Archive

June 17, 2008

The Power of Political Humor

This interesting book review of Hammer and Tickle by Ben Lewis in the Telegraph comes at a particularly timely moment with the Kremlin’s shuttering of the Exile tabloid… Though a few days old now, anyone needing to freshen up their sto...
June 17, 2008

The New Currency of International Influence

This was from yesterday’s WSJ Environmental Capital Blog: Russia is winning the natural gas pipeline wars because it isn’t worried about the things that Western Europe (or much of the U.S. Congress) is worried about: climate change or fussy ...
June 17, 2008

Energy Blast – June 17, 2008

AAR, the consortium of Russian shareholders in TNK-BP, is publicly attacking what it views as BP’s “arrogance”, with Mikhail Fridman also reportedly likening BP’s chairman Peter Suthland to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Saudi Arabia’...
June 17, 2008

Today in Russian Business – June 17, 2008

Russia’s economy expanded an annual 8.5% in the first quarter, higher than economists expected, as consumer demand fueled an investment boom. Austrian builder Strabag won a €1 billion ($1.5 billion) share of a contract to build an eight-lane highw...
June 17, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – June 17, 2008

TODAY: World Bank President visits Russia, praises economy, criticizes inflation; Putin says government funds are stalled; Russia boosts military presence in Central Asia; gifts for officials to be banned; Russians in Dubai. Robert Zoellick, the P...
June 16, 2008

The Business of Shutting Down Newspapers

What is interesting about the Kremlin’s bureaucratic attack upon the caustic ex-patriot satire newspaper The Exile (it is a little exhausting to always write eXile), is not that it is simply another case of media censorship by the state, but...
June 16, 2008

Losing to Russia in the Pipeline Race

We’ve spent a lot of energy over the years covering the pipeline race between Russia and the West, as alternatives to Kremlin-controlled energy are desperately sought and usually thwarted by adept maneuvering from Moscow. Grigory Pasko has l...
June 16, 2008

Gazprom and China Salivate over Nigeria

It’s not just that Gazprom has gotten used to taking things away from Royal Dutch Shell, although it may appear as such following Sakhalin and now their move toward Nigeria’s troubled Ogoniland (see my recent post on Shell’s with...
June 16, 2008

Chirac Feted by Russia

Following on the heels of Gerhard Schröder’s ridiculous award from the captured Russian Academy of Sciences, last week former French president Jacques Chirac was awarded Russia’s highest state prize for “outstanding humanitarian ...
June 16, 2008

Energy Blast – June 16, 2008

In response to Group of Eight nations urging oil producers to boost output, Saudi Arabia is planning to increase its output next month by about a half-million barrels a day, or 6%. The news caused the price of crude to fall for the second day runn...