Russia

December 2, 2008

Medvedev Replies to the Bakhmina Letter

In late September, we reported how a school classmate of imprisoned ex-YUKOS lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina had written a letter to president Dmitry Medvedev asking him to show mercy and grant a pardon to her friend, who had recently been denied parole ...
December 2, 2008

Lithuania Loses Nuclear Power

…and they’re not happy about facing an even deeper reliance on Russian energy, but such are the requirements being invited to the European club.  The Financial Times reports on the upcoming closure of the Ignalina nuclear power pl...
December 2, 2008

Goodbye, NATO

Nick Witney, the former chief executive of the European Defense Agency, has an opinion piece in the Moscow Times bidding farewell to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – an institution whose usefulness has been outlived, he argues: NATO ...
December 2, 2008

Video: HARDtalk on Russia and Georgia

This guy at the BBC really grills a representative from the Georgian government over the start of the war, dispelling whatever notion there may have been about the media being too tame on the issue.  As if to answer, Mikheil Saakashvili has a...
December 2, 2008

Dragging Germany into Confrontation

In the past, we’ve done a fair amount of blogging about the staggering business lobby enjoyed by the Kremlin in Germany, and the various questions and tensions this sometimes raises in terms of managing Berlin’s relations with third pa...
December 2, 2008

The Paradox of Russian Foreign Policy

From Anne Applebaum’s column: (…) Russian foreign policy is, at the moment, based on a strange paradox. On one hand, the Russians have returned to the language, iconography and even historiography of imperialism. With every passing yea...
December 2, 2008

The New Khodorkovsky Trial Website

We encourage everyone to stop by the beautiful, brand new Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Centre, which launched today.  You’ll find not only everything you ever needed to know about the case and its geopolitical context, but ...
December 2, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Dec 2nd, 2008

TODAY: US snubs Russia’s Latin American cooperation; NATO and EU seek to mend Russia ties; corruption in Armed Forces over $75 million; Far East security, HIV, art slump. Joint exercises by the Venezuelan and Russian navies have begun in the...
December 1, 2008

Putin’s Problem with Stock Quotes

The following is an exclusive translation of another article from RBK Daily – a pro-government press organ which sometimes provides a glimpse of Kremlin thinking.  This latest piece explains that Vladimir Putin has finally discovered th...
December 1, 2008

Video: Medvedev’s Latin American Podcast

The Kremlin obviously views last week’s Latin America tour by President Dmitry Medvedev as somewhat of a coup in foreign relations.  The final Cuban leg of the tour was a feast of warm and fuzzy moments, with Raúl Castro walking arm in ...