Grigory Pasko: Person of the Year, Then and Now

The man from the magazine cover and the country in ruins Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. In the last new year holidays Time brought joy to the whole world by recognizing Putin as person of the year. Putin liked that. Now it’s a different person […]

Enduring the Crisis

From Irina Yasina in the Lebanon Daily Star: Whole regions – the Urals and Mordovia, for example – are stagnant. Moscow, which used to rain gold on the economy, is also suffering, because it, too, depends on natural resources, and its biggest taxpayers – Gazprom, Lukoil, Transneft – are now in bad shape. Indeed, Moscow’s […]

Video: Russia Today’s Bizarre Ads

NYT television critic Virginia Heffernan had a great blog post yesterday taking a look at the bizzaro commercials being played inside New York City taxis advertising the 24/7 cable news Kremlin propaganda channel Russia Today.  I’ve also seen the ads on the Washington DC Metro and all over several U.S. airports.  Heffernan writes: “The newest […]

Stalin Calling

In relation to the previous post, I am catching all this news of a new mobile phone being released in Moscow by Nokia which features an image of Stalin – perhaps in the style of one of those U2-branded iPods.  After some hard searching, I came across one exclusive image from The Cell Freak. If […]

Forgiving Uncle Joe

I do agree with this author that it is particularly surprising how un-surprised everyone is that such as astoundingly large portion of the Russian population voted to forgive “Uncle Joe” Stalin and elect him as country’s most popular historical figure. (read more on the subject here.) What would we think if Germans voted Adolf Hitler […]

Two Trends for 2009 in Russia

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Leon Aron sees two trends emerging in Russia that the West should play close attention to: The first will be a growing dissatisfaction with the government, which may lead to a political crisis. The second will be a reactionary retrenchment: increased internal repression and more of its already troubling […]

Energy Blast – Dec 31, 2008

The Gazprom-Ukraine natural gas price-supply fiasco seemed to be drawing to a close yesterday, but not before some last-minute threats to keep things interesting.  The Russians are on a New Year’s Eve vigorous offensive, claiming that the Ukrainians are carrying out “blackmail” and threatening to seize supplies and cut off Europe.  Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kuprianov […]

Today in Russian Business – Dec 31, 2008

State-owned Vneshekonombank (VEB) has approved a proposal to lend $1.5 billion to domestic mining companies to help cover foreign debts – likely favoring those recently listed in the strategic sectors list.  Today concludes the final day of trading on the RTS for 2008, the worst performing year since 1992 with a cumulative drop in value […]

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Dec 31, 2008

TODAY:  The RA Blog wishes you a very happy new year, Opposition gathers momentum in Georgia, Spain extradites a Chechen to Russia, reactions to the doomsday professor, former North Ossetian Mayor gunned down, Nicaragua wants closer relations with Moscow, and the Czechs prepare to handle a difficult EU presidency. Celebrating New Year’s Eve is pretty […]

A Split in the Tandemocracy?

Various observers are beginning to note some early, outward indications that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev are growing apart.  Russophobe points to a comment piece by Vladimir Frolov as the beginning of a new narrative to blame the mishandling of Georgia on Medvedev, while this latest piece in the Financial Times indicates […]