Year: 2008

January 4, 2008

Gazprom Looks to Capture Nigerian Gas

Just this evening the FT has broken a story of considerable importance: According to an unnamed, high ranking official in Nigeria’s energy sector, Gazprom has made an aggressive offer to make major investments in the African nation’s e...
January 4, 2008

SRB on the Nashi 3rd Congress

There’s an interesting post over at SRB about the Nashi’s 3rd Congress, which of course featured Vladislav Surkov as the keynote speaker, and the creeping “bureaucratization” of the movement: The Nashisty argue that Russia ...
January 4, 2008

Russia Cuts Back on Budget for OSCE

RFE/RL is reporting that Russia is cutting back on its contributions to the OSCE budget: Russia’s decision to reduce its payments, in a sense, fits into the ongoing debate over the OSCE’s budget for 2008, which has yet to be adopted du...
January 4, 2008

“The Aggression of the Street Rabble”

The Daily Telegraph continues its reporting on the Belkovsky rumor over Vladimir Putin’s secret fortune, this time featuring some terrific quotes from Andrei Illarionov: Illarionov, president of the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysi...
January 4, 2008

Enrique Krauze on Venezuela and Russia

Today, and hopefully over the next several months, we are planning to do a significant amount of blogging about Russia from a comparative perspective – focusing often on the commonalities of the Russian experience and the Latin American expe...
January 4, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Jan. 4, 2007

Today: Russia’s relations wtih UK and Ukraine in trouble; Greenpeace Russia to focus on Kyoto Protocol and possibly sue the IOC; Moscow’s building boom; movie-going culture on the up. The British Council says that its legal position in...
January 4, 2008

Energy Blast, Jan. 4, 2007

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin says that Russia will not be affected by changes in oil prices, as it has “prepared” for fluctuations with a strong reserve. Lukoil and Gazprom have established a Regional Development joint venture to focus on a numb...
January 3, 2008

The Internet in Cyrillic

With all the hubbub in Russia’s online community regarding LiveJournal and increased internet watchdogs, another frightening development has been added to the mix, this time involving Russia’s campaign to establish a new Cyrillic inter...
January 3, 2008

Economist: Tsar Struck

Gotta love their ability to deliver clever headlines, no? From the Economist: The audible but mostly invisible feuds inside the Kremlin, and the total secrecy about political decision-making, make even the stability so praised by Time look precari...