This Week's Highlights:

• NATO and U.S. Army Europe forces will conduct “forcible entry” combat exercises in Lithuania, Georgia and Poland, according to The National Interest. The DEFENDER exercises are set to take place April-May 2020 and to mobilize large-scale deployments with 20,000 U.S. soldiers and 17,000 U.S. allied forces.
• The impact of Russian trolls on U.S. voters may have been exaggerated, according to a preliminary U.S. study of Twitter interactions with troll accounts by a team of Duke University researchers, The Moscow Times reports. The team found that the Russian trolls “might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized.”
• Gazprom filled the Power of Siberia pipeline with gas in October, and the official launch is likely to happen Dec. 2, with the Russian and Chinese presidents possibly appearing in a joint video link, Bloomberg reports. Gazprom plans to start with deliveries of 10 million cubic meters a day and Russia may eventually expand the system to the west, allowing Siberian gas to flow in either direction.
• The South African navy is hosting the first trilateral exercise involving South Africa, China and Russia, Xinhua writes. It is scheduled to take place Nov. 25-30.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are “close to 100 percent” likely to meet for the first time in Paris on the sidelines of their anticipated four-way summit with French and German leaders on Dec. 9, according to an unnamed source cited by the Kommersant newspaper. Meanwhile, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, nominated to become Washington’s next ambassador to Moscow, told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that an improvement in bilateral ties depends on Moscow’s “disavowal of efforts to undermine our democratic processes” and a commitment to peace efforts in Ukraine, according to RFE/RL.
• A survey by the independent Russian pollster Levada Center, released Nov. 26, found that more than half of Russians between the ages of 18 and 24 want to leave for other countries, while 21 percent of respondents from all age groups said they would like to emigrate, RFE/RL reports.

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

• Members of a United States-Ukrainian working group for non-proliferation have visited the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Kyiv region to inspect a recently completed safe confinement. (Interfax, 11.25.19)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• Officials from China, Russia, France, Germany and the U.K. will meet with Iran in Vienna on Dec. 6 to discuss how to uphold the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, the EU has said. (bne IntelliNews, 11.26.19)
• Iran has asked Russia to provide an additional $2 billion loan for projects including the construction of thermal power plants, hydroelectric power plants, railroads and subway carriages. (Reuters, 11.23.19)

Cold War/saber rattling:

• NATO and U.S. Army Europe forces will conduct “forcible entry” combat exercises in Lithuania, Georgia and Poland. The DEFENDER exercises are set to take place in April-May 2020 and to be the largest deployment of U.S.-based soldiers to Europe in the last 25 years, expected to mobilize 20,000 Army soldiers and 17,000 U.S. allied forces. (The National Interest, 11.25.19)
• Russian and Chinese intelligence services are behind the most aggressive spying activities in the Czech Republic, the Central European nation’s counterintelligence agency said Nov. 26 in a report for 2018. (The Moscow Times, 11.27.19)
• At least eight suspected Russian intelligence officers traveled to Bulgaria around the time a local arms dealer was poisoned in 2015, Bellingcat reported on Saturday. Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev survived the April 28, 2015, poisoning attempt in Sofia. (The Moscow Times, 11.25.18)
• Spain has arrested a Russian and a Ukrainian national on suspicion of espionage, the El Mundo newspaper reported Saturday. (The Moscow Times, 11.25.19)
• Cold War sleuths have discovered a fourth Soviet spy, Oscar Seborer, who had worked within the U.S. atomic bomb project known as the Manhattan Project and whose work helped the Soviet Union end Washington’s monopoly on nuclear arms, The New York Times reported Nov. 23. (The Moscow Times, 11.25.19) 

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• Turkey refused to support a NATO defense proposal for Poland and the Baltics until the alliance offers stronger political support to combat a Kurdish militia group in northern Syria. NATO requires formal approval from all of its 29 member states to deploy its military plan to defend Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in the event of a Russian attack. (Deutsche Welle, 11.27.19)
• Turkish media broadcasts showed U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets flying over Ankara Nov. 25 to test what appeared to be functioning Russian-made radars that are part of Turkey’s newly acquired S-400 missile defense systems. Russia hopes to seal a deal to supply Turkey with more S-400s in the first half of next year. (Reuters, 11.26.19, Al-Monitor, 11.26.19)
• British ground forces would be "comprehensively outgunned" in a conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe, according to the Royal United Services Institute. (BBC, 11.27.19)
• ''I understand your desire for disruptive politics,'' Angela Merkel told Emmanuel Macron after he gave an interview in which he cited the ''brain death'' of NATO. ''But I'm tired of picking up the pieces. Over and over, I have to glue together the cups you have broken so that we can then sit down and have a cup of tea together.'' (New York Times, 11.24.19)
• Zeljko Komsic, the Croatian president of Bosnia-Herzegovina's tripartite presidency, made a working visit to the Pentagon just days after the Balkan nation reportedly took steps to activate a Membership Action Plan (MAP) with NATO. (RFE/RL, 11.27.19)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• Russia has formally proposed to the United States that the two nuclear superpowers extend their New START arms control treaty by five years, though Moscow would also settle for a shorter extension, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. (Reuters, 11.27.19)
• The Russian military says it has shown its latest hypersonic weapon to U.S. inspectors. The Defense Ministry said Nov. 26 that it demonstrated the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle to a team of U.S. inspectors this week as part of transparency measures under the New Start nuclear arms treaty. It said the new weapon will be put on combat duty in December. (AP, 11.26.19)

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• A second man believed to be one of several Russian speakers who filmed themselves beheading and setting fire to a purported Syrian army defector in 2017 teaches patriotism courses to Russian schoolchildren, the news website Fontanka reported. The man, identified as 39-year-old Ruslan, denied involvement. (The Moscow Times, 11.25.19)
• EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has condemned recent attacks on civilians in Syria by government forces and their Russian allies, calling them "unacceptable." (RFE/RL, 11.23.19)
• One key question is whether U.S. troops in Syria have the legal authority to engage Russian, Syrian or Iranian forces that attempt to seize the oil fields. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force does not give U.S. forces the authority to fire on state actors unless they are acting in self-defense. (Foreign Policy, 11.25.19)
• The Russian military police conducted five patrol missions in Syria’s Aleppo, Raqqa and al-Hasakah governorates, and the air taskforce conducted an aerial patrol mission in northern Syria, Maj. Gen. Yuri Borenkov, chief of the Russian center for reconciliation of conflicting sides in Syria, said Nov. 25. Military police units from Russia and Turkey have carried out their 11th joint patrol of a border section in Syria’s northeast. (TASS, 11.25.19)
• The Kurds "have to understand the indisputable truth: It is possible to ensure the rights of Syrian Kurds exclusively within the limits and the framework of Syria's territorial integrity and sovereignty, and in order to do that they need to establish a real, full-scale dialogue with the Syrian government," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said. (Interfax, 11.26.19)
  • "The Russians are mediating," says SDF Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish commander. "They are trying to induce us to move closer to the regime by using Turkey as a threat." (Wall Street Journal, 11.25.19)
• U.S. troops resumed large-scale counterterrorism missions against the Islamic State in northern Syria last week, military officials say, nearly two months after President Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw American troops. (New York Times, 11.25.19)

Cyber security:

• No significant developments.

Elections interference:

• The impact of Russian trolls on U.S. voters may have been exaggerated, according to a preliminary U.S. study of Twitter interactions with troll accounts by a team of Duke University researchers. The team found that the Russian trolls “might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized.” (The Moscow Times, 11.26.19)

Energy exports:

• Gazprom filled the Power of Siberia pipeline with gas in October, and the official launch is likely to happen Dec. 2, when Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping may appear in a joint video link. Gazprom plans to start with deliveries of 10 million cubic meters a day. Russia may eventually expand the system to the west, allowing Siberian gas to flow in either direction. (Bloomberg, 11.24.19)
• OPEC and Russia are likely to extend their oil production deal at least through midyear at meetings Dec. 5-6, but if they were to cut more output, as some speculate, it would blindside a now complacent market, analysts said. (CNBC, 11.26.19)
• See also “China” section below.

Bilateral economic ties:

• No significant developments.

Other bilateral issues:

• U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who has been nominated to become Washington’s next ambassador to Moscow, told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that an improvement in bilateral ties depends on Moscow’s “disavowal of efforts to undermine our democratic processes” and a commitment to peace efforts in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 11.23.19)
• Sentencing for President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn is set for Dec. 18. However, both sides said on the evening of Nov. 26 that they expect the forthcoming report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, due Dec. 9, “will examine several topics related” to a request by Flynn's defense team to find prosecutors in contempt for alleged misconduct. (The Washington Post, 11.27.19)
• Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina, who was briefly jailed in the United States and then deported back to Moscow, has accepted a state job to defend Russians imprisoned abroad. (Reuters, 11.26.19)
• The United States rejected on Nov. 27 a suggestion it seek a prisoner swap involving a former U.S. Marine jailed in Russia for nearly a year over spying allegations, and called for his immediate release. The U.S. embassy complained about Paul Whelan’s declining health and called Russia’s treatment of him “shameful,” saying Moscow had refused to allow a diplomat to bring him Thanksgiving dinner. (Reuters, 11.27.19)
• A top State Department official warned on Nov. 26 that Russia has deployed military forces to Libya in "significant" numbers that are "de-stabilizing" the North African country. (CNN, 11.26.19)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to leave the presidential office in 2024, according to a former top-level aide to his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. "I think if you ask Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] today, he is 99 percent sure to say that he will leave in 2024," Valentin Yumashev said Nov. 22. (Interfax, 11.22.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin told a congress of the ruling United Russia party on Nov. 23 that it has prospered by prioritizing "citizens' interests [and] the interests of our Motherland" and urged his allies not to fear "difficult decisions that don't yield situational popularity and extra points at elections." (RFE/RL, 11.23.19)
• There are six different state-approved Vladimir Putin wall calendars, as well as a desktop version, with slight variations. (The Washington Post, 11.26.19)
• A survey by the independent Russian pollster Levada Center, released on Nov. 26, found that more than half of Russians between the ages of 18 and 24 want to leave for other countries, while 21 percent of respondents from all age groups said they would like to emigrate. The next age group that was most interested in emigrating was 25 to 39 at 30 percent, the poll showed. (RFE/RL, 11.26.19)
• The Russian parliament's upper chamber, the Federation Council, has approved a bill giving authorities the power to label reporters who work for organizations officially listed as foreign agents as foreign agents themselves. (RFE/RL, 11.25.19)
• The number of Russians eligible for bankruptcy has passed one million for the first time in history, research by a credit ratings agency has shown. (The Moscow Times, 11.27.19)
• State-owned bank VTB said it plans to invest 1 trillion rubles ($15.6 billion) into Arctic projects over the next two years. The U.S.-sanctioned bank plans to allocate 195 billion rubles ($3 billion) for the state nuclear agency Rosatom to build five nuclear icebreakers as Russia seeks to open year-round shipping lanes in the Arctic. (The Moscow Times, 11.25.19)
• The Russian Engineering and Manufacturing Company will launch the first domestically made electric car, Zetta, in 2020, TASS has cited Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov as saying. Previous press reports have indicated that the Zetta’s retail price would be about $7,000, which would make it the cheapest electric car in the world. (bne IntelliNews, 11.25.19)
• The Kremlin on Nov. 27 paid tribute to late Soviet intelligence officer Goar Vartanyan whom it credits with helping foil a Nazi plot to kill Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt, saying her career may have changed the course of history. (Reuters, 11.27.19)
• Russia will fully cooperate with the World Anti-Doping Agency and international sports authorities after a WADA committee recommended imposing a four-year Olympic ban on the country, the Kremlin said Nov. 27. (The Moscow Times, 11.27.19)

Defense and aerospace:

• Russia has revealed a new drone prototype capable of tracking, intercepting and disarming enemy drones, the state-run TASS news agency reported Nov. 27.  (The Moscow Times, 11.27.19)
• A Russian Soyuz rocket on Nov. 25 launched a top-secret military satellite designed to scope out other satellites in space, according to government reports. (Space.com, 11.26.19)

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• Four out of five women convicted for premeditated murder in Russia had been defending themselves from domestic violence, according to machine-learning research published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper. The study found that 91 percent of 1,500 women sentenced for exceeding the limits of self-defense between 2011-2018 had been defending themselves from partners or other male relatives. (The Moscow Times, 11.25.19)
• Moscow’s Meschansky District Court has arrested for two months three recruiters of the Islamic State detained in the Moscow region. (TASS, 11.21.19)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

• Cyprus has stripped Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a 51-year-old billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin, of his Cypriot citizenship, local media in the EU country report. (RFE/RL, 11.27.19)
• An Egyptian news outlet, Mada Masr, published an explosive article last week alleging that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's son Mahmoud had been transferred to Moscow on a diplomatic posting, reassigned from a senior intelligence post after being criticized internally within the security apparatus. Egyptian security services have since arrested one of the outlet’s editors and raided its offices, Mada Masr has said. (Al Jazeera, 11.24.19)

China:

• The South African navy is hosting the Multinational Maritime Exercise with Russia and China in Cape Town. It is the first trilateral exercise between the three countries and is scheduled to take place off the southern coast of South Africa Nov. 25-30. (Xinhua, 11.25.19)

Ukraine:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are “close to 100 percent” likely to meet for the first time in Paris on the sidelines of their anticipated four-way summit with French and German leaders on Dec. 9, the Kommersant business daily reported Nov. 27, citing an unnamed source. (The Moscow Times, 11.27.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the phone to discuss three-way negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union for Russia to keep sending natural gas to European customers. A gas-transit contract between Moscow and Kyiv expires on Jan. 1. If gas transit from Russia through Ukraine continues after that date and if there is no corresponding contract, it will be pumped into Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities, Nafotgaz said. (RFE/RL, 11.25.19, Interfax, 11.26.19)
• The head of the Ukrainian state-owned Naftogaz oil and gas conglomerate, Andriy Kobolyev, has lauded the fourth consecutive year that Ukraine hasn't imported natural gas from its neighbor Russia. (RFE/RL, 11.27.19)
• The Ukrainian authorities say a Russian national on the international wanted list for suspected involvement in the activity of Islamic State was detained in Zhitomir on Nov. 21, the Zhitomir region police said on their website. (TASS, 11.21.19)
• Ukrainian soccer's governing body has called on law enforcement agencies to investigate its former president Hryhoriy Surkis, who is now a lawmaker, on suspicion of embezzling up to 380 million euros ($418 million). (RFE/RL, 11.25.19)
• Ukraine's central bank has accused tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskiy of organizing an attack on it and spreading "lies" in the media to "create chaos" at the institution. (RFE/RL, 11.27.19)
• MTS has sold its Ukrainian operations to Azerbaijan’s Bakcell for $734 million (Financial Times, 11.25.19)
• Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee plan to deliver a report soon after Thanksgiving making the case for impeaching President Trump, its chairman said Nov. 25, moving quickly to escalate what he called “urgent” evidence of wrongdoing by the president. (New York Times, 11.27.19)
• In a briefing that closely aligned with Fiona Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a years-long campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. (New York Times, 11.25.19)
• U.S. President Donald Trump has used a recent interview to further assert a theory of possible Ukrainian involvement in cyberattacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. "I still want to see that server," Trump told Fox News. "You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That's a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company? Why?” (RFE/RL, 11.23.19)
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Nov. 26 that a debunked conspiracy theory pursued by President Trump accusing Ukraine, not Russia, of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking the network of the Democratic National Committee is a worthy subject of investigation. (The Washington Post, 11.26.19)
• Rep. Devin Nunes, an outspoken defender of President Trump in his impeachment hearings, said Nov. 24 that reports that he had played a role in the effort to dig up damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden in Ukraine were part of a criminal campaign against him by a “totally corrupt” news media. (New York Times, 11.24.19)
• They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. Dmitry Firtash had been indicted on federal bribery charges. Ihor Kolomoisky was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the FBI. And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudy Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Donald Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. (New York Times, 11.25.19
• Two associates of Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, tried in March to recruit Andrew Favorov, the head of Ukraine’s state-run Naftogaz, in a proposed takeover of the state oil-and-gas company, describing the company's chief executive and the then-U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as part of "this Soros cartel" working against President Trump. (Wall Street Journal, 11.24.19)
• Apple is now showing Crimea as part of Russian territory in its maps and weather apps when they are used inside of Russia, complying with Russian demands, the BBC reports. Ukraine said Nov. 27 that Apple did not “give a damn” about its pain. (Axios, 11.27.19, Reuters, 11.27.19)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• Moldova's new prime minister on Nov. 26 raised the possibility of a "pause" in its cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, a day after he said his ex-Soviet republic was negotiating a $500 million loan with Russia. (Reuters, 11.26.19)
• The chief of Kyrgyzstan's financial police says the amount of cash illegally funneled out of the country by suspects implicated in a joint investigation by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, the OCCRP and Kyrgyzstani news site Kloop is close to $1 billion, well above the original estimate of $700 million. (RFE/RL, 11.26.19)
• A representative of Tajikistan's State Committee for National Security said at a conference in Dushanbe on Nov. 25 that nine men, 11 women and 13 children were among the attackers at a border post near Uzbekistan. That conflicts with statements from officials who said after the Nov. 6 attack that 20 Islamic State militants entered Tajikistan from neighboring Afghanistan and attacked the border post, of whom 15 were killed and five were captured. (RFE/RL, 11.26.19)
• Dozens of ethnic Kazakhs from China's northwestern region of Xinjiang have urged Kazakhstan to help secure the release of relatives, who they say are being kept in so-called "reeducation camps." (RFE/RL, 11.27.19)
• Hundreds of thousands of people in northeastern Kazakhstan are still suffering the consequences from 40 years of nuclear-weapons tests that were conducted near their homes during the Soviet era. (RFE/RL, 11.23.19)
• Riot police in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, used water cannons to disperse protesters outside the country's parliament on Nov. 26. It was the latest in a series of confrontations between the government and opposition over the country's electoral system. (RFE/RL, 11.26.19)