IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
From the always insightful, and anazingly prolific, Paul Goble at Window on Eurasia:
The Russian Federation is seeking a revision in the international system but lacks the economic strength to be a new pillar, according to Fedor Lyukanov. And as a result, Moscow will seek to make up for that shortcoming by sudden and dramatic foreign policy moves as it has been doing in Ukraine.
At a Moscow seminar entitled “Russia in a World Falling Apart: A Revisionist Inspite of Itself” and hosted by Yevgteny Yasin, the editor of “Russia in World Politics” argues that “an entire era is ending not only in Russian politics but more broadly” in the politics of the world since the end of the Cold War.
Read Paul's write up (in English) here and the transcript from the conference (in Russian) here.
RUSSIAN AIRLINES TO CONSIDER RESUMING FLIGHTS OVER EASERN UKRAINE
Not sure what to make of this, but its interesting.
RONALD MCDONALD: A FOREIGN AGENT MONEY LAUNDERER?
Prosecutors in Moscow have opened up a criminal probe into the Russian branch of Ronald McDonald House, a charity that helps children with medical issues. According to a report in the pro-Kremlin daily "Izvestia," prosecutors suspect that McDonalds is using its charity arm to manipulate its accounts or to launder money. The report cites a letter from Moscow's deputy prosecutor Yury Katasonov to the State Duma.
The probe comes in the wake of a series of forced closures of McDonald's restaurants in Russia, ostensibly for health code violations but widely seen as retaliation for Western sanctions.
Read the "Izvestia" report (in Russian) here and The Moscow Times write-up (in English) here.
AFTERNOON NEWS ROUNDUP
A few items from RFE/RL's News Desk:
RIGHTS ACTIVIST PAVEL SHEKHTMAN DETAINED IN MOSCOW
Police in Moscow have detained Pavel Shekhtman, a Russian civil rights activist and Kremlin critic.
Shekhtman's lawyer told the online news site kasparov.ru that his client was detained on October 8 over recent publications in the Internet, but did not give details.
He said Shekhtman was being held in a Moscow pretrial detention center.
Shekhtman is known for his criticism of the Kremlin over rights abuses in Russia.
In March, Shekhtman was attacked by members of a group led by nationalist opposition politician Eduard Limonov over his criticism of Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Russia annexed the Crimea region form Ukraine in March and Kyiv and the West say Moscow has sent troops and weapons to help pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
(Based on reporting by kasparov.ru and grani.ru)
RUSSIA SPARES EURONEWS OVER PUTIN TARGET COVERAGE
Russia has decided not to ban Euronews over footage showing Ukrainian forces using an image depicting President Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler for target practice.
State communications regulator Roskomnadzor voiced the decision in a response to a query from pro-Kremlin lawmaker Mikhail Markelov, Russian media reported.
Markelov had said last month that there was "every reason" to open a criminal investigation and prohibnit Euronews from broadcasting in Russia.
But Roskomnadzor said the target appears in the clip for only about five seconds and "it is not possible for the viewer to visually establish a .... likeness between the image on the target and the President of the Russian Federation," according to media reports.
"We have claims against Euronews," state-run news agency RIA Novosti quoted Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Amelonsky as saying.
(Based on reporting by TASS, RIA Novosti, and RBK)
STUDENTS FROM UKRAINE, GEORGIA, MOLDOVA, ARMENIA TO REPLACE RUSSIANS IN U.S. FLEX PROGRAM
Russia's withdrawal from a 21-year-old U.S. high school exchange program will open more than 100 extra slots for students from Ukraine.
With ties severely strained by the Ukraine crisis, Russia told the United States last month that it would not participate in the 2015-2016 Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX), which provides scholarships to students from 10 former Soviet republics.
The U.S. State Department's top official for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, said she is saddened by Russia's decision "to deny their own citizens the opportunity to study in the United States" and hopes Russia's participation will be restored "in the not-too-distant future."
"In the meantime, we will have more than 100 extra slots for Ukrainians," she said in a speech to students in Kyiv on October 7.
Those slots will bring the number available to Ukrainians to more than 300.
The rest of the nearly 240 slots currently occupied by Russians will go to Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia, according to The New York Times.
(With reporting by The New York Times)
IN CRIMEA, DESPAIR FOR TATARS AND EUPHORIA FOR RUSSIANS
Tom Parfitt has a nice dispatch in "The Telegraph," on Crimea in, six months after the Russian annexation:
This spring, two tragedies hit Ilmi Umerov in one week. First his father died suddenly after a short illness. Then his homeland of Crimea was wrenched from Ukraine and absorbed by Russia.
Mr Umerov is one of 240,000 indigenous Crimean Tatars who live on the Crimean peninsula, which dangles from Ukraine into the Black Sea but which was annexed by the Kremlin in March. His father, Rustem, survived Joseph Stalin’s brutal deportation of the Tartars to Central Asia in 1944 and a ten-year stint in the gulag to return home from exile to his native Crimea as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Now, six months on from the annexation, the Muslim Tatars are facing a new wave of cruelty as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, brings his own brand of authoritarian rule to this newly-minted Russian republic.
Anxiety among the Tatars contrasts sharply with the happiness expressed by Crimea’s dominant Russophone population, still riding the euphoria of joining Russia, despite a tricky transition.
Read the whole piece here. On this week's Power Vertical Podcast (on Octoebr 10), we plan to revisit the Crimean Tatar issue in light of the recent wave of harassment and abductions.
THE CITY OF GHOSTS
I'd highly recommend Christopher Miller's moving dispatch from Luhansk, which brings home the human toll of the conflict in Donbas.
No city in eastern Ukraine has suffered like Luhansk.
Once the epicenter of the country’s metalworking industry with a pre-war population of almost half a million people, the city bore the brunt of the conflict. Though exact estimates are hard to come by, the civilian toll is believed to number between 600 and 1,000 from the city of Luhansk alone.
For two months Ukrainian troops and rebels fought pitched battles here, lobbing thousands of shells at each other, razing entire neighborhoods and villages.
The area now has a desolate, apocalyptic feel.
Electricity, running water, telephone and Internet services were knocked out for more than two months. Long bread lines and people standing for hours in front of the banks to take out money isn't an uncommon sight. Most businesses and cafes have closed as a result of the fighting and, to this day, the city remains largely without basic services.
Fighting forced tens of thousands of people to flee, with some bolting east to Moscow and others going westward, headed for Kiev.
As a result of this exodus, Luhansk has become a ghost town.
Read the whole story in "Mashable" here.
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.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DOLLAR-RUBLE EXCHANGE RATE AND A TWEET?
A tweet can't be more than 140.
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.
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)