MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts meetings with the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders, invites them to a BRICS summit; reparations could be Russia's ace in the hole in future negotiations with Ukraine; and France to send fighter jets to Kiev as West gets closer to a direct confrontation with Moscow. These stories topped Wednesday's newspaper headlines in Russia.

 

Vedomosti: Putin holds separate talks with Azerbaijani president, Armenian PM

On October 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin held Kremlin talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who were in town to attend a CIS summit.

Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have been developing positively, with bilateral trade reaching $4.3 bln last year and Russia pumping more than $4 bln of direct investment into Azerbaijan's economy, the Russian leader said at a meeting with Azerbaijan’s president. The two countries have lots of interesting projects in energy and infrastructure, he added. "These are ongoing projects," Putin said as he also invited Aliyev to attend a BRICS summit in Kazan on October 22-24.

During ensuing talks with Pashinyan, Putin stated that, while, last year, Russia’s trade with Armenia amounted to $7.4 bln, it may double to $14 bln-$16 bln this year, as the figure in the first half of 2024 stood at $8.3 bln. Russia is the leading foreign investor in Armenia, Putin noted. He invited Pashinyan to the BRICS summit, too, as proposed holding a bilateral meeting at that venue and said that Pashinyan could meet with his counterparts from other countries.

Putin’s meetings with Aliyev and Pashinyan are undoubtedly important, said Niyazi Niyazov, Professor in the Department of International Relations in the Post-Soviet Area at St. Petersburg University. Russia is taking the initiative here, which helps strengthen its posture in the South Caucasus. The potential signing of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains a controversial issue though, the expert told Vedomosti. While the current Armenian leadership is eager to conclude a peace treaty, Baku is in no rush. According to Niyazov, to meet Azerbaijan’s demands, Pashinyan will have to conquer the diaspora in the United States and France which continues to take an adversarial stance toward Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the West, which also wants a peace treaty to be signed immediately, is putting pressure on Baku, but this will hardly yield any result, the expert concluded.

Russia in Global Affairs Editor-in-Chief Fyodor Lukyanov agrees that Putin’s talks with Aliyev and Pashinyan were certainly constructive, given that the Armenian premier seldom visits anywhere. However, the involvement of either Russia or the West here will not bring peace any closer, as everything now depends on Armenia and Azerbaijan. And it should be understood that the issue of the ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh has been decided once and for all, Lukyanov concluded.

 

Izvestia: Russia could play reparations card in peace talks with Ukraine

Russia has been adding up the damage done to it by Ukraine since the start of the special military operation, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large in charge of overseeing the Kiev regime’s crimes, told Izvestia. Affected regions are carefully calculating the damage, and, according to the diplomat, Russia will look for mechanisms to claim compensation. "On the battlefield, things have not yet been decided," Miroshnik stressed. And it is too early to assess the total damage amid the ongoing hostilities, he specified.

Separately, the Russian Investigative Committee, too, has been tallying up the damage from Ukraine’s actions. Committee experts have looked at more than 3,000 damaged buildings and infrastructure facilities and determined that rebuilding them would cost more than 7.5 bln rubles ($77.3 mln). Meanwhile, damage to infrastructure and certain industrial sectors has cost ordinary people dearly, in some cases immeasurably.

Member of the Council for Interethnic Relations under the Russian President Bogdan Bezpalko argues that Russia could use reparations as leverage in talks with Ukraine later. "For example, Russia could claim some land in exchange for not demanding reparations for the damage done to the country," the political analyst said. "Ukraine has so far said it will never recognize the new Russian regions officially. But Kiev might agree to do so if we refrain from claiming reparations. <…>. And if we want to claim reparations from Ukraine, we will need to defeat it and take its entire territory, including its resources and banking sphere, under control," he maintains.

The winner can claim reparations, Vladislav Belov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for German Studies, reminded Izvestia. He recalled that post-WWII reparations were a condition for the signing of peace agreements.

Bezpalko also said Russia may as well set up its own tribunal where it and its allies would demand that Kiev pay not only for the damage done to infrastructure and residents but also compensation for disrupted deals if Ukraine ever capitulates.

 

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Ukraine pushes for strikes deep inside Russia as NATO amasses forces near Belarus

Chief of Ukraine’s General Staff Anatoly Bargilevich and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina seem more interested in begging the White House to allow Kiev to strike deep into Russia rather than discuss any kind of peace plan in the United States. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky plans to ask US President Joe Biden for this permission again at the Ramstein summit in Germany on October 12, media reports said. And French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu has already announced that his country will send its Mirage 2000 multi-role fighter jets equipped with air-to-surface missiles to Kiev.

Meanwhile, NATO allies have launched another large-scale exercise, Gelezinis Vilkas 2024-II (Iron Wolf), at the Pabrade training area in Lithuania, just 15 km away from the Belarusian border. The maneuvers involving some 5,000 troops from Lithuania, Germany, the United States, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Norway and the Netherlands will run through October 17.

"The [North Atlantic] Alliance’s advance forces have been ramping up their military presence near the border of the Union State in the past two to three years. As the Ukraine conflict intensifies, these NATO forces serve as a kind of back up for Kiev in its anti-Russian efforts," retired Lieutenant General Yuri Netkachev told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

"One of Kiev’s objectives is to drag NATO into its confrontation with Russia," the military expert argued. "This goal will be achieved as soon as [NATO] allies give Kiev the authorization to use their missiles for strikes inside Russia. This may lead to very dire consequences, for Russia has the means and the capacity to effectively respond to such aggression," he warned.

 

Kommersant: Fathers of AI awarded Nobel Prize in physics

This year, the Nobel Committee decided to award its prize in physics for "foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks." US physicist John Hopfield, 91, will share the Nobel prize with Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, 76. The two scientists’ tools and discoveries made back in the 1980s laid the ground for the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology over the past decade and a half.

The Nobel Committee argued that the two laureates’ research did not become a revolutionary breakthrough back in the 1980s because computers in that era were not powerful enough. However, as technologies gradually developed, machine learning ideas have been put into practice from the 2000s onward. Associate professor of the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at MISIS University Andrey Filimonov said most artificial neural networks are currently based on the network invented by Hopfield. "This works as a modern alphabet for machine learning and is part of the underlying architecture of neural networks," he explained.

Nowadays, the technology based on the two laureates’ research is used for facial recognition, say, when analyzing video streams from CCTV cameras or even when paying for metro travel, Valentin Klimov, deputy director of the Institute of Cyber Intelligence Systems at the National Research Nuclear University MEPHI said. However, machine learning models rather belong to the field of mathematics, the expert argues. "And since Alfred Nobel’s era, mathematics has not been among the Nobel Prize categories. And brain research, on which neural networks are based, is an interdisciplinary field that is related to physics, too," he explained.

Emin Tagiyev, a senior lecturer of the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at MISIS, suggests that the research by Hopfield and Hinton was recognized by the Nobel Committee because AI is important for modern science. "Neural networks are widely used in physics and are taking research to a new level," the expert said. "In experimental science, AI methods are actively used for data processing, and they help reduce the cost of calculations in theoretical science," he added.

 

Kommersant: Russian LNG exports rise by almost 5% in January-September

In the first nine months of 2024, Russian LNG producers exported 24.36 mln metric tons of liquefied natural gas, or almost a 5% rise from the same period last year, Kpler data show. Belgium disappeared from the list of Europe’s largest buyers of Russian LNG last month when it almost stopped purchasing LNG from Novatek. As navigation on the Northern Sea Route remains open, the Russian gas producer is redirecting its free volumes to Asia. In September, 1.48 mln metric tons, or the bulk of LNG, was exported to the Asia-Pacific, namely, China, Japan and South Korea, and Russia sold 1.15 mln metric tons to the EU, with France, the Netherlands and Spain being the largest importers.

According to Viktor Katona at Kpler, Novatek is already trying to establish new supply chains without transshipping LNG in the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. "While the official ban on transshipment across the EU will come into force in March 2025 and there is still time, Novatek needs to prepare for that," the analyst told Kommersant.

In the past few months, the destination of exports from the Yamal LNG plant has reflected the active seasonal use of the Northern Sea Route, independent expert Alexander Sobko argues, hence growing exports to China amid lower exports to the EU, in particular to Belgium. The price differential, too, played a role, he said: in mid-September, prices for 1,000 cubic meters of LNG with delivery to the Asia-Pacific in October was more than $70 higher than that to the EU. So far, as this price differential for November has faded away, and exports through the Northern Sea Route are expected to end sooner this year, exports to Europe may recover in the coming months, he says.

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