Year: 2008

November 17, 2008

A Groundswell of Support for Svetlana Bakhmina

This weekend the Washington Post carried a story about the rapidly growing base of support to free the pregnant Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, whom we’ve blogged about many times.  What started with one open letter to President Dmitry ...
November 17, 2008

Energy Blast – Nov 17, 2008

Russia, Iran and Qatar, the new OPEC-style ‘gas troika‘, is to meet later this month to agree on a draft charter.  Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have agreed to cooperate on setting up an oil transport system that will bypass Russia.&n...
November 17, 2008

Today in Russian Business – Nov. 17, 2008

G20 leaders, including Russia, have committed not to introduce any new trade barriers over the next year, complicating Vladimir Putin’s original crisis plan to raise import duties on ‘a wide range of goods‘.  The descent of ...
November 17, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Nov. 17, 2008

TODAY: G20 summit sees Russian optimism over Obama and a tentative offer to back down on missile defense; pro-Kremlin liberal party formed; Georgia-Russia PR war continues; Svetlana Bakhmina transferred to maternity ward. President Dmitry Medvedev...
November 15, 2008

Britain’s Sudden Turn on China and Russia

The British are a peculiar bunch.  I’ve lived here for years now, and still occasionally find myself surprised once in a while by the sudden reversals in foreign policy.  It’s as though the FCO practices a unique brand of sel...
November 15, 2008

Obama’s Push for Human Rights

Geoffrey Robertson has a good piece in today’s Independent about President-elect Barack Obama’s potential to become a global human rights defender.  How will this impact relations with Russia?  He also points out the careful ...
November 14, 2008

Russia Fast Tracks Constitutional Changes

From the New York Times: As a bill extending Russia’s presidency from four to six years barreled through the Russian legislature on Friday, it fell to the old-timers from the Communist Party to put up a fight. “Why do we have to do thi...
November 14, 2008

Adam Michnik: Release Khodorkovsky

The following is our third and final translation from the Russian press of Polish historian Adam Michnik’s recent visit to Moscow (also the first and second articles). In this interview with Sergey Buntman on Echo Moskvy, which originally ai...
November 14, 2008

When in Ruthenia . . .

Recent stories about Russian passports being distributed in Crimea, Ukraine have raised quite a ruckus. But that doesn’t seem to be the only place in the Ukraine with some ethnic nationalism issues, and a new report we’ve translated fr...
November 14, 2008

Grigory Pasko: A Portrait of Norway’s Erling Borgen

Erling the frenetic A portrait of a journalist against the background of a fortunate country Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. The Norwegian television journalist Erling Borge...