About this book. When Compendium II was published about a year ago, we remarked that Russia had gone through legislative and political changes in 2012/2013 that - from a lawyers perspective — could be described as dramatic. We would have been more cautious about using the word dramatic had we known then what developments were to come in the year that followed. The impact of the Ukraine crisis on the Russian business environment, including business law, has been profound. Planned areas of development (such as reforming the civil law regime and introducing WTO rules following Russias accession in 2012) have been outside the spotlight, while the political disputes between Russia and many Wester