BRIC Bucks
We knew that as soon as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez started talking about introducing a new currency, the “sucre,” for the ALBA, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before we saw Russia get in on this new currency talk. In...
Archive
The Elusive Single Market
The Wall Street Journal has a good column today on one of our favorite topics – Russia’s energy disaggregation of Europe. Accelerating EU plans to build a single market for energy would have multiple benefits. It would encourage much m...
Energy Blast – June 2, 2009
Gazprom has demanded that Turkmenistan either reduce the price or the volume of its gas, as energy tensions between the two nations escalate. The company is also apparently seriously worried by the pumping of gas into underground storage fac...
Today in Russian Business – June 2, 2009
The IMF has said Russia ‘urgently’ needs a plan to deal with bad loans and has cut its forecast for growth from 6.5% to 6%. Russian banks may need around $41 billion for recapitalization in 2009. Renaissance Group CEO Steph...
RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – June 2, 2009
TODAY: EU critical of South Ossetia elections; Israeli foreign minister in Moscow; START talks underway in Geneva; court rules against Khodorkovsky appeal; journalist seeks asylum in Finland; order of parental glory ceremony The EU has joined Geor...
Paid by Putin
Andrei Piontkovsky has an incendiary column published through Project Syndicate alleging the economic interests of some Russia commentators in the United States. This one is bound to raise some controversy. The Kremlin’s achievements i...
Esteemed Barack Husseinovich!
We recently ran across this interesting letter from Russia on a social networking site. While we obviously don’t make any claims for its authenticity, we thought we’d post it anyway, because we feel it reflects – albeit in a humo...
Honor thy Family
Credit is due to Governor Sergei Morozov, who last year as head of the Russian region of Ulyanovsk came up with the great idea of giving away brand new SUVs to women who managed to get pregnant on or around “The Day of Conception”...
Video: Kissinger on North Korea and Russia
Nothing breaks up the Monday blues like a yet another video from Henry Kissinger talking about North Korea and Russia. Fast forward to about 10:30 to get to the Russia stuff. The banter is pretty predictable from Kissinger – we a...
The Russian Genius
I thought Richard Lourie’s column today in the Moscow Times was particularly interesting, and reminded me of several conversations I had during my last trip to Caracas. A friend commented to me that a true totalitarian, whether youR...