Новости за 23.01.2019

Helmer is the longest serving foreign correspondent covering Russia. He published his fascinating memoirs in December of 2018. They are full of insights into what has really been going on in Moscow over the past 30 years. RI wrote about it here. He is the author of 12 books, 3 of them about Russia.

Israeli forces have shifted from a doctrine of “war by stealth” to openly declared aggression on its northern neighbor Syria. For two straight days, the Israelis bombarded Syria’s capital Damascus and its environs with dozens of air-launched cruise missiles. Many of the projectiles were reportedly intercepted by Russian-supplied air defense systems.

The mystery of Lord Victor Rothschild’s (1910-1990) connections to Soviet intelligence has vexed researchers for over a half century now. As the scion of an ultra-wealthy banking house and confidante to Winston Churchill, Rothschild was an influential figure in Britain’s power elite for decades, occupying key positions in counterintelligence, the energy sector and strategic policy planning. But was he also the notorious Cambridge Spy Ring’s “Fifth Man,” a spy for Moscow who could access the crown jewels of UK secrets? Читать дальше...

Russia’s cinema business is growing three times faster than the real economy, but it's a bumpy ride. In 2018 Russian movie-goers set a new record with 56mn visits to a cinema to generate a box office take of RUB13.5bn ($200mn). With one Russian in three having a night out in front of the silver screen, the growth of the business is fuelling a revival in the whole media sector where Russia has a long and prestigious pedigree.

On Dec. 28, 2018, Bre Payton, 26-year-old staff writer for the conservative website “The Federalist,” died suddenly. Payton’s friend, San Diego politician Morgan Murtaugh, found her unresponsive early in the morning of the 27th. She was rushed to a hospital, and a web page that was very quickly set up informed the public, “After a CT scan and hours of testing, they have determined she has the H1N1 flu and possibly meningitis.” She was placed in a medically induced coma and deteriorated rapidly.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the comedian-actor turned presidential competitor and number two in the polls, was shown to have active business in Russia, despite his previous claim that he exited the businesses in 2014 the Skhemy news program produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on January 17.

After WikiLeaks documents provided irrefutable evidence that the Democratic National Committee had violated its charter by rigging its primary for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, what should have happened is this:

The Russian economy is apparently more durable than many Western politicians imagined.

Although Beijing is Moscow’s largest trading partner, while Russia only ranks in the second ten among China’s importers, the Kremlin is strategically the most important contractor because it supplies the most desirable product – oil – and Chinese demand for this raw material is growing. It appears that an increase in Russian oil exports to China will be at the expense of European consumers.

In just the month of December 2018, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus met three times: in St. Petersburg on the 6th (see EDM, December 12, 2018) and in Moscow on the 25th and 29th. On the two last occasions, they negotiated over various economic and political matters for more than three hours. No official statement has been issued aside from an agreement to create a joint taskforce on the Russia-Belarus Union State.

The apparent thaw in Damascus’ relations with the Arab world is more bad news for Turkey, which is already having a difficult time coping with the rapid change in the balance of power in Syria.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible … make violent revolution inevitable,” said John F. Kennedy.

A suicide car bomb attack on a military convoy in northeastern Syria on Monday killed five members of a Kurdish-majority group accompanying US-led coalition troops, the spokesperson of the US coalition against the Islamic State said.

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