This Week’s Highlights

• There is a serious conversation underway between U.S. and Russian officials on arms control, the deepest in years, The New York Times reports. The most notable talks between Russian and American officials have been on strategic stability. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the next round of the U.S.-Russian dialogue on strategic stability will take place in the next few weeks and predicted that that this key dialogue will be intensified, according to Kommersant. TASS reports that Ryabkov also said Russia presented the United States with its concrete ideas about preventing incidents at sea and in the airspace above it.  
• Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of the Kremlin’s Security Council, met CIA Director William Burns in Moscow to discuss U.S.-Russian relations on Nov. 2, the AP reports. Burns also held talks in Moscow with Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergei Naryshkin on bilateral cooperation in fighting international terrorism on Nov. 3, according to RFE/RL.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Oct. 31 that he spoken briefly with U.S. President Joe Biden in Rome and that the U.S. leader “stressed his commitment to further contacts,” The New York Times reports. Asked on Nov. 2 about the possibility of another Putin-Biden meeting, the Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said there was ''a mutual interest in holding such contacts.'' ''The timetable will be determined,'' Peskov said.
• “We are entering into a tripolar world with the United States, Russia and China,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said on Nov. 3. “We’re going to have to put a premium, in my view, on maintaining great power peace,” he said, according to Inside Defense.
• Russia has joined over 100 countries in promising to end deforestation by 2030, in the first major deal of the COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow, The Moscow Times reports. However, while 105 countries signed the Global Methane Pledge at the summit, Russia did not, according to The New York Times and the Financial Times. Biden criticized Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping for not attending the summit in person, The Moscow Times reports. Russia could be left with almost $2 trillion in worthless hydrocarbon assets if major economies hit their net zero targets over the coming decades, a group of researchers from British universities said in a landmark paper.

 

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

Nuclear security:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• Russia and China have submitted a draft resolution on partially lifting the sanctions on North Korea, and Moscow stands ready to finalize the document and expects proposals from counterparts, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. (Interfax, 11.03.21)

Iran and its nuclear program:

• The decision to resume the JCPOA negotiations in Vienna on Nov. 29 opens the way to Iran's full implementation of the 2015 nuclear deal, Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said. (Interfax, 11.03.21)
• Tehran says the United States has to offer guarantees that it will not abandon again the JCPOA in order to ensure the success of current talks to revive the 2015 pact. "The U.S. President, lacking authority, is not ready to give guarantees. If the current status quo continues, the result of negotiations is clear," Ali Shamkhani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said on Twitter Nov. 3. (RFE/RL, 11.03.21)
• Iran says it has increased its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium to 25 kilograms, an almost fourfold increase from the level reported in June, as Tehran prepares for negotiations later this month with world powers to preserve the JCPOA. Iran's stockpile of 20% enriched uranium has reached over 210 kilograms, well beyond the 120-kilogram target set by parliament. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Washington is "absolutely in lockstep" with Britain, Germany and France on getting Iran back into a nuclear deal, but added it was unclear if Tehran was willing to rejoin the talks in a "meaningful way." (RFE/RL, 10.31.21)

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

• “We are entering into a tripolar world with the United States, Russia and China,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Nov. 3. “We’re entering into a world that is potentially more strategically unstable than say the last 40, 50, 60, 70 years. That means that we’re going to have to put a premium, in my view, on maintaining great power peace,” he said. (Inside Defense, 11.03.21)
• Speaking during a meeting with military officials and arms makers in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted the deployment of NATO’s U.S.-led missile defense components in Eastern Europe and increasingly frequent missions by NATO ships near Russian waters in the Baltic and Black Seas. “Even now, a U.S. warship has entered the Black Sea, and we can see it in binoculars or crosshairs of our defense systems,” he said in a reference to the USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the U.S. 6th Fleet, deployed to the Black Sea. (AP, 11.01.21)
  • Russia is ready for countermeasures if a U.S. warship ventures into its territorial maritime waters and stages a provocation in the Black Sea, Vice Speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev said Nov. 1. (TASS, 11.01.21)
• China is continuing to strengthen its strategic nuclear arsenal and could have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, according to a new Defense Department report released Nov. 3. The Pentagon's annual report to Congress on China's military might estimates that China could have 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027 and 1,000 three years later. In addition, it warns that China has ''possibly already established a nascent nuclear triad with the development of a nuclear capable air-launched ballistic missile and improvement of its ground and sea-based nuclear capabilities.'' (The New York Times, 11.03.21)
• “We need to learn about these AI capabilities while simultaneously understanding that they produce a level of uncertainty in the world within which permanent peace is very difficult to sustain—probably impossible,” Henry Kissinger said. “With nuclear weapons it was possible to conceive of principles of deterrence in which there was some symmetry between the damage on each side,” he said. “If an unrestrained [a U.S.-China] arms race goes from nuclear to AI, the dangers of dramatic escalation would be very great,” he said. (Financial Times, 11.04.21.)

China-Russia: Allied or Aligned?

• No significant developments.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Arms control:

• There is a serious conversation underway between U.S. and Russian officials on arms control, the deepest in years.  The most notable talks between Russian and American officials have been on what the two call “strategic stability”—a phrase that encompasses traditional arms control and the concerns that new technology, including the use of artificial intelligence to command weapons systems, could lead to accidental war or reduce the decision time for leaders to avoid conflict. Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, has led a delegation on those issues, and American officials describe them as a “bright spot” in the relationship. Working groups have been set up, including one that will discuss “novel weapons” like Russia’s Poseidon, an autonomous nuclear torpedo. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the next round of the U.S.-Russian dialogue on strategic stability will take place in the next few weeks and predicted that that this key dialogue will be intensified, according to Kommersant. (The New York Times, 10.31.21, Russia Matters, 11.02.21)
• Russia presented to the United States its concrete ideas about preventing incidents at sea and in the airspace above it, Ryabkov told the online Fort Ross Dialogue forum Nov. 2. He expressed hope that the U.S. would provide its response to those initiatives, and the work would be completed as soon as possible. The diplomat mentioned the Russian-U.S. agreements on preventing incidents in Syria, which have been in place in the past few years. In his opinion, this experience can be used in other spheres as well. (TASS, 11.02.21)

Counter-terrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• The next round of Syria talks is due to be held in the Kazakh capital in the middle of December, Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi said. (Interfax, 11.04.21)
• Russian warplanes reportedly carried out eight airstrikes Oct. 30, with high-explosive missiles on Salwa and Qah, north of Idlib, which are about six kilometers from the Turkish border. (Aawsat, 10.31.21)
• Turkey and Russia are reportedly negotiating to stage a Turkish military operation in Syria’s border town Kobane to clear Syrian Kurdish YPG units there. (Middle East Eye, 11.01.21)

Cyber security:

• The White House’s top adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, Anne Neuberger, has engaged in a series of quiet, virtual meetings with her Kremlin counterpart. Several weeks ago the United States turned over the names and other details of a few hackers actively launching attacks on America. Now, one official said, the United States is waiting to see if the information results in arrests, a test of whether Putin was serious when he said he would facilitate a crackdown on ransomware and other cybercrime. (The New York Times, 10.31.21)
• The United States has announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any individual holding a “key leadership” position in DarkSide, a cybercrime group believed to be tied to Russia. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• The European policing agency says 12 people suspected of being involved in ransomware attacks against “critical infrastructure” across the world were "targeted" in raids in Ukraine and Switzerland last week. “These attacks are believed to have affected over 1,800 victims in 71 countries. These cyber actors are known for specifically targeting large corporations, effectively bringing their business to a standstill,” Europol said. (RFE/RL, 10.29.21)
• The United States on Nov. 3 added the Israeli spyware company NSO Group to its "entity list," a blacklist prohibiting the company from receiving American technologies, after determining that its phone-hacking tools had been used by foreign governments to "maliciously target" government officials, activists, journalists, academics and embassy workers around the world. (The Washington Post, 11.04.21)

Energy exports from CIS:

• OPEC and a group of Russia-led producers agreed to keep to their gradual, monthly increase in oil output, deciding to boost production by 400,000 barrels a day next month and rebuffing stepped-up pressure from the U.S. to boost output and ease prices. (The Wall Street Journal, 11.04.21) 
• Russia’s Nord Stream 2 might not be approved until May if regulators use all the time they’re allowed. (Bloomberg, 11.03.21)
• Gazprom declined to book more pipeline capacity via Ukraine and Poland to ship gas to Europe in the first three quarters of next year, in a sign it may be waiting for approval of Nord Stream 2. (RFE/RL, 11.03.21)
• U.S. President Joe Biden has stressed the importance of implementing a U.S.-German agreement on Nord Stream 2 to ensure that Russia “cannot manipulate natural gas flows for harmful political purposes,” the White House said in a statement. (RFE/RL, 10.31.21)
• Turkmenistan says the Taliban-led government in neighboring Afghanistan has vowed to ensure the completion and security of the 1,800-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline projected to run from the Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan to the Indian city of Fazilka, passing through Afghanistan and Pakistan. (RFE/RL, 11.02.21)

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

• Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of the Kremlin’s Security Council, met CIA Director William Burns in Moscow to discuss U.S.-Russian relations, the council said in a literally one-sentence description of the meeting Nov. 2. In a video of the start of the meeting, Patrushev tells Burns, ''I am glad to greet you in Moscow.'' Karen Donfried, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, joined Burns in the meeting. Burns also held talks in Moscow with Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin on bilateral cooperation in fighting international terrorism during his Nov 2-3 visit. "The focus was on interdepartmental interaction in the context of Russian-U.S. relations with an emphasis on the fight against international terrorism," an SVR press release said after the meeting. (AP, 11.02.21, RFE/RL, 11.03.21, The New York Times, 11.02.21, Russia Matters, 11.03.21)
  • It is not clear if Burns was going to raise the issue of the anomalous health incidents known as ''Havana Syndrome” during his visit to Moscow. CIA analysts and other American intelligence agencies have not yet drawn any formal conclusions about what has caused them. Russia has dismissed speculation that it could be responsible as ''unhealthy fantasies.'' (The New York Times, 11.02.21)
  • There are clearly areas the Kremlin does not want to discuss with the U.S. Russia’s crackdown on dissent and the treatment of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny have gone largely unaddressed, despite the disapproval Biden voiced on the matter this year. (The New York Times, 10.31.21)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Oct. 31 that he spoke briefly with Biden in Rome and that the U.S. leader “stressed his commitment to further contacts.” Asked on Nov. 2 about the possibility of another Putin-Biden meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said there was ''a mutual interest in holding such contacts.'' ''The timetable will be determined,'' Peskov said. (The New York Times, 11.02.21,  The New York Times, 10.31.21)
• Russia is calling on the U.S. to send embassy staff to Moscow in order to resume U.S. visa services, senior Russian diplomats said Nov. 2. Ryabkov issued the invitation after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow stopped processing immigrant visas, requiring Russians to travel to the Embassy in Warsaw to apply. The U.S. State Department has warned that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow could stop performing most functions in 2022. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.03.21)
• A Russian analyst who gathered information for the so-called Steele dossier alleging potential ties between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia has been charged with lying to U.S. federal investigators. A grand jury indictment unsealed in a federal court in Virginia on Nov. 4 charged Igor Danchenko with five counts of false statements when he was questioned by FBI agents about the dossier, which turned out to be Democratic-funded opposition research. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov was required to pay nearly $509 million to settle U.S. charges of tax evasion, the U.S. Justice Department said Oct. 29. The banking and investment tycoon paid the back taxes and fine after pleading guilty on Oct. 1 to felony charges of concealing more than $1 billion in assets to avoid paying taxes on them as he gave up his U.S. citizenship in 2013. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.01.21)
• On Nov. 4, Ashley Kowalski was to join one other American, three Russians and an Emirati inside a confined facility in a Soviet-era building on the outskirts of Moscow that’s meant to mimic as much as possible the conditions on long space journeys, including both the physiological and the psychological challenges. A barrage of daily tests will record the changes the aspiring astronauts undergo and relay the data to a team of researchers at Moscow’s Institute of Biomedical Problems, which has teamed up with NASA to launch the Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station, or SIRIUS. (Foreign Policy, 11.03.21)

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

• The Russian government coronavirus task force on Nov. 5 reported 40,735 new cases over the previous 24 hours, the third consecutive day new infections were above 40,000. The daily death toll slipped from 1,195 on Nov. 3 to 1,192 on Nov. 4. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21) 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.
• At least 44,265 people died of COVID-19 and related causes in Russia in September, the country’s statistics agency, Rosstat, said. The figure announced on Oct. 29 brings the number of deaths in Russia since the pandemic began to around 462,000, the highest in Europe. (RFE/RL, 10.29.21)
• Russia has recorded 753,000 excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, one of the highest tolls in the world, according to analysis of government data by the Financial Times. It shows that Russia ranked second to the U.S. in terms of absolute number of excess deaths and third behind Peru and Bulgaria on a per capita basis. (Financial Times, 11.02.21)
• An international study, published in the BMJ journal, examined changes to life expectancy in 37 upper-middle to high-income countries where researchers said reliable data was available.  The highest fall in life expectancy occurred in Russia, where men lost 2.33 extra years at birth, and women 2.14 years. The United States was second, with men losing 2.27 extra years, and women 1.61. (The Boston Globe, 11.05.21)
• While 50% of Russian respondents said they are unafraid of contracting the virus, a Levada Center poll found that 48% are afraid of it, an increase from 43% in August. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.01.21)
• Russia could be left with almost $2 trillion in worthless hydrocarbon assets if major economies hit their net zero targets over the coming decades, a group of researchers from British universities said in a landmark paper, published Nov. 4 in the journal Nature. Their calculations show more than half of Russia’s estimated $3.9 trillion stock of fossil fuel assets—such as oil and gas rigs, pipelines, extraction facilities and other infrastructure to support the country’s vital energy sector—would become “stranded,” or effectively worth nothing, by 2036. (The Moscow Times, 11.04.21)
• An annual commemoration for thousands of people executed during Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Great Terror is being held in Russia online for a second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic. (The Moscow Times/AFP,  10.29.21)
• Russia’s Supreme Court will not hear the case of the surviving descendants of Stalin-era Gulag prisoners fighting for state compensation, according to a court database spotted by Russian media Nov. 2. (The Moscow Times, 11.02.21)
• A court in Russia's Tatarstan region has sentenced a prominent Islamic scholar to 6 1/2 years in prison for running a branch of a banned religious group. Gabdrakhman Naumov was sentenced by a court in Kazan for leading a branch of the Islamic Nur movement.  He was arrested in March 2020 and charged with being the leader of the Nur movement in Tatarstan, where Turkic-speaking ethnic Tatars live. (RFE/RL, 11.02.21)
• Ivan Safronov, a prominent former Russian journalist accused of high treason in a case widely considered to be politically motivated, has been placed in solitary confinement for allegedly violating the detention center's internal regulations. Safronov has been additionally charged with passing classified information to a university in Switzerland and to Germany's intelligence service. (RFE/RL, 11.03.21, RFE/RL, 11.02.21)
• Moscow police arrested dozens of nationalists planning to hold the annual far-right Russian March in the Russian capital, the police-monitoring website OVD-Info reported Nov. 4. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.05.21)

Defense and aerospace:

• Putin chaired the third and final meeting with top military brass and heads of defense enterprises in Sochi. He on Nov. 2 told his defense chiefs to work on further developing Russia's arsenal of drones, especially through artificial intelligence. Putin said the military already had more than 2,000 drones at its disposal. "More work must be done on this... in particular through the use of artificial intelligence and the latest scientific and technological advances," he said. (AFP, 11.02.21, TASS, 11.03.21)
• “Pursuant to our procurement plans, in the coming years, our command is going to be augmented with new nuclear-powered submarines that will help to considerably strengthen the naval component of Russia’s nuclear strategic force,” Chief of Staff of the Pacific Fleet’s Submarine Force Command Rear Adm. Arkady Navarsky said Nov. 3, according to TASS. “We’re looking forward to receiving four submarines, including two Borei-class and two Yasen-class ships. They are almost complete, with some already undergoing performance trials.” (The National Interest, 10.30.21)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• The battle between the Kremlin and former Russian oil company Yukos took a new twist on Nov. 5 when the Dutch Supreme Court overturned a decision forcing the Russian government to pay a $50 billion arbitration award to the former Yukos shareholders and sent the case back to appeal. “The Russian Federation’s argument that the shareholders have committed fraud in the arbitral proceedings has been wrongly dismissed by the Court of Appeal on procedural grounds and should have been judged with respect to content,” it found. “Therefore the judgements of the Court of Appeal cannot be upheld.” (bne IntelliNews, 11.05.21)
• Danish authorities have detained Russian research vessel Akademik Ioffe north of the Jutland Peninsula in an apparent legal dispute. The Russian embassy said the seizure of the vessel was carried out as an interim measure as part of a dispute with a Canadian company relating to the previous activities of the Akademik Ioffe. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
• Berlin police discovered the body of a Russian diplomat on the sidewalk in front of the embassy building on Oct. 19, Der Spiegel reported. Der Spiegel said the 35-year-old man is believed to have fallen from the upper floor of the embassy building onto Behrenstrasse in central Berlin, just steps away from the Brandenburg Gate. The Insider and Bellingcat say that through open sources, it can be proved that the deceased is Kirill Zhalo, the son of Lt. Gen. Alexei Zhalo, head of the FSB's Office for the Protection of the Constitutional System. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
• The Russian authorities have detained three men suspected of illegally obtaining the personal data of FSB agents whom Navalny has accused of being involved in his poisoning last year. TASS and the Baza news website quoted law enforcement sources on Nov. 2 as saying the three suspects from a private investigation firm gathered the phone billing data of the agents on behalf of Navalny and his associates. (RFE/RL, 11.02.21)
• A Russian cargo plane with seven people on board crash landed in eastern Siberia and caught fire, the emergencies ministry said Nov. 3. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.03.21)

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

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

• G20 leaders agreed during their summit on Oct. 31 in Rome to stop funding coal-fired power plants in poor countries and made a vague commitment to seek carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century.” Putin delivered an address via a video link to urge G20 health ministers to discuss the mutual recognition of vaccines and vaccination certificates “as soon as possible”. Both Putin and President Xi Jinping of China called for “mutual recognition” of COVID-19 vaccines by global health authorities. Both leaders delivered the remarks by video after deciding not to attend in person. (The New York Times, 10.30.21, AP, 11.31.21, Al Jazeera, 10.30.21)
• Russia has joined over 100 countries in promising to end deforestation by 2030, in the first major deal of the COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow. The pledge includes around $20 billion in funds for protection of woodlands worldwide, according to the British government. The COP26 deal’s signatories account for around 85% of the world’s forest cover, including Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazil. Russia approved a long-term government climate strategy on Nov. 1 targeting carbon neutrality by 2060. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.02.21, Reuters, 11.01.21)
  • A total of 105 countries have signed the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment to reduce methane emissions 30% by 2030, including half of the world’s top 30 methane-emitting countries, and they expect the list to grow. Russia, India and China, three of the world’s largest emitters of the gas, are not known to have joined the pledge. (The New York Times, 11.04.21, Financial Times, 11.02.21)
  • Biden criticized Putin and Xi for not attending the COP26 climate summit. "It just is a gigantic issue and they [Putin and Xi] walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership?" Biden said. “[Putin’s] tundra is burning—literally, the tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems, and he is mum on willingness to do anything," he said. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also criticized the leaders of China and Russia for the failure of two of the world’s biggest emitters to attend the climate talks in person. The Kremlin on Nov. 3 rejected Biden's criticism. Russia’s 270-person delegation was led by Putin’s climate envoy Ruslan Edelgeriyev and Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.03.21, The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.03.21, Financial Times, 11.01.21)
• Russia is cutting its greenhouse gas emissions faster than the G7 group of nations, Putin said in his video address to the G20 summit in Rome Oct. 31. Russia is heating 2.5 times faster than the rest of the planet and its Arctic regions are warming especially fast, Putin told the meeting of the world’s 20 leading economies. In the past decade alone, the average annual temperature in Russia has risen by about 0.5 degrees Celsius—and as the climate crisis intensifies, Russia is facing multiple threats including desertification, soil erosion and permafrost melt, he said. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.01.21)
• The U.N. Security Council extended a peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina in a unanimous vote Nov. 3 that came after any mention of the office of an international peace envoy was removed from the text of the resolution to win support from Russia and China. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• A Dutch newspaper says Russian authorities have expelled its correspondent who has lived in the country since 2015—the second such decision against a Western journalist in months. The De Volkskrant daily said in its report on Nov. 3 that correspondent Tom Vennink's residence permit in Russia was canceled two days earlier due to what authorities called "two administrative violations." (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• Foreign tourists are canceling trips to Russia in droves over confusion surrounding digital coronavirus passes after current nationwide restrictions are lifted, the Russian Association of Tour Operators said Nov. 2. (The Moscow Times, 11.02.21)

Ukraine:

• Ukraine says Russia has kept tens of thousands of troops near its border following military exercises. The number of Russian troops not far from the Ukrainian border and in areas controlled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine now totals 90,000, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Nov. 3. The ministry said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army remained in the Russian town of Yelnya, about 260 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border, after Russia’s armed forces recently held a series of large-scale drills. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's national security and defense council, estimated that the number of Russian troops deployed around the Ukrainian border at 80,000 to 90,000, not including the tens of thousands stationed in Crimea. (The Washington Post, 10.30.21, RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• Satellite pictures supplied by U.S. space company Maxar Technologies showed about 1,000 military vehicles near Yelnya. According to eyewitness accounts posted on social media, Russia’s Armed Forces are coordinating large-scale westward equipment transfers—including T-80U tanks, 2S19 Msta howitzers, short-range missile systems, infantry fighting vehicles (IFV’s) and logistical vehicles—in the direction of Ukraine. But Ukraine's defense ministry said in a statement late Nov. 1 that "no additional deployment" of Russian forces had been observed. The statement came hours before a government official said that Ukraine's Defense Minister Andriy Taran had resigned—reportedly on health grounds. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.02.21, The Washington Post, 10.30.21, The National Interest, 10.31.21, The Washington Post, 10.30.21, AFP, 11.02.21, al Jazeera, 11.03.21)
• The United States, an ally of Kyiv, said it was seeing a significant amount of Russian military movement along its border with Ukraine, albeit nothing that was “overtly aggressive.” “We’ve seen this before … What does this mean? We don’t know yet, too early to tell,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Nov. 3. (al Jazeera, 11.03.21)
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Nov. 2 dismissed the reports of a potential buildup, saying there was no need to "waste time" on "low-quality" claims. "The movement of our military equipment and army units ... is exclusively our business," he told reporters. "Russia has never threatened anyone." (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.02.21)
• Lavrov accused Ukrainian leaders on Nov. 1 of trying to drag Moscow into the conflict in eastern Ukraine. "We observe attempts to carry out provocations, elicit some reaction from the militia and drag Russia into some kind of combat action," Lavrov told Russia's state television. Russia accused Ukraine of destabilizing the situation after government forces used a Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drone to strike a position controlled by Russian-backed separatists last week. (Reuters, 11.01.21)
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Nov. 2 he had discussed the conflict with Biden on the sidelines of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. "The U.S. continues to support territorial integrity and reforms in Ukraine," Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter. (AFP, 11.02.21)
• U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan said after the G20 summit: “We had the opportunity to consult over this past weekend with key allies and partners on the issue of Ukraine and ensuring that we’re defending Ukraine’s—or supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. We’ll continue to monitor the situation closely. And I don’t have anything else to add at this point.” (The White House, 11.01.21)
• Blinken will meet next week with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Washington, the State Department said. Spokesman Ned Price said Nov. 4 that the meeting will take place on Nov. 10 as Blinken hosts the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
• German and French Foreign Ministry officials expressed concern about Ukraine's use of Turkish-made drones, calling for de-escalation. But Ukrainian officials said the country was exercising its right to self-defense after a Russian howitzer attack killed a Ukrainian serviceman and wounded another. (The Washington Post, 10.30.21, The National Interest, 10.31.21)
• Most of the ammunition and nearly all the weapons used by Ukrainian separatist forces was produced in what is today Russia, according to a detailed weapons-tracing study. The three-year study by the Berlin-based Conflict Armament Research published on Nov. 3 offers a granular view of arms transfers using forensic documentation of ammunition and military equipment recovered from the battlefield. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• The Ukrainian parliament has approved the appointment of the former deputy prime minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, to the post of defense minister. A total of 273 lawmakers voted for Reznikov’s appointment to the post on Nov. 4, a day after parliament accepted Reznikov's resignation as deputy prime minister for the reintegration of eastern regions controlled by Russia-backed separatists. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• Ukraine will pay $14 billion in debt by 2023. The NBU noted that due to the distribution of $2.7 billion, Ukraine was able to increase reserves in August to the maximum level since April 2012 to ($31.6 billion). Ukraine passed the peak payments on the national debt in September of $3.1 billion. (Ukraine Business News, 11.01.21)

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• The Russian and Belarusian leaders have signed off on a series of road maps aimed at deepening the integration of the two neighbors as part of a decades-old plan to create a “Union State,” state media reported Nov. 4. Putin and Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko signed an agreement providing for a total of 28 integration “programs” at an online meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State. The document focuses mainly on economic and regulatory issues, including common policies on taxation, banking, industry, agriculture and energy. In addition, they approved a joint military doctrine. There was no mention of issues surrounding political integration. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
  • "We will together resist any attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of our sovereign states and Russia will of course continue to provide assistance to the brotherly Belarusian people—there is no doubt about that," Putin said. (The Moscow Times/AFP, 11.05.21)
  • Belarus and Russia are poised to reinforce the regional grouping of the Union State’s forces, Lukashenko said Nov. 4 at a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State. (TASS, 11.04.21)
• Belarusian soldiers bringing illegal migrants to the border of Poland "threatened to open fire" on Polish troops, Poland’s Defense Ministry said Nov. 4, in what it described as the latest attempt by Minsk to escalate the situation at the frontier. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• Poland accused Belarus of staging an armed “intrusion” into its territory and said on Nov. 3 that it had summoned the Belarusian charge d'affaires to protest “deliberate escalation” on the border. Poland's Foreign Ministry said "unidentified uniformed men armed with long guns" crossed the border overnight on Nov. 1-2. (RFE/RL, 11.03.21)
• Polish border guards recorded more than 700 attempts to illegally cross Poland’s border with Belarus in the previous 24 hours, the border guard service said on Oct. 31, as Poland continues to refuse to allow nongovernmental medical workers to care for migrants stranded at the border. (RFE/RL, 11.01.21)
• Polish lawmakers have approved the building of a $407 million wall on its eastern border with Belarus in a further move aimed at stemming the flow of illegal migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Africa. (RFE/RL, 10.29.21)
• 35 OSCE members asked Minsk to provide answers on the use of “excessive force” against peaceful protesters, “arbitrary or unjust” arrests or detention and “more than 1,500 cases of credible reports of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” among other things. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
• Moldovan President Maia Sandu has declared an end to her country's energy crisis after the government and Russia's Gazprom agreed to extend a contract for natural-gas supplies for a period of five years. Russian gas began flowing to Moldova on Nov. 1 under the new contract with Gazprom, after disagreements between the sides over the price triggered severe shortages in the former Soviet republic. "We managed to get a favorable gas price for our country as in December it will decline to below $400 per 1,000 cubic meters, in November the price is $450, though the market price averages $900-$940 now," he said. (RFE/RL, 11.02.21)
• Kazakh lawmakers have approved a bill on a mass amnesty ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Central Asian state's independence that will be marked next month. Interior Minister Erlan Turghymbaev, who proposed the bill to the members of the parliament's lower chamber, the Mazhilis, said more than 2,300 inmates and over 11,000 men and women on parole will be affected by the amnesty. (RFE/RL, 11.03.21)
• Facebook owner Meta Platforms has denied a claim by Kazakhstan that it had been granted exclusive access to the social-media giant's content reporting system. (RFE/RL, 11.02.21)
• Uzbek authorities have restricted access to most social media and instant messaging platforms for violating the Central Asian country’s personal data legislation, a move felt almost immediately by users. However, presidential spokesman Sherzod Asadov told local media Nov. 3 that access to all the sites would be restored soon and that the head of Uzbekistan’s communications regulator, O'zkomnazorat, Golibsher Ziyaev, had been dismissed for acting wrongly without any authorization. (RFE/RL, 11.03.21)
• Dozens of human rights groups are calling on Turkey to halt plans to deport Turkmen activists to Turkmenistan, warning they could face persecution at home. Turkmen activists residing in Turkey have faced increased pressure in recent months, with a number of reports suggesting some are being detained, placed in deportation facilities and threatened with deportation to Turkmenistan. (RFE/RL, 11.04.21)
• Some 1.6 million Tajik citizens have entered Russia to work so far this year, new government data from Moscow show. It’s a figure that many observers had suspected but it had not been reflected in official statistics, which usually record around 1 million. Migrant laborers are Tajikistan’s top export. In 2019, the remittances they sent from Russia exceeded $2.6 billion—about triple the value of all other Tajik exports that year combined, and equivalent to approximately 28% of Tajikistan’s GDP. (bne IntelliNews, 11.04.21)
• Azerbaijan wishes to buy JF-17 Thunder fighter jets from Pakistan, military attache in the Azerbaijani embassy in Islamabad Mehman Novruzov said. (Interfax, 11.02.21)
• Lawmakers in Azerbaijan have approved a mass amnesty bill to mark the first anniversary of a 44-day war with Armenian forces. Ali Huseynli, deputy chairman of the Milli Maclis (National Assembly), said before lawmakers approved the bill on Nove. 5 that at least 16,000 people will be affected by the clemency act, of which more than 3,000 will be released from penitentiaries. (RFE/RL, 11.05.21)
• The U.S. has joined the EU in voicing concern about the conduct of Georgia's local election runoffs, which resulted in the ruling Georgian Dream party largely sweeping the vote. In a statement Nov. 1, the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi said it agreed with international election observers that the vote was well-administered, but it noted allegations of intimidation, pressure on voters and an escalation of negative rhetoric impacting the vote. (RFE/RL, 11.02.21)

 

IV. Quoteworthy

• No significant developments.