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48 I Eastern Europe bne November 2020
reductions treaty. This is a very serious element of our potential collaboration in the future,” Putin said.
It is one of the major security treaties signed with the US during the Cold War that is still relevant today and acts to prevent the start of a new arms race. The Kremlin is keen to preserve the START treaty and has asked the White House to begin negotiations on several occasions, requests that have been ignored until now.
What makes Russia nervous is the US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002 that limits the deployment of short-range missiles in Europe and then followed up with plans for a “missile shield” in Europe to guard against attacks by “rogue states.” While the unpredictable North Korea was officially named as the genesis for the need for a missile shield, the deployment of the new missile has so far all been on Russia’s border, in Romania and Poland.
The upshot of the US decision to
ditch the ABM was Putin’s decision to modernise the Russian army beginning in 2012, which has kicked off what is starting to look like a Cold War II after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and then went to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's aid in Syria.
Democrats hard on Russia
Putin’s outreach to Biden and the Democrats is likely to fall on stony ground, as on the whole the Democrats have been hard on Russia.
Biden has used Russophobe language in his campaign, calling for donations to re-elect him so that he can “fight Russia” and calling Putin out by name.
Former president Barak Obama reached out to Russia with a reset that was sold by his then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, but the initiative failed. Obama and Putin did not get on personally and under Obama the US foreign policy line became increasingly hard.
Clinton in particular took a very hard line on Russia, comparing it the Soviet Union, and the Kremlin dreaded the prospect of her becoming the next president in the 2016 election.
And Biden has more experience than most US politicians of Eastern Europe. He flew to Kyiv and gave a speech to the Ukrainian Rada calling on deputies to do their “historic duty” and make reforms so the country could stand up to Russia. He has also been in Tbilisi as a show
of solidarity following the short war Georgia fought against Russia in 2008.
More recently, Biden has come out in vocal support for the people of Belarus who are protesting against Belarus' self-appointed President Alexander Lukashenko’s massive falsification of the August 9 presidential elections. Moreover, his tweets use the Belarusian transliterations of the names of the main actors rather than the Russian versions – for example “Lukashenka” instead of the almost universal “Lukashenko” – which is unusual and
a sign that he has experienced advisors for Eastern Europe already in place.”
The protests have been a weekly occurrence for over three months following the arrest of the popular governor Sergei Furgal, who is accused of multiple murders. Furgal denies the charges against him, which he says
are politically motivated. Furgal is
a member of the nationalist LDPR party that is headed by firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky and he won a surprise victory in the 2018 elections against the local representative of the ruling United Russia Party.
Despite his shady business past Furgal made himself popular by running
the region well and improving public services. After his arrest tens of thousands of people took the streets calling for his return and demanding Russian President Vladimir Putin resign.
The authorities were initially hesitant to use local police to break up the demonstration as their loyalties were questioned. Police from other regions
OMON sent in to break up Khabarovsk protest for first time in three months
Ben Aris in Berlin
OMON riot police were used to break up protests in Russia’s Far East city of Khabarovsk on October 10, the first time police have been used, as the protest went into its 92nd day.
Twenty-five people were arrested as police brutally beat members of what had been a peaceful protest of mainly middle- aged and older residents of the city.
“The authorities in Russia are simply scoundrels. When half of the people in Khabarovsk took to the streets,
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the police hid like cockroaches. They waited three months, the number of people decreased, they grew bolder, went out and began to beat people for no reason,” anti-corruption blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny said on his Instagram channel.
The OMON arrived after demonstrators began attempting to erect tents in a central part of the city. Tents are closely associated with Ukraine’s Maidan demonstration, as a tent city quickly filled the centre of Kyiv and drew in ever larger crowds of supporters.