Russian History - Background
Background - Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities. In the early 17th century, a new ROMANOV Dynasty continued this policy of expansion across Siberia to the Pacific. Under PETER I (ruled 1682-1725), hegemony was extended to the Baltic Sea and the country was renamed the Russian Empire. During the 19th century, more territorial acquisitions were made in Europe and Asia. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 contributed to the Revolution of 1905, which resulted in the formation of a parliament and other reforms. Devastating defeats and food shortages in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the ROMANOV Dynasty. The communists under Vladimir LENIN seized power soon after and formed the USSR. The brutal rule of Iosif STALIN (1928-53) strengthened communist rule and Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a cost of tens of millions of lives. After defeating Germany in World War II as part of an alliance with the US (1939-1945), the USSR expanded its territory and influence in Eastern Europe and emerged as a global power. The USSR was the principal adversary of the US during the Cold War (1947-1991). The Soviet economy and society stagnated in the decades following Stalin's rule, until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91) introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to modernize communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by December 1991 led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and 14 other independent states.
Following economic and political turmoil during President Boris YELTSIN's term (1991-99), Russia shifted toward a centralized authoritarian state under President Vladimir PUTIN (2000-2008, 2012-present) in which the regime seeks to legitimize its rule through managed elections, populist appeals, a foreign policy focused on enhancing the country's geopolitical influence, and commodity-based economic growth. Russia faces a largely subdued rebel movement in Chechnya and some other surrounding regions, although violence still occurs throughout the North Caucasus.
Economy Russia has undergone significant changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, moving from a centrally planned economy towards a more market-based system. Both economic growth and reform have stalled in recent years, however, and Russia remains a predominantly statist economy with a high concentration of wealth in officials' hands. Economic reforms in the 1990s privatized most industry, with notable exceptions in the energy, transportation, banking, and defense-related sectors. The protection of property rights is still weak, and the state continues to interfere in the free operation of the private sector.
Russia is one of the world's leading producers of oil and natural gas, and is also a top exporter of metals such as steel and primary aluminum. Russia is heavily dependent on the movement of world commodity prices as reliance on commodity exports makes it vulnerable to boom and bust cycles that follow the volatile swings in global prices. The economy, which had averaged 7% growth during the 1998-2008 period as oil prices rose rapidly, has seen diminishing growth rates since then due to the exhaustion of Russia’s commodity-based growth model.
A combination of falling oil prices, international sanctions, and structural limitations pushed Russia into a deep recession in 2015, with GDP falling by close to 2.8%. The downturn continued through 2016, with GDP contracting another 0.2%, but was reversed in 2017 as world demand picked up. Government support for import substitution has increased recently in an effort to diversify the economy away from extractive industries.
Economic Hardships of the 1990sThe reforms beginning in the 1990s caused considerable hardships for the average Russian citizen; in the decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy contracted by more than two-fifths. The monetary system was in disarray: the removal of price controls caused a huge escalation in inflation and prices; the value of the ruble , the country's currency, plummeted; and real incomes fell dramatically. Conditions began to improve by the mid-1990s, but the recovery was interrupted in 1998 by a severe financial crisis, which caused the government to sharply devalue the ruble. Numerous banks became insolvent, and millions of citizens lost their life savings. Gradually, corrective measures were implemented. For example, the licensing of private banks became more rigorous, and the government cracked down on tax evasion, which had been rampant since the implementation of economic reforms. To accommodate business growth, taxes on medium and small enterprises were moderated, and the government began to offer incentives for reinvesting profits into the domestic economy. By the early 21st century, the measures had begun to have a positive effect on the Russian economy, which showed signs of recovery and stable growth. Steady earnings from oil exports permitted investments in factories, and the devalued currency made Russian goods more competitive on the international market. (britannica.com)
Economic Regions The economic foundation of the country itself remained similar to that which had been developed during the Soviet period. For purposes of description it is convenient to refer to the official set of 11 traditional economic regions into which Russia is divided (though the federal districts created in 2000 have begun to replace the traditional economic regions for statistical purposes). In Europe the regions are the North, Northwest, Central, Volga-Vyatka, Central Black Earth, North Caucasus, Volga, and Ural, and in Asia they are West Siberia, East Siberia, and the Far East. (britannica.com)
Economic Crisis 1998 Despite Yeltsin's reforms, the economy performed horribly through much of the 1990s. From about 1991 to 1998 Russia lost nearly 40% of its real gross domestic product (GDP), and suffered numerous bouts of inflation that decimated the savings of Russian citizens. Russians also saw their disposable incomes rapidly decline. Further, the capital was leaving the country en masse, with close to $150 billion worth flowing out between 1992 and 1999. In the midst of these negative indicators, Russia would manage to eke out growth in 1997, the first positive growth experienced since the collapse of the Soviet Union . But just as things were beginning to look optimistic, the financial crisis that began in Asia in the summer of 1997 soon spread to Russia causing the ruble to come under speculative attack. The currency crisis would soon be exacerbated by the drop in oil prices at the end of the year, and in the middle of 1998, Russia devalued the ruble, default on its debt, and declare a moratorium on payments to foreign creditors. Real GDP growth became negative again in 1998, declining by 4.9%. (investopedia.com)
While the 1998 financial crisis had immediate negative effects and severely damaged Russia's financial credibility, some argue that it was a “blessing in disguise” as it created conditions that allowed Russia to achieve rapid economic expansion throughout most of the next decade. A significantly depreciated ruble helped stimulate domestic production leading to a spurt of economic growth over the next few years with real GDP growth, reaching 8.3% in 2000 and approximately 5% in 2001. The coincidence of Putin's succession to power in 1999 with the reversal of economic fortunes gained the new president significant popularity, and he made it his goal to avoid the economic chaos of the previous decade and move the country towards long-term growth and stability. Between 2000 and the end of 2002, Putin enacted a number of economic reforms including simplifying the tax system and reducing the number of tax rates. He also brought about the simplification of business registration and licensing requirements, and the privatization of agricultural land. (investopedia.com)
Yet, in 2003, with reforms only partially implemented, Putin confiscated Russia's largest and most successful company, the Yukos oil company. This event signaled the beginning of a wave of takeovers of private companies by the state. Between 2004 and 2006, the Russian government renationalized a number of companies in what were considered to be “strategic” sectors of the economy. An estimate by the OECD claims that the government's share of total equity market capitalization sat at 20% by mid-2003 and had increased to 30% by early 2006. With average real GDP growth of 6.9% per year, an increase of 10.5% in average real wages, and growth of 7.9% in real disposable income all occurring within the period from 1999 to 2008, Putin received a lot of credit for this era of “unprecedented prosperity.” However, much of Russia's economic success during that period coincided with the early 2000s rise in the price of oil, one of the country's most important resources. (investopedia.com)
Support for old Communist Regime The Soviet Union fell apart around 27 years ago, when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. The country eventually broke into 15 independent countries, including Russia, which had been the seat of Soviet power. Today, 66 percent of Russians surveyed say that they regret the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism. (newsweek.com)
Every year, over the past 27 years, the Levada Center has asked Russians the same question, and support for the Soviet Union has remained high. Only in 2012, when Russian President Vladimir Putin won re-election and a wave of protests was held around the country, did support for the Soviet Union fell below 50 percent. (newsweek.com)
Many Russians said that they regret losing the single economic system that existed in the Soviet Union, while others say that they miss living in a great world superpower. Older respondents expressed the most nostalgia. (newsweek.com)
These sentiments have also been expressed by Russian President Putin, who famously described the fall of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century. He made those statements in a state of the union speech in 2005 and has arguably spent the last 13 years working to restore Russia's role as a major superpower. (newsweek.com)
By the mid-2000s, up to 80 percent of the Russian ruling establishment was made up of people with backgrounds in security services, according to a study by acclaimed sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya. The trend was confirmed in numerous subsequent studies. Above all, this included the Soviet secret police, the KGB, which handled counter-espionage and brutally suppressed political dissent. (nbcnews.com)
Cars pass the headquarters of the Federal Security Service in Moscow.The FSB is the domestic successor to the KGB. MAXIM MARMUR / AFP/Getty Images file The KGB's successor the Federal Security Service (FSB) was stripped down in the 1990s but it is now back to being both powerful and feared. It is tasked with fighting spies and extremists, but it also monitors the political opposition to the government. Putin himself is a product of the KGB, having served in the service from 1975 until the collapse of communism in 1991. (nbcnews.com)
Some things have changed: In Soviet times, the KGB was the operative arm of the Communist Party, which ran the country. Now United Russia Party is run by KGB veterans. (nbcnews.com)
What is the Ukraine crisis? Ukraine is a Texas-sized country wedged between Russia and Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, and since then has been a less-than-perfect democracy with a very weak economy and foreign policy that wavers between pro-Russian and pro-European. (vox.com)
This all began as an internal Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union (here's why this was such a big deal mass protests , which Yanukovych attempted to put down violently. Russia backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters. (vox.com)
"Euromaidan" is the name of the anti-government protests, beginning on November 21, 2013, in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev that kicked off the entire crisis. They're called the "Euromaidan" protests because they were about Europe and they happened in Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). (vox.com)
The first, surface reason for the protests was that President Yanukovych had rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union, taking a $15 billion bailout from Russia instead. Lots of Ukrainians had wanted the EU deal, partly because they thought it would help Ukraine's deeply troubled economy, and partly because they saw closer ties with Europe as culturally and politically desirable. (vox.com)
The key facts about Yanukovych are this: he is pro-Russian (and, like lots of Ukrainians, actually a native speaker of Russian rather than Ukrainian), he has a well-earned reputation for corruption and heavy-handedness, and he had a base of support in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking east but was never very popular in its predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west. (vox.com)
The second, deeper reason for the protests was that many Ukrainians saw Yanukovych as corrupt and autocratic and as a stooge of Russia. So his decision to reject the EU deal felt, to many Ukrainians, like he had sold out their country to Moscow. This is why the protesters so quickly expanded their demands from "sign the EU deal" to "Yanukovych must step down." Over the months that followed, Yanukovych tried to break up the protests, first by sending in the dreaded "berkut" internal security forces to crack down, and next by passing a series of laws that severely restricted Ukrainians' basic rights of speech and assembly. Both of these just made protests worse. By late January, they'd expanded to lots of other Ukrainian cities. In February, the parliament turned against Yanukovych, first voting to remove lots of his powers and end the crackdown, and then voting to remove him outright. (vox.com)
Since then, several big things have happened. In February, anti-government protests toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country . Russia, trying to salvage its lost influence in Ukraine, invaded and annexed Crimea the next month. In April, pro-Russia separatist rebels began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine. The rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, killing 298 people, probably accidentally. Fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military intensified, the rebels started losing, and, in August, the Russian army overtly invaded eastern Ukraine to support the rebels. This has all brought the relationship between Russia and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War. Sanctions are pushing the Russian economy to the brink of recession, and more than 2,500 Ukrainians have been killed A lot of this comes down to Ukraine's centuries-long history of Russian domination. The country has been divided more or less evenly between Ukrainians who see Ukraine as part of Europe and those who see it as intrinsically linked to Russia. An internal political crisis over that disagreement may have been inevitable. Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin is pushing an imperial-revival, nationalist worldview that sees Ukraine as part of greater Russia and as the victim of ever-encroaching Western hostility. (vox.com)
It appears unlikely that Ukraine will get Crimea back. It remains unclear whether Russian forces will try to annex parts of eastern Ukraine as well, how the fighting there will end, and what this means for the future of Ukraine and for Putin's increasingly hostile but isolated Russia. (vox.com)
Russian Troops as GunmanIn late February, a few days after Ukraine's pro-Moscow president was ousted from power, strange bands of armed gunmen began seizing government buildings in Crimea. Some Crimeans held rallies to show support for the ousted president and, in some cases, to call to secede from Ukraine and re-join Russia. The bands of gunmen grew until it became obvious they were Russian military forces, who forcefully but bloodlessly brought the entire peninsula under military occupation. On March 16, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly for their region to become a part of Russia. (vox.com)
Most of the world sees Crimea's secession vote as illegitimate for a few reasons: it was held under hostile Russian military occupation with no international monitoring and many reports of intimidation, it was pushed through with only a couple of weeks' warning, and it was illegal under Ukrainian law. Still, legitimate or not, Crimea has effectively become part of Russia. The US and European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for this, but there is no sign that Crimea will return to Ukraine. (vox.com)
Russia launched its well-planned armed aggression against Ukraine on 20 February 2014 with the military operation of its Armed Forces on seizing a part of the Ukrainian territory Crimean peninsula. This date is not even denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense, as it is indicated on the departmental medal “For the return of Crimea”. In fact, only the next day Viktor Yanukovych fled from Kyiv; and it was already 22 February 2014 that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Resolution “On the dissociation of the President of Ukraine from fulfillment of constitutional powers and appointment of early presidential elections in Ukraine”, used by Russia as a pretext for accusations of the alleged “unconstitutional coup in Ukraine”. (mfa.gov.ua)
Microsoft Corp. has issued 13,000 alerts about nation-state hacking attempts to its customers in the last two years, with 52% of incidents between July 2019 and June 2020 related to Russian hackers whose targets have ranged from elections to the Olympics, according to a report published Tuesday [Sept. 29]. Iran was responsible for a quarter of the alerts while China was responsible for 12%. The remainder of the nation-state activity observed by Microsoft came from North Korea and other countries. (insurancejournal.com)
“We see nation-state actors constantly evolving, trying new techniques,” said Tom Burt, a vice president at Microsoft. “As it stands today the attackers are winning in that they are so well resourced, so determined and so agile.” Foreign hackers have continued to target organizations related to American politics in recent weeks, he said. (insurancejournal.com)
In a July 2020 report, the UK and its allies publicly blamed cyber-attacks on organizations involved in coronavirus vaccine development on APT29, a hacking group linked to Russian intelligence agencies. (portswigger.net)
APT29 is a hacking group that western intelligence agencies and various cybersecurity firms have linked to Russian state intelligence agencies. (portswigger.net)
‘APT' in this instance stands for ‘advanced persistent threat' – security industry shorthand for a state-sponsored threat group APT29 has been given various nicknames by cybersecurity firms, including Cozy Bear, CozyDuke, and the Dukes, among others. (portswigger.net)
Russian BOT Traffic - SignificantRussia has one of the highest percentages of fraudulent internet traffic in the world
Cyber CrimeBy OTTAWA, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Canada on Wednesday identified state-sponsored programs in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as major cyber crime threats for the first time, and said it feared foreign actors could try to disrupt power supplies. (reuters.com)
China and Russia Biggest Cyber Offenders Since 2006, Report ...Source: (usnews.com)
Feb 1, 2019 ... As much as $600 billion is annually lost to cybercrime as attackers are ... study labeled China as the biggest state sponsor of cyberattacks on ...
Cybersecurity A poster showing six wanted Russian military intelligence officers is displayed as FBI Deputy ... [+] Director David Bowdich appears for a news conference at the Department of Justice, Monday, Oct. 19, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, pool) Twenty Years of Russian Hacking The recent cyber attacks against 18,000 public and private sector users of SolarWinds' Orion network monitoring software go beyond traditional espionage; they are acts of cyber aggression by Russia against U.S. systems that have continued for twenty years. The Russian attacks on America began in 1996 with the Moonlight Maze attack, one of the first nation state sponsored cyber espionage campaigns. Russia was blamed for the Moonlight Maze attacks, which involved the theft of a massive amount of classified information from numerous government agencies, including the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Defense Department (DoD), as well as defense contractors, and private sector entities. It seriously compromised U.S. national security capabilities, strategies, and interests. (forbes.com)
The Moonlight Maze attack was sophisticated for the time; it routed communications through a third-party server to avoid detection and built back doors in systems so they could reenter later to exfiltrate data. The campaign was carried out over a two-year period and was classified as an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), a software threat so stealthy that it is difficult to detect. Moonlight Maze was initially viewed as a standalone attack but, after time, computer researchers and investigators began to see similar approaches used in other attacks. Ultimately, we realized the same Russian government-backed groups were behind all of them. (forbes.com)
In 2008, a Russian hacking group named Turla, began attacking U.S. military systems using deception, back doors, rootkits, and infecting government websites. Russian intelligence was blamed for the attack. In 2017 – nearly twenty years after Moonlight Maze – four computer researchers from Kaspersky Labs and Kings College in London were able to obtain the third-party server used to route the Moonlight Maze attacks and link the Moonlight Maze attacks with Turla. The findings showed that the Russian state-sponsored attacks had been ongoing. (forbes.com)
Terrorism Terrorist group(s) Aum Shimrikyo (AUM/Aleph); Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham; Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham – Caucasus Province (2019)
note: details about the history, aims, leadership, organization, areas of operation, tactics, targets, weapons, size, and sources of support of the group(s) appear(s) in Appendix-T
Transnational Issues
Disputes - international
Russia remains concerned about the smuggling of poppy derivatives from Afghanistan through Central Asian countries; China and Russia have demarcated the once disputed islands at the Amur and Ussuri confluence and in the Argun River in accordance with the 2004 Agreement, ending their centuries-long border disputes; the sovereignty dispute over the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group, known in Japan as the "Northern Territories" and in Russia as the "Southern Kurils," occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, now administered by Russia, and claimed by Japan, remains the primary sticking point to signing a peace treaty formally ending World War II hostilities; Russia's military support and subsequent recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia independence in 2008 continue to sour relations with Georgia; Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia ratified Caspian seabed delimitation treaties based on equidistance, while Iran continues to insist on a one-fifth slice of the sea; Norway and Russia signed a comprehensive maritime boundary agreement in 2010; various groups in Finland advocate restoration of Karelia (Kareliya) and other areas ceded to the Soviet Union following World War II but the Finnish Government asserts no territorial demands; Russia and Estonia signed a technical border agreement in May 2005, but Russia recalled its signature in June 2005 after the Estonian parliament added to its domestic ratification act a historical preamble referencing the Soviet occupation and Estonia's pre-war borders under the 1920 Treaty of Tartu; Russia contends that the preamble allows Estonia to make territorial claims on Russia in the future, while Estonian officials deny that the preamble has any legal impact on the treaty text; Russia demands better treatment of the Russian-speaking population in Estonia and Latvia; Russia remains involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine while also occupying Ukraine’s territory of Crimea; Lithuania and Russia committed to demarcating their boundary in 2006 in accordance with the land and maritime treaty ratified by Russia in May 2003 and by Lithuania in 1999; Lithuania operates a simplified transit regime for Russian nationals traveling from the Kaliningrad coastal exclave into Russia, while still conforming, as an EU member state with an EU external border, where strict Schengen border rules apply; preparations for the demarcation delimitation of land boundary with Ukraine have commenced; the dispute over the boundary between Russia and Ukraine through the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov is suspended due to the occupation of Crimea by Russia; Kazakhstan and Russia boundary delimitation was ratified on November 2005 and field demarcation should commence in 2007; Russian Duma has not yet ratified 1990 Bering Sea Maritime Boundary Agreement with the US; Denmark (Greenland) and Norway have made submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and Russia is collecting additional data to augment its 2001 CLCS submission
Refugees and internally displaced persons refugees (country of origin): 41,251 (Ukraine) (2019)
stateless persons: 68,209 (2019); note - Russia's stateless population consists of Roma, Meskhetian Turks, and ex-Soviet citizens from the former republics; between 2003 and 2010 more than 600,000 stateless people were naturalized; most Meskhetian Turks, followers of Islam with origins in Georgia, fled or were evacuated from Uzbekistan after a 1989 pogrom and have lived in Russia for more than the required five-year residency period; they continue to be denied registration for citizenship and basic rights by local Krasnodar Krai authorities on the grounds that they are temporary illegal migrants
Trafficking in persons current situation: Russia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children who are subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking; with millions of foreign workers, forced labor is Russia’s predominant human trafficking problem and sometimes involves organized crime syndicates; workers from Russia, other European countries, Central Asia, and East and Southeast Asia, including North Korea and Vietnam, are subjected to forced labor in the construction, manufacturing, agricultural, textile, grocery store, maritime, and domestic service industries, as well as in forced begging, waste sorting, and street sweeping; women and children from Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia are subject to sex trafficking in Russia; Russian women and children are victims of sex trafficking domestically and in Northeast Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Africa, the US, and the Middle East
tier rating: Tier 3 - Russia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making a significant effort to do so; prosecutions of trafficking offenders remained low in comparison to the scope of Russia’s trafficking problem; the government did not develop or employ a formal system for identifying trafficking victims or referring them to protective services, although authorities reportedly assisted a limited number of victims on an ad hoc basis; foreign victims, the largest group in Russia, were not entitled to state-provided rehabilitative services and were routinely detained and deported; the government has not reported investigating reports of slave-like conditions among North Korean workers in Russia; authorities have made no effort to reduce the demand for forced labor or to develop public awareness of forced labor or sex trafficking (2015)
Illicit drugs limited cultivation of illicit cannabis and opium poppy and producer of methamphetamine, mostly for domestic consumption; government has active illicit crop eradication program; used as transshipment point for Asian opiates, cannabis, and Latin American cocaine bound for growing domestic markets, to a lesser extent Western and Central Europe, and occasionally to the US; major source of heroin precursor chemicals; corruption and organized crime are key concerns; major consumer of opiates
Following economic and political turmoil during President Boris YELTSIN's term (1991-99), Russia shifted toward a centralized authoritarian state under President Vladimir PUTIN (2000-2008, 2012-present) in which the regime seeks to legitimize its rule through managed elections, populist appeals, a foreign policy focused on enhancing the country's geopolitical influence, and commodity-based economic growth. Russia faces a largely subdued rebel movement in Chechnya and some other surrounding regions, although violence still occurs throughout the North Caucasus.
Economy Russia has undergone significant changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union, moving from a centrally planned economy towards a more market-based system. Both economic growth and reform have stalled in recent years, however, and Russia remains a predominantly statist economy with a high concentration of wealth in officials' hands. Economic reforms in the 1990s privatized most industry, with notable exceptions in the energy, transportation, banking, and defense-related sectors. The protection of property rights is still weak, and the state continues to interfere in the free operation of the private sector.
Russia is one of the world's leading producers of oil and natural gas, and is also a top exporter of metals such as steel and primary aluminum. Russia is heavily dependent on the movement of world commodity prices as reliance on commodity exports makes it vulnerable to boom and bust cycles that follow the volatile swings in global prices. The economy, which had averaged 7% growth during the 1998-2008 period as oil prices rose rapidly, has seen diminishing growth rates since then due to the exhaustion of Russia’s commodity-based growth model.
A combination of falling oil prices, international sanctions, and structural limitations pushed Russia into a deep recession in 2015, with GDP falling by close to 2.8%. The downturn continued through 2016, with GDP contracting another 0.2%, but was reversed in 2017 as world demand picked up. Government support for import substitution has increased recently in an effort to diversify the economy away from extractive industries.
Economic Hardships of the 1990sThe reforms beginning in the 1990s caused considerable hardships for the average Russian citizen; in the decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy contracted by more than two-fifths. The monetary system was in disarray: the removal of price controls caused a huge escalation in inflation and prices; the value of the ruble , the country's currency, plummeted; and real incomes fell dramatically. Conditions began to improve by the mid-1990s, but the recovery was interrupted in 1998 by a severe financial crisis, which caused the government to sharply devalue the ruble. Numerous banks became insolvent, and millions of citizens lost their life savings. Gradually, corrective measures were implemented. For example, the licensing of private banks became more rigorous, and the government cracked down on tax evasion, which had been rampant since the implementation of economic reforms. To accommodate business growth, taxes on medium and small enterprises were moderated, and the government began to offer incentives for reinvesting profits into the domestic economy. By the early 21st century, the measures had begun to have a positive effect on the Russian economy, which showed signs of recovery and stable growth. Steady earnings from oil exports permitted investments in factories, and the devalued currency made Russian goods more competitive on the international market. (britannica.com)
Economic Regions The economic foundation of the country itself remained similar to that which had been developed during the Soviet period. For purposes of description it is convenient to refer to the official set of 11 traditional economic regions into which Russia is divided (though the federal districts created in 2000 have begun to replace the traditional economic regions for statistical purposes). In Europe the regions are the North, Northwest, Central, Volga-Vyatka, Central Black Earth, North Caucasus, Volga, and Ural, and in Asia they are West Siberia, East Siberia, and the Far East. (britannica.com)
Economic Crisis 1998 Despite Yeltsin's reforms, the economy performed horribly through much of the 1990s. From about 1991 to 1998 Russia lost nearly 40% of its real gross domestic product (GDP), and suffered numerous bouts of inflation that decimated the savings of Russian citizens. Russians also saw their disposable incomes rapidly decline. Further, the capital was leaving the country en masse, with close to $150 billion worth flowing out between 1992 and 1999. In the midst of these negative indicators, Russia would manage to eke out growth in 1997, the first positive growth experienced since the collapse of the Soviet Union . But just as things were beginning to look optimistic, the financial crisis that began in Asia in the summer of 1997 soon spread to Russia causing the ruble to come under speculative attack. The currency crisis would soon be exacerbated by the drop in oil prices at the end of the year, and in the middle of 1998, Russia devalued the ruble, default on its debt, and declare a moratorium on payments to foreign creditors. Real GDP growth became negative again in 1998, declining by 4.9%. (investopedia.com)
While the 1998 financial crisis had immediate negative effects and severely damaged Russia's financial credibility, some argue that it was a “blessing in disguise” as it created conditions that allowed Russia to achieve rapid economic expansion throughout most of the next decade. A significantly depreciated ruble helped stimulate domestic production leading to a spurt of economic growth over the next few years with real GDP growth, reaching 8.3% in 2000 and approximately 5% in 2001. The coincidence of Putin's succession to power in 1999 with the reversal of economic fortunes gained the new president significant popularity, and he made it his goal to avoid the economic chaos of the previous decade and move the country towards long-term growth and stability. Between 2000 and the end of 2002, Putin enacted a number of economic reforms including simplifying the tax system and reducing the number of tax rates. He also brought about the simplification of business registration and licensing requirements, and the privatization of agricultural land. (investopedia.com)
Yet, in 2003, with reforms only partially implemented, Putin confiscated Russia's largest and most successful company, the Yukos oil company. This event signaled the beginning of a wave of takeovers of private companies by the state. Between 2004 and 2006, the Russian government renationalized a number of companies in what were considered to be “strategic” sectors of the economy. An estimate by the OECD claims that the government's share of total equity market capitalization sat at 20% by mid-2003 and had increased to 30% by early 2006. With average real GDP growth of 6.9% per year, an increase of 10.5% in average real wages, and growth of 7.9% in real disposable income all occurring within the period from 1999 to 2008, Putin received a lot of credit for this era of “unprecedented prosperity.” However, much of Russia's economic success during that period coincided with the early 2000s rise in the price of oil, one of the country's most important resources. (investopedia.com)
Support for old Communist Regime The Soviet Union fell apart around 27 years ago, when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. The country eventually broke into 15 independent countries, including Russia, which had been the seat of Soviet power. Today, 66 percent of Russians surveyed say that they regret the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism. (newsweek.com)
Every year, over the past 27 years, the Levada Center has asked Russians the same question, and support for the Soviet Union has remained high. Only in 2012, when Russian President Vladimir Putin won re-election and a wave of protests was held around the country, did support for the Soviet Union fell below 50 percent. (newsweek.com)
Many Russians said that they regret losing the single economic system that existed in the Soviet Union, while others say that they miss living in a great world superpower. Older respondents expressed the most nostalgia. (newsweek.com)
These sentiments have also been expressed by Russian President Putin, who famously described the fall of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century. He made those statements in a state of the union speech in 2005 and has arguably spent the last 13 years working to restore Russia's role as a major superpower. (newsweek.com)
By the mid-2000s, up to 80 percent of the Russian ruling establishment was made up of people with backgrounds in security services, according to a study by acclaimed sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya. The trend was confirmed in numerous subsequent studies. Above all, this included the Soviet secret police, the KGB, which handled counter-espionage and brutally suppressed political dissent. (nbcnews.com)
Cars pass the headquarters of the Federal Security Service in Moscow.The FSB is the domestic successor to the KGB. MAXIM MARMUR / AFP/Getty Images file The KGB's successor the Federal Security Service (FSB) was stripped down in the 1990s but it is now back to being both powerful and feared. It is tasked with fighting spies and extremists, but it also monitors the political opposition to the government. Putin himself is a product of the KGB, having served in the service from 1975 until the collapse of communism in 1991. (nbcnews.com)
Some things have changed: In Soviet times, the KGB was the operative arm of the Communist Party, which ran the country. Now United Russia Party is run by KGB veterans. (nbcnews.com)
What is the Ukraine crisis? Ukraine is a Texas-sized country wedged between Russia and Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, and since then has been a less-than-perfect democracy with a very weak economy and foreign policy that wavers between pro-Russian and pro-European. (vox.com)
This all began as an internal Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union (here's why this was such a big deal mass protests , which Yanukovych attempted to put down violently. Russia backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters. (vox.com)
"Euromaidan" is the name of the anti-government protests, beginning on November 21, 2013, in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev that kicked off the entire crisis. They're called the "Euromaidan" protests because they were about Europe and they happened in Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). (vox.com)
The first, surface reason for the protests was that President Yanukovych had rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union, taking a $15 billion bailout from Russia instead. Lots of Ukrainians had wanted the EU deal, partly because they thought it would help Ukraine's deeply troubled economy, and partly because they saw closer ties with Europe as culturally and politically desirable. (vox.com)
The key facts about Yanukovych are this: he is pro-Russian (and, like lots of Ukrainians, actually a native speaker of Russian rather than Ukrainian), he has a well-earned reputation for corruption and heavy-handedness, and he had a base of support in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking east but was never very popular in its predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west. (vox.com)
The second, deeper reason for the protests was that many Ukrainians saw Yanukovych as corrupt and autocratic and as a stooge of Russia. So his decision to reject the EU deal felt, to many Ukrainians, like he had sold out their country to Moscow. This is why the protesters so quickly expanded their demands from "sign the EU deal" to "Yanukovych must step down." Over the months that followed, Yanukovych tried to break up the protests, first by sending in the dreaded "berkut" internal security forces to crack down, and next by passing a series of laws that severely restricted Ukrainians' basic rights of speech and assembly. Both of these just made protests worse. By late January, they'd expanded to lots of other Ukrainian cities. In February, the parliament turned against Yanukovych, first voting to remove lots of his powers and end the crackdown, and then voting to remove him outright. (vox.com)
Since then, several big things have happened. In February, anti-government protests toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country . Russia, trying to salvage its lost influence in Ukraine, invaded and annexed Crimea the next month. In April, pro-Russia separatist rebels began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine. The rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, killing 298 people, probably accidentally. Fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military intensified, the rebels started losing, and, in August, the Russian army overtly invaded eastern Ukraine to support the rebels. This has all brought the relationship between Russia and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War. Sanctions are pushing the Russian economy to the brink of recession, and more than 2,500 Ukrainians have been killed A lot of this comes down to Ukraine's centuries-long history of Russian domination. The country has been divided more or less evenly between Ukrainians who see Ukraine as part of Europe and those who see it as intrinsically linked to Russia. An internal political crisis over that disagreement may have been inevitable. Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin is pushing an imperial-revival, nationalist worldview that sees Ukraine as part of greater Russia and as the victim of ever-encroaching Western hostility. (vox.com)
It appears unlikely that Ukraine will get Crimea back. It remains unclear whether Russian forces will try to annex parts of eastern Ukraine as well, how the fighting there will end, and what this means for the future of Ukraine and for Putin's increasingly hostile but isolated Russia. (vox.com)
Russian Troops as GunmanIn late February, a few days after Ukraine's pro-Moscow president was ousted from power, strange bands of armed gunmen began seizing government buildings in Crimea. Some Crimeans held rallies to show support for the ousted president and, in some cases, to call to secede from Ukraine and re-join Russia. The bands of gunmen grew until it became obvious they were Russian military forces, who forcefully but bloodlessly brought the entire peninsula under military occupation. On March 16, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly for their region to become a part of Russia. (vox.com)
Most of the world sees Crimea's secession vote as illegitimate for a few reasons: it was held under hostile Russian military occupation with no international monitoring and many reports of intimidation, it was pushed through with only a couple of weeks' warning, and it was illegal under Ukrainian law. Still, legitimate or not, Crimea has effectively become part of Russia. The US and European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for this, but there is no sign that Crimea will return to Ukraine. (vox.com)
Russia launched its well-planned armed aggression against Ukraine on 20 February 2014 with the military operation of its Armed Forces on seizing a part of the Ukrainian territory Crimean peninsula. This date is not even denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense, as it is indicated on the departmental medal “For the return of Crimea”. In fact, only the next day Viktor Yanukovych fled from Kyiv; and it was already 22 February 2014 that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Resolution “On the dissociation of the President of Ukraine from fulfillment of constitutional powers and appointment of early presidential elections in Ukraine”, used by Russia as a pretext for accusations of the alleged “unconstitutional coup in Ukraine”. (mfa.gov.ua)
Microsoft Corp. has issued 13,000 alerts about nation-state hacking attempts to its customers in the last two years, with 52% of incidents between July 2019 and June 2020 related to Russian hackers whose targets have ranged from elections to the Olympics, according to a report published Tuesday [Sept. 29]. Iran was responsible for a quarter of the alerts while China was responsible for 12%. The remainder of the nation-state activity observed by Microsoft came from North Korea and other countries. (insurancejournal.com)
“We see nation-state actors constantly evolving, trying new techniques,” said Tom Burt, a vice president at Microsoft. “As it stands today the attackers are winning in that they are so well resourced, so determined and so agile.” Foreign hackers have continued to target organizations related to American politics in recent weeks, he said. (insurancejournal.com)
In a July 2020 report, the UK and its allies publicly blamed cyber-attacks on organizations involved in coronavirus vaccine development on APT29, a hacking group linked to Russian intelligence agencies. (portswigger.net)
APT29 is a hacking group that western intelligence agencies and various cybersecurity firms have linked to Russian state intelligence agencies. (portswigger.net)
‘APT' in this instance stands for ‘advanced persistent threat' – security industry shorthand for a state-sponsored threat group APT29 has been given various nicknames by cybersecurity firms, including Cozy Bear, CozyDuke, and the Dukes, among others. (portswigger.net)
Russian BOT Traffic - SignificantRussia has one of the highest percentages of fraudulent internet traffic in the world
Cyber CrimeBy OTTAWA, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Canada on Wednesday identified state-sponsored programs in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as major cyber crime threats for the first time, and said it feared foreign actors could try to disrupt power supplies. (reuters.com)
China and Russia Biggest Cyber Offenders Since 2006, Report ...Source: (usnews.com)
Feb 1, 2019 ... As much as $600 billion is annually lost to cybercrime as attackers are ... study labeled China as the biggest state sponsor of cyberattacks on ...
Cybersecurity A poster showing six wanted Russian military intelligence officers is displayed as FBI Deputy ... [+] Director David Bowdich appears for a news conference at the Department of Justice, Monday, Oct. 19, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, pool) Twenty Years of Russian Hacking The recent cyber attacks against 18,000 public and private sector users of SolarWinds' Orion network monitoring software go beyond traditional espionage; they are acts of cyber aggression by Russia against U.S. systems that have continued for twenty years. The Russian attacks on America began in 1996 with the Moonlight Maze attack, one of the first nation state sponsored cyber espionage campaigns. Russia was blamed for the Moonlight Maze attacks, which involved the theft of a massive amount of classified information from numerous government agencies, including the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Defense Department (DoD), as well as defense contractors, and private sector entities. It seriously compromised U.S. national security capabilities, strategies, and interests. (forbes.com)
The Moonlight Maze attack was sophisticated for the time; it routed communications through a third-party server to avoid detection and built back doors in systems so they could reenter later to exfiltrate data. The campaign was carried out over a two-year period and was classified as an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), a software threat so stealthy that it is difficult to detect. Moonlight Maze was initially viewed as a standalone attack but, after time, computer researchers and investigators began to see similar approaches used in other attacks. Ultimately, we realized the same Russian government-backed groups were behind all of them. (forbes.com)
In 2008, a Russian hacking group named Turla, began attacking U.S. military systems using deception, back doors, rootkits, and infecting government websites. Russian intelligence was blamed for the attack. In 2017 – nearly twenty years after Moonlight Maze – four computer researchers from Kaspersky Labs and Kings College in London were able to obtain the third-party server used to route the Moonlight Maze attacks and link the Moonlight Maze attacks with Turla. The findings showed that the Russian state-sponsored attacks had been ongoing. (forbes.com)
Terrorism Terrorist group(s) Aum Shimrikyo (AUM/Aleph); Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham; Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham – Caucasus Province (2019)
note: details about the history, aims, leadership, organization, areas of operation, tactics, targets, weapons, size, and sources of support of the group(s) appear(s) in Appendix-T
Transnational Issues
Disputes - international
Russia remains concerned about the smuggling of poppy derivatives from Afghanistan through Central Asian countries; China and Russia have demarcated the once disputed islands at the Amur and Ussuri confluence and in the Argun River in accordance with the 2004 Agreement, ending their centuries-long border disputes; the sovereignty dispute over the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group, known in Japan as the "Northern Territories" and in Russia as the "Southern Kurils," occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, now administered by Russia, and claimed by Japan, remains the primary sticking point to signing a peace treaty formally ending World War II hostilities; Russia's military support and subsequent recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia independence in 2008 continue to sour relations with Georgia; Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia ratified Caspian seabed delimitation treaties based on equidistance, while Iran continues to insist on a one-fifth slice of the sea; Norway and Russia signed a comprehensive maritime boundary agreement in 2010; various groups in Finland advocate restoration of Karelia (Kareliya) and other areas ceded to the Soviet Union following World War II but the Finnish Government asserts no territorial demands; Russia and Estonia signed a technical border agreement in May 2005, but Russia recalled its signature in June 2005 after the Estonian parliament added to its domestic ratification act a historical preamble referencing the Soviet occupation and Estonia's pre-war borders under the 1920 Treaty of Tartu; Russia contends that the preamble allows Estonia to make territorial claims on Russia in the future, while Estonian officials deny that the preamble has any legal impact on the treaty text; Russia demands better treatment of the Russian-speaking population in Estonia and Latvia; Russia remains involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine while also occupying Ukraine’s territory of Crimea; Lithuania and Russia committed to demarcating their boundary in 2006 in accordance with the land and maritime treaty ratified by Russia in May 2003 and by Lithuania in 1999; Lithuania operates a simplified transit regime for Russian nationals traveling from the Kaliningrad coastal exclave into Russia, while still conforming, as an EU member state with an EU external border, where strict Schengen border rules apply; preparations for the demarcation delimitation of land boundary with Ukraine have commenced; the dispute over the boundary between Russia and Ukraine through the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov is suspended due to the occupation of Crimea by Russia; Kazakhstan and Russia boundary delimitation was ratified on November 2005 and field demarcation should commence in 2007; Russian Duma has not yet ratified 1990 Bering Sea Maritime Boundary Agreement with the US; Denmark (Greenland) and Norway have made submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and Russia is collecting additional data to augment its 2001 CLCS submission
Refugees and internally displaced persons refugees (country of origin): 41,251 (Ukraine) (2019)
stateless persons: 68,209 (2019); note - Russia's stateless population consists of Roma, Meskhetian Turks, and ex-Soviet citizens from the former republics; between 2003 and 2010 more than 600,000 stateless people were naturalized; most Meskhetian Turks, followers of Islam with origins in Georgia, fled or were evacuated from Uzbekistan after a 1989 pogrom and have lived in Russia for more than the required five-year residency period; they continue to be denied registration for citizenship and basic rights by local Krasnodar Krai authorities on the grounds that they are temporary illegal migrants
Trafficking in persons current situation: Russia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children who are subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking; with millions of foreign workers, forced labor is Russia’s predominant human trafficking problem and sometimes involves organized crime syndicates; workers from Russia, other European countries, Central Asia, and East and Southeast Asia, including North Korea and Vietnam, are subjected to forced labor in the construction, manufacturing, agricultural, textile, grocery store, maritime, and domestic service industries, as well as in forced begging, waste sorting, and street sweeping; women and children from Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia are subject to sex trafficking in Russia; Russian women and children are victims of sex trafficking domestically and in Northeast Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Africa, the US, and the Middle East
tier rating: Tier 3 - Russia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making a significant effort to do so; prosecutions of trafficking offenders remained low in comparison to the scope of Russia’s trafficking problem; the government did not develop or employ a formal system for identifying trafficking victims or referring them to protective services, although authorities reportedly assisted a limited number of victims on an ad hoc basis; foreign victims, the largest group in Russia, were not entitled to state-provided rehabilitative services and were routinely detained and deported; the government has not reported investigating reports of slave-like conditions among North Korean workers in Russia; authorities have made no effort to reduce the demand for forced labor or to develop public awareness of forced labor or sex trafficking (2015)
Illicit drugs limited cultivation of illicit cannabis and opium poppy and producer of methamphetamine, mostly for domestic consumption; government has active illicit crop eradication program; used as transshipment point for Asian opiates, cannabis, and Latin American cocaine bound for growing domestic markets, to a lesser extent Western and Central Europe, and occasionally to the US; major source of heroin precursor chemicals; corruption and organized crime are key concerns; major consumer of opiates
