Year: 2008

December 31, 2008

Grigory Pasko: Person of the Year, Then and Now

The man from the magazine cover and the country in ruins Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. In the last new year holidays Time brought joy to the whole world by recognizing Put...
December 31, 2008

Enduring the Crisis

From Irina Yasina in the Lebanon Daily Star: Whole regions – the Urals and Mordovia, for example – are stagnant. Moscow, which used to rain gold on the economy, is also suffering, because it, too, depends on natural resources, and its ...
December 31, 2008

Video: Russia Today’s Bizarre Ads

NYT television critic Virginia Heffernan had a great blog post yesterday taking a look at the bizzaro commercials being played inside New York City taxis advertising the 24/7 cable news Kremlin propaganda channel Russia Today.  I’ve als...
December 31, 2008

Stalin Calling

In relation to the previous post, I am catching all this news of a new mobile phone being released in Moscow by Nokia which features an image of Stalin – perhaps in the style of one of those U2-branded iPods.  After some hard searching,...
December 31, 2008

Forgiving Uncle Joe

I do agree with this author that it is particularly surprising how un-surprised everyone is that such as astoundingly large portion of the Russian population voted to forgive “Uncle Joe” Stalin and elect him as country’s most pop...
December 31, 2008

Two Trends for 2009 in Russia

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Leon Aron sees two trends emerging in Russia that the West should play close attention to: The first will be a growing dissatisfaction with the government, which may lead to a political crisis. The second will b...
December 31, 2008

Energy Blast – Dec 31, 2008

The Gazprom-Ukraine natural gas price-supply fiasco seemed to be drawing to a close yesterday, but not before some last-minute threats to keep things interesting.  The Russians are on a New Year’s Eve vigorous offensive, claiming that t...
December 31, 2008

Today in Russian Business – Dec 31, 2008

State-owned Vneshekonombank (VEB) has approved a proposal to lend $1.5 billion to domestic mining companies to help cover foreign debts – likely favoring those recently listed in the strategic sectors list.  Today concludes the final da...
December 31, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Dec 31, 2008

TODAY:  The RA Blog wishes you a very happy new year, Opposition gathers momentum in Georgia, Spain extradites a Chechen to Russia, reactions to the doomsday professor, former North Ossetian Mayor gunned down, Nicaragua wants closer relations...
December 30, 2008

A Split in the Tandemocracy?

Various observers are beginning to note some early, outward indications that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev are growing apart.  Russophobe points to a comment piece by Vladimir Frolov as the beginning of a new nar...