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causing the government and the central bank to adjust policies and revise outlooks . However, as the toughest potential "nuclear" sanctions threat targeting sovereign debt is coming from the US Congress, the unilateral executive order by the White House can also be seen as an effort to downplay the escalation, while acknowledging the problem. Kommersant d aily reported on September 13 that the Congress was not informed on the executive order preparations, while the authors of the DETER (Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines) bill senators Marco Rubio and Chris Van Hollen condemned the move as finally admitting the (Russian meddling) threat, but not doing enough to prevent it. The Congress can still pass additional measures, with five bills currently submitted suggesting sanctions against Russia, one of which, authored by republicans Lindsay Graham and Robert Mendes, includes the "nuclear" option of banning operations with sovereign debt.
The Kremlin tried its best to surpass a protest rally called by anti-corruption blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny, but the anti-pension reform protest went ahead and more than 800 protestors were arrested at demonstrations across the country on September 9. The demonstrations were called to protest changes to the pension retirement ages that were hiked from 55 years for women and 60 for men to 63 and 65 respectively. The move is necessary as a third of the Russian budget is already eaten up by social payments, but it has also been hugely unpopular as it will materially worsen the situation of a large part of the population. Navalny himself had been arrested a week earlier and the government ordered Google and Facebook to pull ads paid for by the Navalny campaign – an order the companies complied with – but this failed to stop the demonstrations. Although the numbers were not big, the authorities broke up rallies in Moscow and St Petersburg using the OMON riot police. Social media showed footage of police hitting protestors with batons in Moscow as their colleagues tried to wrench them out of the police’s grip. Several children were amongst those arrested.
Russia's statistics bureau Rosstat classified 4.75% of the GDP data for 2011-2017, or approximately $60bn worth of spending, as secret under a new System of National Accounts (SNS-2008) methodology, RBC business portal reported on September 4. SNS-2008 accounts for military spending and scientific research (as intellectual property) in the GDP, with both categories undisclosed for 2017 and 2018. In October 2017 it was estimated that the share of classified spending jumped since Russia's active involvement in the Ukrainian crisis and Syria and was up to 18.6% of spending in 2017 from 17.7% previously. RBC estimates that in 2016 military purchases and intellectual property amounted to about RUB4.1 trillion ($60.2bn), which corresponds for 4.75% of GDP. This is above previous military spending estimates for 2017, which increased by RUB184.3bn in 2017 to over RUB3 trillion ($52bn), less than a tenth of what the US spend on defence.
Russia's Energomash based in the city of Khimki of the Moscow region by 2021 will supply four additional RD-181 rocket engines to the US Orbital ATK to be installed on American Antares-type rockets, Kommersant daily reported on September 4. The US remains the only market for the engines of this type. The head of Russian space agency Roskosmos Dmitri Rogozin told the daily that "despite the disagreements, the mutually beneficial partnerships are not going to be broken." Sources in the industry told Kommersant that negotiations "were not easy" on the background of deteriorating US-Russia relations. Previously Energomash also supplied
26 RUSSIA Country Report October 2018 www.intellinews.com