S. Treasury said that Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his deputy, Naim Qassem, were among 13 individuals and entities sanctioned by the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies. (AP, 05.15.18, RFE/RL, 05.16.18)
• Brussels on May 18 began shielding European companies doing business with Iran from U.S. sanctions. The EU’s chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said on May 15 that ideas to salvage the nuclear deal include plans to deepen Europe’s economic relationship with Iran, shield banking transactions with Tehran, keep purchasing Iranian oil and gas and use EU financing for investments there. The Iranian parliament's website quoted an Iranian official as imposing a 45- to 60-day deadline for European countries to guarantee Iran's interests in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. (Bloomberg, 05.18.18, RFE/RL, 05.17.18, The Washington Post, 05.15.18, RFE/RL, 05.17.18, RFE/RL, 05.14.18)
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said it was possible to discuss the future of the Iran nuclear deal without the participation of the United States and that the U.S. decision on Iran was “rash” amid nuclear talks regarding the Korean peninsula. He also said that Russia supports an EU proposal to hold a meeting on the Iran deal in Vienna on May 25. (Reuters, 05.15.18, Reuters, 05.16.18)
• White House national security adviser John Bolton says "regime change" in Iran is not currently part of the administration’s policy, despite his past suggestions that the U.S. should push for a new government in Tehran. (RFE/RL, 05.13.18)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• A Russian weapon the U.S. is currently unable to defend against will be ready for war by 2020, according to sources with direct knowledge of American intelligence reports. The sources, who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity, said Russia successfully tested the weapon, which could carry a nuclear warhead, twice in 2016. The third known test of the device, called a hypersonic glide vehicle and dubbed Avangard, was carried out in October 2017 and resulted in a failure when the platform crashed seconds before striking its target. (CNBC, 05.15.18)
• Two Russian TU-95 Bear bombers flew into an Air Defense Identification Zone located about 300 kilometers off Alaska’s west coast. Two F-22 fighter jets intercepted and visually identified the Russian bombers until they left the zone. The Russian aircraft never entered U.S. airspace. (RFE/RL, 05.12.18)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• On May 16, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to draft sanctions in accordance with a 2017 defense policy bill that accuses Russia of deploying a ground-based cruise missile in violation of the INF Treaty. Russian officials deny violating the treaty. (The Moscow Times, 05.17.18)
• See also “Nuclear security and safety” section above and “Defense and aerospace” section below.

Counterterrorism:

• Irek Hamidullin, a former Russian military officer serving a life sentence for leading a 2009 Taliban attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has asked a U.S. federal appeals court to reconsider its finding that he’s not entitled to protections given to prisoners of war. (AP, 05.15.18)
• A court in Iraq has reportedly sentenced a Russian citizen identified only by the name of Hassanov to death on charges of Islamic State membership. (The Moscow Times, 05.18.18)
• A knife attacker who killed one and wounded four others in Paris on May 12 was a French citizen born in Russia's Chechnya region in 1997. (RFE/RL, 05.13.18)

Conflict in Syria:

• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s summer residence on the Black Sea for talks on May 17 about the Syrian conflict. A transcript of the meeting released by the Kremlin quoted Assad as saying that Syria is making progress in fighting "terrorism," which "opens the door to the political process." Putin congratulated Assad on what he said were significant successes on the battlefield achieved by the Syrian military and that Russia expected “foreign armed forces” to pull out of Syria as a peace process began. Alexander Lavrentyev, Putin's envoy for Syria, said May 18 that Putin's statement was aimed at the U.S. and Turkey, along with Iran and Hezbollah, marking a rare moment of Moscow speaking about the need for Iran to eventually pull its forces out of Syria. (Reuters, 05.18.18, AP, 05.17.18, New York Times, 05.17.18, AP, 05.18.18)
• Syrian government forces are in full control of the last rebel enclave in Syria’s largest province after the evacuation of more than 27,000 armed men and civilians in recent days. Following Russian-sponsored mediation, the rebels agreed to surrender the northern countryside of Homs province to the government. A Syrian security officer said on May 15 that police began deploying in the area, restoring government control. Videos shared on social media showed vehicles carrying the Russian flag accompanying the deployment. According to the agreement, Russia military police were to deploy in the evacuated areas. (AP, 05.15.18)
• Putin says Russian warships with cruise missiles will remain on a permanent patrol in the Mediterranean Sea to react to possible threats emanating from the Syrian civil war. (AP, 05.16.18)
• Speaking after May 18 talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin said that European humanitarian assistance to Syria and help in rebuilding the country after the devastating civil war is crucial in creating conditions for refugees' return. (AP, 05.18.18)
• Russia, Turkey and Iran will hold the next round of their Syrian peace talks in July in the Russian city of Sochi, not in the Kazakh capital Astana like their previous meetings. (Reuters, 05.15.18)
• According to the independent Levada Center pollster, 57 percent of Russian respondents said they had “some” or “great concerns” about the Syrian conflict spilling into a global war, up from 48 percent in 2016. (The Moscow Times, 05.16.18)
• A mere 14 percent of Russian bombs that fell on Syrian soil in the past three years have reportedly struck Islamic State targets, according to a recent defense industry report. Only 960 out of 6,833 Russian and Syrian strikes, or 14 percent, targeted the Islamic State, according to an IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center report. (The Moscow Times, 05.16.18)

Cyber security:

• Christopher Wylie, the former director of research for Cambridge Analytica and its London-based affiliate company SCL Group, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 16 that his company communicated with Russian firms and operatives that could have facilitated access to data from 87 million U.S. Facebook users. (Bloomberg, 05.16.18)
• The White House eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council on May 15, doing away with a post central to developing policy to defend against increasingly sophisticated digital attacks and the use of offensive cyber weapons. A memo circulated by an aide to national security adviser John Bolton said the post was no longer necessary because lower-level officials had already made cybersecurity a “core function” of the president’s national security team. (New York Times, 05.15.18)
• Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland by the end of next year to help address Western government concerns that Russia exploits its anti-virus software to spy on customers. (Reuters, 05.15.18)

Elections interference:

• The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined the U.S. intelligence community was correct in assessing Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump, contradicting findings House Republicans reached last month. “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton,” Sen. Mark Warner said. The committee’s Republican chairman said he saw “no reason to dispute” the intelligence assessment. (The Washington Post, 05.16.18, Reuters, 05.16.18, New York Times, 05.16.18)
• On May 16, the Senate Judiciary Committee released 2,500 pages of congressional testimony—much of it focused on the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Nataliya Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer and acknowledged Kremlin informant. Trump Jr. said he didn’t think there was anything wrong with meeting a Russian lawyer in hopes of dirt on Clinton, according to the transcripts. Veselnitskaya has denied she was working for the Kremlin. But publicist Rob Goldstone, who helped arrange the meeting, suggested he was led to believe she was very closely tied to Russian authorities. People who attended the meeting generally agreed that it didn't include the transmission of damaging information. Trump Jr. reiterated that the meeting was a waste of time. Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin said Trump Jr. seemed uninterested and bored by the information brought by Veselnitskaya. (The Washington Post, 05.16.18, Reuters, 05.16.18, AP, 05.16.18, The Washington Post, 05.16.18, RFE/RL, 05.16.18)
• Before Goldstone organized the June 2016 meeting, he approached the weeks-old Trump campaign in 2015 with an invitation to visit Moscow, and possibly even to meet with Vladimir Putin. That was declined, but the outreach continued over more than a year. (Bloomberg, 05.16.18)
• On May 17, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign entered its second year. Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani says the president still wants to testify in the probe, but says he is “pretty comfortable” that Mueller’s team could not subpoena him. Giuliani said Trump will only sit down with Mueller if “we feel there’s a way to shorten this thing.” He added that Trump remains eager to offer his “side of the case.” Giuliani also said on May 16 that Mueller’s team told Trump’s lawyers recently that prosecutors do not believe they can charge a sitting president with a crime under Justice Department guidelines. (AP, 05.17.18, AP, 05.17.18, The Washington Post, 05.16.18)
• Mueller was working within his authority when he brought charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a federal judge in Washington ruled May 15. Manafort had argued that Mueller had exceeded his authority because the case was unrelated to Russian election interference. Jeffrey Yohai, Manafort’s former son-in-law and business partner, has cut a plea deal with the Justice Department that requires him to cooperate with other criminal probes. (AP, 05.15.18, Reuters, 05.18.18)
• The Democratic National Committee asked a federal court on May 18 to order the State Department to present a lawsuit to Russia that alleges election meddling on behalf of Trump when he was running for president in 2016. If a federal judge agrees, the Trump administration would be compelled to serve legal papers to the Russian government and two other entities in the lawsuit the DNC filed in April. (The Washington Post, 05.18.18)
• A lawyer for Trump’s campaign on May 17 rejected as “wild speculation” allegations in a private lawsuit by three Americans that it conspired with Russians to disseminate their private information from hacked emails to deter them from supporting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. (Reuters, 05.17.18)
• Concord Management and Consulting LLC, a Russian company indicted in the special counsel investigation, attacked the case in an acerbic court filing May 14 that accused the government of inventing a “make-believe crime.” (AP, 05.14.18)
• Russia is seeking to undermine European democracies and sow doubt in the West through malign activities and a "fog of lies," the head of Britain's domestic spy agency has told European intelligence chiefs. In a May 14 address in Berlin, MI5 chief Andrew Parker said that Russia was carrying out "aggressive and pernicious actions" and risks becoming an "isolated pariah." (RFE/RL, 05.14.18)
• Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has dismissed the U.S. probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia as “anti-Russian hysteria” and warned that it is hurting ties between the two countries. Ryabkov added, however, that Moscow remains open to dialogue with the U.S. (AP, 05.15.18)
• Mueller has issued subpoenas to two people who worked for longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Two of them have been issued to Jason Sullivan, a social media expert who worked for Stone during the 2016 presidential election campaign. The second person recently subpoenaed is John Kakanis, 30, who has worked as a driver, accountant and operative for Stone, two people with knowledge of the matter have said. The subpoenas suggest Mueller is focusing in part on Stone and whether he might have had advance knowledge of material allegedly hacked by Russian intelligence and sent to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published it. (Reuters, 05.16.18, Reuters, 05.18.18)

Energy exports:

• U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing Germany to pull the brakes on a major gas deal with Russia as the price for avoiding a trans-Atlantic trade war, according to German, U.S. and European officials. The officials said Trump told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in April that Germany should drop support for Nord Stream 2, an offshore pipeline that would bring gas directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea. This would be in exchange for the U.S. starting talks with the European Union on a new trade deal. Raising the pressure further, Sandra Oudkirk, a senior U.S. diplomat, told journalists in Berlin on May 17 that as a Russian energy project the pipeline could face U.S. sanctions, putting any company participating in it at risk. She also said the project raises U.S. intelligence and military concerns since it would allow Moscow to place new listening and monitoring technology in the Baltic Sea. Peter Beyer, Germany’s coordinator for trans-Atlantic relations, said that a Trump administration official told him last week that sanctions related to the pipeline are likely. (Wall Street Journal, 05.17.18, Reuters, 05.17.18, Bloomberg, 05.18.18)
• Putin said at a meeting with Merkel on May 18 that he would stand up to any attempts by Trump to block Nord Stream 2 and said U.S. opposition to the project was a way for Trump “to promote the interests of U.S. producers, trying to push for the sale of U.S. shale gas,” which remains considerably more expensive than Russian gas. The same allegation has been leveled by Germany’s economy minister. (The Moscow Times, 05.18.18, Politico, 05.18.18, Reuters, 05.18.18)
• Russia is ready to continue shipping some gas to Europe via Ukraine after the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is built, but only if it makes economic sense, Putin said May 18, speaking alongside Merkel in Sochi. The German leader said, in turn, that, “After Nord Stream 2 is finished, the role of Ukraine as a transit state will have to remain because it is a strategic point for us and Germany is prepared to participate in that process.” (Politico, 05.18.18, AP, 05.18.18)
• Norway is not happy with an asset swap deal between Austria’s OMV and Gazprom that would give the Russian gas giant access to the Norwegian continental shelf. (Reuters, 05.16.18)
• Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Gazprom, said on May 16 it may push back its output goal of 100 million tons of oil equivalent by one or two years due to the deal by OPEC and other oil exporters to curb production. (Reuters, 05.16.18)
• Gazprom reported on May 16 that exports to countries outside the Commonwealth of Independent States in January-May were up 5.9 percent year-on-year. (Reuters, 05.16.18)

Bilateral economic ties:

• No significant developments.

Other bilateral issues:

• Russia’s State Duma on May 17 adopted in the second reading a bill that would allow countermeasures against the United States and other countries that have imposed sanctions against Russia. The final, third reading will take place on May 22. Russian business lobby groups voiced opposition on May 16 to the draft law. The legislation, co-sponsored by leaders of all four parties in the State Duma, provided for imprisonment up to four years and would let the government ban trade in certain items with countries deemed unfriendly to Moscow. (RFE/RL, 05.17.18, TASS, 05.17.18, The Moscow Times, 05.17.18, Reuters, 05.16.18, RFE/RL, 05.14.18)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that European business is being forced to pay for sanctions against Russia imposed by the United States. He said that U.S. sanctions hurt the world economy and are aimed at promoting American commercial interests. (Reuters, 05.18.18)
• U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman said he will not be participating in any panel discussions at the St. Petersburg economic forum next week, which he was to participate in with Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch recently added to a U.S. sanctions list. (Reuters, 05.17.18)
• Seventy-eight percent of Russians surveyed by the independent Levada Center say they have not been negatively affected by Western sanctions, despite feeling increasingly isolated from the international community. (The Moscow Times, 05.14.18)
• Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case against Tom Rogan, an American journalist who wrote an editorial calling on Ukraine to bomb Russia’s newly opened bridge to the annexed Crimean peninsula. (The Moscow Times, 05.17.18)
• Harvard professor Richard Pipes, an author of seminal works on Russian history, died May 17, according to Harvard’s Davis Center. Born in Poland, Pipes arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from the Nazis in 1940. He learned Russian in the U.S. Army Air Corps and taught at Harvard for 37 years. Apart from his academic work, he headed Team B, a group of experts commissioned by the CIA in 1976 to assess Soviet military strategy and foreign policy, and served on the White House National Security Council in 1981-1983. (Russia Matters, 05.17.18)
• See also “Nuclear arms control” section above.

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• A proposal to amend the Russian constitution to allow three consecutive presidential terms rather than two was posted to the State Duma website May 18. This would allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to run in the 2024 election—a move that could potentially extend his rule until he is 77, if not older. The proposal was put forward by the parliament in Chechnya, the Russian region headed by Ramzan Kadyrov. (The Washington Post, 05.18.18)
• Putin on May 18 endorsed the new government line-up proposed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, sticking in most cases with incumbents but elevating two newcomers with ties to the intelligence services. Those keeping their posts are: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin, Trade and Industry Minister Denis Manturov and Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov. Medvedev named Yevgeny Zinichev, who served as Deputy Director of the FSB, as the new emergency situations minister, and put forward the son of FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, Dmitry, as agriculture minister. (Reuters, 05.18.18)
• Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin may soon become the head of Russia's Audit Chamber, bringing him closer to government after years without an official state position. Kudrin said on May 14 that he had accepted the ruling United Russia party's nomination to be chairman of the chamber, an oversight agency that monitors the spending of government funds. (RFE/RL, 05.14.18)
• Putin on May 15 signed a decree restructuring the Russian government. The Ministry of Education and Science will be split into the Ministry of General Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Supervision of the Federal Agency for Youth Issues and the Agency for Education Oversight will be transferred under the direct control of the government. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology will be renamed the Ministry of Digital Development, and supervision of the foreign operations of Russian trade representations will be transferred to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The finance minister will also be a deputy prime minister, bringing the total number of deputy prime ministers to 10. (RFE/RL, 05.16.18)
• Russia’s population will shrink by 11 million people by 2050 and will increasingly be concentrated in cities, according to the latest U.N. estimates. (The Moscow Times, 05.17.18)
• U.S. bank Morgan Stanley has predicted that the Russian economy will hit a recession if the U.S. imposes new sanctions against state companies, despite a projected oil price of $90 per barrel by 2020. Goldman Sachs and Citi Bank cut Russia’s GDP growth forecast this week from 3.3 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, to 2 percent. Russia’s economy minister said this week that 2018 GDP forecasts will be revised downward from 2.1 percent over slow growth in January-March. (The Moscow Times, 05.18.18)
• Russian banks made a profit of 537 billion rubles ($8.68 billion) from January to April 2018, Russia’s central bank said May 16. (Reuters, 05.16.18)
• Mikhail Zadornov, who is in charge of resolving Russia’s largest banking failure, has warned that the costs of saving top-10 lenders Otkritie and B&N may rise higher than the $27 billion budgeted. (Financial Times, 05.14.18)
• Russian gas giant Gazprom said on May 17 it had raised a 600 million euro ($708 million) loan from France’s Credit Agricole CIB. (Reuters, 05.17.18)
• Russia’s second biggest bank, VTB, almost doubled net profits in the first quarter of 2018 to a record 55.5 billion rubles ($897.59 million). VTB is on track to make at least 150 billion rubles in net profit this year. (Reuters, 05.17.18)
• Sanctions-hit Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska has resigned from the board of directors of Russia's En+. (The Moscow Times, 05.18.18)
• Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor on May 17 briefly blocked the WhatsApp messaging service in what appears to be a continuation of its campaign to block the Telegram app. Roskomnadzor blacklisted 10.8 million IP addresses on May 17, including those of Google and Amazon, disrupting a range of unrelated online services for Russian users. Fifty organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Transparency International appealed for Russia to unblock Telegram in an open letter on May 15. (The Moscow Times, 05.17.18)
• China, Russia and other authoritarian countries inflate their official GDP figures by anywhere from 15 to 30 percent in a given year, according to a new analysis of satellite data showing levels of nighttime lighting. (The Washington Post, 05.15.18)
• Russian diamond miner Alrosa may buy state-owned diamond polisher Kristall in 2018. (Reuters, 05.17.18)
• Despite owning real estate and other property, 14 Russian regional deputies declared zero income in 2017, while 54 declared an income below the poverty line. (The Moscow Times, 05.17.18)
• The upcoming soccer World Cup organized by Russia will take place amid "the worst human rights crisis in Russia since the Soviet era," Human Rights Watch said on May 15. (RFE/RL, 05.15.18)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russia’s new weapons, including an array of new nuclear systems, will ensure the country’s security for decades to come, Russian President Vladimir Putin said May 15 at a meeting with top military brass in Sochi. Putin said the new systems unveiled this year will significantly increase Russia’s military capabilities and “ensure a strategic balance for decades.” Putin also said Russia will maintain a high tempo of modernizing its military arsenals this year. According to the Russian president, the Russian air force will receive 160 new aircraft this year, the army will get 500 new armored vehicles and artillery systems and the navy will commission 10 warships. Putin said on May 15 that 14 missile regiments would receive the new Yars intercontinental-missile complexes to replace their old Topol complexes this year as part of the build-up. (AP, 05.15.18, AP, 05.17.18, Reuters, 05.15.18)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced May 15 to spend 30 days in jail for staging an unsanctioned protest in Moscow days before Putin’s inauguration and resisting police, charges he dismissed as unlawful. Police in Moscow on May 17 detained Yelena Malakhovskaya, an anchor of the Navalny LIVE online television channel. Malakhovskaya is accused of calling on people to attend the May 5 protest. (AP, 05.15.18, RFE/RL, 05.17.18)
• Russian investigators have decided to free Alexei Malobrodsky, the hospitalized former director of Moscow's embattled Gogol Center theater, from pretrial detention. He is charged with embezzlement and fraud—charges that his supporters have called politically motivated. The Investigative Committee said Malobrodsky would be obligated to remain in Moscow until his trial. (RFE/RL, 05.15.18)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

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

• Rapprochement with Russia is now a core policy objective in Berlin, according to a senior German official. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Sochi on May 18. The two leaders are now aligned in trying to shield businesses from U.S. sanctions, defend the Iran nuclear accord ditched by Trump and rebuffing American objections to a Russian gas pipeline to Germany. Human Rights Watch has urged Merkel to use her meeting with Putin to raise "key human rights issues." (Bloomberg, 05.18.18, Reuters, 05.18.18, RFE/RL, 05.16.18)
• Polls suggest Germans trust Russia more than the U.S. under Trump. While 14 percent of respondents view the U.S. as a reliable partner, 36 percent said the same of Russia, according to a poll for ZDF television published May 18. (Bloomberg, 05.18.18)
• Sergei Skripal, a Russian former double agent who was poisoned with a nerve toxin in England in March, has been released from the hospital. (RFE/RL, 05.18.18)
• Czech Foreign Minister Martin Stropnicky said that a reported visit by Skripal to meet Czech intelligence officials seemed "logical" as part of "normal cooperation" between Czech and British intelligence. Stropnicky was commenting on reports that Skripal provided Czech intelligence with information about the GRU, met with Czech intelligence officials on several occasions and visited Estonia in 2016 to meet with local spies. (RFE/RL, 05.14.18, New York Times, 05.14.18)
• German media are reporting that the country’s foreign intelligence service secured a sample of the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok in the 1990s and passed on its knowledge to partners including Britain and the U.S. Britain says an attack earlier this year on a former Russian spy and his daughter was carried out using Novichok, and blames Russia. (AP, 05.17.18)
• Putin discussed the Iran nuclear deal and the situation in Syria with French President Emmanuel Macron by phone on May 15, the Kremlin said. The two presidents confirmed their commitment to the 2015 deal. They will discuss Iran, Syria and Ukraine when Macron visits St. Petersburg on May 24-25. (Reuters, 05.15.18, Reuters, 05.18.18)
• Russia is deeply alarmed by clashes on the Gaza-Israel border between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said May 16. Lavrov also said Moscow was opposed to what he described as “extremists” using civilians to spearhead anti-Israeli protests that risk turning violent. The Kremlin on May 15 urged countries to avoid action that might inflame tensions in the Middle East. (Reuters, 05.16.18, Reuters, 05.15.18)
• Polish authorities plan to expel one Russian and banned four others from entering for five years on allegations they had engaged in “information warfare” seeking to fuel animosity between Poles and Ukrainians. (AP, 05.17.18)
• Iran has signed a provisional free-trade zone agreement with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. (The Moscow Times, 05.17.18)
• Russia has granted entry to the World Cup for a German journalist who exposed systematic doping in Russian athletics, reversing a decision that had angered German officials. Hajo Seppelt's employer, German public broadcaster ARD, said on May 11 that he was put on a list of "undesirable persons" who are not allowed to enter Russia. ARD called it an "attack" on journalism. (AP, 05.15.18, RFE/RL, 05.12.18)
• European countries are ignoring evidence of Russian interference in their politics and the destabilizing effect of policies that will make Europe more reliant on Russian energy, Slovakia’s President Andrej Kiska said on May 17. (Reuters, 05.17.18)
• The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Russia to pay opposition politician Alexei Navalny 2,000 euros ($2,400) in compensation for what it ruled was the unlawful refusal to issue him a passport in 2015. (RFE/RL, 05.15.18)
• European Union leaders on May 17 encouraged Balkan countries to continue on the path of EU-oriented reform but were cool on any of the six joining the bloc in the near future. European Council President Donald Tusk, who chaired the summit, said that it’s important to continue the integration process and reassure the six that their future lies with Europe, not with Russia. (AP, 05.17.18)
• Italy’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the far-right League party published on May 18 a joint policy program for their planned coalition government, in which they note that Russia is “an economic and commercial partner” and that it would be “opportune” to withdraw sanctions on Russia. (Reuters, 05.18.18)
• See also “Energy exports” section above.

China:

• China, the world’s biggest soybean importer, almost tripled purchases from Russia amid a trade dispute with the U.S., the biggest soybean producer. (Bloomberg, 05.17.18)
• Rosneft Vietnam BV, a unit of Russian state oil firm Rosneft, is concerned that its recent drilling in an area of the South China Sea that is claimed by China could upset Beijing, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters on May 16. (Reuters, 05.16.18)

Ukraine:

• Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has signed a decree to enact a recent decision expanding sanctions on Russian companies and entities. (Reuters, 05.18.18)
• Poland's President Andrzej Duda is calling for U.N. peacekeepers to be sent to the Russia-Ukraine border and all territory controlled by separatists in eastern Ukraine. (AP, 05.17.18)
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 12 expressed deep concern about repeated violations of a cease-fire between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The four-year conflict shows few signs that the violence might end soon. (RFE/RL, 05.12.18)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 15 inaugurated the newly constructed 12-mile bridge linking Russia to Crimea. The $4-billion project is strongly condemned as illegal by the West. (AP, 05.16.18, The Washington Post, 05.16.18)
• Russian journalist Igor Uklein has been hospitalized in war-torn eastern Ukraine after coming under fire alongside separatist commander Oleg “Mamai” Mamiyev, who was killed in the shelling. Ukraine says one of its soldiers has been killed and two wounded in clashes in the country's east. (The Moscow Times, 05.18.18, RFE/RL, 05.16.18)
• Members of a far-right Ukrainian group disrupted an LGBT event in Kiev on May 10 without Ukrainian police intervening to stop it. Amnesty International said that at least 30 such attacks have been orchestrated by members of far-right groups on women's rights defenders, LGBT and left-wing activists and Romany families in recent months in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 05.11.18)
• A Ukrainian court has ordered Kirill Vyshinskiy, the head of the Ukrainian office of Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, jailed for two months pending investigation on treason charges. Vyshinskiy has been in custody since his detention May 15 by Ukraine’s security agency SBU. The move followed SBU raids of the Kiev offices of RIA Novosti and RT television. The Kremlin denounced Ukraine’s action as an attack on media freedom, and the Russian Foreign Ministry lodged a formal protest. (AP, 05.17.18, AP, 05.16.18)
• A lawyer for Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who opposed Moscow's 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and is now in prison in Russia, says his client is "serious" about a strict hunger strike he began on May 14 and that he "plans to see it to the end." He is serving a 20-year prison term after being convicted on terrorism charges that he and human rights groups say were politically motivated. Sentsov is demanding the release of 64 Ukrainian citizens that he considers to be political prisoners in Russia, but not demanding his own release. (RFE/RL, 05.17.18)
• See also “Energy exports” section above.

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for what he called Moscow's "balanced position" amid the political upheaval that brought him to power in Yerevan, and reassured the Kremlin that the "strategic alliance" between the countries is not in doubt. Pashinyan told Putin on May 14 that he wanted to further develop military relations with Russia and stressed the importance of strategic ties between the neighboring countries. (RFE/RL, 05.14.18, The Moscow Times, 05.14.18)
• Dozens of demonstrators rallied in Yerevan on May 17, demanding the resignation of Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian after a Yerevan court rejected the release of 10 members of the Sasna Tsrer group from pretrial detention. They are charged with the armed, two-week occupation of a Yerevan police station in 2016 that led to the deaths of two police officers. On May 16, protestors demanded the resignation of Yerevan Mayor Taron Markarian, accusing him of corruption and the misuse of state funds. Newly installed Prime Minister Pashinian on May 17 called on all citizens to stop their protests in a live stream video on Facebook: "When we closed roads [during the protests he led in April] we did so because there was no government in Armenia that enjoyed the people's trust. Today there is a government that enjoys the people's trust." (RFE/RL, 05.17.18, RFE/RL, 05.16.18)
• U.S. President Donald Trump and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev pledged a close partnership on trade and military ties on May 16, as the two leaders met in Washington and conferred on Uzbekistan’s strategic position near Afghanistan. Mirziyoev also met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the first official U.S. visit by an Uzbek head of state since 2002. (AP, 05.16.18, RFE/RL, 05.17.18)
• Uzbekistan has freed opposition and human rights activist Fahriddin Tillaev after imprisoning him for more than four years in a case that watchdogs called politically motivated. (RFE/RL, 05.12.18)
• A May 17 event in Tbilisi commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was canceled to avoid a confrontation with opponents expected to march as part of a counterdemonstration supported by the Georgian Orthodox Church. LGBT rights groups said they would hold only an online demonstration in the afternoon to limit the possibility of violence, even with police pledges to keep the peace. (RFE/RL, 05.17.18)
• A Lithuanian prosecutor is demanding that the Soviet Union’s last defense minister be imprisoned for life for his role in a violent crackdown on the Baltic country’s independence movement 27 years ago that left 14 people dead and hundreds injured. Prosecutor Daiva Skorpuskaite Lisauskiene says 93-year-old Dmitri Yazov and 66 other defendants in the trial that started in 2016—all Soviet-era officials—are guilty of crimes against humanity and other offenses related to the events of 1991. All but three are believed to be in Russia, which has refused to hand them over. Those present have pleaded not guilty. (AP, 05.15.18)
• Investigations by Danish regulators show that Danske Bank’s Estonian unit was used to launder billions of dollars in illicit funds over several years. (Bloomberg, 05.14.18)