This Week’s Highlights:

• U.S. and Russian security services are resuming cooperation on cyber issues, according to FSB director Bortnikov, TASS reports. Bortnikov also noted that "not so long ago, the Americans provided us with information on certain individuals and their plans to carry out terrorist attacks in our country," according to Interfax.
• Putin supervised major test launches of ballistic and cruise missiles on land, air and sea as part of the three-day Grom (Thunder)-2019 exercises that were aimed to test the readiness of Russia’s command structure and how efficiently its orders are carried out in a nuclear war, The Moscow Times reports.
• Three U.S. diplomats, who included the U.S. military and naval attachés, caught near the restricted zone of a recent deadly nuclear explosion in northwestern Russia had declared a different destination for their trip prior to travel, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, according to RFE/RL. The trio was removed from a train on Oct. 14 and briefly questioned.
• Twenty-two U.S. citizens are in detention or in jail in Russia, according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
• Statistics published by the Russian government showed an unexpected jump in real disposable incomes of an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter of the year, off the back of a 0.1 percent fall in the second quarter. GDP was also reported to have climbed 1.9 percent over the past 12 months, up from 0.9 percent in the previous reading, according to The Moscow Times.
• A subsidiary company of China National Chemical Engineering has signed an agreement, worth around $13.3 billion, with Baltic Chemical Complex of Russia to build a natural gas processing and chemical plant near Russia's shoreline on the Gulf of Finland, Xinhua reports.
• On a Middle East tour, Putin signed a package of deals valued at $2 billion with Saudi Arabia, followed by a $1.3 billion package with the UAE, according to RFE/RL and Al Jazeera.

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

Nuclear security and safety:

• The deteriorating U.S.-Turkish relationship is troubling because Turkey is a NATO ally. But even more worrisome are the nuclear weapons—about 50 B61 gravity bombs—that the United States stores at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, less than 100 miles from the Syrian border. (The Washington Post, 10.18.19)
• The IAEA on Oct. 17 took delivery of the first shipment of low-enriched uranium at a purpose-built storage facility at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in eastern Kazakhstan. (World Nuclear News, 10.18.19)

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• No significant developments.

New Cold War/saber rattling:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin supervised major test launches of ballistic and cruise missiles on land, air and sea Oct. 17. The three-day Grom (Thunder)-2019 exercises involved five submarines, more than 100 aircraft, 200 missile launchers and 12,000 Russian troops. They aimed to test the readiness of Russia's command structure and how efficiently its orders are carried out in an armed conflict or nuclear war, the Defense Ministry said. (The Moscow Times, 10.18.19)
• The U.S. Army Modernization Strategy aims to counter Russia by 2028 and China by 2035. (Breaking Defense, 10.16.19)

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

• The Swedish navy spent almost $2 million hunting for a Russian submarine off the coast of Stockholm that turned out to be a broken buoy, Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet newspaper reported. (The Moscow Times, 10.17.19)

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, warned on Oct. 18 that the world was drifting into a dangerous era of militarized politics and appealed to Moscow and Washington to sit down for urgent nuclear arms control talks. (The Moscow Times, 10.18.19)
• U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said: “Think about the nuclear agreement with Russia that he [Trump] precipitously pulled out of. This is part of a pattern. It's not an isolated incident.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)

Counter-terrorism:

• "Not so long ago, the Americans provided us with information on certain individuals and their plans to carry out terrorist attacks in our country," Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov told reporters. (TASS, 10.17.19)
• Russia’s security agencies have identified more than 5,500 Russian citizens who have traveled abroad to fight alongside terrorists, Alexander Bortnikov said. As many as 39 terrorist attacks have been prevented in Russia this year, he said. (The Moscow Times, 10.16.19, TASS, 10.16.19)
• Abror Azimov, a Kyrgyz citizen and a suspect on trial over a deadly 2017 subway blast in St. Petersburg, has recanted his confession claiming it was made under torture and threats of blackmail. (RFE/RL, 10.18.19)

Conflict in Syria:

• Ankara and Washington agreed on Oct. 17 agreed to a five-day cease-fire to halt the Turkish offensive against Kurdish-led forces in Syria and in exchange for the expulsion of Syrian Kurdish militias from the border and the removal of a U.S. threat to impose sanctions on Turkey’s vulnerable economy. Under the agreement, Kurdish fighters should vacate a swath of terrain in Syria along the Turkish border. Kurdish forces have already been driven out of much, but not all, of a portion of the territory between Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad. However, shelling and gunfire continued on Oct. 18 around the northeast Syrian border town of Ras al-Ayn despite the cease-fire. (RFE/RL, 10.18.19, The Washington Post 10.15.19, The Washington Post, 10.17.19)

• “Syria may have some help with Russia, and that's fine. It's a lot of sand. They've got a lot of sand over there. So there's a lot of sand that they can play with,” U.S. President Donald Trump said. (The Boston Globe, 10.16.19)
• During a meeting with congressional leaders of both parties in the White House U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that the Democrats liked the Kurds in part because they included some communists. In her turn, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the president that ''all roads with you lead to Putin.” (New York Times, 10.17.19)
• The Kremlin questioned the tone of a letter sent by U.S. President Donald Trump to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which it called highly unusual for correspondence between heads of state. The White House on Oct. 16 released the Oct. 9 letter, in which Trump urged Erdogan: "Don't be a tough guy" and "Don't be a fool!" Erdogan reportedly threw Trump’s letter in the bin. (Reuters, 10.17.19, bne IntelliNews, 10.17.19)
• Syria must be freed from foreign military presence, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. Russian forces in Syria were also ready to leave the country as soon as new legitimate Syrian government tells Moscow it no longer needs its help, he said. Putin will host talks with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi on Oct. 22. (Financial Times, 10.17.19, Reuters, 10.15.19)
• Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Syria, confirmed that Russia had brokered an agreement between the Syrian government and Kurdish forces that saw the Kurds cede control of territory to Syrian troops. Lavrentiev also said Moscow would work to prevent a direct clash between Turkish and Syrian troops, but insisted Turkey’s military assault on northeastern Syria is “unacceptable.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Turkish operation had allowed captured Islamic State fighters to escape. “We are convinced that achieving sustainable long-term stabilization and security in this region of Syria, in the country and in the region as a whole, is possible only on the basis of the establishment, first of all, of its sovereignty, territorial integrity,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. (Financial Times, 10.15.19, Reuters, 10.14.19, Financial Times, 10.17.19, Reuters, 10.16.19)
• Russia's Defense Ministry said its armed forces began patrolling the line between Turkish and Syrian armies in and around the city of Manbij, filling a void created by departing U.S. troops. Russian forces have reportedly crossed the Euphrates River in northern Syria and reached areas outside the city of Kobani. (Reuters, 10.16.19, Wall Street Journal, 10.15.19)
• Human Rights Watch says a strike by a Russian-Syrian military alliance on a displacement compound in mid-August to be a war crime. The rights group said that, according to witnesses, there was "no apparent military target" in the region of Idlib, which killed at least 20 citizens. (RFE/RL, 10.18.19)
• Russia has denied an explosive New York Times report saying it bombed Syrian hospitals, including four in one day in May, insisting that its planes attacked a “terrorist bunker” rather than an underground hospital. (The Moscow Times, 10.14.19)
• Dozens of Russian women in a camp for Islamic State prisoners in northern Syria are seeking help from their motherland amid Turkey’s incursion. Relatives have identified at least 1,779 Russian women and children in Syria and Iraq who want to return from former Islamic State territory. (The Moscow Times, 10.15.19)
• U.S. President Donald Trump did not oppose the deal that Syrian Kurdish-led forces struck with Russia and the Syrian government to protect them against Turkey’s offensive, the force’s commander said Oct. 17, as his fighters battled a new push by Ankara-backed forces to seize a strategic border town. (AP, 10.17.19)
• Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said: “What is happening in Iraq is going to—I mean, excuse me, in Afghanistan, as well as all the way over to Syria, we have ISIS that's going to come here. They are going to, in fact, damage the United States of America. That's why we got involved in the first place and not ceded the whole area to Assad and to the Russians.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)
• U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said: “As president, … I would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like al-Qaeda in Syria who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime change war.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)
• U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris said: “What has happened in Syria is yet again Donald Trump selling folks out. And in this case, he sold out the Kurds, who, yes, fought with us and thousands died in our fight against ISIS.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)
• U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said: “I'd like to hear from him [Trump] about how leaving the Kurds for slaughter, our allies for slaughter, where Russia then steps in to protect them, how that makes America great again.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)

Cyber security:

• Russia and the United States are maintaining contact in the field of information and cyber security, and their security services are resuming cooperation in such matters, Russia’s Federal Security Services Director Alexander Bortnikov said. (Interfax, 10.17.19)

Elections interference:

• U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that splitting up big tech companies will make election interference more likely: “[W]orking … on what we need to do to upgrade the elections infrastructure, knowing that Russia needs to be held accountable for the fact that they interfered in the election of the president of the United States and will attempt to do it again, that's—that's a ridiculous argument he's making.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)
• U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said: “I don't see a moral equivalency between our country and Russia. Vladimir Putin is someone who has shot down planes over Ukraine, who has poisoned his opponent and we have not talked about what we need to do to protect ourselves from Russia invading our election.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)
• U.S. Sen. Cory Booker said: “We cannot allow Russia to not only interfere in the democracies of the Ukraine, and Latvia and Lithuania, but even not calling them out for their efforts to interfere in this democracy are unacceptable. Russia and Putin understand strength, and this president time and time again is showing moral weakness.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)

Energy exports:

• No significant developments.

Bilateral economic ties:

• No significant developments.

Other bilateral issues:

• Moscow is not blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for failing to improve U.S.-Russian relations, a pledge he had made during his election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. Putin said the "internal political agenda" was not allowing Trump to take steps aimed at a drastic improvement of bilateral relations. (Reuters, 10.13.19)
• Russia's Foreign Ministry said the three U.S. diplomats who were caught near the restricted zone of a recent deadly nuclear explosion in northwestern Russia had declared a different destination for their trip prior to travel. The trio, which included the U.S. military and naval attachés, was removed from a train on Oct. 14 and briefly questioned. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it will issue a formal note of protest to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. (RFE/RL, 10.17.19)
• There are 22 U.S. citizens either in detention or in jail in Russia, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. (Russia Matters, 10.17.19)
• U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan is expected to be nominated to become U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy to Moscow in coming weeks. (Foreign Policy, 10.17.19)
• Hillary Clinton suggested Russia had kompromat on U.S. President Donald Trump. She also suggested Russia might back 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard as a third-party candidate. (The Washington Post, 10.18.19)

II. Russia’s domestic news

Politics, economy and energy:

• Economists have raised questions over a surprisingly healthy batch of economic data released by the Russian statistics agency Rosstat. Statistics published Oct. 17 showed an unexpected and significant jump in real disposable incomes of an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter of the year, off the back of a 0.1 percent fall in the second quarter. GDP was also reported to have climbed 1.9 percent over the past 12 months, up from 0.9 percent in the previous reading. (The Moscow Times, 10.18.19)
• Investment rose by 1 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2019 in Russia, after a 2.6 percent year on year contraction in the first quarter, but the overall investment level remains woefully inadequate to spur growth in the country. (bne IntelliNews, 10.15.19)
• The first year of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s experiment in diversifying away from the U.S. dollar cost Russia about $7.7 billion in potential returns. Russia’s central bank added exposure to underperforming currencies such as the euro and yuan just as it missed out on a 6.5 percent rally in the greenback. Russia is exploring currency settlements in euros and rubles for its vast energy exports in an attempt to avoid the dollar. Maxim Oreshkin, Russia’s economy minister, said the popularity of Russia’s domestic bonds among foreign investors—who own 29 percent of its ruble debt—suggested that Moscow would be able to sell its energy exports in local currency. Russia is also stepping up efforts to protect its financial markets from the unpredictable ebb and flow of U.S. foreign policy, including plans to launch a special exchange where sanctioned companies can list their bonds, deputy finance minister Alexei Moiseev said. (Financial Times, 10.13.19, Bloomberg, 10.15.19, Financial Times, 10.17.19)
• A Russian-Italian joint project that will place 57 wind turbines on the coast of the Barents Sea about 80 kilometers from Murmansk could avoid the release of some 600,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Russia is considering banning foreign companies from taking a lead role in designing and building the country’s green energy infrastructure. (Bellona, 10.14.19, The Moscow Times, 10.16.19)
• The Russian government has drastically watered-down its new package of climate change legislation after push-back from the country’s leading businesses. (The Moscow Times, 10.17.19)
• Thawing of once permanently frozen ground covering more than half of Russia is putting buildings, pipelines and other infrastructure at risk of damage. The economic loss is 50 billion to 150 billion rubles ($2.3 billion) a year, said Alexander Krutikov, deputy minister for the Far East and Arctic development. (Bloomberg, 10.18.19)
• A growing chorus of voices expressing environmental concerns has prompted the Russian government to consider setting up a “Green Party” controlled by the Kremlin. (The Moscow Times, 10.16.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin's "trust rating" has fallen again. It was down to 39 percent in September from 40 percent in June, after a summer of violent protests over the Moscow City council election that saw unprecedented police brutality, the Levada Center reported Oct. 16. (bne Intellinews, 10.18.19)
• Russian police have arrested five more people on suspicion of assaulting police officers at opposition protests this summer, marking a new wave of trials in the so-called “Moscow case.” (The Moscow Times, 10.17.19)
• Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says Russian law enforcement officers have raided 30 offices of his Anti-Corruption Foundation in cities across the country. (RFE/RL, 10.15.19)
• Russian opposition activist Lyubov Sobol has been named one of the world’s 100 most influential women by the BBC, becoming the only woman from Russia to be included in the list. (The Moscow Times, 10.16.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to monitor the online behavior of young Russians and to produce “moral and spiritual education” content for them. (The Moscow Times, 10.17.19)

Defense and aerospace:

• See section on saber rattling.

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin is pulling Russia out of a key protocol of the Geneva Conventions that authorizes investigations into alleged war crimes against civilians. The protocol authorizes the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to investigate alleged war crimes and other “grave breaches.” (Bloomberg, 10.17.19)
• Police violence and radiation prompted the highest levels of anxiety among Russians on social media, according to a quarterly analysis cited in Russian Forbes on Oct. 16. (The Moscow Times, 10.15.19)
• Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has denied reports that senior officials and their relatives have been tortured in secret prisons in his republic for showing disrespect and disloyalty to him and his family. (The Moscow Times, 10.17.19)
• Investigators in the city of Novgorod have launched a criminal case into the alleged rape of a local female journalist by a chief editor, more than two weeks after she had first filed a report about the incident. (The Moscow Times, 10.18.19)
• Two suspects accused of co-founding the Novoye Velichiye extremist group to overthrow the Russian government slit their wrists in a Moscow courtroom on Oct. 17. (RFE/RL, 10.17.19)
• Russian authorities are drawing up plans to require all visiting foreigners to submit fingerprints upon arrival, Russia’s Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Gorovoy said. Russia has prosecuted more than 30,000 foreigners so far in 2019 for violating migration law. Around 17 million people visit Russia every year, according to Gorovoy’s estimates. (The Moscow Times, 10.17.19)
• Russian intelligence services are actively recruiting students from the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), the independent Proekt online outlet reported in an investigation Oct. 17. (The Moscow Times, 10.18.19)

III. Foreign affairs, trade and investment

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

• Russia and Saudi Arabia signed a package of deals valued at $2 billion during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the kingdom on Oct. 14. The deals targeted such sectors as aerospace, culture, health and advanced technology. (RFE/RL, 10.14.19, CNSN, 10.15.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has told officials in the United Arab Emirates they "will not be disappointed" as he wrapped up a short Gulf tour by signing deals worth more than $1.3 billion in Abu Dhabi. (AlJazeera, 10.15.19)
• The heads of some 35 African countries are expected for the first Africa-Russia Summit in Sochi on Oct. 23 and Oct. 24 as Russia seeks to reassert its influence on the continent and beyond. (AFP, 10.16.19)
• Russia’s state-run nuclear group Rosatom said it had agreed to buy up to 51 percent of a Chilean lithium project in return for supplies of the battery mineral. (Financial Times, 10.15.19)
• EU leaders are meeting again on Oct. 18 in Brussels to discuss the bloc's budget and climate change. The bloc's leaders wrapped up the first day of their summit in Brussels without making any decisions about the potential membership of North Macedonia and Albania, as France and two other states insisted that the Western Balkan nations were not ready to join the bloc. (RFE/RL, 10.18.19)

China:

• A subsidiary company of China National Chemical Engineering has signed an agreement, worth 12 billion euros (around $13.3 billion), with a Baltic Chemical Complex of Russia to build a natural gas processing and chemical plant in a small town near Russia's shoreline on the Gulf of Finland. (Xinhua, 10.14.19)

Ukraine:

• The last chance to fulfill the Minsk II accords will arrive in November, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystayko. "Ukraine is now and will stay a unitary state. We are not talking about a forceful federalization of Ukraine," Prystayko said Oct. 14 in an address to the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs. "A second red line is that we are not changing our constitution the way Russia wants it," he added. (RFE/RL, 10.14.19, bne IntelliNews, 10.16.19)
• Thousands of Ukrainians renewed this week protests against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's plan to end a simmering conflict with Russia by withdrawing Ukrainian forces and holding elections in Ukrainian territories controlled by Russia-backed separatists. (Wall Street Journal, 10.14.19)
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Ukrainian government must show political will to begin the withdrawals at the towns of Zolote and Petrivske before the Normandy meeting is possible. (bne IntelliNews, 10.16.19)
• Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and one wounded in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military announced on Oct. 15 during its daily briefing. More than 90 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the year, according to a monthly count by local media outlet Censor.net. (RFE/RL, 10.15.19)
• The U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Porter on Oct. 13 arrived in Odessa, the press service of Ukraine's General Staff has said. (Interfax, 10.15.19)
• Russia and Ukraine should be independent states but with a mutual visa-free system of travel, said respondents of a survey carried out jointly by the Levada Analytical Center and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. This opinion is held by 54 percent of Russians and 49 percent of Ukrainians polled. (Interfax, 10.15.19)
• In prepared testimony to House committees, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, criticized U.S. President Donald Trump over his efforts to enlist Ukraine in investigating a political rival and said he and other U.S. officials were "disappointed" by the president's directive to work with Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters. (Wall Street Journal, 10.17.19)
• Then-national security adviser John Bolton was so alarmed by Rudy Giuliani's back-channel activities in Ukraine that he described U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer as a "hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up," according to former White House aide Fiona Hill. Hill told House committees Oct. 14 that she and other White House officials grew so alarmed about the administration's efforts to push Ukraine to open certain investigations that they raised their concerns with a White House lawyer. (Wall Street Journal, 10.15.19, AP, 10.15.19)
• U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent told congressional investigators this week that he raised concerns in 2015 with a senior official at the White House about then-Vice President Joe Biden's son being on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company because of concerns about the potential optics of a conflict of interest. (Wall Street Journal, 10.18.19)
• Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a columnist for the news outlet The Hill had alleged that then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch provided a "do not prosecute list" to Ukrainian officials to protect the Bidens and other allies. But Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, according to the documents, told his colleagues that the list was phony, pointing to incorrect name spellings that longtime officials like Yovanovitch and himself would never have gotten wrong, he said. (The Washington Post, 10.15.19)
• Rudy Giuliani was paid $500,000 last year by a company owned by one of two men arrested last week and charged with campaign finance violations. A fourth defendant, who allegedly conspired with associates of Giuliani to illegally funnel foreign money into Republican campaigns, has turned himself in to authorities. David Correia, a Florida resident, surrendered at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. (Wall Street Journal, 10.15.19, NPR, 10.17.19)
• U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani said Oct. 15 they won’t comply with a Congressional impeachment investigation into Trump’s efforts to prod Ukraine to investigate a political foe. (RFE/RL, 10.16.19)
• Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney for the first time conceded that the lack of a Ukrainian inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation played a role in the U.S. withholding military aid from it over "corruption" issues. (The Washington Post, 10.18.19)
• Former Vice President Joe Biden said: “Look, my son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. And that's what we should be focusing on. … I never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having do with Ukraine.” (October Democratic debate transcript, The Washington Post, 10.16.19)
• Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, said in an interview released on Oct. 15 that he probably would not have been named to the board of a foreign company if his last name weren’t Biden and acknowledged “poor judgment,” but he rejected suggestions by U.S. President Donald Trump that he and his father had engaged in wrongdoing. (New York Times, 10.15.19)
• Anti-corruption investigators have opened a probe of former Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko, who is tied to the spiraling scandal over whether U.S. President Donald Trump sought to pressure Ukraine. The probe, which relates to allegations of abuse of power by Lutsenko, does not appear to have a direct link to the larger, U.S.-focused scandal that Lutsenko is connected to. (RFE/RL, 10.16.19)
• Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau has arrested Oleh Hladkovskiy, longtime business associate and political ally of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on suspicion of abuse of office. (RFE/RL, 10.17.19)
• The IMF improved Ukraine’s growth outlook slightly from 2.7 percent for the full year set in April to 3 percent in its latest World Economic Outlook, released this week. If growth does comes in at over 3 percent and the size of the economic is more than $125 billion, then that triggers Ukraine’s warrant payouts to investors that received them as part of a debt restructuring deal signed five years ago. (bne Intellinews, 10.18.19)
• Ukraine’s talks with the IMF have “stalled” and a deal before the end of this year is looking increasingly unlikely because of the dispute over the snowballing Privatbank crisis. (bne IntelliNews, 10.14.19)
• Ukraine’s state-owned PrivatBank has won a case blocking oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and his partners from unfreezing $2 billion in assets that were seized by a London court in 2017, as part of the bank’s efforts to recover more than $7.2 billion looted from the bank under its old ownership. The ruling means that Privatbank, which is pursuing a raft of legal suits against the oligarch, can go ahead with $3 billion worth of claims against Kolomoisky in U.K. courts. (bne IntelliNews, 10.16.19)

Russia’s other post-Soviet neighbors:

• U.S. President Donald Trump's advisers offered him several options to pressure Turkey, including threatening to recognize the deaths of millions of Armenians and members of other ethnic minorities under the Ottoman Empire as a genocide, a National Security Council official told Newsweek. (Newsweek, 10.18.19)
• Belarusian authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko pledges to prepare a joint response with Russia to NATO's major drills in Europe, which should take place next year. (bne IntelliNews, 10.14.19)
• Russia says Belarusian authorities have detained and then released Anna Bogachyova, who was allegedly involved in Moscow's reported meddling in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. (RFE/RL, 10.15.19)
• A leading Kazakh sinologist has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on high-treason charges and stripped of his citizenship. The Almaty City Court said on Oct. 15 that Konstantin Syroyezhkin was sentenced on Oct. 7 and will serve his prison term in a maximum-security prison in Kazakhstan. (RFE/RL, 10.15.19)

IV. Quoteworthy

• At a recent OPEC meeting in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz described the oil production arrangement betwee Riyadh and Moscow as “ ’til death do us part.”  (AP/Haaretz, 10.14.19)
• “Russia rarely tells others what to do. It understands what each of them wants the most, and what each might afford to do without, and then seeks mutual accommodation on that basis,” Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said. (Financial Times, 10.16.19)