IF YOU BUY THIS, YOU ARE SUPPORTING AGGRESSION!
Via "The Moscow Times":
Kiev's municipal council has ordered stores in the capital to label Russian-imported goods with additional markings to warn consumers they could be supporting the "aggressor" by buying the products, media reports said.
THE $55 BILLION QUESTION
How much will it cost to save the ruble? Can it be saved? According to a report in Business Insider, the Russian Central Bank has spent an eyepopping $55 billion so far this year to prop up the ruble -- depleting the country's foreign currency reserves to $454 billion, down from $509 billion.
In October alone, the Central Bank has spent $1.85 billion to support the currency, which has fallen to record lows.
"Why is this happening? Well, the cause of the latest pressure has come mostly from the worsening outlook for Russia's most important export — oil. Brent crude oil prices slid to a 27-month low on Wednesday, over 20% down from its June peak, meaning that it has now technically entered a bear market."
Read the whole piece here.
MORNING NEWS ROUNDUP
Good morning. Here are some items from RFE/RL's News Desk:
CIS SUMMIT OPENS IN MINSK
A summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) opens later on October 10 in the Belarus capital, Minsk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to attend, while his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko is staying away.
The summit comes amid ongoing tensions between Kyiv and Moscow over Russia's agressive policies in Ukraine.
In May, Ukraine announced plans to quit the CIS.
Russia illegally annexed Crimea in March and has been accused of fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine, including sending arms and soldiers across the border, which Moscow denies.
(Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax)
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV HOSPITALIZED
Russian media report former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has been hospitalized.
Quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency on October 9, Gorbachev said his health was "deteriorating," without disclosing where or why he was hospitalized.
The 83-year-old Gorbachev told the Interfax news agency he was "determined to fight" for his life.
Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and is remembered for instituting sweeping political and economic reforms that became known as "glasnost", or openness, and "perestroika", or rebuilding.
(Based on reporting by Interfax and AFP)
NULAND: NO SANCTIONS RELIEF FOR RUSSIA UNTIL FORCES LEAVE UKRAINE
A senior U.S. diplomat says there should be no sanctions relief for Russia until all foreign forces and equipment have left Ukraine, Kyiv's sovereignty over its border has been restored and all hostages have been released.
"Today there is a peace deal on paper in Ukraine, there is thankfully peace across a lot of Ukraine, but the peace deal is still being violated in key sectors," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.
She was speaking at an Aspen Institute conference on transatlantic relations in Berlin on October 9.
A cease-fire agreed on September 5 is still in place, although some fighting has continued, especially in and around the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
In a related development, the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the sidelines of a meeting of Asian and European leaders in Milan next week.
(Based on reporting by Reuters)
MOSCOW OUTRAGED BY 'COWBOY METHODS' OF U.S. IN ARMS TRAFFICKER CASE
Moscow is reacting furiously to the sentencing of Dmitry Ustinov, a Russian citizen who admitted to conspiring to violate an arms control law in July.
"We are not going to put up with such 'cowboy's methods' against our citizens, who, in case of arrest, must stand trial in a Russian court and in accordance with Russian legislation," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich on October 9.
Ustinov was detained by Lithuanian authorities in April 2013 at the request of the U.S. He was deported to the U.S. to stand trial that August.
He was sentenced to 3 years on October 7 for shipping weapons that the U.S. prohibits export. However, the judge awarded him credit for time served, so his sentence will be about a year and a half.
AKSYONOV ELECTED AS ANNEXED CRIMEA'S HEAD
Crimea's parliament has elected Sergei Aksyonov head of the annexed peninsula in a unanimous vote.
All 75 lawmakers supported Aksyonov in the vote on October 9.
Aksyonov, 41, has served as acting head of Crimea since mid-April, weeks after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine following a referendum denounced as illegitimate by Kyiv, the West, and the UN General Assembly.
He played a key role in the annexation process that began after Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president sympathetic to Moscow, was toppled by antigovernment protests in Kyiv.
All 75 lawmakers in parliament supported Aksyonov in the vote on October 9.
Ukraine considers Crimea its territory, occupied by Russia, and says elections held by Russian authorities there are illegal.
Aksyonov has made tough comments targeting Crimea Tatars, who say their minority has faced abuses under Russian rule.
(Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS)
BACK WHEN PUTIN WAS JUST A FACE IN THE CROWD
"Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has always been a visible and important figure"
KHODORKOVSKY HUMOR
Courtesy of Ben Judah:
ESTONIA PASSES SAME-SEX CIVIL UNIONS -- SENDS MESSAGE TO RUSSIA
On October 5, Stephen Fry had an op-ed in "The Independent" about how the Kremlin, with help from U.S. evangelicals, was trying to prevent the Estonian parliament from passing a law on same-sex partnerships.
Here's the key graf:
"The World Congress of Families (WCF), a US-based evangelist group that has already done so much to ruin Uganda, has teamed up with the Kremlin to parachute into Estonia huge quantities of money with which to browbeat, bully and blackmail parliamentarians, with which to spew out tens of thousands of automated provocative hate-speech emails, with which to produce booklets for every Estonian home repeating the usual vile libels about homosexuality being akin to paedophilia, a decadent “Western” life choice and a threat to the citizenry and future of the world."
Today, Estonia gave its answer:
Estonia has become the first former Soviet republic to legalize same-sex partnerships.
In a narrow, 40-38 vote, parliament approved a civil partnership act that recognizes civil unions between couples regardless of gender.
Twenty-three lawmakers were absent or abstained in the third and final reading of the bill.
The law comes into force in 2016.
It allows same-sex couples to adopt the children of either partner but does not expressly grant them the right to adopt other children.
The Estonian Human Rights Center said it would send a strong message to neighboring Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last year banning the spread of gay "propaganda" among minors, which critics say amounts to a ban on gay-rights rallies and encourages prejudice against homosexuals.
Now an EU member, Estonia chafed under Moscow's control for nearly half a century before the Soviet collapse of 1991.
(Based on reporting by AP and RIA Novosti)
MORNING NEWS ROUNDUP
From RFE/RL's News Desk
UKRAINIAN FM: 'FROZEN CONFLICT COULD DESTABILIZE EUROPE'
Ukraine has urged the European Union not to accept pro-Russian rebels carving out a de facto state in the east of the country, warning it could destabilize Europe.
Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin urged Moscow to dissuade separatists from holding their own elections in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk next month.
Speaking to Reuters on October 8, Klimkin said local people would do better to vote in local elections organized by Kyiv in December.
Klimkin said "fake elections" organized by the rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk would reinforce impressions eastern Ukraine is becoming a long-term "frozen conflict" like Transdniester or Abkhazia, Moscow-backed breakaway regions of Moldova and Georgia.
Klimkin said he was not trying to "blackmail" western European states into stepping up actions, such as economic sanctions, against Russia, or to get NATO to increase non-military assistance to Kyiv.
Klimkin was speaking in Brussels, where he and other senior Ukrainian officials met EU and NATO counterparts.
Among those with whom Klimkin held talks was NATO's new Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
"The NATO secretary general has changed, but the priority importance of Ukraine remains the same," Klimkin tweeted after the meeting.
Klimkin said the country would seek European Commission funding to help eastern residents survive the winter with limited access to essential supplies.
In Washington, Ukrainian Central Bank chief Valeria Gontareva met with IMF boss Christine Lagarde in hope of speeding up the delivery of a $17.1-billion loan and even expanding the amount.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told his cabinet that Gontareva would ask the IMF "to modify its program taking current realities into account".
The two-year IMF arrangement is part of a global $27-billion package approved in April to help the new leaders avert bankruptcy and pull Ukraine out of its third recession in six years.
But the economic slide has only accelerated and is now expected to see the economy shrink by up to nine percent this year.
Last month, the IMF itself warned Ukraine may need an additional $19 billion in short-term assistance should the conflict in the east stretch through the end of next year.
(With reporting by Reuters and AFP)
SANCTIONS COMPENSATION BILL ADVANCES IN DUMA
Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, has passed in the first reading a bill aimed at compensating Russian individuals hit by Western sanctions.
The draft law would allow individuals affected by property seizures outside Russia to receive compensation from Russia's state budget.
The draft law would also allow Russian judges to order the confiscation of property of foreign states.
Members of Russian opposition parties opposed the bill and it passed only by a vote of 233 to 202.
Russian Economy Minister Aleksei Ulyukayev has warned that passage of the bill would accelerate already high levels of capital flight.
The law was first proposed in April but was withdrawn after a government memo criticized it as being against international law and the Russian Constitution.
It was resubmitted in September, one day after Italian authorities seized $40 million of property belonging to Arkady Rotenberg, a Russian businessman and longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin.
(Based on reporting by Interfax, AP, and AFP)
UN SAYS HUNDREDS KILLED DURING EASTERN UKRAINE CEASEFIRE
The United Nations says at least 331 deaths have been reported in eastern Ukraine since a cease-fire deal between government forces and pro-Russian separatists was agreed on September 5.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on October 8 that hostilities continue in Donetsk, one of two major cities held by the separatists, and around the towns of Debaltseve and Schastye.
It said at least 3,660 people have been killed and 8,756 wounded in eastern Ukraine since fighting began in mid-April.
Nearly 376,000 people from eastern Ukraine have been displaced during the more than six months of fighting.
Some of the 331 deaths reported since the September 5 cease-fire agreement may have occurred before that date.
Fighting in Donetsk has focused mainly around the government-controlled airport, but nearby residential areas have been hit repeatedly by shells.
Rebel-controlled Donetsk city hall said on October 8 that three civilians were killed by shelling overnight.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland continued her visit to Ukraine on October 8 with plans to travel to eastern Ukraine.
Reports of Nuland's trip to the restive region did not specify where exactly she planned to visit.
Earlier on October 8, Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt announced that the United States has handed over equipment to the Ukrainian border guard service.
Ukraine's UNIAN news agency reports that the equipment includes trucks, tractors, fuel trucks, armored minibuses, cranes, and excavators worth some $3 million.
Nuland said during a visit to a Ukrainian border guard base outside Kyiv that the United States would provide an additional $10 million in protective gear and nonlethal equipment to Ukrainian servicemen.
Nuland said Ukrainian authorities have devised a plan to regain control over parts of Ukraine's eastern border with Russia but she did not provide details.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has complained that the inability to properly control that border has made it possible for people to cross into Ukraine from Russia and join pro-Russian separatist forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
(With reporting by AP, Reuters, and TASS)
CZECH PROTESTERS CALL FOR COURAGE AGAINST PUTIN'S RUSSIA
Two Czech men have staged a protest against the government’s policies toward Russia by stripping to the waist at a government press conference and calling on Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka to “show courage” against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The protesters stood up as Sobotka was leaving an October 8 press conference in Prague, taking off their shirts to reveal painted messages that said: "Don’t Be With Putin" and "Protect Freedom."
They also distributed leaflets saying "Ukraine needs help" and calling on Sobotka not to "collaborate" with lobbyists from Czech firms that do business with Russia.
The leaflets said Sobotka has “thrown Ukraine overboard in the same way that Western politicians did in 1938 when they betrayed our country,” a reference to the appeasement policies of Britain's then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany.
(With reporting by Idnes.cz)
LUKASHENKA UNPLUGGED: IF CRIMEA IS RUSSIA THEN RUSSIA IS MONGOLIA
What has gotten into Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka? In an October 5 interview with Kazakhstan's 16/12 television channel, Lukashenka suggested that if Crimea is Russia then -- Russia is Mongolia! Either Lukashenka has totally gone off the reservation, or he is playing a high-risk game with the Kremlin.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DOLLAR-RUBLE EXCHANGE RATE AND A TWEET?
A tweet can't be more than 140.
RUSSIA'S OLIGARCH PROTECTION ACT
Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies whose assets are seized by a foreign government may soon be able to claim compensation -- from Russian taxpayers. A bill "On Compensation for Western Sanctions" has passed its first reading in the State Duma.
According to the legislation, which still must pass two more readings and be signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law, citizens whose assets are "unjustly" seized by foreign governments can petition Russian courts for compensation from the budget.
The media has dubbed it the Rotenberg law because it was proposed after an Italian court froze 30 million euros of assets of Arkady Rotenberg, a Russian businessman and Putin crony.