Archive

September 22, 2008

Sarah Palin’s Russia Inexperience

I’ve kept mostly mum about Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s ongoing claims of being an expert on Russia affairs because 1) so many others out there are doing a pretty good job tearing this narrative to shreds, and 2) because it ...
September 22, 2008

Rice vs. Gates on the NATO Response to Russia

The Boston Globe appears to believe that the hard line being pushed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Russia is inappropriate and unnecessary, especially when compared to the realist assessment of Minister of Defense Robert Gates, who appa...
September 22, 2008

Energy Blast – Sept 22, 2008

Ukraine’s economy is suffering even more than Russia’s, partly thanks to the latter cutting its energy price subsidies. Nigerian militants have called a ceasefire, potentially halting attacks on oil and gas facilities in the country which have ser...
September 22, 2008

Today in Russian Business – Sept 22, 2008

The Finance Ministry’s original list of three banks that would receive emergency budget funding has stretched to twenty eight, to offset damage done to liquidity in the banking sector by last week’s stock market tumbles. Alexei Kudrin has revealed...
September 22, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Sept 22, 2008

TODAY: Putin ‘defiant’ on troops in breakaway regions, signs new agreements with France; Medvedev responds to Condoleezza Rice; EU struggling on human rights issues against Russia. Aslamazyan to pay fine and go free; cartoons banned. Yushchenko on...
September 21, 2008

Grigory Pasko: The Putin-Kadyrov Fairy Tale

Aluminum cucumbers Grigory Pasko, journalist In the September 19 issue of the newspaper «Moskovsky komsomolets» is printed an article «And on the seacoast by the bay Putin walks…» Sub-heading – «At the economic forum in Sochi they acquainted...
September 20, 2008

Eroding Russia’s Political Risk Profile

From Anders Aslund in the Daily Star: Putin continues to deny that Russia’s financial problems were caused by his war in Georgia, and it took the Central Bank more than a month to provide substantial liquidity injections. But it was already ...
September 20, 2008

From the Kremlin Playbook: Chavez Expels HRW

It seems that Vladimir Putin has a thing or two to teach Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and vice versa. The expulsion of Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch from Venezuela is eerily familiar to Russia-watchers, who recall the fiasco invol...
September 19, 2008

Grigory Pasko before the ECHR

This one comes from Bellona about our Russian correspondent, Grigory Pasko. Pasko case to raise complex issues of law and fact in European Human Rights Court By Charles Digges The European Human Rights Court has found in favour of hearing a compla...
September 19, 2008

Russia’s Bail-out a Success, For Now

From the Financial Times: As trading resumed after a two-day closure to halt panic selling, the rouble-denominated MICEX Index surged 28.7 per cent and the dollar-denominated RTS 22.4 per cent, its biggest one-day rise, after the government pledge...