Russia

May 15, 2009

Grigory Pasko: Has the Great Thaw Arrived?

President Dmitry Medvedev recently met with human rights advocates. Hooray for Medvedev! Medvedev gave an interview to Novaya Gazeta. What a guy! They’ve released former YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina. Respect – to him, naturally, the ...
May 15, 2009

Europe’s Balkan Reluctance

Reading this stark judgment on Europe’s performance of leadership in the Balkan conflicts from Foreign Policy, one can see how easily Russia established its influence in Southeastern Europe (or at least enough influence to take over the gas ...
May 15, 2009

Federation Council to Directly Appoint Judges

Earlier this week Russia Profile published an interesting piece about a new law being pushed by President Dmitry Medvedev to empower the Federation Council to handpick judges for the Constitutional Court.  Clearly the potential for rule of la...
May 15, 2009

Video: How to Press a Reset Button

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stopped by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to talk about missile defense, NATO enlargement, the conflict with Georgia, nuclear proliferation, past/future U.S.-Russia relations, and his f...
May 15, 2009

Behind the Delays of Russia’s Security Strategy

Earlier this week we blogged about Russia’s new National Security Strategy, a document signed by the president which was delayed one month in its publication.  What was happening during that month, and what changes were being made? ...
May 14, 2009

Cooperation vs. Confrontation

A piece from Yevgeny Bazhanov in the Moscow Times takes a look at what we can expect from the U.S.-Russia relationship this summer. Amid the economic crisis and after the unsuccessful, misdirected policies of former President George W. Bush, it is...
May 14, 2009

Analyze This (Country)

Another apocalyptic take on modern Russia from Paul Goble’s Window on Eurasia blog, quoting an article from Grani.ru.  I don’t think psychoanalysis should be applied to nations, and that Father Yakov Krotov’s arguments reek ...
May 14, 2009

EU Struggles for Coherence in the East

Stewart Fleming has an insightful piece on the EU’s attempts to embrace the east published in European Voice: Some years ago in Kiev, a Swedish diplomat remarked privately that the EU had been lucky when it embarked on its eastern enlargemen...
May 13, 2009

War, What is it Good For?

In what may be the understatement of the year, Mikhail Gorbachev complains that Europe misunderstands Russia: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says Western portrayals of Russia as an aggressive, imperialist nation are “nonsense.”...
May 13, 2009

Emfesz and Europe’s Energy Security

The quote below from Judy Dempsey’s New York Times piece puts it rather lightly: “If the E.U. wants energy security then it should examine how trading companies supply gas to the member states,” said Tom Mayne, energy expert at G...