The UK press have a reputation for baiting Russia somewhat - perhaps a reflection of less-than-healthy diplomatic relations in recent years.  Today, the Telegraph has published a bizarre article by one James Corum, a specialist in military history, who apparently sees Russia as a threat to the West and warns that it could turn to 'open confrontation' in the near future.  The suggestion seems pretty farfetched, especially given the recent news that the Bush administration had considered launching a strike on Russia to halt the Georgian war in 2008.  All the same, Corum's Tsarist metaphor for the mindset of the current Russian government and commentary on use of the phrase 'sphere of influence' is interesting...

Russian foreign policy is based on a truly weird combination of nostalgia for the old Soviet Union and the imperialism of the Tsarist Empire. Russian politicians and academics use the term "sphere of influence" in the late 19th-century sense of the ruler's right to control the external and domestic policies of neighbouring states. One of the strangest aspects of the new Russian ideology is the revival of the old Tsarist symbols to include the double-headed Romanov Eagle - complete with crown-- displayed on official buildings and in the Russian parliament.

Here Streetwise Professor recounts his fortunate opportunity to meet up with the Russian youth activist Oleg Kozlovsky during his speaking tour of the United States (Kozlovsky had been stranded in St. Louis by the snowstorms on the East Coast).  Turns out the professor named his blog after a song by this fellow on the right.

We had a wide-ranging conversation about all sorts of matters, from Putin, to the controversy over his passport, to energy, to Europe and energy, to Kaliningrad, to the effects of the economic crisis, to the militia and OMON, to the military and the effects of the reforms, to Khodorkovsky.  After a while, he smiled and said that he didn't want to sound so negative, so I suggested that we talk about politics and economics in the US instead-which ended with me apologizing for negativity.

I then took Oleg on a brief tour of some of the sites in St. Louis, notably Forest Park.  Hopefully he's now boarding his flight back home.

All in all, an enjoyable morning.  One amusing moment came when he asked me about how my blog came to be named "Streetwise Professor."  I told him that it derived from a combination of (a) the fact that "the Street" refers to the financial markets that I had originally intended to blog about exclusively, (b) the fact that I'm a professor, and (c) my punk rock inclinations.  He smiled and said that he liked the title because it makes him think of street protests.

Gazprom has confirmed that it will delay the Shtokman gas field by three years to 2016 due to a slump in demand.  Rosneft is boasting a 2.5% year increase in proven reserves. Britain points out that Iran's plans to make higher-grade nuclear reactor fuel would break five United Nations Security Council Resolutions; Russia is calling for care in the imposition of any sanctions on Iran so that they are 'limited to non-proliferation only', and is urging Iran to address international concerns about its nuclear program.  TNK-BP should become more streamlined and efficient, and focus more on growth inside Russia, using the former structure of BP as a model, according to its next head, Maxim Barsky.  Shell says it underestimated how quickly the mood on banking salaries was affecting opinion on executive salaries last year.  

At the end of January, my editor James met up with Dr. Nina Khrushcheva at the New School in New York to shoot an exclusive interview on variety of topics in modern Russian politics.  The quote which I have put in the title of this post is just one example from the stories that Khrushcheva shared with us about the nature of the Russian state in the daily lives of citizens, and the cultural status of individuality and identity.  The interview with Khrushcheva was fascinating, wide-ranging, and broad in scope, so we will be publishing several separate videos over the coming week.

A fiction author of the most vivid imagination would have a tough time coming up with a story as satirical as the recent 10,000-strong protests in Kaliningrad followed by political theatrics of the state-approved opposition, as Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov (of the state-sanitized opposition party, A Just Russia) made a big show out of publicly and sharply criticizing the ruling party over the budget and shortcomings of the anti-crisis measures - and then, for good measure, he took a little shot at Vladimir Putin himself.  Just to make sure we believed that the outburst was genuine, Mironov himself was then attacked and called "a rat" by United Russia deputies and then threatened with dismissal.

For a while, the gambit was working its magic - especially fueled on by the additionally well-timed publishing of Igor Yurgens report calling for urgent and immediate political reforms or else Russia would face atrophy.  Olga Kryshtanovskaya of the Russian Academy of Sciences appeared to be buying into it, as she told the Financial Times that the Kaliningrad-Mironov-Yurgens events showed that "Cracks are starting to appear in the hierarchy of the state."

Last year the Kremlin dented Mr Luzhkov's political machine by firing his police chief. The Rechnik row gives the Kremlin extra ammunition. "This may not be the last straw against Luzhkov, but it is certainly another one," says an insider. State television has fiercely attacked Mr Luzhkov. A civic council set up by the Kremlin has now forced the demolition of houses in Rechnik to be suspended.

National newspapers including Nezavisimaya Gazeta suggested Thursday that the quarrel was senseless because Mironov poses no threat to Putin or United Russia, suggesting that the sudden scandal was in fact an attempt to move the media spotlight away from Kaliningrad.

A senior member of the Communist Party, Duma Deputy Sergei Obukhov, told Echo Moskvy radio that "two boys are imitating a fight to get public attention away from the problems that led to the mass protest erupting in the Kaliningrad region."

Meanwhile, the Kremlin seems to have taken the situation there rather seriously, firing Oleg Matveichev, the Kremlin official responsible for domestic politics in northwestern Russia, where the Kaliningrad exclave is located. 

Almost $50 billion will be poured into 'hydrographic and geophysical research' in the Arctic in an attempt to prove Russia's right to claim more of the Arctic floor and what are thought to be its vast oil and gas reserves.  Gazprom has confirmed that Ukraine has indeed paid its gas bill for January (around $780 million).  The Gazprom-led consortium working on a liquefied natural gas project in the Shtokman may hold off until gas demand revives - a surge in domestic production is currently matching US needs.  Garry Kasparov is dismissive of Russia's focus on relations with the East, but Asia is a key client for Russia's energy services, whose demand could reach the same level as that of Europe, according to Gazprom's chief executive.  Canada's Center for International Governance Innovation thinks that a nuclear energy renaissance is unlikely.  Italy's ENI is attempting to appease antitrust regulators by offering to sell $2 billion worth of its pipeline assets, although the buyer would be the Italian state, and such a sale, says ENI's chief executive, would therefore only help to tighten its grip.