RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – June 6, 2008

TODAY: Medvedev adopts “soft-sell” approach in Berlin; EU officials mediate between Georgia and Russia; Putin seeks museum investment; future looks bleak for tabloid The eXile. President Dmitry Medvedev is “satisfied” with the results of his talks in Berlin, at which he reportedly adopted a “soft-sell approach” to foreign policy. At the end of his visit, he called for a “regional pact” to replace Cold War peace treaties, and warned that US and Nato military expansion could destroy relations between East and West “in a radical way, for a long time“. “Medvedev singled out the same issues on which Putin […] had repeatedly taken the United States and Europeans to task.”

Top EU foreign-policy officials have become directly involved “in what increasingly looks like a mediation effort” between Russia and Georgia. Dmitry Medvedev is set to meet CIS leaders at series of informal, bilateral meetings to reassure them on foreign policy. “In the cases of Ukraine and Georgia, Medvedev faces a tough task.”Vladimir Putin has appealed to businessmen to invest in the “dramatic expansion” of the Pushkin Museum. A Russian jury acquitted three men charged with a 2005 assassination attempt on business executive Anatoly Chubais.Investigators probing English-language tabloid The eXile have asked about its relationship with Eduard Limonov, a Kremlin critic and columnist, and expressed worry that the paper “mocks and humiliates” Russia. A search of the offices of Russian Media Group was reportedly carried out in connection with suspicions of tax evasion.PHOTO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev listen to the national anthems upon his arrival at the Chancellery in Berlin. (AFP/Pool/Steffen Kugler)