Peter Baker | Moscow | July 3

NYT - The Russian government has agreed to let American troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan fly over Russian territory, officials on both sides said Friday. The arrangement will provide an important new corridor for the United States military as it escalates efforts to win the eight-year war.

BBC - A senior Obama administration official has told the BBC that Russia has agreed to let US troops bound for the war in Afghanistan fly through its airspace. The deal, which opens up an important new corridor for the US military, is to be officially announced when President Barack Obama visits Moscow next week. Speaking separately, a Kremlin official confirmed a deal was on the table but suggested it referred to weapons only. The reported agreement marks a major development in US-Russian relations.

June 28

BBC - Russia and Nato have agreed to resume co-operation on security issues, after nearly a year of difficult relations. The deal came at a meeting in Greece of foreign ministers from the two sides.

Ties deteriorated sharply in 2008 after Russia's brief conflict with Georgia. Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said differences over the issue remained.But he said Nato and Russia would nonetheless resume co-operation on issues such as Afghanistan, drug trafficking and piracy.

"We have restarted our relations at a political level, we also agreed to restart the military-to-military contacts which had been frozen since last August," the Nato secretary-general told a news conference in Corfu.

June 26

BBC - Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture.

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

Analysts say the move could further strengthen Russia's role in supplying natural gas to Europe.

The agreement comes during a four-day African tour by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

As well as forming Nigaz, Russia is keen on developing a trans-African pipeline to transport Nigerian gas to Europe.

This could further reinforce Gazprom's already-strong influence over Europe's energy supplies.

Brussels | June 19

UPI - Confidential documents written by the EU team investigating last year's Russian-Georgian war assign much of the blame to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

A majority of EU experts say the Georgian president, and not the Kremlin, ordered the first military strike against two breakaway provinces, according to the documents obtained by German news magazine Der Spiegel. The Georgian offensive into South Ossetia and Abkhazia escalated into a five-day war with Russia that the powerful neighbor won.

That doesn't mean the Kremlin is entirely innocent. A senior member of the EU experts' commission tasked with probing the conflict, Otto Luchterhandt, a German international law expert, argues the Kremlin was legally entitled to counterattack but violated "the principle of proportionality" with its massive intervention in Georgia. Other commission members are also arguing that Russia is to be blamed.

** Der Speigel:EU Probe Creates Burden for Saakashvili

John Heilprin | United Nations | June 16

AP - What's in a name? Enough to anger Russia, which exercised its veto power in the U.N. Security Council and brought an end Monday to the nearly 16-year-old observer mission monitoring a cease-fire between Georgia and its breakaway Abkhazia region.

Russia's veto late Monday toppled a Western plan to extend the life of the U.N. mission for another year, or even two more weeks, to work out a compromise. The vote was 10-1 with four abstentions China, Vietnam, Libya and Uganda.

The mission's mandate will now expire at midnight Monday in New York, requiring about 130 military observers and more than a dozen police to leave. Both the name the U.N. Observer Mission in Georgia and references to Georgia's territorial sovereignty were sticking points.

"It is understandable," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday, "that in the new political and legal conditions most of the names and terms previously used in the old documents are inapplicable."

Also see from Registan: Iran Isn’t the Only Country Rioting

Shirong Chen | June 15

BBC -
Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders are gathering in Russia for the ninth Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit.

Some will also attend the first summit of the four emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The main agenda item at the meetings in Yekaterinburg will be how to deal with the global economic crisis.

Putting the two top-level meetings next to each other highlights the dominance of the economic crisis for both groups.

The two meetings are further signs of a global power shift.

The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, or SCO, was formed in 2001 by China, Russia and the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to curb extremism in the region and enhance border security.

India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia later joined as observer members.

It was China's answer to a multi-polar world and increasingly it has played a role in promoting regional security, for example by contributing to reconstruction in Afghanistan.

June 14

AFP - A volcanic eruption on a remote Russian island north of Japan has created a giant ash cloud that threatens passing planes, according to geologists.

The eruption of Sarychev Peak on uninhabited Matua Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago in the north Pacific Ocean, began overnight Thursday (local time) and is still underway, the RIA-Novosti news agency said.

It has formed an ash cloud eight kilometres high which has spread 310 kilometres to the west, said Olga Shestakova, a spokeswoman for the Marine Geology and Geophysics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"Informat

Shaun Walker | Riga | Jan 11

The Independent - In Russia it is not only the future that is unpredictable; often the past is equally in doubt. One minute Leon Trotsky was a hero of the Revolution, the father of the Red Army and a strong contender to succeed Lenin; the next minute he never existed. Until the late 1980s, the 1917 Revolution was the pinnacle of human achievement; suddenly in the 1990s it was seen as an utter failure.

And today again history in the region is turning into an ideological battlefield. When the Red Army poured into the Baltic states at the end of the Second World War, it liberated them from Nazi tyranny – but from the perspective of the subsequent decades of Soviet domination, was it liberation or merely another invasion?

The Russians, of course, have no doubt on the matter: for them it was an heroic national achievement. But for the states which less than two decades ago managed to crawl out from under the Soviet boot, things are not so simple. The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, an imposing black box of a building in the heart of Riga, tells the story of Latvia's time inside the Soviet Union. The Soviet soldiers, glorified as heroes in Moscow, are portrayed as criminals and occupiers, no better than the Germans they defeated.

But now, slamming shut a stable door through which its former subject states long ago bolted, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the creation of a body with the Orwellian title of the Commission to Counteract the Falsification of History to the Detriment of Russian Interests. A linked law is also likely to be passed that will outlaw the "rehabilitation of Nazism" on the territory of former Soviet republics.

Moscow | June 4

Reuters - Major grain exporter Russia, plans to raise its output by some 25 percent to 133-136 million tonnes a year in the coming years and aims to contribute to global food security, President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

He said the country was ready to support long-term foreign investment in its agriculture.

"Russia is aware of its responsibility and is now committed to realising its enormous agricultural potential and bringing grain production to such a level as to ensure, together with other major agricultural producers, food security for a substantial part of the world population," Medvedev said.

"High-quality soft wheat is most in demand, since both developed and developing countries use it for flour production. Thus, contributing to the global food security, Russian grain substantially ensures food supply in a number of countries."

In the current 2008/09 crop year Russia aims to export 21 million tonnes of grain, mainly wheat, to some 50 countries, Medvedev said in remarks distributed by the Kremlin ahead of the World Grain Forum, which starts on Saturday in St. Petersburg.

Sarah Schafer | Sergiyev Posad, Russia | May 31

WaPo -

Inna Kashnikova found her calling during a fourth-grade trip to a factory in this picturesque town that produces matryoshki, the wooden nesting dolls that are synonymous with Russian folk art.

"I really liked it here, with the smell of the paint and all the colors," recalled Kashnikova, 40, as she sat at a workbench in the Aofis factory and used a cotton swab to dab white flowers across the apron of an unfinished matryoshka. "Ever since then, I wanted to paint the dolls."

But matryoshki -- those gourd-shaped figures that can be pulled apart to reveal ever-smaller dolls -- are in trouble, and so is Kashnikova's job.

Here in Sergiyev Posad, a historic town 50 miles north of Moscow that is considered the birthplace of the matryoshka, factories that have produced the dolls for decades are struggling to stay in business. Souvenir shops have slashed orders, tourists have stopped coming, and artisans such as Kashnikova are worried that their way of life -- and a distinctly Russian tradition -- may soon be lost.

Tbilisi | May 28

Reuters - Georgia's influential Orthodox church called on Thursday for snap elections or immediate dialogue to end an "explosive" stalemate between the opposition and President Mikheil Saakashvili.

The statement's recognition of elections as a potential way out will give the opposition new heart after seven weeks of street protests demanding Saakashvili resign over his record on democracy and last year's disastrous war with Russia.

"The situation in the country is explosive," Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II said in a statement.

"The authorities should take efficient steps that envisage holding early elections or the immediate start of negotiations," he added.

An opposition threat to block the main highway and the vital railway line, which some protesters blocked briefly on Tuesday night, deepened fears of violent confrontation in the former Soviet republic, a transit route for oil and gas to the West.

** Russia gets Abkhazian oil
** Georgians march through capital, call for reform
** Georgia says UN's Ban blackmailed by Russia

Shaun Walker | Moscow | May 27

The Independent - In the past year he's been painting pictures, singing songs, and demonstrating his expert judo moves. This week Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will complete a clean sweep of the artistic disciplines after turning his hand to writing. Mr Putin's first ever column for a Russian media outlet will be published on Friday, entitled "Why it's hard to fire people".

But while the previous efforts, along with his skiing, tiger-shooting and bare-chested fishing expeditions, have been propaganda for personal abilities, the article seems to have a more serious point. Written for a niche monthly magazine, Russian Pioneer, it reads as the first admission by Mr Putin of the scale of infighting that raged in the Kremlin during his eight years as president.

"Conflicts within a team, especially within a big team, always arise," writes Mr Putin, in extracts leaked to a Russian news agency. "This happens every minute, every second – simply because between people there are always clashes of interest."

Most analysts believe that during Mr Putin's presidency, a vicious battle was fought for power and influence between liberals and hardliners within and around the Kremlin. This continues today as the relatively liberal President Dmitry Medvedev and his close associates appear to be fighting off challenges from a hardline group of conservative former KGB officers. Mr Putin is sometimes lumped in with the latter group, but many analysts suggest that he actually played a delicate balancing act to stop the two groups from descending into all-out war.

Megan K. Stack | Moscow | May 25

LA Times -

The cheeses are spotted with mold. The sausages are ominously gray. Slime is beginning to overtake the chicken.

But the stooped and slow clientele who crowd this pungent stretch of market stalls in the southern fringes of the Russian capital don't seem bothered. Elderly retirees mass and push before spreads of lukewarm yogurt and moldering fish. Business has never been better, the steely-eyed manager says.

Theoretically, selling expired foodstuffs is a crime punishable by fine under Russian law. But the climbing prices, falling salaries and withering demand of Russia's economy appear to be driving a surge in the sale of past-their-prime goods.

Trafficking in spoiled food, a familiar racket during the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union, is making a comeback in both markets and wholesale Internet shopping. A semi-underground enterprise, it is difficult to trace. But consumer groups, shoppers and anecdotal evidence all indicate its ascendance.

"If you lower the price to pennies, people will buy it even at the risk of being poisoned," says Irina Vinogradova, director of the Russian Institute of Consumer Evaluation. "This crisis has led some people into a situation where they have absolutely no money to survive on.

Shaun Walker | Moscow | May 25

The Independent - Impoverished workers resort to eating salads of weeds and nettle soup

The Kremlin's worst fears are being played out in a small town outside St Petersburg, as angry residents of crisis-hit Pikalevo marched upon the offices of the local mayor and demanded improved living conditions.

The town, with a population of just over 20,000, has been suffering as its three major factories have hit hard times during the economic crisis. Two of them shut down several months ago, while the third has put its workers on shorter shifts. About half of the employees have been put on enforced leave and even those who are still working have not received their salaries for nearly three months.

The final straw came when the town lost its heating and hot water as the only local power station couldn't afford to keep running. Even kindergartens and hospitals were left without hot water. The town's gas supply was also cut off.

Andrew E. Kramer | Moscow | May 23

NYT - Despite continuing weakness in the Russian economy, the stock exchange here has surged to become the best performing in the world, after being the worst last fall.

After the sell-off last year pushed the valuations of Russian companies to record lows, rising energy prices in recent months have drawn investors back into the market, traders said, even as the government has twice downgraded its expectations for growth this year.

When the authorities reported this month that industrial output declined 16.9 percent in April, the stock market still continued a five-day streak.

“Investors are not analyzing macroeconomics when deciding whether to invest in Russia,” the chief economist in Moscow for Merrill Lynch, Yulia Tseplayeva, said.

“They look at oil prices, and believe that when oil prices rise so will the Russian market,” she said. “And that is true.”
..

But given Russia’s dependence on the boom-and-bust commodity price cycles, a lack of so-called long money investing in the economy and a good deal of jitters about political stability and relations with the West, Russia’s stock market probably will remain highly volatile.

In fact, since its inception after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian stock market has been either in the top five performing markets in the world or the bottom five in every year except one, according to Renaissance Capital, a Moscow brokerage.

Warsaw

DPA - Poland would receive US Patriot missiles regardless of whether the United States goes ahead with its plans for a missile defence shield on Polish soil, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Thursday.

Sikorski said that in terms of its agreement with the US, work on the Patriot system would begin this year with a permanent garrison established by no later than 2012, according to a report by the Polish Press Agency.

'All the signals we receive from the US confirm that regardless of what the American administration decides on the missile defence base, that it will keep the accompanying agreement on Patriots in Poland,' Sikorski said.

A report by a team of US and Russial experts released Tuesday said the missile shield would not be effective against Iranian missiles and would undermine efforts at preventing the Islamic state from developing nuclear weapons.

Moscow | May 22

CSM - A bitter joke from the Soviet-era has it that Russia is the world's only country with an unpredictable past.

That jibe has come winging back in recent days, after the Kremlin announced the creation of a special 28-member panel tasked with examining and combating examples of "historical revisionism" that harm Russia's image.

The committee, which has no legal power, is chaired by the head of President Dmitry Medvedev's administration, Sergei Naryshkin, and includes a sprinkling of historians but also lawmakers, Kremlin officials, the armed forces' chief of staff, and members of the FSB security service.

But a companion law, drafted by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and soon due to be introduced into the State Duma, will stipulate fines and prison sentences of up to five years for anyone found guilty of "denying the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal."

This is a reaction to a growing body of historiography in former Soviet and Eastern European countries that depicts the long years of Soviet domination as similar in nature to the Nazi occupation, and suggests that for these nations, liberation arrived only when the USSR collapsed. Even more irritating for the Russians are perceived attempts in some places, like Ukraine and Latvia, to "rehabilitate" citizens who wore German uniforms during World War II to fight against the oncoming Red Army.

"It is high time to make a study of what is going on here, and to decide what kind of documents we need to dig up and publish to counter these new interpretations," says Natalya Narochnitskaya, a historian, former Duma deputy, and member of the new commission. "If a nation is unable to come to a united view in interpreting its own past, it will be unable to formulate its national interests."

Luke Harding | Khabarovsk | May 21

The Guardian - Russia and the European Union were today holding a summit intended to improve their battered relationship, amid mutual exasperation and irritation in Moscow at the EU's recent attempts to lure eastern European countries away from Moscow's orbit.

Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, was hosting a two-day EU-Russia summit in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, close to Vladivostok and Russia's Pacific coast. EU leaders, including the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, arrived in the city this morning.

The summit comes at a time of growing frustration between Brussels and Moscow over a host of issues ranging from energy policy to the war in Georgia. The EU was irritated by Russia's gas war in January with Ukraine and Medvedev's failure to pull Russian troops out of the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

For its part, the Kremlin is annoyed by the EU's attempt earlier this month to improve ties with half a dozen post-Soviet countries. A summit of 33 countries in Prague brought the EU's 27 governments together for the first time with the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.

Ellen Barry | Moscow | May 17

NYT - Sergei Bagapsh wants to make it perfectly clear: Abkhazia is not now, and will not become, part of the Russian Federation.

Almost five years after being elected president of the breakaway Georgian territory, Mr. Bagapsh owes an enormous debt to Russia, his northern neighbor. Russia went to war last August to support Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s claims to independence from Georgia, and the Kremlin recognized both territories as sovereign nations, fulfilling the wish that has driven separatists through two decades of war and privation. No other country, he said, has shown “any concern for the Abkhaz people.”

But his gratitude is not without limits. With Russian border guards taking up long-term positions on Abkhazia’s periphery and Russian investors eager to buy up beachfront property, Mr. Bagapsh said Abkhaz independence remained a central worry. He also said he had been forced to push back on several occasions when Russian partners asked too high a price for their assistance.

“A small country is obliged to defend its statehood,” he said, in an interview in Moscow. “This is our main question now — that we should never again experience the kind of assimilation that Georgia forced on us.”

David Nowak | Moscow | May 16

LA Times - Former officials of Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia said Friday that tyranny and official corruption have flourished there following the Russian-Georgian war last summer.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and another separatist province as independent shortly after Russian forces repelled Georgia's effort to regain control over South Ossetia. Moscow has pledged more than $240 million in aid to South Ossetia.

But former South Ossetian security council head Anatoly Barankevich, who battled Georgian tanks during the conflict, said many residents have become disillusioned with life under pro-Russian leader Eduard Kokoity.

Speaking at a Moscow news conference before May 31 parliamentary elections in the province, Barankevich said hundreds of millions of dollars meant to rebuild homes, schools and hospitals have been misappropriated under Kokoity.

"What has happened practically a year after the war? Nothing. Not one apartment has been rebuilt, not one business has recuperated," Barankevich said.

"There are dozens of concrete examples of theft" of aid, he said

Moscow | May 16

Reuters - Dozens of riot police broke up a gay rights demonstration on Saturday before the Eurovision Song Contest final in Moscow, grabbing protesters and throwing them into police cars and a waiting bus.

Those arrested for taking part in the small demonstration, which had been banned by city authorities, included British and Russian campaigners.

"There is no freedom for gays in Russia," British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell shouted as police bundled him away. "We call on President (Dmitry) Medvedev to meet with us."

Police pushed waiting reporters away as they arrested the gay and lesbian participants but there were no beatings.

Tony Halpin | Moscow | May 14

TimesOnlineUK - Russia raised the prospect of war in the Arctic yesterday as nations struggle for control of the world’s dwindling energy reserves.

The country’s new national security strategy identified the intensifying battle for ownership of vast untapped oil and gas fields around its borders as a source of potential military conflict within a decade.

“The presence and potential escalation of armed conflicts near Russia’s national borders, pending border agreements between Russia and several neighbouring nations, are the major threats to Russia’s interests and border security,” stated the document, which analysed security threats up to 2020.

May 13

BBC -

Japan and Russia have signed their first nuclear energy co-operation agreement during a visit to Tokyo by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The deal will enable the transfer of Japanese technology to Russia and the sale of more nuclear fuel to Japan.

Mr Putin and his Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso, also pledged to study "all options" to end a territorial dispute.

Both claim sovereignty over islands Japan calls the Northern Territories and Russia calls the Southern Kurils. (click map for background)

The four islands have been under Russian control since the end of World War II, and the issue has since prevented the two nations from signing a comprehensive peace treaty.

"We must reach a final resolution on the sovereignty over the four islands in order to remove the obstacle of the territorial issue that lies between Japan and Russia," Mr Aso told a news conference in Tokyo.

John Wendle | Moscow | May 8

TIME - For the past two weeks, posters celebrating the Soviet triumph in World War II have been taped to the windows of every store in Russia, proudly displaying the date "9 May" and the orange and black striped ribbon of victory. Red banners have been draped across the fronts of apartment buildings all along the central Moscow parade route. And in the lead-up to the country's annual Victory Day celebrations, the Kremlin has made a move that it touts as yet another display of Russia's patriotism and pride: the government has announced that it is considering passing a law to criminalize statements and acts that deny the Soviets won World War II, or claim it used poor tactics in battle or did not liberate Eastern Europe.

The proposed law is seen by Kremlin-watchers as further evidence of Moscow's continued suppression of dissent at a time when the domestic popularity of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has slipped thanks to the economic crisis, and amid international fears of growing Russian militarism after its successful war against Georgia last summer.

Violators of the new addition to the criminal code would face a fine of up to around $9,200 or up to three years in prison. If the perpetrator is a government official and uses his status to break the law, the fine is increased to more than $15,300, a five-year term in prison and the deprivation of the right to occupy certain government positions, said Ryazansky.