Archive

December 7, 2007

The Fighting Under the Carpet

From the Economist: Indeed, it is widely believed that some, including Igor Sechin, the deputy chief of staff in the Kremlin and the informal leader of the siloviki, the clan of former KGB men, urged him to make such a change. With little prodding...
December 7, 2007

Meet the Next President of Russia

It is the consensus of the experts who contribute to this blog that Valentina Matviyenko, the mayor of St. Petersburg, will be the individual selected by Vladimir Putin to become the next president of the Russian Federation.
December 7, 2007

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Dec. 7, 2007

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands in his office in the presidential residence at Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow December 6, 2007. Putin’s United Russia party will name its candidate for next year’s presidential election at a congre...
December 7, 2007

Newsweek: War Inside the Kremlin

Newsweek writes about Viktor Cherkesov, Igor Sechin, and all the fighting going on in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle: Putin needs a new political niche. One possibility: leader of the United Russia Party, whose candidate list he headed in thi...
December 7, 2007

Grigory Pasko: How the Legion of Honor Award Lost its Value

Their Name is Legion (or How awards lose their value) By Grigory Pasko, journalist Don’t tell me you’re still not a Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor! Lately I’ve been getting the impression that they seem to be giving it out to just abou...
December 6, 2007

Eldad Tamir Interview

Eldad Tamir of the Israeli financial group Tamir Fishman was one of the first foreign investors to announce his withdrawl from a major deal in Russia following the “velvet reprivatization” interview with Oleg Shvartsman. VentureBeat ha...
December 6, 2007

RSF on Andrei Novikov

Online journalist Andrei Novikov of Chechenpress was arrested on Dec. 5, 2006 on charges of “publicly inciting constitutional change by means of force”, which carries a sentence of three years. Novikov was subsequently committed to a p...
December 6, 2007

BBC Journalists Suffer Violent Attacks in Russia

I’m very concerned for the staff at the BBC in Moscow, who have experienced a spate of individual violent attacks outside of work in recent weeks. First native Russian reporter Davlat Qudrat was assaulted on the Moscow metro after work, and ...
December 6, 2007

Video: Oxford Union Debate on Internet and Democratisation

Proposition: Is the internet a positive force for democratisation? Opposition: Or is it simply another platform instrumentalised by its detractors? Robert Amsterdam participated in an Oxford-style debate on the subject last May, advocating the opp...
December 6, 2007

Velvet Reprivatization and Cool Hand Luke

In the 1967 popular American film “Cool Hand Luke,” the prison guard captain threatens the incorrigible prisoner played by Paul Newman, telling him that he’s got to “get his mind right.” By “right”, of cou...