Page 21 - RusRPTDec18

2.10 Politics - misc
The European Union will extend sanctions on Russia in December,
Reuters reported on November 30 citing European Council President Donald Tusk. It is not yet clear whether the ongoing military crisis in the Azov Sea will lead to any toughening of the EU’s sanction regime on Russia.
Sanctioned Russian tycoons Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, as well as the head of state-controlled bank VTB Andrei Kostin will not be invited to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos taking place in January 2019, the Financial Times reported on November 6 citing unnamed sources.
The US Congress is not expected to pass legislation imposing new “crushing” sanctions on Russia before the end of 2018, as other urgent issues are cluttering the agenda after the recent mid-term elections, Bloomberg reported on November 14 citing key US senators.
Russian opposition activist and blogger Alexei Navalny has been banned from leaving the country, he wrote on Twitter on November 13. Navalny was due to fly to Strasbourg to hear the European Court of Human Rights’ decision on his case. "I arrived at the airport - I’m flying for the pronouncement of the ECHR’s decision - and the border guards took my passport ‘to carry out special checks,’" he wrote. Later, the border guards said Navalny was not allowed to leave Russia. On October 2, Moscow’s Simonovsky Court sentenced Navalny to 20 days of administrative arrest for repeated calls to take part in rallies. Eventaully after Navalny paid the fne he was allowed to leave.
The International Court of Arbitration in Paris has ruled that the Russian government should pay compensation of $1.3bn for losses caused by the illegal military annexation of Crimea in 2014 to Ukraine’s second biggest lender Oschadbank. Ukraine's state-owned lender Oschadbank filed a lawsuit in August 2016 with claims for the recovery of lost assets and remuneration for the lost of business and payable interest caused by Russia’s take over of the peninsula. The move followed another Oschadbank lawsuit worth UAH15bn ($589mn) filed in 2015. Earlier, the Ukrainian leadership urged all Ukrainian state-owned companies to follow the example of Oschadbank and recover damages for the annexation of Crimea and the loss of Ukrainian property. The ruling makes Oschadbank the first fully state-owned company to have won compensation from Russia owing to its military aggression against Ukraine, the bank highlighted, calling upon other state and private entities to follow in its path, the lender said in a statement on November 26. Meanwhile, the Russian Justice Ministry said the same day that it does not recognise the ruling, as it believes the court had no authority to consider Oschadbank’s claim against Russia.
2.11 Polls & Sociology
In the 2018 world happiness report, all 12 (non Baltic) former Soviet states were surveyed. Uzbekistan is happiest, Ukraine least
44 Uzbekistan
59 Russia
60 Kazakhstan 67 Moldova
68 Turkmenistan
21 RUSSIA Country Report December 2018 www.intellinews.com