December 2007 Archives

Ringing Out the Old

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

The new year is a holiday for all. For the president of Russia especially: he was officially appointed to this post precisely on New Year’s Day, in 2000.

They say that in this upcoming year, Putin is going to leave the post of president: the Constitution does not allow him to be elected to a third term. But they also say that he doesn’t intend to wander too far away from this post, so that there would be an opportunity in a year to once again return in the capacity of president. What can you do? Power, like a disease, is infectious.

In the year about to end, the American magazine «Time» acknowledged the Russian president as person of the year. Let’s take a look – in honor of the New Year! – at this person with a bit of light humor, and from another side – not the one from which the obsequious colleagues from «Time» looked at him.

It's getting close to 6:30 PM in Moscow, and no doubt some seriously entertaining festivities are already well underway as Russia concludes quite a memorable year. But will the Russians ring in 2008 with the same energy and apprehension as 1965? I found this entertaining tidbit from the TIME magazine archive which shows a rather remarkable government-planned New Year's Eve celebration from more than 40 years ago at the height of the Cold War: Nothing, in Soviet doctrine, is much more reactionary than Christmas, combining as it does "bourgeois" religion with capitalist commercialism. But the New Year is something else again. For years, the Communists have emphasized this ideologically safer holiday while downgrading or disguising Christmas (which in the Russian calendar falls on Jan. 7). With beaming approval from the Kremlin, Moscow last week was feverishly preparing for the biggest, brassiest and most bountiful New Year's blowout in Communist history.

There's been no shortage of criticism of the TIME selection - this one is from a column in the San Antonio Express News: So here's some criticism based on Stengel's own standard. If you define "powerful" as having at your disposal the economic, military, police — secret and otherwise — and media forces of an increasingly autocratic nation, then Putin's your man. If using that immense power to throw your opponents in jail as your critics perish under the most extraordinary circumstances amounts to bold, earth-changing leadership, then Putin has it in spades.

Nord Stream, a consortium led by Russia's Gazprom, is building a new pipeline that will cost at least €5 billion. The controversial project is facing “growing opposition from governments and private environmental groups.”

The Lithuanian president has acknowledged that energy issues with Russia create tension, but says that they “should in no way harm Lithuanian-Russian relations”.

Gazprom is doubling its number of liquid gas filling stations in Russia, boosting its monopoly on the domestic LPG market. The president of Gazresurs says that “large state-owned energy companies like Gazprom continue to buy up gas refineries and filling station chains. At the same time, they also dictate the price for independent retailers, for example, by increasing transportation tariffs.”

The Russian Natural Resources Ministry is hoping to attract $32 billion in investment for six major new projects. Russia's state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport has filed a lawsuit against Kommersant newspaper over comments made by Oleg Shvartsman about “velvet reprivatization” in an interview. Foreign investment in car production in Russia will exceed $1.8 billion this year. Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control, will impose temporary restrictions on fish imports from a number of foreign companies starting January 1, 2008. Countries to be affected include Argentina, Vietnam, China and the US. Russian engineering and steel company OMZ will invest just under half a billion dollars in the next five years in steel and nuclear equipment plants in the Czech Republic. Many fund managers believes that “Russia will take over China’s crown next year” as the Russian market becomes an increasingly attractive option. “It is rich in commodities and natural resources, for which there is huge global demand, and share prices are still quite cheap.” Luxembourg's Bluebird Securities has acquired a 5.7% stake in Russia's second largest gas producer Novatek. Severstal, Russia's biggest steelmaker, aims to increase profit from its US operations almost threefold by 2010 with the help of a $1bn investment plan to increase output and improve quality.

PHOTO: This undated handout photo shows a gas-well of Russian gas company Novatek in Yamalo-Nentsky region. (AFP/HO/File)

Today: RA show to go ahead; Putin praises Bush’s “personal commitment”; foreign policy will be “constructive” next year, says Lavrov; Russia’s relations with Iran and South Korea could strengthen; Moscow’s property boom; Yukos administrator can “ignore” earlier ruling; new survey says Russia’s is a “surveillance society”.

President Vladimir Putin has been accused of “sexing up the Duma [...] with an array of glamorous new female recruits” including former athletes who have starred in topless photoshoots and the principal ballerina of the Bolshoi.

Post-election Metastases

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Scientists at Cornell University (USA) in 2005 succeeded in identifying the mechanism for the spread of metastases of a cancerous tumor. The scientists established that the appearance of metastases in any organ is preceded by the formation of colonies of bone marrow cells, preparing a kind of “landing site” for the cancer cells.

The scientists discovered that during the formation of metastases, bone marrow cells receive biochemical signals from the “mother” tumor, forcing them to migrate throughout the entire body of the sick organism.

Colonies of chekists – former members of the KGB – are spreading throughout all of Russia at incredible speed. The “biochemical signals” are being spread throughout the entire country from the Kremlin. Former and current chekists, catching these signals, start to migrate throughout the entire body of the big country in the search for any kind of power at all. Nowadays, it is hard to find an agency, all the more so a federal one, in which chekists do not occupy the leadership posts.

Often buried under the more sexy foreign policy issues such as terrorism, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and imported steroids for baseball players, U.S. politicians only rarely speak up about what they believe should be done vis-à-vis Russia. Now, probably thanks to TIME Magazine's selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year, the Kremlin problem is finally getting its due among the field of candidates for the U.S. presidency.

The sudden realization of some of these politicians that there could be some good political mileage to be had by squawking on about Russia has not always produced fruitful proposals or new ideas. Nevertheless, today the Council on Foreign Relations has provided a helpful rundown of each candidate's foreign policy position on Russia. Russia policy was stated as "unknown" for candidates Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo.

In a recent column by Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times about the torture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah by the U.S. Government, an interesting question is posed: if this cover-up of a war crime is finally unraveled, will it eventually lead to accountability at the highest levels of the Oval Office?

Sullivan writes, “Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.”

In making the case for George Bush as a war criminal, Sullivan has raised a very important point – when a high profile prisoner is severely mistreated by the authorities and threatened with death, the responsibility goes to the highest levels of executive power which authorized these actions.

We can now observe a parallel example in Russia, which although lacking the dramatic headline-grabbing stories of terrorist plots, waterboarding, and destroyed videotapes, features the same repugnant cruelty as the former Yukos general counsel Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan is systematically being denied access to emergency life-saving medical care and chemotherapy treatments.

[The following is the final installment of Grigory Pasko's reporting on punitive psychiatry and interviews with journalist Andrei Novikov. See Part 1 and Part 2.]

“Psychiatry for the state is a supplementary element of the police system, convenient when it isn’t possible to prove somebody’s guilt, but when the person is just really getting in the way of the state.” – from I. Girich’s foreword to V. Nekipelov’s 2005 book «Institut durakov» [Institute of Fools]

“You can’t understand Russia with the mind…”

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Some men were sitting next to me in the train back home from Yaroslavl, drinking beer. One was reading a book about chekists (you can’t even imagine how many of them are being published in contemporary Russia!), the other was talking incessantly: about railroads, about perestroika (which had “destroyed the USSR”), about how the toilet was perpetually closed…

I recalled a phrase from Anton Chekhov’s tale «Ward No. 6»: “‘Which one of us two is insane?’, he thought with aggravation. ‘Is it I, who an trying not to trouble the passengers in any way, or is it this egoist, who thinks he’s smarter and more interesting than everybody here, and therefore isn’t giving anybody any peace?’”

Main building of the psychiatric hospital in Rybinsk (photo by Grigory Pasko)

This question was posed by Russia Profile to Ethan S. Burger, Eric Kraus, Ira Straus, Andrei Tsygankov, and Stephen Blank. The latter is the only one to really question some of the fundamental assumptions about Russia's resurgence: "The deliberate stoking of nationalist, chauvinistic rhetoric warning of enemies at the gates, generated for domestic purposes, is now exacting its cost."

Yesterday we blogged about Russia's need to keep Iran in the lurch with regard to delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. Also, the unexpected announcement by the Iranians appeared to have caught the Russians off guard, and led many to conclude that it was a preemptive bargaining tactic to force Moscow's hand (Gazprom has perfected this method of premature announcements of deals).

True to form, today the Russians are denying the delivery of this missile system, and even denying that talks are taking place: "The question of deliveries of S-300 systems to Iran, which has now arisen in the mass media, is not currently taking place, is not being considered and is not being discussed at this time with the Iranian side," said a representative from the Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service (FSVTS).

I wonder what the response from Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and the Iranians will be to this news? Perhaps silence, or perhaps more Nabucco and gas export talk...

Today: Russia denies sale of anti-aircraft missile to Iran, delivers second shipment of nuclear fuel; contraband caviar; British-Russian relations - “Cold War lite”.

At the cabinet’s final session for the year, Vladimir Putin said that Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov’s job for the new year would be “to ensure work of such intensity that even my possible arrival at the White House would seem like a holiday to everyone." A poll by the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Studies found that inflation was the key event of the year for Russians. Putin has topped business daily Kommersant's annual rankings of Russia's elite for the seventh consecutive time.

Gazprom took control of Shell's Sakhalin-2 project last year, and now appears to want a stake in ExxonMobil's Sakhalin-1 venture as well, according to new reports alleging that Gazprom held talks to join the oil and gas project earlier this year.

Russia's state-controlled Rosneft says it will raise oil output by 11% in 2008.

The Middle East's share of Japan's crude imports fell to 84.3% in November from 89.4% a year ago, partly due to a surge in crude imports from Russia and Vietnam.

US aviation giant Boeing has agreed to buy more than $1 billion worth of titanium components from domestic manufacturer VSMPO-Avisma. Peugeot Citron is to construct an automobile plant in Kaluga, signalling that its global partner, Mitsubishi, may construct a plant there also. In the first step towards such an agreement, Mitsubishi, Japan's fastest-growing car exporter, has signed an accord with the Russian government granting it incentives to assemble vehicles. VTB’s purchase of a stake in EADS has been interpreted as “a renewed attempt by the Kremlin to develop Russia’s aerospace industry.” VTB has become the first Russian bank to win a license to operate in China. Sberbank has completed its $150 million purchase of Ukraine's NRB Bank.

In 2007, there were more than 50 billionaires in Russia and more than 100,000 millionaires. In 2002, there were just seven billionaires. (source: Economist)

Scholar Janusz Bugajski of CSIS thinks that the Kosovo issue will be the first major challenge of relations with Russia to be addressed during the U.S. presidential elections next year: The Putin leadership has deliberately created a sense of danger through its anti-Western rhetoric. It claims that the United States and its closest NATO allies, such as Britain and Poland, are seeking to encircle Russia and prevent the country from regaining its rightful position as a major global player. The expansion of Western alliances and the promotion of liberal democracies are depicted as direct threats to Russia's interests.

Among the priority items for the United States will be dealing with an expansionist Kremlin that is once again seeking to divide the Western alliance and diminish U.S. influence. The decision on Kosovo's statehood will be an early indication of whether Washington is determined to stand by its principles and is capable of ensuring trans-Atlantic cohesion -- even at the cost of exacerbating the inevitable confrontation with Russia.

This polling data comes from Levada via Angus Reid.

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? - The purpose of America’s foreign policy is the complete destruction of Russia.

Agree - 43%

Disagree - 42%

Hard to answer - 15%

Source: Yury Levada Analytical Center
Methodology: Interviews to 1,600 Russian adults, conducted from Dec. 7 to Dec. 10, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

Earlier today during President Vladimir Putin's speech at the last cabinet meeting of the year, he commented on economic growth, foreign investment, food price controls and inflation, and said "we no longer depend on large profits from oil and natural gas exports alone." He also pledged for the government to work hard to keep the country running during the election, as though responding to fears of instability:

Last but not least, the entire state machinery must operate reliably and effectively during the presidential election. It mostly concerns the Government of the Russian Federation. So Mr Zubkov must guarantee performance intense enough for all to heave a sigh of relief even if I become Prime Minister. The Government must work efficiently and dynamically, and be aloof to any domestic political events, even such crucial ones as the presidential election. I want to stress that we are working for our nation, for our people, and we must guarantee them normal life.

"A sigh of relief"? "Be aloof to any domestic political events"? Sometimes it feels like the Kremlin lives in some whole other reality...

[Below is an exclusive translation of a press statement from the former general counsel and vice president of Yukos, Vasily Alexanyan, who has been unlawfully imprisoned in Russia since 2006. The statement, distributed by All-Russia Public Movement «For human rights», describes the cruel and outrageous circumstances by which the Russian procuracy have illegally denied this prisoner access to urgent chemotherapy treatments and other medical care to save his life. For many years, I've argued that the true criminals in the Yukos case were those individuals seeking to dress up these show trials in the minimal trappings of counterfeit legality, and here with their treatment of Mr. Alexanyan, who is literally on the brink of death without proper medical care, we see that the procuracy is not above getting involved in manslaughter if not murder. Not once or twice, but three times the Russian Federation has ignored an exceptionally clear directive from the European Court of Human Rights to provide proper medical care to Mr. Alexanyan. Against all known international norms, law, and due process, the Russian procuracy has flaunted rule of law repeatedly in this case, and I urge you to refer anyone who defends the legitimacy or minimal adequacy of Russia's justice system to this statement. - Robert Amsterdam]

“The authorities of the Russian Federation have truly brought me to the brink of the grave by their actions”

Statement for the press and the human rights community from Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan, being held at FGU IZ-77/1 of the UFSIN of Russia for the city of Moscow

On 27 December 2007, the Russian Federation is required to carry out what are already the third Interim Measures of the European Court of Human Rights indicating that I be immediately transferred from the prison where I am now being held to a specialised civilian clinic for hospitalization.

Below is the continuation of the statement from Andrei Novikov, the government critic and journalist who has been illegally held against his will in psychiatric confinement (see Part 1 here). Novikov, who is supported by international press freedom groups such as Reporters without Borders, made a plea for political asylum on an exclusive video first featured on this blog. - Grigory Pasko

Andrei Novikov’s monologue continued...

….Also I was quarrelsome with policemen. I demanded of them that they show identification. Once a policeman beat me up. I turned for help to the police. There they told me that since I didn’t know the surname of the policeman who had beaten me up, then there was no element of a crime, either. They taught me that you need to demand that they show identification. And so I started demanding. They wouldn’t give it. I complained about them to the internal security administration. This too they didn’t forget.

The psychiatric hospital where Novikov spent nearly a year (photo by Grigory Pasko)

For all those of a libertarian bent out there complaining about their own intrusive, nanny state, they should take a look at Russia, where it has become illegal to question the existence of Father Frost, the Russian version of Santa Claus. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (why this bureaucratic arm of government over other options puzzles me) has banned a TV ad from an electronics retailer which poked fun at the existence of this mythical gift giver on the grounds that it broke a rule discrediting parents and teachers.

"It means that parents are not telling the truth to children when they say Father Frost exists. In that way the ad induces negative relations between children and their parents," said a government source.

Perhaps the real reason for the ban was that the Kremlin didn't want to ruin the Nashi's version of Santacon, when thousands from the youth movement take to the streets in the fabled costume to worship the president...

As has been noted on this blog many times in the past, the Kremlin has been exceptionally effective in using its relationship with Iran to move markets to their benefit. Today, for example, the big upswing in oil prices is partly credited to the news that Russia will finally deliver its promised advanced anti-aircraft missile system to Tehran (the S-300), which will "dramatically increase its ability to repel an attack," said the defense minister.

But will Russia really commit this time? Or will it just be another tease, like the past interminable delays and excuses at the Bushehr nuclear reactor? As Stratfor has noted, the Russians are determined to maintain some wiggle-room with these commitments to Iran for various reasons:

The last issue of the New York Times Magazine has a compelling article from Peter Maass about an alleged CIA officer who bribed the president of Kazakhstan more than $78 million to guide oil and gas toward Europe and the United States instead of toward Russia and China. In the era of scarce oil, some governments are looking to drop bribery and corruption investigations lest they scare off important supply deals - an extremely negative development, to say the least.

Today: Nemtsov withdraws from elections; Medvedev receives increased support, pledges to increase spending on national projects; Russia to provide Iran with new air defence system; Khodorkovsky's custody extended.

Boris Nemtsov, the liberal opposition leader, has pulled out of the March presidential election in Russia, saying that improper pressure by the Kremlin turned the campaign into a farce. The head of the Union of Right Forces also said that he was withdrawing so as not to split the vote with what he described as the only other remaining candidate from the democratic opposition, Mikhail Kasyanov. “[The Kremlin] is using Goebbels-esque propaganda, law-enforcement and administrative resources against opposition candidates,” Nemtsov said.

Aluminium producer Rusal said it will raise its stake in Norilsk Nickel from 25% to 27%. The board of KM-Invest, a Russian firm that manages some assets of tycoons Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin, has voted to sell more of its assets. A review of the year’s Russian metal market deals can be found here. The board of Russia's Bank of Development will purchase a 5% stake in European aerospace company EADS from VTB Bank for about $1.43 billion. Russia’s state-owned banks are rapidly increasing their share of the market, with the top ten banks accounting for 46% of total banking assets in 2007. A new survey of German investors shows that German companies continue to see Russia as a business opportunity “in spite of political tensions between the two countries.” Alliance Group and billionaire Polymetal owner Suleiman Kerimov plan to bid for a stake worth $622 million in Polyus Gold. The government will keep its $151 billion stabilization fund entirely in sovereign bonds next year and will not invest a $19 billion subfund in corporate debt or stock. The Association of Russian Banks has asked Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to postpone the introduction of amendments to the law on fighting money-laundering until it is clear on how to implement them.

"We have received an extremely negative experience of foreign participation in exploration projects in Russia's East," said Gazprom’s deputy chairman. The company is against giving Russian subsoil to foreign companies to develop.

In an attempt to reduce Russia's dependence on Belarus for oil transit, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Energy and the pipeline monopoly Transneft have prepared a draft for the construction of a second pipeline leading to the Baltic port of Primorsk.

Unified Energy System (UES) said its net profit had decreased 31%, year on year.

The FT is running a new op/ed which both predicts the difficulties and points to the opportunities for the West to improve relations with Russia: "The question for the west is how to deal with such an important but increasingly unco-operative country. The answer is to engage with Russia on many fronts but avoid compromising on western values, particularly the rule of law. It will not be easy, but the US and the European Union must try and apply some basic principles.

First, forget about trying to turn Russia into a democracy from the outside. If Russia is to develop into a democracy, it will be done largely by Russians. Foreigners can help only at the margin – and only when the time is ripe, which is not now. The west should not refrain from highlighting Russia’s domestic warts but it should focus on key human rights issues, such as political killings, rather than vague comments about democracy."

Old-style mercantilism, as compared to free trade, was an economic doctrine formerly implemented by national governments to advance their country's interests at the expense of others - a divide-and-conquer approach to trade and investment as an instrument of power. Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post argues that a new form of mercantilism is making a strong comeback, as governments (the Kremlin among them) once again make moves to manipulate markets against principles of competition to advance political (and sometimes personal) interests. He asks an intriguing question: can growing economic interdependence and rising nationalism coexist, or will they collide?

Michael McFaul writes about the TIME selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year in Slate:

In mistaking correlation for causation—in arguing that the coincidence of Putin's time in power and Russia's economic recovery proves that "individuals can make a difference to history"—Time has delivered a public relations coup to Putin. Kremlin officials have already applauded. For those in Russia still fighting for independent media and still convinced that objective journalism is a noble aspiration, Time's decision to celebrate Putin with this un-honor most certainly doesn't "feel right," and it most certainly doesn't feel like journalism. Some traditions should come to an end.

Nationalist Alexander Dugin, who heads the «Eurasian Movement», recently declared: “There are no more opponents of the Putinite course, and if there are, then they are mentally ill and need to be sent to get a medical examination. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, Putin is irreplaceable.”

Independence is punished by the nut-house

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

In search of the insane

In the sixth hour of the evening, the Moscow-Vorkuta train brought me to Yaroslavl. I stepped out of the car. It was dark, damp, and very cold. The first thing I saw was a young man strolling along the platform… in his underpants. As it was, I happened to be travelling to meet with a resident of Yaroslavl Oblast whom the power had called insane. That is, I was prepared for all kinds of things. But something like this, right there on the platform when I had just barely arrived?!

On the way to the hotel, I stepped into the local «McDonald’s» for a cup of tea. Two teenagers sat down at the table next to mine. I watched as during the course of ten minutes they ate… four Cheeseburger Royales® [known as Quarter Pounders® in North America–Trans.] apiece. Were they insane?

But I should be talking… What normal person would go drink tea of the Russian firm «Maysky chai» in a «McDonald’s»?

Russia is willing to participate in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus.

Russia will raise duties on oil exports by 21%, starting in February.

A new pumped storage hydropower station in the Leningrad region, to be completed by HydroOGK by 2016, will be the largest in Europe.

Sergei Lavrov says that Russia would freeze its cooperation with Iran on nuclear energy if there was any deviation from agreements currently in place on Bushehr.

Vneshtorgbank, Russia's second largest bank, is to invest roughly $260 million in "the purchase and construction of a residential complex" in London. Magnit, Russia's largest supermarket chain by stores, may seek to sell at least $500 million of shares in London next year. The owner of OAO Seventh Continent reportedly rejected a $1.37 billion offer for the Russian supermarket chain from US buyout firm TPG because it was too low. The state-run monopoly, Unified Energy System, is against passing its name on to its successor company when the country’s electric power sector is reformed. Some analysts suspect that the current rise in retail prices for petrol was initiated by Rosneft. The company say that their prices “are based on market calculations. And we would like to point out that the prices at our petrol stations are growing slower than inflation.” Ball Corp. is in talks with South Russia's Rostov regional authorities to build a beverage can manufacturing plant.

(PHOTO: People pass by a branch of Vneshtorgbank (VTB) in Moscow, September 2006. (AFP/File/Maxim Marmur))

Today: State corporations; GPS satellites launched and ballistic missiles tested; Lavrov discusses foreign policy; anti-globalists hold anti-luxury rally in St. Petersburg.

The State Duma began passing laws to set up new state corporations in the autumn of 2007. The campaign for state corporations is “the logical conclusion of the first stage of the construction of capitalism in Russia”. At a meeting on the implementation of national projects, Dmitri Medvedev announced that “A free, educated and healthy person is the main thing that determines perspective for the country’s development now.”

A few days ago Lilia Shevtsova published the following column in the Moscow Times:

The Power Paralysis

By Lilia Shevtsova

Those watching President Vladimir Putin on television could not fail to see a change in his mood. After he decided on his partnership with First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, he started to look like a different person. He is very much at ease -- as if a huge burden has been taken off his back. Last week, he was joking at the State Council meeting, and he curtly put the Time magazine journalists in their place during an interview at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence. His body language shows that he is enjoying his position of power immensely.

Russia’s retail turnover for November 2007 exceeded 1 trillion rubles for the first time ever, and the country will become the world's fifth largest economy by 2020, provided its gross domestic product keeps its current annual growth rate. Russia has exported a record $7 billion worth of arms in 2007, with state-controlled Rosoboronexport overseeing most of the contracts. The duties on stainless steel import will go up by 35% to 40% early in 2008, with Russian traders of Chinese steel imports feeling the heaviest impact of the increase. French giant Renault is conducting a due diligence review before signing a final deal to buy a 25% blocking stake in Russia's largest carmaker AvtoVAZ. Toyota Motor Corp expects its sales in Europe to continue growing at around 2% next year, although this rate excludes the rapidly expanding Russian market. “Russia is pulling the European market.” Rusal’s acquisition of Norilsk Nickel is seen as the companies “first step towards creating Russia’s first global and diversified mining and metallurgical enterprise.”

(PHOTO: A New Year tree with changeable lights stands at the Red Square in Moscow Monday, Dec. 24, 2007. New Year is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, and is followed by the Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko))

Part of Russia’s plans to build Rosatom, the state nuclear power corporation, will include the setting up of a national nuclear energy university, to be based at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.

Unified Energy System (UES) has completed the restructuring of the thermal power sector as part of a broader electric power system reform.

Russia's Resources Ministry could ease access to state auctions of large oil, gas or metal deposits by foreign companies, but is to tighten control over large equity deals.

Gazprom, Russia's biggest supplier of natural gas for power plants, paid almost $850 million for new shares in OAO OGK-6, Russia's third-largest power generator by capacity.

Today: bird flu; pro-Kremlin youth groups; relations with Iran steadily improving; US missile shield tensions continue; a satellite tracker for Putin's labrador?

Russia’s equivalent of Santa Claus is called Ded Moroz, or Father Frost. Every December, a free three-week course called the Moscow School of Ded Moroz is run at a government-funded youth center. "Ded Moroz is the wizard of New Year’s. His origins predate Christianity, as the pagan god of winter.” Some say he acts as an emblem of Russia’s search for its own identity within existing Western cultural symbols.

Gazprom Neft Finance, a subsidiary of the energy giant Gazprom, has asked permission from the Federal Antitrust Service (FAS) to buy a 50% stake in Tomskneft from Rosneft.

Libya's leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi has met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Tripoli to discuss bilateral relations and international issues, including a joint nuclear energy programme.

Vladimir Putin’s love of judo has apparently landed him a starring role in an instructional DVD. The BBC today is running a story about Vladimir Putin’s forthcoming appearance alongside an Olympic champion.

They write: “Russia's judo-loving President, Vladimir Putin, has recorded an instructional DVD along with Japanese Olympic champion Yasuhiro Yamashita. The DVD will be released as a supplement to a judo manual and is due to come out in January or February, the Kremlin's most famous black belt said. He and Yamashita attended a judo lesson in his home city St Petersburg, two years ago after meeting in Tokyo. "Sports like judo teach you mutual respect," Mr Putin said. "Respect for your rival, with the knowledge that an adversary who appears weak can put up resistance and even beat you if you lose concentration and become complacent."

Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov is seeking to buy the 7.4% stake in Polyus Gold, Russia's biggest producer of the metal, jointly held by former partners Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin. As predicted, Oleg Deripaska's United Company Rusal has won its battle to grab a 25% blocking stake in Norilsk Nickel, the first step toward acquiring control of the company. A full takeover by Rusal of Norilsk would create a $100 billion metals giant. It is being predicted that the Russian stock market will have a strong year in 2008. “The market here should continue to perform even if the economies in Western Europe and the US do not,” said one analyst. Europe's second-biggest insurer, AXA, has made a “major entry” into Russia with a deal to buy a 36.7% stake in insurer RESO-Garantia for about $1.16 billion. Russia's largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, plans to borrow $3 billion to $4 billion on international capital markets in 2008.

(PHOTO: A worker climbs inside a 46-meter (151 feet) Christmas tree in the centre of Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk December 24, 2007. The artificial Christmas tree is the highest in Russia, local media reported. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin (RUSSIA))

Today: Gunvor denies links with Putin; Fifth State Duma opens; Medvedev to begin presidential campaigning; Zubkov initiates wage hike for public sector; Khodorkovsky lawyers apply for case dismissal; corruption; Badri Patarkatsishvili assassination plot.

The oil company Gunvor has spoken out about its alleged links with Vladimir Putin, denying that the Russian president was the company's "beneficiary" owner but admitting that he was a friend of its founder. "None of the shares of this organisation are held by President Putin or anyone allied by him," Tornqvist wrote in a letter published in today's Guardian.

Here's a Reuters news clip on Russia's art loan fiasco with the United Kingdom, which this weekend was unexpectedly reversed. Matisse lovers in London can breathe a sigh of relief.

Writing on Japan Focus, M K Bhadrakumar points out the patently clear quid pro quo going on between Russia and Iran in energy and geopolitics. Extensive high quality analysis after the cut.

In fact, how Moscow proceeds with the reconfiguration of Russo-Iranian relations could well form the centerpiece of the geopolitics of energy security in Eurasia during 2008. The dynamics on this front will doubtless play out on a vast theater stretching well beyond the Eurasian space, all the way to China and Japan in the east and to the very heart of Europe in the west where the Rhine River flows. ...

You'd never say that the Kremlin doesn't know how to win friends and influence people, as this latest nuclear gesture toward Delhi indicates:

Russia’s willingness to sign a nuclear agreement with India, without waiting for international restrictions on technology transfer to New Delhi to be lifted, is welcome. When President Vladimir Putin visited India in January 2007, the two countries had signed a Memorandum of Intent for the construction of four nuclear power reactors in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. Now Moscow seems keen to formalise that agreement and also build half a dozen more reactors elsewhere in India. The offer includes the supply of offshore nuclear plants to India without restrictions, as well. Since the proposal doesn’t seem to carry any riders like the Hyde Act clause that hamstrings the Indo-US deal, New Delhi shouldn’t find it too difficult to decide on it soon.

Russia's relationship with India, one of the fellow BRIC economies, is getting warmer and warmer, despite some hiccups as observed by some.

Outdoing even Russia, the authoritarian Central Asian country of Uzbekistan seem to have no problem ignoring its constitution when it comes to keeping the top boss in office: two-time president Islam Karimov, who has had both his terms in office extended by referendums already, has been cleared by the Central Electoral Commission to run for a third term, despite the small matter of a constitutional limit of two terms. Although there are three other candidates running for the office - all of whom are regarded as Karimov loyalists - our money's definitely on Karimov. He won his last election with 92 percent of the vote.

For those of you who thought that the Kremlin was the first to invent false opposition parties, think again.

A timely paper by Stanford University professors Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss has just been published in the January/February 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs. The article’s title says it all: “The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin’s Crackdown Holds Russia Back.” A PDF version of the article can be downloaded here.

First, a disclosure: I have read and admired the scholarship of these distinguished academics for years, and I have recently had the pleasure to meet with them at Stanford, where I attended a joint seminar that was had standing-room-only attendance from scholars throughout the university.

Ahmadinejad is Better than Putin

By the Polittechnologist

It being Christmastime, I would have liked to write about something pleasant. For example, about good people. Today, I’ve got three candidates – Hitler, Putin, and the current president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Do not look so surprised, dear reader. Hitler is not here by accident. If Time magazine at one time let his photograph grace its cover, that means that at one time he was considered a good person, the way Putin is today.

Yesterday I had an interview with the journalist Andrey Novikov, who since last February has been held against his will in psychiatric confinement on a spurious charge of "publicly inciting constitutional change by means of force." Press freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders comments that "Novikov has been the victim of practices contrary to the rule of law. ... It seems that Russia’s special services and psychiatrists are still empowered to take charge of anyone whose words or actions stray from the Kremlin line. The use of punitive confinement is very dissuasive for all those who might be tempted to express their disagreement with the authorities.”

Below is an exclusive video statement I got from Novikov in which he requests political asylum to escape the persecution he is suffering from in Russia. Stay tuned for more - Grigory Pasko.

Our correspondent in Russia, Grigory Pasko, has been following a tragic story that has been unfolding in Moscow. On December 20, police came to the home of opposition activist and "Oborona" leader Oleg Kozlovsky and forcibly took him to the local military draft board, where the medical commission obediently declared him fit for military duty, despite health problems. He was then immediately taken to a camp for draftees. (La Russophobe has also blogged about it here).