This Week’s Highlights:

• In his interview with The Economist, French President Emmanuel Macron said: "To my mind, what we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” and advocated for European autonomy in defense. In response, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised NATO, according to the New York Times, while German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas rejected Macron's characterization. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Macron was “overreacting,” but Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, wrote that Macron’s were "[g]olden words … an exact definition of the current state of NATO," The Moscow Times reports.
• Macron also said in his interview with The Economist, “I look at Russia and I ask myself what strategic choices it has. … I don't believe much in this stand-alone option … A second path that Russia could have taken is the Eurasian model … I don't believe for one second that his [Putin’s] strategy is to be China's vassal. … I don’t see how, in the long term, his project can be anything other than a partnership project with Europe.”
• Russia and the U.S. have named the people who will be responsible for the creation of a high-level group in the business sector, which Putin proposed last year to Trump, according to Kommersant. 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, has been named.
• The U.S. Navy Secretary says the U.S. is engaged in great power competition and that, through military procurement, Russia and China were “all of a sudden in your supply chain, [which is] not to the best interests of what you’re doing,” Financial Times reports.
• Russia’s navy is on track to deploy up to 32 of its “Poseidon” thermonuclear drones across four submarines, The National Interest reports, citing Russian state media.
• Russia has remained a target of international terrorist groups, particularly ISIS, according to the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism. Low-level militant terrorist activity remained a problem in the North Caucasus in 2018 despite increases to counterterrorism activities and political consolidation efforts, the reports said. Reuters reports that Russia's FSB has identified 2,000 Russian nationals who are relatives of militants in the Middle East and could try to return to Russia, posing a terrorist threat.
• The dollar denominated Russia Trading System index hit 1,471 as of Nov. 7, its highest level in six years, according to bne Intellinews. This week’s performance pushes the market a little higher into territory it has not explored since the annexation of the Crimea in 2014.

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• In 2018, Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism partner nations hosted 10 multilateral activities across the areas of nuclear forensics, nuclear detection and emergency preparedness and response, according to the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2018. “These events raised awareness of the threat of terrorist use of nuclear and radioactive materials,” the reports said. (Russia Matters, 11.01.19)
• Russian conscript Ramil Shamsutdinov, who last month gunned down eight fellow servicemen of a unit that reportedly provided security to one of the Russian Defense Ministry’s nuclear depots, acted in retaliation to hazing and a rape threat, according to his reported testimony and his father’s remarks. (The Moscow Times, 11.06.19, Russia Matters, 11.06.19)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• Moscow expects Washington and Pyongyang to resume the discussion of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said at the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference. (TASS, 11.08.19)

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Nov. 8 that Iran’s latest move to scale back its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal did not pose a threat to the non-proliferation regime. Iran said Nov. 7 it had resumed uranium enrichment at its underground Fordow nuclear plant. (Reuters, 11.08.19)

New Cold War/saber rattling:

• U.S. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said the U.S. was engaged in “great power competition” and that several of them—“primarily Russia and China”—were “all of a sudden in your supply chain, [which is] not to the best interests of what you’re doing” through military procurement. (Financial Times, 11.05.19)
• America’s military is stronger than before, but lacks the capacity to fight more than one war with a major power as adversaries such as China and Russia grow more ambitious, according to the 2020 Index of U.S. Military Strength by Heritage Foundation. (The National Interest, 11.02.19)
• The Russian navy is on track to deploy up to 32 of its “Poseidon” thermonuclear drones across four submarines, according to Russian state media. (The National Interest, 11.07.19)
• Two of the Russian Northern Fleet’s Sierra-class submarines, the titanium-hulled Pskov and Nizhny Novgorod, simulated a “duel” during recent tactical drills in the Arctic. (The Moscow Times, 11.07.19)
• More than a quarter of young Russians have never heard of the fall of the Berlin Wall three decades ago, Levada Center pollster said. (The Moscow Times, 11.08.18)
• Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that current tension between Russia and the West is putting the world in "colossal danger" due to the threat from nuclear weapons. (BBC, 11.04.19)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• French President Emmanuel Macron said: "To my mind, what we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” “I think the first thing to do is to regain military sovereignty,” he said. “European defense—Europe must become autonomous in terms of military strategy and capability.” (The Economist, 11.07.19)
  • Asked for his response, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised NATO while in Leipzig. ''I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically one of the most critical strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,'' he said. However, Pompeo also said NATO must grow and change or risk becoming obsolete. (New York Times, 11.08.19, Reuters, 11.08.19)
  • German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas rejected Macron's characterization. ''I do not believe NATO is brain dead,'' he said. ''I firmly believe in international cooperation.” (New York Times, 11.08.19)
  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Macron was overreacting. "The French president has found rather drastic words to express his views. This is not how I see the state of cooperation at NATO," Merkel said. (RFE/RL, 11.07.19)
  • NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg dismissed Macron’s criticism that Europe needed to regain military sovereignty. “Any attempt to distance Europe from North America risks not only to weaken the alliance and the transatlantic bond but also to divide Europe,” he said. (Financial Times, 11.07.19)
  • "Golden words … an exact definition of the current state of NATO," Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, wrote. (The Moscow Times, 11.08.18)
  • "Whether NATO is alive or dead, and which of this alliance's body parts are in a coma, are not for us to decide. We are not pathologists," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. (The Moscow Times, 11.08.18)

Missile defense:

• The Russian military has allegedly obtained Israel’s new interceptor missile, “David’s Sling,” that Syria captured on its soil last year. (The Moscow Times, 11.06.19)

Arms control:

• On Nov. 7, in Geneva, participants of the Russian-U.S. commission on fulfilling New START discussed the accrued differences on the implementation of the treaty. Russia's Foreign Ministry hoped that at the meeting the U.S. would finally show a constructive stance, Kommersant writes. However, Moscow and Washington still disagree on arms control issues, according to the daily. (TASS, 11.08.19)
• Russia has drawn up retaliatory measures in case the U.S. leaves the Open Skies treaty, state-run RIA news agency reported. (Reuters, 11.07.19)
• The director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Department of Arms Control, Fu Cong, told the Moscow Non-Proliferation Conference: “The global strategic stability architecture is under duress, with the collapse or near collapse of the bilateral arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia … Great power rivalry is coming back with a vengeance, with the U.S. trying to contain and seek overwhelming military superiority over Russia and China.” “The U.S. should stop the development and deployment of its global missile defense system. The New START between the U.S. and Russia should be extended. … [W]e must enhance dialogue on nuclear doctrines,” he said. (Chinese Foreign Ministry, 11.08.19)

Counter-terrorism:

• French President Emmanuel Macron said: “We [the EU and Russia]’re aligned on the terrorist issue, but we don’t work enough on it together. ... We show that it’s in our best interests to collaborate on cyber, which is where we’re waging total war against one another. How it’s in our interests to deconflict on many issues. How it’s in our interests to resolve frozen conflicts, with perhaps a broader agenda than just the Ukrainian issue.” (The Economist, 11.07.19)
• Russia has remained a target of international terrorist groups, particularly ISIS, according to the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2018. Low-level militant terrorist activity remained a problem in the North Caucasus despite increases to counterterrorism activities and political consolidation efforts, the reports said. (Russia Matters, 11.01.19)
• Russia's FSB security service has identified 2,000 Russian nationals who are relatives of militants in the Middle East and could try to return to Russia, posing a terrorist threat, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said. (Reuters, 11.07.19)
• Russia's Investigative Committee says it has placed Talant Onurov, born in Kyrgyzstan, under arrest in Moscow on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack in the capital. (RFE/RL, 11.05.19)
• There were seven law enforcement victims in what Tajik authorities have called "an Islamic State (IS) attack" near a border post on the Tajikistan-Uzbekistan border, five higher than the number in official reports, sources have told RFE/RL. The attackers came from neighboring Afghanistan, fifteen of whom were killed and five were captured, officials said. (RFE/RL, 11.08.19)
• "I think Kazakhstan's efforts here are a model for the rest of the world because they’re doing things like involving theologians who can point out the errors of ISIS ideology," Nathan Sales, the U.S. State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism said, referring to Islamic State. (RFE/RL, 11.01.19)

Conflict in Syria:

• Russia has deployed military helicopters to patrol an area near Syria's border with Turkey in order to help protect Russian military police working on the ground, Interfax said Nov. 8. The second Russian-Turkish joint patrolling mission in northern Syria lasted for around two hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said. (Reuters, 11.08.18, Interfax, 11.05.19)
  • Kurdish armed units have withdrawn 30 kilometers from the border in northeastern Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. (Interfax, 11.05.19)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has expressed pessimism over the possibility of reaching agreements between Russia and the U.S. on the situation in northeastern Syria. (Interfax, 11.05.19)
• Less than two weeks after the Oct. 13 announcement of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, the U.S. military deployed new forces to secure oil fields in the eastern part of country so they would not fall into the hands of IS fighters. Then, on Nov. 1, Trump expanded this mission to protect lands controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters that extend from Deir el-Zour to al-Hassakeh, according to AP. (Russia Matters, 11.06.19)
  • The United States' actions to consolidate its unlawful presence in Syria, including the possible establishment of new military bases in the country's northeast, contradict international law, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said. (Interfax, 11.05.19)

Cyber security:

• For months, Moscow has pursued what current and former U.S. law-enforcement and diplomatic officials describe as part of a stepped-up and evolving campaign to prevent Russians arrested on criminal hacking charges from being extradited to the U.S. Russia has relied on a variety of techniques—whether leveraging the legal system or resorting to more coercive means, such as bribery—to pressure other countries to impede U.S. extradition efforts. (Wall Street Journal, 11.05.19)

Elections interference:

• The heads of U.S. government agencies including the FBI, Justice Department and National Security Agency warned in a joint security statement Nov. 5 that foreign actors would seek to interfere in the 2020 election: “Russia, China, Iran and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions." (Axios, 11.05.19)
• U.S. Justice Department officials are trying to release in the coming weeks a potentially explosive inspector general report about the FBI's investigation into U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, according to multiple people familiar with the effort. (The Washington Post, 11.07.19)
• U.S. President Donald Trump was more personally involved in his campaign’s effort to obtain Democratic emails stolen by Russian operatives in 2016 than was previously known, phone records introduced at the start of the criminal trial of Roger Stone Jr. on Nov. 6 suggested. The records suggest that Trump spoke to Stone repeatedly during the summer of 2016, at a time when Stone was aggressively seeking to obtain the stolen emails from WikiLeaks. (New York Times, 11.06.19)
• Dominic Grieve, chairman of the U.K. parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, has insisted that the government must publish a report into Russian interference in the U.K. democratic process, saying it contains information that is “germane” to voters. (Financial Times, 11.02.19)

Energy exports:

• Gas from Azerbaijan’s giant Shah Deniz field is not expected to reach Europe before October 2020 due to delays in finishing the TAP pipeline in Italy, the head of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline consortium said. (Reuters, 11.01.19)
• The Nord Stream 2 pipeline faces potential delays as a German government adviser denied the country was drawing up legislation that would waive the project from EU energy laws. (Bloomberg, 11.08.19)

Bilateral economic ties:

• Russia and the U.S. have identified persons responsible for the creation of a high-level group in the business sector, which Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed last year to his American counterpart Donald Trump. 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. (WPS/Kommersant, 11.08.19)

Other bilateral issues:

• U.S. President Donald Trump said Nov. 8 he was considering attending Russia's May Day parade. Meanwhile, Russia's foreign minister said Nov. 8 that the world is becoming increasingly unstable because the U.S. doesn't want to abide by arms control regimes. (Reuters, 11.08.19, Reuters, 11.08.19)
• Russian officials in August held up the evacuation from Moscow of a sick American military attaché to a hospital in Germany in the latest episode of a long-running campaign of harassment against American diplomats in Russia. (New York Times, 11.03.19)
• Maria Butina, the Russian national who served 9 months in a U.S. prison after admitting to being a foreign agent, said she blamed racism against Russians for the prosecution against her. (RFE/RL, 11.03.19)
• A federal grand jury in Utah has charged former deputy director of a Russian military contractor Leonid Teyf with bribing FedEx employees to boost business for his U.S. transportation company. (RFE/RL, 11.03.19)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Its been a good week for Russian stocks as the dollar denominated Russia Trading System index hit 1,471 as of Nov. 7, its highest level in six years. This week’s performance pushes the market a little higher into territory it has not explored since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. (bne Intellinews, 11.07.19)
• Sales of new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in Russia continued its decline, decreasing by 5.2 percent in October 2019, according to the report by the AEB Automobile Manufacturers Committee overseeing the industry. (bne IntelliNews, 11.07.19)
• There were 1.21 million deaths versus 994,300 live births in Russia between Jan. 1-Aug. 31, according to the Audit Chamber’s quarterly budget report. (The Moscow Times, 11.07.19)
• Around 56 million Russians across 143 cities are breathing bad air, the Russian state weather and environment service said in its annual atmospheric pollution report. (The Moscow Times, 11.08.18)
• Russia experienced its warmest October since records began in 1891, the country’s Meteorological Center said on Nov. 2. The center added that 2019 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded in Russia and the northern hemisphere. (The Moscow Times, 11.04.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin convened a meeting of Russia’s language council Nov. 5, where he warned that there is a war against the Russian language, recommended replacing Wikipedia and called for the introduction of uniform language norms. (The Moscow Times, 11.06.19)
• Freedom House ranked Russia 51st out of 65 countries on its internet-freedom rating, up from 53rd place in 2018 and halting the country’s six-year plunge. (The Moscow Times, 11.05.19)
• The share of Russians who say the country needs sweeping changes has grown to 59 percent this year, according to new research from the Carnegie Moscow Center and the independent Levada Center pollster. Some 53 percent of respondents said only serious reforms to Russia’s existing political system could bring about the needed changes. (The Moscow Times, 11.06.19)
• Dozens of women have held a series of one-person pickets in central Moscow to call for the release of their children, who they said had been arrested on politically motivated charges. (RFE/RL, 11.04.19)
• The Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow helped the Soviet Union detonate its first nuclear bomb and seven of its scientists have won Nobel Prizes. So it came as a shock last week when security officers searched the office of the institute's director, Nikolai Kolachevsky, and questioned him for six hours about a supposed plot to export military-use glass windows. He later denounced the raid as a ''masked show.” (New York Times, 11.08.19)
• One morning in September, Andrei Yegorov woke to discover his bank account was frozen and in the red to the tune of 75 million rubles, almost $1.2 million. Across Russia, opposition activists say hundreds of people have found that they, too, inexplicably are 75 million rubles in the hole. (Wall Street Journal, 11.06.19)
• Russian authorities in the Siberian city of Tomsk have convicted and handed a prison sentence to Sergei Klimov, member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious group that Moscow has outlawed and labeled as "extremist." (RFE/RL, 11.05.19)
• Russia’s plans to cancel 20,000 Soviet-era laws and regulations may be hampered as officials cannot find the original documents and the wording of the relevant decrees. (The Moscow Times, 11.08.18)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former wife owns shares in one of Russia’s top 10 microfinance providers, according to an investigation published by the Sobesednik news website Nov. 6. (The Moscow Times, 11.06.19)

Defense and aerospace:

• See sections on nuclear security and cold war above.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• One of the suspects arrested in Vietnam as part of an investigation into migrant deaths in Britain is believed to have smuggled people into Europe via Russia. (The Moscow Times, 11.06.19)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

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

• The underlying message of French President Emmanuel Macron’s interview is that Europe needs to start thinking and acting as a strategic power. That should start with regaining “military sovereignty,” and re-opening a dialogue with Russia. Failing to do so, Macron says, would be a “huge mistake.” “If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia. … What I’ve proposed is an exercise that consists of stating how we see the world, the risks we share, the common interests we could have, and how we rebuild what I’ve called an architecture of trust and security. … Europe which, if it can’t think of itself as a global power, will disappear, because it will take a hard knock,” he warned. (The Economist, 11.07.19)
• Russia will deliver the sophisticated Pantsir-S short-range air-defense missile system to Serbia despite U.S. warnings of possible sanctions against the Balkan country if the transaction goes through. (RFE/RL, 11.07.19)
• Cyprus said Nov. 6 that it had started a process to strip 26 individuals of citizenship they received under a secretive passports-for-investment scheme, admitting it had flaws, including nine Russians. (Reuters, 11.07.19)
• The Kremlin says it had received a formal pardon request from Frode Berg, a Norwegian man convicted of espionage. (RFE/RL, 11.06.19)
• Austrian prosecutors said Nov. 8 they have charged a retired army colonel with spying and betraying state and military secrets, alleging that he worked for Russian military intelligence for at least 25 years. (Reuters, 11.08.19)
• After four years of behind-the-scenes financial and tactical support for a would-be Libyan strongman, Russia is now pushing far more directly to shape the outcome of Libya’s messy civil war. It has introduced advanced Sukhoi jets, coordinated missile strikes, and precision-guided artillery, as well as snipers belonging to the Wagner Group. (New York Times, 11.05.19)
  • Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has denied Russia’s military presence in Libya following a New York Times report. (The Moscow Times, 11.07.19)

China:

• French President Emmanuel Macron said: “I look at Russia and I ask myself what strategic choices it has. … I don't believe much in this stand-alone option. … A second path that Russia could have taken is the Eurasian model … I don't believe for one second that his strategy is to be China's vassal. … I don’t see how, in the long term, his [Putin’s] project can be anything other than a partnership project with Europe.” (The Economist, 11.07.19)
• China tops the list of Russia's most friendly countries, a recent poll conducted by the Russian state-owned research center VTsIOM has showed. Forty-five percent of respondents thought China is a country with which Russia has established the strongest friendly relations. (Xinhua, 10.28.19)
• About 1.25 million Chinese tourists visited Russia last year compared with 410,000 in 2015, Kommersant reported. There are now 23 airlines offering flights to Russia from 24 Chinese cities, up from 10 cities in 2015. Chinese tourists officially spent $264 million over the first three months of the year, according to official Russian state data. (RFE/RL, 11.03.19)
• According to M.Video-Eldorado, which describes itself as Russia’s biggest consumer electronics retailer, Huawei and its subsidiary brand Honor overtook Samsung Electronics in the third quarter of 2018 in smartphone sales. A study by the same group in August found that Huawei and Honor together control 37 percent of the market. (Financial Times, 11.03.19)

Ukraine:

• Troop withdrawals in in the village of Petrivske in the Donbas will begin on Nov. 9, the OSCE said. Kyiv has said that the third such withdrawal would mean that Ukraine has fulfilled all necessary conditions from its side for the Normandy summit to take place. (Reuters, 11.08.19)
• Ukraine plans to increase annual spending on defense and security next year by 16 percent to more than $9 billion even as Kyiv gradually moves toward securing talks to end the conflict in the eastern part of the country. (RFE/RL, 11.06.19)
• Ukraine’s central bank predicts that the economy will grow by 3.5 percent this year and next year, and by 4 percent in 2021. (Ukraine Business News, 11.05.19)
• Erik Prince, a private security contractor and informal adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, is in discussions to purchase Ukrainian aerospace manufacturer Motor Sich, which the U.S. is trying to prevent China from buying, according to officials briefed on the matter. (Wall Street Journal, 11.05.19)
• Key MH17 witness Vladimir Tsemakh is ready to provide testimony to Dutch and Ukrainian investigators about the plane tragedy, but only on pro-Russian separatist territory in eastern Ukraine, his lawyer has said. (The Moscow Times, 11.08.18)
• In a legal victory for Kyiv, the U.N.’s highest court ruled Nov. 8 that it has jurisdiction in a case brought by Ukraine alleging that Russia breached treaties on terrorist financing and racial discrimination in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. (AP, 11.08.19)
• "I would love to have him come to the White House if he'd like to come, and I think he'd like to come," U.S. President Donald Trump said in response to a journalist's question whether he intends to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Washington. (Interfax, 11.05.19)
• In the fall of 2017, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Kurt Volker that he would have about 45 seconds to brief Trump ahead of his meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Trump then peppered Volker with his negative views of Ukraine, suggesting that it wasn’t a “real country,” that it had always been a part of Russia and that it was “totally corrupt.” (The Washington Post, 11.02.19)
• In early September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy faced a choice: whether to capitulate to U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands to publicly announce investigations against his political enemies or lose military aid. Zelenskiy’s staff planned for him to make an announcement in an interview on Sept. 13. Then word of the freeze in military aid had leaked out, and Congress was in an uproar. Two days before the scheduled interview, the Trump administration released the assistance and Zelenskiy’s office canceled the interview. (New York Times, 11.07.19)
• U.S. President Donald Trump wanted Attorney General William Barr to publicly declare that he hadn't broken any laws during a phone call with the Ukrainian leader that is now at the heart of an impeachment inquiry, but Barr refused the request. (Wall Street Journal, 11.07.19)
• U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland has revised his earlier testimony before congressional impeachment investigators, now acknowledging he knew the administration withheld military aid to Ukraine while pressuring Kyiv to investigate U.S. President Donald Trump’s rivals. (RFE/RL, 11.06.19)
• The U.S. Government Accountability Office is reviewing the Trump administration's hold on nearly $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine. (Wall Street Journal, 11.08.19)
• Marie Yovanovitch, who was abruptly recalled as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year, told congressional investigators that she felt unsupported by the State Department prior to her departure, and threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump afterward. (RFE/RL, 11.04.19)
• According to congressional testimony provided by George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state, former Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko sought revenge on Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and reached out to Rudy Giuliani to spread false information about her alleged disloyalty to Trump. (RFE/RL, 11.08.19)
• Former National Security Adviser John Bolton was the highest-ranking official in the White House who voiced opposition to the effort to pressure Ukraine. Yet Bolton seemed to find reasons to avoid intervening directly at some key moments. (The Washington Post, 10.06.19)
• Long before a telephone call with Ukraine's president that prompted an impeachment inquiry, U.S. President Donald Trump was exchanging political favors with Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko's aides scrambled to find ways to flatter Trump, advising their boss to gush during his first telephone call with Trump about football star Tom Brady. (New York Times, 11.04.19)
• Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort suggested as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians might have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign rather than Russians, a key witness told federal investigators last year. (The Washington Post, 11.03.19)
• U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry wanted to put two U.S. energy industry veterans on the board of Ukraine's state-owned energy company Naftogaz, according to text messages written by the former Ukraine special envoy that differ with Perry's own account. (Wall Street Journal, 11.05.19)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Western governments are moving to shore up the authoritarian, independent-minded President Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus, worried that his country's possible absorption by Russia would alter Europe's balance of power. That support, however, is limited by fears that getting too close to Minsk could provoke a Russian intervention. (Wall Street Journal, 11.05.19)
• Moldova’s Moscow-friendly President Igor Dodon says the settlement of the frozen conflict in Transdniester is heading in the right direction, citing a Russian proposal to shutter a massive ammunition depot in the breakaway region. (RFE/RL, 11.02.19)
• The candidate of the pro-Russian Socialist Party for Chisinau city hall, Ion Ceban, defeated his pro-EU rival Andrei Nastase on Nov. 3. The result will help Moldovan President Igor Dodon strengthen his criticism against the government headed by pro-EU Prime Minister Maia Sandu, and allow him to gain a tighter grip over administrative matters. (BBC, 11.04.19)
• The U.S. Embassy in Yerevan says U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has increased assistance funding to Armenia to more than $60 million in 2019, adding that the amount represents a 40-percent increase over last year’s amount. (RFE/RL, 11.06.19)
• Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has called on fellow member states of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization to “consider the interests of all participating nations” when it comes to issues such as foreign policy and military-technical cooperation. Pashinian made the remarks in a thinly veiled criticism of Russia and Belarus—two members of the grouping that have supplied weapons to nonmember Azerbaijan. (RFE/RL, 11.05.19)

IV. Quoteworthy

• No significant developments.