Despite Actions, Gazprom Yearns for Western Approval

By Robert Amsterdam | Published: January 17, 2007

From the FT: Selling Saintliness The market for haloes is expanding fast. Gazprom’s talks with public relations companies about a three-year campaign to burnish its image is the latest evidence of the growing number of organisations and individuals in search of saintliness. London is uniquely placed to benefit from the quest for respectability. But the […]

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Borchgrave: Via-a-vis Russia, EU Is Dead in the Water

By Robert Amsterdam | Published:

From today’s Washington Times, by editor at large Arnaud de Borchgrave: Back to the future? It’s no longer politically incorrect to be skeptical about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In fact, said a leading European expert on Russia, speaking privately in Washington, “Russia is a far different political construct than the one we Europeans thought we were […]

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Grigory Pasko: The “YUKOS Affair” Snowball Keeps Rolling and Growing

By Grigory Pasko | Published:

It seems that Russia’s procuracy has decided to start the New Year off with a bang, a flurry of hyperactivity to demonstrate its loyalty to “tsar and country” in the matter of destroying whatever is still left of YUKOS. Nearly every day sees a torrent of news flashes from the frontlines in the battle with […]

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Grigory Pasko: Political Prisoners in Today’s Russia – Igor Sutyagin

By Grigory Pasko | Published:

Political Prisoners in Today’s Russia: Igor Sutyagin By Grigory Pasko, journalist On 27 October 1999, in the city of Obninsk, the FSB Administration for Kaluga Oblast detained Igor Vyacheslavovich SUTYAGIN, a staff member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies. Several days later, he was formally charged under Article […]

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Gazprom Throws its Weight in Polish Joint Venture

By James Kimer | Published:

Today the Associated Press is reporting that Gazprom has partially suspended cooperation with the Polish pipeline company Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe & Gazownictwo (PGNiG), which manages a major segment of the Yamal pipeline transporting Russian gas to Western Europe. According to the reports, the Polish are claiming that Gazprom suspended cooperation after their “unfounded” requests for […]

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Michael Klare on “Energo-Fascism” of Russia

By James Kimer | Published:

Today from the leftist author Michael Klare on TomDispatch.com, an essay focusing on the militarization of global energy politics. While Klare’s positioning of these issues is aggressively anti-government and paranoid, his section on Russia is fairly accurate. The Rising Energy Superpower At the end of the Cold War, it appeared as if Russia was a […]

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Reform Is No Substitute for Russian Expansionism, says Tymoshenko

By James Kimer | Published: January 16, 2007

Today Yulia Tymoshenko writes an energy-focused column on Germany, Europe, and Russia. “Encouraging economic and political reform are important objectives, but they can never serve as a substitute for a serious effort to contain Russia’s deep-seated expansionism.” With high prices for crude oil and natural gas bloating its coffers, Russia is once again aggressively confronting […]

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Forecasts on Average Earnings and Health in Russia Look Bleak

By James Kimer | Published:

Today in the Moscow Times, Alexander Zhelenin examines whether averages wages in Russia will rise along with the energy boom. Also the American Enterprise Institute has just posted a speech by demographer Nicholas Eberstadt which addresses the current health crisis in Russia (see below). Moscow Times: Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref recently said […]

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You Never Know What to Expect out of Russia

By Robert Amsterdam | Published:

Interesting, non-scientific poll on Russia-InfoCentre asking readers which statement about Russia is closest to reality – 1) Russia has all chances to regain the superpower status, 2) Without oil and weapons Russia is a third world country, 3) Russia is a reliable political partner, and 4) You never know what to expect from Russia. Interesting […]

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(UPDATE) Gazprom to Spend $11 Million on an Image Makeover

By Robert Amsterdam | Published:

[UPDATE] Both the Financial Times and the Moscow Times have weighed in on the story broken by Kommersant. The FT writes “Both Gazprom and the Kremlin have struggled to get across their message that price rises for former Soviet republics are part of a commercial move away from longstanding subsidies and towards market prices, rather […]

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