Year: 2008

September 8, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Sept 8, 2008

TODAY: Sarkozy in Moscow seeking adherence to ceasefire agreement; Cheney takes new angle of attack, Medvedev ups rhetoric; International Court of Justice to hear Georgian appeal; Russia colluding with Iran and Venezuela; Happy Birthday Moscow. Fr...
September 7, 2008

Goodbye Reality

The leaders of the Russian government are asking that we believe that 1) the U.S. started the war in order to get a certain candidate elected, and 2) that American operatives were actively involved in the fighting, as proven by a found passport of...
September 7, 2008

Browder on Khodorkovsky: “I think he should be let out”

Today the Guardian has a good piece on William Browder of Hermitage Capital, who along with HSBC is suing the Russian government, is alleging that high-placed officials within the Interior Ministry participated in corporate identity theft and a co...
September 6, 2008

Enemies or Vassals

For a long time I had been hoping against hope that somehow relations with Russia would finally earn a spot on the list of debate topics for U.S. politics (it is quite difficult to contend with Iraq and Afghanistan in the exceptionally narrow band...
September 5, 2008

Energy Blast – Sept 5, 2008

BP has finally agreed to a peace deal with its Russian partners over the future of their joint venture, TNK-BP. The oil firm announced yesterday that embattled chief executive Robert Dudley will leave TNK-BP by the end of the year, as part of an a...
September 5, 2008

Today in Russian Business – Sept 5, 2008

Russian stocks plummeted and the cost to protect government bonds from default jumped to the highest in nearly four years as the central bank shored up its currency pummeled by the ongoing conflict in Georgia and tumbling commodity prices. In Mosc...
September 5, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Sept 5, 2008

TODAY: U.S. Dignitaries (McCain, Rice, Cheney) issue warnings Russia is deepening its international isolation and threatening U.S. security. Lavrov rejects Cheney’s attack on Russia. Russia accuses the United States of encouraging Georgian a...
September 5, 2008

A Pan-Eurasian Alliance and Pax Russica

It seems it has become very popular in many parts of the world to form broad political alliances based upon not much more than mutual distrust and distaste of Washington’s policies. Hugo Chavez should probably sent the Russian nationalist Al...
September 5, 2008

A Discarded Memo on Russia

This one is pretty entertaining from Dominic Lawson at the Independent: I found the following memo – as you do – under a half-finished cup of coffee on the train to Waterloo. Coffee stains made it difficult to read, but it seemed to have come from...
September 5, 2008

Mapping Energy Dependence

Today’s Financial Times features some great reporting and graphic displays of Europe’s dependence on Russian energy. Ed Crooks is not exactly rosy about the EU’s prospects for diversification: “Geography and economics dicta...