Month: December 2007

December 10, 2007

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Dec. 10, 2007

Today: Medvedev to run for President; Renault buys Avtovaz stake; more failed talks between Russia and the United States; European Court of Human Rights rules against Russia in activist case. President Vladimir Putin has backed First Deputy Prime ...
December 7, 2007

Top VTB Banker Murdered over Timber?

In what was initially called an apparent suicide, a senior level banker of the powerful state-owned financial group VTB was found dead in a pool outside his luxury country home in the Odintsovo District. Oleg Zhukovsky, who held the title of corpo...
December 7, 2007

Grigory Pasko: Obituary of Alexander Tkachenko

“If a person is weeping – leave…” Poet and human rights colossus Alexander Tkachenko dies in Russia By Grigory Pasko, journalist The phoned me from the radio station «Liberty» and told me that Alexander Petrovich Tkachenko had died. Director-Gener...
December 7, 2007

Shevtsova: Russia Is Commiting Suicide

The following is an exclusive translation of an interview with Lilia Shevtsova by the German newspaper Die Welt. Russia is committing suicide … … claims political analyst Lilia Shevtsova, because Putin is destroying state institutions ...
December 7, 2007

The Fighting Under the Carpet

From the Economist: Indeed, it is widely believed that some, including Igor Sechin, the deputy chief of staff in the Kremlin and the informal leader of the siloviki, the clan of former KGB men, urged him to make such a change. With little prodding...
December 7, 2007

Meet the Next President of Russia

It is the consensus of the experts who contribute to this blog that Valentina Matviyenko, the mayor of St. Petersburg, will be the individual selected by Vladimir Putin to become the next president of the Russian Federation.
December 7, 2007

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Dec. 7, 2007

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands in his office in the presidential residence at Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow December 6, 2007. Putin’s United Russia party will name its candidate for next year’s presidential election at a congre...