Month: September 2009

September 3, 2009

Journalist Exiled over Missing Russian Ship

UPDATE: A commenter points out that this might not be a story at all... Remember the Ghost Ship story?  How all the explanations just didn’t seem to add up?  The one Russian military journalist to piece together a coherent theory s...
September 3, 2009

Energy Blast – September 3, 2009

The Indian President Pratibha Patil has arrived in Moscow to discuss nuclear energy among other issues.  In August, Russia increased oil production by 1.3% in comparison with 2008, as Lukoil and Rosneft both increased production in new fields...
September 3, 2009

Today in Russian Business – September 3, 2009

The Moscow Times reports that the government spent $10.7 billion of the state budget on fighting the financial crisis in the first six months of the year.  A Russian-Indian project to build a titanium factory in east India has been jeopardize...
September 3, 2009

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – September 3, 2009

TODAY: Russia looks for greater role in Afghan war; Ingush president pleads for vigilance.  Opposition ousted from Moscow race; Rushydro bans reporter; piracy expert flees; war on drinking. Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has warned that ...
September 2, 2009

Russia’s Kyrgyzstan Folly

We’ve covered this Kyrgyzstan double-dipping story a couple of times here, but Alexander Golts latest piece over at RealClearWorld sums it up nicely – including the tale of the embarrassing trip made by Igor Sechin and Anatoly Serdyuko...
September 2, 2009

Apologies for All

Angela Merkel is about as gracious as they come.  During the Danzig Summit, there seemed no crime of WWII that she was unwilling to accept responsibility for:  “I pay tribute to the 60m people who lost their lives in this war unlea...
September 2, 2009

The Yevgeny Zhovtis Trial, Day 1

Russia is far from alone in the neighborhood in its staging of show trials and corralling of political prisoners, and in fact, what is happening to human rights advocate Yevgeny Zhovtis of Kazakhstan, shows an measurably deeper level of political ...
September 2, 2009

Russia Not Ready to Give Up Stalin

This piece in the Financial Times sees positive steps in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to talk about Molotov-Ribbentrop, but observes that the current leadership is still very far away from the comfort level of being able to openly debate Joseph ...
September 2, 2009

Extradition, Torture, and… Release?

Usually when human rights groups lobby to foreign governments not to extradite a Chechen back to Russia, their concerns are well founded by fears of torture, inadequate legal rights, and a less than shining record on treatment of detainees.  ...
September 2, 2009

Russia Approaching Conflict on Three Fronts

Here goes a little piece from openDemocracy about Russia’s triple-pronged security mess, with confrontations broiling from Ukraine to Georgia to the North Caucasus.  The authors assume that the leadership is playing with fire in terms o...