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Russia
Reform Monitor
No. 1534, February 13, 2008
American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC
Ukraine averts gas crisis, receives nuke threat;
Kremlin calls for ban on arms in space
Editor: Jonas
Bernstein
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February 12:
President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko have reached
an agreement over Ukraine’s debts to Russia for natural gas, averting a threat
by the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom to cut off shipments,
NEWSru.com
reports. “We heard from our partners today that repayment of the debt will
soon begin and we agreed on principles for cooperation for 2008 and the
following years,” Putin said in a joint press conference with Yushchenko after
their meeting in Moscow.
According
to AK&M Online News, Yushchenko said the two sides agreed that the price of
Russian gas for Ukraine will remain $179 per 1,000 cubic meters. Ukraine’s total
gas debt to Russia is $1.5 billion.
During the same press conference, Putin said Russia could target Ukraine
with nuclear missiles if it joined NATO and hosted elements of a U.S. missile
defense system. “It would be awful even to consider the prospect that if such a
missile defense system was eventually extended to Ukrainian territory too, and
theoretically this can’t be ruled out, Russia would have to target its nuclear
offensive systems at Ukraine,” Putin said, according to a transcript posted on
the Kremlin’s website. “Just imagine it for a second! This is what worries us.”
The European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP) has been forced to suspend its
activities after officials claimed that its historic buildings were “a fire
risk” and a court ordered that all academic work cease, its classrooms be sealed
and its library shut.
The Guardian quotes EUSP academics as saying the move was politically
motivated, stemming from the university’s decision last year to accept a
European Union grant to run a project advising Russia’s political parties on
such matters as how to ensure elections are not rigged. On January 31st, the
EUSP’s academic council bowed to Kremlin pressure and abandoned the monitoring
project.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has presented a joint Russian-Chinese draft of a
treaty banning weapons in space to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament,
the
International Herald Tribune reports. In submitting a draft on the
“prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space, the threat or use of
force against outer space objects,” Lavrov said deployment of weapons in space
“by one state” would “inevitably result in a chain reaction” which, in turn, “is
fraught with a new spiral in the arms race both in space and on the Earth.”
Washington argues that there is no arms race in space and therefore no need to
negotiate a treaty.
February 13:
Saratov Oblast’s chief prosecutor, Yevgeny Grigoryev, has been murdered in what
law enforcement sources believe was a contract killing. Citing Interfax,
Lenta.ru
reports that Grigoryev was shot in the head in the courtyard of his
apartment building in the city of Saratov. According to Interfax, Grigoryev told
a meeting of Saratov Oblast district and city judges on February 8th that the
oblast topped the list of the regions within the Volga Federal District in terms
of the number of people prosecuted for taking bribes. He also criticized the
fact that 81 percent of those convicted of bribe-taking avoided prison terms.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Russia does not plan any punitive
measures if Kosovo unilaterally declares independence from Serbia but is
demanding an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the province,
Agence France-Presse reports. “Russia does not have among its political
instruments any measures for punishing anyone,” Lavrov told reporters following
an EU-Russia meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He added, however, that Moscow is
convinced it would be “a mistake” for Kosovo to declare independence, which it
is widely expected to do on February 17th. |
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(c) 2008, American Foreign Policy Council.
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