Ukraine 101:

• No significant developments.

West’s leverage over Russia:

• U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia's electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin's command systems, making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyberweapons should the U.S. deem it necessary, according to a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents reviewed by NBC News. The lack of an official response from U.S. authorities to the media reports about cyberattacks against Russia means that there is "state cyber terrorism" in the U.S., Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Nov. 5  (NBC, 11.04.16, TASS, 11.05.16)

 Russia’s leverage over West:

• Upcoming votes in Europe include Dutch elections in March, French presidential elections in April and May and German elections in the fall. Moscow is hoping that gains by Kremlin-friendly parties like France's National Front could help Russia break free of some of the diplomatic isolation and sanctions imposed on Moscow after its seizure of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, Kremlin watchers say. (Wall Street Journal, 11.05.16)
• General Rumen Radev, the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s candidate for president, won the most votes in a first round Nov. 6, raising the risk of snap parliamentary elections should he beat the ruling party’s nominee in a runoff on Nov. 13. Radev will face the ruling Gerb Party’s parliament speaker Tsetska Tsacheva, who took 21.56% of votes. Both Radev and Tsacheva advocate easing EU and U.S. sanctions imposed against Russia over its seizure of Crimea and support of rebels in eastern Ukraine. (Bloomberg, 11.06.16)
• Two of three parties governing Estonia have broken off their coalition agreement leaving Prime Minister Taavi Roivas exposed to a vote of no confidence in the country's parliament. The coalition's rupture and an impending leadership change could give an opening to the Center Party, the largest opposition party that has long had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party. Last year the Center Party got 24.8% of the vote, but it is not part of Estonia’s three-party coalition government (New York Times, 11.07.16, AP, 11.05.16)

Russia’s leverage over Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Casualties and costs for Russia, West and Ukraine:

• The Ukrainian army had no fatalities in the Donbas conflict over the past day, yet four servicemen suffered injuries, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman for military issues Oleksandr Motuzianyk said on Nov. 8. (Interfax, 11.08.16)
• The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said one of its fighters has been killed in Ukrainian shelling. (Interfax, 11.07.16)
• The transfer of Ukrainian servicemen's bodies to Kiev has begun in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. (Interfax, 11.08.16)
• Overall spending on national defense in Russia’s federal budget for 2017 is envisaged at 2.84 trillion rubles ($45.15 billion), or 3.3% of GDP. In 2018, Russian defense spending will amount to 3% of GDP, while in 2019 it will drop to 2.8%. As reported earlier, these figures mark a drop in defense spending of about 30%. (RBTH, 11.01.16)

Red lines and tripwires:

• No significant developments.

Factors and scenarios that could cause resumption of large-scale hostilities or lead to accidents between Western and Russian forces in Europe:

• NATO pilots stationed in Estonia often fly within 10 yards of Russian jets, close enough to wave hello, or in one recent incident, see a Russian pilot flash a middle finger. (The Washington Post, 11.06.16)
• "This is where the accident—God forbid—would more likely occur," U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James has said of the Baltic region, an area of critical importance to NATO where the alliance abuts Russia. (U.S. News and World Report, 11.03.16)
• Russia is increasing its military capabilities on its western border in response to a build-up of NATO forces, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has said. Russia wants to increase the number of troops along its European frontier by about 30,000. (RFE/RL, 11.03.16)
• British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said suggestions that Britain could go to war with Russia next year are “too extreme.” Asked if Britain would have the army capability for a war with Russia in 2018 or 2019, Fallon said: “Yes, we would be ready to increase the tempo in that kind of situation, which I don’t immediately foresee.” (The Independent, 11.01.16, Mirror, 11.01.16)
• NATO’s outgoing Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow said that the situation is as unstable as he has seen since he began his career in the late 1970s. During the late years of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin held to predictable rules of behavior, but now it does not, he said. (The Washington Post, 11.06.16)
• In a new report, the European Leadership Network (ELN) writes: “Despite the maintenance of several bilateral agreements on incident management between individual NATO member states and Russia, there are significant gaps in their coverage, not least because some NATO countries, including Poland and Romania and non-NATO states Finland and Sweden, do not have such agreements with Russia.” (European Leadership Network, 11.02.16)
•  “We should not be afraid of a small war with the use of nuclear weapons. We have a great nuclear shield,” Viktor Mizin, a senior researcher with the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), said recently on Russian national television. (Rosbalt, in Russian, 11.03.16)

Arming and training of Ukrainian forces by Western countries:

• "My expectation is the U.S. Army will be given the mission to continue supporting Ukraine for as far as I can see," said Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of the U.S. Army Europe. The U.S. currently has some 300 soldiers deployed to Ukraine, helping train Ukrainian troops. (Wall Street Journal, 11.06.16)

Strategies and actions recommended:

• In one of her last acts as secretary of state in early 2013, Hillary Clinton wrote a confidential memo to the White House on how to handle Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her bluntly worded advice: Snub him. (The Washington Post, 11.03.16)

Analysis:

• Reid Standish and Ian Bateson of Foreign Policy magazine consider the revelations and potential fallout from the online database disclosing “the incomes and assets of tens of thousands of Ukrainian officials and lawmakers,” which became publicly available on Oct. 31. “In a country where the average monthly income is roughly $200, revelations that elected officials have personal holdings worth hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate and eccentric items, like Fabergé eggs, Japanese art and even a ticket to space, are now causing a public uproar.” (Foreign Policy, 11.04.16)  

Other important news:

• Although a Ukrainian hacker group has claimed responsibility for hacking the emails of former Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov, some experts suspect the involvement of U.S. intelligence agencies, according to TIME magazine. Meanwhile, on Nov. 3 the hacker group leaked another cache of emails it said came from Surkov's account. In one correspondence, he and a Russian lawmaker allegedly discuss fomenting unrest in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. (TIME, 11.07.16, The Moscow Times , 11.03.16)
• The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects the Ukrainian economy to grow in the current year by 1.5% and the growth will accelerate to 2% next year. (Interfax , 11.03.16)
• A new poll released by the International Republican Institute (IRI) on Oct. 31 found that public frustration with the Ukrainian government’s performance is growing, with 72% of respondents saying that the country is moving in the wrong direction. (Foreign Policy, 11.04.16)
• Mikhail Saakashvili, the former Georgian president who became governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region, announced Nov. 7 that he is resigning in frustration at what he characterized as obstruction in efforts to root out corruption. (AP, 11.07.16)
• Ukraine believes that it is impossible to conduct elections in the eastern region of Donbas until an international armed mission is deployed there, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said on Nov. 8. (Sputnik, 11.08.16)