Feb 3

BBC -

Dmitry Medvedev sent his special envoy to the western outpost of Kaliningrad ­today after thousands of Russians took to the streets in the largest rally since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The protest, staged at the weekend, saw between 10,000 and 12,000 people gather in Kaliningrad's main square to demand the resignation of the governor and shout slogans against the ruling United Russia party.

Smaller opposition rallies were held in other towns, including Vladivostok – the scene of regular protests by car drivers over the past 18 months – as well as Moscow and St Petersburg. Riot police violently broke up a peaceful demonstration in Triumfalnaya Square, Moscow, on Sunday, arresting 100 ­people.

Although opposition rallies have taken place throughout the Vladimir Putin era, the scale of the Kaliningrad protest appeared to have caught the Kremlin off guard.

The region – the former German city of Königsberg, which was seized by Stalin during the second world war – is separated from the rest of Russia and bordered by EU member states Poland and Lithuania.

Shaun Walker | Jan 30

The Independent - Mikhail Khodorkovsky's second trial for fraud has already lasted nearly a year. But his real 'crime' is to have crossed Vladimir Putin

The judge, sitting in front of a Russian flag, peers over proceedings and looks thoroughly bored. It's not surprising – the trial started last March, and nobody knows when it will finish. The prosecution promises to call 250 witnesses, and so far only 40 have taken the stand. Then it will be the turn of the defence, who say they plan to call top-ranking Russian officials including the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, to the witness stand.

They have been through all this before, of course. Arrested in 2003, Mr Khodorkovsky was given a nine-year prison sentence in 2005, later reduced to eight, which until the new trial he had been serving thousands of miles from Moscow in the wastes of Siberia.

His conviction was widely seen as a message from Mr Putin, then the President. Mr Khodorkovsky had breached an unwritten agreement that the President had made with Russia's richest men, the oligarchs, when he took office in 2000. The businessmen were permitted to keep their vast financial gains from the tumultuous 1990s in exchange for staying out of politics.

Mr Khodorkovsky was the most successful of these oligarchs. He had started out making money through the Komsomol, the Communist youth league, and by the late 1990s was in charge of Yukos, Russia's biggest and richest oil company. He was never into the obscene displays of wealth and bling for which other oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich have become well known. Especially in the early years, he cut a modest figure, wearing geeky glasses and thick cardigans. But he had begun to break the rules of the game, financing opposition political groups, and this was the price he paid.

Yukos was dismembered, and most of its assets were auctioned off, ending up under the control of the state-run company Rosneft, chaired by Igor Sechin, a shadowy Kremlin figure close to Mr Putin and thought to lead a clan of hardliners within the Russian elite. Mr Khodorkovsky was convicted of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to eight years in prison. The message sent was loud and clear – don't mess with the Kremlin.

It is widely acknowledged that it was difficult to become rich during the 1990s while remaining fully within the bounds of the law, and most of the oligarchs could quite easily be convicted of similar crimes if the political will were there to bring them to court. Mr Khodorkovsky became the poster boy for what happens if you break the unspoken agreement with the Kremlin.

Luke Harding | Moscow | Jan 21

The Guardian - Environmentalists today rounded on Vladimir Putin after he amended legislation to allow the pollution of Russia's Lake Baikal, home to one-fifth of the world's supply of fresh water and unique plants and animals.

Putin ruled that a pulp and paper mill on the shores of the Siberian lake could resume production 15 months after being closed down on ecological grounds.

His decree appeared to be a favour to Oleg Deripaska, the plant's billionaire owner and the Russian prime minister's favourite oligarch.

For decades, environmental groups have attacked the Baikalsk pulp and paper mill, which bleaches paper with chlorine and discharges its waste water into the lake.

Putin allowed the factory to reopen after a visit to Baikal last summer, when he went to the bottom of the lake in a submersible mini-submarine.

James G. Neuger | Jan 14

Bloomberg - As Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in 2008, a post-Cold War turning point was at hand.

George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion. Vladimir Putin boasted that he alone could be trusted. And Nicolas Sarkozy badgered Georgia’s leader into signing a cease-fire.

These are just three peeks behind the diplomatic curtain presented in “A Little War That Shook the World,” Ronald D. Asmus’s absorbing account of the five-day clash in the Caucasus that August.

Asmus, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, now runs the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. He pieced together this tale of realpolitik and diplomatic dead-ends by unearthing previously unpublished documents and interviewing Western and Georgian officials. Taken together, the evidence illustrates how the West failed to get to grips with an emboldened Russia.

Written with a diplomat’s feel for policy nuance and a journalist’s eye for detail, the book traces how Russia exploited U.S.-European divisions -- magnified by the festering sore of the Iraq war -- to put a stop to Georgia’s headstrong embrace of the West.

Thus we learn that “several senior White House staffers” urged “at least some consideration of limited military options,” such as bombing the mountain tunnel that served as Russia’s main supply line.

Miriam Elder | Moscow | Jan 10

The Observer - Five years after Ukraine's Orange Revolution, its next presidential election is between two pro-Moscow candidates

Five years ago, Ukraine's Orange Revolution was hailed as a new start for a country that had begun to look west towards the European Union and Nato. But as voters prepare to go to the polls next Sunday in the first presidential election since they cast out the country's Soviet-era leadership, Europe's most famous colour-coded reform movement seems to have run out of steam.

Both of the front-running candidates in the poll have indicated that firmer ties with Russia, whether for pragmatic or ideological reasons, will be a priority. The poll will thus ring the death knell for a pro-western revolution that degenerated into a morass of political infighting, compounded by economic crisis.

Leading the polls is Viktor Yanukovych, a former prime minister whose initial victory as the Russia-backed candidate in 2004 sparked allegations of a rigged vote. His only serious rival is Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister and Moscow's new favoured candidate. President Viktor Yushchenko, hero of the Orange Revolution, now has an approval rating below 3%. Last week he accused Yanukovych and Tymoshenko of comprising a "single Kremlin coalition", such was their joint desire for warmer relations with Moscow.

Humphrey Hawksley | Kazakhstan | Jan 8

BBC News -
In 1953, eight years after the American nuclear bombing of Japan, President Dwight D Eisenhower laid out a vision that he called Atoms for Peace.

The United States and the Soviet Union, he suggested, should make joint contributions from their stockpiles of uranium that would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.

It was too idealistic for its time. The Cold War was intensifying. At its heart was the competing strength of nuclear arsenals with the apocalyptic scenario of Mutually Assured Destructions - that nuclear conflict would obliterate both sides.

But now, more than 50 years on, the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme has pushed the Eisenhower vision into reality.

In November, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made a deal with Russia to stockpile 120 tonnes of nuclear fuel in a plant at Angarsk near Irkusk.

And in 2010, the IAEA is expected to come to a more encompassing arrangement with Kazakhstan to keep 60 tonnes of uranium at a plant in the east of the country.

The aim is to convince some 60 developing countries planning to use nuclear power in the near future that they do not need to go down Iran's path of enriching their own uranium.

Ulf Mauder | Moscow | Jan 6

DPA - It has long been described as 'hell on Earth,' and now Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has pledged to reform it. That hell is Russia's prison system.

Human rights activists regularly accuse prison guards of brutally mistreating inmates. Russian Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov has even compared the 'inhuman conditions' to the gulag, the forced- labour camp system under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin so devastatingly portrayed, in 'The Gulag Archipelago,' by Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008).

Relatives of prison inmates who have been brutally mistreated or even killed often implore the president to take action against the 'sadistic' guards.

Maxim Gromov, a member of the inmates' association, said prison personnel even recorded their misdeeds with video cameras as a teaching tool for novice torturers and to intimidate prisoners. Many frightened inmates pay 'protection money' to guards, the journal For the Protection of Prison Inmates wrote in its November issue.

In an article for the journal, Gromov wrote that Russian prisons were filled with an 'entire army of highly decorated, uniformed perverts who rape and kill prisoners by the dozens.'

Dec 29

BBC - Russia has signed an oil transit deal with Ukraine, apparently ending a threat to cut supplies to EU countries.

Moscow has agreed to a 30% increase in the transit tariff for oil piped to Europe through Ukraine, according to Ukraine's state energy firm Naftogaz.

Moscow confirmed a deal had been signed, but did not comment on the details.
..
Russia provides about a quarter of the gas consumed in the EU and 80% of that is piped through Ukraine.

Dec 29

BBC - Russia needs "to develop offensive weapons systems" to counter US missile defences and maintain the strategic balance, PM Vladimir Putin says.

Otherwise, the United States would feel "completely protected" and able to "do whatever they want".

The US this year dropped controversial plans for missile defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, but said it would develop other defensive systems.

Mr Putin said such plans were hindering nuclear arms reduction talks.

Russia and the US are yet to find a successor to the Cold War-era Start I treaty, which expired on 5 December.

The 1991 treaty led to deep cuts in nuclear arsenals on both sides.

Both sides have agreed to continue observing Start I until they reach a new agreement.

Under a joint understanding signed in July, deployed nuclear warheads should be cut to below 1,700 on each side within seven years of a new treaty - a huge cut on Soviet-era levels.

Nonetheless, between them the two countries will retain enough firepower to destroy the world several times over.

Moscow | December 24

Al Jazeera - Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has announced that his country is to develop a new generation of nuclear missiles to ensure its nuclear deterrent remains effective.

Medvedev made the announcement on Thursday during an end-of-year interview with three state-controlled television channels in which he also touched upon the country's economy, prison reform and relations with the United States.

Dec 12

BBC - Talks between the US and Russia in Geneva on forging a new nuclear arms reduction treaty are being extended, the Kremlin has announced.

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev agreed by phone to continue work on finding a successor to the Cold War-era Start I treaty, it said. Negotiations in Geneva had been "intensive and purposeful", it added.
Start I expired on 5 December but the two countries agreed to continue observing it pending a new agreement.

"The heads of state agreed to give the order to continue active work and not to reduce the high level and tempo of co-operation, with

Jaroslaw Adamowski | Warsaw, Poland | Dec 12

CSM - The US and Poland have reached an agreement to station an American antimissile defense system on Polish soil two months after plans to install a more robust missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic were scrapped in the face of intense Russian opposition. But the close military cooperation between the US and Poland, including US troops in the country, means the deal is likely to remain a major concern for Russia.

The deployment, under a new Status of Forces Agreement reached between Poland and the US, calls for US troops to install and operate a mobile, land-based set of short- and medium-range missiles to defend against incoming attacks.

The equipment includes SM-3 IA missiles and a MIM-104 Patriot mobile missile battery. Both types of missile are designed to shoot down short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The missiles could arrive in Poland as soon as the first quarter of 2010.

Though Russia is unhappy about the growing military ties between the US and former Warsaw Pact nations, the current plan is more modest than the earlier one, which included long-range missile interceptors. The missiles to be stationed in Poland will not have the capacity to be used offensively against Russia and aren’t capable of shooting down the long-range missiles in the Russian arsenal.

Moscow | December 4

Reuters - At least 100 people were killed in an explosion at a nightclub in the centre of the Russian city of Perm near the Ural mountains on Friday, Russian news agencies reported.

The agencies quoted law enforcement officials as saying the blast had been caused by firecrackers.

Dec 3

BBC - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said he will think about running for president again in 2012.

"I will think about it," said Mr Putin during an annual Q&A session with Russian citizens. He served as Russia's president from 2000 to 2008.

Answering some of 700,000 questions from viewers, he called for tough measures against those behind Friday's train bombing, in which 26 people died.

He said the attack showed the threat to Russia from terrorism remained high.

He also said the US was hindering Russia's efforts to join the World Trade Organisation, adding that his priority was to strengthen relations with Russia's neighbours.

Thinking about it? I bet he is already printing up the banners :D

November 28

BBC - A bomb blast caused the derailment of a Russian express train, killing at least 26 people, intelligence officials say. Some reports say that as many as 39 people have died.

The Nevsky Express derailed in remote countryside on Friday night as the train travelled between the capital Moscow and St Petersburg. Investigators found "elements of an explosive device" at the scene, the Russia's federal investigative committee said in a statement.

A senior intelligence official said a bomb had derailed the locomotive. Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia's domestic intelligence service told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that a bomb equivalent to seven kilos (15 lb) of TNT had been detonated, Reuters reported. Russia's prosecutor-general has opened a criminal case on terrorism charges, Russian news agencies report.

Moscow | November 19

BBC - Russia's ban on the death penalty will remain when a current legal suspension expires on 1 January, the country's Constitutional Court has ruled.

It said the use of the death penalty was now impossible because Russia had signed international deals banning it.

Moscow | Nov 12

AFP - Talks between Moscow and Washington to replace a key nuclear disarmament treaty that expires next month have hit a snag over proposed restrictions on Russian missiles, a newspaper said Thursday.

The dispute threatens to derail high-stakes talks on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which US President Barack Obama's administration hopes to replace before it expires on December 5.

The Kommersant daily, citing an expert familiar with the START talks, said Washington was seeking to keep a provision from the original treaty for monitoring Russia's arsenal of mobile ground-based missiles.

"They are offering to keep and even strengthen control over our mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) such as the Topol," the expert was quoted as saying by Kommersant.

Russia is against the proposal since the United States currently does not have its own mobile ground-based ICBMs and it is therefore of "unilateral character," he said.

The maximum number of "carriers" capable of delivering nuclear warheads remains another sticking point, the newspaper reported.

Clifford J. Levy | Mytishchi, Russia | November 11

NYT - It was late on a Monday afternoon at the drunk tank in this Moscow suburb, but it could have been any day, at any hour, at any similar facility across this land. People would come. They always do. Such is Russia’s ruinous penchant for the bottle — and the challenge facing a new government policy to curb it.

First to be escorted in by police officers was a construction worker named Damir M. Askerkhanov, who said he had been bingeing on vodka and beer — “This is my very own holiday!” — before he was found stumbling about in the cold. At 23, he admitted that he had already been picked up intoxicated twice recently. “Only even drunker,” he said.

With the possible exception of Georgia-US-Russia, no US relationship in the former Soviet region is more fraught today than the US-Russia-Ukraine triangle. At a time when Washington and Moscow have variously committed to a relationship reset, a new operating system, and a rerun of the Clinton-Yeltsin strategic partnership, it is disappointing how little substance has followed rhetoric. Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe are still reeling from the US Administration’s abrupt and ill-timed reversal on missile defense deployment, and Team Obama is eager for opportunities to demonstrate its commitment to the new Europe, which received no shortage of love from the Bush Administration.

Oct 15

Asia Times -

ADRIFT ON A RUSSIAN ISLAND, Part 1
Koreans left high and dry

When Sakhalin Island, off Russia's east coast, became a Japanese colony in 1905, thousands of Koreans were brought in to work in the fishery and timber industries. When the Soviet Union regained the island 45 years later, the Koreans became virtual prisoners, and a stormy coexistence began that lasts to this day.

This is the first article in a two-part report.

Quite the history lesson~ tina

Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Oct 14

Asia Times - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's high-profile trip to Moscow this week to shore up Russian support for tougher sanctions on Iran if talks on its nuclear program fail has been openly rebuffed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

He labeled as "counter-productive" even the mere threat of sanctions at this delicate moment in the Iran nuclear standoff. "At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process. Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counter-productive," Lavrov said.

Luke Harding | Yalta | Oct 11

The Observer - As Ukraine prepares for its first presidential election since the Orange Revolution, there are signs that its giant neighbour to the east will not tolerate a pro-western outcome.

From the terrace there are views of the Crimean peninsula, with fir trees, dark green cypresses and a shimmering bay. Inside – through a pleasant Italian courtyard – is the room where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sat together around a wooden table and divided up postwar Europe.

But almost 65 years after the "big three" met in the Crimean seaside resort of Yalta – now in Ukraine – the question of zones of influence has come back to haunt Europe. Russia has made it clear that it sees Ukraine as crucial to its bold claim that it is entitled to a zone of influence in its post-Soviet backyard.

Last month, a group of east European leaders and intellectuals gathered in the Livadia Palace, where Britain, the US and the Soviet Union held the Yalta conference in February 1945. The idea was to discuss Ukraine's strategic future. But the discussion was overshadowed by one question: will there be a war between Russia and Ukraine?

The scenario is not as daft as it seems. In August, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, gave his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, an unprecedented diplomatic mugging. In a seething letter, and subsequent video message, Medvedev reprimanded Yushchenko for his "anti-Russian" stance. He told him that, as far as Russia was concerned, the pro-western Yushchenko was now a non-person.

I've been on a bit of a Russian kick lately. I've never read much Russian history (China always seemed so much more interesting) so I've been nibbling around the edges with some random tomes on minor topics so I can start getting a feel for the geography and culture before really jumping into a comprehensive historical survey.

There are many fascinating things about Russia, but right now to me it all boils down to "what the hell happened to a once great nation?" The country that produced Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Nabokov, etc etc. The country that beat back the Nazis and dominated all of Eastern Europe. The country at the center of the Soviet empire that contended with the U.S. and NATO for world domination for nearly fifty years.

Now it's a wreck. From the Financial Times:

Everyone interested in modern Russia should read a report out this week on the nation's deepening demographic crisis. It's published by the United Nations Development Programme, but is written by a team of Russian academic experts, so no one can say it is tainted with bias.

The report describes the stark reality of a country whose population is falling fast, to a considerable extent because of rampant alcohol abuse among men, who on average are dying before they are 60. "Short life expectancy is the main feature of this crisis, though by no means its only feature. The birth rate is too low, the population is shrinking and ageing, and Russia is on the threshold of rapid loss of able-bodied population, which will be accompanied by a growing demographic burden per able-bodied individual. The number of potential mothers is starting to decline and the country needs to host large flows of immigrants," the report says.

Since 1992, the natural decrease of Russia's population has amounted to a staggering 12.3m people. This has been compensated to some degree by the arrival of 5.7m immigrants. But many are ethnic Russians from former Soviet republics, and the source is drying up. Overall, Russia had 142m people at the start of 2008, compared with 148.6m in 1993. By 2025, the figure will almost certainly fall below 140m and could be as low as 128m. The implications for Russia's economy are enormous. The authors cite forecasts from Rosstat, the national statistics agency, that Russia's working age population will decline by 14m between now and 2025. As Vladimir Putin said three years ago when he was president, the demographic emergency is "the most acute problem facing Russia today".

My reading on Russia so far has largely focused on Siberia for whatever reason. I just completed Jeffrey Taylor's Siberian Dawn, detailing his early 1990's trek across the breadth of Siberia from Magadan to Warsaw. It's a bracing read as Taylor chronicles his impressions of the unbelievable climate and the people struggling and stumbling to adapt to the fall of the USSR. The shadow of Stalin looms over the book, even forty years after the tyrant's death.

I also read The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, the story of a Polish calvary officer who escaped from a Siberian prison camp in WWII by heading south -- thru the Gobi Desert and over the Himalayas into India. The account of his trial by the Stalinist authorities (and the months of torture that preceded it) outdoes anything by Kafka. Its hard enough to process the facts of tale, much less fathom the deprivation, suffering, fortitude and will to be free that powered these people through their ordeal. A short and understated book of remarkable power. Could potentially make an incredible movie.

Wrapping up the trilogy, I read Brian Moynahan's Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned. Two things jumped out at me about that one: 1) the period from 1904 to 1914 was a true interregnum; 2) monarchy is an inherently criminal form of government. The Czar nearly lost power after getting utterly whipped in a war with Japan and only brutal repression and some superficial reforms managed to cement his hold on power. But it was clear that the old Russian empire of God and the Czar was intellectually and morally spent. I found the descriptions of the anomie of that period hit very close to home and our current predicament. Into this vacuum came the shyster Grigory Rasputin.

For all his machinations and self-indulgence, Rasputin offended me far less than the Czar Nicholas II and his awful wife, the power behind the throne. They systematically eliminated (sometimes with murder) every competent administrator and general in their service until they could no longer insulate themselves from the consequences of the disasters they caused Russia. By the end of the book I was looking forward to the Bolsheviks' arrival.

I'm bracing myself for studying the following periods of revolution, terror and tyranny as well as the preceding eras. Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. Catherine the Great. Lenin. Trotsky. Stalin. Pretty scary stuff. Any recommendations for what to read next?

Philip P. Pan | Oct 6

WaPo -

On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

The humiliating episode underscored Russia's continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine's first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia's interests in January.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country's first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a "possible military intervention" by Russia that would "bring back the division of Europe." Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

Crimea is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine's current government insists it must go.

"It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine," said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. "That's the message they're sending to any future president."