Archive

March 16, 2009

Russia to Toss $43 Billion toward Crisis

As part of the Russian government’s new idea of telling everybody their plans for the crisis recovery, here comes a whopping figure for the 2009 – $43.1 billion dollars to implement anti-crisis measures and support social services spen...
March 16, 2009

A Shifting Dynamic between the Kremlin and Business?

As many of you have gathered from the news over the weekend, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken openly about the joblessness glut currently hitting Russia, citing the fact that there are some six million are out of work and remarking tha...
March 16, 2009

Die Welt Interview with Robert Amsterdam

“The case goes far beyond Khodorkovsky’s fate” Interviewer: Daniel-C. Schmidt Originally published in German in Die Welt, 13 March 2009 Defense lawyer Robert Amsterdam discusses the proceedings against the ex-Yukos head and the p...
March 16, 2009

Gaming OPEC

For quite a while now, if you wanted to know what was strategically important to the Kremlin, you just had to follow the passport stamps accumulated by Deputy PM Igor Sechin (vacations in Cuba and Caracas, tea with Viktor Bout, etc.).  As suc...
March 16, 2009

Energy Blast – March 16th, 2009

Oil prices have fallen back below $45.  OPEC says its new strategy will focus more on production curbs than output cuts.  Russia’s insistence that it had supported OPEC’s last round of cuts was dismissed by analysts, who said...
March 16, 2009

Today in Russian Business – March 16th, 2009

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin blamed global currency devaluations for the burden of foreign-currency debts, and said the International Monetary Fund remained a critical source of help for emerging economies to stabilize exchange rates.  Dmit...
March 16, 2009

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – March 16th, 2009

TODAY: Chávez says no military base; Dovgy trial begins today; Medvedev focuses on corruption, calls for government criticism; 1,000-strong protests in Vladivostock.President Dmitry Medvedev counted 40,000 criminal cases ‘brought against tho...
March 15, 2009

The Khodorkovsky Show

From the Sunday Herald: A symbol of selective Kremlin justice, his second trial – on embezzlement and money-laundering charges – promises to reveal whether Russia is really headed in a new direction. Does Medvedev really represent a lo...
March 14, 2009

As Obama Meets Lula, the Russians Consider Bombers

The coincidence of these announcements from the Kremlin about placing strategic bombers at Venezuelan and Cuban bases most definitely seems timed to rain on any parade of the meeting between the American and Brazilian presidents.  More commen...
March 14, 2009

Losing Central Asia

From the Chicago Tribune: At a time when the world’s financial crisis has most countries hunkering down, Russia is parlaying the global meltdown into a lever for expanding its influence in Central Asia and other former Soviet republics that ...