Month: February 2008

February 26, 2008

Energy Blast, Feb. 26, 2008

Hungary will join Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline project to transport Russian natural gas across the Black Sea to the Balkans and on to other European countries, after an agreement was signed by Dmitry Medvedev last night. Critics say th...
February 26, 2008

Today in Russian Business

French carmaker Renault is delaying a deal to purchase a stake in AvtoVAZ, Russia’s biggest automaker, without giving precise reasons. The chief purchasing officer at the latter company was murdered last week in his apartment building, and o...
February 26, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Feb. 26, 2008

TODAY: Will the Putin/Medvedev working relationship survive? EU to agree on principles for sovereign wealth funds. Russia’s military and healthcare under attack. “The unfortunate reality is that duty rather than interest will take Russians to the ...
February 25, 2008

Mario Vargas Llosa: Khodorkovsky in Siberia

Yesterday the acclaimed author and highly regarded political commentator Mario Vargas Llosa published a long and powerful opinion column in support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Spain’s largest daily newspaper, El Pais. Mr. Vargas Llosa makes r...
February 25, 2008

Pardon Our Appearance: We’re Building an Authoritarian State

Russia was quick to reprimand the insensitive Estonians for moving a monument to a Soviet soldier from the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery, but it looks like the power learned a thing or two from the incident. It is noteworthy that the Ru...
February 25, 2008

Video: Grigory Pasko’s Real Russia, Part 2

Below is the second installment of Grigory Pasko’s video interview series with ordinary Russian citizens during his travels in the summer of 2007, Moscow-Petushki. The title of the series is borrowed by the popular work of samizdat by Venedi...
February 25, 2008

Grigory Pasko: A Pastor Behind Bars

In Russia they’re accusing an American clergyman of arms smuggling By Grigory Pasko, journalist In Moscow, not far from the pretentiously ostentatious building of the state corporation «Rosatom», is found the plain and inconspicuous construction i...
February 25, 2008

Ponomarev in the Washington Post

Lev Ponomarev, who now facing criminal charges in Russia and has had his travel privileges revoked, is featured in a column by Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post today. But criminality isn’t limited to the Kremlin; it may be Russia’s...
February 25, 2008

Russians React to the Times Article

OK, so here goes: The New York Times has published an article about another New York Times article which prompted strong responses from the Russian public. Yes, I think I’ve that right. What happened is that someone came up with the interest...
February 25, 2008

Energy Blast, Feb. 25, 2008

Deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev is in Serbia today, supposedly to focus on South Stream, a €10 billion ($14.65 billion) project designed to bring Siberian gas to Europe via the Black Sea, but also as a show of support after Russia supported ...