The conflict with Ukraine, new laws limiting the freedom of Internet users and companies, sanctions imposed on Russia, and official rhetoric focused on disengagement with the West, all have ratcheted up the risk of doing business in the country.

 

Western venture firms have sharply decreased investment this year, choking off funding for startups. Some Russian technology startups have fled the country altogether.

 

The Azov battalion is perhaps the most well-known of the 44 volunteer battalions fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, despite being only 400-500 fighters strong. They are not part of the Ukrainian military and some are privately funded. Some, like Azov, are successors of the radical and violent movement that helped oust former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukoych.

 

Azov battalion uses a neo-Nazi symbol, the Wolf’s Hook, to represent the battalion and its leader, Anbdriy Biletsky, has expressed anti-Semitic and white supremacist views in the past.

 

Lysenko said the death toll among servicemen since the start of the ceasefire now stood at five, with 33 wounded.

At the weekend, one woman was killed and at least four other civilians were wounded when government forces came under heavy shelling near the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

 

Both sides say they are observing the ceasefire and blame each other for any violations.

"Russian troops and terrorists are continuing their brazen violations of the conditions of the ceasefire, shooting at the positions of the Ukrainian forces, including with heavy weaponry," defense analyst Dmytro Tymchuk, who has close ties to the Ukrainian military, said in a statement.

Sanctions should not be relaxed "until we see some reciprocity from Russia in terms of moving troops back across the border and heavy equipment back across the border," he said.


EU countries will discuss on Wednesday whether to implement the new sanctions, which include restrictions on financing for Russian state-owned oil companies and banks, an expanded list of people whose assets in the EU will be frozen, and new restrictions on the sale of goods that can be used for both military and civilian purposes.

Straus: “NATO is the sole judge of whether a country is the cause of its territorial conflicts and should be kept out, or has tried to resolve them and should be brought into the alliance. It has stated many times that it will not allow Russia, by stirring up and perpetuating ethnic and territorial conflicts, any kind of veto over countries joining the alliance.”

 

< Photo: General Bartels saluting the Ukrainian Guard of Honour

 

Russia has consistently and flagrantly lied about the facts surrounding the murder of 298 innocent citizens on Malaysian Airlines MH-17 but photos that have been discovered and the Dutch forensic evidence make the truth all too clear.

 

< In the photo, on the left the Buk in a column of Russian military vehicles seen on the evening on June 23 on the motorway from Staryy Oskol to the OEMK steel works in the Belgorod area. [Source]  On the Right: Image from Paris Match. [Source]

Prof. Alexander Sagan: “The Moscow hierarch does not want to notice that dozens of examples of how the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate has been trying to provide ideological and physical support for ‘Novorossiya’ have been documented.”

 

"If there are sanctions related to the energy sector, or further restrictions on Russia's financial sector, we will have to respond asymmetrically," Mr Medvedev said in an interview published on Monday in the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti.

 

"We could impose transport restrictions," Mr Medvedev said, adding, "We believe we have friendly relations with our partners, and foreign airlines of friendly countries are permitted to fly over Russia. However, we'll have to respond to any restrictions imposed on us.

 

Analyst: The government said it will use the funds to strengthen the financial, operational, and regulatory capacity of the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) for the resolution of insolvent banks.

 

At least one of the Russian planes came within 300 metres of HMCS Toronto, a government source said.


Russian news agency Itar-Tass quoted General-Major Igor Konashenkov, a senior Russian Defence Ministry official, as saying two Russian military aircraft - an SU-24 fighter jet and an AN-26 transport plane - had flown through the area on a routine flight but denied any provocative behaviour.

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