Year: 2008

November 9, 2008

How They See Obama

Not a lot of new information in this piece by Alastair Gee in US News & World Report, but a succinct summary of what Barack Obama is going to have to deal with in relations with Russia and its inferiority complex: It’s unclear how much ...
November 8, 2008

Will Obama Look the Other Way on Russia?

From the New York Times editorial: President Bush spent years looking the other way while Mr. Putin harassed opponents, stifled a free press and bullied his neighbors. (A new report that suggests that Georgia had no reason to send troops into a br...
November 7, 2008

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Global Perestroika

The following is a translation of an article written by Mikhail Khodorkovsky published in Friday’s edition of Vedomosti. А TURN TO THE LEFT, 3 – Global perestroika By Mikhail Khodorkovsky Published in Vedomosti Barack Obama’s victory i...
November 7, 2008

Oleg Kozlovsky: First Amendment, Russian Edition

[I’m pleased to have another contribution here from Oleg Kozlovsky, whom I had the opportunity of meeting with last month. – Robert Amsterdam] First Amendment, Russian Edition Oleg Kozlovsky, Coordinator of Oborona youth movement On 5t...
November 7, 2008

Grigory Pasko: Interview with Boris Sokolov

[In September, the Russian academic Boris Sokolov was fired from his university as well as from a newspaper where he contributed a regular column after writing materials questioning the Russian government’s position on events in Georgia. Our...
November 7, 2008

Medvedev’s Gorbachev Moment

This bit comes from Andreas Umland writing in the Asia Times Online: However, in the middle of his long speech, Medvedev also voiced a sharp critique of historical Russian statism, and did not hesitate to hail the adoption of the Russian constitut...
November 7, 2008

Law as a Tool of Corruption

Jason Bush at BusinessWeek has a very interesting piece today: Mysterious lawsuits targeting prominent financial institutions could become the latest worry for foreign investors in Russia. Earlier this year, Hermitage Capital Management, an invest...
November 7, 2008

India Cleared for Russian Energy Purchase

It’s always fun when BRICs invest in other BRICs. Today India’s state-owned energy firm ONGC has been cleared by Russia’s anti-monopoly service for a $2.6 billion takeover Imperial Energy. It will be interesting to see if this st...
November 7, 2008

Energy Blast – Nov 7, 2008

A meeting between Dmitry Medvedev and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has led to a series of agreements in the energy sector – as well as the usual criticisms of Berlusconi’s style. TMK, which produces steel pipes for the energy sec...