Month: February 2008

February 8, 2008

Trepashkin on Alexanyan

Former political prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin writes in the Moscow Times about his experience in Building 6 of the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center, the same place where Vasily Alexanyan was being held: “In addition, the authorit...
February 8, 2008

A Collision with the FSB

La Russophobe has posted a translation of an interesting letter written by the Russian filmmaker Vladimir Sinelnikov to President Vladimir Putin published in Yezhednevniy Zhurnal. Two years ago, Sinelnikov was in a car accident with an FSB officer...
February 8, 2008

International Law and the New Russia

The highly respected Bill Burke White is guest blogging over at Concurring Opinions, and has done a terrific post entitled “International Law and the New Russia.” Below is just an excerpt. Indicative of Russia’s disregard for human rig...
February 8, 2008

Still No Confirmation of Medical Care for Alexanyan

On the 11th day of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s hunger strike, we see more and more contradictory reports that fatally ill prisoner Vasily Alexanyan has been “spirited off” to a new facility to finally receive the medical care he was b...
February 8, 2008

Integrating Energy Security into NATO

In a new article in the Wall Street Journal, Zenyo Baran and Robert A. Smith of the Hudson Institute explain how Gazprom has pushed the economically astronomically expensive South Stream pipeline to defeat two competing European proposals designed...
February 8, 2008

Video: Miliband on Russia

This clip from the Labour Party features David Miliband and Douglas Alexander talking about British relations with Russia, among other foreign affairs issues. Fast forward to 4:48 for the good stuff.
February 8, 2008

Nationalistic Chest Beating

Ah, the sweet smell of elections season, when Russia’s political environment blossoms into a stridently anti-Western minefield, hubristic enough so as to sufficiently distract the populace from the painful fact that they are deprived of basi...
February 8, 2008

John McCain and Russia

Stratfor is very premature with their prediction of the next U.S. president (and the reasoning dismissing the Democrats is both brief and flawed), but they are quite right in remarking that foreign governments are already hedging their bets and pr...
February 8, 2008

Energy Blast, Feb. 8, 2008

Gazprom has threatened to halt fuel supplies to Ukraine unless the country settles a $1.5 billion debt or offers assurances that it will pay. Naftogaz Ukrayny, Ukraine’s state fuel company, denied it owes Gazprom $500 million for additional ...