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Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson
#13 - JRL 2009-82 - JRL Home
Subject: re news item #10 from your list of 29 April 2009 [Russia risk assessment for upheaval]
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:51:05 -0400
From: "Lloyd, Alexsandra" <Lloyd@eurasiagroup.net>

30 April 2009

Dear David,

In connection with news item #10 from your list of 29 April 2009, Eurasia Group would like to clarify for your readers the context and content of the "Fat Tail" risk scenario that we recently issued about Russia.

A number of Russian-language and English-language outlets in Russia have reported on the scenario under headlines that suggest Eurasia Group believes that massive social unrest will lead to President Dmitri Medvedev's ouster this year. We do not believe this. As is stated in our scenario, we think that this is only a 20 percent possibility. In other words, in our view there is a high chance that Medvedev will serve out the remainder of his presidential term, and that social unrest and economic downturn are unlikely to pose systemic threats to Russia's political stability this year.

Eurasia Group is a political risk firm, and political science guides our methodology. We routinely write about very unlikely scenarios such as this one, and we assign probabilities to make clear to the reader the relative likelihood among several possible outcomes. Importantly, at the beginning of our Fat Tails publication, which outlines potential risks in a number of countries this year, we clearly state that “these Fat Tails are unlikely occurrences; they do not represent mainline “calls” for any of the countries.”

The full publication is available to your readers at http://docs.eurasiagroup.net/fattails2009.pdf

Johnson's Russia List remains the preeminent English language source for news on Russia, and so it is important to us that your readers understand the full context of our Fat Tails scenario on Russia.

Thanks and regards,
Ian Bremmer
President
Eurasia Group