Archive for the 'AP Russia' Category
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
If you want to take the pulse of Russia as its oil and gas boom of the past few years comes to a sudden and wrenching stop, leave behind the garish consumerism of Moscow and drive 220 miles (355 km) southwest to the small Russian town of Lyudinovo. For the first part of the five-hour trip, the road is a smooth four-lane highway that whisks you past gleaming gas stations and a brand-new Samsung TV factory. Then everything slows down. The highway turns single-track and becomes progressively rougher. For the last 20 miles (32 km), you bump along the ruts, distracted only by the swaying rows of silver birch trees that flank the road.
Read on from Time Mag
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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
This thoroughly revised and updated edition of the classic text provides the most current and authoritative assessment of Russia available. Distinguished scholars offer a full-scale assessment of Putin’s leadership, exploring the daunting domestic and international implications of Putin”s reign.
Read selected essays (on topics of domestic policy, the economy and foreign policy) from this books for free at Google Books. I particularly impressed by Petrov and Slider’s essay, “Putin and the Regions”.
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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom was supposed to have restarted the flow of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine Jan. 13. How much is actually getting through is uncertain at this point, but one thing is certain: Eastern Europe has been left in the cold ever since Gazprom ceased gas flows…
View the Foreign Policy Magazine Photo Essay
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Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
The Economist offers keen insights into Russia’s past, present and future in this 2008 survey. The introductory and concluding articles are especially noteworthy. Enjoy it here.
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Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
Tanks rolling into neighbouring countries, the media back under state control and Kremlin policy shrouded in secrecy … Luke Harding reports on why Russia seems hellbent on reverting to its Soviet past. Read on from The Guardian
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Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
Obeying orders from the top, Russian television has banned the use of words such as “crisis”, “decline” and “devaluation”. Coverage of the mayhem in the country’s stock market, where shares have fallen by 75 per cent since August, is scant.
Instead, just as in Soviet times, Russians are told how bad everything is in the West. The US, Russians are told, is in irreversible decline, while desperate Britons are throwing themselves into the Thames. The Queen, facing imminent penury, has been forced to pawn her diamonds and, according to one tabloid front page, we can no longer afford to bury our dead…
On November 4, Dmitry Medvedev, the protégé Mr Putin shoehorned into his old job as president in May, announced that he would seek a constitutional amendment extending the standard term of office from two consecutive terms of four years to two terms of six.
Read on…
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Sunday, September 7th, 2008
Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.
Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.
With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.
But this organisation – known as “Nashi”, meaning “Ours” – is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life.
Read on
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Saturday, August 9th, 2008
Russia conducted airstrikes on Georgian targets on Friday evening, escalating the conflict in a separatist area of Georgia that is shaping into a test of the power and military reach of an emboldened Kremlin. Earlier in the day, Russian troops and armored vehicles had rolled into South Ossetia, supporting the breakaway region in its bitter conflict with Georgia.
The United States and other Western nations, joined by NATO, condemned the violence and demanded a cease-fire. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went a step further, calling on Russia to withdraw its forces. But the Russian soldiers remained, and Georgian officials reported at least one airstrike, on the Black Sea port of Poti, late on Friday night.
The War is on? (from NYT)
Read Slate’s c overage from the Same Day
James Traub Interview on NPR (very good)Â
In Pictures from Foreign Policy Magazine
Condi Rice Gets Tough on Russia
No Cold War, but Big Chill Over Georgia
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Monday, July 7th, 2008
We’ve been here before. In 2000, western leaders and media waxed lyrical about the new man in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. Now, they’re falling head over heels for his successor. We’ve heard about Dmitry Medvedev’s leather jacket and love of Deep Purple, and his background as a lawyer, rather than a KGB agent. He’s from “a new generation“, we’re told.The noises from the new man in the Kremlin have certainly sounded promising: a war on “legal nihilism” and corruption; a commitment to free media; and, last Thursday, a statement that “Russia is ready to move, to find compromises” with Britain.
But this kind of talk is precisely why Medvedev was selected as president by Russia’s political elite: it’s part of an ongoing campaign to improve the country’s image in the west.
Read more
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