Month: March 2009

March 20, 2009

Energy Blast – March 20th, 2009

Rosatom, the state nuclear company, has signed an atomic energy deal on joint uranium enrichment with Japan’s Toshiba Corp, and is set to receive $1.5 billion in state aid to increase its charter capital.  EU officials are ‘wrangl...
March 20, 2009

Today in Russian Business – March 20th, 2009

Unemployment has hit 8.5% of Russia’s workforce, according to new data.  More than 11,000 people in the Urals city of Nizhny Tagil could lose their jobs when cargo wagons producer Uralvagonzavod halts a conveyor next month, and the comp...
March 20, 2009

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – March 20th, 2009

TODAY: Divided voices on US-Russia relations; Ukraine to seek $5 billion loan from Russia; Belarusian president leaning on Russia; visa rules to be eased for skilled workers; Moscow holds its biggest ever contemporary art exhibition.A Republican s...
March 19, 2009

Andrei Piontkovsky: The Thaw from Below

In Washington DC this week I had the opportunity to meet with the political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky, the survivor of a political trial, the author of some great books about Russia, and a current analyst for the Hudson Institute.  Among oth...
March 19, 2009

The Punishment for Having the Wrong Thoughts

This is extracted from a book review by Gary Saul Morson of the New Criterion on Inside the Stalin Archives by Jonathan Brent. Stalinism was idealist in another, even more terrifying sense: it aimed at controlling from within the very thoughts we ...
March 19, 2009

Grigory Pasko: Putler Kaputt

Cherchez la femme! The legislative power of the Russian Federation, as always, is on the lookout for spies Grigory Pasko, journalist The State Duma of Russia on 18 March instructed its committee on security to gather in the law-enforcement organs ...
March 19, 2009

Butterfly Propaganda

The who-started-it debate on the Georgian war has resurfaced, thanks to a Russian action film ‘shot in the same style as the Bourne trilogy’ which is due to be broadcast on Russian television in the coming weeks.  Reuters reports:...
March 19, 2009

Shuvalov Upbeat on Crisis

Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service today announced that the total number of unemployed Russians stood around 6.4 million people last month (8.5% of the economically active population) – a 4.9% increase on January figures.  ...
March 19, 2009

Energy Blast – March 19th, 2009

Shell announced that it has stopped investing in the conventional renewable energy sources, wind, solar and hydropower, and will concentrate instead on developing second-generation biofuels.  Chechnya’s deputy finance minister denies th...
March 19, 2009

Today in Russian Business – March 19th, 2009

Under a revised budget, Russia is to boost spending by 667 billion rubles this year to tackle the recession, which is forecast to continue well into the second quarter.  ‘Russia is the only country among the Group of 20 with double-digi...