Archive

June 5, 2009

Medvedev’s Interview with Bartiromo

We have been hearing about this interview with President Dmitry Medvedev for a few days now, and I think that Maria Bartiromo really zeroes on some of the most important questions, such as whether or not foreign capital can be protected.  Ans...
June 5, 2009

Short Term Solutions

Once in a while the President of Russia says things that are indisputably convincing: Since the crisis broke last year, however, the government has bailed out some major conglomerates that were highly leveraged, accepting shares as collateral in e...
June 5, 2009

Putin and Connecticut

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the Wall Street Journal: Vladimir Putin is used to taking flak from rivals in the former Soviet Union. Now he has to deal with opposition from a more unlikely location: Greenwich, Conn. Two months ago the Wa...
June 5, 2009

Energy Blast – June 5, 2009

Despite Vladimir Putin holding a meeting to discuss the Ukraine gas problem as the deadline for paying their bill approaches, ‘the situation remains unresolved’.  The European Commission will send a team to Moscow and Kiev on a &#...
June 5, 2009

Today in Russian Business – June 5, 2009

Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina has said that Russia could enter the World Trade Organization by the end of the year, with support from the EU Trade Commissioner.  The Kremlin is hoping for cooperation with the Obama administr...
June 5, 2009

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – June 5, 2009

TODAY: Putin likens Oleg Deripaska and other Pikalyovo factory owners to ‘cockroaches’ in open castigation of the super-rich; fears of social unrest due to unemployment becoming a reality?; Poland angered by Russian ‘rewrite̵...
June 4, 2009

Grigory Pasko: Pitching Nord Stream to the Finns

On the eve of the recent visit of Vladimir Putin to Helsinki, a presentation of my film about the Nord Stream gas pipeline took place there in the parliament of Finland. The crowd wasn’t very large – maybe 30 people.  However amon...
June 4, 2009

Greedy Cockroaches

Here’s the quote of the week.  Vladimir Putin usually saves the public tongue-lashings for incompetent officials during cabinet meetings, but today he went totally chavista on Oleg Deripaska: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin public...
June 4, 2009

Putin’s Firm Grip

A new piece in the Economist sees no change in government coming for Russia for a long, long time.  The main risk, the authors argue, is not bankruptcy or political crisis, but stagnation from failure to reform the economy (a similar point ma...
June 4, 2009

Video: Extreme Prokhorov

Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, likes to grip it and rip it.  Joking aside, what he is saying about living between the extremes says a lot about doing business in Russia – not for the feeble.  Plus you’ve got t...