Archive

February 8, 2008

Nationalistic Chest Beating

Ah, the sweet smell of elections season, when Russia’s political environment blossoms into a stridently anti-Western minefield, hubristic enough so as to sufficiently distract the populace from the painful fact that they are deprived of basi...
February 8, 2008

John McCain and Russia

Stratfor is very premature with their prediction of the next U.S. president (and the reasoning dismissing the Democrats is both brief and flawed), but they are quite right in remarking that foreign governments are already hedging their bets and pr...
February 8, 2008

Energy Blast, Feb. 8, 2008

Gazprom has threatened to halt fuel supplies to Ukraine unless the country settles a $1.5 billion debt or offers assurances that it will pay. Naftogaz Ukrayny, Ukraine’s state fuel company, denied it owes Gazprom $500 million for additional ...
February 8, 2008

Today in Russian Business

The Central Bank of Russia is claiming that the liquidity crisis has strengthened banking finances. Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov has “refused to recognize even the signs of the impending collapse of liquidity,” commenting that the bank system “has...
February 8, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Feb. 8, 2008

TODAY: Russia run by the KGB? OSCE to boycott presidential elections. Aleksanyan to receive treatment in a civilian clinic. Polish Prime Minister in Russia for “rough” talks. According to one sociologist, “an astounding 78% of the country’s ...
February 7, 2008

A Supreme Exercise of Will

Even the cream of Russia’s penitentiary service, the flower of the State’s militocracy, can make a mistake once in a while. However, the dramatic error committed yesterday by the Siberian bureaucratic management, which allowed Neil Buckley of the ...
February 7, 2008

Money is a Snap in Russia

From Reuters: Dmitry Medvedev, likely to be Russia’s next president, says the country’s so rich from an oil-fuelled boom that billions can be doled out simply by a click of the fingers. “Money today is not a problem at all: only ...
February 7, 2008

A Lack of Trust and Imperialist Thinking

Marek Menkiszak, a Polish academic at the Warsaw University’s Centre for Eastern Studies, is quoted by Interfax today talking about the central problems in EU-Russia relations: “I think the fundamental problem in Russia’s approac...
February 7, 2008

Video: The Grigory Pasko Interviews, Part 3

Here is Part 3 of the Grigory Pasko interviews – a brief discussion of freedom of press in Russia following the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, and the future role of the internet. See Bob’s intro to the series here.
February 7, 2008

Die Welt: Putin Abuses Legal System in Struggle Against Rival

The following is an exclusive translation of an important article from the German newspaper Die Welt about the case of Vasily Alexanyan (Aleksanyan, Alexanian). The original version can be read on our German-language blog here. Putin abuses justic...