Year: 2008

March 24, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – March 24, 2008

TODAY: Head of British Council criticizes “political chess”; electoral monitoring discussions continue; Zubkov calls for US to ease pressure on Belarus. The Party of Blondes. Sochi to displace 4,000 residents. One US journalist writes that two cru...
March 22, 2008

Defending Against Expropriation in Latin America

The case of the state’s latest triple-pronged attack on TNK-BP serves as an important reminder that Russia’s investment environment remains about as stable and law-abiding as it was during the height of the Yukos theft – appeals ...
March 22, 2008

Discarding Despotism

In George Will’s column about Chief Justice John Roberts’s new report, we are briefly reminded of how much has changed during the Putin years: Roberts’s report recounts accompanying a Russian judge walking among Arlington Nationa...
March 21, 2008

The Brothers Zaslavsky – Legal Nihilism to the Third Power

Alexander Zaslavsky and Ilya Zaslavsky, two brothers, both dual U.S.-Russian citizens, have found themselves arrested this week, prisoners of the Russian government under charges of “corporate oil espionage,” and at the center of what ...
March 21, 2008

How to Politely Decline a Cup of Tea

From the New York Times review of Andrei Nekrasov‘s film “Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File”: More personal essay than political diatribe, “Poisoned by Polonium” is not without its lighter moments. During a conversation w...
March 21, 2008

Russian Property Seized for Auction in Germany

File this one under painful irony: after so many years of the Kremlin seizing private property and holding rigged auctions, now they get a taste of their own medicine as a German court has ruled to allow the seizure and auction of a government-own...
March 21, 2008

Energy Blast, March 21, 2008

Gazprom said methane captured from underground coal mines may provide a “serious” addition to resources as producing natural-gas fields in Siberia decline. The company has completed the acquisition of effective control in regional power utility TG...
March 21, 2008

Today in Russian Business

Russian Railways is to spend almost $33.9 billion over the next 12 years to modernize Moscow’s local railway network. The regional governor of Ulyanovsk has ordered top officials to learn English so that they can communicate more easily with...
March 21, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – March 21, 2008

TODAY: Medvedev needs to create parliamentary independence; TNK-BP arrests made on grounds of “industrial espionage”. Russian TV journalist found dead. Russia “less hostile” towards US missile defense plans. If Medvedev intends to widen the discus...
March 20, 2008

Kozlovsky: When You Chop Wood, Chips Fly

We’re pleased to present another special exclusive guest column by the Russian political activist and youth movement coordinator, Oleg Kozlovsky. When you chop wood, chips fly… By Oleg Kozlovsky, exclusively for www.robertamsterdam.com In ex...