Russia

January 10, 2009

Grigory Pasko: Crisis, What Crisis?

Crisis, what crisis? Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. Head of the Ministry of Finance Alexey Kudrin in the last days of the year gone by noted that inflation in Russia remain...
January 10, 2009

The Czarist Treasure Hunt

The solution to all of Russia’s economic ills may lie in a ten-foot deep hole in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Here’s a real wild story from the LA Times of an American socialite and daughter of a Russian prince who is on the hunt for...
January 10, 2009

The Coming Unrest in Russia

Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, has really been on a tear lately, with the launching of a new blog over at Foreign Policy and numerous appearances in the press.  Sometimes they have decent intelligence, sometimes the insights are...
January 9, 2009

The Economist: Advising Obama

The Economist has been writing a series of open emails to Barack Obama in the run-up to his inauguration, offering suggestions on various issues that the US President-elect will turn his hand to.  Its latest missive has a few suggestions on h...
January 9, 2009

Compassion for Russian Occupiers

The Czech Republic took up the EU presidency this month – just in time to deal with a number of volatile Russian issues.  The Czechs have dealt with plenty of their own volatile Russian issues in recent history, but anyone curious about...
January 9, 2009

Intermediary Mysteries

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has long been advocating the elimination of RosUkrEnergo, calling it a ‘criminal enterprise’ and linking it to corruption in the gas industry as far back as 2005.  Now analysts are discuss...
January 9, 2009

Redefining Sovereign Democracy

Back when Vladislav Surkov invented “sovereign democracy,” we pegged it as the Brezhnev Doctrine revisited – much less a real political philosophy, and more a functional and durable rhetorical device to explain why Russian citize...
January 9, 2009

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Jan 9th, 2009

TODAY: EU and Russia agree on monitoring of gas deliveries, but gas has yet to resume flowing; Putin defends Russia’s position again, using Georgia as an example; US and Georgia to sign charter.The gas row continues, with hundreds of thousan...
January 8, 2009

Big Business and the Kingmakers

Matthias Schepp in Spiegel Online tots up some of the more egregious losses of Russia’s spectacular spenders as a result of the economic crisis, and offers a few suggestions as to why the Kremlin is pouring so much money into bailing out its...
January 8, 2009

Mixed Messages behind Russia’s Arms Sales to Iran

Remember back when the Iranians happily announced that Russia would soon begin delivering a supply of the S-300 Missile System, only to find out that later the same day Russian officials denied the reports, saying that no such shipments were plann...