Month: May 2009

May 3, 2009

Grigory Pasko: Setbacks for Gazprom’s Pipeline Plans

The boys have been scammed… like suckers. Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. «Nezavisimaya writes»: «Last week, three sensitive blows were inflicted on the international ...
May 3, 2009

Video: Russia’s Political Culture, Present and Past

Here’s is perhaps one of the more controversial segments from our interview with Paul Goble, the former State Department official who blogs over at Window on Eurasia.  Part of this discussion was related to a blog post written by Goble ...
May 2, 2009

Medvedev the Puzzler

After the front page story in today’s Financial Times – the Gleb Pavlovsky argument that the president may start to edge out Putin – we have this think piece from Cliff Levy at The New York Times which is likewise bewildered by D...
May 2, 2009

The Russo-Venezuelan Human Rights Playbook

José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, has published an opinion article in today’s Washington Post criticizing the human rights abuses of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.  Although I am certainly influenc...
May 2, 2009

Russia’s Central Asia Premium

During a trip to my birthplace of New York City some years ago, I had the pleasure of briefly meeting the impressive and talented Professor Jenik Radon of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).  Radon i...
May 1, 2009

Seeking Distance from the Khodorkovsky Case

Political advisory Gleb Pavlovsky has given an extensive interview resulting in two separate articles in the Financial Times, one of which includes commentary about how he believes President Dmitry Medvedev sees the second trial of Mikhail Khodork...
May 1, 2009

Russia’s Damaged System Still Working

I caught the following excerpt over on World Politics Review by Daria Solovieva, which takes a cursory look at the relationship between Russia’s economic boom times and the low level of political activity on behalf of citizens – more o...
May 1, 2009

An Intense Psychological Complex

Below is an excerpt of an article Miriam Elder – a journalist that many of us know from the pages of the Moscow Times – however this time she is writing for GlobalPost, a new news model which is taking a stab at creating a sustainable ...
May 1, 2009

Energy Blast – May 1, 2009

The EU Energy Commissioner has said that Russia’s proposals regarding a legal framework for energy contracts will not replace the current Energy Charter.  ‘There was no attempt to isolate Russia‘, were the words of an EU spo...